Sister Mine

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “Sorry.”

  Abby gave him a fond smile. “It’s hard for me to let her in from the driver’s seat. I’d have to lean over and stretch one arm out to open the door. It’s hard for me to lean like that if I can’t use both hands to support me.”

  He replied, “You could just open the passenger door first, then go around and let yourself in after.”

  “Or,” I put in, “she could get me a spare set of keys.” I scanned the parking lot for anything out of the ordinary. Second time today I’d forgotten to be watchful. Stupid, stupid.

  “Get in the car, Maks.”

  I let myself in. Lars closed the car door behind me. Abby handed her crutches to me from her side. I stashed them across the backseat as she lowered herself behind the steering wheel. I handed her back her keys. We both knew why we did this particular choreography to get into her car. The first time she’d tried letting me in first, a haint had been after me. I’d made it into the car safely enough, but by the time she’d hobbled around to the driver’s side and started putting her crutches in, the blasted thing had broken the passenger side window and hauled me halfway back out again. Sometimes I still dreamt about its claws digging into my upper arms; the heavy stench of its breath, muddy-sweet as stale blood.

  Abby motioned to me to roll the window down so she could talk to Lars. “We’re going to the palais to ask after Dad. You want to come?” Another person would probably only hear bravery in her voice, but I could pick out the tiny tremolos of trepidation.

  Lars said, “Wow. You really think that’s wise? I don’t fancy being unmade.”

  She gasped. “Gods, I hadn’t even thought of that. Yeah, better not.”

  Lars was right. There were those in our bloody family who really would kill him if they had a mind to. They considered the likes of inspirited objects such as Lars and Cheerful Rest to be reflected glory, not real life.

  Lars went around to Abby’s side of the car. When she rolled the window down, he reached in and touched her face. “I’ll escort you part of the way. Then I’ll see you later.”

  “OK.” She took his hand and kissed it. The sight unsettled me. No matter how enlightened I wanted to be, I couldn’t quite shake the reaction that it was kind of like me pitching woo to my workbench.

  Lars strode off to get his motorbike. I said to Abby, “If Dad had become an old one again, would he let us know that he was all right?”

  “I told you, he hasn’t!”

  “If you say so,” I replied glumly. “I’m only saying we don’t know how he’ll act when that happens. I mean, once he’s practically a god again, would he bother so much with his human daughters? It’s not like the rest of them love us so much. Maybe he would become more like them.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Lars roared up behind us on his bike. Abby started the car.

  “Abs, stop at a drugstore first. Gotta pick up some Gravol.” For travel sickness. The journey to the courtyard was going to turn my stomach, in more ways than one.

  “You should try a piece of nutmeg under your tongue. Better for you than all those chemicals.”

  “Just please take me to a drugstore.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Did I say I wasn’t going to?” We pulled out of the parking lot. I looked back. Lars was following.

  “So,” I said, “Jimi’s guitar, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled bashfully.

  I ignored the spike of jealousy. “How long have you guys been seeing each other?”

  “About six months.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “Didn’t think you’d care.”

  I looked at my feet. “Haint attacked me earlier today,” I said.

  “Oh, no!” she replied in the language that only she and I shared. “Was it bad?”

  With a will, I kept my voice nonchalant. “Nah, I handled it. Scary, though. I didn’t notice it creeping up on me.”

  “Christ on a crutch, Maka! Why’d you let your guard down like that? You know you can’t afford to.”

  “Get off me.”

  “Did you have your medicine with you, at least?”

  “Come on, Ab. What’re you, my mother?” I didn’t tell her that I’d left the bottle at home. It’s not like I’d planned to spend a night away.

  Abby reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out my vial of tincture, and handed it to me.

  “You went into my room?”

  “You keep it in the bathroom, remember?”

  I took it from her without another word. I opened it and tried to swallow the requisite two mouthfuls without tasting them. I didn’t quite succeed. I swear, the stuff tasted like armadillo scat mixed with swamp water. I made a face. “Gah.” When I was young, I used to think that “vial” and “vile” were the same word. “I’m getting low on this stuff,” I said in English.

  “I know.” She managed to look even more worried than before. This was one of the last few bottles of the tincture. Dad used to brew it. No one else seemed to be able to make the ingredients work properly together. Uncle had tried it once, and I’d had the belly runnings for two days.

  “It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” I reassured Abby. “I’ve figured it out. I’ll just go to a claypicken doctor. The science of antirejection meds has probably progressed a ton since we were kids.”

  “Shows what you know.” She sounded almost as though she were crying.

  “Well,” I said huffily, “forgive me for trying to use my very own brain to solve my very own problems.”

  She didn’t reply for a few seconds. Then she said, “You’re probably right. Just try a human doctor. It’ll be fine.”

  “I’m saying. Besides, it’s time I start living more in the claypicken world, since I pretty much am one.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Wow. Did she have to agree so easily? Oh, whatever. It was Abs, after all. “Funny thing is, I think one of Dad’s kin helped me escape the haint.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” I described the fortuitous, strangely responsive storm to her.

  “Weird. That sounds like Cathy. Or Cousin Flash.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I thought. But why would any of that lot give me a hand? They hate me.”

  “They don’t hate you. They just—”

  “They just don’t think I’m worth the ground I walk on. I know. Hey; how’d you know to send Lars down by the lake for me, anyway?”

  “Butter told me you were there. Luckily, she made it back before the downpour started. If she’d gotten wet, I’d never have heard the last of it.”

  “Butter tracked me to the lake?”

  “She’s been keeping an eye on you ever since I got her.”

  “Your cat shadows me?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you tell her to do that?”

  “No. It was her idea. She likes you. She likes to make sure you’re all right.”

  I flounced back against the seat and crossed my arms. “She’s a spy. I am so never going to buy her liver treats any more.” The hell with this crap. I’d found a home where people saw me for the adult I was.

  And where my new neighbour, Brie, had the Shine. Holy crap. That green glow I’d seen behind him. I’d just been too stoned or whatever last night to recognize it for what it was. What the hell was Brie? He wasn’t one of the old guys; I’d have recognized him. No matter what human guise they wore, even I could tell who they were. Maybe he was like Lars? If so, what was that last night with the music that sent people into a trance state? Did Brie use mojo on his audiences?

  Abby turned into a parking lot. We were at a drugstore. I opened my door, then remembered that I still didn’t have my wallet. “Uh,” I said, “could I—?”

  Abby rolled her eyes, shoved a hand into the pocket of her skirt, and handed me a few bills.

  “Thanks.”

  Lars pulled up behind us. I was glad that he was coming even part of the way. He and I had just met, but he’d been the only person
to say anything halfway pleasant to me all day. I went over to him. “Just a quick stop,” I said. “Gotta pick up some things I need.”

  “Sure.” To my surprise, he got off his bike and followed me into the store.

  I said, “Hey; did you see the thing chasing me earlier today?”

  “Yeah. Why I followed you in here. Because it might come back.”

  “What’d it look like to you?”

  “Like something bad wearing a skin suit. The suit was like a mask, you know? I didn’t need to pay mind to what the mask looked like. I could see the Shine coming off your little boggart.”

  “Interesting. Most people just see my haint as something normal. A kid, a dog.”

  “I’m not people.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Lars went over to a rack of CDs labelled “Summer Tunes.” He pulled one of them off the rack and examined it, scowling. “Remastered, my ass,” he grumbled.

  A claypicken guy who’d been flipping through the CDs, too, said, “I know, dude! Give me an old record any day, right?”

  Lars eyed him. “Live was better.”

  The guy laughed. “I guess.” He glanced at the CD that Lars was holding. “But I wasn’t alive yet back when that guy was recording.”

  Lars smiled. “Neither was I.” He turned away, leaving the clay guy trying to make sense of that cryptic utterance.

  I grabbed some antinausea meds from a nearby shelf. “I need one more thing,” I told him. As I wandered in search of the right aisle, I asked, “So, you and Abby seem to be getting along.” I cringed inwardly at the whiff of cattish jealousy in my voice. Dating was complicated for me and Abby. We’d run through all the family members we could stand, on both sides of the Family. It wasn’t a huge pool. That pretty much left humans to whom we weren’t related. Which was OK for fucking, but for the long term, not so much. Try explaining to your human lover that you’re not talking to thin air, but to your uncle, the invisible Lord of Death. It doesn’t go down too well.

  Lars’s giggle when I asked about him and Abby was a creamy cascade of harmonics. It made me want to smile, too. “We’re like a house on fire,” he said.

  I checked the aisles where they sold the seasonal stuff. Sure enough, the summer kitsch was already crowding the shelves. Lawn chairs. Coolers. Giant Super Soaker water guns. I picked out one of the guns. It was a cheery green, reeking of new plastic. “This’ll keep the haint away. Once I load it up with water, that is.”

  Lars didn’t bat an eyelid. “I saw gallon bottles of water a couple aisles over. I’ll take you there.”

  As I followed him, I aimed at the back of his neck with the giant water gun. A little girl wearing a jacket with a picture of a Disney princess on it scowled at me and shook her head. She couldn’t have been more than seven. Sheepishly, I lowered the Super Soaker. “Damn it,” I said to Lars, “I can’t pretend. I’m jealous.”

  Lars was squatting to reach some huge containers of distilled water that were on the bottom shelves. “Come again? Jealous of whom?”

  “Abby. She gets the cool life and the hot dates.”

  He grinned up at me. “And you don’t? Nah, that can’t be.”

  “Really, not so much.”

  “Ah, c’mon. You’re just taking the piss. Who wouldn’t want to get with you? These three jugs enough?”

  “Yeah, those’ll do. As to my dating life, you know how it is. When other Shinies find out that I don’t have mojo, it’s game over.”

  He stood up with the jugs. “What d’you mean, you don’t have mojo? I can smell it on you.”

  “That’s not cute,” I growled, “making fun of me like that. I know what I am.”

  “I’m not kidding. I smell it on you. You’ve got a sprinkle of fairy dust, all right.”

  I stopped dead in the drugstore and stared at him. People brushed past us. I scarcely noticed them. My scalp was prickling. My arms had gone cold. The nose of the Super Soaker banged gently against my calf. “What kind is it?” I whispered. “What can I do?”

  Lars boggled. “How can you not know?”

  “Nobody ever told me!”

  “Nobody can tell you what your mojo is. You know how to work it the way your heart knows how to beat.” Then his face fell. “Oh, hell, I’m rubbish. I’ve probably told you something I wasn’t supposed to, haven’t I?”

  “You can smell mojo? Can Abby smell it? Can my dad, and my uncle?”

  “Dunno. Never thought to ask. Like I said, it kinda comes with the territory. Look, maybe I’d better shut it about this now. You should ask your sister what you want to know, yeah?”

  I’d had it. I exploded. “Why does everybody treat me like I’m too dumb to live? I have something this big going on, and people have been keeping it from me?”

  “Hey, don’t drag me into this!” said Lars. “I only just met you and Abby!”

  Other people in the aisle were trying to look casual as they edged away from us. Nothing cleared a room faster than a black man and woman arguing. I took a deep breath. I was so furious, my hands were shaking. “Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll ask Abby. Let’s just go.” I turned on my heel and headed for the checkout counter.

  Great, just great. I’d had mojo all the time, but I couldn’t even figure it out on my own. A freaking guitar had to come along and enlighten me. No wonder Dad’s side of the Family treated me like an impostor. And my own immediate family hadn’t seen fit to tell me. Dad. Uncle, who apparently could lie when he bloody well chose. Abby, literally my own flesh. All three of them all these years smugly flaunting their grand personal magics and watching me flounder, directionless. My heart swelled with the betrayal of it and beat angrily at my chest wall. The pounding climbed up into my throat. It drummed in my ears. A dull, pulsing ache began behind my eyes. I didn’t trust myself to speak. It would come out as a roar. I paid for my purchases. Blindly grabbed a candy bar from the display beside the cash register and paid for that, too. Stalked back out to the car with Lars scurrying to keep up.

  Back at the car, I told Lars to put the water bottles in the front, where my feet would be. Quietly, he obliged, and then scurried back to his bike. I got in and slammed the door. Abby gave me a curious look. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” I handed her her change.

  “No, keep it.”

  “Fine.” I pocketed the money. Abby started the car.

  Bloody Shinies were so closemouthed about their pretty, gleaming world. They were the masters of not answering the question. Evasion, misdirection, bait and switch; whatever carrot would distract my dull donkey brain and lead my clodhopping feet away from their golden paths. I pushed a couple of the anti-sick tabs out of their plastic and swallowed them down with a sip from one of the water bottles at my feet.

  I knew the city pretty well, but we’d woven through so many back roads that I was thoroughly turned around. And bored. I started filling the Super Soaker from the bottles of water. Not easy to do in a moving car. I’d slopped a fair bit of water over my knees before I was done. I was so over being wet today!

  Abby drove with no hesitation about which way to go. No way I could have told where the Family courtyard would be this time, but finding it’d be a breeze for her. Between clenched teeth, I asked her, “Can you smell how to get to the courtyard?”

  “What? No, I just know the way. What’s the matter with you?”

  “But you can smell mojo.”

  “Yeah, so?” She took a U-turn, went up someone’s driveway and across their lawn, then through an alleyway on the other side.

  “Lars says I smell of mojo. Why didn’t you tell me that it had a smell?”

  She started, but kept her eyes on the road. “Maybe the smell’s just rubbed off on you from me and Dad and Uncle.” Her voice was shaking.

  I slammed my hand against the dashboard. Abby jumped. “Don’t confuse me with your new boyfriend! I am not some kind of tool!”

  “You just watch your mouth!” she snarled.

  “A
ll this time, you and Dad and Uncle Jack have known that I have some kind of mojo? What the hell, Abs? Did you guys keep the truth from me as some extra-special torture that the three of you dreamed up to torment me with?”

  “You know we would never do that. You don’t understand—”

  “I can’t understand if you won’t tell me! Does that mean that everyone on Dad’s side of the Family can smell it, too?” My shouting was reverberating off the walls of the closed car. Abby winced.

  “Hon, calm down. We can talk about this later, all right?”

  “No, it’s not all right! What in bloody hell is my mojo, and why can’t I work it?” I felt a tear roll down my cheek. “What’s wrong with me, that I can’t access my own mojo?”

  This alleyway was really long. Suddenly, the bottom fell out of my belly, as though the car had dropped into a hole. But we were still on level road, travelling smoothly. I swallowed my gorge back down. “Oh, shit. It’s starting, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, we’re getting close. We’re gonna have to press pause on our fight for a bit, I’m afraid.”

  “Fuck.” I took a deep breath. I gripped the undersides of my seat hard. “Couldn’t you have warned me?”

  “Don’t need to, do I? You keep telling me you don’t need my help.”

  “Eat shit, Ab.”

  “Try to relax.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Now I’d have to wait to find out from Abs what kind of mojo I had. She was getting her way, as usual. My stomach gave another sickening lurch, and the transit into the other world took hold of me.

  A white mist enveloped the car. The outside sounds ceased. It was like we were driving through cotton. My senses were fucked up. I smelt chartreuse, heard the light of the sun falling like knives of obsidian. My body turned itself inside out, my skin rubbing against itself, my organs flopping to the outside to bobble like so many lumpy calabashes hanging by their stems from the trunk of their tree. Every time this happened, I swore I could feel the place where the doctors had cut into me to give me a piece of Abby’s liver from which to grow my own. Touch was a taste and smell a sight. I groaned, inwardly cursed Abby for doing this to me, cursed my dad for sending us looking for him, cursed all the powers that were.