Other-Mayhap stood behind her parents.
Then Winnow’s eyes found Mayhap’s face — and Quiverity’s. Her body jerked.
The Mysteriessa put Evenflee down gently. The droomhund ran to Winnow as Quiverity stood and drifted toward the silver grass.
There seemed so much to say, but Mayhap couldn’t find a way to say it.
She wanted to say I love you.
She wanted to say I’m sorry.
She wanted to say I didn’t know. I didn’t know all the wrong I had done.
But she couldn’t. The air was too gentle for it. The world felt like a bruise. She didn’t want to hurt it further.
Instead, she turned to Quiverity Edevane, her sister through all of this, and she said, “Maybe we should go.”
Go where, she didn’t know, but this clearing was for the Ballastians. They had righted their wrong, and they could not stay.
Quiverity only looked at Mayhap, but her eyes said, I am afraid, but I will come with you.
Mayhap stood. She picked Seekatrix up. “Goodbye,” she said.
But Pavonine whined. “Tell her,” she said to Mayhap. “Tell Winnow what happened.”
Winnow frowned at Pavonine, one arm around her, then glanced at Mayhap.
Other-Mayhap looked as though she were about to hear the greatest bedtime story ever told.
Mayhap cleared her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to lift her eyes from the soil. “I didn’t know,” she said as loudly as she could muster. “I didn’t know who — what — I was. I didn’t know that Quiverity — the Mysteriessa — made me seven years ago. She made me to steal her place.” Mayhap motioned at other-Mayhap. “When I found out how she had made you sick, I tried to help. Anyway, I am glad you are well now, Winnow.” The wind whistled around them. “She did it because she was afraid, because she knew you’d found out that I wasn’t — that I wasn’t your sister.”
“I was afraid, too. I was afraid for Pavonine,” said Winnow, bursting into tears. “I came back to get her. I was going to tell her once you were asleep. I was going to take her away. To Mamma and Pappa. To the second house. The grass wouldn’t let them through, but it would let me. It let me come back to the first Straygarden Place. But then it all went wrong.”
“I understand,” said Mayhap. “It wasn’t right, what the Mysteriessa did. And now I think we must go. So that you can start over.”
Winnow fiddled with her cuff.
Pavonine ran to Mayhap and hugged her.
Mayhap took her time, looking at their faces. She did not know where she would go or what she would find when she arrived elsewhere, but she knew that she would always remember them.
Pavonine let go of Mayhap’s waist and squeezed her hand. Cygnet and Bellwether were huddled together, turning their faces away, and other-Mayhap was watching all of this with wide eyes, holding her droomhund like a baby.
Mayhap freed her hand from Pavonine’s. She walked to the edge of the clearing, the Mysteriessa at her side.
The grass hissed, as though waking up.
“Where are you going?” it said.
And it curled around Mayhap’s wrists.
The grass wound Mayhap up in silver. It wrapped itself around Winnow, Pavonine, and other-Mayhap. It held Cygnet and Bellwether still as they struggled against its tangling. Mayhap could hear them shouting, but she couldn’t make out the words. The droomhunds were trapped, too, whining and barking.
The only one the grass had left alone was Quiverity Edevane.
The earth at Mayhap’s feet grew soggy, and she was sucked into it. Her sisters and other-Mayhap were slurped down, too.
“What’s happening?” she heard Winnow say. “Is it the Mysteriessa again?”
“No,” said Mayhap. “It’s the grass.”
The Mysteriessa couldn’t help them. The grass had given her magic, but it was far more powerful than she was.
The sisters and almost-sisters were pulled down into the earth. Into the darkness of the mud. Into the glut of soil.
Mayhap tried to cry out and tasted the saltiness of clay, the squirm of worms, the grit of crushed, chalky stone. She tasted centuries.
Strands of grass cut into her wrists, her middle, her ankles. Her nose and mouth and ears were clogged, and she thrashed and twisted, needing to breathe.
Just when she thought she could not live without air for another second, she began to fall.
She could breathe — a gasp, only one — before she landed on the ground below her with a thud. Her hands went to her ears and nose and throat, but her skin was dry and dirtless. Her ears rang like bells. She moved, loosed from her silver bonds.
Her sisters fell, too.
“Pav?” she called. “Winnow?” In the dark, her mouth was scoured by their names.
“I’m here,” said Pavonine.
“Me, too,” said Winnow.
“I think the grass left Mamma and Pappa — and the droomhunds — up there,” said other-Mayhap.
“What’s happening?” said Winnow.
“I don’t know,” said Mayhap.
“Shhh,” said Pavonine. “Can you hear that?”
“Hear what?” said Winnow.
“That,” said other-Mayhap.
“It’s — it sounds like grass,” said Pavonine.
It did sound like grass. Rustling.
“Who’s there?” said Mayhap, her voice in the key of fear.
“Shhh,” said Pavonine, loudly now, for the grass’s sound had risen around them like a wave, and it seemed about to respond.
Then something else happened. Light happened. Bright, white light, as though the earth had been opened like a pomegranate. The ground they had fallen through was now turning itself inside out — turning itself so that its silver grass hung low over them, a canopy of shining threads, sharp as needles. The earth above them flipped over and shut itself like the lid of a pot, and light shone through fissures above.
“Please,” said Mayhap, choking on the smell of the soil. “Don’t hurt us.”
“Friends of Quiverity Edevane, are you?” said the grass.
Mayhap squirmed as the silver brushed her skin. “Y-yes,” she stuttered. “We are.”
“That’s not exactly —” began Winnow.
“Hush,” said Pavonine.
Other-Mayhap stayed quiet.
The grass laughed. Its laugh was like paper cuts against Mayhap’s skin — the sharp edge of something delicate. “Quiverity Edevane,” it mused. “But she has not a friend in the world.
