Instinctively, her gaze found Essie’s two favorite stars.Twin stars, Essie liked to call them. The stories Essie most loved were ones about the Skyweaver, a goddess who spun souls into stars and wove them into the sky.
Roa thought of Skyweaver spinning Essie’s soul into a star, then putting it up there, all alone, without Roa.
A cold feeling knotted her insides.
What was taking her sister so long?
Roa reached for that normally bright hum. Even before Essie’s accident, the hum had always been there, warm and glowing inside them both.
This time when Roa reached for it, she found it dim and weak. Like a too-quiet pulse.
Essie?
No answer came.
Roa pushed herself down from the sill and walked back through the empty, ruined rooms.
“Essie?” she called, her voice echoing. “Where are you?”
Silence answered her.
Roa’s pace quickened, thinking of the way her sister’s thoughts had flickered strangely. At how distant she’d felt earlier.
Essie, if this is a joke, it isn’t funny.
At the entrance, Roa untied Poppy and quickly mounted, nudging her back toward the tree line. When they got there, the sun was long gone and the sky was blue-black. She couldn’t see any sign of a white bird in its depths.
Roa cupped her hands and called her sister’s name.
“Essie!”
Her voice echoed and died. The wind rustled the leaves at her back.
It was something the two sisters never spoke about, as if speaking it would make it come true: an uncrossed soul couldn’t exist forever in the world of the living. Eventually, the death call of the Relinquishing became too strong.
Essie had been resisting her death call for eight years now.
Looking up to the stars, Roa whispered, “Essie, where are you?”
A Tale of Two Sisters
Once there were two sisters, born on the longest night of the year.
This was not a night for celebrating new life; it was a night for letting go of the dead. That’s why it was called the Relinquishing.
The midwives tried to bring the sisters early. When that failed, they tried to bring them late.
But the girls came at midnight, defiant.
Most newborns wail with their first taste of life. Most come into the world afraid, needing the comfort of their mothers.
The two sisters didn’t come wailing. They came quietly, holding on to each other. As if they needed no one’s comfort but the other’s. As if, as long as they were together, there was nothing to be afraid of.
That wasn’t the strange thing.
The strange thing came later.
It was their mother, Desta, who noticed it: how when one girl cried, the other comforted her. And when they both cried, the roses in the garden died. It was Desta who realized that when one girl threw a fit, the other calmed her. But when they threw a fit together, the windows cracked and the mirrors shattered.
