The next day
The forests of Janda Baik
HAVING DECIDED TO adopt Muna’s proposal, Mak Genggang lost no time. The very day after the witch had received Tuan Farquhar’s messenger, Muna and Sakti set off for England.
I should have known what would come of my having ideas! thought Muna, as she picked her way across the jungle floor, keeping an anxious eye on her sister’s back. Now they were banished from Janda Baik, perhaps for good for all Muna knew—for Mak Genggang had not said when they might return.
But they went for Sakti, Muna reminded herself. It was selfish to repine, when Sakti still suffered from her injury—that unnatural absence, carved into her flesh. There had been no time to look at it again this morning.
Muna opened her mouth, but before she could ask to see the blemish, Sakti turned her head. Her eyes were alight.
“I have been thinking,” she said, “of what it would be like to meet a weretiger!”
Muna glanced around nervously, though she had neither seen nor heard signs of any beast larger than a moth since they had entered the jungle. “There is no risk of that, is there?”
“Well, you know they say there are villages of the creatures deep in the jungle,” said Sakti cheerfully. “Cities, indeed, larger than Malacca! But tigers are unsociable animals; perhaps they have concealed themselves with magic. Still, I am surprised we have not seen a single spirit yet. The hantu tetek, perhaps, flying down to seize us and smother us in her bosom—”
“Those are just a story to frighten children with.”
“Or the hantu langut,” said Sakti, “that has a dog’s head and a man’s body, and stalks the jungle with his face turned upwards. They say even to look upon him once brings death!
“I expect you would rather meet a bunian,” she added, in a tone of faint condescension. “I would not mind it, but there is not much to distinguish them from mortals, save their being invisible.”
Muna glared at Sakti. “I would rather meet none of those creatures—” But Muna swallowed her words, recollecting that they were in the jungle, treading earth that belonged more to spirits than mankind.
“I wish you would not speak so recklessly!” she added in a whisper. “What if you should draw the fine ones’ attention? Recall that we are on the boundary of the Unseen Realm!”
“Oh, we have passed that,” said Sakti nonchalantly. “We are in the Hidden World now! Cannot you smell it? The air is full of magic!” She took an appreciative breath of air.
Muna looked around again, but she saw nothing to mark their passage from the known world to the unknown. The same jungle surrounded them, populated by familiar trees. The only noise was the incessant background ringing of cicadas’ voices, interrupted by the occasional birdcall.
She felt a mix of relief and disappointment. She had no desire to encounter a settlement of weretigers or any other spirits, so far from Mak Genggang’s civilising influence, but it was somewhat of a comedown to find the Unseen World so little different from the mortal realm.
“I have never smelt magic before,” said Muna, “so I suppose there is no reason why I should have started now.”
“It is wonderfully invigorating,” Sakti assured her. “No wonder the witch is so hale despite her great age, if she comes here often!”
Sakti’s eyes did seem brighter. Since Sakti had disclosed her complaint, it had seemed to Muna in her anxiety that Sakti was fading visibly, her ill health evident in her pallor and thin limbs. Now, however, Sakti’s face looked round and full; a healthy colour tinted her cheeks. Muna recollected that she had meant to ask after Sakti’s injury.
“What of your wound, adik?” she said. “I have not looked at it yet today.”
Sakti raised her eyes to the canopy, but she began to unknot her sarong. “There will hardly be anything new to see,” she said, “only more nothing—oh!”
“What is it?” said Muna, but then she saw what had made Sakti cry out.
The unnatural absence was restored. In its place was Sakti’s flesh, whole and unblemished.
“I am cured!” said Sakti, delighted.
It was no illusion—when Muna reached out, she touched Sakti’s warm, living flesh, as solid as Muna’s own. Muna had not realised till then what a burden of anxiety she had been carrying. Relief washed over her; tears sprang to her eyes.
“But this is wonderful,” she cried, embracing her sister. “Alhamdulillah!”
“I told you I needed only to escape that woman’s influence to be restored.”
Muna lowered her arms, her joy abruptly dampened. “You cannot still think Mak Genggang put the curse on us? After all we learnt at the King’s house? What about ‘Midsomer’?”
Sakti tossed her head, looking mulish. “Perhaps the English magician is her accomplice. Indeed, now I think of it, nothing is likelier. She said the name sounded familiar, and even now we are being sent to her ally in England . . .”
“You know you do not believe that,” said Muna crossly. “We are no farther from Mak Genggang’s influence than we were when we went to Malacca, and your blemish did not disappear there.” She had insisted on checking this upon their arrival in Malacca. “It is perfectly evident it is not a matter of distance from Mak Genggang.”
“So you say,” said Sakti, “but we are farther from her influence than we can ever have been since she found us. You forget that we are in the Unseen Realm now!”
A thought struck Muna. “Could you take us back to Janda Baik without getting lost?”
At Muna’s insistence they retraced their steps through the trees, till Sakti said:
“This is Janda Baik again. But why did you wish to return? We shall be late arriving in England.”
Muna ignored this; her suspicion had possessed her. “Your stomach, adik—let us see it!”
Sakti pressed a hand to her person with exaggerated patience, humouring Muna, but her expression altered at the touch. She untied her sarong slowly, revealing a hole at her navel. It was larger now, spreading up her torso, as though she were fading away from the centre.
Muna took a deep breath, pushing back her horror. She must be calm for Sakti’s sake. “Let us go back, adik.”
They did not speak again until they had recrossed the border between the Seen and Unseen Worlds. This time Muna knew when they had passed over into the realm of the spirits, for Sakti let out a sigh of relief.
“Are you restored?” said Muna.
Sakti nodded, patting the knot of her sarong.
“Whole again,” she said, with a crooked smile, not in the least convincing.
They walked until the witch’s path came into view, lighting the way through the Unseen Realm to England.
“I don’t believe it is Mak Genggang’s influence that has had this effect,” said Muna finally. “It is being in the Unseen World that has cured you. Janda Baik—does not suit you.”
Sakti nodded. She was more subdued than usual, shaken by what was happening to her. “I felt better directly once I breathed in this air. It must be the magic of the Unseen.”
Muna nodded. “Perhaps mortal magic lacks the potency to lift the effects of the curse—even the magic of a witch of Mak Genggang’s stature. You needed spirits’ magic to heal.”
She swallowed, for the thought that followed was unwelcome.
“But if that is right,” she said, “you must not go to England.”
Sakti blinked. “Why not?”
“You ought not to return to the mortal realm,” said Muna. “Not till we have broken the curse and you may leave the Unseen World in safety. Who is to say the disease will not strike you again in England?”
“Do you mean we should stay here?” said Sakti. She brightened. “I wonder that never occurred to me before. It will be far more interesting to explore the Unseen than to go to England!”
“I am glad you think so,” said Muna, shivering. She did not at all like the thought. Perhaps if she were a witch there might have been some appeal to remaining in the Unseen, despite its dangers. She thought with wistful longing of the village they had left that morning, where they had been safe from wild magic and ravenous spirits.
But Janda Baik had only been a refuge for herself. Its safety had been an illusion, for it had been murdering her sister by degrees.
“We cannot stay here,” she said, looking around at the wilderness. “But there must be civilised places even in the Unseen—villages where one could stay.”
Sakti reflected. “Mak Genggang taught us a spell for calling out the rain. With a little alteration it should serve to summon spirits. We could befriend them—explain who we are, you know, and work upon their sympathies.”
Muna was about to remind Sakti that the sort of spirits that haunted jungles were not known for their broad sympathies, nor for their tendency to look kindly upon mortals with the effrontery to demand their attendance. But Sakti stiffened, her eyes widening.
“I had nearly forgot! I have just the thing to help us.”
They both bore bundles containing various necessaries, as well as gifts for their English hostess. Sakti drew from hers a brown bottle stoppered with a cork, passing it to Muna. “Look!”
“What is this?”
“A talisman,” said Sakti. “Mak Genggang gave it to me. She made me promise I would not use it before we reached England, but if we are to remain here . . .”
“But what does it do?” said Muna. “Is it a potion?” She tilted the bottle, but there did not seem to be anything inside it.
“Oh no,” said Sakti. “There is a sort of djinn inside the bottle.”
“A djinn!” Muna held the bottle up to the light. The glass was murky, but on closer examination she glimpsed swirls of smoke in the bottle. “I had thought Mak Genggang disapproved of entering into compacts with spirits. She says it is an irreligious practice.”
“I expect she is a hypocrite where it suits her,” said Sakti. “Most powerful people are. She thought we might need magical assistance in England. The djinn has a good understanding of witchery and instructions to make itself useful, she said. Shall we summon it now?”
Before Muna could stop her, Sakti took the cork out of the bottle, peering into it.
“Quite empty!” said Sakti, but this did not disconcert her in the least. She made the noise one uses to call chickens to feed:
“Kur, soul! Come out!
I know whence you sprang:
Your mother was resentment;
Your father was greed.
If you do not come out, wild beasts will eat you.
If you do not come out, you shall be a rebel in the sight of God.
I bid thee come!”
Nothing happened. Sakti shook the bottle and repeated the formula, to no apparent effect.
“Are you sure you recited the right verse?” said Muna.
“Certain,” said Sakti. “It is a perfectly typical formula.” She up-ended the bottle with a discontented look. “I tell you what it is. It is that wretched old female! Mak Genggang insisted I should only call forth the djinn in the mortal realm. She said the air of the Unseen would not suit it. I suppose she has put a block upon its being summoned before we reach England. I think that shows a nasty suspicious nature, don’t you? She might have trusted me.”
Muna could not help laughing at Sakti’s pique. “She trusted you to act according to your nature, I suppose! I don’t see what you thought the djinn might do for us, in any case.”
“Why, it is a spirit, and we are in the land of spirits,” said Sakti. “I thought it might act as a guide and interpreter. Perhaps it could even find us a place to stay . . .”
She paused, looking startled.
“Adik?” said Muna.
Sakti’s face screwed up. She let loose an enormous sneeze, dropped the djinn’s bottle, and vanished.
Muna had been reaching for the bottle, meaning to catch it. She crashed to the earth with the bottle in her hand, shrieking, “Adik!”
But Sakti was gone. Muna had been so close to her that she had felt the warmth from her sister’s body, but between one breath and the next she had blinked out of existence.
Muna staggered to her feet, looking around wildly, but an impassive forest surrounded her on every side. She would almost have welcomed the appearance of a tiger or ghoul, for that at least would have been some clue to what had happened to Sakti. But there was nothing and no one—only Muna herself, abandoned in a spirituous jungle, alone with her horror.
“Adik,” called Muna again, fighting back despair. “Sakti!” Her voice cracked on the name.
She knew there would be no answer. Wherever Sakti was now—if indeed she still lived—it was somewhere far beyond Muna’s reach. This was the work of magic, but whose?
Was Sakti the victim of some spirit of the jungle who lurked beyond the limits of Muna’s perception? Or was it their enemy who had wrought this—the curseworker who, growing impatient with draining the spirit from Sakti by degrees, had stolen her outright? Perhaps he had somehow realised that the effects of the curse were lifted once Sakti entered the Unseen Realm. In consequence he had snatched her away.
Muna’s hands were trembling. She looked down at them and realised that she still held the djinn’s bottle.
The cork was lost among the undergrowth, but this was of little consequence, for the bottle was as empty as Sakti had said. Looking into the bottle, Muna saw only a dark smear at its base. Her vision was blurred and she could not tell what it was, but when she wiped her tears away she saw the smear distinctly. It was a streak of dried blood.
“Blood magic,” whispered Muna, with a thrill of dread. She might be no witch herself, but she could not have lived in Mak Genggang’s household without learning something of witchery. This was the strongest sort of magic, mysterious and easily warped to evil ends.
An uncontrollable shivering seized her. She put up a hand to push back her hair. Her forehead was damp with perspiration.
If Sakti had not succeeded in summoning the djinn, it was not likely that Muna would. She recited the verse anyway, just in case, but she was not surprised when nothing happened.
Perhaps Sakti’s disappearance was a mistake, the result of some oddity in the spell for summoning the djinn. Sakti would be back in a moment, miffish and on her dignity, as she always was when she suspected she had made herself look foolish.
But even as the idea flashed through her mind, Muna knew it for self-deception. She repeated the formula again, halfheartedly, for a dull conviction was settling on her. It had been no mistake. Sakti had been taken. Muna was alone, and the djinn would not come.
She raised her head, rubbing her eyes in some irritation. No matter how Muna dried them, they would keep filling up again, and it was necessary for her to see clearly. Ahead the witch’s path still glowed silver, trailing away into the distance.
There was nothing she could do here for Sakti, and the longer she stayed the greater the risk of an encounter with some spirit or wild beast. Loath as she was to leave the place where she had last seen Sakti, her duty was clear—she must seek help.
Her inclination was to go back to Janda Baik, for Mak Genggang was familiar and Muna did not doubt the witch would aid her, for all the trouble Muna’s reappearance would represent. But she had no confidence in her ability to navigate the trackless jungle that lay behind without Sakti’s help. She could not risk getting lost, or stumbling into the spirit settlements of which Sakti had spoken.
In England there would be help. Even if she proved unable to summon Mak Genggang’s djinn there, the English Sorceress Royal was said to be a witch of vast powers, and at the very least there would be some way to convey a message to Mak Genggang, to plead with her for succour. To these great magicians the intervening oceans and continents were as nothing—Mak Genggang had called up the image of the Sorceress Royal in a basin of water when she wished to speak with her. Muna had heard the English witch’s voice herself—it had been as though the Sorceress Royal were in the next room.
Her mind made up, she stopped the mouth of the djinn’s bottle with moss and shoved it into her bundle. She doubted that Sakti would return, yet just in case Muna marked the spot where her sister had vanished with a few stones and twigs, before she straightened up.
The way lay clear before her, illuminated by witch-light. Muna started to run.