The Lost Sisterhood

by Anne Fortier

  I looked around, thinking he was going to introduce me, but saw no one.

  Mr. Ludwig smiled. “We never connect in person.”

  “Let me guess: Skolsky protocol?”

  His smile turned wry. “More of a scheduling thing. Ahmed lives in his own private time zone.”

  MY ROOM WAS UPSTAIRS, off the portico that went all around the courtyard and offered a unique treetop view of this private jungle. It was a beautiful junior suite, complete with tasseled red pillows and a welcoming bowl of dates, but at this point I was so tired my eyes were cramping closed. It was only just midnight, but then, excitement had prevented me from sleeping much the night before, and the night prior to that I had been busy into the wee hours finishing my conference paper.

  Still, ever since leaving my parents’ house that afternoon I had been anticipating the moment when I could turn to Granny’s notebook. And so, after a light room service meal of bread and hummus I splashed water on my face and sat down to scrutinize Mr. Ludwig’s photo yet again, this time looking for specific sets of symbols that might be individual words, in order to search for them in Granny’s dense, handwritten list.

  But it was a greater challenge than I had imagined, and my initial excitement at concluding that the two writing systems were, indeed, completely identical was soon squashed by the enormity of the task at hand.

  Even with the help of the magnifying glass I was unable to identify any dots or dashes that might have functioned as word dividers. All I had was a long string of letters or syllables in a language I didn’t know. Furthermore, Granny’s “dictionary” was not alphabetical, neither in English, nor, it seemed, in the other language. The whole thing was, in other words, frustratingly random, and I couldn’t ignore a little voice reminding me that I was—perhaps in vain—trying to impose reason on the obsessive scribbles of a lunatic.

  After two hours’ focused work I was beat. If I were to trust Granny’s notebook, the first word of the inscription was either “moon,” “water,” or “woman.” I decided to be content with that and got up to brush my teeth.

  Mystery inscription aside, the biggest puzzle of all was how Granny had come to know this ancient language. Perhaps her delusions were simply the unfortunate side effects of once having studied archaeology or even philology like me. It was not unthinkable this writing system had been discovered before, and possibly even deciphered by some obscure university team who never got around to publishing a report. Or maybe they did, and no one ever bothered to read it.

  Utterly exhausted but unable to relax, I lay in the darkness, enjoying the soft breeze from the open window. A remarkable variety of insects and birds was already anticipating sunrise with hectic rustling and all manner of shrieks and squawks, and beyond this cacophony of wildlife, from somewhere out there, came the steady, pulsing sound of the sea.

  ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON, WHEN I was nine years old, my parents had hosted a garden party for all their neighbors. Several nights before the event, I had sat on the staircase and overheard the discussion about whether Granny should be allowed to attend. “You know it will be a disaster,” my mother kept insisting. “She is bound to insult someone or say something wildly inappropriate. And … imagine the looks on people’s faces when they realize we have a madwoman living in our attic!”

  But for once, my father’s stubborn practicality had held sway. “Surely,” he said at length, “introducing her to the neighborhood in a civilized manner is the best way of ensuring that she does not become some kind of invisible monster living in their own imagination. As soon as they see her with Diana, our neighbors will realize she is completely harmless.”

  So it came about that I was tasked with escorting my new grandmother throughout the party, introducing her to people and helping her at the buffet. By and large, the scheme was a success. Our guests addressed her the way they would a normal person, with polite inanities about the garden, and Granny smiled and nodded, as if she cared.

  At one point, however, we found ourselves in a lively group of ladies who had succeeded in driving the new unmarried churchwarden up against a pear tree. “And you, my dear,” the poor man asked Granny, eager to branch out and open up the conversation, “did you also grow up here?”

  “No,” she replied, calmly taking another sip of the wine I was supposed to have exchanged with lemonade. “I come from the Hodna Mountains. My name is Kara. I am the second in command.”

  The churchwarden stuck a finger into his collar, possibly to let in a little fresh air. “Of what, exactly? If one might be so bold—”

  Granny cast him a disgusted frown. “Of the Amazons, of course. Who taught you about the world? You know nothing. Why are you talking to me? Men like you—” She snapped her fingers dismissively and marched away.

  Later, safely back in the attic, I asked her if it was really true she had once been an Amazon named Kara. I quite liked the idea of Granny as a young warrior woman, armed and on horseback, chasing churchwardens and gossipy ladies with arrows and war cries.

  According to Rebecca’s mother, who, being the vicar’s wife, considered herself an expert on all things paranormal, the colorful Amazons were nothing but the spawn of pagan ignorance. “The mere notion,” she had said, at one particularly memorable Sunday school meeting, “that a group of women should be able to live together without men is both wicked and absurd. I have certainly never heard of such abnormal behavior—”

  “What about nuns?” I had countered, sincerely trying to understand, but Mrs. Wharton had pretended not to hear me.

  “So is it true?” I asked Granny once more, bouncing up and down on the chair with anticipation. “Were you really an Amazon?”

  But now, to my dismay, she brushed it all aside with a groan and started walking about the room, adjusting and readjusting every piece of furniture, every little trinket, with obsessive accuracy. “Don’t listen to me. I’m a crazy old woman. I forgot rule number two. Never forget rule number two.”

  I deflated with disappointment. “What’s rule number two?”

  Granny stopped, her hands on the back of a chair, and looked straight at me. “Always make sure,” she said, slowly, to ensure I paid attention, “that they underestimate you. That is the key.”

  “But why?” I insisted. “And who are they?”

  The question made Granny flinch, and she tiptoed around the chair to kneel down at my feet. “The men in green clothes,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly wide with fear. “They look inside your head and cut out the things you’re not supposed to think. So you must learn to think nothing. Never let them know who you are. Can you do that?”

  I was so frightened by her intensity I nearly started crying. “But I’m not an Amazon—”

  “Shush!” Granny squeezed my shoulders so hard it hurt. “Never say that word aloud. You mustn’t even think it. Do you understand?” Only then, when she saw that all I could manage was a tearful nod, she cradled my head with her hands and said, more softly, “You are brave. I have high hopes for you. Don’t disappoint me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LAKE TRITONIS

  MYRINA AND LILLI SPENT ALL AFTERNOON ON THE FISHING BOAT, punting along the swampy coastline and checking traps that were mostly empty. But in the hour of evening calm, just as Myrina began to fear they would be spending the night on the water, circled by monstrous serpents, the men finally pulled into a cove rimmed with beach huts.

  After their long, solitary wanderings, the sight of busy men and women filled Myrina with joy and apprehension all at once. Their mother had always maintained the people living by the sea were the friendliest of all, but then, she had also spoken of clear blue water and sandy beaches—none of which had turned out to be true. In reality, the hue of the sea was a muddy green, and the water in the cove was a stagnant soup of bird feathers and rotting seaweed.

  Once their boat had been pulled ashore and its meager catch handed off to a woman with a large basket, one of the fishermen gestured for Myrina and Lilli to follow
him, all the while smiling and nodding, as if to assure them of his good intentions. He took them to see an elderly man in a long red cloak who sat with straight-backed dignity on a straw mat in front of a hut, eating nuts from a glazed bowl. Guessing the man was a village elder, Myrina knelt down with Lilli in the sprinkle of nutshells at his feet.

  “Greetings to you,” she said, in her own language. When he did not reply, she repeated the greeting in the three other languages she knew—the Old Language, the Language of the Mountain People, and the Nomad Language. None of her earlier attempts had worked with the fishermen on the boat, but when she spoke now in the tongue of the desert nomads, the man brought his weatherworn hands together in excitement.

  “You speak the words of the camel people!”

  “Only a little,” said Myrina. “How do you know the camel people?”

  “They came here to trade.” The man waved a gaunt arm in the air around him, as if to indicate that things had changed, and not for the better. “There was good trading here when the river ran strong. But no more.”

  Although Lilli had never learned the Nomad Language, she seemed to instinctively understand what the man was saying, and they sat for a moment in silence, sharing his distress. Then the man offered both girls a drink of water from a calabash and said, in a tone of business, “Now it is your time to talk. How may I help you young women?”

  “We are on our way to see the Moon Goddess,” began Myrina. “In the big city. My sister was blinded by a fever, but we are hopeful she will be cured.”

  “I am sorry for your sister.” The man shook his head with regret. “Many, many people journey to the Moon Goddess. She is very busy.”

  “Even so,” said Myrina, “we should like to see her.”

  The man looked a little annoyed, then shrugged and threw up his hands as if to say he had done what he could. “It is not far. I will tell you the way, but first you must eat and sleep.”

  IN THE HOUR BEFORE sunrise, hovering on the threshold of the waking world, Myrina sensed the sleeping bodies around her, heard the soft whispers of mothers, and for a moment thought she was back home.

  Over there in the corner, she imagined, lay her older sister, Lana, with the new baby snuggled tightly under her arm. And here, right here against her chest, lay Lilli, warm and cuddly and sweet….

  The stench brought Myrina back to the present. Unwashed for weeks, with cakes of dirt and bloody crusts hopelessly entangled in its curly mesh, Lilli’s hair was a cruel reminder of everything they had lost.

  Myrina turned her head away and clenched her teeth, forcing it all from her consciousness—the sounds, the smells, and all the dear, familiar forms. “Stop thinking,” she commanded herself, over and over, until nothing was left but those two words and their lingering echo.

  AS THE SUN ROSE and the time for departure came, Myrina took off her necklace and gave it to the fishermen in return for their hospitality. They all shook their heads and refused the gift, but Myrina was determined; although she and Lilli were poor, they still had their dignity.

  The necklace was a string of a dozen delicate buds—not from plants, but from the salt plains, which occasionally gave birth to stone flowers of extraordinary beauty. It had been a gift from Myrina’s father to her mother on the occasion of Myrina’s birth—a small pledge of interest from a nomad who called himself a husband but never visited long enough to be so.

  “You might as well take this,” Myrina’s mother had said one day, when she was going through her finery. “Here.” She had closed Myrina’s fingers around the necklace with a frown of determination. “Maybe your wearing it will remind him—wherever he is—that he has a daughter.”

  Since that day, Myrina had not dared take off the necklace for fear its removal would sever her from her father forever. But now, with their home in ashes, she knew he would never be able to find her again, necklace or no.

  And so she and Lilli left the fishing village well rested and with full bellies, but poorer than ever. There was not a single good arrow left in Myrina’s quiver, and with her necklace gone, too, they were unlikely to procure another meal until they reached their destination. “I suppose we could sell Mother’s bracelet,” muttered Lilli, as they walked together along the road to town.

  “No!” Myrina took the traveling satchel away from her sister. “She wouldn’t want us to give it away. And we’re so close now—”

  But when she saw the city rising before them on the horizon, with its jagged, man-made mountains of building upon building glowing brightly in the morning sun, even Myrina began to wonder whether they were truly that close to their journey’s end. To someone who had never seen a town bigger than the village at home, with its three dozen houses and one central common, a settlement as colossal as this defied all natural sense.

  Soon, the road became busy, and people and carts pushed past them impatiently, never stopping to greet them or inquire where they were from. Although she did not say it out loud, Myrina found it all deeply discouraging. In such a vast and busy place, where humans seemed no more mindful, no more welcoming, than beetles, she began to fear that she and Lilli—for all their mother’s assurances—just might discover that they were of next to no consequence to the Moon Goddess or to anyone else.

  “Do tell me what you see!” begged Lilli. “Can you see the temple yet?”

  But Myrina saw nothing that looked like the magnificent building their mother had described. The Temple of the Moon Goddess, apparently, was as tall as it was wide, and made of brilliant, otherworldly stone. From the splendor of this lofty dwelling the Goddess controlled the ebb and flood of water, cured the ailments of women, and stood up boldly against the reign of the Sun, defying him by lighting up the night sky behind his back. Throughout their long journey, Myrina had been confident that if she and Lilli ever did reach the city on the sea, the temple of this powerful deity would dwarf any other structure around it. How wrong she had been. Walking through the teeming streets with Lilli in tow, she saw many marvelous buildings, some impossibly tall, but none that looked as if they were made out of anything other than sun-dried mud brick.

  The immediate challenge, however, was maneuvering through the unfamiliar and unpredictable movements of other people, which more than once made Myrina reach for the knife in her belt. Fortunately, most of the city dwellers were entirely engaged in their own pursuits; some were carrying tools and ladders around, as if off to build or repair a house, and others were driving mooing, bleating, or clucking livestock through the streets, presumably heading for the marketplace.

  A few characters, though, were clearly hovering around with the purpose of striking a bargain with the occasional passerby. Some who had clothing and finery to sell were even bold enough to drape their merchandise around Lilli’s neck before Myrina could push them away. Others offered their services in hoarse, hushed voices before retreating into the dark alleys. It did not take long for Myrina’s polite newcomer’s curiosity to fade into suspicious disdain. She quickly learned to avoid eye contact with anyone seemingly idle, and to duck or sidestep whenever someone approached her with a big smile.

  There was no need to explain what she was doing; Lilli instinctively understood. She let Myrina drag her through the tumult, and when the street finally widened, and they could stop and catch their breath, the girl was quivering from top to toe. “Oh, Myrina!” she exclaimed. “To think this place has been here all the time … with all these people. It is too wonderful!”

  “I don’t know what is so very wonderful about it—” Myrina began, but then she regretted her words. She had waited so long for Lilli to regain her usual zest for life; she would not squash it.

  “What is that horrible smell?” Lilli held her nose in disgust. “It is foul!”

  They stood on the rim of a large, open area crowded with humans and animals. Judging from the presence of old, cracked seashells on the hard-packed sand, this sloping ground had been seashore not too long ago—perhaps even a place where tradesmen
pulled up their ships. Everywhere Myrina turned were piles of melons and heaps of colorful spices displayed on mats, and a cacophony of wild shrieks told her butchers were slaughtering animals right there, in the middle of it all. “It is a marketplace,” she told Lilli. “Bigger than you can imagine. But there is also”—she stretched to see beyond the commotion—”a house. Enormous. With broad steps in front, and tall, tall columns made of stone.”

  As they worked their way through the mayhem, heading for the formidable building, Myrina felt a flutter of excitement in her belly. For above the tall columns ran a long, colorful depiction of all the lunar phases, with the full moon in the middle, right above the colossal entrance door. “I am not sure,” she said, stopping, “but I think this must be it.”

  “At last!” Lilli shifted her weight back and forth, anxious to continue. “Why are we standing still?”

  “Our task is not an easy one.” Myrina looked out over the rolling horde of people gathered in front of the temple, clearly seeking help. She had never before seen so many assembled in one place. “Come.” Pulling Lilli along by the hand, she tentatively stepped forward, taking care not to disturb the sick resting on mats or the rawboned mothers trying to console their wailing children. But she did not get far before an old woman rose to block her way, sneering something in a language she did not understand.

  “I think we must wait our turn.” Myrina looked around at the fetid puddles. The stench was nearly unbearable. “These people have been here for many days, if not weeks. But don’t worry.” She took Lilli firmly by the shoulders, determined that they would not spend as much as a night in this place, surrounded by shrill lamentations and oozing sores. “We’ll find another way.”