The Love That Split the World(39)

“‘I changed my mind,’ he told her and went to sit by her on the bed. He seemed different to her, and when he tried to embrace her, she became afraid and fought him off.

“‘Why do you act as my husband when you are my brother?’ she said angrily, but again he tried to hold her as a lover, and she fought him off again, and this time he left.

“The next day the brother returned home, but his sister would not speak to him, though usually they spent many hours talking. ‘My sister,’ the brother said, ‘Why do you treat me as one hated? What have I done to deserve such a change in your love toward me?’

“‘You know what you’ve done,’ the sister answered. ‘You harmed me and broke our bond.’ But the brother insisted he didn’t know what she was talking about, so the sister told him plainly, ‘Yesterday you embraced me as a lover, and today I can’t look at you.’

“‘My precious sister,’ the brother said, ‘I was not here yesterday. I was hunting. You must have met my friend, who looks like me in every way.’ The sister was angry that her brother had given such an outlandish excuse. ‘Do not treat me in that way again,’ she said, and for many days he seemed to be his old self.

“Finally the brother went away to hunt again, and as before, the sister saw someone who looked just like her brother and wore his clothes, hiding in the brush near their home. He followed her back inside, and this time when he tried to hold her, she tore at his face with her nails until he fled.

“Three days passed and her brother returned again with a deer he had hunted. Again she refused to speak to him, and again he spoke gently to her, saying, ‘Sister, you’re very angry with me. Has my friend been here again?’

“She did not answer him, but he repeated the question, and she broke down and wept. ‘How could you attack me again, when I had come to trust you? I see my nail marks on your face. I know it was you, brother.’

“But the brother denied it. ‘My face was scratched by thorns as I hunted,’ he told her, ‘but if you scratched my friend, that is why my face is scratched—whatever happens to one of us then happens to the other.’ But she didn’t believe him. She avoided him as much as possible until he left again to hunt, and this time when he returned and attacked her, she tore his hunting shirt from his throat to his belly button and threw hot grease on his stomach, burning him and causing him to flee.

“As before, her brother returned, and as before he denied having been there though his shirt was torn and his stomach was burned just as his sister remembered it. ‘I tore my shirt while climbing a tree, and I burned myself while cooking the meat I hunted,’ he tried to tell her, but she would not believe him, and he saw what had to be done. ‘Sister, I will find my double and bring him here to prove to you it was not me who hurt you, and for what he’s done to you, I’ll kill him, though it may kill me too. That is how important it is to me that you know my heart and my brotherly love for you.’

“The sister did not believe him, and the brother left to find his double. He wasn’t gone long in the woods before he returned, dragging with him a man who looked exactly like him and whose clothes were torn in just the same way. ‘You’ve betrayed me by hurting my sister,’ the brother said to his double, ‘and now you must die.’ He lifted his bow and arrow and shot his double through the heart. The sister looked on as blood poured from the identical man’s chest and he slumped to his knees. Then she heard a second noise behind her—a battle cry—and when she turned, she saw her brother fall, an identical wound over his heart, blood spreading out through his shirt.

“The sister knew then she was safe, but her heart was broken.”



The story had upset me when I first heard it, but now it takes on a whole new meaning. I’m sure Grandmother knew what was going to happen today, how Matt’s feelings toward me would change so violently that he’d seem like a different person, one who saw me as a stranger. She had to have—why else would she have told me that story? And how many of her other stories contain hidden warnings too?

When Mom and I get home from the movie, I go to my room and record the story of Brother Black and Brother Red for Alice. I’m in the middle of it when someone knocks on my door.

“Yeah,” I answer, and Coco pokes her strawberry blond head in the door, looking worried.

“Can I come in?”

I sit up and pat the bed. “What’s going on?”

She perches on the edge of the mattress and crosses her legs. She looks more and more like Mom every day, and while not on the school’s dance team, she takes ballet and jazz, and she definitely inherited Mom’s dignified grace. “Mom told me about the movies. That Matt has a girlfriend?”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”

“So weird—I’ve heard nothing about it.” Her pretty, deep blue eyes come up to mine. “Is it Rachel Hanson?”

I avoid her gaze, pulling a stray thread in my quilt. “I don’t know.”

Coco twirls her loose waves around her finger. “Abby told me what happened at Matt’s birthday—that they hooked up. I thought Matt was better than that. I definitely didn’t think they’d date.”

Of course Coco knows. “Matt and I were broken up,” I say. “I told him I didn’t want to date him. He’s free to be with anyone he likes.”