“Drink,” the Elder urged her again.
Mayang hesitated. The water didn’t smell like ordinary drinking water.
“It smells like ylang-ylang flowers,” Mayang said.
The Elder slowly nodded, as if he knew what was happening to Mayang.
“What happened, sir?” Joenathan asked anxiously.
The Elder fell silent. He didn’t answer right away, and his expression showed that he was thinking hard.
“You have an invisible bond with an inhabitant of the jinn realm,” he said casually, though his face looked grave and troubled.
“What do you mean, sir?” Joenathan looked confused.
The Elder invited Joenathan out onto the porch to talk, afraid that Mayang might panic if she overheard them.
“There’s a bond between your friend and a supernatural figure from the jinn realm. That means she may return here someday, whether she’s picked up or comes back on her own,” he said.
“How could that bond have formed? She’s always been with me. We haven’t met any supernatural figure,” Joenathan argued.
“They don’t have to meet or face each other for a bond to form. It can happen when a human and a jinn first encounter each other, and when the jinn sees the human and immediately falls for her. At that point, the bond between them has already been formed,” he explained.
“Was that figure a prince who came face-to-face with her?” Joenathan murmured.
“If it was a jinn prince, then the bond will be even more complicated.”
Mayang opened her phone to check the local time, and her eyes happened to catch the numbers and letters displayed beneath the digital clock.
“Huh? July 8?” she cried in shock.
“What’s wrong, May?” Joenathan hurried inside to find Mayang in the living room.
“We’ve been here almost a week, Joe?”
“What? No way. Didn’t we just get lost last night?”
“That can happen, depending on how quickly time passes in the jinn realm. In some places, one day in the jinn realm equals three days in the human realm. In others, one day in the jinn realm equals one week in the human realm,” the Elder answered casually.
“Oh, crap. The office might come looking for me,” Joenathan said.
“Don’t worry. We’ve already contacted your office. Someone will pick you up this afternoon.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you so much,” Joenathan said.
All day at the Elder’s house, Mayang could do nothing but stare blankly into space. She barely spoke, unlike usual. She felt hollow, as if a part of her were missing.
That afternoon, Joenathan and Mayang sat relaxing on the porch of the Elder’s house.
“May, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, Joe.”
“You’ve looked gloomy and spaced-out all morning.”
Mayang turned to him and gazed deeply into the face of her best friend. Rubbing her chest, she said,
“Something’s missing here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, Joe. It’s like I left something behind, but I don’t know where it is or what it is. And this feeling is hard to explain.”
“We’re going home to Jombang the day after tomorrow. I already bought our tickets.”
“What? Going home? I still want to vacation here, Joe.”
“Another time, when I’m not away on business. I’ll come pick you up and take you on vacation somewhere beautiful.”
Mayang turned her face away, feeling strange about herself.
After evening prayers, two cars and a tow truck arrived at the village Elder’s house. The air there was strange enough to make Joe’s supervisor and coworker shudder with fear—especially when they saw the yellow monument bearing the words Ngapak Wentira.
The monument was shrouded in a thin veil of clouds, as if anyone who saw it would feel that the invisible boundary between the human realm and the jinn realm was about to merge into one.