Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(39)
Thinking of him put me in mind of my flaring gleam, like a candle flame caught in a cross breeze. “Lina, do you feel like you’ve been getting stronger at all? Or more unpredictable, anyway? It kept happening to me at Our Lady, like in the café. Also, I’m not sure if that’s all it was, but I almost hated being in there.”
“Yes!” Lina burst out. “Not about the strength—I’m not feeling much different, though maybe it’s been a little easier to sing things out—but there was something about that place. This feeling, you know, like when you’re visiting with someone and you can tell they’re just itching for you to leave?”
“Hmm, a bit like that,” I said. “Though it was more . . . visceral for me. More mutual, maybe. It wanted me out. And I wanted to hurt it.”
“So, what else?” Luka said, drumming his fingers on the table. “This is an equation, like everything else. A really damned weird one, but still. The more variables we can fill in, the better we’ll understand it.”
“Mathematics to the rescue!” Niko cheered under her breath, giving a sarcastic fist pump. “Calculus will find a way!”
“Oh, shush, brat. It’s just a way to consider it. Think of it as a criminal case, if that works better for your gnatty brain. The more clues we have, the closer we are to understanding how the whole is supposed to look. Right now we have Jasmina, our Schr?dinger’s cat. Alive and not alive.”
“Luka!” Niko hissed. “She’s their mother. You can’t just turn her into a physics paradox.”
“I’m just trying to help, and this is the only place I know to start,” Luka said equably, squeezing the back of my neck. “Why don’t you two walk us through what else you know?”
Lina and I took turns respooling the past few days. Niko’s brow had wrinkled while Lina and I described the nightmare of Mara, and she broke in before I could even finish telling them about Sorai and Naisha.
“The woman that you saw, in the winter valley. You said one of her names was Marzanna?”
“Yes.” I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, a chill running down my spine like a trickle of water as I recited the rest. “Also Mara, Mar?ena, Marmora. There were others, too, I think. Why?”
“It sounds familiar, is all. I can’t quite remember it—it might have been a song Mama sang us, or maybe one of her stories, Luka, remember the ones?”
He pulled a face. “How could I forget? We probably had a few nightmares of our own about them, not that that ever stopped Mama.”
“She just wanted us to remember, is all,” Niko countered. “That’s what we come from; it’s not something to be scared of, or ashamed. I wrote a lot of them down in the last months, along with her tinctures and recipes, when she”—her slim throat worked—“when it got worse than bad. I’ll look through them for you when we get home.”
We all fell silent, watching the sun set. Layers of mountains reared above the bay, each receding tier like a paler charcoal rendering of the first. The pinks of the sky turned the rippling water a silvered mauve, with the early moon rising fat above the mountain peaks. Despite everything, I could feel my heart swell with the majesty. Sitting here, you understood why so many monasteries and churches clustered in Montenegro, perched on every other cliff top and wedged into folds of mountain stone. It was beautiful on top of beautiful with beautiful tucked inside, like one of my fractals, and watching it you could almost sense the slipstream of eternity, the holy, breathing soul of the universe.
The waiter returned then, carrying a tray loaded with the gleaming catch of the day. A massive two-pound bass served as a centerpiece, with fleshy sea bream fanned out around it, along with an ugly, gawping monkfish. As we waited for the fish to grill, we tore into dense, chewy rolls spread with kajmak—the buttery cream cheese made from ripened curd—washing our bites down with tart, tannin-laced sips of the dark Vranac merlot Luka had ordered.
I was wondering if I’d even have room for the fish when Malina let her fork clatter to her plate, her eyes brimming. “The kajmak is perfect. The balance is exactly right. Mama would have loved it.”
The roll turned to ash in my mouth, and I struggled to swallow. Luka draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me against his side, sliding my chair along with me. “Hey, now. It’s not a sad thing. Flavor was everything to Jasmina, even I knew that. Even before I knew it meant anything more.” He gestured toward the dusky water. “And she would have liked that, wouldn’t she? Maybe . . . maybe she’d have made it into one of those little cake squares. What are those things called?”
“Petits fours,” Malina whispered. “It would be really pale pink ones, with mille-feuille and strawberry filling, and a sprinkle of sea salt for the surprise. And silver foil for the decoration.”
I took another swig of the wine, feeling the kick of warmth in my stomach displace the hurt. Maybe that’s why they had named it after a vranac, a rearing black horse, I thought muzzily. Because it bucked so nicely in your belly. If I had another glass, I would be fully tipsy.
Our fish arrived, and the waiter prepared it for us, separating the steaming, flaky white meat from the tiny needles of the skeleton in one smooth slice with the fish knife. He slid portions of the bass and the sea bream onto our plates, complete with the salty crisp of skin beneath, along with potatoes boiled with spinach. I ladled dollops of the slick marinade onto the meat—olive oil, parsley, and minced garlic—letting each tender bite saturate my mouth.