I felt the same way I used to feel after making a moody cake and bringing it to The Voice. But that was something I didn’t want to think about. Not yet. So Tahnee and I returned to the rooming house and endured a mild scold from her mother about almost being late for the evening meal. But her father looked at us and said with a wink, “Had a little adventure, did you? Nothing wrong with a little adventure—as long as it doesn’t go too far.”
Too far? I thought about what the Shaman had said about making a journey without leaving your room and realized I already had gone too far—because now there was no going back.
The next two days were deceptions tacitly permitted by Tahnee’s father, since he knew we were up to something but figured that being together, neither of us would go too far in our little adventures. And there was a tacit agreement between me and Tahnee that neither of us would go too far and put the other’s “little adventure” at risk.
I don’t know where she went, but I guessed that a handsome young man had been given some time off from work in his father’s booth. I went to the Temple of Sorrow.
The gongs reverberated in the air. Voices rose and fell. And the sounds and the tears lanced a pain deep inside me that had been growing and festering since the first time I had eaten a moody cake and had gained an inkling of what it meant to be The Voice.
I lanced the pain, knowing there would be scars. But I wasn’t able to extract the core of that pain until later that evening when Tahnee and I were in our room, not saying much as each of us contemplated how to spend our last day in the city.
“The boys at home,” Tahnee said, curling up on the bed and fixing her gaze on the wall rather than look at me. “I mean no criticism of your brother. He seems nice enough, although it will be years yet before he is considered of marrying age. The ones who are of marrying age . . . They’re all like Chayne, and I don’t want to live with a man like Chayne. Kobbi . . .” Tahnee licked her lips, a nervous gesture. “Kobbi thinks Chayne is doing something to her when he wants to do the marriage thing. You know. In bed.”
Since she seemed to expect it, I nodded to indicate I understood.
“She’s not sure, and it isn’t every time they . . . do things. But sometimes she doesn’t feel right in the head the next day. Chayne was real worried the day she had a bad spell after one of those nights, and that’s when she began thinking that maybe he was doing something. Before she could get up the nerve to tell her father, Chayne began making cutting little remarks, especially around her father, saying that a good wife would not begrudge giving her husband little pleasures when he had to work hard to provide her with a home and clothes and food. So when Kobbi finally got scared enough to tell her father . . .”
“What did he say?” I whispered, feeling as if the world itself held its breath while waiting for the answer.
“He hit her.” Tahnee’s face had a bewildered expression, as if everything she had known and trusted had changed suddenly and betrayed her. “He said she shamed him by being a poor wife and he would denounce her as his daughter if Chayne continued to have cause to complain.”
In the silence, I heard the patter of rain. I looked out the window and watched the sky weep. Lulled by the sound, Tahnee fell asleep. I stayed awake much longer, letting thoughts drift and form patterns.
Honor your parents. Give thanks for them every day. Because an orphan’s life is one of sorrow.
There was no ingredient used in the moody cakes that wasn’t used in other foods. So what made the cakes a vessel for feelings we didn’t want? And who had decided that one person would be sacrificed for the health of the village? Who had decided that the people in my village would not have to carry the weight of their own sorrows?
Maybe there was no one left to blame. Maybe no one truly knew anymore.
But the Elders continue it, my heart whispered. They see her; others care for her. Are there Black Pustules festering all over her body, always hidden because she had been trained to keep her body covered? Someone stripped a child of the ability to speak and scarred her so she would be ashamed to reveal the reason for her silence. The people who did this still live in the village.
We all did this. Day after day, year after year, we handed someone a plate of sorrow disguised as a treat and expected her to swallow it so that we could feel better instead of carrying the weight—and the scars—ourselves.
Welcome to Vision. You can find only what you can see.
As something inside me continued shifting and forming new patterns, I wondered if I had changed enough to see what I needed to find.
The following afternoon, I turned a corner. It was that easy.
The Apothecary was on a street that is one of Vision’s shadow places—neither Dark nor Light, since it is a street that can be reached by hearts that resonate with either.
On another day, the looks of the man standing behind the counter at the back of the shop would have scared me enough to abandon my plan. That day, I studied him in what light came in through his grimy windows and decided if looks were a measure of a man, this one could do what I needed.
So I told him what I wanted, and I paid him what he asked, relieved I had enough coins for the purchase and a little left over so that Tahnee would not end up paying for my family gifts completely out of her own pocket.
“Enough for three people, you said?” he asked when he returned from the curtained back room and handed me a small bottle.
“Yes, three.” I was almost sure that there was only one caretaker in the later hours, but I had to be certain I could deal with whomever was there. Because there would be only one chance.
“I am curious,” he said as I turned to leave. “Do you seek revenge?”
I slipped the bottle in my pocket and carefully buttoned the pocket flap. Then I looked at him. “I seek another’s freedom.”
He studied me a moment longer, then raised his hand and scribed a sign in the air. I didn’t know if it was a blessing or black magic—and I didn’t care.
The next day, we began the journey back to our village. Tahnee and I gave each other sly looks and pokes in the ribs that were followed by giggles, which confirmed to her parents that we had gotten up to some mischief. It also made them relax, confident that nothing much had happened during our visit.
My parents, too, were relieved by the sly looks and the giggling. I was once again the daughter they knew.
Only my brother noticed something different. Or maybe it was just envy trying to bare its fangs.
“You look good, Nalah,” he said. “Rested. Almost like a different person.”
I just smiled. I didn’t tell him he was right. I was a different person.
Now I was dangerous.
5.
I could no longer live in this village and participate in the cruelty of destroying someone else in order to keep myself clean of all but the “good” feelings, and I was afraid of what might happen to me if the Elders decided I was no longer in harmony with the rest of our community. There must have been others before me who had seen and understood what we had done by not having to live with the weight of our own sorrows. What had happened to those others? Had they tried to change the heart of a village, or had they slipped away one day to escape what they could not change and could not endure?
Or did they lie beneath the blank markers that festered in the thorny, weed-choked part of our burial ground that was set aside for the Un-Named—the ones who had done something so offensive their names were “forgotten” in the village records and family trees.
Alone, I could escape, could vanish into the vastness of the world—or, at least, vanish into the streets of Vision. I was certain of that. But if I tried to help The Voice and was caught . . . I would suffer a tragic—and fatal—accident and be buried under one of those blank markers, just one more of the Un-Named. I was certain of that too.