Footprints in Your Heart

Kai: Sister

I dream that I'm chasing a faceless woman who I somehow know to be my mother.

We're on an underwater train, and I can hear the persistent tumble of the tide above us. The woman is running from carriage to carriage. I try to run faster, but there's resistance – it feels as if I'm running through the water that surrounds the train on all sides. Then the woman reaches a wooden bench in the centre of a carriage and slowly turns around. I yearn to see her face.

'I have dreams about you,' she says, and I realise with a start that her face is familiar. It's Milo's face. 'Kai.'

'Kai!'

I sit up on our air mattress in an unfathomable darkness, heart pounding as my eyes adjust. A sliver of light from the almost-closed bathroom door cuts across the room.

'Kai, come quickly!'

It's Isla's voice. The remains of cold disquiet from my dream are replaced with a fear that is sudden, piercing. A shot to the heart. 'What's happened?' I ask, stepping over to the bathroom and starting to push the door open.

'Don't come in,' she says panickedly. There's a rapid, slightly shaky exhale as I pull the door back towards me. I imagine her with her palms against her cheeks, how she's responded to fear since we were small. 'I'm...there's so much blood.'

'Oh.' I know what it is now, but my sister doesn't. I have to help her. 'You're having your first period,' I explain gently, pressing the side of my face against the door so she can hear me better. 'It's normal. Every female will experience this.'

There's a silence layered with a few more trembling breaths. 'My tummy really hurts. And Kai...I'm scared.'

Another shot to the heart. In the story of our lives, Isla's the brave heroine who dives headlong into danger – it can't work any other way. 'I'm here,' I say. 'Deep breaths. In...out. Do it with me, in...out.'

She laughs feebly while sucking in air through her nose. 'You sound like the guy from the meditation podcasts we listened to in Year Three.'

'Open your mind.' I try to imitate the sophisticated accent from beneath a hazy fog of memories. 'Let ze thoughts flow past, like in ze rivers of Antarctica.'

Isla gives a short burst of laughter from behind the door. The arrows of fear and uncertainty start to ease their pressure from my chest. 'Rivers of Antarctica?'

'The best in the world.' I hold still and listen to her breathing. It's slower and steadier, without the little wavering gasps she was making a minute ago. 'Wait here for a sec, okay? I'll get some stuff for you.'

I step over a few unpacked boxes we have lying on the ground and fumble for the light switch to the kitchen before remembering that we don't have one in this new house in Fernsworth. Instead, there's a huge window next to the counter that now, in the early hours of the morning, opens floor-to-ceiling onto the inky blackness of the outside world. On the horizon, tiny pinpricks of distant light amidst the fog and a bulbous full moon. I hold my breath for a second looking at it because I realise it connects everyone. Me, my mother, Milo.

When I make my way back to the bathroom a few minutes later, I knock. 'Isla?'

'Yes.' Her voice still sounds a little strained, but I can tell her initial panic has thawed. The door creaks open to leave a gap, and she accepts the bundle of things I pass through it. 'Thanks...why the hot towel?'

'For the cramps, I think it might help a little. And hopefully the tissues work for now. I tried to find some paper towels and we don't have any, but as soon as the shops open we can –'

'Kai?'

'Yeah.'

'Thank you.' There's a sluicing of running water. Somewhere outside, a soft magpie's carol heralds the dawn.