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Heat rushes up my throat to my eyes, and I can no longer hold back the tears. “Don’t talk like this,” I scold her, but my words tremble. “We’re going to leave Tambu together. Remember? You wanted to sail across the nine Emerald Seas, and hear the yawnbirds of the Suma Desert, and climb the thousand steps to Gadda’s Temple on Jhor….”
“In another life.” Vanna caresses my cheek with her fingertips. “In another life, we will do these things. Together.” She leans against the tree, her face utterly serene. “Stay good, sister. Love more, for me.”
Her eyes start to close, and awful sister that I am, I shake her. I clasp her hand. “Don’t go.”
Vanna smiles, a softer smile than before. “I’m only taking a rest. I’m tired.”
I will go to the Nine Hells for this, but I grab her wrist. “No.”
Bless Vanna for humoring me. “So many times you’ve helped me sleep—with your stories and your songs. Will you sing to me now?”
I have no songs in my memory now. My mind is numb. But for the hope of keeping Vanna awake, I make something up:
Channi and Vanna lived by the sea,
And kept the fire with a spoon and pot.
Stir, stir, a soup for lovely skin,
Simmer, simmer, a stew for thick black hair.
But what did they make for two happy smiles?
“What?” breathes Vanna.
I smile.
Cakes, cakes with coconut and peanuts.
Vanna laughs gently, and the sound is music.
Night ages, but I hardly notice. I keep singing, even as her lashes droop down over her eyes, falling into a delicate black curtain.
When at last my voice grows tired, and my song ends, words coming to a gentle cadence, Vanna’s eyes open once more. They see a realm beyond ours.
“Vanna?” I whisper, a leap in my heart.
“Channi, your scales are turning white,” she says, peering up at me.
The transformation is reflected in her eyes, the green of my scales paling into a milky white. “It happens to the snakes of Sundau.” My ribs go tight. When they lose someone they love.
“You look beautiful.” She reaches for my hand and holds it. “Look, like the moon.”
I fall for the trick and look up, but before I can find the moon, Vanna sags against the tree, and I catch her just before she falls. She’s gone. So gracefully, she’s slipped from this world and entered the next.
A sob wrenches out of my chest, and I stare at my beautiful sister, swearing that I will never forget her face. Never forget a single hair or line. Never forget her voice or the sound of her laugh.
I weep and weep, certain that I will weep forevermore. I fold my body over hers, clinging to her as long as I can before she begins to glow. Vanna’s skin shimmers gold, like when she was born, and softly she goes into the earth.
Then she is gone, and she will never shine again.
CHAPTER FORTY
After sorrow comes anger. Anger like I have never felt before. It consumes me, a fiery poison that burns down my throat. Nothing can quench the heat.
“You!” I rasp at the pearl. The halves lie still, innocent as river stones. But I know better.
They’ve taken everything from me. The person I loved most, and who loved me most. I loom over them with a rock in my fist, ready to shatter them into dust—when suddenly they quiver to life.
