The Story of Songs and Silverfish

words by Megana Kumar, art by Gloria Sung

In the village of the Song Spinners, spirited young Magal Mozhi lives with her mother, wise old Thaai Mozhi. Every day when the sky turns from orange to blue, Thaai Mozhi goes outside to spin songs. And every day when the sky turns from blue to black, she comes home, resting her song strings by Magal Mozhi’s head. 

“I’ll always be right here,” she whispers to Magal Mozhi in the morning, when she begs Thaai to stay.

Thaai Mozhi teaches Magal Mozhi everything she knows. Each week, they venture out into the wild to pluck fresh song strings, taming them to a rhythm. Magal Mozhi runs deep into the fields, and she can hear Thaai Mozhi behind her, voice loud and bright. Magal, Magal, Magal, Thaai Mozhi calls. Magal Mozhi presses her small fingers into Thaai Mozhi’s hands where the strings leave behind little markings, like scales on a silverfish. 

“When you make a song,” Thaai Mozhi would say to her when they were out hunting for harmonies, “you have to put a piece of your heart in it.” 

—

The time comes for Magal Mozhi to go out into the world and carve a name for herself. She decides to start by spinning for the people Thaai Mozhi had always spun for. 

“I’ve been with this family for generations,” Thaai Mozhi says, ushering Magal Mozhi towards them, “and now it’s your turn.” Magal heads towards a boy, around her age. 

“Hello,” Magal says, nervous. 

“Hello,” he says, his words woven from Thaai’s own string. And in that moment, even though he wipes his nose with the back of his hand, Magal Mozhi knows she’ll write songs for him forever.

Thaai’s songs are ones you never have to learn—they are fed and gobbled.

It doesn’t matter what color the sky is anymore, because she will be with him for every shift in hue. She spins song after song after song. It helps that Thaai Mozhi gave her all of her songs, ones that she can pull bits and pieces from to sample as hooks and baselines as she weaves ones of her own. Magal will never, ever tell her, but she sings Thaai’s songs under her breath when her fingers start to shake. Thaai’s songs are ones you never have to learn—they are fed and gobbled. They look like the crow’s feet around an aunt’s eyes and the graying ends of a grandfather’s hair, desperately covered up with dye (who is he fooling?) They sound scolding, nagging, cajoling—they blow on a wound to make it go away.

She sings Thaai’s songs to feel loved. She sings Thaai’s songs to give love.

It is Magal Mozhi who goes outside to spin songs now, but she brings her boy by sometimes when she rests her song strings behind Thaai Mozhi’s head. Magal sleeps on Thaai’s left side and her boy takes the right, and they burrow their noses into the soft cotton of Thaai’s clothes as they pretend to fall asleep. They wait for Thaai Mozhi’s eyes to fall slowly shut before whispering and giggling above her head.

Thaai pretends not to notice.

They are too old (or perhaps too incompetent) to pluck song strings, but never too old to press their fingers into her hands. Magal on the left and her boy on the right, where the strings leave behind little markings, like scales on a silverfish. 

Magal Mozhi tries showing her boy how to pluck song strings. His thumb is misaligned, fingers a little too rough when plucking. The sound is jagged, strings turning into sand in his hands, and Magal teases him to tears about it.

“You don’t know how to pluck a plant, or what?” she laughs.

“Shut up! It’s not my fault you’re such a bad teacher.” Magal launches herself at him and has him almost pinned to the grass when Thaai Mozhi separates them, tone chiding. On the way home, Magal and her boy go through an arduous vow of silence, a test to see who can last longer (neither, they end up talking after five minutes). Thaai Mozhi can only smile. They are too old (or perhaps too incompetent) to pluck song strings, but never too old to press their fingers into her hands. Magal on the left and her boy on the right, where the strings leave behind little markings, like scales on a silverfish. 

Magal Mozhi always asks her boy what her songs feel like. It’s the only way to get trustworthy feedback. Her mother has a responsibility to lie and pour honey into her ears, but she knows her boy will be honest. Her boy says that Magal’s songs feel like dewdrops, clinging onto the ends of his tongue before they fall, like they can’t bear to let him go. Her songs look like dawn, he tells her, a new beginning. 

“They taste sticky and sweet,” he says, earnest—so much so that even when the strings get tied up in his teeth he licks them right off. He doesn’t mind when she fumbles and leaves ends loose. He stands there with her strings hanging from his mouth and all her unraveled, half-stitched mistakes in his hands. She asks him why he keeps them.

He tenderly folds them on his fingers. “What is my heart,” he asks, “without pieces of your song?”

She doesn’t tease him for a whole two hours after that.

When he talks to his father, when he kisses his mother’s forehead, when he dries his sister’s hair, he uses Thaai Mozhi’s songs.

He uses a mix of Magal and Thaai to speak with his friends. His friends use songs that sound a lot like hers, but there are certain nuances and notes that she can discern, notably different. Sisters, not twins. 

“When you make a song,” Magal Mozhi mutters reverentially, as she weaves, “you have to put a piece of your heart in it.”

Still, she can’t help but notice the way Thaai Mozhi’s songs seem to roll off of his tongue when he takes Magal to his house. When he talks to his father, when he kisses his mother’s forehead, when he dries his sister’s hair, he uses Thaai Mozhi’s songs. They sound easy, natural—like honey in the sun, smooth and warm. Magal’s songs are getting to be technically perfect, she knows that, but the honey behind them has just begun to heat. 

—

One day, when Magal’s boy is less of a boy and more of a man, he tells her he wants to travel off to a faraway land.

“Who knows what I’ll see?” he asks. “It’ll be good for you too. Just wait until we get there. You won’t believe the amount of songs you’ll get to spin.” Magal Mozhi can’t help but be excited—a new chance to practice her song making! 

She packs all of Thaai Mozhi’s songs into a gigantic trunk and goes to tell her the news right away. Thaai is not as excited as Magal hoped she would be. 

“It’s good,” she reassures Thaai. “I’ll get to practice so much more.” 

Thaai just places her silverfish hand along Magal’s cheek. 

“Remember,” her eyes are sad, as if Magal Mozhi will forget. “I’ll always be right here,” she says softly, tapping the side of Magal’s face. 

“I know,” Magal says simply, and kisses the inside of Thaai’s palm. 

She knows her songs sound strange, compared to theirs. They stretch the vowels she grew up hollowing, and whittle the consonants that she likes to keep whole.

So Magal and the boy go to a faraway land. He makes new friends, and the songs they use sound more like second cousins than sisters—but they all come from the same loom. His friends find Magal Mozhi terribly endearing, a little funny. She doesn’t mind. They don’t mean anything by it. She knows her songs sound strange, compared to theirs. They stretch the vowels she grew up hollowing, and whittle the consonants that she likes to keep whole.

She keeps spinning her sugar silk songs, but something has changed now, she can tell. Sometimes when she spins, her string almost bites, and other times, it curls up soft and mellow, like a cat in the sunshine. She can feel her songs grow crow’s feet and desperately cover up their gray hairs. She knows why. He was right, she gets a lot of practice. Almost too much. Nobody really speaks in Thaai Mozhi’s strings, in this faraway land. Magal Mozhi always starts with her dawn dewdrop base, but she can’t help throwing bits of Thaai Mozhi’s spinnings into each one—her hollow vowels, her taffy ones, her bites, her cats, her crows feet and gray hairs, her silverfish hands. Her boy smiles when he finds her doing this. When she finds ways for them to remember.

—

Her boy is in class, talking, while Magal Mozhi sits in the corner, weaving and weaving elements of Thaai Mozhi, instinctively braiding Thaai into her song. 

There is a sharp, cutting noise from the back of the room. Laughter, she recognizes, after a beat. But it’s not a laughter filled with joy, but venom. A murmured string floats out of one of their mouths, a piece of shrapnel drifting through the air. Wait a second, she searches the air. How am I hearing this when I’m supposed to be hearing—

Him. Her boy has stopped singing, she realizes. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes downcast, and she doesn’t understand why. 

She is not nothing, Magal Mozhi thinks. She is my whole heart. 

She doesn’t understand why he storms out of the building. She doesn’t understand why he refuses to look at her for the rest of the day. She doesn’t understand why he turns his back to her as he paces along the floor. 

She reaches for his hand, and he slaps it away. 

“Why?” he asks her, “Why do you have to—” he presses his fingers into his temple. His voice comes out strangled. “Why do you make me sound like that?”

She fidgets. “Sound like what?”

He finally turns to her. “You know what.” She doesn’t. There is a long, heavy pause in the air.

“Like her,” he hisses. Oh.

“What’s wrong with—”

“What’s wrong with? What do you mean, what’s wrong with? Can’t you hear? She’s haunting us. They don’t listen to me, they just hear her,” he seethes, “and to them, she is nothing.”

She is not nothing, Magal Mozhi thinks. She is my whole heart. 

“You don’t want to—” she has to take a deep breath for her words to not come out frayed. “You don’t want to sing anymore?” 

“What? No. No, nothing like that. I need to sing, for them to pay attention.” He smoothes a hand down his face. “Just— take her out. Take all of her out. You can do that, can you? Weave songs without her in them.” Magal’s head spins. She can feel the strings on her fingers bite harder and harder. “Come on, it’ll be a new beginning!” He gives her an eerily fake grin, before it shatters. “I can’t take sounding like a joke anymore.”

A deep, horrible wail echoes in her head, and she realizes, with tears in her eyes, that it sounds like Thaai Mozhi. Her hands hang limply at her sides, her heartbeat ringing through her chest and back into her spine. She tries desperately to provide comfort the only way she knows how.

“I’ll always be with you.”

He looks at her for a long time. She can’t read his eyes. They are wide open, but shuttered all the same. “I know.”

The sky turns blue to black. 

She changes her name from Magal Mozhi to Daughter Tongue…She realizes her hands will never have silverfish scales.

So she packs all Thaai Mozhi’s songs away in a trunk. The dye in grandfather’s hair begins to fade away, aunt’s crow feet start to disappear. The songs call to her, scolding, nagging, cajoling, and her chest falls apart as the sound muffles into silence. 

She closes the last zipper with shaking hands. There is no one to blow on the wound to make it go away.

When she spins, she adds filling to her hollow vowels and she whittles all the ones she left whole. She squishes any words that stretch like taffy and cuts off the string that claws and bites. She chases the cat away from the sunlight, and its yowls fill her with regret. She changes her name from Magal Mozhi to Daughter Tongue (that was what all of his friend’s song spinners said to do). She forces her hands to tap out the universal rhythm his friends’ songs seem to bend and flow to. 

She realizes her hands will never have silverfish scales, and her songs begin to taste salty.

—

She tries to keep spinning her sugar silk songs, but something has changed now, she can tell. Sometimes when she spins, her string falls limp. There is no dawn, no new beginning. The strings are cloying instead of sweet, because that is the only way she can deal with the obvious absence of Thaai. Not Thaai, she thinks fiercely, bitterly. Mother. Mother Mother Mother. Say it right, or they won’t listen. And what is the point of singing if they cannot understand. She pours parts of herself that don’t exist into her weavings, and the earnestness that was there at first turns sour. The boy struggles to move his tongue around the strings, much less lick them off.

“What are these songs?” he asks her, exasperated. “I know you can do better than this.”

“They’re what you asked for,” she says, voice clipped. 

“I didn’t ask for this! I asked for songs without her in them. Not this. It feels like torture to get my mouth around these—”

“Look at you,” Daughter Tongue sneers, suddenly. She stands, exhausted yet defiant. He jerks back, startled. “You can’t even say her name. You slobber after them like their approval is the only thing that matters, when she raised you. Raised us.” Daughter stalks after him, panther after prey. “Tell me, boy—” she spits. He flinches. “why do you care?”

And all of a sudden all she can see is a little boy who wiped his nose with the back of his hand, who dried his sister’s hair, and who kissed his mother’s forehead.

His mouth flattens into a straight, thin line. She stares at him, eyes narrowed, venomous. A cobra ready to strike. “Because everything here depends on if they listen or not.”

“Who decides that? Who? Why should I bind myself to a rhythm I’ve never heard of? What makes them audible and us not?” He stays quiet. “Why do I have to be the one to change?” she hisses, “Why not them?”

He just stares, dumbstruck. Her body finally releases, slumping into the wall where he leans. They stay like that for a while.

“You know,” she says, turning to him. He tilts his head immediately to listen to her. “My old songs were just as much her as the ones I made here. Whether you like it or not, she’s part of me. So I’m sorry if my songs aren’t better than this,” she pauses, “I’m sorry that it’s taking me so long to rip out a piece of my heart.” He averts his gaze, eyes picking apart the floor.

“Why didn’t you say no?” he asks, and his voice breaks, and all of a sudden all she can see is a little boy who wiped his nose with the back of his hand, who dried his sister’s hair, and who kissed his mother’s forehead.

She scoffs. “Like I could ever say no to you.” There is a long silence after that.

“My heart misses new beginnings,” he says, but then looks right at her. “but it misses homecoming even more.”

“I miss it,” he says, finally. “the way your songs held my tongue and refused to let go. I miss you tackling me into the grass when I couldn’t pluck notes and when you couldn’t either.” She hides a smile. “I miss the morning colors that spiraled out when I spoke your thread. I miss licking strings off of my teeth and I miss holding pieces of song in my hands. I miss when I was honest with myself about who I was. About who we are.”

She gets up to leave, and he grabs her hand. His eyes hold a quiet type of ruin when she looks back at them. 

“Open the trunk.”

“What?”

“Open it, Magal.” She stares and stares and stares.

“My heart misses new beginnings,” he says, but then looks right at her. “but it misses homecoming even more.”

—

It takes months for them to be okay again. For Magal’s songs to gain a quarter of dawn, of morning glory. For her songs to trust his tongue to hug them back when they cling to him like dewdrops. For the cat to curl back up in its patch of sunlight, for Magal to glue back all the pieces she whittled down and hollow out all the vowels she filled up. Her string isn’t afraid to bite anymore. There are still times where she finds herself falling back from Magal Mozhi to Daughter Tongue, but the weaving scolds and nags and cajoles her until she says her name the right way. 

Her boy still goes to his classes, and sometimes, they laugh razor sharp laughs. When they do, he just smiles and speaks louder. “Your songs,” he says, afterwards, “they taste sweeter.” Strings hang out of his mouth and he licks them right off of his teeth, beaming.

There are crow’s feet around his eyes.

When they fall asleep at night, she takes the left side and he takes the right, the trunk placed in the middle of their beds. There is no soft cotton to bury their noses into, but she still places her song strings behind his head.

“I’ll always be with you,” she whispers.

“I know.” he says. He takes her hands and presses into them where the strings leave behind little markings.

Like scales on a silverfish.