The Journey of the Nightisans

Chapter 1: Suilmada’s Television Eyes “My sister is weird,” Lucasse Koltz frequently told newcomers to his village. It’s a known fact that most brothers find their younger sisters weird at one point or another. Then again, Lucasse’s little sister really was weird. For starters, she had blue hair—light blue like the sky. Nobody in Lucasse’s family had blue hair. Heck, nobody in the world had blue hair, that he knew of. Lucasse himself sported a head full of perfectly normal dark hair always cut in the most recent style in order to impress any members of the opposite sex who might happen to be nearby. Then again, hair could only do so much to counteract the side-effects of an embarrassing blue-haired little sister. Aside from the blue hair, Lucasse’s sister dressed a tad on the peculiar side, always wearing a tan pair of Lucasse’s old trousers with an oversized lavender shirt from their mother’s old belongings. She had made herself a hat out of a long strip of lavender cloth that she had wound around like a turban until it dwarfed her head like a beehive. At the other end, she wore a pair of wooden sandals, which, incidentally, had gone out of style three and a half centuries ago. Lucasse wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing anything from last season, let alone three centuries ago, but Suilmada seemed to make breaking fashion taboos her calling card. That was her name: Suilmada. Lucasse figured his parents had made it up in one of their attempts to be creative. His father was the village mad scientist and had always worked on some crazy theory involving black holes. He had disappeared three years ago while trying to create his own personal black hole. Lucasse’s mother, who had only lived one year after Suilmada’s birth, was an artist. Her final art project had been to paint the whole house blue. “Blue?!” Lucasse had exclaimed upon seeing his newly-painted house. “But the neighbors already think we’re crazy because of Dad and his black holes!” All the other houses on the block were normal shades of brown. “But that’s art!” his mother had answered quite innocently. That was right before Suilmada had been born. Lucasse had been away for the whole summer visiting his great-uncle Hezekiah and had come home to discover that he now had a little sister with blue hair. His parents had grinned a mile wide when they let him see her. “But all the other kids’ little sisters have brown or blond hair!” Lucasse had pouted. He hadn’t even known that his mother was pregnant; that in itself was a shock, but the blue hair topped it off. “Why do I have to be branded as the kid with the weird blue-haired little sister?!” Lucasse’s parents seemed to think she was the greatest thing since cream cheese and weren’t about to get rid of her. To make things worse, she had also been born deaf—deaf as a doorknob. However, the most peculiar thing about Suilmada concerned her eyes. Lucasse figured that since she was deaf, her eyes had been given something extra-special to make up for it. He had first noticed it when she was nine, just a few days after their father had disappeared while trying to create a black hole. Instead of mourning the loss, Lucasse actually felt relieved that his kooky mad scientist father was now out of the picture. The only drawback was that it left him the sole provider for his blue-haired sister at the young age of sixteen. The incident had happened right in the center of town next to the large marble fountain. Lucasse had taken to spending most of his free time there because its central location gave the girls a wonderful opportunity to get a glimpse of his dashingly handsome looks. Sooner or later they would have to pass by to fetch water, and then he could try out his latest heart-stopping line on them. Unfortunately, Suilmada, who loved to copy Lucasse’s every movement, was also standing by the fountain in a perfect imitation of his stance—one hand on her hip, chest stuck out, stomach sucked in, and a toothy grin—looking quite ridiculous in Lucasse’s humble opinion. Just then Jessica Hartlet, the mayor’s daughter, approached the fountain with her water bucket in hand, so Lucasse readied his smoothest line yet. “Morning, Jessica! How’d you like to go out with the best-looking guy in the world?” He flashed her his most attractive grin. “Shut up, Lucasse. For the thousandth time, I refuse to go out with anyone who thinks he’s better-looking than I am.” Then Jessica dipped her bucket into the fountain and was gone before Lucasse had a chance to blink. Lucasse turned to Suilmada with a scowl. “Look what you’ve done now!” he fumed in his frustration. “She probably thinks I’m weird because you won’t stop imitating me!” Then he did a double take. Suilmada usually liked to move her mouth in imitation of Lucasse yelling at her, but this time she stood frozen like a statue. To make the situation even more strange, Lucasse noticed a flicker in her normally light blue eyes. “Um, Suilmada, are you okay?” Lucasse began, looking around to see if anyone else in town happened to be standing nearby. Fortunately, no one was in sight to witness her latest oddity. Suilmada’s eyes had now faded to brown. Lucasse tapped her on the head. “Um, Suilmada, you’re being weird again.” A picture began to form on the surface of her eyes. It kind of reminded Lucasse of that invention called “television” in one of those other-worldly dimensions that only magicians knew how to reach. Since television didn’t exist in this dimension, Lucasse had never actually seen one, but this was how it had been described to him…except that televisions weren’t supposed to connect through people’s younger sisters. Gradually the picture came into focus to show a room shelved full of deadly chemicals. A table sat in the middle of the room, and at the table sat none other than Lucasse’s nerdy next-door neighbor Clementine performing another one of her science experiments. Clementine Heartmaker was the same age as Lucasse, yet that was about the only similarity between the two. She had an IQ of 182 and always claimed she was going to be a mad scientist like Lucasse’s father when she grew up. She even kind of looked like a mad scientist with her messily braided chestnut brown hair, which she only got inspired to fix when it began falling into her science experiments. Her current experiment dealt with a cockroach in a mayonnaise jar. Lucasse watched as she suddenly turned away from the experiment to reach for a jar labeled “hydrochloric acid.” As she turned, her long braid knocked over one of the candles that lit up the basement science lab. Lucasse could have sworn he saw the cockroach’s eyes bug out as the candle toppled right into its mayonnaise jar. Immediately the whole basement went up in flames, and Clementine ran for the stairs as fast as she could. As soon as Clementine was out of view, Suilmada’s eyes cleared back to their normal light blue shade. Before Lucasse could say anything, he suddenly noticed the flames coming from the house next to his own—Clementine’s house. He dashed toward it with Suilmada following close behind. Other neighbors were also gathering around to see the biggest fire in the history of Littletown. Clementine, dressed in a dingy lab coat and safety goggles, stood outside her house coughing as she watched it blaze away. Her father came running down the street from the local weapons store waving his hands at her. “My house!” he wailed, clutching at his bald head. “Clementine! Didn’t I forbid you to do any more experiments in the house?!” His face was tomato red as he shook his fist at her. “It was an accident!” she said between coughs. “I was only trying to shrink a cockroach!” She held up a sooty book in her right hand. “At least I was able to save my calculus book.” Calculus was the latest invention of the century and Clementine its biggest fan.