“After I started to dream of you, and when I saw you in the museum glass, something started to change in me. Maybe it was there all the time. I began to see pictures, things began to come to me, faces I didn’t know, then the dark room and the candles. And then I heard voices for the first time, I heard a voice like my own voice saying the incantations— I thought I was going crazy.” She stared at Bethany, rapt. “I just— I wanted to be there. I tried, I just—I just made myself be,” she said with sudden passion. Bethany stared back at her, loving her for perhaps the first time. Caring. In a way, the Zagdesha story was true. At least for them; they had found each other. Would they have, without it? She thought they would. After all, Ninea had dreamed of her.
“Ninea? Do you ever think—did you ever think what we could do? I mean with our lives, the way we are? Something special.” She felt very close to her sister suddenly, as if, after all—
But Ninea had turned to stare at her with a really defiant look. “I don’t know. Why should we?”
“I—well because,” Bethany began lamely. “Because—” she tried to make Ninea see without words, but she could touch nothing but a wall in her mind. “Because if we can do some good—” She stared at Ninea, and felt Ninea’s sullen response, almost as if she felt Bethany were trying to spoil something for her. Bethany stiffened, and they stood locked in a defiant exchange; then all at once Ninea turned on her heel and began to walk fast down the top of the stone wall, high above the water. Bethany stared after her, perplexed, and she did not follow her; she turned away instead, hot and irritable suddenly. Tired suddenly. And there was a lingering sense of darkness, of the voodoo —as if Ninea would prefer to delve with her into some dark cult. Bethany longed suddenly, more than anything, to be home, on her own shore, and safe. She longed to be with Reid.
She sat on the wall and stared out at the bay and tried to think about Ninea—it was her responsibility, she felt. But what was? Not Ninea herself, surely. Or was she? Well at least it was her responsibility not to let Ninea lead her. Her sense of self, of keeping control of her own powers and her own way of life seemed more important than before. But there was more, and that was harder to think about. She could not just humor Ninea as she did Colin. Ninea’s power, her potential—at least when it was linked with Bethany’s own—was too great for that. Oh! She clenched her fists and scowled down at the water. She didn’t know what was right—not at this moment, in this place. Was it right to fight Ninea if she used her powers for—well, for voodoo or something? Or was it right only to keep herself in the path she wanted to tread, and let Ninea go her own way?
She sat there for a long time arguing with herself. And when she thought Ninea was not coming back, she grew angry. But at last Ninea returned, sheepish, and they started home in silence, Ninea kicking at a can on the sidewalk. And Bethany’s joy at the brightness they had felt together so short a time ago was quite gone.
Well they would be home soon, really home, on the dunes, and maybe things would be better there. It was only last night they heard the decision. “Ninea may go for the American school year,” Senora Ruiz had said in a cool tone. “Ninea’s school year is different, of course, even though it is an English-speaking school. A very special school,” she said pointedly, as if Ninea wouldn’t find anything to compare in the States. “You will miss your vacation entirely, Ninea—but then that can’t matter, can it, when you want so much to go.” She had said this with such sarcasm that a surge of anger had swept Bethany.
She glanced at Ninea now, feeling a little less cross with her. After all, what would she be like if she hadn’t gotten any more love than Ninea had? Ninea looked up sideways under her lashes, and she was not sullen any more; Bethany felt her own lightness return and grinned back at her. “You’re going home with us!” she said, feeling the excitement of it now, looking forward to it. “I wonder how Grandfather ever managed it.”
“He charmed it out of her; haven’t you been watching him? What do you think all this going out in the evening and opening doors for her and being so flattering has been about?”
“You don’t think— They aren’t getting romantic?”
“No! Oh, no!” Ninea doubled over with glee, breaking the tension completely. “Oh, they couldn’t, Grandmother’s too—too proper. That would be—” she was almost hysterical with laughter. “That would be incest!”
When they had recovered from this witicism, they felt better, definitely better, and climbed the tree to get into their bedroom, then sneaked down the back stairs to the kitchen and talked Corrinne out of hot empanadas and milk, which they took to Ninea’s room. “We don’t eat in our room,” Ninea mimicked Senora Ruiz. And they were altogether happy and uncomplicated and at ease in the world.
“These are the meat pies we had at the party,” Bethany said, curling down and getting crumbs on her chin. They stared at each other, suddenly remembering, with goosepimples, that wild flight into unfathomable space. Fear touched them again then, and each drew back imperceptively into her own being, into her own autonomy—fear at being less than whole. And stubbornness touched them too, each wanting to be more master of herself. And yet, because of this, they seemed easier with each other suddenly. Maybe you had to be your own master before you could be easy with another. And Bethany thought, with new awareness, what it was to not be master of yourself: When something other than your own will ruled your mind, you fell away into nothing. They shuddered equally, and drew farther from each other still; they needed more space; but it was an agreeable drawing away, and they regarded each other with increased friendliness, and with the bright joy rising again, unbidden.
After a while, “You don’t want to leave Corrinne,” Bethany said. “She—she’s more like your mother than Senora Ruiz.”
“Corrinne won’t come with us,” Nina said sadly. “How could she not, after Grandfather asked her like that.” But Corrinne would not. And it was true. Corrinne who stood silently, her hands in dishwater or flour, listening to the two of them spit at each other and make up, Corrinne who, when she scolded, made it direct and not hateful and soon over, Corrinne who hugged Bethany just as if she were her own, it would be Corrinne who, when they left, Ninea would grieve for. Whom Bethany would grieve for, too.
“But why won’t she?” Bethany reached for two more empanadas. “Why not?”
“All she says is that I’m old enough to be on my own and this is her country and she’ll never set foot outside it. Stubborn,” Ninea said. “She’ll never change her mind.” And Corrinne had said, “You two are like snakes at each other sometimes. You were made two to give, not to take.”
Then Justin’s letter came:
Mr. Hickby has started on the new wing; Reid is working full time with him at it and taking his meals with me. I thought at first you two would share a room, but I have changed that. It seems to me you might each prefer your own place. After all, twins or not, you are separate people who have grown up independent of one another. You can’t be expected to do and think everything alike. Just being twins may make you touchy with each other, and with your special talents, perhaps touchier still. It seems to me it may be very hard to get used to having a shadow of yourself around. At any rate, two rooms it is, and there will be a sitting room for all to share.