Sisterland

by Salla Simukka

  The nurses checked on the old ladies first and then came to Alice’s bed.

  “She’s a strong girl,” the woman whispered to the other nurse.

  “How so?” he asked.

  “I’ve never seen such a strong grip by someone who was unconscious. She was clutching a small glass bottle and a feather in her fists when they rescued her from the pool. The ambulance couldn’t get them out of her hands. It took two people working to pry her hands off the bottle and the feather.”

  Alice nearly jumped up in bed. So she really had brought them back to this world!

  “What was in the bottle?”

  “Nothing special. I think just water. At least, it didn’t smell like anything strange. I think it’s on the counter in the break room, with the feather. Go ahead and throw it away when you leave.”

  “What if they’re something important to her?” the man asked.

  Yes, they’re the most important things in the world! Alice wanted to shout.

  “Nah! It’s just trash. Kids get such weird things into their heads sometimes.”

  Then the nurses left the room and closed the door behind them. Now wide awake, Alice lay in the darkness thinking about what to do. She had to get that bottle. Tonight. Right now.

  Quietly and carefully she got out of her bed. Of course, the problem was that she still had an IV connected to her arm and a bag of fluids hanging from its pole. She couldn’t rip the tube out herself. So all Alice could do was take the whole pole with her. Fortunately it had wheels, because sometimes patients on an IV drip needed to visit the bathroom.

  Alice grabbed the water glass from the nightstand and hid it under her hospital gown. You never knew when you might need something to defend yourself.

  Alice began to drag the pole with her, trying to move as quietly as possible. One patient’s snoring broke off for a second when Alice was going past her bed. Alice froze like a statue and held her breath. Soon the snoring continued as before, and she could breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

  Alice peeked out the door into the hallway. No one. The coast was clear, so she continued toward the smell of coffee. The nurses’ break room door was open, and inside Alice saw one of the night nurses, the man, standing at the counter and holding Alice’s glass bottle. The nurse raised it to the light, opened the cork, and sniffed it. He looked confused, as if he didn’t know what to do. Then he shook his head and moved as if to dump the contents down the drain.

  Alice gave a small involuntary squeak in horror. The nurse stopped and looked around. Alice pressed herself against the wall so he wouldn’t see her. When the nurse turned away, Alice slipped behind the door, pulled the water glass out, and tossed it as far as she could toward the far end of the hall. The glass shattered. The nurse stepped out of the break room, leaving Alice hidden behind the open door.

  Alice watched through the crack near the hinges as the nurse looked up and down the hall and began to walk toward the broken glass. Alice swung herself and the IV pole into the break room and grabbed the bottle of tears and the feather from the counter. The tears were still safe. She replaced the cork in the bottle and dropped everything into her pocket.

  Alice tried to get back to the hallway before the night nurse returned, but he met her at the break room door.

  “How did you get out here? You’re supposed to be asleep,” he said.

  “Umm…I was sleepwalking,” Alice said.

  The nurse looked at her suspiciously.

  “You don’t look like a sleepwalker.”

  “It runs in our family. My grandfather didn’t even have a bed because he spent all night walking around,” Alice joked.

  The nurse tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t contain a laugh.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? Should I call the doctor?”

  “No! I mean no, you don’t need to. I’ll go back to sleep,” Alice said.

  Glancing into the break room, the nurse noticed that the bottle and feather had disappeared. Alice swallowed. Would she have to give them back? She wouldn’t let them go without a fight!

  “This little outing can be our secret,” the nurse said after a moment. Then he nodded toward the counter.

  “And that. I was once a kid too. I know that children’s treasures don’t always look as valuable to us adults as they really are.”

  Alice gave a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks,” she said, and suddenly felt so tired that she could have fallen asleep right there. Just before she nodded off, it occurred to her that being a hero was a lot more work than she ever could have imagined.

  Alice sat in the school cafeteria and stared as if hypnotized at Marissa, who sat at the neighboring table. She was so excited she couldn’t even touch her food. The hot dog and mashed potatoes grew cold on her plate.

  Above all, Alice stared at Marissa’s water glass, from which she hadn’t drunk a single sip. In the food line, Alice had managed to pour Lili’s tears into Marissa’s glass by distracting her and the others with a shout of “Look! There’s a moose outside!” Afterward everyone glared at her. Alice shrugged and said it had just been a trash can. They all rolled their eyes. Apparently she was “childish” and a “freak.” She ignored them. Nothing else mattered but what would happen if Marissa drained that glass.

  Two days had passed since Alice’s release from the hospital. She spent the first day at home recovering, and then she returned to school. Suddenly she had become terribly interesting. Everyone (except Marissa) wanted to talk to her and hear about how she’d almost drowned and almost died and how she was revived.

  Whenever anything extraordinary happened, everyone wanted to be a part of it. But Alice knew the interest would soon fade. And now on the second day, people already seemed to have gotten what they wanted from her. They were disappointed that her near-drowning hadn’t suddenly changed Alice into someone more exciting and cool.

  They didn’t want to be Alice’s real friends. They just wanted to be able to say they knew someone who had almost died. Alice didn’t want friends like that. She wanted her best friend back. She wanted back the Marissa she’d had all those adventures with in Sisterland.

  That was why she stared so intently at Marissa’s water glass, repeating in her mind, Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!

  “Hey, weirdo, can you stop snooping?” Lenny said nastily to Alice. He was sitting next to Marissa.

  Marissa just gave a crooked smile and said, “Let her stare. Maybe she’s so stupid she doesn’t even know how to eat. I can give her a lesson.”

  She bit into her hot dog and chewed very thoroughly. The whole time, she stared at Alice, her gaze cold and cruel. Then Marissa raised her water glass to her lips—and Alice felt as if the whole world stood still.

  More fear and hope filled Alice than she had ever experienced before. She was more afraid than when they fought Lili’s snow creatures. She was more afraid than when the sea monster pulled her toward its mouth. This would be the moment that decided everything. This was when she would learn whether she had really succeeded or failed.

  In her mind’s eye, Alice saw a future in which she and Marissa would be best friends. She saw the sleepovers and the hikes in the forest and the late-night talks and swimming in the lake in a summer rain and writing stories together and forest strawberries and wild raspberries strung on blades of grass and hysterical fits of laughter and all the moments when you know you aren’t alone in the world because there’s someone who understands and listens even if they’re not right there next to you.

  She also saw another future. The one in which the tears didn’t melt the shard of mirror glass. She saw Marissa staring coldly at her, talking meanly to her, leaving her so much more lonely than when Alice hadn’t met Marissa yet.

  Marissa swallowed the liquid in exaggerated, slow gulps.

  And then she placed th
e glass back on the table.

  What now?

  Marissa closed her eyes. She began to shake. She began to sweat. Her chair toppled over, and she tumbled to the floor. People rushed to her side. Alice shoved her way to the front.

  “What did you do, you freak?” Nelly screamed at Alice. “Did you poison her or something?”

  Alice ignored the others’ cries and commotion. She just looked at Marissa, whose shaking stopped as quickly as it had started. Marissa opened her eyes. For a brief moment, her gaze was the same again, friendly and playful and warm, as it had been in Sisterland. “Alice,” she whispered.

  Alice gazed into Marissa’s green eyes. Did Marissa recognize her?

  But then Marissa blinked, and the icy gleam returned.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you staring at me? Get lost!”

  Disbelief squeezed Alice’s throat. How could it be that Lili’s tears didn’t help? Why hadn’t Marissa changed?

  Marissa stood up, looking so angry Alice was afraid. Ignoring the other students’ shouts, she set off running. She had to get out of the cafeteria and away from Marissa.

  At the edge of the schoolyard was a tree the students were forbidden to climb, but right now Alice felt that she had to get off the ground for a while. She wanted some quiet, and she didn’t want anyone staring at her or asking her questions. So she climbed the tree, found a comfortable spot in the crook of a large branch, and leaned her head against the trunk. Then she let the sorrow and disappointment come.

  Everything had been a waste. The whole dangerous journey into the new Sisterland had been for nothing. She hadn’t been able to melt the icy shard of mirror inside Marissa. She wasn’t getting her best friend back. Alice had never felt so tired, so small, so sad, and so lonely. Hot tears burned in her eyes, but cold started creeping over her, since she hadn’t had time to grab her jacket as she ran outside.

  Then Alice saw Marissa exit the school. She had on her coat and backpack. Did they give her permission to go home in the middle of the day because of what happened in the cafeteria? That seemed very possible.

  As Alice looked at Marissa, she couldn’t hold back the tears anymore, and soon her cheeks were wet. There was the girl she used to know better than anyone in the world. Marissa came toward the tree, but she didn’t notice Alice, because she stared straight ahead. Alice tried to hold her breath as Marissa passed the tree, but she couldn’t. The crying just grew stronger, and Alice sniffed.

  Marissa looked up. She saw Alice.

  “What the…?” Marissa said.

  At that very moment, a tear rolled off Alice’s cheek. In slow motion, she saw as it fell between the branches straight into Marissa’s left eye.

  “Ow!” Marissa exclaimed, and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Then she started shaking the same way she had in the cafeteria. She didn’t fall this time, though. Her whole body trembled as if she had a high fever. Alice didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what was happening to Marissa and why her own tear had triggered this attack.

  Then Marissa’s shaking suddenly stopped. She opened her eyes and looked up toward Alice.

  Great, bright tears began to roll down her cheeks. Her eyes were still green—the most beautiful green eyes in the world—but the icy glint was gone.

  “Aren’t you cold up there in the tree?” Marissa asked, smiling and reaching toward Alice. Hesitantly, Alice began climbing down and took the offered hand. It was just as warm as Marissa’s smile.

  “Do you remember?” Alice asked cautiously. She could hardly believe this was true. Marissa nodded.

  “I remember. Everything.”

  Now Alice stood on the ground too. She hugged Marissa long and hard, wishing she never had to let go.

  * * *

  —

  The doorbell at the gallery jangled invitingly when Alice and Marissa entered. It was the day after Marissa regained her memory. They’d gone straight from school to Alice’s house and talked late into the night until Marissa had to go home to sleep. Alice had related her own adventure in Sisterland, and Marissa apologized for her behavior.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Alice said. “You weren’t yourself.”

  “But I was still horrible to you,” Marissa sighed, and shook her head. “It felt strange. Some part of me knew the whole time that it was wrong, but I didn’t know how to stop. It was like something inside was forcing me to be mean to you. It always felt wrong, though.”

  “Luckily we didn’t have to be in a fight as long as Lili and Anna,” Alice said.

  Anna welcomed them with open arms and much tinkling and jingling of jewelry.

  “It’s so lovely to see both of you!” she said. “Especially you, Marissa. Alice told me so much about you.”

  Marissa blushed.

  Anna had bought chocolate cake and lemonade, and she served the cake on porcelain dishes she had painted herself with foxes running around the edges. Alice had called Anna to tell her they were coming. Now Alice described to Anna what had happened in Sisterland. When she told about Lili and what she’d said, Anna began to cry.

  “Oh, my dear girls,” Anna said. “You can’t know how important it is to me to hear that Lili still considers me her soul sister.”

  “What do you think? Why weren’t Lili’s tears enough to melt the shard?” Alice asked Anna.

  Anna cocked her head as she thought. For a second, she looked surprisingly like Lili.

  “I think the magic of the mirror was too strong. It took a tear from someone genuinely important and close to Marissa to counteract it. And who knows, maybe you have some powers hiding inside of you too, Alice.”

  “I think Alice is definitely a wizard,” Marissa said.

  Having Anna and Marissa look at her with so much admiration made Alice feel at once embarrassed and very happy.

  “And Lili gave me this to bring you,” Alice said, and presented Anna with Raven’s feather.

  “It’s beautiful,” Anna said, inspecting the feather.

  “And it isn’t just any feather,” Marissa said. “You can use it to visit Sisterland whenever you wish.”

  Anna turned the feather in her fingers, looking pensive.

  “It may be high time to go see what’s happening there. High time, indeed…I could bring Raven something else to read, for a change….”

  A dreamy smile spread on Anna’s face, and she closed her eyes. Alice and Marissa exchanged a smile. Then Anna snapped back to reality.

  “I almost forgot! I painted a new picture.”

  Anna went to the back room to fetch the canvas. On it, they saw the great oak in the Garden of Secrets, with Raven sitting on a branch. The dream weavers wove dreams off to one side, and wind fairies flew about as the shapeshifter stood guard as a wolf. All the creatures, from the sillyhops to the question flowers, were there. In the middle of the painting, at the base of the tree, stood two girls. They looked just like Alice and Marissa.

  Anna looked at the girls affectionately.

  “I want to give this painting to you. It’s called Sisterland.”

  Salla Simukka is the author of the international bestselling trilogy As Red as Blood, As White as Snow, and As Black as Ebony, which has sold more than one million copies worldwide in fifty-two territories. She has already written several novels and a collection of short stories, translated adult fiction, children’s books, and plays, and worked as a TV screenwriter before turning her attention to writing full time. Salla lives in Tampere, Finland.

  The inspiration for Sisterland came from the stories and fairy tales Salla grew up with. She has always wanted to find a portal to a magical world, and finally she decided to write one for herself—and other readers.

  Owen F. Witesman is a professional literary translator with a master’s in Finnish and Estonian area studies and a PhD in pu
blic affairs from Indiana University. He has translated dozens of Finnish books into English, including novels, children’s books, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and nonfiction. His recent translations include the first eleven novels in the Maria Kallio mystery series, the dark family drama Norma by Sofi Oksanen, and Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt, winner of the Finlandia Prize for Literature. He lives in Springville, Utah, with his wife, three daughters, one son, a cat, and twenty-nine fruit trees.

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