Mad Sisters of Esi, page 8
Could Kiltas be born with a different measurement of time?
But this made no sense. Magali Kilta was born and raised in the wider black sea; she traveled across it. She would have followed the standardized measurement of time, like everyone else.
Why change it on this island?
No, this isn’t a person’s doing. This has trickery written across it, the kind performed by shape-shifting islands.
Myung smiles. She loves an intelligent island.
Slowly, she stumbles to her feet, clutching her notebook and charcoal pencil. If Blajine isn’t going to return for two days, then she has time and freedom to explore away from the eyes of a jealous keeper.
She will make it count.
For unless she is wrong—and Myung Ting is rarely wrong—the person she needs to win over to find what she is looking for is not Blajine, but Ojda.
• • •
Myung has befriended numerous islands—so many now, she cannot keep count. Ojda is a tough one, but she is certain it will yield to her eventually. Patience, as she writes in her one hundred and fifty-eighth Myung’s Diaries, is key:
Wait. Watch. Move as slowly as you can. Don’t move at all. Islands don’t like you being on them. They’d like to know why you’re here. Human time is wrong: you walk too fast, speak too loudly, die too quickly. It is irksome. Islands like change as a slow curve, the build and break of a gentle wave. To befriend an island, sit still. If you must walk, tread as if on a butterfly. Ossify to become a part of them. Show them you can change your time, even if it brings you close to your death.
But after one day of wandering across Ojda, Myung is forced to face a few realities.
First, she is not as healthy as she believed. The wounds she suffered from the jomin keep opening, and her body is not happy with being dragged under Ojda’s sun.
Second, the islands Myung usually visited were wild and unexplored. They didn’t know what to do with Myung when she arrived. They certainly weren’t wary of her. But someone must have warned Ojda’s beasts and birds about her, because they inch away with definite suspicion. Even an even-tempered mammal that spent his time chewing thoughtfully on Ojda’s soil hisses and scampers when she comes close.
Third, Ojda is watching her.
Myung can feel its consciousness press down on her shoulders. It is not the same as when she was in the plains—then, there was a definite sense of dislike in Ojda’s gaze. Now, there is curiosity mingled with suspicion. Ojda doesn’t know her. She doesn’t look like a Kilta, and Kiltas are the only people Ojda tolerates.
Tired and hot, Myung tries to soothe it. She drops to her knees and presses her palm into the dirt. Friend, she says. Friend.
But either Ojda thinks this is a stupid thing to say—what actual friend says friend?—or it can hear the edge of desperation in her voice. Its opinion doesn’t change.
By noon the next day, Myung knows there is no tricking this island.
A part of her is determined to deny this. She is Myung Ting! She was keeper of the whale of babel! Which island dare best her? She simply needs to find the knife to pry its heart open. She only needs time.
But Myung may not have time. She does not know if a ship is indeed growing in the sea of mists, and what Blajine will do when Myung refuses to board it. She has been a keeper too, and knows that keepers will go to any length to protect their charge.
But it isn’t just time, is it? Laleh would say it straight: You know Ojda cannot be fooled, silly. It sees you; it’s smart. You won’t get what you want by being witch, knight or explorer. You’ll need to be a truth-teller, give it your honesty. That’s what it wants.
Honesty. One of the most potent ways to pry open an island: to metaphorically roll on to your back and expose your soft underbelly, and then hope it won’t eat you alive. Myung hates honesty. Fools use it, explorers who are novices at their craft. Honesty can earn you the heart of an island, but it can also leave you dead.
Fine, not dead. But maimed. Or at an island’s mercy. Or with the horrible feeling of having exposed the rawest parts of yourself. Which are all terrible things! Worse than death!
Overhead, Ojda’s sun bores into her. She glares back, each waiting for the other to blink.
IV
Laleh walks through the snow plains—although it is not snow but salt and it clings to the bottom of her feet. Somewhere on Ojda, Myung drops to her knees and presses her hand into the ground, murmuring friend. In the cottage, Blajine curls up in her bed, crying silently. Laleh wants to be free of all of them, to be alone with the knowledge she has discovered.
Great Wisa has a sister.
It is baffling. Great Wisa is one of a kind. Yet here is a sister, and the sister has a family. It means Great Wisa has a family. In the black sea, outside the whale. Myung was right.
It feels too raw, and too much for Laleh to handle.
And yet . . . it also feels nice. The only person Laleh has been linked to is Myung. To now find she could be linked to many people is . . . strange. Wonderful. She can be part of those people-webs in the museum of collective memory. And she would not have only one mirror to reflect herself, but hundreds: each showing different sides of her, offering her different possibilities. She could trace her behaviors to an old uncle who lived two centuries before her; she could predict how a niece or nephew may get her eyes. She could make patterns.
Just arrived?
An old woman is looking at her appraisingly. She is sitting on a collection of stone-plants, all of them sighing under her weight; she taps her walking stick thoughtfully. Laleh knows this woman is a ghost. She also knows, without a doubt, that it is Mad Magali.
Magali sighs. You must be new; the new ones never talk. Damn that Rostum and all his children. She taps her stick again. You’ll get used to the island, she says kindly. You are made for this place; you’re a Kilta.*
Laleh sits by the old woman’s feet. She doesn’t say anything; she simply wants to be near her. This is Great Wisa’s sister. They shared the same life, at least for some time. That must make this woman goddess-like. There must be some of Great Wisa in her.
Magali looks down at her, amused. I like you, she says. You are calm. None of the young ones are calm. Everything frazzles them. When I was your age . . .
She pauses and looks at Laleh again. Something about Laleh’s age has pushed her into sadness, and she stays quiet for a while. The two women stare out into Ojda.
I miss her, Magali says.
Laleh doesn’t interrupt; she knows Magali is not talking to her. She stays still, making space for the old woman’s memories.
She would have loved this place, Magali says. She would have delighted in what Ojda became. All these little ones are so scared all the time. But Wisa—Wisa would have laughed. She would have danced with glee. She would have wandered across this landscape learning everything, and then she would have relearned it when Ojda changed it all. I didn’t make it like this—I made the island nice and kind—but I’m proud of it. It has changed itself into something she would have admired.
Laleh is filled with a light, white joy. She is content. To sit here, with Great Wisa’s sister. To sit here and talk about Great Wisa. She could not have asked for more.
Why doesn’t she come? Magali says.
Laleh hears her pain, and it strikes deep into her own heart. She holds Magali’s foot in comfort; it is the only part of her she can reach. It is a question Laleh has asked herself so many times in the whale. She would call out Great Wisa! and no one would answer.
Why didn’t she come?
Magali!
Someone is shouting for her. Laleh doesn’t recognize the voice, but Magali clearly does. She lurches to her feet, cursing.
Magali!
A man is striding across the landscape. He is older than his statue in the museum, but the features are the same: a beard, thick hair, a strong body. Although Laleh can’t see from this far, she’s sure he has the same kind eyes.
Don’t tell him I was here, Magali whispers hurriedly. Keep it to yourself.
Then she disappears.
V
Blajine doesn’t arrive on the second day (as measured by Myung’s watch) that is meant to constitute her night (as measured by Blajine’s sense of time). Myung waits by the Rock of Respectability for a few hours, then considers resuming her quest. But what difference will it make? Ojda has won. She can sense its shriveled heart pumping in stubbornness. It doesn’t care how many islands she has bested—she won’t best it.
If Myung wants to stay, she needs to give it all of herself. Ugly, good, true—everything. Ojda will accept no less. (In fact, it would be very appalled at the thought that anyone would accept less. After all, it has had a family chained to it since its birth, dedicating their lives to its care. That’s the kind of dedication it knows. Not this useless dropping to your knees and saying friend, friend.)
So, Myung can explore as much as she likes, write notes and scheme; it won’t make a lick of difference. There is only one option open to her: radical honesty.
Myung grimaces. Laleh would love this; she would see it as a sweet bonding; she would sing and coax Ojda out of its shell with the tenderest parts of herself. But Myung is awful at it. Being honest with yourself is hard enough. Being honest with someone else is agony.
But Ojda cannot be convinced any other way.
I suppose you want to know how I found you, she says. Or why I found you. I am quite proud of it actually; I don’t think anyone has done it in centuries. It did take a bit of hunting. I made a map from fragments. I went across the black sea and I asked about you. Your myths, your legends, any gossip. I wrote it all down, what anyone would tell me, and then I made a map of it.
I don’t know how I made it, nor do I think I could read the map again. It was a bizarre thing—a sketch of circles and triangles that just seemed to . . . make sense. Some part of me knew how to make it, and then some part of me knew how to sail with it. And then I landed up on you.
Ojda is listening but Myung can tell her speech hasn’t impressed it so far. “I made a map of nonsense that I can only read once” isn’t enthralling stuff.
I like you, she says. I used to live in a place like you once. Bigger than you, much bigger. Kinder too. I think it was just older; you’re a little baby planet. That one was a universe. I had a sister there. I left her behind. She used to say the whale—that place I was in—would sing to her, but I could never hear it. I always felt . . . punished, you know? Myung’s voice grows thicker. She clears her throat. Punished a bit for being me. I know the whale loved me but I . . . I couldn’t feel it. And its kindness made it worse.
I like you, though. I like that you don’t love me. That you are not easily impressed. I understand that. It feels more real, more equal this way.
Myung looks at her lap; she fiddles with her fingers. God, she hates this. She hasn’t said these things to anyone—even to herself. It’s all coming out as nonsense.
My sister and I, we knew of this one other person. Our maker, Wisa. Great Wisa, we called her. She made us and she loved us, but we never met her. I became obsessed with finding out who Wisa was. Where she came from. I began dreaming about people. So I left. I came to the black sea, and I became this. She gestures to herself. Traveler. Explorer. I’m famous, you know. Written lots of diaries; many people call me smart.
She smiles; she hopes it is endearing. Ojda’s consciousness is still here. She feels a prickle of pride that she has kept its attention for so long. She takes a deep breath—this is the tough part.
But it wasn’t enough, beyond a point. The diaries, the explorations. I missed Laleh, my sister. But I couldn’t find the whale again, no matter how much I looked. I swear, on Laleh, I looked. I read all the literature they have on the whale of babel. I’ve researched everything they say about Wisa. There was nothing there. Nothing about how to find the whale or who Wisa may be. It was all a dead end.
And then one day, I was on a ship. We were about to face an electrical storm and a sailor was rocking back and forth. “Please, Alban,” he said, “please don’t let the mad sisters get me.” And I remembered hearing that somewhere, when I first became an explorer. About the mad sisters of Esi who roam as spirits in the black sea, enticing sailors to jump in and join them.
It’s just a sea story. I know that. “Don’t let the mad sisters get me”—that’s just a sea phrase. There are so many of them: sea phrases to pray for good food, safe passage, fat treasure. Maybe that’s why when I heard it for the first time decades ago I didn’t pay attention. But when I heard it this time . . .
Myung falls silent. The blue-bird tree above her is silent too; it has been listening intently. Now it nudges her with its root. Go on, it seems to say. Ojda is still here.
Have you ever felt an impulse so strong you know it is correct, but you cannot understand it? Have you ever chased something, a tail end of a feeling, always whipping out of sight? And you run and you run, hoping to catch it. That’s what this was like. I heard the sailor say the words “mad sisters” and I knew Wisa was one of them. I knew as if I had heard her tell me herself. I can’t explain it. Don’t ask me to. But I didn’t question it. I chased the impulse—I looked for the story.
Mirabilia diachronism is a branch of academia that says that every fairy tale, every sea phrase or myth has a seed of history in it. I looked for that seed. I read up on Esi and on all the famous people that came from its shores. I found out about Magali Kilta. And then I found a paper that said Magali and Wisa were sisters. That Magali made this museum for her.
So I came here. I read up on Magali Kilta, I found out about this place, I hunted for it and I came here. I came because somewhere on this island there is a story about who Wisa really was, about the mad sisters of Esi. And if I can learn that, then maybe . . . maybe I didn’t leave my sister for nothing. Maybe I can better understand myself. And once I know it—
Myung tilts her face to the sky, her body trembling.
—Once I know it, I’ll understand her creation better. I’ll understand the whale, I’ll know how to find it and I can be with my sister again.
The Cracking
I
Blajine wakes up from the nightmare of Kiltas chasing her and realizes she has overslept. When she reaches the Rock of Respectability, the traveler is gone. Panic swells in her, but she quells it with practice. Where can the traveler go? Her satchel is here and Blajine knows she would not leave without it.
This is simply a ripe opportunity.
She tips the satchel, watching its contents empty onto the ground. She rummages through them with her toe. Quills, charcoal pencils, some dried meat, medicines, a folded piece of paper that is a drawing of triangles and circles, a book and a nondescript orb, probably used for navigation.
Of these, the book is the most interesting. Blajine flips through it, noting the clear “MYUNG’S DIARIES, NO. CMXLI” on the front. She opens it to a random page:
There is no smell. I close my eyes and expect to find it: the sharpness of vegetation, of brine or perhaps cold flatness of shell. Instead, I find sound. When the soil shifts, I can hear an island’s worth of conversation. Then I find smell, light but growing more pungent. Masked, always masked, by whispers.
Blajine drops the book, startled. This is Ojda in the stranger’s handwriting, caged on the page. She feels a giddy rush of protectiveness—Ojda should never be caged.
She picks up the book again and flips. She reads a passage to the end, then flips and reads more. She learns Myung has a sister, someone to miss and love, someone to call her own. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes. She keeps reading. Another page and another.
She cannot stop.
Her thirst frightens her. Nothing here is new to her; she has lived her life in the museum of collective memory, wandering its collections; she knows everything there is to know about most islands. It is not what is written, but how. She reads to quench something in herself.
When she sees “Vortex in Noma” she pauses, then reads the entry in full.
There is a vortex in Noma that eats into the black sea. Peasants gather at its edge to shiver and peer at it in wonder. Among the cluster of boats, you can find the sleek canoes of the academics, their books bound in waterproof leather, quills rolling around at the bottom. They take notes with the frenzy of those who feel an idea will disappear if not set down in words. They catch, as desperately as they can, the maelstrom’s wisdom.
For here is the wonder of the Vortex of Noma. Those who travel through it say that, through the veil of the whirlpool’s edge, you can see the secrets of the black sea. These are unlike anything seen—mysteries, fables, knowledge so far beyond our grasp that we did not know we do not know.
And now the crust of boats has grown thicker, for the vortex is speaking of a beloved children’s fairy tale, a story so old that its origin has been forgotten.
What prize will they earn, those who can find the whale of babel?
But the academics’ notes are piecemeal, their information second-hand and scattered. No adult can travel through the vortex and come out alive. A few have tried. Julop Crace was the first, and other adventurers followed her. Their bodies were never found.
So the academics must rely on a more capricious source—children. They are the only ones who can travel through the vortex and return. They leap into the eye of the whirlpool and come back out of the cosmos, falling into their panicked parents’ arms.
This, then, is Noma. A gathering of boats like a jigsaw puzzle, children whooping and yelling as they leap into the vortex. Professors in single boats, scribbling what they can hear. Parents with their faces turned heavenward and their arms out, panicked, waiting for their children to be returned.
