The Sisters of Straygarden Place

were in agony. Her hands were cut. Her blood was as red as the lipstick their mother used to wear.
“W-Winnow?” said Pavonine. She stepped toward her, holding a hand up to show Mayhap that she should stay back.
Mayhap didn’t need to be told not to go near Winnow. But it still stung that Winnow could not be near her without becoming frightened and violent.
Pavonine approached Winnow and crouched beside her, stroking her cheek, and Winnow grew calmer.
It’ll be fine, thought Mayhap. Pavonine will calm her down, and I’ll — I’ll —
Mayhap had no idea what to do next. Maybe she would talk to Tutto again. Maybe she would find the Mysteriessa and apologize, try to get more details out of her —
But Winnow did not calm down, not like last time.
She bared her teeth at Pavonine and pushed her away — a flat hand against each of Pavonine’s shoulders. Pavonine fell back, winded. Red dribbled from her finger. She’d cut it on the glass-littered floor. Peffiandra ran to her and licked her face.
Winnow’s wet eyes leaked silver-tinted tears as she stepped — slowly, deliberately — toward Mayhap, holding out one hand as if she wanted her sister to take it.
Mayhap held her breath as the distance between them shrank.
“May —” whimpered Pavonine.
“Shhh, Pav,” said Mayhap. Winnow took her hand. And for a brief lemon-drop moment, Mayhap had come home again. Her sister loved her again. “Winn,” she said. “Winnow. Let me help you.”
Winnow’s bottom lip wobbled. Up close, Mayhap could see that she was entirely silver, from the tips of her eyelashes and ears right down to her bare toes and the slips of her fingers.
“Winnow,” said Mayhap. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.”
Little liar.
Winnow pulled Mayhap toward her, hugging her, and Mayhap wrapped her arms around her sister. Her hair smelled of wanderroot blossoms. Everything Mayhap had been feeling up until this point — fear, rage, confusion — flooded out of her in the form of tears. The tears soaked into her sister’s hair.
Distantly, Mayhap could hear Pavonine. “May — she’s got —”
But it was too late.
Winnow caught hold of Mayhap’s forearm — her fingers pinching so tightly that Mayhap couldn’t pull away. In her other hand, Winnow held a shard of mirror. In a moment she had made a clean cut through Mayhap’s skin.
Mayhap hissed and brought her arm to her lips. She tasted earth. And, when she lowered her arm again, her blood wasn’t red — not like Pavonine’s, and not like Winnow’s. No — hers was silver.
I told you not to meddle, came a voice — the voice of the Mysteriessa. Mayhap looked around, but she couldn’t see her.
She clamped her hand over the wound, but it was no use — the blood, the silver, was seeping between her fingers.
“Pav,” said Mayhap, her voice shaky.
“May?” said Pavonine. “May, why is your blood — silver?” Each word was a splinter. Fear made her cheeks white.
“I don’t know,” said Mayhap. But she did know, deep in the root of her being, that she wasn’t sick.
This was something else. There was something wrong.
“But — silver is bad. Silver is the grass. Are you sick, too? May? Answer me.”
Mayhap looked at the palms of her hands. “I don’t know,” she said again. But she knew that Winnow, sick as she was, still had blood that was raspberry red.
“Let me see,” said Pavonine.
Mayhap pushed her sister away. “I have to — I have to go — I’m sorry —”
Winnow stared at her with flat, unyielding eyes. With smug victory.
“Where do you have to go?” asked Pavonine. She began to cry. “You can’t get sick, too, May. Please — let me see —”
“You can’t help me!” Mayhap screamed.
She hadn’t wanted to treat Pavonine badly. But the shame in her, prickly as winter trees, made her want to bite. It made her want to hide.
She had to get away from her sisters.
She had to get away from their eyes.

Mayhap stumbled along in the dark, clutching her wounded arm. Somehow, she had lost her slippers, and the carpets were soft beneath her feet. She could have asked the house to light its lamps, but she didn’t. She did not want to catch a glimpse of her face in any mirror.
She walked and walked, and the hallways seemed to sway and twist. Seekatrix skipped at her side, nipping at her dressing gown, but Mayhap ignored him and kept moving. She didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that if she stood still, she would have to think about the silver patch of blood on her arm.
She asked the house if it could help her with the cut. More than anything, she wanted to stop the bleeding. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she could feel a bandage wrapped tightly around her arm.
The thought of the silver staining the sleeve of her dressing gown made her nauseous, and she took it off, leaving it on the floor. And even though she wore only a thin nightgown underneath, she was warm — from the blood pulsing through her, from her pounding heart. Her silver heart.
She pressed the thought to the back of her mind and she walked. But that word kept coming back to her: silver, silver, silver.
The passages seemed to widen and shrink. She walked until she stepped on something — something small and sharp, digging into the arch of her foot.
“Ouch,” she said in the dark.
But she didn’t want to look. If she looked, there might be more silver.
She kept walking until she stepped on another object, this one smoother. She halted, and Seekatrix copied her. His body brushed her leg.
“Please,” she said to the house, still whispering, “some light. A little.”
The house lit the lamps along the walls dimly, and their strange, colorful shapes came into view — and so did the thing at her feet.
It was a small compact mirror, all gold on the outside. Mayhap opened it and felt something shift within her, like wind