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“Your father will forget you? Your stepmother too?”

“They’ll only remember that they had a daughter who went away and won’t be coming back.” I pause. “They won’t remember Channari at all.”

Oshli is quiet. “It’s hard for me to fathom such power.”

“As it is for me,” I admit. “But it will be done.”

“I’m sorry that I cast stones at you,” he blurts. “I’m sorry I abandoned you when you needed me. I was a child—a stupid child—and I’ve been sorry for years. I know you’ll not forgive me, but I want you to know this before you leave. Before I forget you.”

The apology is late, yet it unwinds a thread inside me, tied tight for years. I almost smile. “You won’t forget all of me.”

We bow to each other, and all I can think is how Oshli and I have misjudged each other. How I am glad that we will part as friends.

“Here,” he says, giving me the broken wooden bowl from my childhood home. He’s repaired it, mending the cracks with melted gold. “My father kept for himself the coins that Vanna’s suitors gave to the temple. I used part of one to make this. The rest, I’ll share among the villagers. We’ll rebuild.” A pause. “You must too, Channi.”

“I will.” I touch his shoulder, lingering before I leave. “Thank you, my friend.”

They will be my last words to him.

It is time now, and my voice carries across the sea: “You will forget Vanna Jin’aiti, and you will forget her sister, Channari. Everyone you speak to will also forget, and it will be as if they never existed. As if they were a tale from a time long forgotten.”

My words coalesce into a cloud of gold and silver dust, and it disperses across the islands. I see it sprinkle down over Yappang, where Nakri is wrenching out a crocodile’s rotten tooth. She lifts her head, as if she senses me, and grins just before the gold dust passes her eyes. I see it come to rest upon Lintang and Adah, the children of Puntalo, my neighbors and those who once knew me. They blink, momentarily disoriented, before resuming their lives.

The dust passes next through Oshli’s eyes. His body sags against his broom, but his face does not go blank like the rest. His ties to Vanna are strong. I can muddy his memories, but he will always sense the shadows of truth behind the lies I’ve spread. Until I die, these lies will unsettle him.

The dust does not reach Ukar and the snakes. Only they will remember the full truth.

Tears pool in my eyes. Be well, my friend, I whisper to Ukar, knowing that even across this vast distance, he can hear. Rule wisely and dream well.

Ukar shifts his scales to look like the sea, and in a gift of enchantment, I can almost see him outside my window. He lifts his scales to my cheek, one last time, before the moment is gone, and the sea separates us once more.

Lastly, the dust settles upon Hanriyu’s ship, erasing the final traces of my past. Come morning, the stories about the two sisters—one the monster and one the beauty—will be splintered from truth. They will be legends, and few will remember that they were real.

As the last of the dust dissipates in the wind, I murmur my true name, so I don’t forget it.

“Channari.” My moon-faced girl.

My spell is done, and I am more tired than I ever have been. My every muscle feels like a stone weighing me down, and it is the hardest thing, turning back into my cabin. I lie on a small cot hardly made for a queen, with hastily decorated silk cushions. Hanriyu didn’t expect me to come home with him.

I reach for the wooden bowl at my side. It is one of few possessions I’ve brought from Sundau, its delicate cracks carefully sealed with gold. I rest it on my palms. As Vanna did, I use it to cover the light inside me, so I may sleep.

When I arrive in Kiata, I’ll no longer need this bowl. My light will soften. It will fade into a spark, and over time, it will be forgotten.

In its place, I will have six sons and a daughter. A family, at last.

The thought fills me with hope. I drift into my dreams, meeting the ghost of my sister with a smile.