Once I was the Lady of Tales. From the kingdom of the Thais to the island of Singa Pura, tens of thousands of kampung folk crowded around their storytellers to leave this world for the ones I spun. To live as heroes and queens, battle demons and tyrants, find love and lose it. And if you were lucky enough to hear one from my lips, you would remember it to your dying day. When I told a tale, people forgot to breathe.

Now I am a Datuk in the Royal Court of Melaka. I have exchanged tales for treatises, myths for philosophies. Dignitaries come all the way from India to meet me, and I have the ear of Alauddin Riayat Shah himself, Sultan of all Malaya.      

And yet, once, I birthed worlds like a god.    

This, however, is a true tale; the only true one I’ve ever told or am ever likely to. So listen now to me, Aabirah, Lady of Tales, and I will tell you of the great mystic Suara Bumi. You know many tales of her—for who has ever been more beloved?—but this is one never before heard, never before spoken.      

Listen now to the Last Tale of Suara Bumi.       

***

Not one thing is known of the childhood of Suara Bumi. Some say her kampung was sacked by bandits, she the only survivor; others that she was abandoned in the hutan, only to be saved and reared by beasts. Many believe she emerged from the ground already a woman and thus named her the voice of the earth. Of course, Suara Bumi herself provided no illumination, only speaking in her constant and incoherent babble.   

For Suara Bumi had no interest in the things of man, avoiding even large kampungs. She wandered the land without pattern or purpose, alone, unclothed, unhindered, foraging better than the monyet and outhunting the harimau, tearing flesh with her teeth.   

For her, there existed only the things of nature, and she consumed it constantly—or, more properly, was consumed by it. A single piece of the world could snare her, and everything else would cease to be, sometimes for heartbeats, sometimes for days. The labah crafting her web, or bulbous obor-obor, washed up and suffocating on the beach. A bunga raya opening its petals to the sun, pokor-pokor snapping in a monsoon, the stench of a herd of kerbau, the inexorable, ruthless march of an army of kerenga. Her face assuming a look of rapture, she would neither eat, nor sleep, nor shelter. Then she would suddenly wander away and never again show the slightest interest in the thing that had held her attention so completely, as if she had awoken from an entrancement.     

In the beginning, Suara Bumi was thought a harmless madwoman, a novelty, even a joke. Children shouted after her as she passed their kampung, and when she was entranced, some would fling mud, or worse. Then, the kampung folk began to notice something peculiar: sometimes, when a question was posed to Suara Bumi, a word, phrase, or even whole sentence of her ramblings would seem to answer it—and what’s more, these answers were always true, for that which had long past, and even for that to come.      

Hundreds began trailing her, shoving each other aside to put forth their petitions. But as the clamour swallowed any reply, an unspoken rule came to be: one-by-one they approached, asked a single question, then made way for the next.      

In time, excitement turned to awe, awe to reverence. They claimed that in her entrancements she spoke with djinn, the malaikah, or even Allah Himself. Whispers began of her own divinity. Kampung folk across the land rushed to see her as she passed, and many came just for the blessing of walking alongside her.   

Then, one day, she vanished. The land was thrown into an unparalleled furor. Thousands, trawled padi fields, scoured limestone caves, hacked into the deepest hearts of the hutan. When she couldn’t be found, it’s said the depth of their wailing rent the earth itself.      

But as suddenly as she disappeared, Suara Bumi returned. And wonder of wonders: she was pregnant. However, Suara Bumi herself seemed not to notice the change, and there were fears that she would leave the newborn behind after birth. As her time approached, midwives throughout the land followed her, trading places, endlessly vigilant as she roamed past their kampungs.      

Fittingly, her time came in the hutan. Suara Bumi is said to have shown little sign of distress, babbling as usual. And yet, at the birth of the child, something happened that none expected. When the babe was placed in her arms, Suara Bumi’s babbling fell silent for the first time that any could remember. And, it is said, that her face blazed with the joy of the stars above. The child was a girl.      

For a time, mother and daughter were never left alone, but it soon became clear that Suara Bumi cared for her daughter with utmost tenderness. The crying of the babe could even bring Suara Bumi out of her enchantments. Suara Bumi strapped the babe to herself with palm leaves. Suara Bumi taught her to talk, walk, run, forage, and kill. This daughter alone Suara Bumi remembered. She alone did Suara Bumi love.    

Suara Bumi spoke to her daughter without a trace of her usual babble, though she forgot  every conversation they had. The girl never thought it strange. Did not every mother give different answers to the same questions? Once the sky was blue because it was the royal cape of a god who circled the earth again and again, then it was the great lake that shielded the land from the flames of the stars. Every conversation meant a new story, a new history, a new world.      

As the girl grew, she began to collaborate in these creations. Before long, it was she who would speak, while her mother listened.      

“Tell me a story, anakku,” Suara Bumi would say.     

“Once, Mak, you were a maid in the palace of a mighty sultan.”      

“Was it big?”    

“The largest in the land, with hundreds of servants like you. But only one of them captured the heart of the putera.”     

“Was it I?”    

“Yes, Mak. But the sultan wouldn’t allow his son to love a woman so lowborn, so he had a spell cast. The putera was made to forget his love, but from you, the sultan stole all memory, past, present, and future.”      

“Ah, sayangku, how could he do such a thing?”      

“Men are wicked, Mak,” the girl said somberly. “Especially those with power.”      

Time and again, the girl created a new life for her mother, and every detail became their true history. When the girl said her mother had been a pirate, Suara Bumi swaggered and cursed like one, swearing to find and kill the tuan who held her love prisoner. As a puteri mourning her beloved fallen in battle, she recited passages from the Ramayana. As a scorned woman, they heaped insults and curses on the girl’s father. After each tale ended, her mother forgot all about them. For the girl, it was like waking from a dream.       

Sometimes she wanted the stories to last forever. Sometimes, the stories were so bitter, so  fearful, that their lives would plunge into misery. During these desolations, the girl would long for the stories to end, but they had their own power. The words clawed at her throat until she let them loose. It mattered not. Even the darkest of these times she treasured. Hundreds of lives she and her mother spent together, held forever in her heart.

*** 

Why have I come here to tell you this story?
A dream of my own. Suara Bumi kneeled by a lake in the mountains. The water, a mirror’s reflection. In it, her breath blossomed white clouds from unruly hair that covered her face. A legion of stars framed the wild visage.      

In the stillness, her reflection spoke to her. Though I know now what was said, the real Suara Bumi listened with rapture, and after a long while, she reached out to touch the face of her reflection. The water writhed as her hand passed, but the reflective face remained undisturbed. Tears fell from the reflection, upward, and splashed on Suara Bumi’s face. And the white puffs of breath from Suara Bumi’s lips came less and less, soon, only wisps. Her eyes brightened like a fire’s last roar, and then, darkness filled them.      

I woke, shrouded in sweat. That night, I packed light and set out from Melaka. Suara Bumi was going to die, and I needed to bury her. Isn’t that, after all, a daughter’s last duty?        

*** 

I began to true-dream when I was eleven or twelve. My first was of a man murdered in an alley of a great bandar. I noted the great houses with every ornate detail clear in my mind, even though I had never seen any dwelling larger than the hut of a kampung chief. Paved streets were strange to me, when all I had known was dirt roads. I saw lamps set on poles, the blue sash of the victim, threaded with gold in a pattern of scales, and beside him, a bloody keris with a hilt carved like the maned head of the singa. Even weeks later, I could recall the vision.      

When I told Mother about this, she spoke of the world as a web. If one knew how to read the threads, then one could see to even the furthest shores of the laut. For the first time, I wasn’t satisfied with her mystical answers. I wanted to know what the dream meant, here, in the real world. So when a man came dressed in a finely woven tunic and a silver laced taqiyah, I went to him. He seemed like he would know the going-ons of the bandar folk. Perhaps he would have answers for me.      

He scratched his beard and said, “The sash, it sounds like one worn by the house of Tan Sri Abdullah.”      

“Was someone murdered?” I asked. “Someone young? By a keris with a hilt shaped like the head of a singa?”      

“No, nobody in his house has died,” the man said, laughing. “What an imagination you have.”      

The man kissed his fingers, touched my mother’s shoulder, and left. Little more than a week later, he was pushing through angry supplicants to reach us.      

“Aabirah binti Suara Bumi!” he called between gulps of breath. “Three days past, the youngest son of Abdullah was murdered in the street! With a keris!” He turned to the suddenly quiet crowd. “She saw these things in a dream! A week before they happened!”      

For a moment the sheen of silence over the crowd held them entranced. Then a woman shouted, “The girl has inherited her mother’s power!”      

Another man called, “Praise Allah, she too is blessed!”      

Suddenly I was surrounded, a chorus begging me for more. As they pressed on me, I felt a sharp panic. But then, a wave of something rose in me that drowned all else. As I took in the desire of those around me, I felt a sudden need to keep them listening. I trawled that dream with increasing desperation as the light of interest dimmed in their eyes. The crowd began to dissipate, in ones, then twos, then whole groups. When they were all gone, I felt lonely for the first time in my life.      

When another true-dream came to me, I shared it eagerly. I wanted to wait for confirmation, but my mother veered off for a nearby hutan. Nothing I said nor did could persuade her to leave, and my frustrations with her grew. So much so, that when she asked for a story, I refused to give one. She looked confused and hurt, but I remained unrelenting. When we finally left, I sprinted ahead at the sight of the first kampung. Indeed, my dream had come true, and my prowess spread like thunder.       

I came to lust for those true-dreams, but more than that, for the desperate eyes of the crowds that swelled around me. It seemed as if they would starve without my next word. Soon almost as many people came to see me as did for my mother. I began to let her wander ahead while I told my true-dreams over and over, only searching her out when I had my fill of attention. Once, I had the kampung folk begging for more and more. I couldn’t resist keeping them late into the evening, feeling a hot flush of pride at how reluctantly they milled back to their homes. I wafted in this feeling for a few minutes before setting out to find my mother.       

But something was wrong, she was nowhere I could see. It grew darker by the minute, and shadows stretched to cover the land. I became a spooked calf, chasing down every sound across the field. My heart pounded endlessly, and I shivered through the night.      

Only in the light of early morning did I find her, sitting on the ground, hugging her knees, silent. She seemed not to notice, even when I grabbed her.       

“It’s me, Mak,” I said. “Aabirah!”   

I shook her again and again without response. I only realized I was screaming when I started choking on my words. It was all my fault. For a few morsels of glory, I had abandoned my own mother, and she had lost her mind in grief. I shoved my face deep into her hair, matting it with my tears, begging Allah, the spirits, anyone or anything, to reverse this consequence of vanity.     

I woke up cradled in her lap. She was stroking my hair.      

“Are you awake, anakku?” she asked.

I felt so much in that moment, I couldn’t even speak. “Ya, Mak,” I said at last.      

“Aabirah, sayangku,” she said. “Why is the sky so blue?”

I lay my head on her chest. Her heart beat gently on my cheek.  

“It’s a great lake, Mak. It protects us from the fire of the stars.”

***

I never again shared a true-dream.      

When we crossed the mountains and came to villages that hadn’t seen us in years, I told them everything they’d heard of me was mere gossip. Some childish prank, or the imaginings of superstitious folk, or the work of some cheap sorcerer, all who made it seem like my dreams had come true, hoping to use my fame to gain some of their own.      

People soon realized they were just tales, but I had become so skilled at enthralling a crowd, they asked anyway. They began demanding tales of other kinds: epics, farces, tragedies. Soon they cared nothing for what I dreamt.      

Unlike the ones I told my mother, these stories were entirely in my control. I could shape the words to pull people deeper and deeper into the worlds I created. The times the audience grew bored only flamed my passion. In the kampungs, I listened to every storyteller and before long, taught myself to read. I learned to trap hopes, corner fears, and make puppets out of hearts. I could render any listener to sobs, laughter, and screams with the shift of my brow.       

Once I was just Suara Bumi’s daughter, then a seer, and now the Lady of Tales.

Together, my mother and I were the darlings of the land, and hundreds swelled around us everywhere we went. People submitted their souls to Allah, their bodies to the Sultan, but they saved their hearts for us.      

Our own hearts belonged only to each other though. If my mother wanted to be alone with me, I dismissed the crowds without hesitation, no matter their pleas. Whenever she asked, I brought us to another one of our lives, and these I shared with no one. If this were one of the worlds I had spun, this would be where I ended our tale. Here, where our joy was complete.           

***

One day, in my seventeenth year, I returned from a kampung with supplies to find my mother was gone. I tracked her down easily enough, but when I called out to her, she didn’t seem to hear. When I touched her, she didn’t notice. I pulled at her, and she shrugged away, her eyes sliding off me.     

I followed her, waiting for the confusion to clear. But after a day turned into three, and then into a week, I grabbed her in desperation, trying to wrestle her to her senses. It was like fighting a beruang. She tossed me from her and returned to her stupor.      

“Mak it’s Aabirah. Sayangmu,” I pleaded. “Why won’t you talk to me?”      

For a moment her eyes flickered up to mine, and with it, a stab of hope. That is, until she spoke. “What dream lasts forever?”     

The world closed in around me. Time began to loop: there was my mother, there were those words, over and over, softer and softer, until I could hear them no more. And it was night. And my mother was gone. And I’d only ever been an entrancement.        

***

What more is there to say?     

I would go on to use my fame to gain access to the highest societies and study with the best teachers. I gave up tales to write complex and inscrutable treatises and commentaries. The knowledge I gain from my dreams, I use to furnish insights that astound all too wise and great to believe in prophecy. There is little difference between enthralling people of the smallest kampung and the greatest court.      

But in the end, these titles—Datuk, scholar, counsellor—all of them, worthless as dust.        

How could I be anything but the daughter you forgot?         

***

Mak, I haven’t spoken of you in decades. In truth, I hope every day will be the last I think of you.

I expected to find you already dead, wished only to bury some portion of my grief with you. Yet here you are, still alive, but so frail and shrunken it shocked me when I first saw you. You were shivering, clutching yourself, eyes wild and confused—but hadn’t you been so serene in my dream? How did you look when last I saw you? Surely not mottled and wrinkled? Not with hair so grey and brittle? Never before had a true-dream been so wrong.

But then your eyes found mine. You smiled, and I ran to you. You stumbled as you rose, and I swooped to catch you, pulling you into my lap.   

Your eyes blazed with joy. As I removed my clothes to cover you, the wind bit immediately, prickling my skin. I stared down at you, barely believing, my hair hung over your face, and your smile was as wide as the sea. You raised your hand to graze my face.      

And then I knew.      

I was the same age as you had been when you left me. I had never considered how much I must look like you. I, your reflection, framed by the lake of the great blue sky that shielded us from the fire of the stars.      

And then you spoke. “Sayangku, tell me a story.”       

And so I have.       

Your face is wet, but you are not crying. Your breath slows, and wonder flares in your eyes one last time. Now the light fades.

Oh Mak, our story is at an end.