Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(61)
“I can’t believe it,” Lina said, her voice tremulous. “She was someone else, all this time. I talked to her while she taught me, Riss. I told her so much, about you and Mama and . . . about how hard it was, sometimes. It felt so good, being around her. Like doing the right thing. Who knows what all she learned from me?”
I squeezed her hand. “It’s not your fault. How could you have known? And if she was family, somehow, maybe it was the right thing. Luka, is there anything else in there?”
He twisted, rummaging in the drawer. I could see his spine stiffen and he turned back to us, holding something that looked like a scroll. He offered it to me and I accepted it gingerly, breathing out a sigh of pleasure as the fabric slid like water over my palm. If it was vellum, it was softer than I had ever thought that would feel, like felt or deerskin as I carefully unrolled it, its fabric whispering over the embroidered duvet without a snag.
Unscrolled to its full length, it spanned across the bed. I could feel Lina’s and Niko’s breath fanning over my neck as I ran my finger up its length. Like an illuminated manuscript, the edges were filled with beautiful women in black and gray, rendered in the bare minimum of strokes it took to hold them. One had hair that cascaded to the floor, butterflies suspended in its length; another hung upside down, one ankle and one wrist wrapped in the hint of trailing bolts of silk. A third had leopard spots patterned on her skin, and a fourth sat cross-legged in the suggestion of a winter storm, some of the snowflakes as large around as her limbs.
They surrounded what looked like a family tree, but with first names only, and no years marked. And instead of spidering branches, the names ran down a single column, two in every generation. In each, one was crossed out with a glittering silver strike-through, and the other provided the snaking line leading down to the next two names. I saw Naisha’s name about eight lines up; it sprang alive from the parchment, more embellished than any of the others. Maybe it meant ownership, a mark that this scroll belonged to her.
“Look,” Malina whispered, her voice catching. “It’s us.”
It was—we were at the bottom, both of our names in black calligraphy that reminded me of Mama’s fine handwriting, though this was even more stylized and sharply graceful, as if each name had been rendered in a single perfect stroke like a lovely fencing stab. The two names above us were Faisali and Anais. Anais was struck out with silver, and Faisali connected to the two of us. The last third of the scroll was blank.
“But that’s not Jasmina’s name,” I said.
“And Natalija’s face wasn’t her face,” Lina reminded me. “Maybe this used to be Mama’s name?”
“Wait,” Niko said. Her hoarse voice sounded scratchier than usual, almost warbling. “Look.”
Lina and I followed her finger up the strange, laddered tree. At the very top was a single name, rendered with none of the flair. Because it needed none. Just its four stark letters were enough.
MARA, the scroll proclaimed at its apex. Hundreds of lines separated us from her, but the connection was direct—Iris and Malina at the bottom, Mara at the top. The blood flowed from her straight down to us, connecting us to her through ribbons of ink.
She was the first mother.
She was what we’d come from.
TWENTY
?I?A JOVAN HAD ALREADY GONE TO BED BY THE TIME WE staggered in, Niko and Luka having walked us home. He’d be surprised in the morning to find us there, after having been told that we would be spending the night at the Damjanac house, but we’d wanted to be alone, together. And even talking to him in the light of day was difficult to imagine. Lina and I had stepped off the edge of the earth in the night, and the coming morning felt like a different world, some undiscovered continent. A modern age full of mundane things, like McDonald’s, talk shows, and machines, that would either never come or had already passed us by.
As if we were the sole survivors of an apocalypse, even with the rest of the world spinning around us fast asleep.
We’d tucked the scroll into the farthest back of one of the knobbly drawers. It was too much for either of us to look at any longer. Then we’d talked in circles for an hour, facing each other with hands tangled.
“If she’s alive—if Mara’s alive,” I began. “And we’re related to her . . .”
“But how could she be, whoever—whatever—she is? Did you see all those names, Riss? If that’s a family tree, that would make her, what, thousands of years old? That’s impossible. There are no . . . no witch-goddesses that are just too interesting to die. No matter what the legend says.”
“Well, there’s clearly witches,” I pointed out. “There’s us, and Mama—who didn’t die when she should have. There’s Sorai and Naisha, possibly Dunja. And how do you even know the two of us are categorically mortal? We’ve never been sick, not in any real way. We haven’t tried to die so far, so we can’t know what would happen if we did.”
“Let’s not make an experiment out of it yet, maybe?”
“Agree. Early yet.”
“It’s just—” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s crazy to think it.”
“You’ve felt her, too, though,” I argued. “We both saw her in the dream, and we’ve been feeling her through the ribbons somehow. She’s alive. Or at least a piece of her is. Otherwise, what’s happening to us?”