The Lost Sisterhood (5 page)

Unnerved by her sudden intensity, I obediently wrote down the words in the middle of my essay, and when she saw the result, she nodded her approval. “That is good what you are doing. Writing.”

I barely knew what to say. “Do you not … write?”

For a moment she looked stricken, and I wondered if I had insulted her. Then she looked down, suddenly fearful. “Yes. I write.”

For Christmas that year I gave her a notebook—one of my unused red exercise books from school—plus three blue pens I had bought at the store. She didn’t say anything right away, but as soon as my parents were busy with their own stockings, she took my hand and squeezed it so hard it hurt.

I did not see the red notebook again until years later, long after she was gone, when I was eavesdropping on an after-dinner conversation between my parents and my father’s old school chum, Dr. Trelawny, who was then a psychiatrist in Edinburgh. Perched on the top step of the staircase I was able to overhear most conversations going on in the living room, and I could also swiftly retreat to my room if need be.

On this particular occasion the subject was Granny, and since all my questions about her were usually met with reproachful silence, I was naturally determined to ignore the biting draft in the stairwell and take in as much information as possible.

My father was evidently showing Dr. Trelawny a collection of medical files, for they were talking about such things as “paranoid schizophrenia,” “electroshock treatments,” and “lobotomy,” most of which was gibberish to me at the time. At one point there was a prolonged shuffling of papers, interspersed with Dr. Trelawny exclaiming, “How extraordinary!” and “This is remarkable!”—all of which made me so agog with curiosity I simply had to descend another few steps and crane my neck to see what was going on.

Through the half-open door I saw my mother sitting on our yellow sofa, nervously twirling the tassels of her shawl, while my father and
Dr. Trelawny stood by the fireplace, their whisky glasses resting on the mantelpiece.

It took me a moment to realize that the object eliciting such excitement from the otherwise exceptionally dull Dr. Trelawny was the red notebook I had given Granny for Christmas six years earlier. Clearly, the three blue pens had been put to good use for, judging by the doctor’s fascination with each page, the notebook had been filled from cover to cover.

“What do you think?” my father eventually asked, reaching out for his whisky glass. “I have shown it to a few specialists in London, but they say no such language exists. An imaginary dictionary, they called it.”

Dr. Trelawny whistled out loud, oblivious to my mother’s warning grimace. “The make-belief language of a delusional mind. I thought I had seen it all, but this is something else altogether.”

Unfortunately, the whistle prompted my mother to close the door to the hallway, effectively cutting me off from the rest of the conversation.

Ever since that evening I had been itching to see exactly what Granny had written in the notebook. But whenever I dared approach the subject, my mother would spring up from whatever she was doing and exclaim, “Oh, that reminds me! Diana, I want to show you something—” And off we would go upstairs, to sort through her clothes, or shoes, or handbags in search of something I was old and responsible enough to borrow. It was, I suppose, her way of apologizing for all the unanswered questions.

Once I inadvertently surprised my father as he sat bent over the notebook at his desk, but the clumsy urgency with which he shoved it into a drawer was further evidence that this was by no means an object he cared to discuss. And so I waited and waited, very much aware of the notebook’s presence among the family papers, until one day, I could stand it no longer.

Rebecca and I had been alone in the house for an entire day, getting up to all the usual sorts of mischief, when we at last found ourselves on the threshold of my father’s study. “You have a right to know the truth,”
Rebecca had insisted, when she saw me hesitating. “They can’t keep it from you. It’s so wrong. I am sure it’s even against the law. You
are
sixteen, you know.”

Spurred on by her indignation, I had finally opened the drawer with the family papers, and we had spent the next hour riffling through my father’s file folders in search of the red notebook.

During that hour, we found so many shocking papers that our eventual discovery of the notebook dwindled in importance. Yes, indeed, it contained a long list of English words and their apparent translation into a set of bizarre symbols, but Granny’s little dictionary, as it turned out, was not nearly as interesting as the letters from doctors outlining ominous-sounding treatments for her, including a stomach-turning description of the surgical procedure involved in a lobotomy.

Somewhat stunned after this unforeseen jackpot of information, Rebecca and I had eventually put everything back in the file folders, including the red notebook, and had walked out of my father’s study with a budding appreciation that parents hide things from children for a reason.

I had not laid eyes on Granny’s meticulously scribbled dictionary since that day, twelve years ago; in fact, I had barely allowed it to cross my mind. But it had clearly festered there all the same, in some cerebral cranny, and as I stood in the attic on this rainy October afternoon, I knew I couldn’t rest until I held it in my hand.

It didn’t take me long to find the box with family papers. As expected, my father had done a halfhearted job of hiding it underneath a folded garden parasol, and it was the only box in the room that did not have its contents meticulously scribbled on the side. As I peeled off the adhesive tape one nervous inch at a time, I kept listening for steps on the staircase outside; once I felt confident no one was coming, I knelt down and started going through the file folders.

When I finally spotted the red notebook, I was in such a hurry to test the wild idea that had possessed me since the night before that I nearly missed the two words Granny had written on the jacket: “For Diana.”

The discovery that the notebook had always been intended for me filled me with sudden feverous certainty. I opened the cover with trembling fingers and, after a quick glance at the first few pages, could see right away that in her careful blue writing, Granny had left me the key to a language of symbols I would never encounter anywhere else … until the day a stranger stopped me in Magpie Lane and gave me a photograph and a ticket to Amsterdam.

NORTH AFRICA

W
E MADE IT, LILLI!”

Myrina staggered onto the shifting stones of the riverbed. There was not much of a stream left; what must once have been a roaring waterway was now little more than a long, narrow crack in the parched landscape. But she was far too exhausted to feel any disappointment, far too exhausted to feel anything other than a faint throbbing as the uneven rocks scraped the last few patches of skin from her weary feet.

“The river!” Falling to her knees by the water’s edge she could finally unfasten Lilli’s spindly arms that had been clasped around her neck since sunrise. “Do you hear me? It’s the river!” Myrina eased her sister’s limp body to the ground and began pouring water to the lips that had been far too silent all day. “Come, drink now.”

The desert had been bigger than she thought. Their water-filled goat bladders had run dry before they were even halfway across it. She had kept assuring Lilli she saw trees on the horizon, beyond the blazing plain, hoping her words would come true. Yet as hour after hour went by without shade or drink, the conversations between the sisters became briefer and briefer, until there had been no words left to speak.

Over the course of their journey those last few days, Myrina continually heard the patient, steady voice of their mother urging her on, on, on. “Must reach the river,” it said, with hushed intensity. “Cannot
stop. Must keep moving.” The words never faltered, never faded; just as her mother had never left her side during all those nights of childhood illnesses and fears, so did she remain faithfully by Myrina’s side throughout these last stumbling hours, when there was nothing else to cling to but a few persistent words, throbbing in her head, “Must reach the river. At the end of the river lies the sea. By the sea lies the city. In the city dwells the Moon Goddess. She alone has the power to cure my sister.”

When Lilli finally came to, she peered in all directions with her poor, unseeing eyes, then started crying, her narrow shoulders trembling in despair. “This is not the river,” she sobbed. “You are just saying that to comfort me.”

“But it is! Feel.” Myrina guided her sister’s hands into the shallow stream. “I swear to you, this is it.” She looked around at the dusty rubble. An abundance of trees must have lined this waterway in its prime, but now they were little more than crumbling skeletons toppling this way and that in search of support—the sad remains of a lush world long gone. “It has to be.”

“But I cannot hear the water at all,” said Lilli, bravely wiping her tears before cocking her head to listen. “It must be a very quiet river.”

“It is,” admitted Myrina. “An old and tired river. But it is still alive, and it will lead us to the sea. Come, drink now.”

For a while they were silent, gorging themselves with water. At first, it was as if Myrina’s throat had forgotten how to swallow, but once she had managed to force down the first few mouthfuls, she could feel the cool liquid trickling through her body, restoring life wherever it went.

When her belly was full, Myrina lay back against the rocks and closed her eyes. So many days without rest, and the last, agonizing stretch without water. For how long had she carried Lilli? Two whole days? No, it was not possible.

A startled shriek and a sudden flapping of wings pulled her back upright. Seeing her sister’s terror as she kept flinging her arms at some invisible enemy, Myrina immediately drew the knife from her belt.

“It was a bird!” cried Lilli, furiously rubbing her leg. “It bit me! Where did it go? Don’t let it bite me again!”

Myrina held up a hand against the sun and eyed the two scrawny vultures circling overhead. “Hateful vermin!” she muttered, putting away the knife and reaching for her bow instead. “Expecting to feast on us today—”

“Why do the gods despise us so?” Lilli rocked back and forth, hugging her knees. “Why do they want us dead?”

“I would not waste my time speculating about the gods.” Myrina eased her finest bird arrow out of the quiver. “If they really wanted to kill us, they could have done so forty times.” She laid the arrow on the string, rose slowly on her feet, and pulled back the bow. “Clearly, some power wants to keep us alive.”

Later, when they were lying by the small driftwood fire under a starlit sky, digesting their unsavory meal, Lilli snuggled up to Myrina and said, “Mama came for me, you know. I saw her so clearly….”

Saying nothing, Myrina merely drew her sister closer.

“She looked happy,” Lilli went on. “She wanted to embrace me, but then she saw you, and I think she was afraid you would be upset with her for taking me away … so she didn’t.”

They lay quietly for a while.

It seemed so distant now, their life back home. And yet the memories of their lost friends and loved ones were still strong enough to choke and silence them both, just as Myrina knew that the terrible, evil reek of sickness and death would surely linger in her nose forever.

After leaving the village, they had both been miserably ill with shakes and convulsions. Myrina had been convinced they would die—in fact, she had almost welcomed the thought. But then she slowly began recovering, as did Lilli, although her sister’s fever lingered long enough to harm her eyes. For several horrible mornings in a row, the girl had woken up from fitful sleep seeing less and less, until finally she saw nothing at all. “Is it near daybreak?” she had asked on that last day, peering helplessly into the bright sunshine.

“It is not far,” Myrina had whispered, drawing Lilli into a sobbing
embrace and kissing her again and again, while the awful truth had clawed at her throat from the inside.

But they were still alive. They had survived the pestilence, and now they had survived the desert, too. From here on, things could only get better. Myrina refused to think otherwise.

“Are you sure—” Lilli began, as she did every night. But this time she did not finish the sentence but merely bit her lip and looked away. They both knew there would be no answer to Lilli’s big question until they reached their destination. Could the Moon Goddess in the big city undo the damage of the fever and restore her eyesight? No one but the Goddess knew the answer.

“I am sure of one thing,” said Myrina, polishing their mother’s bracelet with the skirt of her tunic. Underneath the stubborn residue of soot was the jackal-headed serpent she remembered so well, staring at her with blackened eyes. “Mother would be proud if she saw you now.”

Lilli looked up quizzically, unable to fix her gaze on Myrina’s face. “You don’t think she would be angry with me for being useless?”

Myrina drew the girl closer. “Useless is for farmers who don’t farm, and herdsmen who don’t herd. Remember that you are a sister. A sister does not need eyes to be useful, merely a smile and a brave heart.”

Lilli sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping as she leaned on their traveling satchel. “I am only your half sister. Perhaps that is why I do not have your courage; had I had your father, I might have shared your hunter’s heart.”

“Hush! Fathers come and fathers go, but Earth stays the same. Just as there is no such thing as half a heart, there can be no such thing as half a sister.”

“I suppose,” muttered Lilli. “But I am still not sure I can ever smile again.”

“Well, I am,” said Myrina, resting her chin on Lilli’s head. “Remember that she who braves the lion becomes the lion. We will brave this lion, and we will smile again.”

“But lions don’t smile,” muttered Lilli, still hugging the satchel.

Myrina made a growl and started biting her sister’s neck until they were both giggling. “Then we shall teach them how.”

M
YRINA AND
L
ILLI FOLLOWED
the river for ten days.

They now had plenty of water to drink, but the land surrounding them on all sides was barren. Whenever Myrina came across a living plant that tasted halfway edible, she would munch a few leaves or tubers, then wait a while to observe the effects on her stomach before offering it to Lilli. And whenever the languid stream pooled in a basin of slightly cooler water, Myrina would prowl the perimeter, trying to spear a lonely fish.

On particularly hot days, an animal or two might come down to the river to drink with abandon, and thanks to her bow and a few intact arrows Myrina was usually able to serve up a side of unfamiliar meat for dinner. Those were the good moments. Staying up late, eating as much as they possibly could, the sisters inevitably found themselves circling back to life as it used to be.

How trifling the daily sorrows of their village seemed now. And how much greater all the little pleasures. The comforts of family, the worries and the gossip … it all blended together in a bright and happy dream, an impossibly innocent world that survived in words alone.

Since they had both been born in the Tamash Village, Myrina and Lilli had never thought of it as anything other than home. And when the other children occasionally jeered at them for being foreigners with foreign habits, their mother dismissed it as ignorance. “They think it is evil for a woman to have children with different men,” she would say, rolling her eyes at the subject. “Little do they know their own father may not be the one they think it is.”

In addition to the whoring charge there had been the issue of their mother’s mysterious skills with herbs and roots. While the other village women might spend their days gossiping about her sinful ways, as soon as an ailment struck, they would be upon her doorstep, begging for a remedy.

More than once, the village elders had come to the hut with their fine robes and carved staffs, asking that Talla no longer practice her foreign arts. But she had merely shaken her head at them, knowing their wives would never let them drive her out of town. On one particular occasion, Myrina remembered her mother taunting the village chief, saying, “You think I put a curse on your little one-eyed bird, Nholo? Maybe if you didn’t sit on it all day long, talking rubbish, it would soar to new heights.”

But even those once-unhappy moments were beatified by the golden light of memory. Grudges were forgotten and debts quite forgiven; Myrina was amazed to see how easily death stripped away all the niggling details of life and left an entire village of petty people cleansed and amiable.

As day after day of monotonous travel went by, the sisters would often return to the same few memories over and over, as if the pleasure grew with repetition. “I can still see it,” Lilli would say, half-giggling. “Mother trying to catch the old rooster…. Oh, she was so mad! And all those young men so desperately in love with you, but too afraid to even smile at you—”

Myrina never corrected Lilli when she spoke like that. She merely laughed along and let her sister roam around in this imaginary past for as long as possible. The present, she knew, would come back soon enough.

O
N THE ELEVENTH DAY,
the river widened into a delta and now, finally, Myrina began seeing evidence of other human beings. Narrow dug-out canals for irrigation shaped the landscape in spiderweb patterns, and yet not a trickle of water made it into the fields. The soil was as parched here as it had been at home, and there was not a farmer to be seen. “What is it?” Lilli asked at last, unnerved by her sister’s long silence.

“Nothing.” Myrina tried to sound cheerful, but the truth was, she was sick with worry. Wherever she looked, she saw abandoned farming tools and desolate strips of pastureland. The only animals in evidence were scraggy crows circling the sky. Where were the people?

“Shh!” Lilli stopped abruptly and held up her hand. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” All Myrina heard were the cries of the birds.

“Voices”—Lilli turned her head this way and that—”men’s voices.”

Infused with hope, Myrina clambered up on a large boulder for a better look around. Before them was a coastline and large body of water—a sight that filled her with relief. “It is the sea!” she exclaimed, pointing without thinking. “It is enormous … just as Mother said it would be.”

No one back in the village, except their mother, had ever seen the sea. But the elders had often talked of it, all nodding in agreement, sitting in the shade underneath the fig tree. It was big and blue and dangerous, they had said, absentmindedly batting away the flies, and on its distant shores were cities full of danger and suffering, cities full of evil strangers….

Their mother had always laughed at such speech, reminding her daughters that men tend to resent things beyond their understanding. “The city is no more evil than the village,” she had once said, brushing it all aside with a hand covered in bread dough. “In fact, people there are a great deal less jealous than they are here.”

“Then why did you leave?” Myrina wanted to know, sprinkling more flour on her mother’s hands. “And why can we not go back there?”

“Maybe we will. But for now, this is where the Goddess wants us to be.”

Myrina had not been fooled. She knew her mother was concealing something to do with the Moon Goddess. But no matter how she phrased her questions, she could not provoke the answers she was hoping for. All her mother ever said was, “We are her faithful servants, Myrina. The Goddess will always be there for us. Never question that.”