That makes you giggle. I exhale, relieved, and feel like I’ve finally done something right.
I’m talking out of my ass. None of us knows what happens in that grotto. You know that. None of us will never know which version is true, and by the time you find out, it will be too late.
I like to see you laugh. We haven’t laughed together like this—like sisters—in a long time. We have not been friends for a long time. I was afraid this would be a day of forced and fake levity, but walking hand in hand through Arlong with you feels so natural. We’ve fallen comfortably into our old patterns, and it would be so easy to pretend that the past few years had never happened.
But today we must be honest.
I was jealous of you. I have never admitted this to you before. I didn’t want to say it out loud because it would affirm all the reasons I was jealous to begin with. But yes—I was jealous, I was cruel, and I was ashamed. I am still ashamed.
I always knew I wasn’t pretty. Mother never ran her hands through my hair and sighed at its thickness. She never braided it in twisting, intricate patterns the way she did yours. No one ever commented on the elegant slope of my nose, or the arched shape of my eyes. I never lingered in front of a mirror, admiring the shape of my face, the way everyone else admired yours.
It didn’t used to bother me. On our island, where the myriad schools of colorful fish in the shallows were far more attractive and more exciting than the boys, my looks hardly mattered. I was strong and I was quick. I could fish and run and shimmy up palm trees just as well as anyone else, and it didn’t matter that fish clustered self-sacrificially around your ankles when you waded into the water with a net, or that trees dropped their ripest fruit as if by command when you touched their trunks.
Then when I was thirteen and you were nine, the city matchmaker stopped by our home on her annual visit, because by then I was at last old enough for her opinion to matter. She examined my face for all of two seconds before she shook her head and sighed.
“Pity how the looks always go to the younger sister,” she said.
Our parents had no response to that. I think they were shocked, and likely nervous in her presence. But they didn’t deny it. Of course they agreed with the matchmaker—it would be so silly to protest, no, both our daughters are beautiful, don’t be absurd—when the shining evidence of your beauty was right there in front of us.
That was the first time I saw, truly, how brightly your star shone over mine. This was even before the priests came. Oh, gods, it became ten times worse after the priests came and started telling everyone you were chosen by the gods and blessed from the day you were born. Not truly human but a faerie sent down from the heavens. Special.
All of that came later. But I started to hate you the day the matchmaker came. It didn’t matter how kind, how humble, or how loving you were. All your graciousness only made the gap between us harder to bear. You could afford to be kind, because you were so secure in your superiority.
I interpreted your kindness as snobbery. And the day the matchmaker came was the first time I wished you were dead.
You’re too young.
My gods. You’re far too young. You haven’t even begun to live your life. You’ve only ever seen the sands of our little island. You’ve never been to the mainland; never visited the great universities we all thought you might enter one day.
How could they make you throw all that away?
The sun sinks lower over the Daba Mountains, and Arlong’s canals reflect burnt gold now instead of bright, searing yellow. Our time is drawing to an end. I know I should cherish these final moments with you and kiss you and hug you, but all I can think is that you’re too young, it’s not fair, and that makes me want to scream, to overturn this sampan, to jump into the river with you bound in my arms, because even if we go to the same watery fate, at least he will not have you—
No, meimei, I’m all right. I’m just tired. It’s been such a long day. Please don’t worry about me.
Thank you. I would love some tanghulu.
By the time we reach the grottoes of the Nine Curves River, a crowd—the entire city, it appears—has assembled by the shore. They watch you pass with varying expressions: some cold and expectant, as if wondering what has taken you so long; some with hands clamped over their mouths, eyes wide with horror. Some are weeping. Some of them cry out to you how brave you are, and how sorry they are.
I want to hit them. If they’re sorry, then why don’t they walk into that grotto themselves? Why are they letting this happen? Why won’t anyone try to stop this?
I know why.
Year after year, the people of our archipelago have experimented with this ritual, enough times now that we know its effects even if we will never understand its cause. We know that it rains in the years that we send a sacrifice. We know there is drought in the years that we don’t.
We still don’t know what happens to the Dragon’s tributes. We don’t know if they live or die—no one has ever returned from the grotto, and their bones have never washed up on shore. Perhaps the Dragon devours them whole. Or, for all we know, perhaps the tributes step into that cave and vanish into another world entirely.
This is no consolation to the families. This uncertainty will do nothing to assuage our parents’ pain. But they are two people, and their opinions mean nothing stacked against the weight of Arlong’s. Arlong’s citizens have chosen to sentence my sister to death.
Who can blame them?
Droughts are horrible things. Droughts mean withered fields, empty granaries, and stomachs bloated from being stuffed with cotton, goose down, and tree bark. Droughts mean shriveled carcasses littered along the canals with no one left alive to tie rocks around their ankles and roll them into the sea. Droughts are a thousand times worse than the quick, brutal death of one little girl.
No matter how sorry the crowd at the shore professes to be, no one will lift a finger to help you today. I know this. Because I know, better than anyone, how selfish a person can be.
I began to torture you first with my indifference.
You see, when I began to hate you, I wanted to hurt you, and it seemed the easiest way to do that was to ignore you.
The day after the matchmaker left, you asked to come with me when I went out to check my bird traps in the forest, and I said no.
“You’ll get in the way,” I said. I’d never said that to you before, and we both knew it was a lie; you were nimbler with those traps than anyone. But I said it anyway. “You’re always following me around. Can’t you leave me alone?”
It startled me how quickly tears sprang to your eyes. I hadn’t expected this degree of devastation. For a moment, I was stricken. Then I felt this thick, squirming tendril of delight—delight that you cared what I thought of you this much. That I, your jiejie, still wielded this much power over you.
So I began to routinely ignore and exclude you. Jiejie, do you want to fly paper kites with me? No. Jiejie, will you go climbing for coconuts with me? No. Finally you learned to stop asking, but I knew that time hadn’t dulled the pain. You didn’t have other friends on the island—either you scared the other girls your age, or they scared you. I was all you had and I refused to be that anymore.
But it wasn’t enough just to hurt you, because everyone else still loved you. Whenever you cried, someone was always there to pick you up and wipe your tears away and tell you how special and wonderful you were. Hush, hush, don’t cry, you little pearl of a girl. You are so lovely. What do you have to cry about?