The Resident’s house, the British Straits
Settlement of Malacca
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.
“You could fit two of the Sultan’s palace on Janda Baik in there!” she whispered.
Muna was beginning to regret the suggestion that had brought them there.
“They say the English king of Malacca is mad for magic,” she had told Sakti. “He has a collection of magic spells and artefacts from England and India, as well as the countries hereabouts.”
Sakti had been rather offended by the notion of Muna’s knowing more of a magical matter than herself. “Who told you this?”
“I overheard the lamiae speaking of it,” said Muna. “They were gossiping outside the kitchen and did not know I heard. It seems the English king is fond of collecting magic. Tuan Farquhar pays a wang for every magical verse he is given and more for whole formulae, so there is a great crowd of people outside his house every day, clamouring to sell him their spells. He has engaged two scribes and has them write the spells down in books.”
“A wang for every verse!” said Sakti, intrigued.
Muna saw where her thoughts tended.
“Mak Genggang would be bound to find out if you attempted to sell her magic to the English,” she said. “Even the lamiae would not do it, for fear of provoking her!”
“I did not think of selling him real magic, of course,” said Sakti, injured. “A good spell is worth far more than a wang. But the English king is no magician, and one could easily invent a credible formula to take in a layman.” At Muna’s look, she said, “If the man has the impertinence to buy magic without being a magician, he deserves to be cheated. He ought to know his place.”
“That is nonsense and you know it,” said Muna, frowning.
“Oh, very well!” said Sakti. “But if you don’t wish to profit from the Englishman’s magic-madness, what do you mean by mentioning him?”
“Do not you see,” said Muna, “if he has spells from England and India, he will have magic unknown even to Mak Genggang. Magic that could help us break the curse—cure your disease!”
Sakti was struck by the idea. Her look of scepticism fell away. Encouraged, Muna hurried on, “Perhaps it is not likely we will find the antidote to the curse, if it has proved beyond Mak Genggang’s power to break it. But there may be a spell that would shed light on the nature of the curse, or its origins—a spell that would give us the curseworker’s name.”
Sakti gave her a pitying look. “We already know who the curseworker is. It is only that you don’t wish to credit it.”
Muna raised her eyebrows. “Supposing you are right, can you tell me Mak Genggang’s true name?”
“Why—” Sakti pursed her mouth, displeased. “No. But no one knows it.”
“Well, shan’t we need it if we are to break the curse?” demanded Muna. “When Mak Genggang is asked to cure any magical disease, the first thing she does is find out the name of whoever caused it.”
This was an undeniable hit. Sakti looked vexed.
“That is only because one generally cures a magical illness by calling upon its author and threatening to break his head if he does not take the curse off,” she said. “You don’t mean to suggest we adopt that course with Mak Genggang?”
They both imagined it. Sakti looked rather pale.
“If we know her true name, we shall have other courses open to us,” said Muna, but Sakti rolled her eyes.
“The truth is you do not think it is Mak Genggang at all!”
“Even if it is,” said Muna, “we ought to make certain of it, rather than abandoning ourselves to the world on a mere suspicion! Come now, adik—would not you like to break the curse yourself, and tell Mak Genggang you had done it?”
Sakti had given in—more because an expedition across the Straits to the English king’s house smacked appealingly of adventure than because she had had any real belief that it would teach them anything about the curse. As for Muna, she had been so anxious to distract Sakti from the idea of running away that her proposal had seemed less wild than it now appeared to her, hunkered down upon the grass outside the English king’s house, with the sun beating on the back of her head.
Even Sakti’s high spirits flagged at the sight of the King’s house—and the armed sepoys guarding the entrance. “Kak, there are soldiers!”
Muna had not accounted for soldiers. This now seemed stupid to her. Vexed with herself, she said irritably, “Why, you did not think the King’s own house would be left undefended?”
“I am sure you did not think we should have to battle sepoys when you said we should come,” said Sakti, unimpressed. She reflected. “Perhaps we could turn ourselves into birds and fly in at an open window.”
Disconcerted, Muna said, “Can you do that? Is not shape-shifting a very great magic? Mak Genggang says none but the most skilled magicians should attempt it.”
“Oh, everything is ‘Mak Genggang says’ with you!” said Sakti. “I have never tried to change my form, but it cannot be that difficult. You would start by imagining yourself as a bird . . .”
She was already beginning to look rather beaky around the face. Muna shook her shoulder.
“Let us not!” she said. “I know what we ought to do.”
It was Sakti’s dismissive reference to Mak Genggang that had given her the idea. Sakti could call the witch wicked, but she could not deny that Mak Genggang was effective. What, Muna asked herself, would Mak Genggang do now?
Thinking this was like a sort of magic in itself. Muna suddenly saw the sepoys through new eyes. They were only bored young men stranded in a foreign country, perspiring in their regimentals.
Mak Genggang was of a thrifty disposition; she never used magic where force of character would do. Muna seized her sister’s arm, brushing glossy black feathers off Sakti’s head. “Come!”
Muna marched up to the entrance of the King’s house, Sakti grumbling behind her. The sepoys looked doubtfully at them, but Muna was at the door and rapping energetically before they could issue any challenge. She frowned at the sepoys, as much as to say, They had best not keep me waiting!
The manservant who opened the door was a Malay, to Muna’s secret relief. She had never spoken to a foreigner before and she was not altogether confident of her ability to mislead one into believing that she was a person of importance.
“Good morning, adik,” said Muna in her stateliest manner, though the manservant looked of an age with her, and in common courtesy she ought to have addressed him as an elder, not a junior.
The manservant blinked, but he seemed to decide to overlook her lapse in manners. “Do you have a petition for the King? He has gone out.”
“That is no inconvenience to me,” said Muna graciously. “Tuan Farquhar desired me to come while he was away and put his library of spells in order. I am a witch,” she explained, “and this is my assistant.”
Sakti made an outraged noise, but Muna drove her elbow into her sister’s side.
“Surely Tuan Farquhar told the household to expect me?” said Muna.
“You must be mistaken,” said the manservant. “Tuan Farquhar cannot have asked for you. Perhaps you do not know, but the English abhor witches. Their customs prohibit the practice of magic by women.”
“By Englishwomen, to be sure,” said Muna. “But what business is that of mine? Tuan Farquhar sought one who understood our magic—one who could study the spells he has been sold and ensure that he has not been cheated—and he was given my name.
“I am sure his scribes have done their best,” she added, in a tone of kind condescension, “but they are not witches. They are bound to have introduced errors while taking down the spells. I beg you will lead me to the King’s collection. I am told it is extensive, and I must be off by the afternoon, for I have a healing ceremony to conduct.”
“A case of possession by evil spirits,” added Sakti. “Very sad!”
When the manservant hesitated, Muna fixed a stern eye on him.
“Unless you would like to account to Tuan Farquhar for turning me away?” she said. “You should know that witches are no fonder of Englishmen than Englishmen are of us. He is not likely to find another who is willing to assist.”
The manservant wavered. Muna tossed her head, turning to Sakti.
“Let us go!” she said. “You were quite right to say we ought not to lower ourselves to help the Englishman. What business is it of ours if he has been cheated? Let him take false for true, the worthless for the valuable. It would serve him right for his servants’ arrogance!”
Sakti was beginning to enjoy her role of witch’s helper. “I cannot think why he paid us so many visits, begging for help, if he only meant to send us packing. It is a deliberate insult, depend upon it!”
“An insult not only to us, but to all witches,” agreed Muna. “We had better spread the news abroad at once—tell everyone the English are not to be trusted.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the harassed manservant. “Pray come in! If you knew . . . but it is true Tuan Farquhar wished to know if the spells he collected were real magic. I meant no offence, kak.”
Muna held her head high as they sailed through the door, but it was fortunate that the manservant did not look back at Sakti, for she did not trouble to keep her countenance at all.
THE English raja’s collection was larger than Muna had expected. There were magical artefacts, in tall cabinets fronted with glass, but the main part of the collection consisted of spell books—rows and rows of these, stretching from floor to ceiling in the room where the manservant left them. Muna had not dreamt that there might be so many books in the world, much less books of magic.
“We shall never get through them all before that man returns!” she whispered, appalled.
“No,” Sakti agreed, round-eyed. “Tuan Farquhar must have kept his scribes hard at it. I should think the people of Malacca have sold him all the magic they have.”
But there were greater surprises in store. Muna had expected that they would be obliged to restrict themselves to investigating the spells Tuan Farquhar’s scribes had taken down in Malay. No other language was used in Janda Baik, and there was no reason to suppose either Muna or Sakti could understand anything else.
When Muna took down her first spell book, however, reaching for the tome closest to hand, she found herself reading it with perfect ease. This was unexpected, for the book was not in Malay.
“That is English, I believe,” said Sakti, when Muna showed her the book. “How curious that we should understand it!”
Their want of self-knowledge meant that Muna and Sakti often made surprising discoveries about themselves, but this was the most unexpected yet. Not all the books in the collection proved accessible—some defeated them, being written in scripts they did not recognise—but it appeared that in their past life they had made sufficient study of English and Arabic to be able to read both languages with ease.
Sakti was delighted. “How clever I am, and I never knew it!”
The revelation had given Muna’s thoughts a different turn.
“Our family must have been wealthy, as well as liberal, to have educated their daughters,” she said. “They must have been pious to have had us learn Arabic. And they must live here—in Malacca, ruled by the English. There is no reason why they should have had us learn English otherwise.”
“Perhaps we are princesses!” said Sakti, brightening.
Muna would have thought it would be interesting to read about magic, but if the scholars of English magic were to be believed, their thaumaturgy was a very different beast from the magic that permeated the witch’s household. Mak Genggang’s magic was a wild, living force, as everyday as the weather and as untameable. The English made their magic sound exceedingly dull in comparison. To understand what they said of it demanded all of Muna’s powers of concentration, so it was some time before she realised that Sakti had abandoned her books.
“Adik, what are you about?”
Sakti was standing by the cabinets, turning over an article in her hands with fascination. “Look! It is a dead imp. I wonder how they prevented it from rotting. I cannot tell that there is any magic on it to keep it sweet.”
Muna recoiled, holding her book up before her. She would not put it down till Sakti had restored her find to its original place.
“You had best not touch anything else,” said Muna. “For all you know there was a horrid curse on that imp, which could have rubbed off on you.”
“Nonsense!” said Sakti, but she rather contradicted herself by adding, “We could always bathe in flowers later to cleanse ourselves of any bad luck.”
“Yes, but you might try to avoid picking up any more bad luck. One curse is enough, surely,” said Muna. “Come and look at the instructions for this spell.” It was in a book of English spells—a device for discovering the author of an enchantment.
“You lay your hand on the enchantment and ask the spirits, Whose magic is this?” said Muna. “And if the spell succeeds, they tell you. Do you think you could cast it?”
“It sounds easy enough,” said Sakti. Casting spells interested her more than reading about them. She became businesslike. “But how am I to lay my hand on the enchantment if it is in us?” She looked around, frowning.
“Is that a piece of string by you?”
She knotted the string around Muna’s wrist, then held out her own to Muna. “If you tie it around me, too, that will do to mark the curse. What is the formula?”
Muna read it out from the book, Sakti repeating the syllables after her. When she said, “Whose magic is this?” the words themselves wound out of Sakti’s mouth, written in green smoke. For a moment they hung in the air.
“Adik,” said Muna, worried. It could not be healthy for a human to breathe smoke, surely?
Sakti coughed, dispersing the words of the spell. “What a strange effect!” she said cheerfully. “I have never seen that before.” A look of surprise came over her face. She picked up a pen and wrote the words:
SAKTI MUNA
“What is that?” said Muna.
“The spirits’ answer.” Sakti looked put out. “But it is only our names!”
Muna reflected. “You asked the spirits whose magic is this? Perhaps they misunderstood, and the spell is simply telling us what the source of your magic is.”
“But you do not have any magic. Why should the spirits have named you?”
“The spell might have confused us. You could cast the spell on me alone,” suggested Muna. “Since the curseworker stole my magic, the only magic remaining in me should be his—the magic of his curse.”
Sakti slipped her wrist out of the loop of string, but the second attempt produced the same result.
“Perhaps the magic has not come off,” said Muna. “Are you sure you have said the formula correctly?”
Sakti was not accustomed to her spells going awry. She said crossly, “Of course I did. Read out the instructions again. I expect you have missed a step.”
“I have not,” said Muna, but an inspiration had come to her. “I tell you what it is. Your question is too vague. I expect you are confusing the spirits. Could not you simply ask for the true name of the enchanter who cursed us?”
This time after speaking the spell, Sakti wrote a different word.
Muna read it out: “‘Midsomer’ . . . it must be an English name.” She looked up, her eyes shining. “This could not possibly be Mak Genggang’s true name. She is not the curseworker after all. I told you so!”
Sakti screwed up her face. She obviously meant to give an uncivil answer, but instead she gave a stifled shriek, staring at something behind Muna. The blood drained from her face.
Muna smelt frangipane—the small, sweet-smelling white blossoms people called grave flowers. She whirled around.
A ghoulish face hovered at the window. Long yellow nails tapped the glass. The creature’s mouth stretched wide, revealing yellow fangs and a scarlet tongue, but then the glowing eyes narrowed.
“Why, you are only natives!” exclaimed the lamia in disappointment. It was one of Mak Genggang’s vampiresses.
Muna stumbled backwards, seizing Sakti’s hand. Lamiae had poor vision during the day, their eyes being best adapted to the darkness of night. It was not too late. If they could only get away before the lamia recognised them . . .
Muna was nearly at the door when it swung open. She looked directly into the startled pink face of a foreign gentleman.
“What in heaven’s name . . . ?”
With remarkable presence of mind, the lamia smashed the glass and leapt into the room. She seized Muna and Sakti and bounded out of the window again before the Englishman could do anything but gawp.
The air whistled in Muna’s ears. The lamia flew over the city of Malacca, a sister under each arm. Behind them the Englishman leant out of the broken window, shouting, but his words were snatched away by the wind.
“If you keep writhing, I shall let go, see if I don’t!” snapped the lamia.
“I shall make disgusting eating, I warn you!” shouted Sakti, struggling. “I have a bad disposition and everyone knows that turns mortal flesh rancid!”
“Where are you taking us?” said Muna. She shut her eyes, feeling queasy—they were a horrible vast distance from the ground.
“Where but the witch’s house?” said the lamia. “If you were wise, you would beg me to drop you in the sea. That would be no worse punishment than Mak Genggang will deal when she hears what you have done!”
TO be flown through the skies by a furious vampiress was terrifying, but the return to earth was even worse. Mak Genggang gave them such a scolding as seemed to shake the very timbers of her house.
Yet she did not throw Muna and Sakti off, as Muna had feared she might. They were charged with tedious tasks by way of penance—Muna was set to cleaning and Sakti to repairing the magic wards around the witch’s house and orchard. But there was no suggestion that they should leave.
Two days passed; Muna and Sakti quarrelled seven times about whether they should tell Mak Genggang what they had learnt at the English king’s house. The blemish at Sakti’s navel had not improved, and she could not really believe any longer that it was Mak Genggang who was to blame for it. But Sakti would not own to being wrong, and Muna had yet to wear her down when Mak Genggang summoned them for an audience.
“I have received a messenger from the English,” she told them. For once Mak Genggang’s age, which one forgot in the full glare of her personality, was evident in her bearing. She looked tired, even frail. “He came to tell me that the Resident of Malacca—the English raja—caught women trespassing in his house two days ago. He has reason to believe they belong to my household and has demanded that I deliver them up. The intruders are thieves, or worse, says Tuan Farquhar, and they must be punished.”
Muna and Sakti had been dreading another scolding, but this was a calamity neither had foreseen. They looked at each other in horror.
“But why does he want us, mak cik?” stammered Muna.
“Oh, it is not you they want,” said Mak Genggang. “You are only a pretext to seize control of Janda Baik. Tuan Farquhar knows I will not willingly give up any person under my protection, and when I refuse, well! He will not fail to make the most of it.”
Muna was cold, though it was the middle of the afternoon, when the earth had been baked for hours in the relentless sunshine and the heat reached its zenith. Mak Genggang had every reason to surrender her and Sakti to the English. But . . . when I refuse, the witch had said. Surely Mak Genggang would not betray them.
“What does Tuan Farquhar want with Janda Baik?” said Sakti, baffled. “He has a great house, larger than our Sultan’s palace, and reigns over a city many times the size of the island.”
“They have need of a port for trade, and a base for their war against the French. Malacca is all very well, but the English seized it from the Dutch, and the Dutch are likely to want it back,” said Mak Genggang. “What is more, Malacca does not have our magic.”
“What did you say to the messenger, mak cik?” Muna said, in a voice she strove to keep even. She had no wish to insult the witch with her fear, but she could not help feeling nervous till Mak Genggang said:
“I sent him away, of course—impudent fellow! And I know what they will do now. Tuan Farquhar will say I am recalcitrant—we have no reason to defy him, unless you are spies and we intend an invasion of Malacca. He will say it is his clear duty to strike first. We will fight—he will pay a bitter price for victory—but we cannot hold out against the British forces; they are equal to the Dutch in sanguinariness, and they’re superior in greed. The end of it will be that we shall be overrun!”
“No!” exclaimed Muna involuntarily. She thought of soldiers spilling onto the white shores of the island, savage men swarming the villages . . . “Oh, Mak Genggang, what can we do?”
“You might have refrained from going to the English king’s house and supplying him with an excuse for interference,” said Mak Genggang drily. “But there! That is in the past—and all the magics for turning back time are best avoided, for they are liable to make worse muddles than they are designed to solve.”
Sakti shifted restlessly, looking both guilty and irritated.
“We had no notion a brief call would cause such trouble,” she said. “If we had known, of course . . . ! But we only wished to break our curse. It is not as though we took anything that would be missed. A formula may be cast any number of times.”
Her manner was scarcely calculated to propitiate the witch, at a time when Mak Genggang had every reason to be vexed with them. But Mak Genggang only nodded, unsurprised. “It was for the curse you went, was it? I thought that was the case. What was this spell you cast, then?”
“It was an English spell,” said Sakti. “But it is not as though we stole it!”
The consequences of their actions had shocked Sakti out of her obstinacy. After all her resistance to confiding in Mak Genggang, it was she who told the witch what they had discovered at the English king’s house, though she omitted to mention her mysterious affliction.
When she told Mak Genggang the name the spell had given them, a faraway look came into the witch’s eyes.
“‘Midsomer,’ did you say?” said Mak Genggang.
Muna looked hopefully at her. “Do you know this ‘Midsomer,’ mak cik? Is it an English name?”
“I believe it is.” Mak Genggang frowned, tapping her knee. “I may have heard it before, but I cannot recollect . . . Midsomer, Midsomer!” Her tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables. “These English names are impossible to keep in one’s head.”
She was vexed at her own forgetfulness. “It will come to me in time. I could ask the Sorceress Royal—but we shall already be at a disadvantage, for we must ask her to intervene with Tuan Farquhar on our behalf. I dislike begging for favours, but I do not see what else we can do.”
Muna glanced at Sakti, but it seemed Sakti’s ignorance on this point was as complete as her own. “Who is the Sorceress Royal?”
“It is what the English magicians call their chief—a witch of prodigious talent,” said Mak Genggang. “She is notorious in her country, for she has established a school which educates females in their thaumaturgy, which is accounted a great scandal. Still, she wields considerable influence among the English and she is indebted to me, for I was able to do her a service or two before she attained her current position.”
“A school for witches,” echoed Muna. She sat upright, her eyes wide, as the seed of a notion began to sprout in her mind.
“But an Englishwoman will not help us against her countrymen, will she?” said Sakti. “Will not she take Tuan Farquhar’s part against us?”
“Oh, we need have little fear of that!” said Mak Genggang. “If we were speaking of the young man who was Sorcerer Royal before, I might hesitate, indeed. Zacharias Wythe is burdened with a conscience—a fine thing to have, but dangerous in excess. But Prunella would never dream of allowing conscience to prevent her from helping her friends.”
Still, she sighed. “Mind you, it sits ill with me to be beholden to any European. Prunella is a good warmhearted girl, but in these times I should rather have her in my debt than give her any hold over us. But it cannot be helped. When elephants battle, the mousedeer dies in the middle. It is this, or be trampled!”
She would have said more, but Muna broke in, saying, “Mak cik, may anyone attend the Sorceress Royal’s school? That is to say, will she receive any female who desires to learn magic?”
Mak Genggang looked surprised. “I believe so. She wishes to open the practice of magic to persons of all kinds. The English as a whole are jealous of their magic; they hoard it as a miser hoards his gold.”
“Then,” said Muna, “why do not you send us there?”
The other two stared. Muna’s heart was racing at her daring, but she must keep speaking before she lost her nerve, or was interrupted.
“Either we must give the English what they demand, or we must quarrel with them,” she said. “We cannot afford to quarrel with them, so we must concede—or appear to. If you send us to the Sorceress Royal, that would take us out of Tuan Farquhar’s reach. He could not accuse you of defying him, for after all you will only have done what he required. The English asked for us, therefore you sent us to England. Tuan Farquhar could not in decency complain of your preferring to entrust us to his countrywoman.
“It will be like rowing while going downriver,” she added, “for it will put us in the way of making amends for our conduct. Perhaps we cannot equal the foreigners’ ships and cannons, but in magic Janda Baik need not consider itself the inferior of any mortal kingdom. I daresay my sister will learn English magic quickly, and that will teach her its weaknesses too, so we may help defend Janda Baik against their encroachment.”
Mak Genggang regarded Muna for a long moment, her expression inscrutable. Muna pressed her damp palms against her sarong, trying to look like someone capable of spying on the English.
“It is an interesting notion!” said the witch finally. “But that is not all you hope to do, surely. You wish to break the curse. Do you believe this ‘Midsomer’ is to be found in England?”
Muna flushed under Mak Genggang’s penetrating gaze. “You said Midsomer was an English name, mak cik.”
“What will you do if you find him?”
Muna glanced at Sakti. Sakti was looking at her in wonder, as amazed as if Muna had suddenly revealed an ability to fly. Encouraged, Muna turned back to the witch.
“My sister was trained by no less a witch than Mak Genggang,” she said. “We shall think of something.”
“Hmph!” said Mak Genggang: but she was pleased. “It is not a bad notion. It will vex Tuan Farquhar exceedingly. And to send the Sorceress Royal a scholar will have less of an appearance of petitioning her for a favour. Prunella has pressed me for some time to explain Malay magics to her—she has a great interest in our enchantery.
“There is little enough good that can be said of you,” she said to Sakti, “but you do have some understanding of our magics! What do you say to your sister’s suggestion? You have not shown any extraordinary devotion to your studies so far. But perhaps it is only my tutelage to which you object?”
Muna was in terror lest Sakti should be too honest—a failure of tact could scuttle the proposal. But Sakti could be diplomatic when it suited her.
“I should like to go to England, if you think it wise, mak cik,” she said. “I would be proud to tell the English of your magic! But how would we travel there? Isn’t it very far away?”
But to Mak Genggang, the distance between countries was nothing. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand.
“You would need a year at least if you were obliged to travel by conventional means,” she said. “But we are not subject to such limitations. It is only a short path through the Unseen Realm. With your youth, you will not need more than a day to traverse it.”
A shiver of foreboding ran up Muna’s spine. “The Unseen Realm? You don’t mean we would have to travel through the world of the spirits, mak cik?”
“Oh yes. Nothing easier in the world!” said Mak Genggang. “I shall lay the path for you. There is no reason you should run into any trouble, provided you are sensible.”
“It sounds perfectly straightforward,” said Sakti, who had never been sensible in her life. “When do we leave?”