New Year's Special: Miriyam's Longest Night

First impressions are everything. It was for this reason that the spectre of a man seated across from her wore pristine white silk robes, the manner of dress one would have expected from a high-ranking bureaucrat, even though it clashed horribly with everything around and within him. This was the one thing he had always refused to compromise on, no matter how bad their situation had gotten. A good first impression was the best way to smooth over any suspicious gaps in one’s resume, and he had many of those to smooth over. Unfortunately, she knew him quite well.

The spectre posed a queasy question, his words punctuated by the polyrhythmic tapping of several leaks in the roof.

“Have you been eating lately? You look so… skinny.”

She did not look up as she answered.

“I’m eating now, aren’t I?”

“Yes, today, but what about the rest of the week?”

In other words, the days on which he hadn’t been home.

She did not reply.

He kept quiet for a while. The leaks conversed in their stead as they went on eating mechanically.

“I…”

Another attempt.

“I am worried about you, you know. I know I don’t have the right, but…”

Her grip on her fork tightened, but she was determined to keep eating. As long as she could get everything on her plate down her throat, she was free to get up and return to her post without having to fear any interference. The relentless passing of time ensured that all the bad things would eventually leave her alone if she only patiently endured the winds they threw up as they blew past her.

She scraped her teeth over her tongue.

The spectre went on talking with himself.

“I really don’t have the right, do I? I’m barely around, I feel like I hardly know you… You’re at that age anyway, but…”

She kept on eating.

“I wish you would just talk to me. Talking can help, you know? We’ll never get anywhere if you refuse to say anything.”

Another forkful. About six forks’ worth of food was left on her plate.

“…But, of course, you would never want to talk to me. What have I ever given you but grief? You must think I’m totally useless. No, you’re right. You’re right. I’m useless, aren’t I?”

Three forks of undercooked vegetables separated her from blissful solitude. She forced herself to keep her pace.

“I’m worthless as a father, right? Go on, say it. I’m trash. I’m the lowest of the low. I’m a failure. I’ve failed you. I’m the worst, aren’t I?”

He closed this all too familiar tirade of self-pity with a flat, nasal groan. It was the whimper of a denied toddler who was too tired to throw a tantrum.

At this point, she would have usually put on a smile and assured him that she was fine, that they’d be fine, that, most importantly, he was fine. But there was something about that pathetic little sound that disturbed her to her core. It was the kind of sound a parent should never allow their child to hear from them. She was repulsed.

For the first time in weeks, she looked her father in the eyes.

“Yes, you are. You are the worst.”

She left her plate unfinished and got up.

***

First impressions are everything. Miriyam Akhenaten’s first impression of her grandfather was that of a mean and scary old man. As much as she grew to love him, she would never quite be able to shake the feeling that there was a darkness hiding deep within him, some terrible curses muttered under his breath that only didn’t come to fruition due to his long and matted beard catching the words and dissolving them into harmless laughter.

She much preferred to remember him as she later saw him: A warm and wise teacher who indulged her endless questioning without ever dropping the smile in his eyes. A man of royal bearing sat firmly at the centre of his world in a finely carved rocking chair.

When she was a little girl, on a typical day, she would let herself into his study to find him bent over his desk, labouring over some scroll or codex. She would take a while to marvel at the backs of the books covering every wall of the room, only leaving space for the door through which she had entered and even this, it seemed, begrudgingly. She would pick out a book, flip through its pages, inevitably get bored and sneak up on her grandfather to poke him in the back. He would ignore her for a while, then sigh and turn around and invite her to sit. He’d tell her stories about all the adventures he had gone on, all the miraculous things he had witnessed in the dungeon.

Young Miriyam was enamoured with these stories. At the age of four, determined to unlock every secret of that dungeon which had been poured into her dreams, she taught herself to read and forced her way through her grandfather’s exploration journal. She would never forget how proud he had looked when she finally finished it, only to flip to the front and start reading it all over.

Over and over. With time, she made her way through many of the books in her grandfather’s possession, but she kept coming back to that journal. At first, it was the world contained within it that held her in its grasp, but after a while, what comforted her most was the image of its author it transmitted, one of youthful vigour and courage.

The man who had written this journal could overcome anything. She held fast to this belief, even when it had long become irreconcilable with reality. At the point when he had made that powerful first impression on her, her grandfather was already unable to live by himself. He had been forced to put his life and his work in the hands of her father, and as she would have to find out time and again, that man was bad at taking care.

He bankrupted them almost immediately. They were forced to sell their ancestral home and many of their prized possessions, forced to move into increasingly cramped and seedy apartments.

Eventually, all that was left for Ramses Akhenaten was the dusty corner of a three-room flat, a stack of about a dozen books, and his rocking chair, in which he sat without a single trace of royal candour. None of his words made it through his beard anymore. It would have grown to cover him entirely if she hadn’t taken it upon herself to trim it regularly. Still, she never worked up the courage to fully free his mouth, for his eyes had lost all warmth and spirit.

Despite her best efforts, the first impression had stuck.

As the population of his kingdom of books dwindled, he too shrank over the years, merged with his chair like an ingrown toenail, until, two weeks before her fifteenth birthday, he was gone.

Months had passed since then, but it might as well have been yesterday. For Miriyam, it felt as if the time since her grandfather’s death had all been one long night, a bad dream from which she’d never wake up.

She hadn't eaten all week. Her father had been right to be worried.

The events of the evening came back to her, and she began to regret her actions. She felt that she had been unfair. In his own way, her father did care about her, and he did try, and she should at least have acknowledged that. She had been unfair, but she had not lied. 

This was the trouble.

She could foresee what would happen. Her father would come back in the early hours of the morning, drunk, hover wobbly over her floor-bed, and he'd start crying and apologising, and then she'd start crying and apologising, and they would finally make up. Their lives would revert to some modicum of the play-pretend normalcy they had become so practised in, before her grandfather's death. But the truth had been said, and it could never be taken back by her.

Now he knew.

The fraudulent basis of their coexistence would have been exposed, but still, they'd keep it up. Could she live with that? Was she really willing to wait here for this fate to overcome her?

Suddenly, this final corner had also become uninhabitable.

Miriyam ran out into the night.

***

She had never been the type to disobey or cause a ruckus, never the type to sneak out when she wasn't supposed to. As such, her image of Mul at night was much like a child's vague fear of their parents' basement, given shape and vindication by many lascivious stories of muggings and knife attacks overheard during recess and in hair salons. She hurried down alleys like open maws, flanked by lit windows like the eyes of beasts leering at her in the dark, the cold dark, the impenetrable dark that was raring to swallow her. She had always imagined the night as something quiet, dignified in its silence like death, but there was noise all around, laughter and shouting smacking of a mad hunt. She was running now, as fast as she could. There was no turning back. Every step took her further into this monster's grasp, and yet, now, she desperately wanted to escape, outrun her out-of-shape body, make it catch more air than it could. She could feel the night catching up. 

Finally, it struck her. She landed face-first on the ground.

"Oh no, are you ok? I'm so sorry!"

Dazed, Miriyam turned up her head. In front of her stood a girl of about her age with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. She was holding out her hand. Miriyam took it instinctively. The girl's grip was firm, her hand warm and calloused. She pulled her up so quickly that Miriyam tripped forward, almost landing in an embrace. 

The girl put her free hand on her chest and frowned. 

"Seriously, my bad. I should have watched where I was going. You're not hurt, are you?"

As much as she wanted to, Miriyam was unable to reply.

The girl looked at her expectantly, her frown slowly changing into a confused expression.

"Um, are you-"

"Utchi, stop dawdling! We're gonna miss the fireworks if you don't hurry up!!"

The girl spun towards the end of the alley, from which the voice had called.

"Ah... Hang on, I'm coming!"

One last time, she turned back to give Miriyam an apologetic smile, tore her hand loose and ran off after her friend. Miriyam was left behind, stunned for a couple of seconds, until she remembered what the stranger at the end of the alley had said.

"Fireworks...?"

The only day on which it was allowed to launch fireworks within Mul was during the Festival of the Longest Night, which was held at the end of the nightly season and marked the transition to a new calender cycle, as the days started to grow longer again. Had so much time passed since the death of her grandfather?

She went the direction the girl had run off to and soon found herself on a brightly lit plaza covered with festival tents, food stands and games. Everywhere, people were laughing and enjoying themselves. It felt entirely surreal to her. She had already forgotten that sights like these existed in the world, even during the darkest night.

She spent a while standing at the edge of the plaza, watching the hustle and bustle of the food stands. The constant process of orders being received, prepared, and paid had a calming, hypnotic effect on her. And all of them, customers and servers, were laughing. 

Suddenly one of them locked eyes with her. He smiled at her. She smiled back, without meaning too.

The smile stuck.

She spent the rest of the night on that plaza. After a while, the fireworks went off. She could barely make them out between the roofs of the buildings surrounding her, but the sound they made as they went up and the way they engulfed the entire plaza in their colourful light, fought against both the night and the fire of the streetlights, moved her deeply. This was a light that a book could never show her. Soon, all of these lights and darknesses were swallowed by the rising sun. The festival workers began packing up. The Longest Night was over, and a new cycle had arrived.

For the first time in months, Miriyam was making plans.

She had to start by attending school again. Then, she'd look for a part-time job to ensure their finances didn't worsen. She'd get herself into the Magician Academy on a scholarship and work towards a high-paying job as a professor or researcher. Then, she'd begin slowly but surely repopulating her grandfather's kingdom. Yes, she'd buy back every book he'd ever owned, and then some. She'd write enough books of her own to fill an entire shelf. She'd rebuild that room as she remembered it, with one key difference:

She would leave part of her outside wall unobscured and put in a big window. She'd put her desk by that window, and when the fireworks came, she would open it and watch and cheer with the people on the street. Maybe she could even throw down sweets for the children.

Her future had been reborn and was steadily approaching. Miriyam could hardly wait.