Mad sisters of esi, p.17
Mad Sisters of Esi, page 17
Wisa is delighted. She stays awake at night and thinks about belonging, this strange bottle of sunshine she has been given. Can she swallow it? Whole? How else can she keep it?
• • •
Over months, Jinn begins to slink closer.
Wisa notices it slowly. At first, she sees him at the edge of groups, listening to her conversations. Then she begins to notice him in the same places she is in, always out of the corner of her eye. When she looks at him openly, he doesn’t look away; a lot of people do; they are shy about these things. Instead, he smiles sheepishly. The first two times Wisa cannot understand what he wants. Then she does, simply, suddenly, and she is thrilled.
After that, she spends more time by herself, wandering among the giant trees of the forest and whispering to them. She is careful to choose the routes he knows and she is careful to not be with Magali, for she knows Magali will spoil any chance of Jinn approaching her. She doesn’t do any of this with forward-thinking guile. She acts on impulse, believing the impulse is true and wanting to see if it can be.
Finally, after weeks, Jinn finds her nestled in the roots of a giant flame tree, its flowers tangled in her hair. He wants to be friends. On the ground, he is nothing like the boy who climbed that mango tree. That boy was certain, full of plump confidence. Here, he is unsure of everything. Wisa and he throw stones into the river when Magali is not around, and Wisa enjoys how he always looks for her sister, as if hopeful she will suddenly appear.
You climbed well that day, he tells her.
Thanks.
Actually, you were terrible but you kept going, which is great but also mad. You could have died.
Wisa wonders what madness would look like on him. Whether he remembers the stories his great-grandmother told him—forbidden stories, Magali says and then purses her lips and won’t say more—and if they had anything to do with the cave or stone buildings.
Why’d you do it? he asks.
She doesn’t know how to answer. She just wanted to touch the topmost leaves, that is all. She picks up a stone and throws it into the lake. People have a curious interest in the beginning of things. Magali keeps asking about her parents. And now Jinn, asking why she climbed so high. It is silly. It doesn’t matter; things simply are.
Why did you stop? she asks him.
He is taken aback. I couldn’t go farther, he says.
Liar.
He doesn’t know how to answer that. He fingers a stone in his hand and stares out at the water, not throwing it in.
People do that a lot here, Wisa says. Don’t reach.
Look, everyone knows Wisa is strange, even if no one says it out loud anymore. So Jinn knows he should just forget what she said. He certainly shouldn’t brood about it on his way home from the river. Or think about it for days. Or wonder what it says about him, and if Wisa thinks he is Esi’s biggest coward.
If Magali does.
And he certainly shouldn’t let it influence his actions. That would be weird, and Jinn is not weird. He is a nice, normal boy. His mother spends a lot of time telling him so and he spends a lot of time making sure he is, for her sake; so he shouldn’t let Wisa get under his skin.
Still, Jinn finds himself . . . not listening to himself. He will go for a walk in the forest and suddenly be near Magali and Wisa. He will lie by the river—to look at the fish, he tells himself—and feel a small leap of joy when he spots the sisters down the bank. And if he sees them, well, it is only normal to go talk to them. To spend an evening with them. To make plans for other such evenings, or afternoons, or any time he can get his hands on.
Magali is always cold toward these suggestions, but Wisa treats them like she would want nothing more in the world, so Jinn clutches at this and doesn’t let go. As long as Wisa is enthusiastic, Magali won’t shoo him away. It is not . . . ideal, but it will do.
Jinn tries to be his nicest self around the sisters. He cracks jokes, hoping to make Magali laugh. Summer is gone now, and it is deliciously cool, the way only Esi can be—light breezes that are fresh and crisp. The three of them dip their toes in the water; they go swimming. Wisa tells him his jokes are terrible, so he must stop. There are even times Magali forgets she doesn’t like him. She talks with abandon, and Jinn is pleased she can be herself around him (although he feels stupid for feeling pleased).
The best times are when they climb the eucalyptus tree, as high as they can, and sit among the clouds. Magali is different then. She is not so guarded; her prickliness melts. He likes the way she lies along a branch, eyes half closed, clouds playing with her hair.
This is nice, he says once, without thinking.
But at the mention of how nice this is, Magali stiffens. She remembers she is mad at him and so looks like she would rather drop off her branch and die on the ground than be near him.
He is careful to never say it again.
But the time has come to ask for help. He goes to Wisa. Magali and he were best friends but now she hates him. He doesn’t understand why.
You’re fighting, Wisa tells him, surprised. You’ve been fighting for years. Did you not know?
The fight
Blajine knows this fight. It is a family heirloom, a story with pride of place in the family history and told to anybody and everybody, whether or not they want to listen.
Once upon a time, Magali Kilta had a friend. He was a small boy, not much to look at (the males in the Kilta family have a different version of this story), but he had what few children possessed in bright, sparkling quantity: wonder and curiosity. Ah, we know you think all children have it, but that’s a lie. It is the few good fruits like Jinn who give the others their reputation.
Anyway, this story starts out happy, like these stories do. Jinn and Magali were inseparable, fellow explorers, and they spent all their time on expeditions across Esi (by which we mean the wilderness inside and near the colony). Magali was granddaughter of the greatest memory keeper the colony had ever known, so she was the smarter of the two. She showed Jinn how to spot the slime trail of the prickly biu snail and how to make necklaces out of saltgrass. She invented all the games.
But Jinn brought presents too. He knew stories, told to him by his great-grandmother. These were secrets, gathered from the belly of time. They whispered of alchemists and gold, of greed and mistakes, of forests both real and imagined, stories the children didn’t fully understand but that they knew—they knew—were special.
Then his great-grandmother died. Jinn changed. He laughed more, but in that floaty and false way people laugh when the laughter is not attached to anything. He moved more deliberately, spoke slower. It was like a new spirit had taken hold of Jinn’s body.
Magali tried to play with him. She said, do you want to tell me a story? She even told him his stories, to bring her old friend back.
But he only twisted his mouth so that it looked withered and said, aren’t we too old for fairy tales? And when Magali said, but you used to love these!, he did his laugh. He said, I’ve never heard these stories in my life.
Little Magali didn’t see the pain in her friend’s eyes. She didn’t notice the fear. All she could see was her best friend pretending their friendship wasn’t so special after all. He wouldn’t meet her in the wilderness or go on expeditions. In fact, he wouldn’t meet her alone at all, even when she asked. He spent his time now with the other children, playing their silly games and talking about “normal” things.
It broke Magali’s heart so completely, it would take her eight years to forgive him.
The Kiltas know there is no moral to this story. They just love it. They forget the sad and scared Jinn, for they didn’t know why he was scared. They forget the hurt and weeping Magali, for it is difficult to imagine Mad Magali as a child, forget as a child who cries. They focus, instead, on the cleaving, on Magali striding away from a boy who chose to be ordinary. This, they tell each other with glee, is the price you pay for being uninteresting.
• • •
Jinn asks Wisa for help.
She doesn’t try to hide her excitement. This is incredible—she’s never been asked for help before. She has always existed on the fringes of groups, invisible and superfluous. She doesn’t mind that, not at all. But this! This is glorious. Is there a greater gift than brokering peace between two people? Can there be anything more important than mending a friendship? This is her most crucial task; it will be her crowning glory.
Jinn is beginning to regret he asked her for help.
He is skittish, she must remember that. She soothes him by looking suitably contemplative about the task. She hems and haws, and wonders how she’ll do it. People like that. Magali always does a great job of it—looking eager to help but also baffled by the sheer weight of what is being asked. It makes people feel better about not being able to do it themselves.
But when Jinn is gone, pleased that Wisa seems contemplative about his request, she lets her joy fly uncontained. A re-joining! A union! She will do such a good job that they will be inseparable for the rest of their lives—beyond that even!
She asks Jinn to meet her by the bulb jackfruit tree.
The bulb jackfruit tree is called such because its trunk has grown fat with knots, each of which protrudes out like a bulb. Its fruit is always large, sometimes the size of a small child, and you have to walk around their split and fermented carcasses as you navigate the tree’s roots. It always smells fecund and tart around the bulb jackfruit tree.
When Jinn arrives, Wisa is sitting in its branches and talking to Gul, her pet lizard. He climbs up beside her. He is too nervous to ask what she has planned, but he hopes she will tell him soon. Preparation, his mother always said, is key to successful endeavors.
When time passes and she doesn’t volunteer the information, he plucks up the courage to ask. She looks at him as if she doesn’t really see him. Then, after a moment, she points to the ground.
Magali is approaching. Jinn is not one to be sentimental about things; life is best lived lightly, with little attachment to people or to outcomes and certainly not to looks. But he cannot help thinking how beautiful she is. She carries herself in a way that is uniquely Magali. As if she is striding somewhere incredible and you can’t follow. As if she will punch you if you deter her from her path.
It is very strange that Jinn finds this appealing.
But he doesn’t have time to wrap himself up in his thoughts because Wisa is climbing down the tree. He follows, and he can tell from a swift look at Magali’s face that she didn’t know he would be here.
She looks even more annoyed when she figures out where they are going. Wisa is leading them out of the forest, around the outskirts of the colony and toward a patch of wild grass just beyond. Wisa, Magali says once, and it is a warning, but Wisa ignores her, just skips through the grass as if they aren’t there. Despite his growing awareness that it was a terrible idea to ask Wisa for help, Jinn is excited.
Then Wisa drops to her knees and parts the long weeds, looking for something. Jinn peers closer. It is a gash in the ground, traveling deep into the rock. It looks naturally formed. Wisa beckons to him, and then drops through, disappearing into the blackness.
Jinn is startled, but not as startled as Magali, who looks like she is now, finally, about to say something. She has the expression she gets when she is about to stop the nonsense. So he hurries after Wisa before she can. He doesn’t look to see if she is behind him.
Jinn follows Wisa down the wall of an enormous cavern. The rock is undulated, so it is easy to find footholds. When he looks around, still clutching the wall, he forgets about Magali.
It is the most incredible thing he has seen. A gold pattern etched along the walls of the cave and high into the ceiling, intricate and natural and yet . . . human. Jinn feels as if he has tumbled into a pile of gold and for once, it sings of things travelers describe—promise, wonder and riches beyond one’s dreams.
The gold carries and strikes the light, so that the pattern multiplies on motes of dust floating in the cave, on the water of a rock pool, on their skin. How delicate it is, how precise. The stone structures have the same elegance. Most of their stone is crumbling, plants springing between the cracks, but the structures themselves have not given way. Who would build like that—with permanence, with stillness? Even the crafted homes of the purple-jade forests or the whalebone hills change in the seasons.
He doesn’t notice Magali climb down the wall and reach the cave floor. He never makes it there himself. Instead, he clambers over the cavern, flowing with the same energy he has when he climbs. This is astonishing. Better than any story, better than the stone structures. This is . . .
He doesn’t have the words.
Have you drawn this? he shouts down to Magali. You must get some of Kua’s supplies and just draw this! Have you been coming here every day? Do you know how the pattern was made? What it means? It is incredible work! I’ve heard of these caves but I never . . .
Wisa and Magali watch him clamber across rock, trying to glimpse parts of the pattern hidden by stalactites.
You shouldn’t have brought him here, Magali whispers. It’s dangerous for people to know we come here.
Kua’s voice is ringing in her ears: You’re living in difficult times.
Wisa is surprised. It’s Jinn, she says.
People are changeable. You don’t know because you don’t pay attention.
Wisa wants to say that if Jinn changes, it is only as a barnacle cone, growing thicker and more entrenched to the rock on which it lies. He is a boy built to stay, clinging to what he finds most valuable around him. But she doesn’t know how to explain this without explaining that she is a bird, made to feel the wind on her wings, so she doesn’t say anything.
When Jinn finally joins the sisters, he is a new person. He’s filled with a purpose he hasn’t felt in years. He has forgotten why they are in the cave in the first place. So he is surprised when Wisa says to Magali, firmly: Jinn and you will be friends now. He will make up for his mistake.
This is definitely not the subtle meeting of souls Jinn was hoping for, and he dies a little inside. But really, he doesn’t know how he can be surprised: you don’t go to Wisa for subtlety. Magali is too astonished to be upset, and Wisa—wisely, Jinn notes—continues talking before Magali gets her presence of mind back.
This cave was made by the same people who made the stone structures. The trees told me. Jinn is sorry about his great-grandmother’s stories, but you always say being sorry is not enough. Or saying it anyway. So he is going to show it. He is going to help us find out what the pattern means.
Wisa beams at them. This is a beautiful plan, and she doesn’t know why they aren’t clapping. They are not the clapping type, she reminds herself, and she loves them more for this. Then she worries that maybe they haven’t understood the full beauty of what she is saying, so she adds: This was made by the people who started the festival. She adds: Of madness, because they are still staring at her like they can’t quite hear. People are so strange sometimes. She loves them even more.
Magali finds her voice first. Wisa, it is forbidden to talk about the festival of madness. It is forbidden to even think about it, forget examining secret patterns to learn more of a lost history that tells us about how it started. Don’t ever, ever say this to anyone—
But Jinn, who has definitely turned into someone who is distinctly not Jinn, is pointing at Magali. He is saying, with a sense of glee that surprises, terrifies and delights him: Aha! Who is the coward now?
Magali shakes with rage. Jinn’s joy is absolute; it bubbles up in him, triumphant, his terror gone. For the first time in a long time, he is on an equal footing with Magali. He is speaking not from a place of apology or contrition—and contrition about what, he also didn’t know—but from equality. There is a chance, finally, of becoming friends again.
Wisa watches Magali and Jinn shout at each other with mild interest. Magali is accusing him of being spineless and a betrayer of friendships. Jinn is yelling that she is closed-hearted and petty, nurturing her resentments until they become poison. Magali says she would never, ever have pretended not to know stories that were so important to both of them. Jinn says, Aha, so you admit they’re important! Wisa notes that this was a very silly point, but he saves himself by saying how Magali doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know pressures in his life or why he did what he did.
They love each other, Wisa thinks happily, for although there is a lot of yelling, both of them seem very committed to it. Magali accuses Jinn of leading Wisa down corrupted paths—how could you encourage her?!—and Jinn accuses her of not knowing the people she pretends to care about—as if I could lead her anywhere! Wisa!
Wisa lets this go on for a few more minutes, and then gently interjects. We don’t have to go mad, she says. I only want to know.
The way she says it makes it seem so simple, so distilled to its essence that Jinn and Magali don’t know what to say. When you put it like that . . . Well, it doesn’t seem so horrifying, does it? What could be wrong with knowing? Magali is the granddaughter of a memory keeper and will take on the role one day. Surely it is her duty to know? And Jinn . . . He has spent his life trying to forget his great-grandmother’s stories. But she told him about these caves. And, well, if he was going to truly become brave and a new person, he owed it to her to find out. It is in the interest of Magali and his friendship, right? Everyone agrees you should do anything for friendship.
Jinn sneaks a sidelong glance at Magali. She is still staring at Wisa—who is smiling peacefully—her forehead scrunched with the effort of thinking this through properly. Finally, she says in a vaguely defeated voice: Madness is a sly enemy. They say even thinking about madness means it will worm and fester in your brain. Merely contemplating madness makes you mad.
He can’t help it. He mumbles: Then Ava would be batshit crazy.
