Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Elizabeth Lim
- Language: English
- Genre: Epic Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
There was no moon or moonbow when my sister was born. Contrary to the
stories, she arrived late in the morning, close to noon. I remember, because
the sun was in my eyes, and its glaring heat needled my skin until I bubbled
with sweat.
I was very young and playing outside, poking the ants crawling up my
ankles with a stick, when the sun suddenly receded—and I heard screams.
Mama’s screams.
They were faint at first. Thunder had begun to rumble, swallowing the
brunt of her cries. The loud cracks in the sky did not frighten me; I was
already used to the island’s fickle winds and the low howls that rolled from
the jungle at night. So I stayed, even as rain unfolded from the sky and the
chickens ran for cover. The dirt under my toes became mud, and the warm,
humid air chilled. The ants drowned as the water climbed up my ankles.
Adah had told me not to come inside until I was called, but the rain was
getting harder. It came down in sheets, soaking my shirt and sandals and
drumming against my skull. It hurt.
Kicking off my sandals, I clambered up the wooden stairs to our house
and ran inside to the kitchen. I shook my hair free of rain and tried to warm
myself by the fire, but only a few embers remained.
“Adah?” I called, shivering. “Mama?”
No answer.
My stomach growled. Up beside the cooking pot was a plate of cakes
Mama had steamed for me yesterday. They’d made her hands smell like
coconut and her nails shine, sticky with syrup.
“Channi’s cakes are ready!” she would always call when they were
done. “Don’t eat too much at once, or the sugar flies will come sweeping
into your belly for dinner.”
She didn’t call for me today.
I stood on my tiptoes and stretched my arms high, but I wasn’t tall
enough to reach the plate.
“Mama!” I cried. “Can I have cake?”
Mama had stopped screaming, but I heard her breathing hard in the
other room. Our house was very small then, with only a curtain separating
the kitchen from Mama and Adah’s bedroom.
I stood on my side of the curtain. Its coarse muslin chafed my nose as I
breathed against it, trying to see what was happening on the other side.
Three shadows. Mama, Adah, and an old woman—the midwife.
“You’ve another daughter,” the midwife was telling my parents.
“Channi has a baby sister.”
A sister?
Forgetting Adah’s warning and my hunger, I ducked under the curtain
and crawled toward my parents’ bed.
There Mama lay, propped up on a pillow. She looked like a fish, all
translucent and pale, her lips parted but not moving. I barely recognized her.
Adah was hovering over her, and the restless look on his face soured
quickly as Mama locked her fists around the edges of the bed—as if she
were about to start screaming again.
Instead, she let out a gasp, and a gush of red swelled through the
blankets.
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