a dream but a memory.
Over a decade ago
Goldie
I wanted to grow up quickly, to leave home and find my own way in the world. Maybe other children felt secure in the clutches of their parents, tethered to the ground, rooted in the soil. But I didn’t; I longed to drift through life like an unplanted seed, a lucky puff of dandelion or milkweed, no one watching, no one telling me what to do.
In Everwhere it was different. There I could be a floating seed in a place full of floating seeds and falling leaves. There we could go where we wished, before being brought together on currents of water and air. We didn’t need a meeting place or a map. We were drawn to one another, like spawning salmon or migrating birds. As soon as I stepped into Everwhere something inside me switched on—a radar that resonated with my sisters. The feeling I had there of belonging, of connecting, was not a feeling I’d ever known before. But the first time I felt it, I knew what it was. And every night I followed this beacon until I found them.
Most of the time we’d stick together, but sometimes we’d split up. One night I sat with Bea in the glade, while Scarlet and Ana searched for a river and a midnight swim. I’d conjured up an elaborate excuse not to go; Bea simply said she couldn’t be bothered.
“This place is real, you know. You’re not dreaming.”
“How do you know?”
“Mamá told me,” Bea said. “She’s a Grimm too, so she knows.”
I frowned. “What’s a Grimm?”
Bea laughed. Her full name, and I don’t know how I knew, since I’d never asked, was “Beauty.” Personally, I’d be mortified to have such a name, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Don’t you know?” Bea asked, still laughing. “How don’t you know that?”
I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn’t matter to me either way.
But Bea, seeing straight through me, gave a self-satisfied grin. “I can’t believe you don’t know what you are,” she said. “You’re a Grimm. So am I, my mamá too.” Her smile shifted then into something else: a little nice, a little nasty—as if she loved and hated me both. “Your mamá isn’t, or she’d have told you. So you’re not pure Grimm like me.”
I tried to shrug again, but I couldn’t. “Okay,” I persisted, wishing I didn’t have to ask again. “But what’s a Grimm?”
Liyana
“I have news.”
Liyana looked up at her mummy, excited by the promise in her voice.
Isisa smiled. “Auntie Nya’s coming to stay for a few days.”
Liyana’s excitement evaporated. “Boring,” she said, returning to her drawing.
“Don’t say that, Ana. You love your auntie.”
Liyana picked a red crayon out of her box. “She’s only coming to visit because she’s lonely, because she’s getting divorced again. She never visits otherwise.”
“That’s not . . . Well, anyway we’ll cheer her up. She’ll be happy to see you. You can help heal her broken heart. That’s what family is for, Ana.”
Liyana bit down the sudden anger that swelled in her like a gathering wave. She didn’t want to be responsible for healing anyone’s heart—the burden of her mummy’s expectations was enough, without adding her aunt’s hopes on top.
“Dagã doesn’t have a broken heart.” Liyana reached for an orange crayon to capture Scarlet’s hair and the fire sparking in her hands. “She loves money, not husbands.”
“Hush,” her mummy said. “And you shouldn’t be so contemptuous of money, only people who have it do that. Aunt Nya’s money is the reason we’re here.”
Liyana wanted to say that she didn’t think that was such a great thing. She wanted to ask the meaning of “contemptuous” but didn’t, in case her mummy scolded her for not already knowing.
Biting the end of her orange crayon, Liyana also wanted to ask why her mummy had never had even one husband, skirting a sneaky side street into the question of her own father. But timing was everything with her mummy and now was not the right time. Perhaps when she was drunk with Aunt Nya.
“Maybe you could find a husband, Da— Mummy, then you might be—”
“Hush!” Isisa’s simmering anger suddenly boiled over. “Don’t talk nonsense, vinye.”
“But maybe he’d be better than Daddy,” Liyana persisted. “Maybe—”
She stopped as if she’d just been slapped. Her mummy narrowed her eyes. Silence shifted the air like static before a storm.
Liyana fixed her eyes on her drawing, trying to think of something to say to make everything better again. “I, um . . . do you