And then it came to her, the memory—thick, viscous fluid, the extraneous membranes of space in Felix’s universe. It was the remnants of space from his denuded head, she realized, it was what had been drained from him—a layer of foreign dimensions floating atop of the ocean like oil, cutting her off from the house as effectively as any barrier. There was no crossing this pocket universe, even as it spread in an infinitely thin layer—she could only stick her face inside and squint at the impenetrable darkness and the faint taste of rain-beaten dust in the thick, immobile air.

The urgency of Vimbai’s situation caught up with her occasionally and then she would bound for the surface, crazed and weightless like an air bubble (and those had ceased leaving her lips a long time ago), only to find again and again that the barrier persisted, and she still did not know how to breach it. Then she sank back, to the crabs, and floated by them as they dragged the house and Vimbai clinging to the rope along with them. There, she thought that maybe it would be okay, maybe she could stay there until someone—either Maya or Felix or Peb—found her. Or perhaps she would be okay all the way to New Jersey—didn’t the crabs say that they were close?

But she knew that these were idle fancies, and that she did not have time to be found or rescued. With every passing second, the wrinkles on her grandmother’s face grew more and more familiar, with the same inevitability as one’s face is recognized in the mirror. Soon, the vadzimu and Vimbai would not be able to tell where one ended and the other began.

“I’m so sorry, grandmother,” Vimbai whispered, and immediately answered herself, “I’m so sorry, granddaughter.”

It had occurred to Vimbai that lately she had been spending quite a bit of time drowning or otherwise under water; she wondered if there was some significance to it.

“What say you, crabs?” she said out loud.

The crabs chittered and whispered among themselves, such disconcertingly high-pitched and birdlike sounds. “What pierces the darkness?” they finally asked.

Vimbai sighed. Stupid riddles, she wanted to say, sthe ame riddles that surfaced in fairy tales—just feeble-minded guises for simplistic morality lessons, not at all challenging or enlightening. “Light,” she said out loud, struggling not to let her irritation show. “Light pierces the darkness. Thank you, this is very helpful. Only I have no sources of light here, and neither do you.”

This is not true, the vadzimu in her mind answered. Remember the story I told you, remember the story you told Peb. Both are ngano—and ngano is how children learn. Your task may be hopeless or you might not even know that you have a task in the first place, but there are things within you that you can reach.

Vimbai only sighed in response. It seemed silly, the same psychobabbly message of hope she’d been hearing from school counselors and the books that were supposed to instill ‘values’ (no one ever told her what those values were supposed to be) into her. It didn’t change, she thought. There was always someone offering a simple solution, there was always this belief that only if you try hard enough, want something bad enough, there would be a wellspring of miracles and you would always get whatever it was you wanted. One could always triumph—but she knew, she had learned through a long and disappointing string of letdowns that sometimes there were circumstances beyond one’s control. Sometimes one was too short for basketball or too stocky and thick-boned to seriously consider gymnastics. Sometimes one did not have the complexion to play Snow White, no matter how much enamored one was of this role at the age of five. Sometimes one had to throw away the dreams, no matter how dear or powerful, after first experiencing a bitter sting of reality. But then again, this is what this house was for, wasn’t it? The old dreams that everyone had forgotten about, so she really had no right to get angry at them.

She thought of the tortoise in her grandmother’s story, and hated the smug beast who got everything everyone else wanted without even trying. Humility indeed. And yet, and yet . . . there were dreams in this house, she thought, and what were dreams if not irrational wish fulfillment? What was the point of ever dreaming if one could not be a ballerina anyway? And didn’t the sea follow her? It followed her in her dreams as if it was her, Vimbai who was the moon, round and heavy like an old silver coin—a coin tossed by a careless hand, heads or tails, and now stuck in the middle of the sky. The coin that attracted all the seas in the world, heavy and smooth, grave and yet pouring out bucket after bucket of pure light, reflected though it might be—it didn’t matter in the slightest.

Vimbai closed her eyes and imagined pure white light, white as milk, as the tortoise’s beak slurped it up as if it was candy. She pictured all this cold, pure whiteness sloshing inside her belly, heavy and round like the moon, with enough gravitational pull to attract all the oceans in the world, and then she thought of her slender fingers reaching inside, into all this light, asking for a wishing thread—and receiving a white burst of light instead, the kind of light that burned bright as a carbide lamp, and before which no darkness could resist.

Chapter 17

There was one memory Vimbai rarely thought about—not because she had forgotten and not because the memory was in any way unpleasant. Rather, Vimbai felt that some things were too precious to tarnish with frequent reminiscences, and thought around it, obliquely, while always retaining the warm feeling the memory gave her.

But now she felt it was a good time to remember it—she chose this memory from among all the others for its golden light and the overwhelming sense of joy that radiated from it. It all happened when both Vimbai and Elizabeth Rosenzweig were in eighth grade, when Vimbai was still too clueless to realize what was happening to her.

She remembered that day with such clarity—it was May, and their class was mercifully sent on a fieldtrip to one of the dinky little museums that peppered the shore towns like lighthouses and souvenir shops. Vimbai did not remember which town it was, and she did not remember much of what she had seen at the museum—there were vague memories of old fishing nets and handmade fishing floats, rusted antique anchors, and the musty smell, the same as every tiny and ill-conceived maritime museum she had visited over the course of her life in South Jersey. There were stuffed blue marlins mounted on the walls and insipid paintings with white-sailed ships frozen on the brink of white-capped waves, and things rescued from shipwrecks of dubious authenticity mixed in with preserved specimens of octopi and other strange-looking invertebrates; if Vimbai was so inclined, she could’ve traced her fascination with marine biology to these dusty jars with discolored eyes and tentacles in them.

What made this museum different, though, was Elizabeth’s presence—she had just transferred in from whatever glamorous life she had previously lived, and Vimbai tried really hard not to follow the new girl too much but found such restraint difficult, due to Elizabeth’s interesting way of speaking. At the museum, Vimbai spent little time looking at the exhibits and a lot trying to maneuver herself next to the new girl so that it looked like an accident, in case anyone actually paid attention to Vimbai.

She had finally managed to stand next to Elizabeth, who yawned and looked at an old, sepia-toned photograph of one fishing vessel of the bygone days or another.

“Hi,” Vimbai said, staring at the photograph with a greater intensity than it warranted and keeping her tone casual.

“Hi,” Elizabeth answered and smiled at the photograph. “Vimbai, right?”

Vimbai felt a happy little flutter in her stomach that the glorious new girl remembered her name, and even pronounced it correctly. “Yes,” she said. “And you’re Elizabeth?”

The girl nodded and finally tore her gaze away from the photograph and gave Vimbai a slow, half-lidded look, which gave Vimbai goosebumps on the back of her neck and head. “I don’t like any of the diminutives of my name,” she said. “And I’m bored. Is there anything else to do around here?”

“Well, sure,” Vimbai stuttered and looked for the teacher who was just ahead of them, pointing something out on some stupid diorama. “There’s the beach, and the shore towns always have a boardwalk. But we’re supposed to be here . . . I think.”

Elizabeth shrugged one shoulder, took Vimbai’s hand—so confidently and thoughtlessly, as if it was her right to grab Vimbai’s digits like they belonged to her doll or stuffed bear—and dragged her along, to the diorama. “Excuse me, Ms. Burns,” she said to the teacher. “My allergies are acting up because of the dust, and I don’t have my medication with me. Vimbai will take me outside, and we will meet the group by the bus later.”

Maybe it was that snooty accent, Vimbai thought. Maybe it was the way Elizabeth carried herself—she didn’t even ask, she told the teacher what she was going to do, and Mrs. Burns just nodded and told them to stay out of the sun. Or maybe, Vimbai realized much much later, maybe their overworked teacher, who was looking back to the summer recess more than her students did, had a small moment of mercy and just decided to let them go and enjoy themselves on the boardwalk. Such a small kindness that seemed such an enormous stroke of luck back then—such incredible escape from the dark and dusty and boring sepia-colored museum and its stench of formalin, into the blinding sun and the smell of salt in the air.