The truth is, she won’t remember much about that day, but the brined crocodrilos has to have come from somewhere, and it has been with her for the duration, and will be hanging from the rafters of her witch’s aerie in Kiamo Ko on the day she evaporates from her own history. She will think of herself as having adored Nessarose and cared for her sister always. She will mourn Nessa’s death without recognizing that guilt is part of the chemical composition of grief.
* * *
It’s raining now on the black water and on the green and brown lily pads. The surface of the water puckers, the sound rises all around, as noisy on the river as on the succulents that overhang both banks. If you’re growing up in the wettest part of the world, by the time you’re eight or nine you’ve heard this noise three thousand times already. It rains every day in this part of the world, at least a little. Sometimes more.
Elphie recoils even when a few drops splash off a sloppily handled canoe paddle. But her family works out accommodations for her. Alone of the mission party, Elphie wears boots rather than sandals. Nanny has rooted in the chest of Melena’s castoff clothes and she has repurposed leggings for all four of Elphie’s scrawny green limbs, cutting holes in the toes of stockings for fingerless gloving. Elphie lives under a shallow rattan hat, broad enough to guide rainwater off its eaves. There’s also her famous jungle bumbershoot, which gives young Elphie the air of a junior botanist in the field.
She gets by. Managing her own needs around the weather becomes second nature. It won’t need to be mentioned again, but it’s a condition of hers as real as her preternatural skin tone.
The lily pads circle and float on, in the rain. Some memories disappear around the bend and die while others link arms and make moments into episodes so firm it feels you could walk across the water, walk upon them across time itself.