Page 34 of Her Radiant Curse

Adah touches my shoulder—an act that startles me back into my present surroundings. “She has some clothes, Your Highness,” he is answering. “Not much else. My wife and I will bring them.”

My father won’t look at me, but he is less angry than I expected. “It is settled,” he tells Dakuok. “Clean her up.”

Dakuok makes a grand gesture of placing his scarf over me.

“I’ll see you soon, Channi,” says Vanna. “This is the beginning for us.” Her light fans across the temple; I’ve never seen her so happy. I should be happy too.

As I said, Vanna has a way of getting what she wants. Soon she will be a princess of Tambu, and one day the queen. Poets will write about her for centuries, and musicians will compose songs about her long after she is dead.

It’s everything she’s ever wished for, and it will make a splendid tale for generations to come. A tale of dreams and love and hope that children will clamor to hear before they sleep.

But this is not Vanna’s tale.

It is mine.

* * *

It’s late, and Adah reeks of wine as he stumbles into the courtyard with Vanna and Lintang holding him upright by the shoulders. My sister’s selection is half a year away, and Adah and Dakuok spend many evenings feasting in anticipation of the riches she is soon to bring.

“Good night, Adah,” says Vanna. “Good night, Mother.” She goes to her room and blows out her candle. Her window goes dark; soon, Adah and Lintang’s does too.

But I know she isn’t asleep.

Before long, the kitchen doors creak open and my sister tiptoes inside, gracefully navigating by the light of my simmering soup pot. She slides next to me on my cot and quickly throws my quilt over herself. “I brought presents.”

By “presents,” she means “supper.” Out of her purse she takes two wings of beggar’s chicken, stuffed with claypot rice, still wrapped in a lotus leaf, still warm. I bask in the smell.

Vanna watches me eat. She looks tired, and I can’t blame her. During the day, while I’m supposedly doing my chores and keeping hidden, she has lessons in the temple. Singing, dancing, reading, writing, embroidery—everything a great lady supposedly needs to know.

Usually, she bubbles to life when we’re together. She’ll show me what she’s learned, even teach me from her lessons, even though I have little interest in how to say such and such in formal Tambun or make my writing look curly and elegant. We’ll share a midnight feast with whatever she’s managed to scrounge.

Tonight she’s different. Withdrawn.

I’m not training to become a great lady, so I can talk with my mouth full: “What happened?”

She combs her fingers through my hair and starts to braid a lock. “I was just thinking how lucky I am to have a sister.”

I tilt my head. “If you’re so lucky, why do you sound so sad?”

“I love our nights like this,” she says quietly. “Getting to talk to you without Adah around. Sharing what we’ve done with our day.”

I hear what she leaves unsaid: Pretending like we aren’t worlds apart because of how we look.

“Do you think,” she says, “that we’ll still have nights like this after I leave Sundau?”

“You don’t have to leave Sundau. You could stay.”

“Stay?” she echoes. “On this tiny speck of the earth, where you can walk from one end to the other in half a day? Where the jungle makes up most of the land, and we’ve only one real town and a few scattered huts on the beaches—”

“We used to live in one of those huts,” I remind her.

“I know. But the world is vast. I don’t want to stay here forever.” Her voice rises, filled with a passion I’ve rarely heard. “I want to sail the Emerald Seas and hear the yawnbirds of the Suma Desert. I want to climb the thousand steps to Gadda’s Temple on Jhor. You know I’ve never even left Sundau before?”

Yes, I know. More than once I’ve stolen boats and tried sailing us to the continent, where the gods are different and the lands so broad you could live a hundred lifetimes without seeing a demon. But every time, high seas and violent winds stopped us. Angma might have vanished, but I can feel the power of her curse thwarting me at every turn.

“You won’t miss it here?”

Vanna turns wistful. “Of course I’ll miss it. I’ll miss the reedy quay where we used to jump up and down, waving at ships and trying to get them to stop over. I’ll miss the peddlers with the stale coffee biscuits and those jars of salty dried mystery fruit, all cut up to look like mushroom slivers.”

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