Silverworld

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  “Don’t you know our answer?” Natala asked with a smile. “Rebalancers won’t divide. Ever. We’re a team and it won’t be easy to get rid of us, I’m afraid.”

  “Please save discussions for the road!” Dorsom cut in. “We can talk as much as you like if we’re also moving.”

  There were no signposts to the Bare Isles, just notches in the sides of grassy tree stumps and an occasional trampled path. Mostly, there was a long swath of dirt and brush and trees bearing fruit that looked like sausages or cats or tiny houses. Dorsom hadn’t wanted to wait for sunrise—the journey would take several Silverworld days and nights, he said, and they’d make safer progress under the cover of dark. They’d set off on foot. Horses or camels, Natala had explained, might draw more attention. Wherever there was energy, she’d said, there were Shadows.

  It’d been hours since her meal back in the Actual World, and Sami was starting to feel hungry again, when the bat—a creaky blur of wings that circled above—led them to a sprawling bush in the center of a clearing.

  “A vapor plant,” Natala said, clapping her hands. “Ingenious! Such wondrous fruit.”

  “What’s so ingenious about a bush?” Sami asked. She didn’t see anything on it that looked very edible. It was thick, covered with tiny berries like glass beads. “Do you eat these?”

  “In a way.” Dorsom plucked a handful of berries and dropped some in her hand. They were hard and glittered in the brilliant moonlight. “Put them in your mouth while you think about whatever you’d most like to eat.”

  “Just so,” Natala said. “The berries reflect the thoughts of the one who is eating them. They imitate tastes and smells of remembered foods. You seem to be eating. Though really you aren’t,” she added.

  “There’s tiny bits of nutrition in the berry, but mostly they just let you feel like you’re eating. Child Flickers call these snack trees—what you munch when no true food is around.” Dorsom popped a few berries into his mouth and smiled. “Bread, butter, salt! Almost fresh from the table.”

  Intrigued, Sami sniffed the berries, then cautiously placed one in her mouth. Eyes closed, she began thinking about the crispy falafel sandwiches with tahini sauce that Teta used to make in the days before she stopped speaking.

  Then, to Sami’s amazement, the taste was right there, on her tongue: the smell of spattering oil, the crunchy, spicy balls, fresh tomatoes, lettuce, creamy tahini sauce, all tucked inside warm pita bread. Hunger sharpened her appetite and she picked berry after berry, filling herself until she thought she’d never need to eat another bite. For a few moments, the flavors brought her back to the round table in their old kitchen where she’d sat beside her mother, teta, brother, and father. Each of them talking and eating and telling stories. The food made the stories better and the stories made the food taste better, her father used to say. Her family was present in the taste of the food, and as she ate the berries, she felt both a sweet joy and a jolt of almost unbearable homesickness.

  Natala touched her arm. “It’s a comfort feeling, but soon we must find you better food.”

  Sami and the Flickers filled their pockets with vapor plant berries before setting off again.

  They walked through that night, and the following days, sleeping and waking with the movements of the sun, snacking on vapor berries and whatever fruits and roots the Flickers could forage (though none, Sami thought, tasted as wonderful as vapor plant berries). The bat easily flapped and glided over their heads and roosted in the trees, and neither of the Flickers looked any worse for sleeping outside on the sandy ground all night. In fact, even though she was hungry, Sami was surprised at how good and rested she felt. It was like Silverworld somehow didn’t make the same physical demands on its inhabitants—everything was softer, lighter, easier.

  She also felt the vigilance of her companions, their gaze continually sweeping and scanning the landscape as they walked. Occasionally, they passed other Flickers—usually traveling alone, wrapped head to toe, only their hands and faces showing. The women wore heavy black bangles on their wrists and jingling chains across their foreheads. The men had covered all but their eyes, which glimmered, surrounded by golden tattoos. Sometimes Sami felt their thoughts and curiosity bend toward her, and she became increasingly adept at closing her own mind and staying silent.

  On their fourth day of travel, they encountered a small caravan: a woman led the way, trailed by two men and four children. The men both had babies wrapped against their chests in soft slings. They were leading a row of grunting burgundy camels, who peered at Sami, their sides glistening as if rubbed with oils.

  The woman’s head was uncovered, except for a chain of silver coins draped across her forehead, down behind her ears, then curved forward to lie flat on her chest. Her skin was a deep woodlands green and her long hair was a sheet of darker green silk. She wore a cutlass strapped to her hip and a dagger bound to her ankle. As the caravan approached, Dorsom and Natala drew closer to Sami, and the bat veered off into the trees. Better not to mix with such as these, the small creature thought. I have an instinct. Sami noticed what looked like a collection of small animal skulls—of sheep or goats possibly—tied in a clicking bundle to one of the camel saddles.

  “Flesh-eaters,” Natala murmured to Sami, eyes averted. “Let’s keep walking.”

  But the group slowed as the woman studied them—Sami in particular—and there was no way to avoid conversation. “Flickers,” she said, “need thee water or provision? Art thou lost?”

  “We are well. We are grateful for your concern,” Dorsom said quietly.

  “Then know thou that this is the approach to the Dominion of the Bare Isles and Castle Shadow of the Bleak Fairy Nixie?”

  “Aware we are,” Dorsom said. “That is our course.”

  Once again, Sami felt the woman’s scrutiny. “And how is it,” she said at last, “that I hear not this young one’s thoughts?”

  Dorsom placed one hand on Sami’s shoulder and the woman lifted her eyebrows. “She is unused to strangers,” he murmured.

  “Strange, though. Thy thoughts I perceive well enough. But this one…” She squinted, moving closer to Sami, who instinctively dropped her eyes. “Stunted is she?”

  “In no way is she stunted,” Natala said indignantly. “She is restrained.”

  The woman began to circle her and Sami felt sweat break out on her temples and palms. “Or is she a captive? Another prisoner to be delivered to the Bleak Fairy?” Sami noticed the woman’s hand move toward her knife as one man shuffled backward with the children. “Mean thou to sell or enslave her?” she asked evenly.

  “Rebalancers we are!” Dorsom retorted.

  The woman’s head lifted sharply. “Thy laws of balancement mean nothing to me,” she uttered. “Such beings as you care only for your World of colors and regulation. You leave all others at the mercy of the Nixie forces, to dwindle away in her cages.”

  Sami noticed the other man pass his sleeping infant to the first man. In a single movement, he turned, seizing and unsheathing a sword that had been lashed to the side of a camel. Instantly, Dorsom pulled a cutlass from his satchel. “Wait, no!” Sami cried, too late. The woman sprang at Dorsom, swinging her large blade. Dorsom parried it, pushing her away, but she leapt back easily. The man at her side clumsily slashed out with his sword. Natala pulled Sami out of the fray, then grabbed the man’s arm.

  The woman clashed knives with Dorsom and they fell on their sides, rolling in the sand. She had remarkable strength and agility and she fought intensely, striking blade against blade, until at last Dorsom fell back. She pinned him on the ground with one hand and held the blade of her knife at his throat with the other. But suddenly his eyes widened and he blurted, “But you are not Flicker?”

  Sami jumped up and backhanded the sword out of the man’s grip. Natala pushed him to the ground and jumped onto his chest, restraining him with he
r hands and knees—a small dagger in one of her hands.

  “No!” cried the woman. “Thou mustn’t hurt him!”

  Sami turned to see the woman’s green skin briefly flash dark and transparent, and she had a sudden understanding. “She’s—a Shadow?”

  The woman looked at Sami. Like that, the color drained from her skin and hair, and she flattened into the silhouette of a woman, a perfect paper cutout. “Thou art Actual,” she breathed, rising and letting Dorsom get to his feet. Natala backed off the man slowly. “Such dreams as never I dreamed,” the Shadow marveled, walking to Sami. “I thought I was imagining such.” She lifted Sami’s wrist in her cutout palm, turning it. “Heavy, dense,” she said approvingly. “Strong. How many times I’ve wondered how ’twould be to meet an Actual One.”

  Sami pulled away. “I’m not a captive. No more than you are a Flicker!”

  She saw a ripple go through the murky form. “Much of our World thou dost not understand, child. I travel in Flicker guise to remain with my family.”

  Sami frowned in confusion and Natala said gently, “She shape-shifts. It takes a lot of skill and energy for a Shadow to imitate a Flicker, but it can be done.”

  “But why do it?” Sami asked.

  “Rules of Balancement state that Flicker and Shadow must not cohabit,” Dorsom explained. “Eons ago it was written, long before our time.”

  The woman’s shape nodded. “ ’Twas my double misfortune—first, to fall for a charming man-Flicker at the marketplace.” She gestured to the glowering man holding the sword. “And second, to succumb to another handsome face at the baths.” She gestured to the Flicker with the children. “My offspring are half-Flick, half-Shade—unacceptable to all society. Eternally in movement and in hiding are we.” Her shape twisted toward the bundled forms hiding behind the camels, then turned back. Sami could make out a sort of glint on her silhouette that might have been a smile. “But please, let us speak not of grief. We invite all to take coffee and such things as an Actual might wish to eat. Guests of the caravan thou shalt be.”

  The Shadow traveler, whose name was Lamida, and her two Flicker husbands, Yazar and Tajreef, quickly assembled a small camp, setting up coral-colored tents, spreading rugs, pulling blankets, cushions, and food from their provisions. Sami was put in a place of honor near the food and Tajreef offered her the coffee first. If this had been the Actual World, she reflected, she would never have tried it—it looked so thick and dark as he poured it in a stream from the lifted spout into a doll-sized cup. It reminded her of the cups of coffee, cafecitos, that she saw people sipping at the Cuban market at home. But it tasted earthy and delicious and didn’t seem to vanish in her throat. Sami drank two cups before Natala touched her wrist and murmured, “This is strong stuff.”

  Sami was curious about this family with two husbands. The Flicker men set out platters of pink grapes and yellow bread, and they whispered to each other as they worked, shooting narrow looks at Sami and her friends. Lamida was equally curious about Sami. Reclining on embroidered red cushions beside her guests, she said, “So many years of gazing into the Silverskinned, yet I never imagined I’d see an Actual in person! How comest thou to the Silverworld, child?”

  Fingering the tiny cup, Sami said, “Well, some have said I was tricked or…lured, I guess, through the mirror. But it was my idea first to read these special words from my grandmother’s spell book. It’s strange. I feel like I still don’t have the whole story.”

  The Flicker men murmured to each other and nudged the curious children away from Sami.

  Lamida lifted her chin in the way Sami’s grandmother used to when she was annoyed. “Superstitious my husbands are, fearful and weak.” She sighed. “They see the Shadow mark on thee.”

  Sami frowned in confusion. When she turned, both Dorsom and Natala dropped their eyes. We may have neglected to mention…Dorsom’s thought was low as a whisper. When you were hit by Shadow fire—they leave a sort of—mark. Here. He pointed to the top of his own forehead.

  Sami touched her hairline, but could feel nothing. He shook his head. It’s visible only to Shadows. And those who live among them and know their ways.

  “It helps Shadows to identify prey,” Lamida said with a shrug. “Though usually the mark is just used on other Shadows. As shape-shifters, they are harder to track. And to be sure, most hunted Flickers never survive a Shadow strike, anyway—not of the magnitude that hit you.”

  “They’re hunting me?” Sami asked in alarm—though suddenly she knew they were, of course. Hadn’t she sensed them lurking, sniffing for her, throughout the long journey to the Bare Isles?

  The men turned skewers with bits of meat over a small central fire, filling the air with a spicy, delectable scent that reminded Sami of lakeside picnics and her grandmother’s shish kabobs. Dorsom and Natala politely declined the plates of sizzling morsels. Sami swallowed hard and, after a moment, also said no to the food.

  “Child Actual!” Lamida held out a kabob in a bit of bread. “Be tainted not by squeamish Flicker customs. All my children and both my Flicker-men now enjoy the nourishment of meats—praise to the Goddess for her bounty. Some die that others may live. ’Tis the circle of life.”

  Sami pressed her lips together, then muttered, “Well, I guess. As the honored guest, I don’t want to offend anyone….” With the Flickers watching, Sami accepted the bite of food and ate. It tasted exactly like grilled lamb, and it was so good in the fresh air, after she’d gone so long without solid food, it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Best of all, while it was lighter than Actual food, it didn’t seem to disappear when she swallowed. Sami sat beside the crackling green-gold fire and told Lamida and the others about her grandmother’s worsening health and her journey through Silverworld. She was filled with homesickness as she spoke. She missed everything: their house, her bedroom, even Florida: the pink hibiscus flowers, the sweet-scented gardenias, the fresh water from a coconut. Now the embers crackled and whirled green sparks in the chilly darkness, and Sami soon realized she had finished off nearly the whole platter while Dorsom and Natala had discreetly looked away.

  As Sami and the adults ate and talked, the children peered at the visitors from behind their glowering fathers. Three of the children looked like Flickers, though Sami noticed their eyes were unusually wide and black and their skin almost translucent, so she could see the shadows of things behind them. The youngest child looked exactly like a Shadow except for one detail—a pair of startling, lavender-colored, violet-lashed eyes floating in her silhouette face.

  The child was, Sami thought, lovely in an entirely new way. She stared at Sami, sneaking out from behind one of her fathers, gazing up at her.

  What is your name? Sami thought-asked.

  After a long pause, the child whispered, Yamay.

  Frowning, both of the husbands jumped up, grabbed the children, and shuffled them back into a tent.

  Lamida chuckled. “She thinks thou’rt like her.”

  “Me?” Sami felt both pleased and confused. “What do you mean? In what way?”

  An embarrassed hush fell over the group. The Shadow shrugged and said finally, “Mixed. A little of both things.”

  “Mixed?” She looked quizzically after the child, then murmured, “I did always feel kind of different, like, from the rest of my family. Like the oddball.”

  “Now that thou’rt in Silverworld,” Lamida said softly, “knowest thou why?”

  “Why I feel that way?” Sami sighed and faced into the wind. Yamay was perhaps five years younger than her, but at that moment Sami felt like she was a hundred years older. She knew she didn’t appear so visibly different from others, the way that Yamay did—yet there was something inside her that had always felt out of place. Her mother had said it was her will; Teta said it was her power.

  “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “But I do feel like I’m getting c
loser.”

  Lamida put her hand on Sami’s shin and Sami had to stifle a gasp—it looked as if there was a hand-shaped hole in her leg. Perhaps sensing Sami’s fright, Lamida removed her hand, and Sami’s leg looked whole again. The husbands cleared away all traces of cooking, then withdrew into their tents, muttering to each other and casting their angry glances, their words and thoughts rattling in the distance like threats.

  The Flickers wanted to get back on the road, but Sami felt drowsy after the big meal and the weather was increasingly rough. Palm fronds lashed the air over their heads and sand stung their skin. Lamida insisted they spend the night with the caravan before making their final approach to the Bare Isles. “Bats and Yellow Eyes, Fangles and carrion birds prey all about this region,” the Shadow warned. “And perhaps there are worse still where thou’rt headed. Best to remain with us tonight—we understand the Night Creatures.”

  “Have you been to the Bare Isles?” Natala asked.

  The Shadow shook her head quickly. “Never. And never will I! Legends are many and realities even worse.”

  Early the next morning, Sami found Yamay sleeping next to her on the blanket, her cutout of a body just as warm and solid as any child’s. Still drowsing, she smiled and snuggled closer to the Shadow child, only to feel an icy darkness fall over her face. Sami turned and gasped: one of the Flicker husbands was standing over her with a curved white dagger. His eyes widened and he lifted the knife. Sami jumped up and knocked it from his hand. That instant, the other husband grabbed her from behind. With a cry, Sami seized his wrist and arm, instinctively swinging down, and flipped him over her back. He landed with a thud on top of the first husband.

  Then Lamida and the Flickers were there, shouting. Lamida screamed at her husbands, stomping on the knife and breaking the blade. Yamay ran crying to her brothers and sisters. While Natala checked Sami to make sure she was unharmed, Lamida returned to apologize. “They are like children, those two. Worse than children, in truth. Tajreef believed ’twould be best to sacrifice thee now to spare thee from horrors to come of the Nixie.”