The True Queen

by Zen Cho

  The truth was that Muna was fond of Mak Genggang. The witch could be overbearing, but it was natural that one so old and powerful should believe she knew what was best. But to say this to Sakti would only annoy her.

  “I find that the fact she is a powerful magician is a great incentive to courtesy,” said Muna mildly. “Besides, we are indebted to her. She was under no obligation to take us in.”

  Sakti could not deny that the witch had been kind. Mak Genggang had shown no impatience for their departure, as the time passed and they remained at her household. As for Muna, she knew there must be people wondering at their disappearance—family and friends waiting for their return—but since she could not remember them, she felt no urgent need of a reunion. She should happily have remained with Mak Genggang indefinitely . . . if not for the curse.

  She glanced at Sakti’s waist, but the evidence of the curse was concealed by Sakti’s sarong. The recollection of the wound made Muna soften towards her sister. Why should Sakti regret to leave a place that had served her so ill? Muna could only hope that England would suit her better.

  Mak Genggang straightened, tossing her stick away and clapping her hands. “There! That will keep you as safe as you can hope to be in djinn-country. And I have laid speech-magic on each of you, so you ought not to have any difficulty speaking with the English.”

  The path unfurled before their feet: a silver rope of light, winding across the grass and into the jungle. Sakti and Muna regarded it in some doubt. Mak Genggang’s businesslike manner did not quite suffice to persuade them that to stroll into the Unseen World was nothing out of the ordinary way.

  “What shall we do if we encounter any spirits?” ventured Sakti.

  “I have taught you spells for defence. You will not have forgot them all, surely?” said Mak Genggang.

  “No, but—”

  “You should not have need of them in any event, so long as you keep to the path. Few spirits will offer to molest you if they know you are under my protection,” said Mak Genggang. “You must be discreet, however. The Queen of the Djinns has never minded what we do here in Janda Baik, but she has quarrelled with the English, and that has made her particular about who may travel between her realm and England. But if you are quick and quiet there is no reason she should ever know you have passed through her lands.

  “You had best get along,” she added, when Muna and Sakti still evinced an inclination to linger. “I have other business to attend to—and we don’t want the English to come and find you still here. It would be just like their wickedness to surprise us! Go in safety, and give my regards to the Sorceress Royal and her young man. And mind you look after your sister!”

  It would have been natural for the witch to have been addressing Sakti, since it was Sakti who had magic and was best equipped to defend them against the various perils of the Unseen. Yet Mak Genggang looked at Muna.

  “I shall watch over my sister, mak cik,” said Muna. She hesitated. “Thank you. You have been very good to us!”

  They set off. Muna did not mean to look back, for she had a suspicion she would disgrace herself if she did. Yet she turned despite herself.

  Though they had only advanced a dozen steps into the jungle, already the crowding trees obscured her view. Through the gaps between the boles, she caught a glimpse of the witch still standing there—a small, upright figure, deceptively frail, shading her eyes with one hand.

  2

  IT WAS COOL in the shade of the trees, with only a few rays of sunlight breaking through the canopy. The light brightened as Muna and Sakti walked, and they were aided, too, by the eerie glow given off by the witch’s path.

  Soon the forest closed in around them, trees towering overhead on every side. The vast busy stillness of the jungle seemed to demand a respectful silence in response, and it was necessary to pay careful attention to one’s feet to avoid stumbling over the various hindrances littering the jungle floor—snakelike creepers, fallen stalks of bamboo, rotting logs and tree stumps.

  Muna trudged after her sister, absorbed in melancholy thoughts of all she was leaving. She could ascribe the blame for their departure to no one but herself, for it had been her disastrous venture that obliged them now to leave the island. Yet it did not seem to her that she could have done anything else. She had acted with the best of intentions. She had only wished to break the curse.

  When Muna and Sakti had been at the witch’s household for a fortnight without recovering their memories, Mak Genggang had conducted healing rites over them. These had consisted of extremely long, dull ceremonies, with much chanting and scattering of rice paste. Finally the witch had declared:

  “Some wicked magician has been at you! You have been split apart like a mangosteen and the pulp pried out.”

  She gave Muna a thoughtful look. “I thought it strange that you should have no magic at all, when your sister has such an excess. But this accounts for it. It has been stolen.”

  Muna was dozy from several hours of fighting sleep while Mak Genggang wove spells over them, and it took her a moment to understand what the witch had said. “Stolen? But how could anyone steal a person’s magic?”

  “It is an evil magic, but easily done by a magician not overly burdened by scruples,” said Mak Genggang. “They need only steal the vital part of the soul that is the seat of one’s magic—what some call the heart. That is why many magicians keep their hearts outside their bodies, as a sensible precaution. Someone has taken yours. In other words, child, you have been cursed!”

  “But why has only Muna been cursed?” said Sakti, sounding faintly indignant. “What could she have done to anyone? If I were an evil magician wishing to curse one of us, I should choose myself.”

  “Adik!” said Muna in reproof, though she secretly sympathised with the sentiment. It was not that she wished Sakti to suffer, but it seemed most unjust. It was one thing to believe that God in His wisdom had decided not to bestow magic upon her—another to hear that she had had magic, but it had been stolen away.

  “You are both cursed,” said Mak Genggang. “You do not have your memories either, do you?”

  “But what has been stolen from me?” said Sakti. “I lack for nothing.”

  “Would you say so?” said Mak Genggang. “I can think of any number of things your enemy may have stolen from you. Your conscience, your manners, your respect for your elders . . .”

  “Can you break the curse, mak cik?” said Muna, before Sakti could provide any further fuel for Mak Genggang’s complaints.

  Mak Genggang frowned. “I have tried, but I cannot seem to come at the trouble. There is something very odd about the spell! It is a subtle magic, or I should not have failed to see it before. And yet the breach is clumsily wrought. I cannot see how it was done, nor how it is to be undone.”

  It vexed the witch to be faced with something she could not do. She tapped her knee, glaring at Muna and Sakti.

  “If I had the name of the enchanter, perhaps . . . Do you have no recollection of who might have done this to you?”

  But neither of them had any notion of who their enemy could be.

  Mak Genggang was not a woman to let a problem lie without seeking to solve it. She had her apprentices mix up stinking concoctions which Muna and Sakti were obliged to swallow, and taught them cryptic formulae they were to chant at sunset and sunrise, when the veil between the worlds wore thin.

  But she lacked time to devote proper thought to the matter, for she was preoccupied with greater affairs. It was whispered that foreign powers had designs upon Janda Baik, which were giving the Sultan much anxiety. Whatever the truth of the matter, Mak Genggang spent most of her days at the palace, conferring with the Sultan and his advisers.

  Once Muna had recovered from her first shock, the curse ceased to worry her. She was a practical soul and saw little good in fretting about what she could not change. Besides, the curse did not
seem to impair her health, or Sakti’s.

  Or so she had thought, till Sakti came to her one day with the air of one who has a great secret.

  “I have something to show you,” said Sakti.

  Muna had been charged with cooking a pot of rice and she would have preferred to be left to it. But Sakti lingered, winking and nodding, till Muna was obliged to take the hint. She begged Puteh to look after her pot and followed Sakti out to the veranda. “Could not you have shown me in the kitchen?”

  “In front of Puteh?” said Sakti, with scorn. “No tempayan ever had a larger mouth. Anything I said in front of her, the witch would know by the evening.”

  This made Muna look more closely at her sister. Sakti was not quite her usual self; she radiated a brittle energy. There was a strange triumph in her eyes, mingled with anxiety.

  “What’s wrong?” said Muna, starting to feel worried, but Sakti refused to answer till they were on the outskirts of the orchard behind Mak Genggang’s house.

  Here, where the witch’s fruit trees began to blend into the scrubby fringe of the jungle, there was little risk of being overheard. Even so, Sakti made Muna wait while she wove a spell to prevent any tree or zephyr from carrying tales.

  “I don’t think it’s true that Mak Genggang talks to the trees,” said Muna, but even as she spoke she recollected several instances of the witch scolding her garden as she might reprimand an erring servant. “That is, I doubt they talk back.”

  Sakti was not convinced. “It is you who are always telling me how she is the greatest magician east of India and west of China. I’d wager collecting rumours from trees is the least she does.”

  She clasped Muna’s hand. “Swear you will not tell Mak Genggang what I show you now!”

  “You have not stolen from the witch, have you?” said Muna, alarmed. Sakti was given to melodramatics, but this seemed to go beyond that.

  Sakti drew herself up, ruffled. “Stolen from her! She has nothing I desire,” she said grandly. “Rather, it is she who is stealing the very life from me!”

  “What can you mean?”

  “Look!” said Sakti. She unwrapped her sarong with a flourish.

  Muna gasped.

  “Isn’t it horrible?” said Sakti, with grim relish.

  Where her navel should have been, there was nothing whatsoever. It was as though a hole had been carved out of her person. There was no wound or bruise—the flesh simply faded into nothingness. Through the gap, Muna could glimpse the bushes behind Sakti.

  Muna reached out, her hand trembling, but did not dare touch her sister. She felt sick. “. . . How did this come about?”

  “I woke yesterday and found I had been hollowed out,” said Sakti. “See, it goes right through me.” She put two fingers through the gap.

  “Oh, don’t—don’t!” said Muna, shuddering. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” said Sakti. “I feel nothing.” Her satisfaction at making a sensation was tempered with unease as she looked down at herself. “But I believe it is growing. It is larger today.”

  “The curse,” breathed Muna. A pang of guilt shook her. She had been content to await Mak Genggang’s pleasure, trusting that the witch would break the curse in good time. “I had no notion! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I thought it might go away,” said Sakti. “The witch taught us a great magic the day before yesterday; I thought perhaps this was the effect. But none of the other apprentices seem affected. It can only be the curse.”

  Muna pressed her hand against herself. Her finger dipped into her own navel, meeting reassuringly solid flesh. “But why should it affect you so, and not me?”

  “I wondered,” said Sakti. She wound her sarong around herself again, hiding the unnerving absence at her centre. “But the answer is obvious. The curseworker has already robbed you of your magic: that is why you have none, though magic generally runs in the family. Now that hateful woman has started on me—but a greater part of me is composed of magic. To drain me of my magic is to destroy me!”

  “You have discovered who cursed us?” said Muna, startled. “It is a woman?”

  “It does not take much guessing,” said Sakti. “The answer is plain. Who else could it be but the witch?”

  Muna stared. Weariness descended upon her.

  “You cannot think Mak Genggang is the author of the curse!”

  “Have not you ever thought it strange that she should be so powerful—an old woman of obscure birth like her?”

  “She draws on the virtue of the island. Everyone says so.”

  Sakti dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Superstitious nonsense! Who ever heard of an island being magical? Where would its magic have come from? Isn’t it likelier that the witch steals her power from others? It explains why she should have taken us in, when we have no hold on her.”

  “But Mak Genggang’s household includes a great many people who have no claim upon her,” protested Muna. “Not all of them have magic. Indeed, most do nothing useful. You’ve said yourself their only talent seems to be that of sponging upon their friends.”

  “I expect she takes in the useless ones to disguise her true scheme,” said Sakti, but Muna said severely:

  “That is nonsense and you know it. Why should Mak Genggang have told us of the curse if she was the curseworker? We would never have known of it otherwise. Think of all the rice paste she has expended on breaking our curse, never asking for a single wang to defray the expense!”

  “I don’t believe rice paste is much of an expense,” said Sakti. “As for why she told us, that is all part of her cunning. So long as we believed she meant to help us, we were not likely to suspect her. You must own it is strange that even after so many weeks, we should have no memory of who we are or what happened to us. If Mak Genggang were draining off our souls to increase her stocks of magic, that would explain it.”

  “There is a simpler explanation,” said Muna. “We have been cursed, and it was Mak Genggang who told us so and is trying to break it!

  “I think you are shockingly ungrateful,” she added, with energy. “You need not have invented this absurd story, just because you do not like lessons, or the fact that Mak Genggang does not care how pretty you are but scolds you just as she scolds everyone else—”

  “Oh!”

  “You would have been better off telling Mak Genggang about your affliction,” said Muna. “We ought to tell her now. I am sure she will find a means of reversing it.”

  She turned, intending to return to the house. But Sakti seized her arm in a frightful grip.

  “Hush, or you will bring the whole village down upon us!” said Sakti over Muna’s yelps. “If Mak Genggang knows we have seen through her deception, she will have no reason to restrain herself any longer. She must destroy us, or risk losing her good name. I expect she will have us murdered!”

  “You have been listening to too many syair about depraved mothers-in-law,” said Muna. She tried to tug her arm away. “Ow! Let go!”

  “I shan’t, till you swear you will not go to the witch. You promised you would not breathe a word of what I told you!”

  “But—”

  “I will seal your lips with magic if I must,” said Sakti, “but I had rather not. I must conserve my soul-stuff. The more I use, the more I risk losing of myself.”

  This reminder of Sakti’s affliction made Muna go limp in her sister’s grasp. She searched Sakti’s face. “Do you think the curseworker has stolen your heart? Mak Genggang said he took mine.”

  Sakti looked grave. “I don’t know what may have been done to me. But I fear I am fading away.”

  Muna felt a chill of apprehension. It overcame her frustration at her sister’s obduracy.

  “Let me go,” she said. “I shan’t say a word to Mak Genggang, since you don’t wish it. But what do you propose we do instead?”


  “Run away, of course,” said Sakti, releasing her. “I should not wonder if I began to feel better directly once we were free of the witch’s influence.”

  Muna’s heart sank. Yet she should have foreseen this. Sakti’s restlessness could have led to no other end.

  “But what if you do not?” she said. “What if we find that Mak Genggang has nothing to do with the curse and it is still eating away at you? Then we will be alone, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. What shall we do then?”

  Sakti turned up her nose. “If you don’t wish to come with me, you need only say so! I don’t mind. I am perfectly happy to go alone.”

  This was pure bravado, for Muna could see that her sister was afraid. But Sakti was strong-willed and did not readily part with her prejudices. Since she had conceived one against the witch, she would be far happier to run away, even alone into unknown terrors, than to admit she was wrong.

  Muna’s mind raced. She must prevent Sakti from doing anything reckless, but how?

  Her eyes fell on a wild banana tree. Banana trees were said to be haunted by lamiae—those lamiae, that is, who did not benefit from the hospitality of a sympathetic witch. The sight imparted the inspiration for which she had been looking.

  “Of course I shall go wherever you will,” said Muna. “But let us not depart quite yet. I have an idea.”

  “Oh yes?” said Sakti sceptically.

  “What if we could break the curse ourselves?” said Muna.

  3

  The Resident’s house, the British Straits

  Settlement of Malacca

  MUNA

  THE HOUSE OF the English raja of Malacca was an imposing building, fit for the series of foreign kings that had occupied it, for it had been built by the Dutch before the English had taken the city. Its brick construction gave it a heaviness that ordinary wooden houses lacked—an air of permanence and power. Sakti gasped as she took in the building’s red roof, white walls and dazzling rows of windows.