The Story Sisters

by Alice Hoffman

  The driver turned from Elv to see his carriage disappearing down the road. He took off running, even though it was impossible to catch up. On the sidewalk, Elv leaped up and down, applauding. “Yes!” she cried out. She wanted the horse to run as fast as it could. She felt alive and free and powerful. They had made their plan in absolute silence, that was how deeply she and Claire knew each other.

  Meg and Mary Fox watched, stunned. The horse was at a full gallop now. Runners and cyclists scattered. The carriage was shaking, as though it might spring apart into a pile of wood and nails.

  It took all of Claire’s strength to hold on to the reins. She remembered the number one rule her riding instructor had told her. Never let go, not under any circumstances. She could feel the leather straps cutting into her hands as she was tossed up and down on the seat. There was an upholstered pillow, but underneath there was only a plank of wood that hit against her tailbone. Maybe she should have been more frightened, but she had the impression the horse knew where he was going. He’d probably been along this same route a thousand times. Everything was a blur. There were sirens in the distance, blending together into a single stream of noise. Claire had never felt so calm. She had the sensation of floating, of following destiny in some way.

  “Good boy,” Claire called, although she doubted the horse could hear her. Everything was so noisy. He was running and the air was rushing by. The horse had kept to the asphalt path, but he suddenly veered onto the grass. There was a big bump as they went over the curb. Claire could barely breathe, but she held tight to the reins. It was quieter on the grass. Everything smelled fresh and green. Now Elv would be proud of her. Now she would be the one to make the sacrifice, save the day.

  Se nom brava gig, Elv would say. You are my brave sister.

  Slats from the carriage were falling off, leaving a trail in the grass. They had almost reached the reservoir. That’s where the horse seemed to be heading. When they arrived, Claire hoped he would stop and drink. Everything would be fine then. She was certain of it. Maybe they could take him home, to the stables out on Long Island. She could bring him special treats every day, and he could be happy, and they could be too.

  Mary Fox dashed back to the Plaza to look for her mother. She ran so fast that she began to have an asthma attack. She stopped when at last she reached the ballroom door. By then she was gasping. Tears were steaming down her face and she was shaking. Seeing Mary in such a state was shocking. Everyone knew her as logical Mary who read medical journals for fun. Now she seemed transformed. Her hair was straggly, her face ashen.

  “Hurry!” she cried. Her voice sounded childlike, reedy. “It’s life or death!”

  The girls’ grandfather, so recently ill, was taken home by Elise, who also had Mary in tow, her inhaler already in use. Madame Cohen was taken to her hotel by their uncle Nat so that she wouldn’t get the wrong impression of Americans and their dramas. Still, Madame Cohen worried about the Story sisters, especially the eldest, who had the misfortune of being too beautiful and had a far-off look in her eyes. Madame Cohen had seen what could happen to girls like that; they were picked off like fruit on a tree, devoured by blackbirds. No one liked to hear bad news, but she would have to warn Natalia. She would have to tell her to look more carefully at her eldest granddaughter. She would tell her to look inside.

  PEOPLE GATHERED IN ragged groups outside the Plaza, hailing cabs, wondering how the day had gone so wrong. Annie and the girls’ grandmother raced to the line of carriage horses. When they explained to a policeman what had happened, he quickly called for a squad car. Everything seemed to be going at a different speed. Time was in fast-forward. At least the other girls were safe, running over to their mother and grandmother at the entrance into the park. Meg looked pale, but there was bright color in Elv’s cheeks.

  When the police cruiser pulled up, Meg got in alongside her grandmother. She felt irresponsible and scared. She should have watched over Claire. Something had gone terribly wrong and she hadn’t done a thing to help.

  Elv came to stand beside the squad car. There was green pollen in her hair. She looked shimmery and hot. Everything she touched smelled burned, like marshmallows held too long over a bonfire. “I hope that driver gets put in jail for a thousand years,” she said. Her voice was powerful, as though she were reciting a curse.

  Annie felt a chill. Elv was always at the center of things, gathering the other girls around her. “Whose idea was this? Yours?”

  Elv narrowed her green eyes. “It was animal cruelty.”

  “Get in the car,” Annie told her. “We don’t have time to discuss it.”

  Elv climbed into the back of the police car, sitting in the middle beside her sister, so crammed in she was practically on Meg’s lap. The cruiser took off through the park, siren blaring. All the windows were rolled down. The wind whipped through with such force that it stung. Elv wished they could go even faster. She liked the way her heart felt, thumping against her chest. As for Meg, she kept her fingers crossed and held her head down. She said a silent prayer. She couldn’t bear for anything bad to happen to Claire, who always put others first, even an old horse she’d never seen before.

  Midway through the park they spied the horse, galloping at full speed. He didn’t look old, like skin and bones. He looked as if nothing could stop him. A patrol car was racing alongside of him, keeping pace. An officer who was a marksman took a shot from the window of the car. One shot and the horse stumbled. Another, and he fell with a crash. The carriage went up and nearly vaulted over him before it stopped, shuddering. For Claire, it was like a ride at an amusement park, one where your heart is in your throat, only this time it stayed there. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth her heart would fall onto the grass. She was still holding the reins. Both of her arms were broken. She didn’t know that yet. She was in shock. She didn’t see the horse anymore. Maybe he had gone on running. Perhaps he’d had made it to the reservoir and was drinking cool green water. But when Claire pulled herself up, she glimpsed the heap on the ground in front of her. She was fairly certain she could see his chest moving up and down. She thought he might still be alive, but she was mistaken.

  The officers from three squad cars came racing over. Claire still wouldn’t let go of the reins. An ambulance had pulled up and one of the EMT crew members came to talk to her. “Just let me unwrap them,” he said. He would be careful, he promised, and it wouldn’t hurt. But Claire shook her head. She knew it would hurt. She could still hear the clattering sound of the racing carriage through the quiet. She would hear it for a long time. A dappled light came through the trees and spread like lace along the ground. She smelled something hot and thick. Even though she’d never breathed in that scent before, she knew it was blood.

  The girls’ mother and grandmother were ushered from the police cruiser to the fallen carriage. The other Story sisters were told to stay where they were. They were too young to see what was before them. Death, broken bones, a trail of blood. But as soon as Annie and Natalia were across the lawn, Elv darted out.

  “Come on,” she urged Meg.

  “We’re supposed to stay here,” Meg reminded her.

  “It’s Claire. She’s hurt.”

  “They said not to.” Meg’s face was set. She had already decided. She was not going to listen to Elv anymore.

  “Okay. Fine.” Elv was disgusted. Those who could not be brave were condemned to the human world. “Stay.”

  Elv ran across the lawn. Her dress looked as though it had been made of blue jay feathers. Of course she would have the loveliest of them all. Meg had an odd feeling in her stomach as she watched her sister approach the horse. It was resentment, a pit she had swallowed that was already sending out tendrils, twisting through a tangle of her innermost self.

  In the green bower of the park, Elv knelt down beside the horse. Snippets of grass clung to its black hide. There was blood seeping into the lawn, staining the hem of her dress. The blue fabric turned red, then black. Elv didn’
t care. She leaned close to whisper into the horse’s ear. She had always believed that dead things could understand you if you spoke their language. Arnish was close enough to the lexicon of death. It was spoken underground, after all, by those who had known the cruelty of the human world. Surely, the horse would be able to hear her. Another girl might have shrunk from the bitter odor of blood and shit and straw, but not Elv. She wished the horse well on his journey to the other side. People in the park stopped to stare. They had never seen a more beautiful girl. Several passersby took photographs. Others got down on their knees right there in the grass as if they’d seen an angel. Looking out the back window of the squad car, Meg wasn’t surprised by what she saw. Of course Elv’s dress would be covered with blood and people would pity her, when she wasn’t even the one who’d been hurt.

  CLAIRE REFUSED TO speak to her mother. She wouldn’t even look at her beloved ama. She closed her eyes so tightly she saw sunspots beneath the lids. If she let go, if she failed in any way, the horse’s spirit might wander, miserable, panicked and in pain. It would all be her fault. Everything seemed to be her fault. She might have held on forever, but then she heard Elv’s voice.

  “Nom brava gig.” My brave sister.

  Claire felt comforted by the sound of Arnish. It made her think of birdsong and of their bedroom at home, things that were safe and comforting and lasting. Elv was never afraid of anything. She wouldn’t compromise; she was stubborn and beautiful. There was no one Claire admired more.

  The men from the ambulance continued to beg Claire to drop the reins.

  “Go back to the car,” Annie told Elv. Today the whole world had been turned upside down.

  “Har lest levee,” Elv said to her sister. You can let go.

  Claire opened her eyes. It was a relief to finally drop the reins. Her mother unwound them and then the emergency technicians hurried to lift her and carry her to the ambulance. Claire realized there was excruciating pain in both her arms. The pain was terrible and growing worse. It felt hot, as though lit matches had been placed inside her bones. She didn’t want her mother in the ambulance with her, she wanted Elv. She called for her sister, but the EMTs said no one under eighteen could accompany her. Claire started screaming, and when she did all the birds flew out of the trees, all the moths rose up from the grass in a curtain of white.

  Elv’s shoes were streaked with blood and grass stains. “I’m the one she wants,” she told her mother. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going.”

  Elv got into the ambulance while Annie begged the EMTs to make an exception this one time. Elv was already perched on the bench beside Claire. Meg and the girls’ grandmother had come to wave, but you couldn’t see a thing through the ambulance doors. Elv leaned in close.

  “Se brina lorna,” she whispered.

  Claire couldn’t make sense out of anything that was happening. She was dizzy and confused. Her mother was there now too, telling her she would be just fine. The siren they’d switched on was so loud it was impossible to hear anything more. But she’d understood what her sister said.

  We rescued him.

  Gone

  The witch came to the village at noon. She moved into a cottage in the middle of town, got a fire burning, put up her pot.

  The next morning a famine began. In the afternoon the roads were filled with frogs. By suppertime there was lightning. By early evening the birds all fell out of the trees.

  They sent me to her because I was nothing, a cleaning girl.

  I collected frogs in a jar as I went along. I took the charred wood from a tree hit by lightning and tied the twigs together in my shawl. I gathered the birds bones and kept them in my pocket.

  At the well, I stopped and looked down into the black water. Nothing was reflected back. Only the rising moon.

  It was night and the streets were empty. Everyone had locked their doors.

  What do you have for me? the witch asked.

  I gave her the frogs, the charred wood, the bones. She made a soup and offered me some. All over the county people were starving. My poor sisters were nothing but flesh and bone. I sat down to dinner. When the witch packed up to leave, I was already at the door.

  HEALING TOOK TIME, EIGHT TO TEN WEEKS AT LEAST. CLAIRE had to undergo an intricate surgery. A metal rod was inserted into her left arm, and several pins were needed to repair her shattered elbow. She wore two heavy casts, from her wrists all the way up to her shoulders. She never once complained. She’d done what she had to, and now she bore the marks of her bravery. She didn’t say a word when she couldn’t feed herself or turn the pages of a book. She wasn’t even able to take a shower without first being wrapped in plastic. The most she could do was look out over Nightingale Lane from her window. She wanted to be as she imagined Elv would have been had she been the one to be injured: a girl who couldn’t be broken, who refused to feel pain. But Claire’s arms still hurt and she couldn’t get comfortable. Sometimes she cried in her sleep.

  Claire never told Elv that she still dreamed about Central Park. It seemed so babyish and silly. Her dreams were nightmares of grass and blood. She urged the horse to leap, but he stumbled and tilted over. Sometimes Claire startled in the middle of the night, awakened by her own soft sobs. As the world came into focus and her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out Meg’s sleeping form and the outlines of their room. There was the pale wallpaper with its cream and lemon stripes, and the three white bureaus with their glass knobs, and the tall shelf filled with books. On some nights Elv was gone, her bed empty. Perhaps she could drift in and out of Arnelle, disappearing down the secret staircase at will, leaving her sisters behind.

  When Claire heard the dusty leaves of the hawthorn hit against each other in the dark, she knew Elv was out there, perched in one of the highest branches. You had to look through the dark to see her, but she was there, breathing in the cool night air. That man wasn’t a teacher at their school when they went back in the fall, but Elv whispered that you could never be too careful. She was looking out at the pavement, the asphalt, the trees with their swelling branches. It was so quiet Nightingale Lane seemed like the gateway to the otherworld.

  Claire couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened on the afternoon of their grandparents’ anniversary party if Elv hadn’t told her about the horses in the park. How would the day have ended if there’d been no mention of skin and bones and bravery? Perhaps the horse would still be alive. Claire got a shivery feeling thinking about it. She’d felt the same when she was eight and her parents got divorced. All the trees in the yard were covered with gypsy moth cocoons. The whole world seemed spun up in gray thread. People said they wanted to help you, then they did exactly the opposite. She felt safer with Elv out there in the tree.

  In the afternoons, when she returned home from school, Elv always brought Claire a cup of soft vanilla ice cream. She fed her with a plastic spoon. She’d get into bed and tell stories about the three sisters of Arnelle. Each had a special task: one to find love, one to find peace, one to find herself. The sisters had a bond no one could break. That was something Claire understood. She and Elv spent more time together after the accident. Meg was busy with after-school activities—the school newspaper, painting lessons, the French club—but Elv came home early, skipping dance class. She murmured to their mother that she was quitting dance in order to help out with Claire, but there was another reason as well. She didn’t like to look at herself in the mirror at the dance studio. She didn’t think she was as graceful as the other girls. She was too tall, too clumsy. Her teacher, Mrs. Keen, insisted she had real talent. She’d come into the locker room while the other girls went in to warm up and told Elv it was time for her to be serious about her work. All Elv had to do was make the commitment. A dancer’s life was one of both commitment and sacrifice. She was such a beautiful girl, she could have whatever she wanted. Elv had sat in the locker room afterward. Things echoed in there. The air was heavy and smelled of sweat. She could feel the beginnings of
her black wings. She was from Arnelle, a stolen girl. Mrs. Keen hadn’t seen who she was. She didn’t know the first thing about her. That was when she’d begun skipping classes.

  “Which sister am I?” Claire wanted to know when she was told that the old Queen was looking for someone to take her place. The next in line must be able to place her hand inside the mouth of a lion, her arm inside the jaws of a snake, her entire body into a nest of red fire ants. She must be able to tell the true from the false with her eyes closed. The scent of a lie was the stench of turpentine, dirty wash-water, green soap. She must be able to escape from ropes and metal boxes, to spy treachery from a distance.

  “You’re the best sister, Gigi.” That was Elv’s nickname for Claire, taken from gig, the Arnish word for sister. Elv’s long black hair was pinned up. She stroked Claire’s head, which was filled with knots from spending so much time in bed and from sleeping so fitfully.

  “No,” Claire said. “That’s you.”

  Elv curled up closer. She spoke in a whisper. “Once upon a time I saw a demon on the road. I ran away, but then I realized I’d left you behind.”

  “You came back for me,” Claire said.

  Elv linked her arms around her sister. They both laughed when one of Claire’s casts bonked against the side of the bed.

  “Le kilka lastil,” Elv said. You could kill someone with that.

  “Je ne je hailil,” Claire said. I would if I had to.

  “No, you wouldn’t.” Elv smiled. “You’re the good-hearted sister.”

  Meg came home, her backpack overflowing. She sat at the foot of the bed. She knew her sisters stopped their conversations when ever she was around. “Everyone’s talking about you at school,” she told Claire. “You’re famous.”

  “No,” Claire said. “I’m not.”

  “Oh, yes,” Meg insisted. “Über famous. ‘Page Six’ famous.”