The Sisters of Straygarden Place

as though she had two mouths instead of one, and she tried not to think about the grass and the way it spoke with a hundred separate voices.

Mayhap, Winnow, and Pavonine lay in their crescent-shaped bed of creamy onyx, their hair spread out on embroidered pillows.
The letter their parents had left hung on the wall above their heads, framed in curlicued silver. In the black-and-white photograph that hung beside the letter, Cygnet and Bellwether Ballastian were sitting on a sofa, staring ahead seriously, their droomhunds perched on their laps.
All three girls blew a kiss to their lost parents. “Sleep darkly, Mamma and Pappa,” they said in unison.
“Sleep darkly, Winnow,” said Mayhap, determined not to meet her older sister’s eyes. “Sleep darkly, Pavonine.”
The grass made a keening sound against the windows.
The coverlet tucked itself around the girls.
“Sleep darkly, Mayhap,” said Winnow, lying back and letting out a long breath. “Sleep darkly, Pavonina Carina.”
“Sleep darkly, sisters,” whispered Pavonine.
And then Winnow whistled for the dogs.
The three droomhunds leaped at once onto the enormous bed.
Peffiandra trotted toward Pavonine’s cheek. Evenflee pawed at Winnow’s collarbone. And Seekatrix bounded onto Mayhap’s stomach. Mayhap rubbed his ears. He smelled of brown sugar and orange zest. He yawned, showing his black tongue and gums, the inky cave of his mouth.
Peffiandra nuzzled Pavonine’s ear, then burrowed inside it like a rabbit slipping into its warren. Pavonine’s breathing slowed and steadied. Her eyes fluttered closed, her eyelids like two pink petals.
Then Winnow said, “You next, Mayhap.”
Seekatrix was on his back now, gnawing at Mayhap’s fingers. She wished she could fall asleep with him beside her — tucked against her body or held in her arms. But that was impossible. She was a Ballastian. If she closed her eyes for too long without a droomhund inside her mind, her head would fill with a buzzing whiteness, a searing heat, like lightning burning inside her. Those were the words Winnow had used after her experiment. It made Mayhap nauseous to think of it. She rubbed Seekatrix’s belly and whispered, “Come on, Seeka. Time to sleep darkly.”
He sat up, tilting his head, then squeezed his way into Mayhap’s mind.
The room went ashy at the edges, as though it were a singed letter, and Mayhap’s thoughts turned to gauze and gossamer. Pressure sat behind her watering eyes and pinched the top of her nose as Seekatrix fussed, trying to get comfortable.
Winnow’s face hovered over her, a fuzzy oval, and then Seekatrix curled up tightly and went to sleep, and everything went dark. Mayhap shut her eyes.
It was time to rest.


Seekatrix scrambled painfully out of Mayhap’s mind, and she knew he was petrified.
Sometimes a noise would wake him, and he would flee from her head, leaving her ears ringing. But this was different. Her whole head ached and the bridge of her nose burned. Waking up had never hurt this much.
When she opened her eyes, rubbing her temples to stop the clangor in her brain, the silver ceiling came into focus above her, its ridges as defined as scars in the light of the fire.
Pavonine was still asleep. Seekatrix was sitting beside Mayhap on the bed, facing her. His growl was high-pitched, like a hummed question.
And Winnow was gone.
Mayhap clambered out of bed, and Seekatrix followed her. She asked the house for a dressing gown, and a garment as fragile as moths’ wings was draped over her shoulders, pink ribbons tightening the organza around her wrists. Velvet slippers covered her feet.
When she opened the heavy damask drapes and peered through one of the thousand bedroom windows — each the size of a teacup and shaped like a nine-pointed star — she found that it was the middle of the night.
The silver grass parted its strands and swayed, revealing a navy sky dabbed with white stars. The wander-root trees hung in the air like ornate chandeliers.
As Mayhap pressed her face to the glass, the silver shrieked and scratched against the windows. She stumbled back, legs numb.
She turned to Seekatrix, her heart pounding. He was standing just behind her, still growling, and her thundering heart made her want to growl right back. “Seeka,” she whispered, folding her arms. “What’s going on? Why did you wake me?”
He pitched his ears forward, his growl only loudening.
Mayhap patted her thigh for him to follow her. She knocked on the intricately carved ebony screen that separated the bedroom from the bathroom. “Winnow,” she said, “are you in there?”
Silence.
Mayhap asked the house to move the screen aside. The electric lamp on the wall glowed. The bathroom — a square of seamless green marble with a claw-footed tub in the middle of it — was empty.
“Winnow?” said Mayhap again. Her sister’s name was peculiarly shaped in her mouth, as though it were a shard of broken china.
And Seekatrix was still growling.
Mayhap peered at the open bedroom door. She couldn’t remember if it had been closed when they’d gone to sleep. She felt it call to her — pulling her as though there were an invisible wire connecting it to her heart.
“Come along,” she said to Seekatrix, marching through the door. The droomhund walked at her side with his tail held halfway down, sloped like a lowered flag.
Lustring-shaded lamps lit Mayhap’s way as she followed the carpet that traced the hallway’s length like a gift’s ribbon. The walls were dotted with mirrors of every shape and size, framed in burnished silver. As she walked, she could see other Mayhaps walking alongside her. Her dressing gown billowed like a cloak.
Four rooms down, there was another open door. Mayhap pushed past it.
And there was Winnow.
Winnow was lying in a bed shaped like a hand and carved out of oxblood marble. The curtains on the far side of the bedroom were open. The moonlight, filtered through the grass and through a thousand rose-shaped windows, brightened her face as though it had been dusted with chalk. She stirred, waking. She sat up. But Evenflee did not wriggle or