Fiction: When Myung flees the whale of babel, she stumbles into a new universe and new adventures

We are looking at a girl.

She is small and waif-like, arms sinewy and collarbones noticeable. Her head is tilted up, eyes wide, her mouth slightly pursed as she listens and then speaks. She is talking to a jackfruit tree.

We know it is a conversation although we cannot hear it. It is a quiet picture. If you want sound, you will have to imagine it. Leaves brushing against clouds. An engorged moon, heavy in the sky. The smallness of a girl sitting before a tree, so small that she is no more than a dot at the bottom of a picture, and we have to sweep our eyes across the forest floor to find her.

She is familiar.

We have never met her before, but we feel as if we have known her all our lives – for longer than our lives. This, we realise, is Wisa. The lost sister. The hidden story. Laleh feels her insides twist; she wants to drop to her knees and touch her forehead to the ground. She wants to shout Great Wisa! and have her creator look at her, hold her, bless her.

But this Wisa is only a girl. No more than eleven, maybe twelve. She has a mischievous energy...

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