Sisterland

by Salla Simukka

  The fox who had found the girls was also part of the crew.

  “I am ship’s fox Lox,” he said with a note of pride in his voice. “My job is to smell out storms and water rabbits.”

  Marissa quietly asked Alice, “What’s a water rabbit?”

  Lox fixed Marissa with his gaze and said, “A stowaway. Like you two.”

  One of the women in the crew came up close to Alice and Marissa, peering suspiciously at their clothing. She poked their arms and then snorted. Finally, she said, “And what are we supposed to do with you? Shall we turn back and take you to shore? Or are you good for anything?”

  Alice screwed up her courage, stood tall, and said, “I’d like to speak to your captain.”

  The crew looked at each other, and then they all burst out laughing. Ship’s fox Lox barked his own laugh along with the others. Alice and Marissa exchanged amazed glances.

  “Oh, little whelps,” one of the men said once he recovered from his guffaws. “The Glimmer has no captain. There’s no hierarchy on this ship. Everyone does everything, and we decide everything together. Each of us takes a turn running things.”

  “Well, in that case,” Alice said, and swallowed.

  The rocking of the ship on the waves turned her stomach, but she persevered.

  “In the Garden of Secrets, Raven delivered a prophecy that concerns me and my friend Marissa here. We have a mission in Sisterland. We must find Queen Lili, who rules this world. She is causing an endless blizzard in another world, the one we come from. Soon the snow will bury all the buildings and the people. We have to try to save…”

  Then Alice was forced to pause, because she had to rush to the railing to vomit into the sea.

  “A mission, is it?” one of the women said. “Be that as it may, we have to consider what’s best for our ship.”

  As she retched, Alice heard Marissa explain to the crew that she’d been sailing her whole life and was sure to be useful in any work aboard the Glimmer. The crew weighed the words of both girls. With legs trembling from weakness, Alice returned to hear their judgment.

  Finally, after a debate that seemed to stretch on forever, the crew announced, “We’re already so far out to sea that we don’t wish to turn back. You have one week to demonstrate your worth aboard the ship. If you only lie around, we’ll leave you to your fate on the first rock we find. The Glimmer has made its decision, and there shall be no appeal.”

  * * *

  —

  The early days were nightmarish for Alice. She was constantly seasick and thought she might actually die. She threw up many times each day and couldn’t do much beyond lying in the small cabin that had been assigned to her and Marissa. Alice was certain that if she’d stowed away alone, she would have been tossed on the first rock that poked through the waves, but thankfully Marissa was with her.

  Marissa earned her place on the ship immediately. She hadn’t lied when she said she’d spent her whole childhood sailing. She was in her element on the ship, scrambling up the mast like a squirrel, handling the sails and ropes, and tying knots Alice had never even heard of. In an instant, she became an unquestioned member of the crew of the Glimmer.

  Sometimes Marissa came to keep Alice company, bringing her strong tea and sea biscuits and stroking her hair.

  “It’ll pass soon enough,” Marissa assured Alice as she wallowed in her misery.

  Alice didn’t believe her. But thankfully Marissa was right: After four terrible days, Alice woke up feeling marvelous. The seasickness was gone. Apparently her body had just needed that long to adapt to the rocking and the waves.

  Then for three days, Marissa taught Alice everything she could do aboard the ship to be useful. Because she couldn’t climb like Marissa—the mere thought threatened to bring back the upset stomach—Alice diligently swabbed the deck and crawled into the tiny spaces inside the hull to patch any cracks that might let water in if they grew larger.

  Within the week, both girls became members of the Glimmer’s crew, and no one talked about marooning them anymore.

  Each member of the crew (except Lox the fox) was named for a month. Responsibility for commanding the ship rotated according to each person’s month, May told the girls.

  “What about Lox?” Alice asked. “When is he in charge?”

  April, who had just walked up, laughed.

  “Lox is a full member of the crew otherwise, but we never give him complete command. He is a fox after all. He has to be free.”

  “I can hear you!” Lox barked. “Don’t make fun, or I may not mention the next storm I smell!”

  “You do that and see how you like getting your fine fur as wet as the rest of us!” February said.

  * * *

  —

  To her own surprise, Alice came to enjoy life at sea. The water never ceased to amaze her. Of course, she’d seen the sea in her own world before, but it was different, less colorful and somehow more boring. The Ocular Sea was so blue and green and turquoise that it almost looked unreal. It shone in the sunlight, moving and shimmering, sometimes swelling in great breakers and sometimes settling into a glassy mirror. It was constantly alive and changing, playful and free. The sea often seemed as if it were singing or laughing. It smelled like salt and freedom and wondrous colors. When spray hit the deck of the ship and doused their cheeks and lips with its droplets, it felt like a joyous kiss. When Alice licked the salt taste from her lips, she found it refreshing.

  Alice learned that Marissa’s name meant she belonged to the sea. When she saw her friend on the deck of the ship, her hair streaming in the wind, she realized how well the name fit her. Marissa was like the sea. Always moving and alive, quick to laugh, quick to turn serious. She was just as fascinating and surprising and unpredictable as water, and when a laugh glinted in her eyes before it reached her lips, that was at least as beautiful as the glittering of the waves.

  So what did the crew of the Glimmer do? Why did the ship sail the Ocular Sea? Ship’s fox Lox told the girls one day.

  “We fish for lost stories. The world is full of stories that have disappeared and been forgotten. They end up adrift on the Ocular Sea or sink to the bottom. Our job is to find them and fish them to safety. A great library of lost stories is under construction in the Garden of Secrets.”

  During the second week, the ship reached a place where one lost story after another rose from the waves in a net woven from story lines. Some of the tales came as messages in bottles; some were carved in driftwood or written in small books and sealed up in small iron chests. Some stories were inside seashells, and when you placed them against your ear, you could hear the story along with the rushing of the sea.

  The crew rejoiced. These were the moments that made them willing to sail for weeks on end, to endure the harshest seas, to live on limited and monotonous rations. As she watched them rejoice, Alice thought of her own world and all its lost stories. Did anyone rescue them? Maybe not, but they should.

  “We find fewer and fewer stories these days,” September said, a little wistfully. “Before, there were more.”

  Alice tried to imagine a reason for this, but she couldn’t.

  Something in the Ocular Sea and on the Glimmer bothered her, though. The crew looked like fearsome pirates, but it didn’t seem as if they were facing any real danger. They sailed peacefully. The weather was always beautiful, and life on the Ocular Sea was just as lazy and happy as in the Garden of Secrets.

  “Does winter ever come here?” Alice asked as they pulled in another catch.

  The crew considered this for a long time. Finally, the oldest of them, December, replied, “Some say that long ago, there were different seasons in the year. But now we only have summer. Everything is always the same. Before, life was also more dangerous and exciting. There were sea monsters, storms, and other ships that would try to steal our stories. Those
were times to be alive!”

  Giving a bittersweet sigh, he stroked the dagger hanging at his belt, which he never used for much beyond peeling fruit.

  Alice stored this information away in her mind as well. The mystery of Sisterland was a puzzle, and she kept finding new pieces but didn’t know how they fit together.

  Once the stories had been brought onboard and stowed in the hold, the girls also learned where the name Ocular Sea came from. Alice was belowdecks fetching water when Marissa shouted to her from above, “Alice! Quick, come look!”

  Alice rushed onto the deck, and there she saw them. A swarm of oculars. The oculars were round and about the size of a beach ball. They were like eyeballs with many irises, at least ten on each. They bounced on the waves like dolphins, sometimes diving and disappearing and then shooting up again. They looked so silly that Alice laughed. Marissa laughed with her.

  “Just think. We’re in a place with wolf-dragonfly creatures and wind fairies and lost stories and giant eyeballs!” Marissa said. “I’ll never forget this as long as I live.”

  Alice would have liked to join in her delight, but a small voice inside her was skeptical. If she didn’t remember what her room at home looked like or what her father’s middle name was or whether her sister liked violet or red better, how could she be sure she’d remember all this after she returned home?

  Home. That was a word Alice hadn’t thought of in days.

  “Do you wish you were home? Do you miss your family?” Alice asked Marissa.

  At first Marissa stared at her, as if she didn’t understand what Alice was talking about. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she looked confused.

  “I probably should miss something…,” she said slowly. “But I don’t remember what I’m supposed to miss.”

  “Let’s tell each other things about home. We’ll remember together,” Alice suggested.

  And so they each recounted details of their lives in their own world. Alice told about how her mother would always put a little extra cocoa in her hot chocolate, because she liked it best that way. Marissa described her whole shelf of animal books and said she’d learned to draw a horse and an ostrich perfectly from them. But her little brothers always wanted her to draw dinosaurs.

  Remembering was hard. Alice felt as though she had to fight through fog in her mind, and her head began to hurt.

  “I don’t know which makes me more scared,” she admitted. “That I won’t ever see my family again or that I’ll forget them.”

  Marissa squeezed Alice’s hand tightly. No words were needed.

  In the evening, the Glimmer held a celebration. The crew played raucous, rip-roaring music, and Lox taught everyone a fox dance that included various leaps and lunges and the chasing of one’s tail. When evening gave way to night and the five moons rose in the sky, Alice and Marissa grew tired and withdrew to watch the calm sea and to count the stars as they appeared one by one, like lamps above. The Glimmer glided slowly forward, and for a moment the entire universe seemed to be right there, perfect and peaceful. They saw a small rocky outcropping rising from the waves, solitary and proud.

  “Just think, they would have left us someplace like that if we hadn’t earned our keep,” Marissa said.

  “I’m glad that didn’t happen,” Alice replied. “Although that wouldn’t have been the worst deserted island in the world. It’s quite beautiful. It almost looks like a heart.”

  The girls gazed at the rock. Then they looked at each other and said in unison, “The key within the heart!”

  They ran to the crew and shouted, “Stop the ship! We have to get onto that rock!”

  The crew stopped the ship, but when Alice and Marissa tried to find the rocky island, it was gone. Instead, three other rocks had appeared in its place, but none of them were shaped like a heart.

  “It was there just a second ago!” Alice said, pointing at the sea.

  Then suddenly the three rocks dove under the waves, and the heart-shaped island and a slightly larger rocky outcropping appeared.

  “The Wandering Isles,” August said. “The bane of every seafarer. They always come in groups, but it is impossible to predict which of them will pop out of the water at any time. Getting that key is going to be difficult.”

  “Can we steer the ship closer?” Marissa asked.

  “No. In fact, we need to move away, because one of those rocks could crash up through the hull.”

  “May we take one of the lifeboats?” Alice asked.

  The crew conferred for a moment. Finally, February, who currently led the Glimmer, replied, “Yes, you may. Just so long as you come back in one piece.”

  * * *

  —

  Cautiously Alice and Marissa rowed toward the tiny islands. Even though the sea was mostly calm and the moons shone down brightly, seeing the Wandering Isles, let alone trying to predict their movements, was hard. Rocks rose from the water at irregular intervals. The girls maintained a little distance and kept their eyes peeled for the heart-shaped island. Finally, it appeared.

  “I’m going! Keep the boat here!” Marissa shouted.

  “I’m a better swimmer!” Alice said in protest, but Marissa had already jumped overboard and was swimming toward the rocks.

  Just as she nearly reached the island, it sank again. Quickly Marissa dove, but another rocky outcropping appeared and hit her in the stomach. Accidentally Marissa swallowed some water, and she came back to the surface spluttering. Then the islands seemed to go wild, rising and falling all around, churning up the waves. Marissa lost control, coughing and floundering in the water.

  “Help!” she just managed to scream.

  As fast as she could, Alice rowed toward Marissa, dodging the rocks, and then dragged her into the boat before rowing frantically to get away. They both heard a rock scrape the side of the boat. Thankfully it only left a scratch.

  Marissa coughed and gasped for air.

  “We can’t go there. It’s too dangerous,” she said.

  Alice looked at the islands. Their unpredictable motion was frightening, but she knew she was a good swimmer. And besides, they had to get that key. So she gathered her determination and said, “It may be dangerous, but I still intend to try. Now it’s your turn to keep the boat here.”

  Before Marissa could object, Alice took off swimming toward the rocks. You can’t beat me, she thought. You’re just dumb rocks. She swam slowly, diving and listening. She learned to pick out the low whooshing sound and the change in the water’s motion that an island caused when it rose. The heart-shaped rock had appeared again, as if to taunt her. Alice swam closer to it, skillfully dodging the other rocks around her. It was like a water dance. She sensed the movements of the rocks and followed along.

  Alice’s hand was just reaching for the surface of the heart-shaped island when it started sinking. Filling her lungs with air, Alice dove. The island fled her, but Alice didn’t give up. Finally, her hands touched the surface of the rock and found the hollow in the center. The key had to be hidden there.

  The thought flashed into Alice’s mind that something else might be in the hole, something alive that would grab her, but she shut that idea out of her mind and shoved her hand in.

  She groped around in the darkness, feeling the stony sides of the hole, but she couldn’t reach the bottom. She put her arm in almost to her shoulder to reach farther. Then the very tips of her fingers finally brushed something cold and metallic. Alice stretched just a little more and managed to get a grip on the key. The pressure of the water rang in her ears, and she felt her oxygen running out. Alice tried to yank her hand out, but she couldn’t. She was stuck. Panic began to rise in her. Would the rock drag her to the bottom of the sea?

  Alice pulled and pulled. Her lungs burned. The island continued to sink.

  Would this be the end of her?

&
nbsp; Then, just as suddenly as it had sunk, the island began rising again. Alice tried to kick to make it rise faster. The surface seemed forever away. Alice felt faint, and she knew that was a bad sign. Stay awake, she ordered herself.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the heart-shaped rock bobbed to the surface and Alice breathed in the air. The suction in the hole in the rock also relented, and she succeeded in pulling her hand out with the key.

  Alice swam to the lifeboat, where Marissa helped her in and hugged her tight. When they let go of each other, Alice saw that Marissa was crying.

  “Hey, don’t worry. I got it!” she said, and waved the key in triumph.

  Marissa shook her head.

  “It’s not that. You were underwater so long, I started to think…Don’t ever do that again!”

  “I won’t. Unless I absolutely must,” Alice promised. “But you can’t say I’m not the best swimmer now!”

  Smiling, Marissa gave Alice a jab in the side.

  * * *

  —

  When the girls made it back to the deck of the Glimmer with the key, they called the crew together again.

  “It’s been a great honor to be part of the crew of the Glimmer,” Alice said.

  “But we have an important mission, and we believe that the discovery of this key means that we need to continue our journey,” Marissa said.

  “If we don’t find Queen Lili, our own world will drown in snow in an eternal winter,” Alice said.

  The crew of the Glimmer murmured in sympathy.