My uncle Gerry Karlsson was a storyteller—a great one. My cousins and I loved his stories and even loved the fact that they changed a bit—sometimes a lot—with each retelling. We'd all listen closely ... [+]
"I offer myself as this year's sacrifice!" I yell out frantically, my voice cracking on the last syllable. I pant as I try to catch my breath, the boiling air burning my throat with each breath. The crowd surrounding the lava pit turns to look at me, their faces caked in mud and their eyes crimson red. They wanted their sacrifice now.
They were all men. The girls stayed home to cry tears of relief. The women stayed home to mourn. The silence was deafening as I decided to stand tall in the face of my fear. But my sister's eyes, a replica of my own, reminded me that I was afraid.
My sister and I lived in a backwater village called Sulking Fern, where all the men believed that they could appease their god of war and prevent future wars from passing through our terribly important village by sacrificing virgins. Yes, they really thought that a divine entity that has nothing better to do than to start and drag wars would be appeased by some torn and broken girl.
If you're asking whether it works or not, my sister and I are war orphans. Half of our village is made up of war orphans. So you tell me. But they do it every year, and every year leading up to the ceremony, men find all sorts of ways to "help" us girls out of this commitment. This doesn't really serve a purpose besides tricking poor, naive girls into giving up their innocence over false promises, because it seems the council of elders already choose a girl they want to sacrifice the next year almost right after the ceremony ends.
I didn't think it was true. I didn't want to believe it was true. I didn't want to believe that men preyed on women in whatever way they could find. That not even our death could be left up to chance. But when I saw men who I knew were suspicious avoid my sister, I knew. I knew that every man was in on this sick joke of a tradition. Well, tradition could eat dust; I was going to make sure my sister lived.
I didn't tell her what I knew. She was only 10, and I was 16. I couldn't tell her of the cruelty of the world. So instead, we talked about what it would look like to leave Sulking Fern. We daydreamed as we worked in the mines. I listened carefully when she would talk about wanting to start a restaurant; she loved the idea of cooking. About wanting to work in the city. The closest city, Glistening Peak, was about a three day's walk, and I had prepared a basket for her with instructions written inside with all I could think of for her to survive. I had packed a whole lot of supplies I stole over the course of 8 months. I learned how to make them last for as long as I could. I drew a map of what little I knew of the path to get to the city. Truthfully, I had no idea if my sister would even survive the trip. But dying a free girl was better than dying to a man's whims.
But today, I came home to an empty, splintered shack. There was clearly a scuffle: the walls were concave, the ceiling had almost crumbled, and the dirt floor showed small feet digging into it in protest. My tears had clouded my vision, red swimming in the corners of my eyes. No wonder the village had been quiet. How could I have been so stupid? No, I wasn't stupid. The men were calculative. They started the ceremony a day early, I realized. They had never done that before. But they did this year. They must have caught on to what I was trying to do.
I ran out of the tiny wooden shack that has housed my sister and I all our lives. I ran towards the woods, towards the trunk that hid the basket I hid for my sister. The one I only barely managed to tell her about this morning. My knees almost give out, and what little energy I could use to keep myself standing was not enough to keep me from sharply crying out. I should have made her leave sooner. We could've escaped together. We were better than whatever cards we were dealt. Were we born to parents across the world, we could have dreamed enough for 10 kids. I made my eyes focus on the mountain where I knew they were all gathered, ignoring the tremble of my knees. I would give my sister a better hand. I was determined to give my sister the chance to dream.
I booked it towards the volcano, running up its steep steps as the air grew thin. There was one thing they couldn't take from me. Not my home, not my future, not even my life. It was in my voice as I cried out towards the crowd when I finally made it to the top. It was in my eyes as I scanned the area, the men avoiding my gaze. It was in my posture as I held my head high. It was what held my fear back. It was what made my legs move forward once I found my sister, her eyes pleading with mine but finding no resignation. It was what made the men part for me even though they didn't want to. They saw it too. The love I had for my sister.
"Young lady, you have no right to interrupt this cere–" the priest next to my sister started, but I wasn't having it.
"Can it, old man." I didn't even hear the crowd start to complain; I pulled my sister down from the man-made looking platform that the men claim the volcano created for this very ceremony by instruction of the god of war.
"Mali, what are you doing?" My sister asks me with tears in her eyes and a tremble in her arms. But her voice remains steady. There's the woman my sister is forced to be.
"I'm giving you a fighting chance."
I step onto the platform, ignoring the glares coming from all sides.
"You insolent girl!" The priest yells at me. But my eyes are following my sister who is already running down the steps. I was glad to see there was still a girl in her that prioritized self-preservation over anything else. She knew not to let my sacrifice go to waste. She now knew the meaning of the basket in the woods. Somehow, none of the men stop her or follow her down.
"You'll have your sacrifice," my voice said without permission. The priest said nothing else. Or maybe he did, but my world began to blur, my mind blanking, my feet carrying me over the ledge of the platform. Something foreign to this world controlled me like I was a puppet on strings, and I started to fall down, down.
A peace I had never encountered enveloped my body, the anger that had boiled my blood and kept me alive all my life had become replaced by peaceful waters, the chill turning my body numb. My last thought was how happy I was that my sister escaped.
...
Maybe a god did exist, and they felt bad for me. Because I opened eyes I didn't think would exist anymore. Brought a hand up to a head connected to a body that ached and creaked and felt more alive than it ever did before. I felt a hand close around my frail arm, and I knew I had been taken back home. The first thing I saw when my vision returned was the smile of my sister, Kali. Her face was so radiant I thought I was looking into the sun. I returned her smile with my own, sure that it could not compare.
I looked up to the sky then, wondering what god had saved my life. I wonder what they had seen in me to deem me worthy of rescue. All I had on my mind that day was my sister. Is it silly to say it was my love for her that saved me? Maybe that god had a sister too. Maybe sisterhood is something to be revered. I prayed morning and night after that day, and we made it to the city with food to spare. Our restaurant flourished over the years and I watched my sister grow old with me. Did my sudden faith change the course of our lives? I don't know, but we kept the basket as a totem of our journey. As a token of our sisterhood. A god woven within its wooden body.