The Sisters of Straygarden Place

by Hayley Chewins

  The third floor was not for her.

  Her bones had known it.

  Only now — now that the strewn stolen things had made her come — she knew, somehow, that it was meant for her, that there was something tying her to this place, to this room with its slim, tidy bed and its heart-shaped windows, silvered with nighttime grass.

  On the dresser was another, single box. It looked like a ring box.

  Mayhap opened it.

  It looked empty, but it wasn’t.

  It was filled with belonging.

  The sensation hit her like a familiar smell. It was like knowing someone had come home — an opened door, fresh air rushing in behind them.

  Inside the box was the feeling of speaking and having someone listen — really listen. It was the feeling of someone looking into your eyes and knowing you — every part of you.

  Mayhap could have called it belonging, or she could have called it love, or she could have called it family. Whatever it was, it hit her in her stomach, the feeling of it, and she fell to her knees. Tears ran down her cheeks. She retched and sobbed.

  She lay on the floor shaking while Seekatrix licked her face.

  She remembered how Peffiandra had found a box and chewed the lid off. Pavonine hadn’t been able to stop laughing. Now Mayhap understood that Peffiandra had found a box full of laughter — laughter that the Mysteriessa had stolen from some unsuspecting family.

  I need to close that ring box, she thought. But she couldn’t move her hands.

  And then the shape of a person clouded her sight, and she knew the Mysteriessa had come.

  It was the Mysteriessa who closed the ring box — clapping it shut like the tiniest of doors. “That’s not for you,” she said, as though Mayhap were a toddler reaching for a chocolate éclair. “You should know that’s not for you.”

  Mayhap wriggled her fingers. She found that she could open her eyes. She found that she could sit up. Seekatrix crawled into her arms. “You’re a liar,” said Mayhap. The cut on her forearm was stinging. She stood, holding her droomhund, even though her body shook.

  The Mysteriessa seemed unmoved by the insult. “You see all these things I’ve taken? I can take more. I can take anything I want from you. If you don’t stop meddling, Mayhap, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I can’t just pretend that nothing’s happened. Not when you’re making Winnow sick.”

  “I did not make her sick!” screeched the Mysteriessa. The next words were softer: “I made her silent.”

  “Silent?” said Mayhap. “Why?”

  “You don’t understand what it is to lose everything,” the Mysteriessa said.

  “So tell me,” said Mayhap.

  The Mysteriessa scoffed. “Do you know why these rooms are empty?” she said. “Because they all left. The servants my father hired. Each and every one of them left me, left a girl alone here — can you believe that?”

  Mayhap looked at the tidy bed. The windows. The dresser.

  “The cook who made our porridge in the mornings, and our nanny —”

  “The house didn’t care for you?” asked Mayhap.

  “The house only looks after the families who live here because of me,” snapped the Mysteriessa. When Mayhap looked at her blankly, she continued. “My name was Quiverity Edevane before I became the Mysteriessa of Straygarden Place.”

  The Collected Diaries of Quiverity Edevane. “Your diaries —”

  “Never mind that!” said the Mysteriessa. “I’m trying to tell you a story, Mayhap Ballastian. The grass took my family from me. It snaked around them and pulled them out of the house. They screamed and screamed, but it didn’t listen. It pulled them underground. And the servants all thought it was my fault.” She gestured around the room. “As if a twelve-year-old girl could kill her entire family. They left me, one by one, and I was alone in this big house, with nothing but magic to keep me company. I had so much magic, Mayhap. For the first time in my life. And I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “So you made the house look after you,” said Mayhap.

  Tears ran down the Mysteriessa’s cheeks. “Stop. Meddling!” she shrieked through gritted teeth. “And I will let Winnow be. Stop looking for answers, and she won’t get worse.”

  But Mayhap knew she couldn’t do that.

  “She’s my sister,” she said, pleading. “I don’t want her not to get worse — I want her to get better. I can’t stop —”

  “You will!” said the Mysteriessa. “Or you will lose everything, as I did. We will lose everything.”

  “I don’t understand —”

  “Of course you don’t! You don’t know the cost of it. The cost of light is darkness, Mayhap. And do you know what the cost of having a family is? Hiding who you really are.”

  Mayhap had never, ever, had to hide who she was. She had lost her parents too young to have to hide anything from them, and her sisters had always known her every secret. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. “Please. Let Winnow be, and —”

  The Mysteriessa laughed bitterly. “You haven’t seen,” she said, “that everything I’m doing is to protect you. To protect us.”

  “Us?” Mayhap was tired of how the Mysteriessa tiptoed around secrets. Mayhap wanted to know. She wanted to know now. Before the silver took over Winnow. Before it was too late.

  If she could only push the Mysteriessa a little bit more —

  “You’re a coward,” Mayhap said.

  “I’m not scared, I’m —”

  “You are scared!”

  “I am not!” said the Mysteriessa, covering her ears. “I’m trying to protect you!”

  “I don’t want you to protect me,” said Mayhap. “I want you to make Winnow better.”

  “I can’t . . .” whimpered the Mysteriessa. “I can’t . . .” She backed away and fell onto the narrow bed, curling up like a puppy. She began to sing quietly.

  The song was so familiar. It was as though it wasn’t coming from the Mysteriessa but off Mayhap’s own tongue.

  Then she made out the words: Think of an animal, think of a place. Think of a person, think of a face. The guessing game she had always played with her sisters. Coming out of the Mysteriessa’s mouth.

  The words filled her with dread, but she was desperate to know the truth. She was desperate to make Winnow better. She had to keep trying, no matter what. She would try another tactic. She would try gentleness. She would get the Mysteriessa to talk.

  “Quiverity,” Mayhap whispered, letting Seekatrix hop to the floor. “Tell me your favorite food, and I will ask the house for it. That’ll make you feel better, won’t it?” She touched the back of the Mysteriessa’s head, her silver-streaked hair.

  A long silence.

  Then the Mysteriessa sniffed. “Cinnamon porridge,” she said. “My favorite food is cinnamon porridge.”

  Mayhap stepped back. “The house gave me your favorite breakfast,” she said.

  Seekatrix began to bark.

  The Mysteriessa sat up. “You’re putting it together, aren’t you?” she said, her tone as buttery as brioche. She giggled. “Think of an animal, think of a place. Think of a person, think of a face.”

  Mayhap backed away more, knocking over a vase. It cracked, and sunlight streamed into the room.

  The Mysteriessa had stolen sunlight from someone.

  “I still don’t understand,” said Mayhap. “Why would the house give me your favorite breakfast?”

  “Because,” said the Mysteriessa, “you are me.”

  Mayhap wanted to laugh — the words were so absurd — but she found that she couldn’t. “What do you mean? You’re Quiverity Edevane. You’re the Mysteriessa —”

  “I mean,” said the Mysteriessa, “that you are not a Ballastian sister. You never were. I made you, Mayhap. I made you out of dirt and bats’ lungs. Out of the darkness of the sky and the silk of the moon. A sprinkling of coffee grounds for your freckles.” The Mysteriessa held up her two white hands. “I made yo
u with my magic, and I dug a hole deep in your heart — a hole I could nestle into. So that I could live within you. Live through you. It’s been so long since I had a sister, Mayhap. You must understand.”

  Mayhap couldn’t breathe. Her blood was silver — silver like the grass. Silver like the streaks in the Mysteriessa’s hair.

  “I used to love the grass,” said the Mysteriessa. “I used to love it more than anything, and it loved me back. I would spend hours running through it. It would rush against my skin. One day it asked me if I wanted to be a queen. A queen, like the ones in the stories it told me. And I said yes. I had settled down into the grass for a nap, and it told me it would need to take something from me — to make space for the magic to go in.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I said yes, and I drifted off — that beautiful, hushing color all around me, the grass giving shape to the wind. I woke to my family’s cries. I woke to see the grass pulling them beneath the ground. My mother. My father. My two sisters. And then they were gone. It only took a few moments, but those moments — they were everything. Do you know what I mean, Mayhap?”

  Mayhap knew exactly what the Mysteriessa meant.

  “The servants left,” continued the Mysteriessa. “I was alone. I had only magic to keep me company. I asked the house to look after me. But I became lonely, so lonely. I invited families here and stole from them — silence, good tastes, warmth. I stole from the families who lived here so that the magic could touch them. So that the house could look after them. I stole because I had been stolen from. Because stealing felt good. I stole to watch them suffer, as I had suffered. And then the Ballastians came along, and I couldn’t stand to watch them suffer. They were so much like my mother and my father, so much like my sisters.”

  The room grew smaller and smaller.

  If Mayhap searched — if she really looked — she could find the hole the Mysteriessa had made. It was in her heart, a little to the left. She could find it the way a tongue finds a cavity in a tooth. It was there. And if it was there, the Mysteriessa was telling the truth. Mayhap wasn’t a Ballastian. She wasn’t even a Mayhap. She was nothing.

  Worse.

  She was a monster. A beast made of dirt and bats’ lungs and scratches of sky.

  “I know what happened,” said Mayhap.

  The Mysteriessa crossed her arms as though she appreciated the challenge.

  “There were three of us,” said Mayhap.

  “Hmmm?” said the Mysteriessa.

  “There were three of us. You had two sisters, too, just like us.”

  “Just like them,” said the Mysteriessa.

  “You didn’t want us to leave. Eventually we’d have left, if we couldn’t sleep. You wanted us to stay. That’s why you gave us the droomhunds. The contract showed me how you called the droomhunds and brought them to us. You said you loved us. Because we reminded you of your lost family. Three girls. A mother. A father.”

  “So?” said the Mysteriessa.

  “It wasn’t enough,” said Mayhap. “It wasn’t enough for you to live beside us, hiding in the house unseen. You wanted to be one of us — one of them.” The word them stuck in Mayhap’s throat like a fish’s bone. “So you made — me.”

  It all fell into place now. The empty feeling that sometimes surfaced in her heart. Her hatred of the smell of coffee. The taste of earth.

  Her nightmare of being buried wasn’t a fear; it was a memory.

  “You made me,” said Mayhap, “and you buried me. You made me in the soil, among the silver. You brought me to life. I coughed out the black earth. I coughed it out at your feet. You slipped into my heart. And I became the new Mayhap, a new Ballastian girl —” Mayhap’s mind was filled with foggy desperation. “Winnow found out. That’s why you made her sick. Because she was going to say something — tell Pavonine. She was going to break it all apart. You hurt Winnow to protect me. To protect us. It was because of me, it was me all along, making Winnow sick, hurting her . . .”

  The room spun.

  “Yes,” said the Mysteriessa. “Yes, clever creature. And you think your sisters love you entirely. How could they possibly? When you don’t even know who you are.”

  Mayhap found herself on her knees. She was coughing. She was coughing up silver blood. “What did you do to the other Mayhap? The middle Ballastian sister? What did you do to my parents?” she said.

  Seekatrix tried to lick her cheek, but she pushed him away.

  “Enough,” said the Mysteriessa.

  She clicked her fingers, and Mayhap felt heat bloom through her. She felt as though she had been thrown down a long, twisting set of stairs. When she opened her eyes, though, she was in her bedroom. She was still on her knees, and Seekatrix was shaking beside her.

  Pavonine was standing by the bed, and Winnow was writhing, her skin as silver as a moonlit lake. The little ormolu clock on the mantel ticked and ticked.

  “What happened —” Mayhap began to say.

  But the Mysteriessa interrupted her.

  “I let them hear your story, Mayhap,” she said. “Now Pavonine knows who you really are. Just like Winnow does.”

  “Pavonine,” said Mayhap. “I didn’t know. I promise you.”

  Pavonine shook her head slowly, looking from Quiverity Edevane to Mayhap. “Stay away from me,” she said, picking Peffiandra up and putting a hand on Winnow’s silver shoulder.

  Mayhap listened. She didn’t want to frighten Pavonine any more than she already had. Seekatrix sat at her side, mirroring her. After a moment, Mayhap took one step forward, and Seekatrix did, too.

  “Get back!” said Pavonine.

  Mayhap froze. But she carried on talking. “Pav,” she said. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me. I didn’t know any of this —”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Pavonine said, her mouth a twist of shock. “You kept sending me away. You kept telling me to look after Winnow. I thought it was because you wanted to figure things out on your own. But you never did figure anything out, did you, because you never had anything to figure out. You said you’d tell me everything, and then you made a scene about a bowl of porridge.”

  Mayhap peered into her own heart as if she were looking through a telescope. Had she known? Had she known why Winnow was sick? Had she known what she was?

  No.

  She couldn’t have.

  She hadn’t.

  She had been as confused as Pavonine. As scared as Winnow.

  She hadn’t done this on purpose.

  But she was still the Mysteriessa’s vessel. Her body was a traitor.

  “Stay away from me, May — I can’t even say your name. It isn’t yours. You stole it.”

  “You’re scaring your sister, Mayhap,” said the Mysteriessa. There was a hint of joy in her words.

  Mayhap put her hands up. “Pav, I’m going to — I’m going to go out into the hallway. You can come out when — when you’re ready to talk.”

  Pavonine’s face was hard.

  Mayhap left the room with Seekatrix, and the Mysteriessa followed. When Mayhap looked around, the pale girl with silver hair was gone.

  There was an iciness in Mayhap’s lungs. The Mysteriessa had nestled into her chest again.

  Mayhap wanted to rip her own heart out to be rid of her. She wanted to scream. Instead, she sank to the floor silently, her back against the wall. Seekatrix lay beside her.

  Her head was a pack of wolves, and all her thoughts had sharp teeth.

  Winnow knew.

  Winnow had grown tired of obeying the rules. The rules they’d thought had come from their parents but had actually come from the Mysteriessa. Winnow had gone looking for answers. Somehow, Winnow had found out the truth.

  Think of an animal, think of a place. Think of a person, think of a face.

  The Mysteriessa had put that rhyme on Mayhap’s tongue as a taunt. She was part animal, part place. Part person. She was the Mysteriessa’s face.

  Mayhap could not go back to guessing games and apple cake. There was no wa
y to travel the ground that took a girl like her — a girl made of darkness and bats’ lungs — back there, back to sister-whispers and lace-ruffled afternoons.

  But she could try to make things better.

  She could try to make Winnow better.

  The Mysteriessa was not Mayhap. They were separate, like the yolk and the white of an egg. But living within someone’s heart for nearly a decade had to leave some traces behind.

  What trail have you scattered, Quiverity Edevane?

  Mayhap closed her eyes. She sat up straight.

  What happened? she asked herself. What happened the night Winnow fell ill?

  A vision blinked into Mayhap’s mind, flickering on and off.

  She sat excruciatingly still, as though the memory were a frail baby-winged bat that would fly away if she frightened it.

  Pavonine and Mayhap had gone to sleep, their droomhunds snuggled soundly in their minds, but Winnow paced the room, trying to decide what to do about the truth.

  That’s when the Mysteriessa unfurled from Mayhap’s chest like steam from a kettle.

  She formed herself at the foot of their bed, ragged in her silver dress. Winnow saw her, eyes wide. The Mysteriessa reached out a hand —

  Winnow ran, bare feet on the carpet. She pushed their bedroom door open, escaping into the hallway. She asked the house to light the lamps.

  The Mysteriessa made the lamps spark and go out.

  Winnow shuddered, a breath in the dark.

  “You know my secret,” the Mysteriessa said in her high, sweet voice.

  And Winnow, brave Winnow, said, “I know you took my sister away — and I know my parents left to find her. I know who you are.”

  The Mysteriessa grabbed at Winnow, but she ran away again.

  In Mayhap’s memory, the two of them looked like a pair of ghosts, two white dresses and four lungs breathing.

  “You’ll keep my secret,” said the Mysteriessa. She sounded desperate, hungry.

  “No, I won’t,” Winnow said.

  The Mysteriessa pushed Winnow into another room — the one Mayhap and Pavonine had found her in. She wrestled her onto the bed.