Mad Sisters of Esi, page 15
For once every hundred years, Esites pile their visitors, travelers and old guests onto boats; they row them out to the black sea, leave them bobbing there for days and days; they make sure their island is clear, filled with only natives.
Then they go mad.
II
After the climbing incident, the children are suspicious of Wisa.
Not all the children—only some. But even this surprises Magali, for what Wisa did that night was magnificent. Still, she should have expected it. The festival of madness is ten years away, and the children are on the lookout for signs of madness. That’s what luddite children do. Luddites don’t participate in the festival—they have found ways to protect themselves from it—but they are wary nonetheless. Madness finds you, Kua used to tell her, whether you are looking for it or not.
And now Wisa is here, and she is different. The children suspected it before, but now they know it.
What she did isn’t natural, Ava whispers loudly, so that Magali overhears. No normal child could have climbed that high. They have stories about it—about people doing things they can’t do, finding sudden abilities, seeing things. It’s a sign—she drops her voice—of, you know, the festival. The drifters will tell you; you can ask them if you like. I’m not lying. That feeling that night—slithering and shivery and . . . alive. It is what they warn us against. It is what those seven days . . . feel like.
Magali feels a prickle of irritation for Ava and her paranoia. Magali may not like Wisa, but you cannot help but admire what she did on that tree. It was brave and wild, and Magali finds herself . . .
Longing for it.
She shakes her head, trying to get the thought out.
Some children believe Ava and skitter away every time they see Wisa. But others don’t care. Wisa has earned their respect. Magali is cornered in random places in the colony and bombarded with questions she doesn’t have the answers to. Where does Wisa come from? Why did she keep climbing that night? Is she going to stay?
Freyn finds her in Lira’s elderflower shop and asks her, in a voice that is too loud for what they are discussing: Will Wisa show me how?
He means climbing. What an idiot to mention it here in a shop full of parents, where anyone could overhear. If people found out what the children did, they would be stopped. She glances around and catches sight of Jinn.
It is not surprising to see him here; Lira is his mother. Jinn is rummaging in the earthen pots next to them, trying to pretend he hasn’t overheard. Magali waits for him to say something. She has been watching him closely since that night; she knows how much it rankles him that Wisa climbed as far as he did—and then farther. Jinn is proud of his status as the best climber. So she waits for him to say what she knows he has been dying to say since that night. Any moment now, he’ll lean forward and look Freyn in the eye. His voice low and urgent, he’ll say: I wouldn’t ask that if I were you, Freyn. Wisa’s clearly mad.
For a moment, their eyes meet. Magali knows there is a challenge in hers. Go on. Say it. She doesn’t know why she wants him to, but she does. She wants to know if there is any of her old friend left in this boy.
But he doesn’t say it. He breaks eye contact and wraps a fistful of dried elderflower in a leaf.
Magali says to Freyn: Ask her yourself.
Four nights later, Jinn finds her.
Magali is by the river, the quiet place where she can be by herself. It is nice to be the golden child in the colony, but it is also exhausting. There is always someone who wants to talk to you, feed you or be loving. It is selfish to think like this, of course; she is lucky to have so many people love her. But she thinks it nonetheless.
So she comes to the river, to this tree whose branches skim the surface, where she can lie with her feet in the water and let the fish nibble her toes. The river is not as clear as the glass lakes, but you can still see almost to the bottom: weeds, fish, crabs, and there, buried in the loose mud, the familiar glint of gold. There is gold everywhere on Esi; if you dig even lightly with your fingers, you will find it.
When she looks up, Jinn is staring at her.
It has been a long time since they were alone, not since their fight. Seven years, Magali recalls. No one can carry a grudge like her. She waits for him to speak first, and enjoys watching him search for the words. What will he say? Sorry? Or You’re so wise, Magali; I miss you? Perhaps, Isn’t Ava weird; I wish I didn’t spend so much time with her?
Jinn says: What do you think?
It is not what she is expecting, but she knows what he means. She and Jinn are no longer friends, but they haven’t lost the ability to pick up in the middle of a conversation that never started. Magali is delighted to find she still knows him. Knows he has been bursting to find her alone, that that night put the same questions in his head as it did in hers. Who is Wisa? And is she “mad”? In fact, Magali senses that if she says what she really thinks, perhaps Jinn and she could be friends again.
But Magali is older now. She knows time only flows one way. So she says: No, and feels smug at his disappointment.
Jinn leaves, and she doesn’t stop him.
• • •
Two nights later, though, Magali is still thinking about the meeting.
Not because of Jinn—she gave up on that fool long ago. But his question makes her look at Wisa in a new light. It makes her want to act on her thinking.
When Jinn and she were still friends, he described the two types of visitors to Esi. Those with stone eyes and those with eyes like birds of prey. He heard it from a drifter and it delighted him. He did the actions for her, putting pebbles on his eyelids for the stone-eyed, and curving his fingers into claws as a bird of prey. She was unimpressed. She had heard the same story, from the same drifter, which annoyed Jinn because he traded a whole silta pearl for it.
But now, she is curious. What if she looked at Wisa with eyes better than her own, with eyes like a bird of prey? What would she see?
It is thrilling to contemplate it.
For a while, that is all Magali does: contemplate. She thinks, and thinks, but slowly she begins to act. She observes Wisa at home, and writes down her behaviors. She notices Grandpa is oblivious to Wisa’s strangeness; he is more concerned with teaching her to read. Wisa herself doesn’t pretend to be better around Grandpa; she is as listless and endlessly talkative, her mind forming startling connections. In her notebook, Magali notes: Is this madness?? She doesn’t think it is, but how would she know? How would anyone? What happens during the festival is a mystery, and no one talks about it.
If Jinn and she were still friends, he would say: You’re changing. For she is. Observing Wisa gives her purpose, the closest she has come to the giddy excitement of her adventures with Jinn. When they stopped talking, this part of her died; now, she is finding it again, by herself, which is more exciting. She catches a glimpse of her reflection sometimes, in pieces of glass or in still water, and she grins. She likes the way her cheeks are flushed. When she walks, there is lightness in her step.
Wisa disappears a lot.
Magali didn’t notice before because she was avoiding her. But now she realizes Wisa likes her own company. She leaves each afternoon, when people are napping and won’t miss her. Sometimes at night as well. She is not in the house or in the colony; she vanishes into the forest, and Magali is filled with an irresistible urge to follow her.
So she does.
She follows her for weeks. Wisa stays in the shadows; she has an uncanny ability to melt into her surroundings. Magali tries to follow her lead, but is not very good at it. No matter how hard she tries, people discover her crouching behind the earthen pots or nestled in thickets. They exclaim, chastise and then feed her. Much to her frustration, Magali cannot be invisible.
Nor does she really have eyes like a bird of prey. For if she did, she would notice that Wisa has been wandering around a patch of forest in elaborate loops. That she leans against trees and sighs dramatically, as if they hide special secrets. That when Magali is held up by someone in the colony describing in detail how much their elbows hurt, Wisa waits patiently until Magali extricates herself and only then does she continue her journey. And if Magali was really observant, then she would catch those odd moments when Wisa stares at her in the house, delighted. Followed by Magali Kilta! How thrilling. Wisa is determined to make this a good performance—stupendous, magnificent! Her best. She is careful to sit under different species of trees, so Magali cannot discern a pattern. When Magali is particularly close, hiding inefficiently behind a house or a bush, Wisa bends to talk to earthworms. What a show! She will make sure Magali remembers her.
But Magali notices none of this. She writes in her notebook, looks happily for patterns and follows her sister.
That is how we find both sisters on a full moon night, Wisa moving soundlessly through the colony and Magali trying to keep up. We watch Wisa find the crack to the cave and fall through it, Magali following. And here they are now, both sisters, Magali pinning Wisa to the floor of the cave. Magali saying: I knew there was something strange about you.
Above them, the gold pattern of the cave shimmers in an unseen light.
Wisa grins at her sister. She says: You’ve been lying.
III
Magali knows Wisa is talking about double sight.
Wisa doesn’t say it, but the knowledge now hangs between them. For a moment, Magali is too surprised to act. Then she releases her sister. She clambers off her and sits down, careful to keep distance between them. Look calm, she thinks. She knew something happened that night. When she looked up at Wisa in the mango tree and the landscape around her transformed—far more chaotic than anything she had experienced before—she felt Wisa’s eyes on her. And Magali doesn’t know how, but she knew Wisa had guessed.
The first time Magali experienced double sight, she was nine. She was waist-deep in a pond catching milows, bright purple-and-white fish that are a little dumb, when she saw a woman staring at her from between the wild grass. The woman said her name was Ayesha Kilta, which Magali took to mean I-am-a-long-lost-cousin-eleven-times-removed-from-your-father. It was not uncommon. Ayesha waded into the water and they caught and released milows in silence, letting Esi hum and whistle over them.
Do you know any songs? Ayesha asked after a while.
Magali didn’t like singing but Ayesha seemed nice and a little lost, so Magali sang “Huff Away Arugay,” a children’s song her mother used to sing all the time before she died. It is about a cloud that gets tangled in the branches of a tree. Ayesha didn’t seem to be listening very carefully. She was marveling at the sky, at Esi’s towering forest, even at the fish like she had discovered rare and delicious blue oysters. When Magali stopped singing, Ayesha said with a touch of awe: You’ll make a museum of song one day.
Well, Ayesha was clearly crazy. Still, Magali liked the sound of “a museum of song” and so when she went home, wet and a little muddy, she told Grandpa.
She hadn’t learned as yet what “madness” meant to an Esite but, in that moment, she saw it. Grandpa went silent. For the first time in her life, Magali felt her grandfather wander away from her, moving down paths she could not follow. She wasn’t scared; she was too confused to be scared. When he returned, it wasn’t with an overt gesture; she simply felt him back in the room with her. He continued tearing spinach for dinner.
Don’t tell anyone, he said without looking at her, and so Magali didn’t.
She didn’t, even when the visitors became more frequent. They were eccentric people who called her “Mad Magali” and accused her of locking them away on an island for the rest of their lives. Magali didn’t understand what they meant. She tried to shut her ears and ignore them. Ayesha turned up a few more times, and she was always gentle. She didn’t try to talk to Magali, only joined her in whatever activity Magali was doing, which Magali was grateful for.
Once, she saw Jinn.
He was older, but it was definitely Jinn. He had the same smile, although there were a few wrinkles around his eyes now and he looked . . . calmer. Like the fight had leaked out of him. Not that he had had much fight in him to begin with. Coward. But when he smiled at her, Magali didn’t feel angry. She just felt at peace. This was Jinn. Her Jinn. She was safe.
Then he asked, are we still fighting? in a soft and condescending tone, and she wanted to kick him in the shins, hard, and stamp on his toes for good measure. Of course they were still fighting; they would be fighting until the end of time; how did he have the gall to ask?
He disappeared before she could do any of those things.
There was a time, at about twelve years old, when the visitors became frequent, two or three at once. They began appearing when she was buying tools or helping Kua with his drawings. They talked to her so loudly, she couldn’t ignore them. People in the colony began to ask her if she was unwell. If she needed to rest. They had asked her four times now if she could spare them some candles for the night, and she had not heard them.
Only then did she crawl into Grandpa’s bed and cry. She held his big hand and said the words that had been choking her for years. I am mad. She didn’t look at him, afraid of the horror and repulsion in his eyes.
But he only laughed. A soft laugh, the way Grandpa laughed when you told him you were scared of the dark, and there were definitely spirit-eating creatures under your bed. He held her and rocked her gently, and told her, You’re not mad my little one, not at all. You are only gifted.
Double sight meant that Magali’s ancestors and descendants visited her, but only she could see them. No one understood how it worked, how long they stayed, why they came. It had the mysteriousness of a gift. Think of it as a muddle of personal time, Grandpa said, the yarn of your life all tangled up. But they cannot do anything to you, little one, nor do they want to. They just like attention. Nod to them when they arrive; show them that you are busy and can’t talk. If they are very loud, go somewhere you can be alone and talk to them. Go to the forest. Anything can be said in the forest—trees understand. Don’t be afraid of these people. They’re your family—speak to them, enjoy your gift.
He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, considering something. Then he said:
When you are home, you don’t have to hide it. You can speak as freely as you like around me; I won’t mind. I won’t be able to see your visitors, but they are always welcome. But no one else can know, Magali. We live in difficult times.
Magali understood. Twelve years old was old enough to know she had been born in a time that would witness the festival of madness—the great, petrifying festival no one can remember. And that required special decisions.
But the visitors got easier to manage after that. They were quite amiable to being silent once they knew she wasn’t ignoring them. They still passed loud comments, rather like a running commentary on her life, but Magali enjoyed these. At least her family was innovative.
And once in a while, Magali saw her parents. Sometimes together, sometimes only one of them. When this happened, Magali would rush to the forest, bursting with things to tell them. It was her mum who was the first person to hear about the fight with Jinn. It was her father who listened to how she had grown a batch of waterapples—shelled fruit with tart, pink-blue insides—and cooked them, and how Grandpa had said it was the best meal he had ever tasted. They both heard about how she was the best silta pearl hunter in the colony, how she felt alienated from the children—they are so childish, Mum—and how she wanted to be a memory keeper like Grandpa when she grew up.
Double sight was indeed a gift.
But now Wisa knows—don’t tell anyone, Grandpa had said—and Magali’s heart is pumping wildly. What should she do? Deny it? No, Wisa would never believe her. She knows, and you couldn’t shake her from that certainty. Threaten her? Tell her that if she told anyone in the colony, it would be Magali’s word against hers and everyone would believe Magali? It is her only option, but it isn’t a good one. Even the suspicion of double sight is bad when the festival is so close. Magali has heard drifters talk about it. They say it is the first sign of madness.
You can’t be mad and still live in a luddite colony.
Breathe, Magali tells herself, as her heartbeat spikes. It will be okay.
Don’t be scared, Wisa whispers.
She’s looking at Magali with concern, as if she cannot understand what she is thinking. She holds out her hand, the way you do with a wild animal when you are trying to soothe it. The idea almost makes Magali laugh; Wisa, treating her as wild? But it is comforting too. There is no guile in that gesture, nothing but goodwill.
Magali is suspicious.
How do you know? she asks, because it is pointless not to.
I saw, Wisa says. In the stone structure.
But Wisa knew before that as well; the jackfruit trees had told her. Or rather, they told each other, and she’d overheard. Tree speech is slow, elongated, so you can never be sure you have heard right.
No one will believe you, Magali whispers.
Wisa is puzzled. Why would I tell anyone?
Magali doesn’t know what to make of that. Wisa is looking at her in triumph again, but it is not . . . the triumph of a game won. It is not the smile Ava has when she is more popular than you, so you have to be nice to her. It is . . . outside of them. Like Wisa made a bet with unknown forces, with herself, and she is pleased she is right.
What’s double sight like? Wisa asks.
Magali is startled. What?
What’s it like?
Wisa is leaning forward now, eager. She really wants to know. No one has asked Magali this question, not even Grandpa, and suddenly, Magali wants to cry.
