THE DREAMER'S LAMENT

03. Satu

IT is snowing, again.

Mahra hates snow. She hates how the white expanse of white made her reminiscent of the way things used to be. Innocent, beautiful, untainted by the dark or the splash of spilt maroon. She hates that it reminds her of kafan fabric, to wrap the deceased before they meet the cool, forgiving earth. And she hates that winter never seemed to want to end. How every time she steps outside, a cold of a thousand knives buries deep into her flesh. As if she doesn't have enough pain to deal with.

The book on her lap is unread, but lies open, flipped halfway into the story. She read the back cover. It's a novel with a fight-to-the-death theme, only it doesn't take place in an arena, but the real world, where water is something so scarce people would kill for a drop. Not interested.

The bookshop is dim and musty with the scent of parchment old and new. The narrow corridors are lit by a candle at each end. Only natural light illuminates this corner, trickling from a window that's sheathed in swirls of frost. Even so, the sunlight is poor, most of its face in the sky is shrouded by snow-weeping clouds.

Her thoughts overlap in a raging tide of the last several days. She clenches her fists, presses them against her thighs. Her nails are digging into her palms, cutting crescent moons into her skin. Pain shoots through her until the second it slowly nulls and she can't feel the blood that's threatening to seep out.

She tries to think of something else. Essays due tomorrow, short stories, internship. Coffee, rent, morning shift at the café across the street. Then every strand of something else thought flies to the same things once more, igniting rage beneath her skin: Money, flight home, funeral.

Maia called in last week to check if everything is okay. It was a stupid way of approaching a matter that will inevitably have to be discussed. It took ten minutes of small talk for Maia to gather the courage to say, "Mom is at stage four. Are you going to go home?"

"I am," Mahra said. "I want to see Mom."

There was a pause and she could see her little sister chewing on her lower lip. A small nervous tic Maia developed as a child.

"But Dad doesn't think it's a good idea," Maia said finally.

"Are you going home?"

"Yeah... Dad says he has a little bit of money left. I'm leaving London tomorrow. For good."

Mahra's heart clattered to the floor of her stomach at the revelation of her sister's departure. What she wanted to say was, "Please, don't go without me." What her tongue spoke was, "Are you giving me the piss? He's already in debt to four people."

"He's going to pay all of it. Don't worry."

Mahra massaged her forehead. "He's only giving us more burden when he dies."

She could hear Maia flinch on the other end of the house phone's receiver. "Don't say that, Mahra..."

"Screw him," Mahra snapped. "He didn't give a damn whether Mom was treated or not. I was the one who fed her, who comforted her through every therapy, every loss of weight." Tears snagged her breath. They stung her eyes. A million continuous pricks of needles. She bit down on the inside of her cheek.

"I know..." Maia whispered, guilt echoing alongside. "Dad doesn't want you to waste your money."

The true meaning behind those words smote her heart. They still do.

"After Mom dies, Dad won't be paying for us. You'll have to pull this family together," she knew Maia wanted to say.

In fleeting seconds, she pulled out her wallet, checked her online bank account. Counted her money. Her heart sank, a rock in silent waters. Of course, she doesn't have enough money. She won't until she's done months of double shifts every day.

But she told her sister, hand trembling as she attempted to hold steady the receiver: "I can do it. I'll have enough money by the end of the week. I'll book a flight to Indonesia."

She didn't understand the beat of silence that crossed between them that time. Now, she knows it's the unspoken words they were both too terrified to acknowledge: Mom won't make it until.

Now, burrowing for warmth in the bookshop's window nook, Mahra takes out her phone. Texts her sister, hey—then quickly erases it. It won't do any comfort. What's done is done.

Pain burgeons in her chest, throbs there. Curls against her breastbone like a twine of thorns puncturing through her flesh and bone. Searing heat flares beneath the bridge of her nose. Another blizzard of stinging needles rains behind her eyes. She squeezes her eyes shut. It hurts so much.

She imagines the ghastly white complexion of her beautiful mother's face. The bones protruding through underneath her skin, enough to be able to cut through the paper-like quality it had taken. Most of all, she remembers the brown eyes that have always reminded her of the wood when sunlight filters in, now closed behind wrinkled eyelids. Buried six feet deep in the earth.

"Can I have another story, Mommy?" Little Mahra hops onto her mother's lap, a large storybook that weighs a ton in her tiny hands. "I want this one!"

"My little panda," her mother says and kisses the crown of her head. "Loves reading, I'm so proud of her."

Little Mahra beams brightly, round rosy cheeks puffing as her happiness spreads her smile wider. "When I'm big," she says in the middle of reading aloud the story, "I want to make stories like this, so kids like me can love reading, too."

"You will, my darling," her mother says, nuzzling into her thick brown hair. "You will."