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Hazakura is cold.
Colder than Kurain ever was. Honestly, Dahlia doesn’t know how Iris can stand it. Still, she ducks her head against the wind and keeps walking.
The things she does for her sisters.
She doesn’t need to wonder how Pearl feels about it. Her littlest sister doesn’t let a single complaint pass her lips, but her body gives her away. She shivers, the smallest movement. The flap of insect wings. The whisper of the falling snow.
They’re holding hands, a casual thing now. Both wearing gloves, but Dahlia can still feel Pearl’s warmth, her skin. Tights cover their legs — Pearl under her robes, Dahlia under her dress. Impractical, maybe, to wear a dress in this weather, but she never wears pants. She’s not about to start now. Something about old habits and dying.
Another habit: Pearl herself. Dahlia had wondered — not feared, never feared — whether she would ever see Pearl again after leaving her in the village. Back in Mother’s clutches. If the little lamb would go running back to the shepherd, tell her all about how the Evil Dahlia kidnapped her. Corrupted her. Spirits know Mother would have loved to hear that.
She’d tighten up village security, maybe. Put up more fence posts after her prized lamb had wandered free. Keep a better eye on her. Never once wonder if any part of Pearl’s so-called kidnapping had been of her own free will.
Maybe Mother is too stupid, too naive to think that Pearl wanted to escape. To even consider the idea that her precious Pearl could have a single original thought in her head apart from the ones that Mother herself put there. Or maybe, it’s the other way around. Maybe Mother did tighten up security. And maybe Dahlia’s sister is just a little too good at slipping past her.
A mystery, and it’ll remain one; the news from Kurain reaches Dahlia, as it always does, secondhand. All she knows is the end result: for the past few weeks, ever since she left Pearl at the village, her sister has been calling her every single night.
Pearl, shoulders hunched up around her ears. Futon bundled up in the shape of her body, in the off-chance that Mother wakes up to check on her. In the off-chance that Mother ever manages to pull herself out of dreams of power. The buttons of the payphone pushed, one at a time, rhythmically. And then, miles away, Dahlia’s phone ringing out a greeting.
In these calls, they somehow manage to talk about everything and nothing. No mention of the village, from either of them. No openings for Mother to worm her way in. Why return to the very thing, the very place they’re escaping from?
Or attempting to, at least. There is no escape from Kurain; Dahlia knows that better than anyone.
Instead, Pearl, endowed with newfound confidence, bombards Dahlia with questions. About herself. What did you do today? asks Pearl. What’s homework? What are you reading? Can you read it to me?
So Dahlia does. Reads Orwell, Austen, Wilde, Fitzgerald to Pearl, who goes so quiet that sometimes Dahlia wonders if she’s fallen asleep. But she never does. She waits until Dahlia comes to a stopping point, and every night, she ends the calls the same way.
“Thank you, Dahlia,” she says. “Good night.”
As though it’s Dahlia who’s doing her a favor.
Still, Dahlia doesn’t mind. Reading out loud is preferable to reading in her head, silent in her empty apartment. It helps her understand the material better, too. Never mind the fact that her grades can’t be any higher. Never mind the fact that she doesn’t raise her hand in class anymore, sick and tired of the way Professor Creep probes her for answers. As though if he gets close enough, he can peel away her layers and lay his eyes — Terry’s eyes — on what hides beneath.
Pearl never asks for anything more than a few words, a passage or two. The ones Dahlia chooses are deliberate: safety nets, the crab grass. Saviors, strangers, sometimes a bit of both. Laced with meaning. She wonders if Pearl can find it, can parse through the words to hear Dahlia’s intentions beneath. Can peel away her layers.
Every night, Pearl calls at the same time. Dahlia’s ringtone volume is set to the highest it can be. The day it all changes: Pearl says thank you, but does not say goodnight. Instead, she breathes, waiting.
Dahlia listens to those breaths, syncs her own with them — one, two, three — before she says, “What is it, Pearl?”
Impatient. Harsh, some would call it. Not Pearl. Drawing in another breath, she speaks up.
“I want to see Iris.”
A surprising amount of backbone in the words. Dahlia imagines her practicing, repeating the words over and over until they sounded exactly the way she wanted them to. So that’s what it is. She wants to see her other half of a sister.
“I’m not stopping you,” Dahlia replies. She runs the tip of one freshly filed nail along a thin crack in her dining room table. A hair’s length away from being perfect.
Silence again, and then, “Can you take me? To go see her?”
No please to be found. Has the little brat forgotten her manners so quickly? Nothing between them, then. No extra barriers. Training from Mother vanished into the air.
“And why should I do that?” asks Dahlia.
Her littlest sister is a source of endless curiosity. What will she say? Will she grovel? Offer something in exchange?
“Because I’m asking you to,” says Pearl, the slightest quiver in her voice giving her away. “Please.”
An afterthought. Faker than the rest of her words.
“You little brat,” says Dahlia, but her tone is fond. That is the difference between her and Mother.
Mother’s insults were always honey-sweet, daggers wrapped in silk. Dahlia prefers to dress her compliments the opposite: a rose with thorns, a sip of too-hot tea. Pain, maybe, but only a bit. Only for a second. And after, soothing.
She continues, “Can you get away?”
“Yes!” Pearl’s voice is too loud; she returns to herself quickly, remembers where she is, what she’s at stake of losing if she’s discovered. “Yes. I can. I will.”
No doubt to be found. Good, but not unexpected. Dahlia wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t already know.
“This weekend, then,” Dahlia’s saying, but then Pearl interrupts her. “Can… can we go tomorrow instead?”
Eager to meet Iris. Eager to get out of the village. Really, what is the difference?
Dahlia purses her lips, runs the next day’s schedule through her mind. No classes. Just a paper that she needs to finish the conclusion of. Doable.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” she says. “Be ready.”
“Thank you, Dahlia,” says Pearl, grin audible. “Good night.”
Just like that, a plan was made. They should go, Dahlia knows, without telling Iris. Better to ask forgiveness than permission — in a manner of speaking.
And that was what brought them here, trudging up Eagle Mountain. Pearl is breathing hard now, swaying back and forth the slightest bit. Dahlia’s grip on her hand the only thing keeping her upright. Tethered.
“Let’s take a break,” says Dahlia.
“But I’m not tired,” comes the reply. Small, wan.
Dahlia snorts. “Liar,” she says. Fond. Proud. How easily the lies come to Pearl, now. She’s getting better at them. Seeing her sister as a space to practice something new. Safe. Saviors, strangers. A little bit of both.
Pearl doesn’t argue when she stops walking, intertwined hands pulling them both to a halt. Dahlia wonders why; maybe she’s too tired to, or she knows there’s no use arguing with Dahlia. Or maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe she’d rather them both be on the same side. Crab grass, a safety net. Not as opposite as they may seem.
Carefully, Pearl untangles her fingers from Dahlia’s. Dahlia lets her, watching what she’ll do. A source of endless curiosity. Will she keep walking on her own? Is she so eager to meet Iris? Did she only need Dahlia to bring her here, and now has no use for her? Discarding must come easily to her — following in the footsteps of her mother.
Did you leave her, Pearl had asked once, or did she leave you?
Isn’t it all the same thing, at the end of the day?
But no, Pearl isn’t leaving her; and something in Dahlia’s chest unfurls at that, the blooming of flower petals. She’s just stepping a bit away — still within arm’s length. A lamb always needs a shepherd, after all, regardless of the fact that there is none to be found here. That the only shepherd either of them has ever known is miles away in Kurain.
Still a child, despite the way Mother has tried to beat that out of her: she’s intrigued by the snow. Of course, she’s never seen it before — or much of anything, really. Pearl crouches down and picks up a handful. Rubs it between her fingers, shapes it into a lump. The consequences will hit her soon enough. Snow will seep into her gloves, rendering them wet and cold, and it’ll be Dahlia who’ll have to hold those hands. She should tell her to stop.
She says nothing.
After a moment, Pearl speaks up. “What does Iris look like?”
Stretching up on her toes, Dahlia peers in the direction of the temple. Shouldn’t be much longer now. “Her hair is black,” she says offhandedly. “But otherwise, she looks like me.”
Fascinating, in a way, that Pearl has never seen twins. Doesn’t know what they are, when the word itself is carved into Dahlia’s heart.
Pearl squeezes the newly formed snowball in her hand a touch too hard, and they both watch as it falls apart and to the ground. Consequences are the best way to learn. Instead of letting it get her down, she picks up more snow, starts shaping it into another ball. Better this time, less pressure. She’s a fast learner.
“Will she like me?” Pearl asks. Soft, so soft.
Dahlia blinks at her, but Pearl won’t meet her eyes.
“Why does it matter?” Dahlia says. “You didn’t care if I would like you.”
“Yes, I did!” She whips around to look at Dahlia. So earnest. Lamb eyes wide. “And… we’re friends now, aren’t we?”
Dahlia says nothing. It’s not a no.
“She’ll like you,” she says after a moment. She holds out a hand, a silent command to keep walking. Pearl drops the snowball — nearly perfect this time — and slips her cold, wet hand in Dahlia’s. “You’re not too different.”
No matter how long it’s been since the last shearing, a lamb is a lamb is a lamb.
The remaining trek up the path is faster now. A need to get out of the cold driving them, but it’s something else, too. Something thrumming in the air, beneath their skin, through the fingers that still connect them. Anticipation. A message from the spirits, though whether it’s encouragement or a warning, Dahlia can’t say.
Through the blur of the falling snow, the view before them reveals itself in pieces. The outline of the temple, broad and looming above. The main gate, the letters it displays barely visible. And below, as though framed by the arch, stands a figure. Dahlia’s height. Dahlia’s weight.
Dahlia’s face.
No one told her they were coming, but Iris still stands out here to greet them. Twin telepathy. A message from the spirits. Either way, the effect is the same: the hand in Dahlia’s squeezes hard. All of Pearl’s fear and excitement in that strength.
Closer, closer now, until the two sides of the mirror are face to face once more.
"Dollie," says Iris, "you made it."
A guest standing before the mistress of the house. Hazakura is so far from Kurain; it must need its own Master, surely.
Iris's eyes travel down down down to meet Pearl's, and for a moment, it's the two of them who could be twins. Surprise, fear, mouths the slightest bit open. Similar robes, black hair done up the same way. Dahlia, now, who's the odd one out.
"Hello," says Pearl, bowing her head low. The proper Kurain greeting for an older woman. Not usually between sisters, but then again, most sisters don't meet like this for the first time.
"Hello," Iris returns. Closed, formal. "Come in, both of you."
She leads them through the arch and into the Main Hall. Colder here than outside, but if Iris even notices anymore, she doesn't show it. She gestures for them to take a seat before disappearing into the other room. The hall makes Dahlia's skin crawl, her teeth ache. It's like being back in the Channeling Chamber again: the feeling of being an intruder. An outsider. Unwanted.
Settling herself down on a cushion, Dahlia watches as Pearl, too much excitement in her to sit still, begins to poke around the room. Reads the writing on the wall. Dutifully inclines her head toward the Lesser Magatama at the back of the room. Paces along the length of the hall as though measuring it with her strides.
“She called you Dollie,” says Pearl. “I like that. What do you call her?”
Dahlia raises an eyebrow. “I call her my sister. Isn’t that enough?”
“I guess so,” she says, like she’s never thought about it before. “Can I call you that, too?”
“Your sister?”
“Dollie.”
“Do whatever you want,” says Dahlia. “You certainly don’t need my permission.”
Finished with her short exploration of the room — though what it is she found, Dahlia can’t say — Pearl comes back to the center. Several more cushions spread around a pile of pitifully burning embers, and yet she takes the one right next to Dahlia. Curls into her side.
Dahlia says nothing.
Neither does Iris when she returns, although the look on her face certainly says enough for her. She’s brought tea for them; she pours it and neatly hands them each a cup, with the practiced grace of someone who has been doing so her whole life. The cup balances strangely in Dahlia’s hand. The unpracticed grip of someone who has never been served.
Warm, though, even without drinking. Through the cup is enough. This distance is enough.
Iris takes a seat across from them, back straight as a bamboo rod. If she should remind Dahlia of anyone, it should be herself — but when Iris sits like that, looking down her nose at them, she reminds Dahlia of Mother.
For Dahlia, who has done her best to scrub all traces of Mother’s fingerprints off of her soul, it’s strange to see how easily they could return.
If Pearl reminds Dahlia of Iris, and Iris reminds Dahlia of Mother, then who does Dahlia remind them of? If she asked, would either of them tell her the truth?
Pearl is looking between the two of them with wide eyes. “You really do look the same,” she murmurs. One thing to know they have the same face; another entirely to see it for herself.
Something in Iris’s face hardens at that, so slight that Dahlia doesn’t think she’d have noticed if she wasn’t looking. Out of the two of them, Dahlia has always been the subtle one. With greater control over her emotions. Herself. When had Iris learned this?
After she left home — after Dahlia threw her out. Because of that, maybe.
“Sister Bikini is spending the night at the Inner Temple across the bridge,” says Iris, gazing into her own teacup. “She won’t be back until tomorrow.”
No one to catch them, she means. No one to see Pearl. To alert Mother.
Neither one of Dahlia’s sisters is drinking the tea. Have they ever? The way they sit there and avoid each other’s eyes. The way they don’t even know how similar they are. It’s up to her, then, to lead the way. Bridge the gap. To show them they can be something other than what Mother made them.
Holding her head high, Dahlia takes a sip of tea. Lets the taste of it dissolve on her tongue. Swallows loudly, ostentatiously.
“Bitter,” she says, smiling at Iris. “Mother would be disappointed.”
Iris does not look amused. “Sister Bikini likes it.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
Emboldened by her actions, Pearl follows suit. Dahlia’s little shadow.
“Mm, this tea is good, Ms. Iris!” she says. Beams. The little flatterer.
Back slumping, she says, “Just Iris is fine.”
“Or,” Dahlia cuts in, “you could use her title. What do they call you? Sister Iris?”
She could never have Mystic, so she went for second best. Always settling. Always smiling.
She’s not smiling now. It’s been a long time since Dahlia’s had that glare directed her way. An embrace, familiar.
“My sister, Iris,” Pearl says. Immune to the tension, or ignoring it. Unused to the way sisters love each other. “Dahlia—“ She throws a glance at Dahlia, then barrels on. “Dollie said you’re my sister.”
“Half sister,” Iris says softly. As though that makes a difference. Two halves make a whole and so on. “Is that why you came to see me?”
Pearl nods. “I wanted to… to know you.”
A glance shared between twins, and Dahlia knows they’re thinking the same thing. Someone else with matching scars. Another bad daughter. A fellow branch on the tree of Kurain women.
“That’s so kind of Dollie, isn’t it?” says Iris, and in the blink of an eye, drains her teacup. Bitterness suits her. “Bringing you from the village. Taking you in. Treating you like a sister.”
Words that she practiced, over and over, to get right. Just like her little sister.
“I’m always kind, Iris.” Dahlia holds her cup out for a refill. A drop of boiling water lands on her hand. “Didn’t you know?”
“I suppose I must have forgotten. It’s been a long time.”
More stranger than savior, she means. Whatever brews within her has been for a long time.
“Pearl,” says Iris carefully, “could you give us a minute, please?”
Saving her. From Dahlia.
“No, Pearl, stay.” Dahlia bares her teeth; anyone else would call that a smile. Her sisters know otherwise. “We’re all family here, aren’t we?”
Iris raises an eyebrow. “Are we?”
Pearl is stiff and quiet at Dahlia’s side. Used to this, perhaps: to making herself small, unseen.
“If you have something to say, Iris, then spit it out.”
“Fine,” says Iris, the slightest tremor in her voice. Not as brave as she pretends to be, then — but Dahlia already knew that. “I just think it’s funny, that’s all.”
Dahlia opens her mouth to respond, but it’s Pearl who gets there first. Stepping onto the minefield. “What’s funny?”
Iris’s eyes cut over to her. “How much Dahlia likes you.”
And it’s the two of them, now, caught in battle. Dahlia watches and she waits. How, she wonders, will her littlest sister defend herself? Handle her first sisterly spat? Prove that she is one of them?
Pearl’s bottom lip trembles. “Why wouldn’t she like me?”
It should make Iris turn back, the childishness of Pearl that bleeds through. It doesn’t. They both were young once, too, after all. Watching Iris now, Dahlia knows what she’s going to say. Something that no one knows: out of the two of them, it’s Iris who has never liked sharing.
“You don’t… “ Iris flounders for the word, before finally settling on, “You don’t get her.”
Born together, lived together. No room for an outsider in that equation, no matter what blood runs in her veins. No matter where on the family tree she sits.
Slowly, Pearl holds her own teacup out for a refill. No more making herself small; now, she is seen. Iris acknowledges, obliges.
“Maybe not,” says Pearl. “Mother says that if you aren’t born with something, you’ll never have it. And I wasn’t born with her. I’ve never had a sister before. But… Dollie told me that it’s important to try.”
There are always two paths to follow, no matter how unseen one may be. And it looks like little Pearl has made her choice.
It’s not herself Pearl defends. Crab grass, a safety net. A savior.
Dahlia swallows down a lump in her throat; it must be the tea, the cold. Her sisters. “Iris,” she says quietly, drawing both of their attention her way. “What is it, really?”
It’s like they’re children again, younger than Pearl. Heads pressed together under the blankets, whispering so Mother won’t hear them. Breathing each other’s air.
“Nothing,” Iris replies. Making herself small, unseen. “I just thought… if you would come for anyone, it would be me.”
Don’t send me away. Keep me. Burn the rest of the world down, if only it means the two of us can stay together.
“I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Only because she asked.” Iris juts her chin toward Pearl, daring Dahlia to disagree. She doesn’t.
“You never did,” she says instead.
The silence stretches through the room, casting a shadow over them. Shaped like a woman. Gray eyes, black hair. Sharp fingernails.
“I call Dollie every night,” Pearl says. Her turn to bridge the gap, now. “Maybe I could call you too, Iris.”
Iris blinks at Dahlia. Why don’t you call me?
Because I have nothing to say. What can I say to you that you don’t already know? The crab grass, the safety net — we were born knowing it.
Iris doesn’t say no to Pearl. Instead, she says, “It’s getting late, isn’t it? Maybe you two could stay here tonight.”
“Mother won’t like that,” says Dahlia.
“No, she won’t,” Pearl agrees.
Just like that, a plan is made.
It’s been years since Dahlia slept on a futon, on anything that isn’t her cloud bed. Some things, though, are easy to return to. Pearl insists on dragging the futons together. On sleeping between her two halves of a sister. A lifetime sleeping alone; her sisters can’t help but oblige.
“I like your hair, Pearl,” Iris murmurs. She reaches out to run her fingers over the carefully done braids. Pearl’s been practicing.
Pearl leans into the touch, little pet that Mother has taught her to be. “Dollie taught me how to do it.”
“She did a good job,” says Iris, and it’s as though she’s run her fingers through Dahlia’s hair, too. A few more years and they’ll be triplets instead of twins.
When Pearl crouches to adjust the futons further, Dahlia wraps a hand around Iris’s wrist, pulling her closer.
“You can’t keep her, Iris,” she says, mocks. The same words from weeks ago. A lifetime ago.
“I’m not,” Iris says. The corners of her lips turn up. “I’m just borrowing her.”
“You like her that much?”
“She reminds me of you.” Quiet. A confession.
“Funny,” Dahlia says, and means it. “I thought the opposite.”
They pack themselves on the futons, like sardines in a can. Like triplets in the womb. Dahlia and Iris used to sleep like this: back to back, their feet pressed together. Now, they face each other, with Pearl in the middle. It’s crowded.
It’s warm.
“Remind me in the morning, Pearl,” says Iris, her voice dreamlike. The way it does when she’s about to fall asleep. When she’ll agree to anything. “I’ll give you my number.”
“Replaced me that easily, Pearl?” asks Dahlia with a laugh.
Pearl looks scandalized by the thought. Little flatterer.
They grow quiet, then, and in that quiet, Dahlia breathes. Even, steady. Like footsteps. To the door, to the village. One after the other. A sister by her side.
History repeating itself, a bruise she can’t help but press and press no matter how much it hurts.
She closes her eyes, and through the silence, the slightest whispering breaks through. The spirits, maybe. Dragging her back, condemning her. Strike me down, she’d said so often — dared them — and here they are, eager to take her up on it—
“Dollie,” someone says. Iris. Pearl. Both. “Maybe next time, we could come stay with you for a bit.” Waiting until now to ask. When she’ll agree to anything.
Don’t send us away. Keep us.
Dahlia says nothing. It’s not a no. And just like that, a plan is made.