Chapter 6: High Water

The farmhouse stood dead silent at the end of a long path, invisible from the roadside.

Sadie Crane strode onto the porch and opened the front door, remembering the long abandoned cornfields. Berry bushes and apple trees, the well out back and the pond where they learned to swim. The empty chicken coop and the little goat house. Roasted pecans, strawberry jam, fresh baked bread and doughnuts, corn stew, beans and rice, flatbread, scrambled eggs, baked meat and fish. A fire pit in the backyard. That was how they chose to remember their home.

"Helen's high water," said De'afi.

Viola stepped up onto the porch. She cinched her sleeve, stabbing anxious dents into her forearm.

"Hell and high water," she corrected irritably.

The front door creaked open, revealing old sofa chairs and a battered kitchen table. The icebox where they kept meat and vegetables for later cooking. And there was the little shelf for Adel's jams and marmalade. There was the turned over crate where Sadie Crane used to sit and read in the living room. There were the hooks for all their coats, their bows and quivers, their hats.

The enormous bear of a wood stove kept vigil in the leftmost corner. There was a sink for washing dishes and a dressing box near the stairs. The stairs led to a small loft space just below the ceiling where everybody slept. The storage trunk had been pushed to the middle of the living room.

Sadie Crane wanted to see the old farmhouse at least once before they left, to offer final goodbyes.

De'afi searched the closet. In the meantime, Viola lit the wood stove. Their spirits bettered, Sadie Crane unlocked the storage trunk.

Viola opened the dressing box and took out some clothes, stacking them in neat piles on the floor. She liked her cloaks and pants, sometimes a long breezy skirt weather permitting. But inside her there lived both a dancer and an artist. She collected fashion magazines from Ladezi and Eudora, pattern books from Turaq, fabrics from Kat-Ari. Her as yet unfinished dress was made of exquisite Kat-Ari silk from the day market. The second it touched her fingers, she was in love. She labored two months over the sleeves alone, hoping beyond hope to recreate her vision of a grandiose Ladezian ballgown. What she ended up with was nothing overly special, and yet her eyes filled with tears of gratitude.

Her hands trembled on the hem of a linen skirt, remembering the bright jewel tones and decorative gemstones she'd once gushed over with Sybil as they flipped through another of her magazines. He made fun of her, but in the fond way her older sister used to. He was, in many more ways than she could stand, exactly like Mara.

Sadie Crane dug through the storage trunk. They uncovered their journal from six years ago, a portable radio, and a small box of Sybil's things. He often stayed overnight, shedding parts of himself. Maybe on purpose.

Their eyes filled with tears. This was all they had left of him. For Sybil, this would have been a relief. He didn't want to be remembered, let alone mourned. Most days, he barely wanted to be alive.

They held their breath and opened the box, half expecting to find Sybil's ashes. But Jaia and Basalt left Alcoast, urn and Sybil's belongings in tow, a year after he died.

The box was like a time capsule. It brimmed with fashion magazines, the guitar pick he used to keep on hand despite never touching a guitar, the scrap of blue cloth he tied around his left wrist for luck, discarded gold and silver bangles.

Viola's eyes filled, then overflowed, with tears. For just a second, he was real to her. Silver bangles on his wrists, long yellow shirt, dark gray pants cinched around his ankles and waist with orange flower-patterned ties, his deerskin outside slippers Jaia made for him, a thick rope of braid hanging over the back of his neck.

De'afi put hir hand on Viola's shoulder, dissipating the image.

"Hurts," ze summed it up perfectly.

Ze stood on the verge of tears, hir right hand and lower lip trembling with suppression.

There was an old saying in hir village. The person in the sky sees nothing of the world below. For those who stood far above could not fathom what existed below, just as those below could not fathom what existed above. This was how people in Mati explained The Other Side. A world connected to All Creation by the skinniest thread, sometimes visible but not wholly there. At times like this, De'afi wished ze could follow that thread back to all the people ze'd lost in just the recent decade. Hir birthgiver Kota, hir birthgiver's birthgiver Kyah, hir sibling Da'nai who resembled hir in all ways that mattered, and finally Sybil. Taken by illness or by accident, back to I'lli and O'lli where they belonged.

Without saying a word, ze lifted the blue cloth and cinched it around the upper left arm of hir jacket. Looser than a tourniquet, but no less welcome. Something to staunch the bleeding, at least for now.

Sadie Crane slid the box closed and put it on the floor.

"I'm sorry," they said regretfully. "I guess he was your friend too."

"You guess?" ze half-laughed. "Wow, okay.''

Ze heaved a watery sigh, wiping tears off hir face.

"It's--I'm--it's fine," ze struggled. "Everything's fine. I just. Just. Feelings are stupid. I can't be the only one who thinks that."

Sadie Crane swiped a finger over their upper lip. They used to get semi-regular nosebleeds, another thing to have in common with Sybil. It seemed, in ways both esoteric and cruel, they were made for each other. Their birth dates half-aligned, his being thirty days before. By twelve years old, they had builds similar enough to wear each others' clothes. The nosebleeds felt, at the time, almost like a prophecy. We'll be together forever, the blood promised. We were born a month apart and we'll die that way too.

They swiped a finger over their upper lip again. And realized their nose, for the first time in six years, was bleeding.