Sister Mine

by Nalo Hopkinson

  We zoomed up over the top of a ridge. From there, it was clear that Dad covered the horizon, as far as spirit eyes could see. There was only one choice to make. I said into Lars’s ear, “Dad was trying not to hurt me that night! Head into the kudzu!”

  “Yeah,” grumbled Lars, “the very model of loving parenthood, he was.” But he aimed for the kudzu anyway. He zigzagged the bike. The birds, like evil, could only travel in straight lines. I was leaving a trail of dead and dying birds behind us, but more were coming. Abby said I’d made thousands and thousands of them, and she must have been right, because they were massing so thickly in the air that they looked like a thunderhead bearing down on us. I concentrated on leaning with Lars when he banked into turns, on swinging his goofy rainbow umbrella sword at the birds that came too close, on stabbing them when I could.

  As we approached the edge of the woods, the kudzu flowed and locked us out, like an eye snapping shut. Lars growled and plunged the bike right into the thick of it, snapping tendrils of vine as he went. The smell of torn green things rose all around us, and the stench of grape candy. I turned and swung at a bird that had plunged into the tunnel we’d created. The blade connected with a satisfying thud. The bird fell to the ground. Its beak made a metallic twanging noise as it connected. The bird flopped about.

  The bike whined to a halt halfway into the vegetation, then stuck. “Keep going!” I shouted at Lars. He gunned the motor, revved the engine. The wheels spun, kicking up shredded kudzu leaves and lengths of vine in its wake. The front end of the bike caught air, dumping me off the back. I thudded down onto my behind. The brolly rapier went flying. Lars clutched at it and managed to catch the handle, then had to swing it immediately at a volley of three birds.

  “Dad!” I shouted. “It’s me, Makeda! Let us in!”

  Was the kudzu pulling back a fraction? A flurry of feathers and glinty beak flew at my face. I punched, hard. Bastard got a good slice at my forearm before I connected. “Ow!” It came at me again. I stomped it to the ground. Its body gave with a crunch under my boot in a way that would have made me sick to my stomach a few minutes ago. A lifetime had passed between then and now. I lifted my boot. On the ground under it was a lumpy smear of feathers, blood, glass shards, and small gears.

  Lars jumped off the bike. “We’re going to have to go on foot! Come on!” He took my hand and yanked me forward. There was the smallest open wedge in the wall of kudzu, around the front of the bike. We shoved past it. The lead bird slammed in behind us. The space had already shrunk so much that it was a tight fit. The bird pushed and paddled with its clawed feet, squirmed on winged elbows, its daggered beak still aimed at us, its pinprick red eyes narrowed meanly at our faces. I tried to back away, came up against a solid tree trunk. My skin prickled as I watched the kudzu vines embolize the bird into a chancre of flesh with the smallest tip of silver peeking out. The bird gave a quiet, hopeless squawk. The kudzu sealed the opening completely. For a few seconds more, we could still hear the muffled concussions as other birds thumped into the wall of kudzu, but failed to find a way in. Then nothing. Lars and I were left standing in the cold, green dark. “Whoa,” he said.

  I looked around, up. Foliage clustered so thickly around and above us that it created an artificial twilight. I could scarcely see my hand in front of my face. There was one source of light, though; Lars had sheathed the sword and opened the brolly. It fluoresced in a lazy flow of muted, shifting colours with the occasional glittery sparkle. “God, that’s so gay,” I said.

  Lars held it erect and bowed slightly. “Thank you, milady.”

  I tried to peer through the semi-dark. “Dad?”

  No answer. “Well,” I said, “at least we’re still alive.”

  Lars glanced around nervously. “For now.”

  By the pied, ever-changing light of the brolly, I tried to make out some details of where we were. Not much use, really; I couldn’t tell for sure what other vegetation there was, because everything was covered in kudzu. The tall, standy-uppy things were trees, but what kinds of trees? Whatever they had been, they were now, for all intents and purposes, kudzu trees. The bushes? Kudzu bushes. I sat on a fallen kudzu-clad log, trying to think what to do now.

  Lars snapped the brolly shut. It kept up the light show, though muted. He rested its tip on the ground, and I saw that it’d make a creditable cane, too. “Handy for hiking,” he told me. “What the hell were those bird things, do you know? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “Yes, you have,” I replied glumly. “I think I made them.”

  “You are shitting me!”

  I shook my head. “Kinda wish I were.”

  “Those were Dolly’s birds?”

  “Yup. My haint’s pulling out all the stops. It’s seriously pissed at me for trying to destroy it.”

  A small black snake wriggled out from under the log. I recognized it. “Hey, little one. Got away from that nasty, bitey haint, huh? Well, I’m afraid I brought it to you. I’m so sorry.” I put my palm flat on the ground in front of it. It crawled onto my hand, its scutes dry and raspy against my skin. It spiralled around on my hand for a couple of turns, then tried to crawl off my palm. I put it down on the ground so it wouldn’t fall. It slithered off a little way, then stopped. It turned its head and looked back at me. “OK,” I said to it. I stood and brushed off the back of Abby’s pants. Not sure why I bothered; the fabric was powdery all over with the dust it’d picked up on the hell ride here. I pointed to the snake. I told Lars, “I think we’re supposed to follow that little guy.”

  He peered through the rainbow-lit gloom. “That snake? How d’you know?”

  “It’s a melanistic garter snake. You only find them on the Leslie Street Spit. Dad was very fond of them.”

  He gave a grunt of laughter. “You Joli sisters, never a dull moment with you two, is there?”

  “ ’Scuse me? You used to live with Jimi Hendrix.”

  “Well, put it that way…”

  “C’mon.” I reached for his free hand. He clasped mine. His was a warm mitt of a paw, with calluses in interesting places. I held on, and we began following the little snake’s twisty trail, deeper into the tulgey wood. I was all nerves. “Lars, don’t keep quiet, OK? This light is making my head spin. I can barely make you out. If you stop talking, I won’t know whose hand I’m holding.”

  “Shall I turn the brolly off?”

  “Gods, no! Then there won’t be any light at all.”

  “True that. What d’you want us to talk about?”

  “Are you the guitar that Hendrix set on fire?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “Everyone asks me that. You want my life story, is that it? Shall I start with my birth in a crossfire hurricane?”

  “No, I want you to tell the truth, not recycle old rock lyrics. Besides, that’s the Stones, not Hendrix.”

  “Yeah, well it’s kinda private.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get too personal. Gods, I can be such a dolt.”

  To my chagrin, he replied, “Yeah, people can be. You guys are mercurial. Instruments are simpler. We are what we are. We don’t go changing our minds or our natures every five seconds.”

  “That must get dull,” I muttered.

  He laughed. “If you ever tell one of the others I said this, I’m going to deny it. But yeah, some of us… for example, trying to have a conversation with Lucy?”

  “Lemme guess: B. B. King’s axe?”

  “No, not Lucille; Lucy. John Henry’s hammer. She’s all thud, thud, thud. That chick gets a topic in her head, she’ll run it right into the ground. What a voice on her, though. You know that beautiful, brassy clang you get when a hammer hits the sweet spot? It’s like that. She says even just a simple hello, and it’s like angels shouting the length and breadth of the universe. It’s like Michael’s trumpet. Which is wild, seeing as Michael’s trumpet is just a made-up story.”

  “I—” I was too dumbstruck by what I’d learned from his last few sente
nces to say anything intelligent. It wasn’t just musical instruments. “Is Stagecoach Mary’s coach one of you guys?”

  “Luvvie, both of that fearsome woman’s pistols and her rifle are enspirited. But not her stagecoach. Though I did once meet an enspirited flatboat. Big River’s Daughter, her name was. But the stagecoach that Mary drove wasn’t a thing she loved and toiled with and worked on and handled till you could see her finger marks worn into it, and till it had raised calluses on her hands that fit to its shape like a glove and its hand. Her stagecoach wasn’t the thing that people talked about and gossiped about and legendized in their own minds. Her guns were.”

  “Huh. That’s wild.” I was getting used to seeing by the coruscating effect of Lars’s rainbow-casting brolly. I could see the snake more easily. I stepped over a fallen log in the split second before I would have tripped on it and gone sprawling onto the forest floor. “Where’d you find the two-four that you clonked the haint over the head with?”

  “I can’t really remember. Maybe it’d been in the wings somewhere. All I could think of was getting to Abby. And you, of course. Lars, are you and Abby going to last?”

  It was a second or two before he answered. “I don’t know. She’s amazing, but—”

  “But she can get a little bossy?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you would know about that. But that’s not really the problem. I’m an instrument, yeah? It’s kinda hot for me when someone knows how to take the lead.”

  I held a hand up. “OK, TMI.”

  “Nothing’s TMI with you lot. It doesn’t bug me that Abs is a leader. But it’s really getting up my craw that she always assumes I’ll follow.”

  “She forgets to ask you first.”

  “For her, there’s nothing to forget. It just doesn’t occur to her that it’s important.”

  Lars and I walked in silence for a few paces. Then he said, “You don’t, though. You treat me like an equal. How come is that?”

  I sighed. “You’re not my equal, though.”

  He stopped and looked at me. “Come again?”

  The snake flicked its tongue impatiently at us. We got going again. I said, “I mean, you’re better than me. You have everything I’ve ever wanted. A soul and mojo. A sense of purpose. Independence.”

  “And Abby?”

  I thought about that. “Actually, I’m finally figuring out that I do have Abby. Always will.”

  “Yeah. Glad I don’t have to tell you that.”

  A forest is never really quiet, but this one was, except for our footsteps and the scritchy sound of the snake’s movements. No wind in the trees, not even the sound of gargantuan kudzu blossoms falling. Looked like Quashee had licked that overgrowth problem—in spirit space, at least. Pretty soon, I couldn’t stand the silence any more. “Did you know it was me?” I asked Lars. “Impersonating Abby up onstage?”

  “Sure. And I figured you had some help from Brie, doing his thing. But girl, you were on fire!”

  “I was?”

  “Given what you had to work with? Yeah.”

  “Great. Thanks a lot.” Given what I had to work with. Sheesh.

  “Don’t you think Maka deserves better than that?” asked a quiet voice beside us.

  I leapt about a foot. “Beji! What are you doing here?” I went and hugged him. I’d forgotten how good he smelled.

  “We followed you.” He pointed to the forest floor, where Yoplait was pacing beside us. Still walking, she transformed into Beji.

  I said, “Not quite what I’d planned for our first date in forever.”

  They looked confused. Suddenly my tummy itched so fiercely that I had to scratch it. The Bejis went on the alert. They watched me dispassionately. Catlike.

  “How’re you feeling?” Beji asked.

  “Think I’m getting a cold,” I replied. “Plus there’s that armada of scary birds chasing us.”

  “They can’t get in here, nohow,” Beji pointed out.

  “Contrariwise,” Beji added. “There is no illness in spirit space.” All I could see was his grin.

  “Aren’t you confusing the Cheshire cat with Tweedledum and, uh, Wheedledee? No, that’s not it.” I was kind of unsteady on my feet, I realized. “Why is it so hot in here? And where’s the snake taking us?”

  “What snake?” asked the Bejis.

  There was no longer a snake in front of us.

  Lars stopped. He looked around uneasily. “Uh-oh. The kudzu’s moving in.”

  It was. The vines were visibly getting closer. In amongst the leaves of one of them hung the little snake, its spine clearly broken. Mesmerized, I watched the vines pull in. “Dad?” I said.

  “Maka, get down!” said Lars. He pushed me down to crouch at his feet. I heard his rapier sing as he swung it around in the air.

  A vine as thick around as a thigh lashed out at me. Lars chopped it away before it hit me. He didn’t get a chance to do it a second time. The kudzu crashed in and cocooned us all in ropes of green.

  “Uncle Boysie! Stop it!”

  “Please, Uncle Boysie! She’s almost ready to slough it off!” The Bejis crouched beside me, cradling me on either side.

  The kudzu withdrew from us a little space, and I could breathe freely again. Lars rolled out of the kudzu hug and lay there coughing.

  Beyond that space, the kudzu thrashed and twitched like something in agony. I asked, “Is Dad dying?”

  “He needs his mojo,” said Beji.

  “I can’t give it to him!”

  “You’ve been itchy and feverish for days, haven’t you? And headachy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We figure you’re rejecting Uncle Boysie’s mojo.”

  “But I won’t be me without it!”

  “Then maybe you’ll be someone new. We can help.”

  Kudzu vines started slapping the ground near us. The Bejis didn’t give me time to think. Yoplait and Butter leapt at me in deadly silence. They dug their claws into me, one on either shoulder. “What are you doing?” I screamed. I tried to pluck them off. I found I was lashing out at Beji and Beji, both tugging at my clothing. Or maybe not my clothing. Something tore away from me with a soft pop and a little pain. Beji and Beji were holding it in their hands, and it was so Shiny that I had to look away. “Why are you doing this?” I cried. “You’re killing me!”

  “We don’t think so,” replied Beji.

  “At least, we hope not,” said Beji.

  I whimpered. I curled up and waited to lose my faculties.

  Instead, I felt blessedly cool. The fever I hadn’t been aware of had broken. The low-level headache that had had me chewing painkillers for days was gone. My head was clear enough for me to finally realize how foggy it had become. I took my head out of my hands and looked around. Beji and Beji smiled protectively at me. I said, “I’m still here.”

  “Good,” Beji replied. He looked worried. He asked Beji, “That’s good, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “I hope so.”

  I squealed, “You hope so? I may be about to go brain-dead because of you two, and all you can say is that you hope it won’t happen?”

  A thigh-thick rope of kudzu yanked Dad’s mojo out of their hands. Dad pulled it up against the mass of his body. I sat up. I was more scared than I’d ever been, but part of me didn’t want to miss the miracle. If I could just see Dad whole again, just for a second, before I lost myself.

  But when the vines let it go, Dad’s mojo just hovered there, not touching him. A tremor went through the main body of Quashee. It flopped to the ground, twitching. The kudzu that had been covering the forest began to withdraw, to shrink in on itself. And except for a few rotting tree trunks, still rooted in whatever passed for soil in this place, there was no forest there. The kudzu had choked it all to death, creating a vast vine barren. “Dad!”

  Lars wheezed, “He can’t work his mojo with the kudzu body, remember? Quashee has his own mojo.”

  The Bejis looked at each other in dismay. “We forgot about t
hat part.”

  “Oh, gods,” I muttered. I really was going to have to watch my dad die twice.

  There was a whistling from the air above us. Once more, I looked up. My heart plunged. With Quashee shrunken and the forest denuded, Dolly’s birds had a clear shot at me. Vaster than all outdoors and shot through with glints and flashes of colour, a grey-black cloud of mechanical raptors was bearing down on me. When I failed, I sure didn’t fail small. It never rains but it pours.

  Rain. As in thunder and lightning. Free-flowing electricity. Electricity was power, was amplitude. And Abby’d said you could sing anything to smithereens if you hit the right note.

  “Can’t you buffet them with a wall of loud music, or something?”

  “In this wide-open space? You got a Jimi-sized bank of amps? ’Cause I sure don’t!”

  Maybe I did have something like that. My mojo, if I had any; wouldn’t it be some amplification of a skill I already had a natural talent for? Didn’t Abby’s life go smoother when I was around? Didn’t I have a knack for making my big failures bigger and my small achievements insignificant?

  I yelled, “Lars! go fetch Abby!”

  “Sure thing. If I can find my way back.”

  “That’ll have to do.”

  He nodded, tottered to his feet and headed for his bike. He was a little wobbly, but he was on the move.

  “Bejis, I want you to brew up a storm, like you did last time.”

  “You’re sure about this?” asked Beji.

  “No, I’m not! Fucking do it, already!”

  They joined hands. Fluffy little white clouds started dancing around above the haint birds that gyred deathwatch circles in the air above me. “I need more than that!” I yelled at the Bejis. “Give me storm clouds, damn it! Lots of them! Water slows the bastards down.”

  The Bejis closed their eyes tight, their brows furrowed. Slowly the clouds drew together. As clusters of them joined, they took on anvil shapes. Their undersides were greying up with the weight of moisture in them. “Yes! Like that! More!” Had Lars been able to find his way back to Abby? I couldn’t do this without her. I probably couldn’t do this at all.