The Sisters of Straygarden Place

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 way to travel the ground that took a girl like her — a girl made of darkness and