The party went on all day. Isika ate, wandered, talked with her guests, accepted a lot of hugs, and bowed respectfully as the elders arrived. Ivram and Karah hugged her, and Andar and Laylit, Jabari and Gavi’s parents, bowed their heads graciously in her direction.
Isika had just sat down to watch the dancers when her friend Brigid arrived, wreathed in smiles, and plopped a present into Isika’s lap. Isika tore the wrapping off and found a dress, not the traditional tunic that she normally wore, but a robe that fitted at the waist and would flow all the way to the ground when she put it on, made of soft silvery grey weave. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“This is too much,” she told Brigid.
“It is not!” Brigid said. “You know my parents are weavers. This is some of their cloth.”
That was only more impressive. Brigid was a rescued Worker, with long, impossibly straight brown hair, pale, freckled skin and deep blue eyes. Brigid’s adoptive parents were Maweel master weavers, the best of their kind, steeped in the shaping magic that enabled Maweel to create the beautiful things they made almost effortlessly. The weavers had a large guild, and the gift for weaving magic usually passed from parents to children, but every so often, someone else in Maween would turn out to have the gift. Young Maweel children who would make good weavers were easy to spot, as they were always weaving grasses into baskets or hair into tiny doll shawls. Though not originally from Maween, Brigid had turned out to love weaving, and she was gifted at it. It was something mysterious and wonderful to the Maweel: the fact that their rescued children often found that a gift burst out of them when they were in Maween air. Brigid was also gifted with protection, so she had gone on a seeking journey to explore that side of herself.
“Thank you,” Isika said, smoothing one hand over the dress.
“You’re welcome. I’m so happy to know you, Isika. You’re one of my dearest friends.”
Isika smiled. She felt the same way about Brigid, but didn’t know how to say it. She and the other girl had grown close after they returned home after their last journey. They rode horses for hours, or sat under Isika’s favorite tree when both of them were done with their day’s work. Brigid, like Jabari, had chosen to stop seeking for a time, though Isika knew it was because Brigid’s parents were afraid, more than anything else. There was too much new danger, with more poison than ever coming from the Great Waste. They didn’t want Brigid to go back to being a seeker.
“Let’s go to your room,” Brigid said. “You can try it on. I want to see what it looks like!.”
“Right this moment?” Isika asked.
“Yes!” Brigid laughed. “I’m excited, I’ve been working on it for days. Mom helped me sew it, but it was my first fine cloth. Try it on just to see. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”
Isika shrugged. “Sure.” The dancing and music was still going at full strength and she liked the idea of a break.
On their way into the house Isika heard the voice that she’d been waiting for. Aria. She came! Isika thought, her heart leaping. Aria was in the entryway to the house, out of sight. Isika started to go to her, the dress forgotten, but then she heard Aria speak, and her heart sank back down into her chest. She put a hand out to stop Brigid before they turned the corner.
Aria was speaking in a low, intense voice. “She always needs attention. Look at this party! Lights, dancing, all for her. She couldn’t have a perfectly good party at the palace, oh no, she had to have everything here.”
“Isn’t it simpler to have it here?” another voice asked. It sounded like one of Aria’s friends from school.
“No, she would never do something because it was simpler, trust me. You should have seen her when we had to rescue her on the seeking mission. She made such a fuss about being hurt that Jabari did everything for her, running for everything she wanted, and then…” Aria took a gasping breath, ”…at the very end she paralyzed us so she could do everything herself and take all the credit. She makes me sick.”
Isika couldn’t breathe. Pain radiated in her chest in a way she hadn’t felt since her mother died. Brigid had a death grip on her arm, and Isika had no idea what Brigid was trying to do because she couldn’t move if she wanted to.
“Aria, you’re sounding bad again,” the friend said in a low voice. “I’m going to get your mom. You need to go back to the healers.”
Isika heard the sound of her sister sobbing, and underneath the pain she felt deep sympathy and love. Something was tightening around her heart, squeezing and squeezing. Everything in her wanted to go to Aria to comfort her. But just before Isika burst into the room to throw her arms around her sister and beg her to feel better, Jabari walked up behind Isika and Brigid in the corridor.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and Isika shook her head wildly, putting a finger to her lips. Brigid grabbed both of their wrists and pulled them into a nearby room, closing the door behind them. For a moment, Isika stared at the room without recognizing where she was, but eventually she came back to herself and saw that they were crowded into the bathing room. She blinked and put her back to the wall, slowly sliding down until she was sitting on the floor, staring at the stone tiles, worn smooth by years of people walking on them.
Brigid whirled to face her. “It means nothing, Isika,” she said fiercely. “Don’t think about it for even one more minute, it means nothing, do you hear me?”
“How can it mean nothing?” Isika asked. Her voice sounded strange to her, as though it came from far away. “Did you hear her? I’ve never imagined that she could feel so much… contempt…” her voice broke and she couldn’t continue. She buried her face in her hands.
“Is anyone going to tell me what happened?” Jabari asked.
Isika couldn’t explain or feel anything but pain. Brigid filled him in quickly.
“You heard what Aria’s friend said,” she said to Isika again when she had finished. “She’s not well. You know that!”
“The arrows,” Jabari said. “Why can’t anyone heal them?”
“Most of them are out,” Isika said. “But one is different, and no one can touch it. The healers said it’s stronger because it pierced the wound that never healed. The one from her sending out, when Nirloth threw her away. Oh, I hate that this travels with us. I wish we could be finished with the evil of that place forever!”
The arrows that poisoned Aria weren’t literal arrows. Aria had been sacrificed, sent out in a tiny boat by the Workers, to what they assumed was her death among the waves. But Aria, at nearly eight years old, became the oldest rescued child ever found in one of the tiny boats. She was traumatized when they found her, because she hadn’t been asleep like most of the children who were sent out, but had lain there awake, terrified of the water. The Maweel had rescued her and brought her back to the city, where Aria had been adopted by parents who loved her. Then, on their last journey, Aria had stumbled into a trap meant for Isika, and the trap had recognized Aria as someone of Isika’s blood. It sent the poison arrows into her instead. She was already horrifically wounded from the betrayal of being sacrificed, so when the arrows found her, the poison had nearly killed her.
“Her parents told my parents that she’s barely the same girl,” Jabari said, sliding down to sit against the wall across from Isika. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault! Those arrows were meant for me! And they hurt her instead. It’s the same thing that happened when our father chose to send her out and I stayed.”
This was the most painful part, more agonizing than any beating she had ever received from her stepfather, more painful even than her mother’s death. She had helplessly stood there, watching, when Aria’s boat was pushed out into the waves.
“The healers are searching for a cure,” Brigid said. “And they’re treating her often. It helps.”
“But they say that every time the poison floods her, it gets a little worse,” Isika said.
She couldn’t say any more, and the silence grew heavy in the little room. It was breaking Isika’s heart. And Ben was barely able to talk about it. Aria was a gorgeous, lively girl who was being consumed from the inside. Even though Isika knew she shouldn’t take the things her sister said personally, she couldn’t help hearing the words over and over in her mind. She wanted Aria to know how much she loved her, wanted it badly, but it seemed that there was no way to make her feel loved. She was wild with the desire to help, but Isika was the last person in the world Aria wanted to talk to.
Aria trusted Brigid, so Brigid had become their link. She kept Isika filled in on how Aria was doing, and dropped hints to Aria about how much Isika cared for her.
Isika saw then that Brigid hadn’t told her everything Aria said about her. She looked at Brigid, suddenly sure there had been more harsh words than Brigid had passed along. She had a sense of what it had been like for Brigid to be in the middle. How kind her friend was, to be willing.
Isika jumped to her feet and hugged Brigid hard, stepping away to look at her two friends; short, dreamy Brigid and tall, energetic Jabari, frowning slightly as he looked back at her. She found she had tears in her eyes.
“I don’t even want this! You know it’s true, Jabari. I never asked to be World Whisperer, all I want to be is to be the same as everyone else. Nobody believes me, but you two have had years of being normal Maweel kids and as soon as I get here I’m caught up in all this…”
“Stop right there,” Jabari said. He leaned back and folded his arms over his chest, and didn’t say anything else. He just looked at her. If he had said something, argued, Isika could have pushed back, using the anger that was roaring like a furnace inside her, but his silence and his gentle eyes made her feel suddenly, hugely ashamed, and she sighed. Her anger grew cold and turned to sadness. Brigid’s eyes were wide and suspiciously shiny.
“I’m sorry,” Isika whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I’ll find a way to be the right thing, to do the right thing. I don’t—“
“Today is today,” Jabari said. “No one is asking you to be World Whisperer today. You only have to go out there and be somewhat sane around all these people who love you. That’s probably enough for you to deal with.”
“Some of them love me,” Isika muttered, but she smiled at him as he put a hand on her shoulder, jerking it back quickly at the shock of colliding magic they felt whenever they touched. “You’re right, Yab,” she used Gavi’s pet name for him, something she’d started doing recently and had continued when he didn’t object. “Having you, this family, is a gift. What would I do without you? If you hadn’t found me on that beach, I would still be in the Worker village, gathering wood every day and working in a temple I despised. Or I would be dead.”
She wiped at her face and took deep breaths, standing straighter, preparing to go back to the party that celebrated her small, conflicted self. She wished above all for her mother. Brigid linked arms with her, and they walked out to the party, Jabari just behind them.
“Oh, you didn’t leave the dress on?” Auntie asked, when they arrived in the courtyard. Isika shook her head. She didn’t tell Auntie she hadn’t even tried it on.
“I forgot about it,” she said. Auntie gave her a quick look and Isika knew she saw that something was wrong. She smiled at Auntie to reassure her, and searched the crowd, but she didn’t see Aria anywhere.
“Aria’s family took her home,” Auntie said in a low voice. “Her mother said to give you a birthday greeting. Aria wasn’t feeling well.”
Isika nodded, not daring to meet Auntie’s eyes again, and after a moment, Auntie squeezed her shoulder and put a fruit pastry into her hand, continuing on her way to hand out food. Isika ate the delicious pastry, and stood trying to get her face under control. She hadn’t even finished chewing the last bite when her hand was caught and she turned to see Gavi, pulling her into the mass of dancers.
He laughed at the expression on her face, and she shoved away the sad, grieving parts of her that missed her little sister and her mother. She smiled back at him, and she danced.
Their dance followed the drums, and Gavi had always been good at dancing. Isika followed his steps, trying to remember what she had learned in the last year. Nearby, she saw Ivram dancing with Karah, Jabari dancing with Ivy, Auntie leaping higher than Isika had thought possible. Kital and Ibba jumped around to their own rhythm, in the middle of the floor. The drums picked up speed and suddenly Isika was laughing, she couldn’t have stopped dancing if she wanted to. The evening light made everyone beautiful, the trees swayed overhead, and the thankfulness that she had tried to force before welled up without effort, filling her whole soul until her dance felt like a prayer.