Sisterland

by Salla Simukka

  Furious waves of joy washed over her.

  Her most fervent wish had come true.

  Marissa told the class that her family had just moved there and that she had two little brothers and liked drawing and sailing. The whole class welcomed Marissa and said hello. Then the teacher assigned her to sit next to Mia and Jonas, even though Alice would have liked to have Marissa next to her.

  * * *

  —

  When the others left for recess, Alice lingered at her desk. Marissa was going with Mia and Jonas, but Alice called after her.

  “Marissa!”

  Marissa turned reluctantly.

  “What?”

  “I have something to talk to you about,” Alice said, trying to use her expression to indicate Marissa should leave the others.

  So Marissa said something to Mia and Jonas, who giggled and left. Then she walked a little closer to Alice but still stayed several feet from her. Alice walked over and tried to hug her, but Marissa pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Alice searched her gaze. Searched for recognition.

  “You don’t have to pretend not to know me,” Alice said. “No one else is here. We don’t have to keep it secret anymore, that we’re best friends. That we know about a secret world, about Sisterland.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re saying,” Marissa replied. “I’ve never met you before.”

  Alice didn’t understand. Why was Marissa acting like this? What was she afraid of?

  She took Marissa’s hand.

  “Don’t you remember? This was your dragon hand. Together we defeated the icelisks and the heat eaters and the snow blowers. We broke the mirror. We promised to find each other. We—”

  Marissa jerked her hand out of Alice’s grip, as if she were hurting her.

  “You’re crazy! Who do you think you are? Believe me, I don’t know you. There isn’t any ‘us.’ There never has been, and there never will be. Never speak to me again!”

  Marissa’s voice had turned ugly and hard. Her green eyes flashed with malice. Then she ran out of the classroom without looking back.

  Alice stood in the empty classroom. With the sound of laughter coming from recess outside, it felt deathly silent. Alice was so shocked she couldn’t even cry. She felt as if a cold door had opened within her, allowing in a frigid blast.

  * * *

  —

  After that, Alice didn’t talk to Marissa at school for a while. Marissa chatted with the others, but she never approached Alice. Whenever Alice saw Marissa, her heart hurt.

  At night, she lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. She tossed and turned, but she couldn’t find a comfortable position. With the blanket on, she was too hot; with it off, she was too cold. Of course, Alice knew she couldn’t sleep even in the most comfortable bed in the world, with the temperature just right. The hot and cold gripped her from within. Nothing made her feel better when she thought of Marissa.

  Alice couldn’t understand. She couldn’t comprehend a world in which a person could be given a best friend and then have her taken away. If she had never met Marissa, she wouldn’t miss someone so much she couldn’t sleep.

  Alice didn’t know it was possible to miss another person this much.

  What if she really hadn’t ever met Marissa? If she’d been in Sisterland alone, if she’d fought alone, if she’d beaten Queen Lili alone? Would she feel better now? But Alice didn’t wish for that, because meeting Marissa had been one of the most wonderful things in her life. Marissa had been the first person with whom Alice had wanted to share everything. She’d been the first person to understand Alice. She was her best friend. Bestbestbestbest. Alice’s memory was alive with images of Marissa laughing with her, sleeping next to her, talking with Raven, riding on the back of the shapeshifter, and talking about her dreams at night. They’d done and seen so much in Sisterland. Even though Marissa didn’t remember, Alice did.

  What Alice wished was that Marissa had simply disappeared rather than coming back into her life as a complete stranger. Alice wondered if this Marissa only looked like the one she knew, and they happened to have the same name. An evil twin sister? What if she really was someone else? But Alice knew it was Marissa. Alice would have had a hard time explaining why she was so sure, but she just knew. Something in Marissa’s expression, when she didn’t realize she was being watched, was exactly the same as in Sisterland. She brushed her hair off her forehead with exactly the same motion. She held her pencil when she drew in exactly the same way.

  How could Marissa not remember? How could she not recognize Alice?

  And what if everything had just been a dream or a hallucination? What if there was no other world, no queen, no shapeshifters, no Raven? Just one eleven-year-old girl who slept too long? But Alice could find no comfort even in that idea, because she had the kiss of the shapeshifter on her ankle. She had been there. Everything had really happened. And Marissa had been with her, walking by her side every step of the way.

  For some reason, Marissa had just forgotten and didn’t want to remember. It hurt Alice to see her at school every day, looking at Alice with indifference or outright hostility. Marissa didn’t want to have anything to do with her; that much was clear.

  How could Alice survive when all she wanted was to spend time with Marissa? Even if Marissa didn’t remember her, Alice still would have wanted to be her friend. She was sure that with time, Marissa would remember or they could start from the beginning, get to know each other, and become best friends again. Alice had perfect faith that under this hard exterior was the same Marissa with whom she’d had all those adventures in Sisterland.

  For the next month, Alice tried to make friends with Marissa. She thought that if they became friends, at some point Marissa would remember what had happened in Sisterland. Maybe Alice could use little things to remind her, like telling her about the wind fairies or Raven, or about the shapeshifters, the dragons, or the ship’s fox.

  But it was hard to strike up a friendship with someone who refused even to look at her.

  Alice tried to talk to Marissa about everyday things, like the weather or school, but she just walked away, as if Alice didn’t exist. Alice tried to ask her to be her partner for their biology fish project, but she didn’t bother to respond, instead turning to Nelly and asking her to team up. Alice even wrote Marissa a letter telling her everything, but Marissa just threw it away as she watched, and Alice retrieved the letter before anyone else could read it.

  Alice tried to apologize. She tried to lie that she had just made up silly stories to sound interesting and attract Marissa’s attention. Marissa wouldn’t listen. She refused to hear Alice, she acted as if she didn’t see Alice, and she did her best to avoid Alice and turn her back on her.

  Alice cried herself to sleep most nights. She couldn’t explain to anyone how bad she felt. The only person who could have understood was Marissa. The Marissa whom Alice knew. But she wasn’t sure if that Marissa existed anymore.

  Finally, Alice decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble of trying to make friends with Marissa.

  For you see, over the month, Alice had noticed that Marissa had changed in more ways than simply forgetting Alice. She was still smart and was the best in the class at almost every subject, but she’d become more conceited. She snorted with contempt when the others answered questions wrong. She was still good at drawing, but even though her pictures had amazing detail and followed all the rules of composition, they lacked any feeling. Often Alice heard Marissa saying mean things behind the backs of other classmates. She made others feel stupid and embarrassed them. She’d turned into a bully.

  Most of all, her laugh had changed—her laugh, which Alice had perhaps liked more than anything else about her. It wasn’t the bubbly, bouncy laugh that made you want to laugh along. It wa
s cold and cruel. It cut through the air, dismal and mirthless.

  It was clear that Marissa hated her. And Alice wasn’t sure anymore that Marissa was the kind of person she really would have wanted to be friends with. So Alice concentrated on the things that were good in her life. She enjoyed time with her family. They had game nights and baked together, and Alice hated the thought that she’d been ready to give all this up in Sisterland: her wise mother, her silly father, her occasionally exhausting but usually super-fun big sister. She was thrilled that all the snow had melted, and the January sun shone longer every day. She was happy that Shadow Alice had come back into her life, and that she could talk to her almost as if to a real friend.

  Even though Alice had made her decision, it hurt her every time she saw Marissa. That was why she started avoiding Marissa as well—and tried to forget the Garden of Secrets and everything else. Maybe it really had been just a crazy dream.

  It was hard to forget, but it hurt more every day to remember, so it was best to live her life as if nothing had ever happened. And every day, it became easier.

  Until one day after gym class, Alice saw something.

  She had just showered and was pulling on her tights. For a moment, her hand paused at the mark that the kiss of the shapeshifter had left, because it had begun to tingle and burn strangely. At the same time, Alice’s eyes fell on exactly the same mark on another ankle, which belonged to the girl sitting on the next bench and pulling on her socks.

  Marissa.

  Of course, she had the same imprint from the kiss. She had been marked too!

  Marissa noticed Alice’s gaze and quickly pulled her sock on.

  “What are you staring at? You weird creep!” she hissed.

  But her cruel words didn’t bother Alice, because she was so happy about what she’d just seen. She hadn’t imagined everything. It had really happened. And Marissa really was her Marissa, her best friend.

  Alice didn’t say a word. Now she had evidence that evil magic was behind Marissa’s behavior. Someone or something had bewitched her so she would forget Sisterland and make her act so mean. Alice knew she couldn’t turn her back on this. She had to find a way to break the spell, save Marissa, and restore her memory. Not just for her own sake, to get her friend back, but also for Marissa. No one who acted the way Marissa acted could really be happy.

  “I have to find a way,” Alice said quietly to Shadow Alice as she walked home from school. Shadow Alice nodded in agreement.

  Alice knew that everything that had happened in Sisterland was true, but she didn’t know how she could restore Marissa’s memory.

  Could she take Marissa to a hypnotist who specialized in amnesia?

  Or give Marissa medicine to revive her memory?

  These were the things Alice thought about as she walked home from school. Alice began walking home different ways, in the hope that a change of scenery would help her think of a solution. One day, she decided that at every corner she would ask Shadow Alice which direction she should turn. The result was that she ended up in a part of the city she’d never visited before.

  Alice walked along the sidewalk and looked at the store windows as she thought.

  “Will I ever discover a remedy for Marissa’s memory loss?” she asked Mirror Alice, who looked back at her from the window of an art gallery.

  “If you look closely enough, you’ll see,” Mirror Alice replied mysteriously.

  Alice was ready to snort at this advice, but something in the display window of the gallery made her stop. She wasn’t staring at Mirror Alice anymore—she was seeing the large painting in the middle of the window. The painting showed a wolf. But at the same time, it also depicted a dragonfly. It was painted with such skill that when viewed from slightly different angles, the animal appeared to change shapes.

  “A shapeshifter…,” Alice said.

  Then her eyes fell on a sign that told the name of the painting’s artist, Anna Shores. A shapeshifter and an Anna! That couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it? What if this was the same Anna who had once been in Sisterland, because of whom Queen Lili had become so cold and bitter?

  Alice entered the gallery. Above the door, a tiny bell tinkled. However, she saw no one inside. Alice looked at the other paintings and found a group of four called A Series from the Garden of Secrets. The paintings had clearly been created by a person who had been to the garden. Alice recognized Raven and the wind fairies, the dream weavers and the sillyhops—all the fun, beloved creatures she had met. The paintings depicted the mood of the garden, and the colors were so vivid that Alice almost felt as if she were being drawn back into that world. She could almost smell the scent of the singing roses. She felt dizzy.

  Suddenly an old, gray-haired woman appeared from the back room of the gallery. When she saw Alice, she smiled.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I’ve been there,” Alice said, and pointed at the paintings. “I’ve been to the Garden of Secrets. I’ve seen the five moons of Sisterland.”

  The old woman’s breath caught.

  “I didn’t believe that anyone else would ever…,” she sighed.

  “I’m Alice. And you must be Anna, right?”

  The old woman nodded and sat down at a table next to one wall of the gallery.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so surprised. I must sit down. Come sit too. I suppose we have a lot to talk about.”

  * * *

  —

  Anna fetched juice and cookies from the back room. Her gray hair was up in a bun on top of her head, and she had eyes just as green as Marissa’s. She looked gentle and a little sad. She had a lot of jingling bracelets and wore a long dress covered in a pattern of intertwining, multicolored flowers.

  “I’d begun to think it was all a strange dream,” Anna said. “It’s been almost seventy years since then. Tell me, how did you end up in Sisterland, and what happened there?”

  Alice took a sip of juice and then told Anna everything. When she reached the part about how they defeated Queen Lili, Anna’s eyes welled with tears.

  “So that’s how she’s become….It’s so sad,” she said, and wiped her eyes.

  “Queen Lili thought you didn’t stay in Sisterland because you were bored and didn’t want to be her friend anymore,” Alice said.

  “No, it wasn’t like that at all!”

  “And that was why she tried to make Sisterland more beautiful by making it eternally summer—so she would be liked and needed and so no one would ever leave there again. And she wanted me and Marissa to stay to be her friends.”

  “Poor Lili,” Anna sighed. “You can’t get friends by forcing people. Or chaining them up, as she did with the dragons.”

  “What was she like when you were there?” Alice asked.

  Anna’s expression turned soft and dreamy. The wrinkles on her forehead smoothed. Suddenly she looked ten years younger.

  “I was only a little girl then, about your age,” Anna began. “One summer, I was playing hide-and-seek with my sisters in the forest when I got lost. Suddenly nothing around me looked familiar. Then I saw a large wolf. I was startled and ran away, but the ground opened beneath me, and I fell down and down and down. Just like you, I fell into Sisterland.”

  Anna paused for a moment as if thinking back.

  “All of the creatures you described were already there then. But the dragons were free to fly, and there was no gate to the Garden of Secrets. Anyone could walk in. Lili was only a girl too, even though she already had magical powers. She had asked a shapeshifter to fetch her a playmate because she felt so alone.”

  “But why does no one in Sisterland remember that time anymore?” Alice asked.

  “Time passes differently there than here. If seventy years have passed here, it could have been centuries there,” Anna replied.

 
“So did you become friends?” Alice asked. “We saw a picture of you in the abandoned amusement park.”

  “Yes, we became best friends,” Anna said with a smile. “And I’ve never had a better friend than Lili. We finished each other’s sentences and always laughed at the same things. Lili made up all the best games, and we were never bored. The amusement park was our own special place. That’s why we named it Lilianna.”

  “But then why…?” Alice began.

  “Why did I come back? Because my family was here. My home was here. I knew that even though it was nice in Sisterland, I belonged to this world. Lili didn’t understand that. You see, she had no family. I’m not sure where Lili really came from, but she said she was born from a rose and the wind fairies cared for her when she was a baby. She didn’t know what it was like to have a father and a mother and siblings. She thought nothing could be more important than the friendship we had. We had a terrible fight, after which I asked the shapeshifter to bring me back. I woke up in the same forest where I got lost. My sisters found me. And even though a whole summer had passed in Sisterland, I’d only been missing a couple of hours in this world.”

  Anna massaged her forehead. Her bracelets jangled.

  “I regretted it later,” she sighed. “Not because I decided to return, but because Lili and I parted on such bad terms. And especially now that I hear it’s been eating at her all these years….”

  “It feels horrible to think of a friend despising you,” Alice said.

  Then she told how Marissa had become since their return.

  “Can you think why she’s being that way? And how I can get her to remember?” Alice asked.