Mad Sisters of Esi, page 10
She brought Myung here. She can take her out.
The room shakes and dissolves. Myung cries out. She tries to grab as many books as she can, but the museum disappears and Myung is spat out, her arms empty, to huddle on the forest floor.
She is sobbing.
Blajine stares at her. The traveler is shattered; her pain is so great, Blajine can see it running through her.
I’m sorry, Myung says, reaching for Blajine. I am sorry.
But Blajine takes a step back. Then she hurries away.
IV
Magali!
The old man that Laleh knows is Magali’s husband is climbing over the horizon. He is no longer striding with energy; he looks exhausted. He takes a deep breath.
We can’t have this fight forever Magali! he shouts at nothing. He takes another deep breath and then just lets it out, slowly. He says in a normal voice: We live on the same island. At some point, we’ll have to talk about it.
He catches sight of Laleh then and smiles. It is such a kind smile to offer a stranger that Laleh warms to him. She doesn’t want to speak to anyone right now. She wants to travel back to the whale and take her sister with her, then she wants to visit again when she has had time to think about everything she’s learned. But this man . . . this man she could talk to. She doesn’t know why, but she knows it will make her feel better.
Have you found Magali? she asks.
She is hiding, he says, sighing. Help me sit, will you? Today has taken everything out of me.
Laleh helps him to the ground and sits beside him. From the corner of her eye, she can see Myung stumble about. She tries not to look.
Magali hides when she doesn’t want to look at something, Jinn says, massaging his knees. I’m trying to make her look. Does she scare you? He squints at Laleh. Don’t let her scare you. They call her Mad Magali and make up all these stories, but she is soft really. So soft and so large-hearted, I don’t think you can find another heart like it in the black sea. No one loves like Magali Kilta.
You love her very much, Laleh says.
Yes. And she loved her sister very much. He gestures at Ojda. Love makes you do mad things. He takes another breath and bellows, Magali!
The more you shout, the more she’ll run, Laleh says. All the shouting does is tell her where you are.
Jinn scratches his beard. He hadn’t considered this. He gives Laleh a sidelong glance. Whose daughter are you? I can’t keep track with all the people.
Laleh shrugs.
Ah yes, he says wisely. Obviously, several new Kiltas were confused about their parentage. He pats her hand. Don’t worry—it is not important to know. I only asked because you remind me of someone. Wisa used to say things like this all the time; I often felt like a fool next to her.
Great Wisa? Laleh asks.
Are we calling her great now? Great Wisa then. Yes, that one. Thank you for the tip. He taps his nose. No more shouting.
He stands up slowly, and Laleh offers him her shoulder for support. Magali wasn’t always like this, he murmurs as he stands. He seems to be talking to himself. I just have to remind her.
V
Blajine paces in her cottage. She is unsure of how to deal with Myung. What she saw in the museum is proof that the traveler cannot be trusted; she came here for something that belongs to the Kiltas, and she will do anything to get it. It is exactly what Blajine has been warned against. It would be best to get rid of the traveler as soon as possible.
They need to find that ship.
But when she dreams that night, it is of Myung staying. Of both of them sitting outside the cottage eating stew. Of this wise and brave traveler making Ojda her home and playing lilta with Blajine at night.
She shakes off the dream the moment she wakes. Ojda is tense; she can sense it in the air. They are on the precipice, balancing on the knife-edge of change. I’ll make her leave, she promises the island, but Ojda doesn’t seem relieved. It is as confused as she is.
• • •
Myung has had days to think about the incident. She has had nights to imagine what she would have done differently, for if she had, maybe she would be clutching Wisa’s story now. She has cycled through it in her head.
Be nicer.
No, kinder.
No, more assertive—make Blajine show you the island’s secrets.
Stop waiting for her to show up—run away, hide. She’s going to get rid of you and you will never find your sister.
Go back to the museum. Look for the room.
Beg Ojda.
Scour the island; do whatever it takes. This is your last chance—find your way home.
By the time Blajine walks over the horizon, Myung has already lived a dozen different versions of herself. She’s played out multiple scenarios, over and over, each one leading to a dead end. She is tired.
And when Myung is tired, when she is frustrated, when the black sea tells her something is impossible . . .
VI
The traveler looks harrowed. She stares at Blajine in . . . wariness? There is a sharpness to her, like a cracked vase on the verge of splitting open and slicing you.
Blajine understands wariness. She knows that when someone looks at you like a wounded animal, it is because they need kindness.
She has been that animal.
So she offers her hand to the traveler, feeling suddenly old and very wise. Myung takes it and lets Blajine pull her up. There is something different about Myung, tangible in the set of her shoulders and how she moves her body. She’s retreated into herself. It is like the first day again, a return to their roles: Blajine, keeper; Myung, unwelcome.
The traveler doesn’t apologize for the museum. Good. Silence is best now; this camaraderie is at an end. They walk toward the sea of changing mists.
• • •
And there is their ship.
The sea of mists settles on their shoulders, lifting locks of their hair, poking their ears curiously, wondering what it can change them into. The fog is thick, so sky and ground are the same imperceptible white. But there is no mistaking the ship. Its sail is made from silver leaf, its prow a sea serpent. Four paws protrude from its hull, their claws gleaming. It is not complete as yet—bits of it are missing, and the deck has gaps. How long? Blajine estimates a day. Then they can push the ship out of the fog, and the traveler can leave.
Oh, she feels it. The past coming for her, her life pulling back into shape, squeezing her into the mold of what she was taught to expect and cherish: endless, empty time.
One last day.
The women stare at the boat.
Do you want to see my cottage? Blajine asks without looking at Myung.
Yes, says the traveler.
• • •
Myung doesn’t mention the strange alignment of the cottage. She sits on the sloping floor and accepts tea, putting her feet against the bedpost to prevent herself from sliding.
You’ll want to know then, Blajine says. How it happened.
Myung doesn’t answer, only sips her tea. There is a lightness to her that Blajine likes; she never rushes you or expands to fill the silence. Blajine can say all the quiet thoughts she has had for years, alone, and not worry they will be too much.
Ojda did it, she says. When it woke up, it didn’t like something on its back. So it rose into a cliff and tried to shake the cottage into the abyss.
Were you scared?
No. Yes. I crawled out and clung to the ground, waiting for the shaking to stop. I had lived my life in this cottage. If it went, so did all of me. Blajine rubs the rim of her shell cup. It didn’t fall, though, she says. Mad Magali built it with foundations so deep that Ojda would have to rip itself apart to destroy it. Mama used to say that to me, when I grew scared. Toward the end.
How did she die?
In bed. Peacefully.
I am sorry.
Blajine doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like to think there is something to be sorry about. She drinks her tea and stands. Tomorrow, the traveler will leave. Would you like a meal? she asks and Myung nods.
Not here, Blajine says. Come to the song bowl.
• • •
What Blajine calls the “song bowl” is a glade. It is filled with sculptures made of entwining branches, each with the same face, their bodies curved in dance. Out of their hands and hair grow leaves covered with the softest gold fur, like a shade of sunset, and these grow into canopies with traceries of black and then only black. At the highest points of the canopy, Ojda has pressed hard diamonds that sparkle as stars. There is no sign of Ojda’s sun.
It is a perfect night sky.
Myung helps Blajine pick the ingredients for dinner. She watches her cook. Myung has spent a lot of time observing how different cultures prepare their food. In Tuleman, they eat as they harvest—men swallowing berries straight from the branch, women gutting silver deer and smoking the meat over a makeshift fire. In Contrini, they eat alone and then return to the great fire with seeds and bones to tell the story of their meal. In Esop, they make their food into intricate rangolis and then devour these with frenzy, for they believe order always gives way to chaos. Each culture eats in the same way they understand the world, and it makes Myung feel so alone that she cannot tell Laleh this.
Blajine makes her food in rhythm. She boils plants and reptiles in a charcoal pot, sprinkling weeds she carries in hidden pockets, tasting as she goes. She uses fresh materials: scales from a river snake, crystals plucked from Ojda’s soil, sap from a bulbous plant that swells as she whispers to it. But her North Star is song. She sings as she cooks, under her breath and absent-mindedly, and her actions change with her melody, growing fiercer as the song swells or more languid when it ebbs.
Blajine has a home. Blajine was taught to cook by someone who was taught by someone else, and a memory of those hands will always live in her.
Yet she is preventing Myung from going home.
The traveler’s heart hardens further.
They eat in silence. Blajine uses a stone with a dipped center; Myung eats from the pot with an old shell she carries in her backpack, slurping noisily and picking fibers out of her teeth. The stew is salty and stodgy, textured with an odd mix of rooty sweetness. It’s good.
• • •
Tomorrow, Blajine thinks, the traveler will leave. They will walk back to the sea of mists, where the ship will be waiting for them. Blajine will say, Don’t tell anyone what you saw here, and Myung will promise. Sail safe, Blajine will say because it is polite. She will not cry. And then Myung will go on adventures and Blajine will go back to being a Kilta—tied to Ojda with a foundation so deep that the only way to uproot yourself is to die.
The stew is too salty. She is annoyed by the fibers tickling her tongue, by the crystal spices that have not melted even though she boiled the mixture for a good length of a song. She is annoyed by how much Myung is enjoying it, her whole concentration on the stew.
What do you see when you look at me? she asks.
Myung picks out a piece of root, considering. Blajine has wanted to ask this question since she read Myung’s notebook, and Myung knows it.
If you could write me, Blajine says, when the silence stretches, what would you write?
Still Myung doesn’t answer. A childish, perverse self has taken over. She is enjoying this: Blajine reaching to her for something, her withholding it. How does it feel now, keeper?
Blajine senses the resistance, and beneath it, the taunt. You can’t write about me, she says. I forbid it.
You can’t stop me.
I’ll burn the diaries.
How will you find them after I leave?
Promise you won’t write me.
I won’t promise.
Myung’s eyes in the firelight—hard and cold. Her jaw tense. It makes Blajine’s hackles rise; she wants to fill out with her own power, match Myung’s petulance with hers.
But what is the point? The traveler will be gone tomorrow. And she is right—how will Blajine know if she’s written about her once she is out in the black sea? Maybe it will be good if the traveler records her. It will mean that someone—anyone—will remember she had lived.
Can I ask you a question? Myung says.
No.
Myung asks anyway. Why did you read the diaries? I watched you—you were reading for a long time.
Blajine looks for a lie, then gives up; she can’t see the point in pretense. You write warmly, she murmurs. Like a fire on a cold beach night. You see what others don’t care to look at. Then she empties the stew onto the ground, where it hisses and dissolves; collects leaves into a pillow; lies down.
Blajine? Myung’s eyes are softer in the firelight, her voice gentle. Can I stay?
No.
• • •
That night, Blajine dreams again.
Blajine? Can I stay?
Dream Blajine considers it. She rolls the possibility in her mind like a loose tooth. You can stay, she says finally. Dream Myung cries.
Dream Blajine holds out her hand and Dream Myung climbs down from the ship. You are Myung Kilta, she says solemnly. Sister of Blajine Kilta, daughter of Ayesha Kilta, granddaughter of—and she recites the genealogy back to the name her ancestors used to wait to say, the diamond of their heritage that would elicit gasps of wonder when unwrapped from its velvet cloth. Magali Kilta. Creator of the museum of collective memory. Keeper of your stories.
Her mother claps furiously. The spirit that is Ojda cheers. Blajine’s mother wraps Dream Blajine in a hug.
One eye on the world of the waking, she whispers into her daughter’s ear. What are you missing?
And Dream Blajine knows. She never told the traveler her name.
• • •
Blajine? Can I stay?
When Blajine opens her eyes, she finds the traveler staring at her, playing with a cut fingernail. Blajine keeps still. Her heart is pounding, the dream still fresh behind her eyelids. In the soft light of the glade, Myung looks like a predator.
Do you know, Myung says, about the two types of quests?
Slowly, Blajine sits up. Her heartbeat is slowing; she is regaining control of herself. She is Blajine Kilta and she has survived the awakening of Ojda. No traveler can outwit her.
I don’t, she says.
My sister used to say there were two types of knights. Knights who dressed in shiny armor and rode in search of princesses. And knights who were actually learned women, who sat under a tree in the forest until they became the tree.
I don’t understand, Blajine says.
It is the quests. There are two type of quests—moving and waiting. The first kind of knight moves in search of what she wants. The second . . . she waits. Myung looks at her cut fingernail; she shakes her head imperceptibly. I’ve spent my time being the first knight. But Laleh always said the wise ones were the ones who waited. Who sat under the tree until they became the tree. Until knowledge came to them. I want to wait. I want to stay.
Any animal, when cornered, lashes out; Blajine knows this. Myung may be a predator, but her eyes have a hunted, haunted look, as if she exists on the edge of her own quiet madness. Can she be guided? Shown a path out of here that she follows with her own free will? She has a sister, an anchor to the black sea.
What about your sister? Blajine asks. Won’t she miss you?
I don’t know. I left her behind.
Blajine blinks. Left her behind? Blajine would kill for a sister. Bathe in Ojda’s volcano. Give it her fingers, like it had once asked, to have another Kilta by her side. And to say, so easily, “I left her behind”—
Swiftly, Laleh kneels at Blajine’s feet. It isn’t like that, she whispers, placing a hand on Blajine’s knee. She loves me, I know it.
For a moment, it is as if Blajine can see her. She is staring at Laleh intently, like she’s trying to understand why the air feels both hot and cold, like two currents meeting, the same way it felt in the museum of collective memory when Blajine thought of Wisa.
Oh, Laleh is desperate to be seen. To reach out to this world of the living and actually participate, to be . . . She tightens her hand on Blajine’s knee.
But Blajine is already looking up.
Sister is a careful word, she says.
What?
Sister is a careful word. That’s what we say in the family. It is a special relationship. You have to love and hate each other. Want to drown them but also burn the world if it threatens them. She taps her head. You have to be slightly mad to love like that.
Blajine, when did your mother die?
I never told you my name.
I know a lot more than your name. How long since you’ve been alone?
But Blajine has had enough. She won’t answer any more questions. She is keeper again, vested with the responsibility of a Kilta, and she will not betray her family. Ojda and she are better off alone.
I know your type, she says. Mama warned me. She said, “The ones with the maps and diaries are the worst, little leaf. They’re alchemists. To them, islands are only real once they’ve seen them, secrets only true once they’ve heard them. Many names they give themselves—pioneer, explorer, adventurer. Never let one stay.” But I did. I let you stay and now you think Ojda is yours, after four days. It’s not; it’s not even mine. Sail away. Now, in this light. We won’t wait for tomorrow. I won’t ask again.
What makes you think I’ll leave?
Blajine laughs. Traveler, you’ll go. You’ll go or Ojda will gnaw at your insides. You can’t last a day without me.
The traveler raises her eyebrows. Alchemist, is it? And so Myung the alchemist reaches into her robes and pulls out a piece of her alchemy. There is rage in the gesture, focus and cunning. She is holding in her hand the cold hard truth and she wants Blajine to see it.
• • •
Myung is holding a rock.
But Blajine knows it is not any rock. It is Ojda’s rock, and it was sitting in Myung’s pocket and now is in her hand as docile as a pet rabbit.
Suddenly Blajine knows that Myung’s pockets are full of Ojda’s flora, her ears filled with their secrets. The landscape is leaning toward her, as if Myung draws all of Ojda with her charisma. The soil is playing with the traveler’s toes, plants reaching for her, clouds hovering as if they cannot bear to be far from their new love.
