MUNA CAME TO herself slowly.
She lay in a bed with clean-smelling sheets. A soothing repetitive noise filled her ears, like the sound of waves crashing against the shore. It took her a moment to realise it was snoring.
She touched her nose, wondering, and saw that her hands were a mortal’s hands: brown-skinned and short-fingered, with squarish palms and pale half-moons of fingernails. Through the gaps between her fingers she caught sight of a figure—an old woman, dozing in a chair by the bed. The snoring came from her.
Muna sat bolt upright, electrified. “Mak Genggang!”
The witch stirred, snorting. “Eh? Are you awake, then?”
Memory rushed in upon Muna: the absorption of herself and Sakti into the Serpent, Saktimuna’s rampage, Henrietta’s intervention, and the final breach. She gasped, “Henrietta—how is she? Is she safe?”
Mak Genggang leant over her, her expression inscrutable. “I should have thought you would have asked after your sister first of all. She was always your chief concern before.”
Muna blinked. “But I know what became of my sister. I devoured her.”
Then she realised what Mak Genggang meant.
“Oh!” she said. “But Sakti is well, isn’t she?” Sakti’s flesh might have been divided from hers, but they were one soul still. This time the link between their minds had not been severed, so that Muna knew Sakti to be on the other side of the wall—intact, untroubled and fast asleep.
“But Henrietta is a mortal,” said Muna. “And I was trying to eat her!”
“Well, you did not succeed, if that is what you fear,” said Mak Genggang. “Saktimuna devoured no mortals. It seems she was on the verge of doing it, but according to Miss Stapleton, the Serpent was suddenly taken ill. She disappeared, leaving the two of you in her place.”
That, Muna remembered. “And Miss Stapleton? You have spoken with her?”
Mak Genggang nodded. “She is unharmed.”
Relieved of her anxiety, Muna settled back in bed and gazed at Mak Genggang. There was no trace of fear or awe in the witch’s countenance. She looked back, frowning slightly, just as she would have looked at the mortal girl Muna had once been.
A great calm happiness bubbled up inside Muna.
“We are in England still?” she said in wonder. “When did you come, mak cik?”
“I arrived this morning,” said Mak Genggang. “I should have come sooner, for Prunella asked for me when they could not wake you. But the Unseen is in a state of considerable disorder and I was delayed. You should have summoned me earlier, child. Surely you knew I would not withhold my help.”
“I did not know how,” said Muna. Her brow furrowed. “You have left Janda Baik undefended?”
Mak Genggang waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, the British will not dare touch us while I am in London at the invitation of their Sorceress Royal. What is more, I am attending upon the True Queens of the Unseen Realm. Tuan Farquhar may know little of the Unseen but he knows enough to fear the name of its rulers!”
“The True Queens?”
“That is your title now,” said Mak Genggang. “Yours and that wilful child Sakti’s. Devouring the incumbent is the traditional means by which the throne of the Unseen passes to its heir. Your usurper—she that was Queen before—consumed your six parents in order to gain the throne, after she had exiled you. And now you have consumed her.”
It was only now that Muna became aware of the magic surging in her veins—not only Saktimuna’s magic, but also that of the former Fairy Queen and her King, whom the Serpent had consumed in her wrath. The power coursed hot under her skin. She must fairly glow with magic to anyone who had the eyes to see it.
That was what the witch had come for, of course—the magic that had protected Janda Baik. Muna did not blame her. Mak Genggang’s presence brought with it a vision of the island, extraordinarily vivid—its rich earth under the omnipresent sun, and the palms that fringed the shore. Suddenly she was overcome by the homesickness that had never really left her since she had set off down Mak Genggang’s path through the Unseen. A wonderful idea came to her.
“I could come back to Janda Baik,” said Muna. “Stand guard over it, as I did before.”
Mak Genggang did not respond as she expected. The old woman only looked thoughtful.
“It is not that we would not be grateful for your protection,” she said. “You know how we are placed. Without the magic you lent us for so many years, we shall be sadly exposed.”
Muna met her eyes. “But . . .”
“But you cannot come back,” said the witch. “And you know it.”
She was not unkind, but her tone was unyielding.
Muna had not expected the blow. Her happiness dissolved at once.
“You could not stop me,” she said, gulping down her hurt.
“Who would govern the Unseen Realm?” said Mak Genggang. “You have not seen what I saw on my journey here.”
Muna could imagine the chaos that reigned in the Hidden World following the abrupt removal of its monarch. Conspiracies, struggles for power, wars . . . the very idea wearied her. She would not have minded it as the Serpent who had been thrown out of Fairy. Then, the incessant intrigues of the Palace of the Unseen had been all she had known. But she had since spent centuries in cleaner waters.
“Sakti could be Queen,” said Muna. “It would not worry her. She does not mind power—indeed, she likes it.”
“And that means she will be just and merciful?” said Mak Genggang. “She will seek to resolve difficulties with patience, taking the winding path where it leads true, disregarding easier courses where she would come to grief? She will extend shelter to the weakest of her subjects—correct the wrongs your sister wrought?”
Muna was silent. She was remembering the imps imprisoned in the lamps in the caverns beneath the Palace of the Unseen, and the offhanded manner in which Sakti had said, Sometimes they weep.
“Sakti is not all bad,” said Muna.
“No. But all that is in her is spirit and magic and love of self,” said Mak Genggang. “The True Queen will need more than that if she is to put the Unseen Realm to rights.”
“But why must I put the Unseen to rights?” Muna protested, even as the weight of the responsibility settled upon her shoulders. “I did not spoil it.”
“Why ask such a question when you know the answer?” said Mak Genggang. “You know the rule that governs all magic. Nothing can be taken that is not paid for. Perhaps you might have evaded your duties if you had stopped at recovering the Virtu, but you could not consume the powers of your sister and her consort without incurring a debt. You owe that debt to your subjects—to the kingdom you have inherited.”
Muna bowed her head, looking at her hands on the bed sheets. They were the old Muna’s hands, but she herself was no longer the old Muna, bound to no one save Sakti.
For a time they were silent—as much as Mak Genggang had to say, she was practised, too, in silence, as all witches must be. It was Muna who broke it.
“Will you teach us?” she said.
Mak Genggang looked startled. “Teach you? Your Majesty knows a great deal more magic than I do now.”
“I beg you will not call me that,” said Muna, disturbed. “‘Child’ will do perfectly well. But I meant, will you teach us how to rule? Sakti and I are not quite the same as Saktimuna—and even she never learnt how to be a raja.”
It was the first thing she had said that surprised the witch.
“Very well,” said Mak Genggang, after a pause. “I will teach you what I can.”
She rose, putting the back of her hand against Muna’s forehead. “But now it is time for you to rise. You seem to have suffered little harm from your adventures. Will you take a meal? You will not need mortal sustenance anymore, but it will reassure your English friends to see you. Your Miss Stapleton has been wild with worry on your behalf. She would be here all day if her family could spare her.”
Warmth rose in Muna’s cheeks.
“She is not my Miss Stapleton,” she began to say, before she realised how absurd it would sound to protest, as though she thought Mak Genggang was implying more than she could mean. She swallowed her words.
“I will come,” she said instead.
Muna had indeed never felt healthier. She was wholly refreshed, full of vigour, and ready to spring out of bed. She sat up, and for the first time noticed something odd. She threw off the sheets and gaped down at herself.
“Did not you know?” said Mak Genggang.
“No!” said Muna faintly.
Stretched out on the bed, instead of her own ordinary legs, was a serpent’s tail, covered in shining blue-green scales—evidence, if any were yet needed, that the girl Muna was gone forever.