Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  Dad smiled. “Course you do!” And then, “And thanks to those dry-landers from the culture organization, there’ll keep on being a Mermaid’s Hands to love.” He shook his head and laughed. “Too bad I couldn’t fetch you home earlier, when they were following everyone around with cameras and questions. There wasn’t a thing they didn’t want to poke their noses into—you could’ve told them about knowing when the Seafather’s going to send seagifts, Em. They would’ve loved that.” He hesitated a little. “It got wearing, having them hovering around like hungry gulls all the time, but we all agreed it’s a small price to pay for what they done for us.”

  “Why’d they do it?” I asked. “I didn’t think anybody outside of Sandy Neck even knew about Mermaid’s Hands. Not till Helga, anyway.”

  Dad shrugged. “Not sure.”

  By now we were in Sandy Neck, coming up to the town parking lot. The huge limb of the live oak tree that came down by the entrance was still lying there, across half a dozen parking spaces, but you could see that someone had started chainsawing it into chunks.

  “They kept talking about way of life and preserving endangered cultures,” Dad said. “Endangered. Like we’re manatees or something. You feel endangered, Tams?”

  Tammy shook her head.

  “That’s my girl.”

  “But do you think they just noticed us from the news?” I asked.

  “I suppose—no wait, it wasn’t just the news. It was a speech. The lady who talked to Brett and Deena and me that first day said something about a speech someone gave, overseas, mentioning Mermaid’s Hands.” He frowned. “That just makes it stranger, though, if you think about it.”

  And that’s when I started thinking it had to be you, Kaya. You know about Mermaid’s Hands and its troubles, because I wrote about them in my letter. And you said in your letter that the government wanted you to make a speech. I nearly burst out with my theory then and there, to Dad and Tammy, but I was afraid if I said the words, I’d make it turn not true. I decided to check first, and today, that’s what I did. I used Mr. Dubois’s computer, since the library’s still closed because of Helga pushing a tree through its roof.

  I searched on “Kayamanira” and “W—” and “speech,” and I found it, on lots of different sites—you saying we have a special culture, just like your people in the mountains. A special culture. That’s why the cameras and reporters came, and that’s why we’re getting to rebuild. Because of you!

  And I just had another thought. I said it was you, not the Seafather, but I think really maybe it was you and the Seafather. He carried my message to you, so we could start writing each other. It’s like he was pushing us to be friends. Maybe the Lady of the Ruby Lake helped somehow, too, what do you think?

  I’m going to mail this tomorrow. Now that we’re back home, you don’t need to send letters to Aunt Brenda’s address anymore. Maybe you already sent one, but don’t worry, I’m going to find a way to call there to check, so I won’t miss it if you did.

  Thanks for rescuing our home, Kaya! It feels so good to be back in the arms of the sea again. My feet have missed the silt and sand so bad! I wish there was some way I could be as good a friend to you as you’ve been to me.

  Love from your friend,

  Em

  September 26 (Em to Kaya)

  Dear Kaya,

  I had to write you another letter. This is the fourth one I’ve written you and you haven’t written back yet. Are you ever going to write again? I’m worried about you. I decided I can’t bother Ma about whether any letters from you have arrived at Aunt Brenda’s. She’ll send them to me if any come. I just have to be patient, but I stink at being patient.

  Today during lunch hour I went to Mr. Dubois’s room and asked if I could use his computer again. I thought I’d just check to see if there were any other new stories about your country. Maybe one would mention you, I thought.

  I wish I hadn’t looked. The story at the top of the list had the headline “Tensions Increase on the Island Nation of W—.” It sounded pretty bad. People in the mountains attacked a bus from the capital, it said, and set it on fire, and in the capital a mob beat up two men from the mountains and left them to die by the factory where they worked.

  And then the article said that one of the “imprisoned insurgents” confessed to plotting to overthrow the government. Not you—it was another name. I can’t remember it now, but it must be one of your friends, right?

  But it’s not true, right? I don’t believe it. You told me you just wanted to have a festival for the Lady of the Ruby Lake … Your friends couldn’t of been planning a rebellion behind your back, could they? You have to be careful about who you pick for friends, my brother says. He should know. He confessed to something he didn’t do to try to protect his friends, but they turned on him. Do you think your friend confessed to protect you? But that doesn’t make sense, because confessing just makes you all look bad. Maybe your government is just lying, and he didn’t really confess at all.

  And there was another story from W—, about an earthquake. It said the earthquake opened cracks in the ground, and poisonous steam came out. It made me think that nothing at all is safe in your country right now. I wish I could bring you to Mermaid’s Hands.

  Love,

  Em

  September 28 (Em’s diary)

  A letter from Kaya at last! September 13th, it says on it. It did go to Aunt Brenda’s, but Ma sent it here, like I knew she would. She says she has an idea of how to help us in Mermaid’s Hands—I know what THAT was. And it worked! I love you, Kaya. But then there’s the other parts of her letter, the parts about the Bully and punishment raining down on the mountains if there’s an uprising. All that stuff I read in Mr. Dubois’s room, about tensions increasing and the bus being attacked, does that count as an uprising? I bet it does. Thinking about it makes me feel like I’ve swallowed a bowl of fishhooks. I thought getting a letter from Kaya would make me feel less worried, but instead I feel more worried.

  10

  Visions

  September 19 (Kaya’s journal)

  Something new: thick clouds of steam rising from somewhere in the bowl of the Ruby Lake, and sulfur fumes. Three days ago it was mere wisps, and I took them for ordinary mist; today I can see nothing beyond the edges of the platform, nor even one end of it if I stand at the other. Not the rim of the crater, not the Ruby Lake, barely even the sky. If it’s like this tomorrow, I don’t see how the supply helicopter can possibly come. How could it see to land? I shall have to be careful with my supplies again. I suppose I should be grateful to have postponed hearing what the Bully and Friendlier have to say about the additions and adjustments I made to their script. They certainly didn’t look pleased on the day.

  What is Sumi fussing about, out there? I must go see.

  September 19 (Kaya’s journal, second entry)

  All right. I have stoked the brazier. I have made tea. I will drink it and calm down. I am not hallucinating. I am not having visions. It’s just imagination.

  Sumi was wheeling around in great loops above the platform, and then down into the steam cloud, calling in her hoarse voice. When she vanished from sight down there, my heart cracked. Please don’t disappear. Don’t leave me alone here with only the black ants for company, I was thinking. Then, even before my mind understood what my eyes were seeing, my sad, cracked heart started up a war drum beat. In the clouds that blurred the far end of the platform was a figure: a man? The Bully, or Friendlier? Impossible; they can’t just appear here. Rami? Even more impossible. I started down the platform, the war drum pounding away in my chest, but stopped halfway, feeling sick from the smell of rotten eggs and the clinging heat.

  I squatted down and let my head droop between my knees, hoping the nausea would pass, but raised it when I heard Sumi cawing—thank you, friend, for not abandoning me—and saw the figure had come closer. A young fieldworker, he seemed to be, a ragged, sunfaded shirt hanging from his lean frame, a shortcloth round his waist,
and another cloth wrapped round his head for sun protection. Black, red, and green. Not any old cloth: a flag, a separatist flag.

  We did end up having streamers at our festival, but only red ones. We were careful to avoid the separatist colors. Certainly we had no flags. There have been no flags out in the open since that other festival, years ago, when we were all small children.

  “They’re making these again,” he said, unwrapping the flag from his head and holding it up. There was a red-brown stain running the width of it, and, I realized, a matching gash on the man’s head and down his left cheek by the ear.

  “Are you a ghost?” I managed to ask.

  “Look around you. Do you sense the power, beneath your feet? You mustn’t cower. Remember your heart of ruby fire. You must be fierce.”

  I blinked and squinted, trying to resolve the features of the young man’s face, but he had changed; he was not he any longer, but she, a woman, clutching her ragged shirt closed in her fist, and I recognized Grandmother Jemenli. In the same moment I remembered as a child climbing the ladder and pushing aside the curtain to enter Grandmother Jemenli’s tiny mountainside house. I remembered kneeling beside my mother there, taking small sips of honey coffee while she and my mother exchanged formal words. My mother slid a neatly folded length of orange-and-gold checked cloth across to Grandmother Jemenli, who pushed a small green bundle—charms, for me, wrapped in a leaf—to my mother. Bored, I let my eyes wander round the room. They rested briefly on a memorial photo in a teak frame: a serious-faced, thin young man. The fieldworker—Grandmother Jemenli’s son? To child me, it had been just another unknown grown-up. Grown me bowed my head.

  “You must be fierce.” This time, the words were breathed right in my ear. No, they came up through my feet; the platform was vibrating with them. I pulled myself to my feet. No one else was on the platform now.

  “I can be fierce! I will be fierce!” I shouted, startling Sumi, who had perched on the railing. She flew up, protesting, and disappeared into a billow of heated mist. My arms, legs, and face were slick with sweat, my longcloth and shirt clung to my limbs. Can I be fierce even while being steamed like a sago dumpling?

  Yes, sure. Let me be heated until I glow as red as the Ruby Lake. Let me be an ember that lights a fire.

  September 20 (Kaya’s journal)

  The steam clouds have subsided somewhat today; I can see the cracks they’re coming from, not on the Ruby Lake’s surface, but along the sides of the crater, a bit higher up.

  The Ruby Lake is swelling, too. I’m sure of it. The curled golden rock I called the salamander has disappeared into the lava, which is lapping the knees of the four hunched boulders I think of as the old grandfathers. The Lady really is coming, but how soon?

  I don’t care when. I have a heart of ruby fire. I will be fierce.

  I hear a helicopter. Time to face the Bully and Friendlier.

  September 20 (Kaya’s journal, second entry)

  Beside the helicopter, Friendlier seemed browbeaten, harassed; the Bully, on the other hand, was practically feverish with excitement—as if the two had been arguing on the way over and the Bully had prevailed. I felt a pang of concern for Friendlier, though I suppose it was for myself as well. I’d rather have Friendlier winning arguments than the Bully.

  Friendlier handed me a letter from Mother (nothing from Em this time) and a copy of the Palem Courier and took the letters I wrote last week, one for Mother, one for Em.

  “No more of that from now on,” the Bully said, emphasizing that with a jut of the chin toward the letter in my hand.

  “No letters?” I asked. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on that thin lifeline until that moment, facing the prospect of losing it.

  “What did you expect, after what you did with the speech?” Friendlier shook his head. “I said you were reasonable. I vouched for you.”

  “I didn’t break trust! I did what you asked.”

  “You had a moment in the spotlight and you used it as a call to arms.”

  “How can you say that? You were here; you heard what I said. Language rights. Religious freedom. That’s not a call to arms.”

  “‘Greater autonomy’ is,” said the Bully, his teeth and tongue seeming to disdain the words.

  “I hope you’re happy with the fruits of your actions,” Friendlier continued, eyes falling on the newspaper.

  The photo on the front showed some kind of accident, a burnt-out wreck of a bus. “Terrorism!” the headline shouted. Underneath, in smaller print, was a promise to keep the roads through the mountains open and safe. My heart constricted. Attack a bus? Had the separatists done this? Why?

  I looked at the photo again. I know the interdistrict buses; I bumped and jounced in them down to the coast and back again each term, when I was at St. Margaret’s. This wasn’t one of those buses. Half soot blackened but still visible on the front was the jasmine-flower-and-shield medallion of the State Security Service. My cheeks warmed, and I felt a harsh joy I’ve never felt before.

  “Self-defense, not terrorism.” I tapped the medallion in the photo.

  “It wasn’t a combat vehicle!” Friendlier said. “There were civilians on board!”

  “Her kind don’t respect those distinctions,” said the Bully, disgusted. To me he said, “You can respect this, though: You can’t win. Destroy a bus? We can impound every vehicle in the mountain region and have them all scrapped. Ambush one of us? We can take out twenty of you. A hundred of you.”

  Threats, always threats. The heat in me grew stronger.

  “Your friend confessed, you know,” the Bully continued. “Your sweetheart, the separatists’ brat. Signed a statement. Early this morning, it was. He admitted to manipulating you and the others to rekindle old fires. I have a copy here. Look.” He held out a paper with a list of charges. Rami’s signature was at the bottom.

  A wave of nausea, worse than last night’s, swept over me. Grandmother Jemenli’s son, with his wounds and bloody flag, filled my mind—but wearing Rami’s face. What must they have done to Rami to make him sign such a thing? The whole world was spinning; the platform was tilting, trying to send us all to the Lady … Friendlier caught my arm and steadied me.

  “This confession is false,” I said, each word like glue, sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “Rami never …” I couldn’t look at Friendlier or the Bully. I set my eyes on the Ruby Lake.

  “You know he hated the government. You wrote as much in your memoir.” Friendlier’s voice. Quiet. Firm.

  My head shot up. Had my words doomed Rami? Friendlier was watching me intently. The Bully stood two steps back, arms folded, radiating impatience.

  Is there any way for me to save him?

  There was no way to ask that question; all words fell to ash before I could speak them. But perhaps Friendlier is a mind reader, because he held out a recorder and said, “You can still help him. Order a stop to all this, in no uncertain terms. A good-faith gesture like that could mean clemency for your friend.”

  Could mean. Not will mean. If I do exactly as they ask, will they make me a promise, and keep it? Do I really have the power to issue the command they’re asking for? If I order, will people listen? I thought of the pinpricks of light I’ve seen at the rim of the Ruby Lake’s crater, the fires people have lit. Do I have the right to command those fires to be snuffed out?

  “Speak in the name of the Lady,” Friendlier said, a curl to his lip as he made the suggestion, almost as if he were inviting me to share a joke. Mocking the very idea of the Lady.

  They can afford to mock. They know right now I’m ready to do anything to save Rami. But does he want to be saved, at such a cost? Did he risk everything, suffer everything, to be told to accept the rule of his tormentors? And what about everyone else? Rami would never buy his life at the price of everyone’s hopes.

  The wind was turning; the scent of sulfur was strong in the air.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “I told you before: the Lady loves upris
ings. Can’t you tell? She herself is uprising.”

  Friendlier flung down the recorder, which bounced twice on the platform. He turned away, paced toward the helicopter, then back.

  “You don’t believe that nonsense. You’re an educated woman, a scientist,” he growled.

  I realized—remembered again—at that moment: they are both enemies. Friendlier as much as the Bully. Enemies, and liars. I must not forget it.

  “It’s over, Den,” the Bully said. “Leave it to me now.” And to me, “We’ll let your friend know that you agreed to his death—we’ll tell all of them. How being a priestess went to your head.”

  “It’s not about me! Or Rami. It’s about them.” I nodded to the world beyond the Ruby Lake. Grandmother Jemenli and the others in the mountains. “You know who’s destroying W—? Not me. Not Rami. Not our people. It’s your masters. The gold-stars and shiny-boots in the State Security Service, the parliament, the prime minister—all of them. They’re the ones gambling with our nation.” I looked past the Bully and Friendlier to the pilot—it’s always the same man who flies them here—who was hanging back by the helicopter cabin door.

  “You know, don’t you. Tell your family and your neighbors how the State Security Service is putting our country at—”

  “Enough of that!” said the Bully, he of the quick hand, but this time I was ready, arm raised to block his blow. For a couple of heartbeats no one spoke. The ocean rumblings of the Ruby Lake filled all our ears.

  “Your days are numbered,” the Bully said, lowering his hand and stepping back.

  “Do you have anything extra you’d like to add to this, since it’s your last communication?” Friendlier held up my letters to my mother and Em.