Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  It’s heavy-handed punishments that make people rebel, not festivals.

  But we can’t win against the government. Rami said so, and he knows. So what can I do? What are my options? That’s what I’m supposed to be thinking about.

  Tema’s right. I have to try to cool everyone’s hot tempers—mine first. The alternative is too horrible. I’ll take another look at that statement they gave me to read. Maybe I can do some creative editing. Add a few words, something to prick the hearts of the lowlanders a little and make them feel for all of us up here.

  September 5 (Kaya’s journal, second entry)

  There were three fires on the rim of the Ruby Lake tonight. The first only shone for a moment, then it was gone. But just as it disappeared, I noticed a second, further along the rim, and then I turned round and saw a third. Then those both vanished, too.

  The State Security Service must be putting them out—no doubt arresting whomever they find nearby. But people keep lighting new ones, even knowing that they’ll likely be caught and punished for it.

  When we were planning the fire festival, we tried so hard to play it safe. I thought we were safe. Would I have been so bold if I knew we’d be arrested?

  These people, lighting fires for me to see … they are much braver than I am.

  September 5 (Kaya’s journal, third entry)

  Not for me. I’ve had it wrong, these past days. It’s for something bigger than just me. Bigger than just the festival. It’s for mountain autonomy. The fires are for freedom.

  September 6 (Kaya’s journal)

  No supplies. I suppose the authorities wanted to make good on their threat. I don’t mind about the food and water; I can make what I have stretch for another week, I’m pretty sure. It’s their exercise of power that burns. It’s knowing that when the men from the State Security Service finally return, and I tell them yes, I’ll make a statement, they’ll smile and believe it’s because they compelled it.

  September 8 (Kaya’s journal)

  What a thoughtful friend Sumi is! She’s brought me a ripe Malay apple. Oh that scent! One of my favorites. I cut it up and shared it with her.

  September 8 (Kaya’s journal, second entry)

  Black ants are swarming the spots on the floor where Sumi let bits of apple fall from her beak. Where did these ants come from? Did they travel from the rim of the crater along the chains that support this floating lotus? Or did they arrive with some box of supplies the helicopter left?

  They say black ants are children of the Ruby Lake, immune to fire. When you clean house, you mustn’t swat them or stamp on them. You must always sweep them gently away. I won’t sweep these ones away, though. It’s good to have friends near, even tiny ones.

  September 10 (Kaya’s journal)

  The winds are high, but not so high as to make the roof tiles on the house whistle, and yet the platform is trembling like a dog in a thunderstorm. And I, in this little house, am a flea on that dog!

  And now rain? Surprising, a storm like this in the dry season, but good: if the wind lets up, I’ll set out the water tank and refill it some.

  Success! Thank you, rainstorm. Look how I’m provided for: first Sumi brings me fruit, now you bring me water. And oh rainstorm, it was good to feel your touch on my forehead, shoulders, and arms and to hear the hiss of your kiss on the face of the Ruby Lake.

  The Ruby Lake seemed brighter now—washed by the rain?—And more full. But that’s not possible. Rain can’t swell the Ruby Lake; it’s filled from below, not above.

  September 11 (Kaya’s journal)

  Another three fires on the rim of the Ruby Lake tonight. They barely appeared before they were gone again. I thought I heard shots fired. Please let me be wrong. It makes me sick to think on it. I just want to scream Stop, stop—to everyone. To the separatists, Is this act of defiance worth losing your lives for? To the State Security Service, Must you become murderers?

  But now I’m remembering that last fire festival before the ban, back when I was four years old. In my mind’s eye, I can see Rami’s smiling face, see him bobbing along on his father’s shoulders amid a thicket of flaming spears. And where is his father now, and where is his mother? The State Security Service already are murderers. And must I now make myself their tool? I’d rather dip a cup in the Ruby Lake and drink it. But if I refuse, then I may as well serve the self-same drink to the very people I want to protect. They’ll die just as surely.

  September 12 (Kaya’s journal)

  I couldn’t fall asleep last night for the longest time, I was so troubled and trapped by my thoughts. After tossing and turning on my sleeping mat for what seemed like more dark hours than can fit into a night, I finally jumped up in frustration and went out onto the platform. At least, I thought I was awake, but I must have been dreaming at that point, because the Lady was waiting for me there. She was not a child anymore. She seemed a bride, all dressed up in wedding finery, with her lips painted bright red and her eyes underlined in red, too.

  “Let’s play a game,” she said to me, glancing at me obliquely from downcast eyes. “You talk to me like I’m your beloved, and I’ll answer.”

  “I don’t have a beloved,” I protested.

  “You don’t?” Now her gaze was direct. Ramiratam filled my mind, and tears rose in my eyes.

  “Rami, we’ve—I’ve—done a terrible thing,” I cried. “I promised you and the Lady and everyone else a joyful celebration, and instead what I’ve caused is detentions and riots and now maybe deaths. And it seems that the only way to reel time back is to cooperate with the killers.”

  “Why would you want to reel time back?” There was challenge in the Lady’s tone. Was that what Rami would ask me?

  “But you said … We can’t win. And there’s so much to lose. I wanted to make people happy, make the Lady happy, not …” My eyes slid to the blood-red channels moving through the thin black scabs that form on top of the Ruby Lake. Fresh injuries. The Ruby Lake never heals.

  Red on black, like wounds from a switch on a child’s back. Only a handful of children each year get scholarships, but everyone gets switched from time to time. Is that what I’m so afraid of mountain children losing? A tiny chance for a scholarship—and a certainty of aching shoulders?

  A fountain of lava spurted up from between the scabs.

  “I love uprisings,” the Lady said.

  “What about you, Rami?” I asked, trying to find him again in the Lady’s eyes.

  “What do I love?”

  It was his voice, not hers. I don’t know if I heard it in the air or in my heart, but my heart felt the words with a pang.

  “No, I meant—”

  “You, Kayamanira. I love you.”

  And then I woke up.

  And what have I done now, writing it all down? I must scratch this all out, or tear out this page and drown it in the Ruby Lake. But I can’t bear to, not just yet.

  September 13 (Kaya to Em)

  My dear Em,

  Both your letters arrived; they came together today with the supply helicopter. I was very sorry to read that the hurricane stole away Mr. Ovey and destroyed your village. It’s a hard thing, when our lives are tied to someone like the Seafather or the Lady of the Ruby Lake. The closer they get to us, with all their power, the more dangerous it is for us. And yet you all were there to greet the Seafather’s storm when it came in, despite the danger. You have hurricane hearts! I admire that way of living.

  As you can see from this letter, I am still alive and well. The State Security Service did skip one delivery of supplies, but I knew they wouldn’t let me waste away—not when they want me to make a statement telling everyone in the mountains to stop their protests and accept life on lowland terms.

  My opinion on that, well, I shall not write it here. It’s enough to say that I am going to do as they ask. A government can be as powerful as a hurricane, and it’s one thing to greet a storm, but another to fight it. Try and fight it, and it’s likely to smash you into splinte
rs. I don’t want that for my neighbors and others in the mountains.

  Today, when the helicopter came, the Bully and Friendlier (as I think of my two keepers from the State Security Service) were much more sober than I was expecting. I was prepared for loud demands for my decision as soon as they disembarked, but instead they seemed almost distracted.

  More surprising was the pilot. Even after the blades of the helicopter stopped spinning, he stayed in the cabin, staring at me through the window, until the Bully ordered him to start unloading, and then he kept stealing glances at me as he worked. Finally, after everything was unloaded, he turned to me and asked, “Do you really speak for the volcanoes?” But the Bully snapped at him to return to the helicopter before I had a chance to ask him what he meant or give any kind of answer.

  Then Friendlier asked me if I had felt the earthquake two days earlier. That was the day of a rainstorm. I had been surprised by how the platform of my prison had rocked and shaken in the wind—but it hadn’t been the wind at all. “It wasn’t a very powerful earthquake,” Friendlier said, “but it opened up a volcanic fissure about thirty kilometers north of here, in Taneh District, that released a nasty cloud of superheated sulfur dioxide. Torched the hillside and left it littered with dead wildlife. Another two kilometers to the west, and it would have hit the town of Rai. As it was, there were only two human casualties—hikers.”

  Friendlier raised an eyebrow. “Eruptions are to be expected on a volcanic island, but it seems that credulous people like our good pilot, here”—he nodded at the helicopter—“just can’t resist reading events as supernatural support for you troublemakers up in the mountains. Educated people know better, of course. You know better. Don’t you.”

  A wave of dizziness came over me just then, maybe from my restricted diet these past days, or maybe because I was thinking of what the Lady’s friendship might really mean. I made the mistake of telling them something the Lady said to me in a dream: “The Lady loves uprisings.”

  Before I could turn away, the Bully struck me with his open hand, on my face. I staggered back, and my own hand flew up to cradle my cheek, but the Bully grabbed hold of it and yanked it down.

  “Oh she does, does she?” he said. “Then I guess she doesn’t love people much, because the punishment that’ll rain down on these mountains if there’s an uprising will make people wish they’d never been born.” Then he flung away my hand.

  “That’s not what you want, is it,” said Friendlier.

  I shook my head.

  “So you’ll help diffuse tensions by letting us record a statement from you, for television.”

  I nodded and said, “But I want to use my own words.”

  “You’ll use the statement we gave you,” said the Bully.

  “I’ll say what’s in the statement. But I want to choose the words myself.”

  “You get too creative with your words, and your friends in prison will pay the price.”

  I nodded again. My mouth felt so dry, it was hard to speak. “And foreign journalists. There have to be foreign journalists present.”

  “Fine,” said Friendlier. “We’ll find a foreign journalist or two. But they’ll be coming with nothing more than notepads. No recording devices, no cameras.”

  They left after that. They’ll be back soon, though, and I’ll get to speak to the world. I know they will edit out whatever I say that they don’t like, but if there’s a foreign journalist present, then there’s a chance that what I really say will be reported, somewhere. Please look for the story, Em, because I have an idea, a plan for helping you and Mermaid’s Hands. I can do next to nothing for the people who need my support here, but with a heart of ruby fire, I can perhaps make a difference for Mermaid’s Hands, at least.

  My thoughts are with you,

  Kaya

  September 13 (Kaya’s journal)

  Em and her people have hurricane hearts. And me? I must cultivate a heart of ruby fire from now on. The power of ruby fire is different from hurricane power. Everyone can see a hurricane coming, and so they shake with fear. The ruby fire no one can see coming until it arrives—and so they shake with fear.

  “Separatist leader urges a conciliatory approach, expresses concern for minority cultures worldwide”

  September 17 (Reuters) – One of the instigators of the most recent flare-up of minority separatist agitation in the island nation of W— issued a plea for restraint from her unusual temple prison suspended above “the Ruby Lake,” a lava lake in the crater of Abenanyi, a volcano in the country’s mountainous central region.

  In an apparent effort to cool down inflammatory rhetoric and rapidly escalating demonstrations, Kayamanira Matarayi, a botanist with a degree from Cornell University’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, said that the mountain minority region could no more separate itself from the lowland-based national government than the mountains could separate themselves from the coast. She followed that statement, however, with a plea for greater autonomy for the mountain region, including recognition of the minority language as an official language in minority-dominated areas and a lifting of the ban on the practice of the traditional mountain religion. In the postcolonial era, the populous coastal plains of W— have largely secularized, but folk beliefs persist strongly among the mountain minorities.

  Matarayi called on governments everywhere to preserve the rights of minority cultures in their midst, highlighting the case of a tiny community in the Gulf Coastal region of the United States displaced by Hurricane Helga. “The people of Mermaid’s Hands have lived for generations not by the sea but in it. Now the state wants to forbid them to rebuild their homes. This is how cultures are lost.”

  A highly edited version of Matarayi’s remarks, containing only the call for restraint, aired on W—‘s television networks this evening. The Cambridge (MA)-based organization Minorities Mobilize expressed interest in taking up the cause of the community of Mermaid’s Hands and also in following developments in W—. “W— has sacrificed minority rights on the altar of national progress,” said a spokesperson for the nonprofit. “It’s something we see all the time, unfortunately.”

  A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch Asia expressed concern over the condition of Matarayi’s detainment. “Imprisonment over an active volcano amounts to a constant threat of death; it’s psychological torture.” The government of W— has insisted that house arrest in the “Lotus on the Ruby Lake” is a mark of respect for Matarayi, based on her special relationship with the Lady of the Ruby Lake, a deity who is the focus of veneration among Matarayi’s people.

  9

  Phone Calls

  September 11 (Em’s diary)

  Up here in Mandy’s room, I can barely hear Ma and Aunt Brenda talking. It’s not like at home, where each and every thing Ma and Dad say when they’re arguing flows right into our ears, whether we like it or not. I know they’re talking about Jiminy, though, because of him calling here. I was the one who answered the phone. It was close to suppertime, but only me and Tammy were in the house, because Mandy had ballet and Ma and Aunt Brenda were at the supermarket. Me and Tammy were mixing up some chocolate milk, making little whirlpools in the glasses as the syrup turned the milk from white to brown, when the call came.

  Aunt Brenda’s house phone ringing is like a baby starting up crying. Just like with a baby, you can hope maybe somebody else will pick it up, or maybe it’ll just stop crying on its own, but its wailing gets to you. Picking up a phone is more scary than picking up a baby, though, because a baby’s always just a baby, but with a phone, you never know what voice you’ll hear on the other end. I’ve only answered Aunt Brenda’s house phone twice before. Once it was Uncle Lew, calling from the road. He has a gruff, deep voice. The other time it was a lady from the school office who wanted to know why we didn’t fill out the free lunch form. She had a too-sweet voice. Talking to her made me feel sticky.

  This time, it was a voice like a television announcer that started up before I could even say
hello, and it talked without hearing me—a recording. And in the middle of the recording came Jiminy’s voice, just the tiniest sliver of it, just saying his name, and then it was back to the recording. It went like this:

  “Hello. This is a collect call from Jiminy and Clear Springs State Prison. To accept this call press 3. To decline press 9 or hang up.”

  I pressed 3.

  “Jiminy … are you there?” My heart was pounding harder than when I got sent to the principal’s, harder than when the Coca-Cola man was yelling at us.

  “Em? Is that you?” His faraway voice took on light and color. “So y’all really are staying at Aunt Brenda’s. I saw on the news about the hurricane, and I though you might. Wasn’t looking forward to getting Aunt Brenda or Uncle Lew on the phone though … I’m glad you’re the one that picked up.”

  “Jiminy …” I didn’t know which thing to start with. Jiminy, Mermaid’s Hands is all gone and might not come back. Jiminy, Tammy’s taking to this town like a fish to water—no, like a hummingbird to flowers—and Ma’s looking for work here, but I don’t want this to be our new home. But I pushed those ones down, because I remembered about his clavicle, scapula, and ribs. He’d still be wrapped in bandages and wincing each time he took a deep breath. “How are you healing up?” I asked, but he spoke at the same time:

  “They told me somebody called from outside and said you tried to come see me. By yourself. On the day the hurricane hit. Is that true?”

  “Yeah it is, but—”

  “Ha! Sweet. Dad and Ma must’ve been freaking out. Nice to know I’m not the only one in the family with some spirit,” he said.