Crystal Heat

9

Lylunda lifted her head as the shell string by the front door clattered and clanked; she sighed and snuggled into her covers, closed her eyes and tried to drift back into the dream she’d been having. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, but it was better than being awake.

A hand closed on her shoulder, someone shook her.

She pried her eyes open. Seruchel bending over her, the smiles fled from her mouth. “Luna, Luna, get up. Please.”

“Di’m, Seru,” she mumbled. “Go ’way.”

Seruchel shook her some more, but Lylunda closed her eyes tightly and ignored the child until Seru gave up and left. Then her mind started going round and round about her father, his promise to come get her, how much she didn’t believe that, the addiction to the tung akar, her horrified suspicion that if she completed the Tung Bond and he did come, she couldn’t leave without the tung killing her. She tried not to think of that, but the notion sat like a dark fungus in her mind.

“Jojing doors without locks. Everybody and his dog can walk in.” Muttering obscenities under her breath, she crawled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, vomited into the sink, an acrid yellow fluid that she washed away before it made her sick again. She splashed water onto her face, stood leaning against the counter, her body shaking, her knees threatening to fold under her. “What’s happening to me? I’m acting like I was three years old and sulking because Ma took my candy away. I’m not like this.”

“No, you’re not. Diam, Luna.”

Lylunda eased herself around, scowled at Outocha. “Seru ran to get you, didn’t she. So I don’t want to be here.”

“We know. Sometimes, Luna, when you fight what is, you only hurt yourself. If you could just accept us, you’d have a good life here.”

“Turn Pandai?” Lylunda pushed away from the sink, made it to the table and lowered herself into one of the chairs. “Sit if you will, Outocha.”

“Thank you.” The Pandai woman arranged herself in the chair across the table from Lylunda, reached out and touched her wrist lightly, then drew her hand back. “Yes. As our elders did. Is our life so bad, Luna?”

“It’s a good life for those who like it, but for me, it’d be like cutting off an arm and a leg. I’d have to be someone else, not me. And I’d lose my mousika.” She watched Outocha’s eyes go blank. “You don’t have a word for it. You can’t even think about it. I want my life back, Outocha.”

“You won’t have any kind of life if you keep on the way you’ve been.” The older woman reached out again, wrapped her hands around Lylunda’s wrists, her thumbs pressed on the big veins; there was electricity in her touch, then a sense of drawing out, as if she pulled strength from Lylunda to augment her own. She closed her eyes, the vertical line deepening between her sun-bleached brows; when her voice came, it had a distant, hollow sound. “It is difficult… sometimes… to remember… my mother told me of… of a way to slow the closing of the bond.-She got the last words out in a rush, squeezed her ’eyes more tightly shut. “A tea… yes, an infusion of ahhhh… of cherar leaves.”

There was a long pause. When Outocha spoke again, Lylunda had to strain to hear the faint whisper. “It is dangerous; if you get the wrong leaves, gather them at the wrong time, try to store them, cherar will kill you. You must pick the pale green leaves without the red veins, they’re the youngest and the only ones it’s safe to use. And you have to gather them when it’s light enough to see but before the sun has cleared the world’s edge. No more than twelve leaves. You must take a bowl with you and a pestle and mash the leaves into a paste as soon as you’ve gathered the twelve. You bring the paste home, soak it in cold water, not hot water, never hot water. When the water turns a dark blue-green, you strain, it through cloth into a bottle with a wax stopper. You drink two fingers of the liquid a day until it is gone. Then you gather more.” her eyes went blank again, her hands left Lylunda’s wrists to rest on the table, wholly relaxed with the fingers lightly curled.

Lylunda leaned forward tensely. “Will you show me where to find cherar and what it looks like?”

“What?” Life came back to Outocha’s face. She frowned. “Why?”

For an instant Lylunda was as astonished as she’d been when Seruchel wasn’t allowed to be aware of music. This was the aspect of the Tung Bond that terrified her most; whatever acted to diminish that bond was counted as enemy and as much as possible not permitted to happen. The kindness of the Pandai woman could for a moment override this, but not for long. And that’s the joy of the telilu, she thought suddenly. It lets them remember what the Bond has forced them to forget. No wonder I thought I heard something like singing. Oy, Jaink help me, 1 have to get away from this world. Somehow… Aloud, she said “It’s part of my lessoning, isn’t it. To learn all the plants of the island, I mean. The bad as well as the good.”

“Are you feeling well enough to walk a while?”

“Slow and easy, if you don’t mind, but it’ll be good for me to get out. You’re right, I can’t sleep my days away without getting really sick.” Hope, she thought

Better than a hit of pelar. If only she shows me the right plant. With the Bond pulling her about, who knows…, when she took my hand she could override that.. maybe that’ll work, she points out the plant; I take her hand and ask if she’s sure… jojing tung…