by Nina Hoffman
The handwriting was neater than Maya’s, but looked enough like it to pass for Maya being extra neat. “What the Water Taught Us,” it said.
Eww, Maya thought. Good one. Maya drew twin girls, about five, pigtails sprouting from both sides of each head. Instead of eyes, they had dark pits. One smiled, and the other had a blank expression. Mostly, she thought, they were probably mad at their mother. She started the story.
When the bell rang at the end of the period, she looked up, surprised. She’d written four pages, complete with illustrations, and was at the part where the mother was going insane because of the twins’ haunting.
“Finish up and turn them in tomorrow. Good luck,” said Ms. Caras as everybody rose and clattered and collected their things and made for the door.
Maybe I can tell a story, Maya thought. Maybe that’s how Steph can haunt me. Help me come up with stories. Thank you, Steph.
TWENTY-ONE
Thursday afternoon, Maya had a piano lesson with the music teacher from the elementary school where Maya’s mother worked. Ms. Barge was one of Maya’s mother’s best friends at the new school. She lived a block from the Andersens. Maya had taken lessons from her mother in Idaho, but she liked the change in teachers, even though her mother still encouraged her to practice every day. That was just the way it had always been.
On the way to Ms. Barge’s house, Maya stopped at Penny’s Mini-Mart for a soda. The store was small, dark, and cool, on a corner not far from her house. She and Peter had gone there first thing when they moved into Spring House to check out the candy selection, which was minimal. The clerks watched them all the time they were in the store, just waiting for them to shoplift, and sometimes that made Maya so mad she went three blocks to the supermarket instead, but today she didn’t have time.
She was staring through the cooler’s glass doors at her choices when Sybil Katsaros edged up beside her. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” said Maya. At last, they had said something to each other. So far, so good.
What is this? Rimi asked. Pattishaw! This close, I can feel—this is, there’s a feel that—who—
“We should talk,” said Sibyl.
Rimi thought, The scarf. The scarf. It is—from the nursery—one of my sibs.
Sibyl has a sissimi? Maya asked. Sibyl? OMG.
I sisti it. Sib! Rimi reached for Sibyl and her sissimi, and then shock sizzled through her and into Maya. Maya staggered and grabbed the chrome handle to the cold case; it was all that held her up as her insides buzzed and jolted. Her legs shook, and her muscles felt like jelly. All Rimi’s extensions flexed and flopped wildly around her, brushing against Maya and bumping glass, shelving, floor, every direction but toward Sibyl. Maya gasped and gripped the handle and struggled to find her feet. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
Rimi! she thought. Rimi! Are you okay?
Ssssizzura! Sizz. Sizz. Oh, that was bad. Oh! I’m—I’m—I’ll reintegrate. Rimi pulled in close around Maya, wrapped her up in Rimi-stuff, loaned her muscle and stiffening so she could stand up straight. Maya swiped her forehead with the back of her hand, which came away wet. Her stomach jumped, then settled.
“Sorry,” said Sibyl. Her glasses gleamed. “We weren’t expecting you to try anything like that.”
“Try anything?” Maya felt as though she’d just been run over by a roughshod windstorm. “I didn’t try anything,”
“Sure you did. Yiliss doesn’t attack unprovoked.”
“Yiliss,” Maya repeated. “Attack.” Yes, she had been attacked. Oh, Rimi!
“You know what I’m talking about. A sissimi. You got one, too, right? But I never saw you in the sand pits.”
“The sand pits,” Maya whispered.
“Are you going to go on playing dumb and repeat everything I say, or can we have some kind of a conversation here?”
Maya shuddered and pulled herself up straight. She stroked her hand across the invisible Rimi wrapping around her. “I’m not playing dumb,” she said. “I am dumb. I don’t understand anything you’re talking about.”
“You can do better than that. You can start by explaining why you ditched the Methry, why you’re hanging out with those creepy Janus kids and that loser Travis, why I never saw you in the sand pits—”
“What’s Methry?” Maya asked.
“Methry,” Sibyl said, waving her hand as though she could make Maya understand by nudging the air near her head. “The Kalithri trainers.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maya said.
Sibyl frowned at her. “This ignorance act is getting so old!”
“It’s not an act,” Maya said. Rimi, I’m so sorry. I know we need to find out more about your brother, but I’m scared of him now. That hurt.
I echo your apprehensions. I—Rimi did something that tightened across Maya’s skin. I close myself to him. I don’t want to accept that energy again. I will not fuse. I don’t want him to hurt you, Mayamela! I need to access everything I’ve learned about protection from Kita and Vati. I can make our shield bubble next time he attacks if I have to. I will set myself to do that.
“God, you are too stupid to live!” Sibyl cried, anguish in her tone.
“Great,” said Maya. “On that note, I’m leaving.” Maya opened the cold case and pulled out a can of Dr Pepper. She pressed the chilled can to her forehead. The cold helped.
She glanced sideways at Sibyl. She had thought when she met another sissimi pair it would be a good thing. Her contacts with Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati had convinced her it was all good, but Sibyl—
They had found one of the missing sissimi. She needed to let the Janus House people know.
Ms. Barge would be expecting her in a few minutes.
She was still shaken. She tightened her pack straps and headed for the front of the store. Sibyl had told Maya her secret, but Maya wasn’t prepared to deal with it. She needed to talk to Sarutha even more than she needed a piano lesson.
Yiliss, thought Rimi. His name wasn’t Yiliss when I knew him through the mothernet. He didn’t feel like—but he tastes—he is sissimi, he is my sibling, we are fruit of the same vine, but he is no longer the one I knew.
Are you the one he knew? Maya asked.
Oh. No, Rimi thought. No. I am made of me and you and Bikos. I am part Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati. I have hatched and intermixed and integrated, and all that has changed me. This one used to be near me on the vine when we were all unformed and intermixed, back home. A brother-self, a close love. When we were in the desert place, when Bikos and I were learning each other and bonding, I knew this brother, too, and I knew that Sibyl, but I was a seed, and I did not perceive her as I do now.
Now this one, the one now called Yiliss, is made of Sibyl and some other things that taste like metal and oil, some shaping that came from others not bonded to him. As though someone has trimmed his roots and shoots, cut off pieces of him.
Sibyl said, “I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not supposed to insult you. I want to make friends with you.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Maya said. “All you’ve done so far is shock me silly and call me names.”
“Wait,” Sibyl said. “Wait. Okay, so I didn’t get the diplomat training, okay?”
Maya paused. “No lie.”
“We’re special. We’re different. But we’re more like each other than anybody else, except for the Hasible, and he’s not really like us, either. He’s all gray and he gets mad a lot. And anyway, the Methry sent him to Shostrunim, so even if I wanted to talk to him, I couldn’t. But you and me—we should be able to relate. I’m so lonely,” Sibyl said. She reached for Maya’s arm.
Maya jerked back. “I don’t want another shock,” she said.
Sibyl held up her hands, palms front. “Okay, okay. Yiliss didn’t—I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t going to—please. Give me a minute to figure this out.”
“Take all the time you want.” Maya headed to the cash register.
“You okay?”
said the skinny, pimply college-kid clerk waiting there. He was new. “I saw you in the mirror. Looked like you spazzed out. Did you have a fit?”
“I guess I did,” Maya said. She wondered why he hadn’t come to help her.
“You kind of got it back together,” he said, answering her unasked question, “and then it looked like you were just talking to that girl, so I figured you were okay. If you need help, give a yell, okay?”
Maya blew out a breath. So he might have helped her, if he had been able to figure out she needed it. “Yeah. Thanks.” She handed him money and he gave her change. Maya glanced at Sibyl over her shoulder. The other girl was lost in thought, but she looked up. Maya tightened her lips and pushed out of the store. Janus House or Ms. Barge’s? Sarutha should be first, but Maya needed to let her piano teacher know she had to skip. She went to the phone booth, looked up Ms. Barge in the phone book, and called her on the cell phone. “Ms. Barge, something’s come up, and I can’t make it to my lesson.”
“Are you all right?” asked Ms. Barge.
“Feeling a little rocky,” Maya said. “I’m going to check with the doctor next door. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to give you better notice.”
“That’s all right this time, Maya. Don’t make a habit of it. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks, Ms. Barge.” Maya closed her flip phone. When she turned around, Sibyl was standing outside the phone booth staring in at her.
Maya edged the door open. “What?”
“Can we start over?”
Maya took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Hi. You have a sissimi. His name is Yiliss. I understand that part.”
Sibyl stroked her golden scarf. “This is Yiliss.”
Maya nodded.
“What’s yours named?”
Do we tell her? I so don’t feel safe here, Maya thought.
My name. I don’t think it can hurt me. Let’s try.
“Mine is named Rimi,” Maya said.
Sibyl unscrewed the cap on her root beer, and it fizzed up and ran over her hand, splattering the front of her red dress. “Shee-oot!” she cried, and then the golden scarf around her neck unwound itself, reached down its fringed and tasseled ends, and sucked the root beer right out of the fabric. “Thanks,” Sibyl muttered, and held her wet hand up to the scarf, which wrapped around it. The scarf thrust a tassel into the root beer bottle, too. When it retreated, Sibyl’s hand was clean and dry, and half the root beer was gone.
“You are such a pig, Yiliss!” Sibyl said, but she laughed.
“Yiliss drinks root beer?” asked Maya.
“He loves sweets,” said Sibyl. “Usually I have to use half my allowance to buy him treats. It’s the only way I can stop him from shoplifting.”
“Gosh. Rimi eats a lot of weird stuff, but I don’t have to feed her candy,” said Maya. “Can you taste what Yiliss is eating?”
“Huh?” said Sibyl. “No. Are you saying you can taste what yours eats? That is so weird.”
“Not all the time,” Maya said, “but sometimes.” She shuddered. “Rimi eats garbage.”
“Oh, no!”
They stared at each other, their eyes wide. Then, suddenly, they were muffling giggles, then laughing out loud.
When Sibyl caught her breath, she asked, “So what does yours look like? Is it your hoodie? I thought probably not, because you have three different hoodies. Unless yours can change color. Yiliss can do a couple other colors, but he always looks kind of the same.”
“Mine’s—” Rimi, I don’t want her to know you’re my shadow! I don’t want her to know anything important!
That’s all right, Rimi thought. She poured part of herself into Maya’s front hoodie pocket. I’ll be like hers.
Maya reached into her pocket and pulled out a bunched-up scarf, the yarn soft as chick feathers, woven with holes in it. It was much bigger when she spread it out than she would have thought possible. It was longer than it was wide, but it was almost as big as a tablecloth, though fine as gossamer. Color shimmered across it, pale pink and yellow, green and blue, with threads of gold and silver glinting in it. She spread it wide, flapped it, then rolled it thin and tucked it back into her pocket.
“Wow,” Sibyl said. She frowned. “Pretty,” she said, her tone gruff.
“Yeah,” said Maya, “but I’m not really a scarf person, so it’s kind of—I keep her in my pocket.” Maya patted the small part of Rimi that was the scarf, feeling the larger part still wrapping her round.
“So where were you on Thrixa? You didn’t train with us. Was there a second program somewhere else?” Sibyl asked.
Maya just looked at Sibyl, then away.
“Come on. You don’t have to keep secrets anymore, not from me, anyway. You’re like me. You must have been involved in a different egg collection mission, though, because I trained with the other two who grabbed eggs when I did. Actually, there were five of us, but two got caught. Where did you train? Just tell me, all right?”
Maya stopped on the sidewalk and turned to Sibyl.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I was never on Krithi, or Thrixa, or whatever it’s called. I wasn’t part of any program. I don’t understand any of those weird words you’re using, because I’m from Earth, and I’ve lived here all my life. Okay?”
“No!” said Sibyl. “That makes no sense at all!”
“Did you know someone named Bikos Serani?”
“Bikos! Sivertha, of course! He was the other successful one besides the Hasible, and I thought he came to Earth, too, but I didn’t see him, even though we were both supposed to be going to the same school.” Sibyl frowned. “I’m supposed to show how well I can survive on Earth without help, and Bikos was supposed to do that, too, until we’re ready for the next part of our mission. The Methry said we could talk to each other in school if we acted like strangers the first time we met. I wanted to see him again . . . but he wasn’t here.” She looked away from Maya, toward the houses across the street.
TWENTY-TWO
“Are you originally from Earth?” Maya asked.
“Sure,” said Sibyl. “I lived here until I was seven, and then Gaelli found me, and—well, wait. What about Bikos? What can you tell me?”
“He was from someplace else. Not Earth. You knew that, right? He got a sissimi egg. The Krithi put him on Earth, and he couldn’t eat the food or breathe the air very well. He got really sick, and then he asked me to take care of the egg for him. Like, randomly. And then he—he died.”
Sibyl pulled in a hissing breath. “Oh. Oh, no. Oh.”
Maya sighed. “Yeah. It was sad. . . . So I took care of the sissimi, and she hatched, and we’re a pair, but I didn’t have any training. I don’t speak whatever language you keep talking to me in, and I don’t know your Golly-guy.” Maya stroked her Rimi-scarf. “Rimi was just trying to find out who you were and whether we could be friends when Yiliss attacked us.”
Sibyl’s mouth actually dropped open, and she stared at Maya. Then she shook her head like someone trying to wake up. “Whoa. Rewind and start over. I need to reboot my brain. Okay. I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time.” She muttered “Whoa!” a few more times.
Maya walked toward home and Janus House. Sibyl, still staring at distance, kept up with her. “So anyway,” Maya said after she’d sucked down some Dr Pepper and given Sibyl time to stop “whoa”ing, “I don’t know from Methry or Kalithri or any of that stuff.”
“Okay. I get that. How the heck did you manage to hatch and bond without any training?”
Maya drank Dr Pepper. “Lucky, I guess.”
“That’s amazing,” Sibyl said.
They had reached Maya’s block, the block with Janus House on it. Maya stared across the street at Janus House. Sibyl followed her gaze.
“Is that—what is that place?” she asked.
“Janus House,” Maya said. It was public knowledge.
“Where those weirdo kids come from. The ones you’re always hanging out with.”
> Maya checked for traffic and headed across the street. Sibyl walked with her. “Yeah. I live next door,” she said, pointing to her own house. Maya wasn’t sure she wanted Sibyl to come inside, but she didn’t know where else to go. “So we got to know them.”
Sarutha was sitting on the Janus House porch with her backstrap loom, watching them. Maya didn’t wave, and Sarutha didn’t, either.
I don’t think we’d better tell Sibyl and Yiliss anything more about Janus House than we can help, Maya thought.
That layer of secrets we keep to ourselves, Rimi thought. And many others. I do not trust them.
“ ‘We’?” Sibyl repeated.
“My family.” Not exactly a secret, either. Maya glanced at her Dr Pepper and Sibyl’s root beer. They both had drinks, but as the hostess, she felt she should offer something. “Want some tea or something?”
“Sure, I guess,” said Sibyl.
Maya led her into the house through the front door and back to the kitchen.
No one else was home yet. Maya shrugged out of her pack and put the kettle on, got down two mugs. “Cocoa? Tea? Instant coffee?”
“Cocoa,” Sibyl said.
“Have a seat.” Maya gestured toward the kitchen table, and Sibyl sat. “Where do you live?” Maya got cocoa packets from the cupboard and poured them into the mugs. “I never found out where Bikos lived. I think maybe he was living in the park.”
“I live with a family that thinks I’m an exchange student from Canada. I’m not sure how Gaelli set that up.”
“Who’s Gaelli?” Maya asked.
“He’s—we had these people who took care of us on Thrixa, and Gaelli is the one who protected us and trained us and brought us here. He left me with this family. They’re kind of nice, but they’re kind of afraid of me, too. Yiliss did a couple of strange things soon after he hatched that I forgot Earth people wouldn’t understand. Now they think Canadians are really weird and a little scary.” Sibyl shrugged. “I’m learning survival skills all the time. So far I’m surviving okay.”