The Sisters of Straygarden Place

at its details. The figures were girls, and the silver bent around them.
Every image in the house seemed like a symbol — or a threat.
Mayhap was shaken out of her thoughts by Pavonine’s soft voice: “May? What are you going to have to eat?”
“Oh,” said Mayhap. “You go ahead. I don’t know what I feel like yet.”
Pavonine requested a cup of hot chocolate and a cheese sandwich.
Mayhap squinted at her. “Hot chocolate and cheese? How is it possible that you can have those two things together?”
Pavonine only shrugged. She thought chocolate went with everything. It made Mayhap laugh — but only a little, because she was suddenly very aware of Winnow again, half asleep and just outside her vision, groaning faintly.
The food appeared on a little rose gold tray, which Pavonine placed on her lap. She looked cheerful for the first time in twelve hours. She lifted the sandwich with both hands and bit into it, then slurped her hot chocolate loudly. “May?” she asked.
“Yes, Pav?”
“Why is some magic good and other magic — not good?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this sandwich” — she held the sandwich aloft — “is a kind of magic. The house gave it to me. It appeared out of nowhere.”
“Right,” said Mayhap.
“But the grass’s magic is different.”
Mayhap thought instantly of the Mysteriessa. Her magic was different, too.
“So why is the one good and the other bad?” asked Pavonine.
Mayhap ached for her parents to be sitting with them. She wanted them to answer the question.
But as she thought about Pavonine’s question, she realized she had an answer. It wasn’t something she knew with her mind; it was something she knew with the parts of her that were wordless. She knew it with her toes, with her fingertips.
“It’s not that the magic is bad or good in itself,” she said to Pavonine. “The magic itself is like any other tool — like a knife, or a hammer, or electricity. It’s what the magic is used for that makes it good or bad. The house’s magic is a helping magic. It looks after us. But the grass’s magic”— or the Mysteriessa’s magic, thought Mayhap — “is a taking magic. It is used to steal from us, and from others.”
Winnow moaned, as though in agreement.
“That makes sense,” said Pavonine, and Mayhap was satisfied with her answer for a moment.
But the more she pondered the Mysteriessa, the more that satisfaction evaporated. Because the Mysteriessa’s magic was not only a taking magic. She did take from every resident of Straygarden Place, but she also gave them the house to live in, and she had given the Ballastians droomhunds when they couldn’t sleep. Mayhap didn’t know if she was good or bad. Maybe she was both.
Pavonine took a big sip of hot chocolate. “Are you going to ask the house for your food, May? Then you can tell me what you’ve found while we eat.”
“Of course. I completely forgot,” said Mayhap. Feeling lazy, she said, “I’ll have my favorite breakfast. And a cup of Earl Grey tea.”
The food appeared on a wooden tray, carved with birds’ nests and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It hovered in front of Mayhap before she placed it carefully on her lap.
But the house had made a mistake.
It had not given her a single pain au chocolat — her favorite breakfast. Instead, a bowl of steaming cinnamon porridge sat on the tray.
The house had never made an error like this before.
And even though it was only food — food that smelled perfectly fine — panic crept across Mayhap’s scalp as though her hair were full of ants.
Pavonine hadn’t noticed — she was too busy cooing at Peffiandra. When she finally looked up, she said, “What?”
“The house gave me the wrong breakfast,” said Mayhap. “I asked for my favorite, and it . . .” She gestured at her bowl.
“What is it? Porridge? You don’t mind porridge. I rather like it, too. It smells nice.”
“Pavonine, that’s not the point.” Mayhap shoved the tray off her lap, and it landed on the floor, and Seekatrix jumped with fright. The porridge seeped into the carpet.
“May!” said Pavonine. “Why don’t you ask the house for your favorite again? I’m sure it was only . . .”
But Mayhap felt as though she were walking in the dark without a lamp. She looked past Pavonine’s shoulder. She couldn’t possibly make Pavonine understand how terrible this entirely insignificant thing had made her feel.
Winnow woke up, crying again, speaking in garbled and hurried fragments.
The house began to clean the mess Mayhap had made.
Mayhap watched as Seekatrix and Peffiandra played, wrestling and growling. She couldn’t eat anything now. She could hardly think. “Let’s go to sleep, Pav,” she said. “We’ll feel better if we do. And then I can tell you everything.” She stood and moved toward the bed, her head full of frantic fog.
“May?”
“Hmmm?” said Mayhap.
“We have to brush the droomhunds first.”
Mayhap stopped beside the bed. “Oh, yes,” she said, sniffing and wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
She looked at her feet to meet eyes with Seekatrix, but he and Peffiandra were still playing, and then they were speeding off, out of the bedroom, running abreast and barking, and there was nothing left to do but to fetch them back.

Mayhap and Pavonine found the droomhunds in their father’s old study, wrestling on the moss-green rug. The walls were covered in dark-blue silk, little silver stars stitched into it. The curtains were drawn, making the room feel like a cave. Lamps glowed dimly on the walls. Their father’s desk was untouched, his collection of bat skeletons arranged on shadowed shelves behind it.
The tiny bones made Mayhap’s skin tingle. She was still shaken from the porridge incident, and she didn’t feel like being inside the dark shell of her father’s once-favorite place. Her thoughts were loose in her head.
She grabbed at Seekatrix, who was wriggling about on the carpet with Peffiandra, but he scrambled away, his clipped nails skittering on the polished marble floor. Peffiandra darted off, too, hiding underneath the