The Ghost Sister

by Liz Williams

  “Ghost,” Eleres said softly. “I've been expecting you. I saw you on the dock.”

  “Yes, you did,” Shu said, feeling tense and nervous and somehow ashamed. “I followed you, from the river valley.” Her voice sounded small and thin, like a child making excuses for itself. Embarrassed, Shu cleared her throat, but Eleres did not seem surprised.

  “I see,” he said. “Why did you follow me?”

  “I don't want to—well, alarm you,” Shu said. “I'm not haunting you. I need to talk to you. About your sister.” Now that she was standing in front of him, her intrusion into his life seemed unpardonably clumsy and wrong. And if he saw her as a ghost, who knows how he might view her presence here?

  us

  He looked up, surprised. “About Mevennen?” he said, and now there was even more of an edge to his voice, like a razor under silk.

  “Look,” Shu said. “Just hear me out. Your sister came to us. She's with my companions now.” She saw Eleres's eyes widen. He opened his mouth to speak, but she went hastily on. “She's sick, as you know, and she thought we might be able to help her—find a cure for whatever it is that she suffers from.” She went on. “So we told her this, and she came to be with us for a while.”

  Eleres stared at her. She was expecting recriminations, anger, superstition, but he just said blankly, “And have you? Found a cure?”

  “No. No, we haven't been able to do very much for her. We don't even know why she's ill. I know what she's told us,” she added hastily, “but we don't really understand the explanation.”

  “Then why have you come after me?”

  Shu took a deep breath. “We need to find out how a normal person—works. How their body reacts to certain stimuli. The composition of their blood. If we know that, then we might be able to see how Mevennen is different from the rest of you, and—well, put her right.”

  The young man's face was blank with shock. He said, “You're blood thieves. Demons.”

  “Listen,” Shu said quickly. “I know what you think, and why you should think it, too, but I'm not a ghost or a demon. I don't come from the otherworld, from eresthahan. But I am from very far away.”

  He put his head on one side and studied her. “You're not human. Your eyes are different, and the color of your skin … And most important of all, you have no shur'ethes, no presence. I can't sense you; we're not linked by the world. I can't sense Mevennen, either, but at least she looks like me. That suggests to me that you are demon or ghost.” Uneasily he shifted position and Shu realized for the first time that he was afraid of her. The knuckles that were still wrapped around the hilt of his sword were taut and white. He was not the only one who was scared. Shu swallowed hard, and stared at him across the widening gap of understanding.

  “I don't come from this world,” she said, at last. “But I'm not supernatural. I really am not.”

  Eleres's eyes narrowed. Disbelief was plain in his face. “From where, then?”

  “From another planet,” Shu said, after a pause. Eleres looked at her with frank incredulity. She couldn't blame him.

  “Another planet? Like Rhe?”

  “Where's Rhe?”

  “The evening and the morning star.” He gestured vaguely upward.

  “Yes, like Rhe, but farther away.”

  “So,” Eleres murmured. The thought seemed almost to amuse him.

  “You don't believe me, do you?” Shu said. She had to admit that she wasn't exactly surprised. The arch of his eyebrow was the only response, but she could see that he was still unnerved.

  “Why did you come here, then? Why not stay on your own world?” He seemed more curious than angry, but there was still that edge to his voice which Shu felt inclined to dispel.

  “Because we want to find out more about this world. Not to do harm. Simply to learn, and to help if we can.”

  “A ghost-student. You must be very young.”

  Shu couldn't help smiling. “That's flattering. I'm old enough to be your grandma.”

  “There are many people who are more learned than I, who understand themselves and the world. Why did you choose me to talk to, back there in the orchard?” He shifted his weight against the pillar, and gave her a sidelong glance.

  “Because you were the only person who was around, besides your sister.Why did you choose to talk to a ghost?”

  Eleres sighed, and sat down on the step of the veranda. The hand that gripped the sword relaxed a little. Cautiously, Shu came to sit beside him.

  “Because I thought I had earned a haunting,” he said. “Because I thought you were here to exact retribution, on myself, or upon my cousin.”

  “Retribution? Why?”

  “For the child's death. And for what I nearly did, and wanted to do, to my sister. You know that she has laid an honor charge upon me?” He may have been a long way from human, but the shame she heard in his voice was entirely intelligible. Shu sat for a moment in thought.

  “When we spoke first,” she said carefully, “you talked about 'the pack.' You said that your people enter some kind of—of state, where you lose consciousness and awareness; you become like animals.”

  “Elustren,” he murmured. She caught the word beneath the translation, but the word that the lingua franca translated was by now a familiar one: bloodmind.

  “But Mevennen doesn't enter that state, does she?”

  “No, she's landblind.”

  “Landblind?”

  “I suppose you don't know what that means, either? Mevennen is set apart from the bloodmind, so she cannot hear the land. Surely she told you this?”

  Mevennen had, Shu remembered. In that first meeting, Mevennen had indeed told them this, and again, during her stay, she had spoken of it. But Shu and Bel and Sylvian had focused so heavily on the bloodmind that they had not really taken note of the other word, thinking it a metaphor, perhaps, or something similar. A cold trickle of unease passed down Shu's spine.

  “I know she doesn't enter the bloodmind,” she said slowly.

  “No. And so she does not have the abilities that a normal person has—to sense the water beneath the land, to feel the metals and minerals and currents of energy. She can't tell when storms approach, or the weather changes. My poor sister has none of the abilities that have enabled us to survive this harsh world, to be a part of it.” He frowned at her, perplexed. “I can't imagine what it would be like to be in such a state; rejected by the world itself. The bloodmind is a hard thing to bear, sometimes, but how much worse to be so separated from the world. The two are connected, like blood or bone.”

  “You're natural dowsers,” Shu said, wonderingly And more than that, she thought, as though a great light had broken over her. More than that, they're natural Gaians. They have a connection with the world that a Gaian mystic would give her eyeteeth for. Not a theory about organic unity, but a visceral link with the planet that gave them life. They really are living in Elshonu's imagined Dreamtime. And yet it's come with a price. And another thought came hard behind these reflections, with the impact of a blow. If the generator is behind all of this, and we turn the generator off, what will we be doing to these people? We won't just deprive them of the bloodmind—save themselves from their own more primitive natures, as Dia thinks. We'll cripple them.

  Evidently Eleres did not think that he'd made himself sufficiently clear, for he said patiently, “Perhaps I haven't explained myself very well. We're like most animals. We reside in packs, we live by the tides of the land, we sleep in the heart of winter. We have the urge to hunt, and sometimes we take prey” —and here he glanced across the courtyard to the cold store where, Shu knew, the child's body lay—” but we are more than animals, and therefore less, and that is our great grief and sorrow. We pretend it's natural, we tell ourselves that we can't help what we do, but I sometimes think we're just deluding ourselves.” He turned back to look at her, and his face was somber in the cold light of morning.

  “Our mutual ancestors felt much the same way about sex,” Sh
u said, before she could stop herself. She still felt cold with realization. “Perfectly natural thing, but that didn't stop them from calling it a sin and wringing their hands over it.”

  “But sex doesn't usually result in people dying,” Eleres said, with a wry smile.

  “Not usually, no.”

  “So, ghost. Have you learned something today? And is it to be my penance to instruct you, and for you to remind me of what I most fear about myself?”

  It was the ideal opening. All she had to do was play along, succumb to the old temptation that civilization meets when it confronts the primitive. Pretend to be a ghost, indeed; manipulate him, play on his fears and get the results she needed if Mevennen was ever going to be cured. But even though the stakes had just become higher than she had planned, Shu knew that she could never compromise his dignity in such a way, or her own. Or Mevennen's. Pragmatism could go only so far, unless it was to be transformed into ruthlessness.

  And then he said, “My sister wrote me a letter, before she disappeared. She told me she had gone with you. She said that once the funeral of the child was over, then I'd see her again. Is that true?”

  “Let me explain,” Shu said, though she was certain that he would not believe her. She shoved thoughts of the generator aside for the moment. “I'm just a person, like you, from somewhere else. I'm not here to torment you, or steal your sister away, and if you really do want me to go, then I will. But if I'm ever going to help Mevennen, then I'll need your help, too. And that means a drop of your blood, and a few basic tests. Then I'll take you to your sister.” So much for objectivity, she thought, and so much too for all her silent criticisms of Bel Zhur's urge to be a savior.

  Eleres stared at her with equal bemusement, followed by a return to disbelief. He rose, brushing dust from his coat in an echo of their meeting in the orchard. She could hear voices coming from inside the house.

  “Look,” he said shortly. “I have to go. The claim hearing starts soon. Tell me this. How do I know you're not lying to me? That Mevennen's alive and unharmed? I want you to prove it.”

  “All right,” Shu said. “You can talk to her. I have a device that will allow you to speak to her.”

  He frowned. “And how do I know that isn't simply a trick?”

  “You don't.” That wrung her an unwilling, bitter smile.

  “Come back soon, then,” he said reluctantly. “After the hearing's over.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Later. I don't know exactly how long it will take.”

  “All right,” Shu said. “I'll do that.”

  Turning, he vanished through the doorway. Shu took a deep breath, and faced the consequences of what she had done. Quite deliberately, she realized, she had violated the most fundamental precepts of anthropology, her adopted discipline. She was not merely an observer, not to Eleres. She had intruded into his world and his conscience, blundering through, her need for knowledge such that she had ignored the effects on him. But if Mevennen died, if Sylvian's attempts to shut down the generator's power source were successful … Her head pounded as her thoughts chased themselves around and around. She had to get back. But if she went back without the data she'd come for, Mevennen might not live. She had to contact Sylvian, tell her that she had a new theory and that they were not to close the generator down, not yet. Shu sat down suddenly on the step, shivering with delayed shock. It was a few minutes before she could bring herself to go back into the shadows of the house.

  Finding a quiet corner, she sat down and activated the communicator, punching in the coordinates for the camp.

  Speak to Sylvian first … She heard the familiar attempt at connection; a faint hiss from the metal sliver of the communicator, but then there was only static.

  “Connection has been unsuccessful,” the device informed her blandly.

  “What? Why?” Shu asked, feeling a tense chill knot her stomach.

  “Unknown,” said the small, metallic voice of the communicator. “There is interference.” Cursing, Shu tried again, with equal lack of success. But if the little communicator did not work, there was still the aircar's own relay. She did not relish the thought of traipsing all the way back up the hillside, but she didn't seem to have much choice. She tried the communicator one last time, hoping against hope that it had only been a momentary lapse, but still there was nothing. What was the matter with the thing? It had been working perfectly until now. Grimly, she replaced it in her backpack and hurried downstairs, lingering for a moment in the courtyard until she was sure that no one was about. She heard footsteps behind her in the hall, and turned to see the tall, blue-eyed young man, Eleres's new friend. He hastened past her without a glance, his face drawn and anxious. Shu waited until he had disappeared from view, then hurried toward the gate.

  As she stepped through, a bolt of lightning shot up her spine. For a blinding second, the world was ripped apart and she was plunged inside it, as though the goddess herself had reached out and struck her. Shu Gho fell to her knees on the flags inside the gate. Her ears sang and she could hear her breath rattling in her lungs. Her stomach churned. These people were at the domesticated-animal, boatbuilding stage of technology. Though their engineering skills were good, there was no knowledge of even rudimentary electronics. The possibility of a forcefield, like the Bering Walls used for domestic security in some of the Core worlds, was out of the question. So what was this? Nausea and dizziness gradually passed, only to be replaced with the realization that she could neither contact the camp nor leave. She was trapped.

  6. Eleres

  I left the ghost sitting on the step and went inside. I did not know what to make of the meeting, and the thought of Mevennen in the hands of ghosts, or whatever they were, filled me with terror. I think I knew then that the hearing would not go as smoothly as I had hoped, though I did not suspect quite how bad it would be.

  The house was filled with a tense anticipation. I received punctilious morning courtesies from those I met on the way to the stoveroom, but nothing more until I encountered Jheru. This morning, he was dressed in overlapping blue robes which lent bulk without disguising his sinuous grace of movement. His aquamarine eyes were deep as well water, and guileless. He appeared genuinely pleased to see me, I saw with a lift of the spirits, which sobered only when I reminded myself why we were here. Sounds came from the open door of the stoveroom.

  “There is only tea, and water,” Jheru informed me apologetically. “You understand that a fast is imposed until … ?”

  Until the matter was settled.

  I gestured assent.

  “I'd like some more tea, if I may,” I said, and he took my cup and went with it into the stoveroom to refill it. As I waited, Pera Cathra emerged from some errand in the stoveroom. She peered at me and then, very much to my surprise, gave me a chilly formal bow, which I returned. When I raised my eyes, she moved on into the labyrinth of rooms behind the main hall.Jheru reappeared. “Hessan has asked me to explain the order of the day to you. He himself has gone to speak to sereth.The claim hearing meets shortly, she knows all about this. Then, we'll all go up to the funeral ground. The child's birth took place at a particular configuration of the moons; she must be sent into the fire accordingly. Time is a little short, and the satahrach deemed it inadvisable to wait.”

  “We'll do whatever has to be done.”

  The claim hearing was held in a small room close to the main gate. Sereth and myself, led by Hessan and Jheru, were met at the door by a man in the mask of Temethai: the sign of the First Gate of the gap between the worlds. The left half of the mask was blue, to denote sorrow, the right half was green, to indicate inevitability. The esedrada, the ritual speech of passage, was begun and we responded appropriately, but it was left unfinished, since this was not the true passage of death but only reparation. The satahrachin say that the recitation of the esedrada brings one's own death closer, turns the implacable attention of the Gate upon oneself and reminds the world of its own powers. I used not to
believe that this was so.

  Once ritual and response were given, a hand brought the mask down and turned it deftly inside out. Now, it was a smooth face, the color of stone, the Second Gate. The ritualist stepped aside and we went through. The hearing was composed of the five principal family members, the Hand of the House, here in Temmarec, three women and two men, one of them Hessan. They sat behind a heavy table before the semicircular rows of benches. On either side of the front row was a raised seat and the witness chairs. We were shown to our proper places by Jheru and waited. A light scatter of rain drummed against the taut skin of the window. Family members filed in until the chamber was full, and then the hearing began.

  It proceeded much as I expected, at least at first. Sereth recounted the events which had led to the child's death. She took pains to make clear that our descent into the bloodmind was inspired by the natural urge to protect a member of the family. There were gestures of assent and sympathy at this point in her narrative. She did not conceal her own responsibility for the death of Hessan's niece. When my own turn came, I acknowledged my part in the hunt. Wishing to be candid, and to confirm that Sereth had acted from the depths of the bloodmind, I told them that I had nearly savaged Mevennen. This was accepted for the truth it was, but it still stuck in my throat. There was a time when I would have taken such a thing for granted.