by CJ Brightley
And what about my childhood friends, who let me lead them into this mess? “It’s not political; we won’t let it be political,” I said, but we’re in prison all the same.
July 27 (Kaya’s memoir)
Just now I awoke with my heart racing and an indescribable feeling of something hanging over me. I jumped up from my sleeping mat and ran out to the platform rail for air and … and I don’t know why else. To be reassured? By the Ruby Lake?
That makes no sense.
But I am not becoming unhinged. I’m not. It was just a dream haunt—the work of a cave bat, we’d say at home.
I never would have mentioned cave bats or any other such thing during my school days. It dismayed me to realize just how completely my classmates thought that mountain people were primitives—either primitives, or stupid and idle. It drove me to study harder and longer, so that whenever I was called on, I could answer intelligently. While the other girls were singing along to radio hits, I was listening to the announcers, repeating their phrases in my head, trying to get the trick of intonation and emphasis just right so that I could duplicate it when I spoke. My looks might reveal me for a mountain native, but I was determined not to sound like one.
I schooled myself to brush off slighting remarks from my classmates and dorm mates, but it hurt when Tema said something dismissive. I tried never to mention anything about home, so as to not let an opportunity arise, but sometimes I would let something slip, like at the midterm study session Tema organized for first-years in our wing. We were going over the complicated tribute and hostage situation between the princes of W— and the Johor sultanate, and I said it was like the arrangement among the Five Sister Kingdoms.
“Tribes,” she said. “You mean tribes.”
“No, they were kingdoms,” I said, realizing even as the words were leaving my mouth that I was wandering into unsafe territory. I saw the other girls exchanging glances; a couple hid smiles behind their hands. Tema flipped to the index of the history book and ran her finger down the columns.
“Look,” she said, pointing. Under the entry for the mountain region, along with “pacification of” and “tribal conflicts,” was “Five Sister Tribes.”
“The word we use is ‘tribes,’” she explained. Just correcting a word-choice error on my part.
“We call them kingdoms,” I said, hunching my shoulders. I couldn’t stop myself. Memories of a certain day in the fifth year of primary school were filling my mind.
“But the word is ‘kingdom,’” I said to Ramiratam, through furious tears, as we were leaving school that day. “I know what ‘tribe’ means and I know what ‘kingdom’ means. The word should be ‘kingdom.’ The book has it wrong.”
“If it’s in the mountains, it’s tribes, not kingdoms, as far as lowlanders are concerned,” Dinasha said.
“But that’s the wrong word! They’ve got it wrong. They’re not understanding our language correctly.”
“They understand the language; they just have their own ideas of what makes a kingdom, and nothing in the mountains fits,” Rami said, picking up a pebble and tossing it at a battered road sign. It pinged and fell. From behind us someone called. It was Nawalam, jogging to catch up.
“So you actually went and got yourself switched over the stupid history book,” he said, panting a little. “That’s very noble of you. How’re the shoulders?”
I evaded the clap on the back that he attempted to give me and scowled.
“I just think the textbook should use the right words,” I muttered.
“Sure, me too,” he said. “It’s an idiotic textbook and an idiotic language. Hey, what say we get everyone in class to say ‘kingdoms’ instead of ‘tribes,’ as a protest? Can you imagine it?” He grinned. “It would drive Mr. Baktin mad.” Then he shrugged. “It’s probably not worth the sore back, though. Who cares whether lowlanders want to say ‘tribe’ or ‘kingdom’?”
“I care!”
“I care too,” said Ramiratam, “but you’ve got to just say ‘tribe.’” He turned to Nawalam.
“You shouldn’t joke about a protest. They can do more than switch you.” His face was painfully serious; we all stared at him.
“I’m not afraid of old Baktin,” said Nawalam, but his voice was uncertain.
“Just say ‘tribe,’” Rami repeated. “You know they’re really the Five Sister Kingdoms. For each time you have to say ‘tribe’ in school, say ‘kingdom’ five times on your way home. That’s what I do.”
Tema gave me her best big-sisterly smile. “I guess to mountain people they seemed like kingdoms, but if you think about the population and wealth they controlled, or the social organization, they really weren’t at the level of kingdoms,” she said.
I nodded, but I felt as if I had an ax blade stuck in my chest.
It wasn’t until the day I found Sumi that I saw life in W— as maybe more complicated than lowlanders versus mountain people. That day, first-years and second-years took a field trip to Tasan Port, at the eastern end of Palem Bay, to see the annual boat races. Some of the boats were more than a century old, and all were beautiful, carved and painted to resemble dolphins, whales, and fantastical fishes with spiked and jointed fins. After the races finished, we had a couple of hours free to find food and explore the port before boarding the bus back to school. We were supposed to move about in groups of four, but I got separated from my group when my eyes were caught by a fishing net that seemed to be possessed by a spirit. All along the dock, draped from rails, yellow and orange nets hung limply, drying, but this one was rippling and writhing. The other nets were sleeping. This one was having nightmares.
Something was in there, tossing about like a fish. I came closer and saw it was a bird, but not a white-winged gull or tern. No, this bird was black as ink.
“‘Sumi,’ that’s ‘ink’ in Japanese,” I informed the creature as I got closer. “That’s what you’re as black as.”
Sumi stopped struggling, fixed her left eye on me, and cawed. I saw her right wing was caught in the net’s mesh. She went back to fierce fluttering as I tried to slide her wing free.
“Stop it! You’re only going to—”
hurt yourself, I thought. She fell at my feet, still fluttering madly, her right wing spread at an unlikely angle.
Half a crab dangled from the inside of the net, no doubt the lure that had attracted Sumi in the first place. I pulled off a jointed leg.
“Sit still. Here have some of this,” I said. Her sharp beak snapped at it. I let her have the whole thing. She held it in place with one of her feet as she devoured it. What to do about the damaged wing, though? Was it merely dislocated, or broken? I’d have to feel the wing to tell, and Sumi would never let me.
Unless perhaps I wrapped her up in something? She seemed small, maybe a juvenile, but even so, our uniform neckerchief wouldn’t be big enough …
I crouched down and spread my skirt over her. Holding her wrapped in its folds, I felt along her good wing, then the limp one, and found a break.
“Kaya, what are you doing? It’s getting late. Where’s your group?”
I looked up. Tema was standing beside me, one hand shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun, the other holding a paper shopping bag with turquoise tissue paper peeking over the top.
“This crow has a broken wing. I’m trying to think of how to help it.”
“A crow? Those are carrion eaters! You shouldn’t touch something like that. You could get sick.”
“But it’s hurt! And crows are the Lady’s birds.” Like at the study session, the words just slipped out.
“What lady?” Then, comprehension dawning, “Oh, you mean … the volcano. Mountain people— I didn’t think— I—”
I could see her searching for the right thing to say, but we were both spared by the arrival of a fisherman.
“What’s the problem, girls? What do you have there?” He spoke differently from the people in the capital, with drawn-out s sounds and without the staccato quicknes
s. It was the first thing I noticed about him: that he spoke with an accent—like me—but a different accent. And he was dark, too, almost as dark as I am, from working beneath the open sun all day. Still tall, though, like all the lowlanders. The wind was ruffling his hair, and there were fans of lines by his eyes, sun-squint lines.
“My friend found an injured crow, uncle. She won’t just leave it here, even though they’re dirty birds,” Tema said.
She looked at me accusingly, but any anger or defensiveness I might have felt was lost in surprise over the way she spoke: Tema answered the man in the very same accents he had used.
“Ah, crow, is it? Gulls are the usual thieves.” He squatted down beside me. “You’re from the mountains, aren’t you.”
I nodded.
“Thought so. My brother worked up there, in the eastern mountain district, at a logging camp.”
“I’m from the western mountain district,” I said.
“We have to go, Kaya. Let uncle get rid of the crow,” Tema said, switching back to standard speech. “You heard—they’re thieves, like gulls.”
“I know that!” I flared. “They steal from fields at home, too, but you have to let them take what they need, because—” I stopped. I didn’t want to bring up the Lady again.
“They belong to the Lady of the Ruby Lake,” finished the fisherman. Tema and I both stared at him.
“You know about her? From your brother?” I asked.
“We know about her here,” he said. “We always knew about her. Crazy sister of the Lady of the Currents.”
“Not crazy,” I protested, “just wild, and, and … powerful.” But a question flashed into my mind, cutting through the memories of the stories of the Lady that my mother and grandmother used to tell me. When is wildness craziness?
“Don’t worry, little daughter. I’m not speaking evil of her. The Lady of the Currents is crazy too, sometimes, just, she brings us more good than the Lady of the Ruby Lake.”
“You believe in the Lady of the Ruby Lake?” Tema asked, disbelief in her voice.
“You didn’t know that? You speak like you’re from hereabouts. Haven’t you ever been to the blessing of a new boat? Seen’m spill a few drops of blood over a flame as well as in the water? A little gift to both sisters, keep’m from asking for a bigger gift, later on.”
He turned to me. “Now look, little daughter. If you want the crow to get better, you have to bind its wing right close to its body, just the way it always holds it, so it can heal up—but then you need to take the bindings off in good time for it to remember how to fly. Got something to use as a bandage?”
“I … I could use the extra cloth in the hem of my skirt, if I had something to cut it with,” I said.
“Kaya!” Tema was scandalized.
“It was way too long for me; there’s lots of extra cloth here,” I said. “And I can hem the raw edge back in place when we get back to school. Do you have a knife I could borrow?” I asked the fisherman.
We got Sumi bandaged up, the fisherman went on his way, and Tema even had a few safety pins that I used to hide the ragged edge of my skirt.
“They aren’t going to let you take that dirty thing onto the bus,” said Tema, but she leaned over my shoulder and watched with interest as I gave Sumi another leg from the crab.
“I was thinking …” I glanced at the bag she was carrying.
“What, this? You can’t use this! I’ve got souvenirs for people in here.”
“Please? I’ll carry the souvenirs for you. Look, I’ll make a carrier with my neckerchief.”
“No, it’s … I wanted the bag especially for…”
She hung her head, fiddled with the tissue paper. It was strange to see Tema flustered.
“For?” I pressed.
“Vira saw me going into the shop where they sell local hand-dyed stuff. You know, with the wave-and-net pattern? This area’s famous for it.” She was speaking even faster than usual and still wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“She called out to me and asked if I’d get her a couple of handkerchiefs. So I did, and had the woman at the shop put them in a special bag. I was going to pull out my own things at the last moment and give Vira the bag.”
“But you’ve always said— she’s one of the princesses! How can you let yourself run errands for her? You despise it when people fawn all over the princesses!”
“It’s not running errands! It’s doing her a favor, and I do, and I’m not! Fawning. I’m not fawning. I don’t care a fly’s eyeball about her. It’s just being polite. You have to respect— I … She never talks to me, you know—but there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. I’m as good as she is. You’re even as good as she is. I just, I just wanted to make a good impression. There’s no reason not to make a good impression. I’m every bit as cultured as some twenty-generation aristocrat, even if my grandfather was a fisherman. And I bet I’m three times as rich.”
Maybe Tema’s grandfather sprinkled blood over an open flame.
I’d like to say that thinking that made me realize how odd it was that coastal lowlanders were free to honor the Lady, when we up in the mountains, up by her home, no longer were, but it didn’t. No, I was too busy trying to understand what it meant that confident, self-assured, and wealthy Tema had a past with an accent and a grandfather who used to go out to sea each morning.
And there was still Sumi to think of.
“Could we maybe get a spare bag from the shop? And put the handkerchiefs in that, to give to Vira?” I asked.
“No, never mind,” said Tema abruptly, kneeling down and emptying the contents of the bag into her lap. “I’ll just wrap them in the tissue paper and give them to her by hand. She doesn’t need a special bag. It would probably only be a bother for her, anyway. Here.” She pushed the bag toward me. “But I still don’t see how you’re going to keep it a secret at school. You certainly can’t hide it in the dorm.”
“I was thinking of hiding her by the delivery entrance for the cafeteria kitchen. There are always boxes and things stacked there, and the teachers never go there.”
Tema made a face.
“It’s not very dignified to poke around back there. It’s something a street urchin would do, not a student. People will think badly of you if they see you. Especially … well, it doesn’t look good.”
Especially when you’re from the mountains, that’s what she had been going to say. But the thought didn’t sting as much as it might have even an hour ago, before I learned about her grandfather and heard her speak the soft coastal way.
“I’ll be careful.”
I lifted Sumi into the bag. She didn’t even squawk, poor thing.
Tema was watching intently.
“Do you think it would like another bit of crab?” she asked.
“Maybe. Would you like to give it to her?”
“Oh no! No. I don’t want to get my hands dirty. And its beak looks sharp.” She hesitated. “I like watching you feed it, though.”
I gave Sumi one more piece of crab. Then I wiped my hands off on the tail end of Sumi’s bandage and stood up.
“It’s funny,” said Tema, watching, “I always hoped to find a message in a bottle, when I was little and we’d go to the beach. Sometimes the fishermen would show my brother and me odd bits of trash that they’d found in their nets. There were sometimes bottles, but never one with a message in it. But a crow. That’s got to be the most unlikely thing I’ve ever seen come out of a fishing net. I should make a poem out of it. Something about the crow being a message.”
“I always thought of crows more as messengers than messages, but maybe Sumi’s a message, somehow,” I said, untying my neckerchief.
“Now you be quiet on the bus,” I said to Sumi, laying the neckerchief loosely over her.
“Yes, you be quiet.” Tema used her scolding big-sister voice on Sumi. “Otherwise you’ll be a messenger of disaster, and the message will be that little Kaya is expelled from school.” We headed back to the bus.
4
A Cup of Fortune
July 27 (Kaya to Em)
Dear Em,
Thank you for this second letter. I treasure it!
I’m glad you found my country—yes, it’s an island, but I was born up in the mountains and never even saw the ocean until I was a little older than I imagine you must be now.
I suppose I did commit a crime, but I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to celebrate the fire festival, the way we did when I was very little. We used to have a fire festival every year, on a night at the start of the rainy season. It was for the Lady of the Ruby Lake.
You have the Seafather to watch over you, and we, up in our mountains, have the Lady of the Ruby Lake. She lives in volcanoes. I guess you can say she’s the mother of all fire. Volcano fires are special—-they can destroy things, but their ashes can make things grow. Maybe you know this from school? Any little fire that people light, it’s a child of the fires in the Ruby Lake.
For the fire festival, people used to light huge bonfires. They’d carry flames from those fires all through the fields and orchards and then into their houses. If people wanted to beg some new fields from the forest, they’d use those flames to do it, because forest land cleared with those flames would be protected by the Lady. The flames would drive away evil spirits, things like sweat snakes and cave bats, and the sparks would prick the sky and release rain, so the ground and all the plants would have plenty to drink. People would sprinkle the ashes from the bonfires all around, to help the plants grow.
But then we stopped being able to celebrate that festival. In my country, the people who live up in the mountains have different traditions and customs and even a different language from the people who live on the coast. Some of the mountain people started saying we should have our own country, and that made the lowlanders very angry. There are many more of them than there are of us, and they made laws prohibiting our festivals, because the separatists were using them to stir up rebellious feelings.