Two women, face to face, hands clasped.

The sisters.

I’ve seen them in my dreams. Their faces are alike – they are twins after all – but their bodies are night and day. Moriah and Belia, the sisters whose divergent journeys are the paths we have followed ever since, one people marked like Moriah and another blank like Belia. Each woman is a queen to her followers and accursed to her enemies. When I dream of them, they are always so sad. But those are just dreams.

“When this was found, by all accounts, it caused quite a storm.” Mel smiles but her eyes are anxious.

“What does it mean?” I ask.

“It’s a symbol of the sisters reunited. After everything – after Moriah is utterly covered in ink and the White Witch—”

“Belia,” I interrupt. “Her name is Belia.”

“Belia…” Mel says, “is utterly blank and bare. And yet, this image seems to depict an idea that at the end – towards the end of their lives and reigns – the sisters came back together. Perhaps even reconciled.”

“It’s incredible,” I whisper. My fingers itch to be able to touch – just once. “You think this was part of a skin book?”

“I do, but a very old one. Some storytellers argue that it is the skin of a storyteller who was alive in the time of Moriah. They believe that this is the final story that storyteller told. There is another theory, fanciful though it may be,” ventures Mel. Her voice is deliberately light. “Some past storytellers have argued that this is the skin of Moriah herself – that this was her final message to her people.”

I stare at her. “A message – a declaration,” I breathe. “A record claiming that the sisters had reconciled in the past – and that blank and marked could do so again…”

Mel watches me, her blue eyes hooded.

“But if the sisters had reconciled,” I go on, thinking aloud, “then surely that would be widely known? People wouldn’t live like this if there was a better way…”

But even as I say that, I think of Sana – Sana, who starved her own people to make them more likely to fight. Jack Minnow, whose eyes light up when he sees violence. Even if they were given every reason, every chance for peace, I think that people would still choose war.

“Whose skin do you think it is?” I ask Mel.

Her voice as she replies is dreamy. “In my wildest thoughts I have hoped that this might be the skin of Belia.” I stare at her in surprise, and she shrugs. “That she came back. That she repented and was marked and rejoined her sister, living under Moriah’s good rule.”

“Is that what you want for the blanks?” I ask. “Even now?”

“I pray for their repentance,” she says, nodding. “That they find hope.” I’m surprised to feel a lump in my throat.

“The blanks have hope,” I say. And I think of the stones, the lake and Fenn’s face when he came up from the water. I remember the day Ruth died and their voices soaring high, sending her soul on its final journey. That was real – as real as this. “They have faith, too. It’s just different to the stories we know. Not wrong. Just different.”