princess Miriam
of House Ieshan
of House Ieshan
I told my soul to sing
she said her strings were snapt
I
can’t stop watching her.I lean up against the doorway. The sharp corner of wood digs so deep into my shoulder it’s the only thing I can feel, but at least—I am feeling something. That dull, throbbing pain hurts less to focus on than all the rest of it. “The rest of it” is:
My little sister has grown up. She is not “little” anymore, by any standard of age (though some part of me is comforted that, even grown up, she remains a little smaller than I am). My little sister is a doctor, who has gone from picking fights with our brothers to cutting them apart with scalpels. She is her own person now—free, more than any of the rest of us, from the clutches of our family name. She has made her own path. Written her name in the stone doorway of the hospital. (Sometimes I wonder—if she had been so practiced at the time our parents died, could she have saved them?)
My little sister, I think, doesn’t need me anymore. And nothing could ever hurt worse.
I bite my lip. Pain flashes through me, and a half-second later I taste the sharp bitterness of iron, so strong it almost feels like heat. It’s small enough a drop of blood I don’t think she’ll see it. But then again—without the distractions of love and pain Ruth is better than any of us at really seeing things, whether they are or aren’t there.
(Sometimes I wonder if the thing she has—the way she is—is like seeing ghosts. I think her eyes could go right through me. She doesn’t see what she wants to see, because she doesn’t want, or expect to see anything in particular. Knowing people without the distraction of what you want from them, I think, is like existing without the distraction of a body. People are ghosts, whether they know it or not.)
“Ishak,” I say suddenly, repeating her like a well-trained parrot. “I should meet him properly, someday. He—I mean, do you—“
I realize as soon as I start talking that it’s a question I couldn’t bear to really ask.
Do you love him? Yes and no would both be terrible. Yes, I love him; if she said so, I would know that she is capable of love and simply unwilling to give it to me. That at some point in the dark fog of the last few years I lost her heart and Ishak gained it. Yes, I love him; I would realize I do not know her, not really. And I would think of the girl whose name I cannot bear to really say and wonder if I still love her, if I ever did—
Do you love him? No, I don’t. Maybe this is the better option. This is the response I would lean toward expecting, the response some slimy, almost monstrous part of me wants her to give. But she is my sister; I want her to be happy, and no, I don't love him, wouldn’t be a sign of happiness.
I think. I don’t know anymore.
My head feels fuzzy. Ruth asks me a question, and I replay it in my head until the words stop sounding like words and start sounding like music: Do you think that he would agree to it? Something rings in my ear. Blood-buzz. Or cold wind. I swallow so roughly my throat threatens to close.
“I don’t see why not,” is my answer, soft and unattached. Some part of me wants to add, bitterly—it’s not like you could make things worse—but the age-old impulse to protect her kicks in, and I bite back the snappish remark. Instead, a creaky sigh slips out. My chest aches like I’ve suffered a battle-wound.
I don’t know what to say. What to ask. But the silence is more painful than anything else could be, and I burst out, my voice wet with almost-tears: “But honestly, Ruth. I am not worried about him dying. Our gods are not that kind.”
If there is a glower in my eye that says I wish they were, or I would trade my life for is, then maybe it is lost in the darkness of my room.
