MIRKO DROVE US BACK TO THE OLD TOWN, AND ?I?A JOVAN insisted we spend the night with him; neither of us could face going back to our empty house with the pall of Mama’s absence, her death or undeath or whatever it was, hanging over it. And there was the horrible possibility that whoever had hurt our mother might be lurking somewhere near, waiting for the chance to strike at us too. It seemed ridiculous that anyone would want to hurt us, here where we knew everyone, but nothing was certain anymore.
Still reeling, I’d told the detective about Dunja, and my missing bougainvillea sculpture—he’d asked for anything we could think of that might help in the investigation, which he meant to begin no matter what was happening to Mama—and then assured us that officers were posted around the house to keep watch.
None of us knew what to do with ourselves after that. My insides felt clammy and numb, as if I’d been floating in icy water from the inside out. Jovan made sure we were comfortable in his guest room, but after we were settled I could hear him pacing the living room beyond our cracked-open door, murmuring “God, Jasmina, God, kuku lele” to himself, followed by a quiet rasping so low and terrible I didn’t immediately recognize it as tears. I closed the door with a soft click, pressing my cheek against the warped surface.
Malina showered first, so she was already tucked up beneath the quilts in the guest-room bed by the time I padded out of the bathroom. I slid in next to her, folding myself around her curled body, and she tucked her feet against my calves. We lay together in silence for a long moment, listening to the rise and dip of each other’s breathing until we finally matched up.
“What do you think is happening, Riss?” she whispered. “It has to be something like the gleam. Not exactly like it—nothing we do has ever been anything as terrible as that—but the same sort of thing. Some kind of magic. I mean, what else could it be?”
We’d hardly ever called it that before. “Magic” sounded like something out of one of my books, vast and impossible to reconcile with our world, gods and demons and creatures made from daylight or darkness but decidedly inhuman. The gleam felt more like a talent, a skill we’d been born with, if crafting beauty could be a genetic trait like the color of our eyes.
But it was magic. Mama had called us witches since we were little, to make sure we understood the danger and the secrecy we practiced, and witches worked with magic—that was their material, the fabric of their loom. And I remembered the sheer intensity of my fractals when I’d been at the height of my gleam. That girl hadn’t just been beautiful; she had been so strong. And Malina still was, no matter how she tried to spare me by hiding the fullness of her gleam.
“It must be,” I agreed. “But being alive when she should be dead . . . that’s an infinity apart from eating the moon.”
“And you think that woman you saw fighting with Mama has something to do with it?”
“Mama said her name right before she . . . stopped. She said, ‘Dunja.’ And then, ‘don’t.’ And that woman was so strange when I talked to her. The way she spoke, the things she chose to say. Why would Mama have said her name if she hadn’t been the one to do it?”
Malina let out a quavering sigh. “It’s all so impossible, you know? My brain just doesn’t want it. And either way—I don’t think we’re getting her back, Riss, not from whatever or wherever she is now. I guess it’s really just you and me. Like you always said.”
“But if it is magic, maybe it isn’t permanent,” I argued. “Maybe there’s some way to undo it, if we can find Dunja.”
“Maybe.” I could hear the anguished doubt in her voice. We’d both seen Mama; I couldn’t really imagine a magic that would bring her back from that, either, even if one existed that wouldn’t let her go.
“I just keep thinking . . . ,” I started.
“What?”
“I keep thinking, if she’s well and truly gone, now I’ll never get to ask her why. Why she was so hard on us, or on me, at least. No, don’t deny it, I know she wasn’t all cherry preserves and sugar water for you, either. But you know it was always so much worse for me.”
“I do,” she said softly. “I know. I think it might be because you kept stepping between us? Even when she wanted to take it out on me, you wouldn’t let her.”
“But still, it was always different with you. It never felt like she was sharpening herself on you just for the hell of it, like you were her whetstone.” The memory of last night, the almost playful banter between them, drilled deeper inside me. “It’s almost easier to think she never loved me at all, but then I have these memories of her taking us to the beach at Pr?anj when we were little. We had swimsuits that matched hers, white with strawberries on them, and she’d tow us around in our floaties and pretend to nip our cheeks like snacks. Do you remember that?”
She nodded, her hair tickling my nose. I buried my face in her curls, inhaling her complicated scent—the sweet and oddly biting perfume of the ribbons, above the white musk, cedar, and patchouli from the little tinctures she and Niko blended together.
“I used to think it was because having us kept her from things she wanted for herself. She could have been a famous chef anywhere she wanted, instead of raising us with no one but ?i?a Jovan to help.” It was so hard to say this, even to her. “But then I wonder if that wasn’t it at all. If it was maybe just raising me that did it.”
She stiffened against me. “What do you mean?”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, enough iron that I was sure my voice wouldn’t break. “I know I’m not easy to love, sometimes. I hated her so much for taking the gleam away from me—I threw it in her face so many times—and I know I’m not very much without it.”
Not like you, I didn’t add. You who’d still be so sweet and perfect even if you couldn’t sing.
“So I wonder if maybe she loved me at first, but then . . . couldn’t anymore. Because I’m all harsh and sort of scabby, and I can be terribly mean. And I know how much she values—valued—beauty, and I’m not beautiful like you—”
“How dare you say that?” The outrage in her voice took me aback. “You think you made her stop loving you, like you weren’t good enough for her to love? I’m not going to lie—I’ve seen you taunt her even when you didn’t have to, and so maybe there was a circle you both fell into and then there was no way out. You haven’t called her ‘Mama’ in years and years; you did that on purpose just to bait her, you know she hated that. And the way you always talk about Japan . . .”
My shoulders tensed like a stitch drawn tight. “What do you mean?”
“Japanese flowers, Japanese food. Trying to learn to write kanji. Like you’re so desperate to get away from here—from me and Mama—that you’d latch onto anything and ride it as far away as it could take you.”
“That’s not fair.” Except, it was, at least in part. “Or true.” That, too. “Those things belong to us. And you’re the one who found the patterns for the kimono online, remember? You’re the one who bought fabric and snuck her sewing machine to Jovan’s studio to sew them for us.”