The Story Sisters. Alice Hoffman

up her pot.

       The next morning a famine began. In the afternoon the roads were filled with frogs. By suppertime there was lightning. By early evening the birds all fell out of the trees.

       They sent me to her because I was nothing, a cleaning girl.

       I collected frogs in a jar as I went along. I took the charred wood from a tree hit by lightning and tied the twigs together in my shawl. I gathered the birds’ bones and kept them in my pocket.

       At the well, I stopped and looked down into the black water. Nothing was reflected back. Only the rising moon.

       It was night and the streets were empty. Everyone had locked their doors.

       What do you have for me? the witch asked.

       I gave her the frogs, the charred wood, the bones. She made a soup and offered me some. All over the county people were starving. My poor sisters were nothing but flesh and bone. I sat down to dinner. When the witch packed up to leave, I was already at the door.

      HEALING TOOK TIME, EIGHT TO TEN WEEKS AT LEAST. CLAIRE had to undergo an intricate surgery. A metal rod was inserted into her left arm, and several pins were needed to repair her shattered elbow. She wore two heavy casts, from her wrists all the way up to her shoulders. She never once complained. She’d done what she had to, and now she bore the marks of her bravery. She didn’t say a word when she couldn’t feed herself or turn the pages of a book. She wasn’t even able to take a shower without first being wrapped in plastic. The most she could do was look out over Nightingale Lane from her window. She wanted to be as she imagined Elv would have been had she been the one to be injured: a girl who couldn’t be broken, who refused to feel pain. But Claire’s arms still hurt and she couldn’t get comfortable. Sometimes she cried in her sleep.

      Claire never told Elv that she still dreamed about Central Park. It seemed so babyish and silly. Her dreams were nightmares of grass and blood. She urged the horse to leap, but he stumbled and tilted over. Sometimes Claire startled in the middle of the night, awakened by her own soft sobs. As the world came into focus and her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out Meg’s sleeping form and the outlines of their room. There was the pale wallpaper with its cream and lemon stripes, and the three white bureaus with their glass knobs, and the tall shelf filled with books. On some nights Elv was gone, her bed empty. Perhaps she could drift in and out of Arnelle, disappearing down the secret staircase at will, leaving her sisters behind.

      When Claire heard the dusty leaves of the hawthorn hit against each other in the dark, she knew Elv was out there, perched in one of the highest branches. You had to look through the dark to see her, but she was there, breathing in the cool night air. That man wasn’t a teacher at their school when they went back in the fall, but Elv whispered that you could never be too careful. She was looking out at the pavement, the asphalt, the trees with their swelling branches. It was so quiet Nightingale Lane seemed like the gateway to the otherworld.

      Claire couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened on the afternoon of their grandparents’ anniversary party if Elv hadn’t told her about the horses in the park. How would the day have ended if there’d been no mention of skin and bones and bravery? Perhaps the horse would still be alive. Claire got a shivery feeling thinking about it. She’d felt the same when she was eight and her parents got divorced. All the trees in the yard were covered with gypsy moth cocoons. The whole world seemed spun up in gray thread. People said they wanted to help you, then they did exactly the opposite. She felt safer with Elv out there in the tree.

      In the afternoons, when she returned home from school, Elv always brought Claire a cup of soft vanilla ice cream. She fed her with a plastic spoon. She’d get into bed and tell stories about the three sisters of Arnelle. Each had a special task: one to find love, one to find peace, one to find herself. The sisters had a bond no one could break. That was something Claire understood. She and Elv spent more time together after the accident. Meg was busy with after-school activities—the school newspaper, painting lessons, the French club—but Elv came home early, skipping dance class. She murmured to their mother that she was quitting dance in order to help out with Claire, but there was another reason as well. She didn’t like to look at herself in the mirror at the dance studio. She didn’t think she was as graceful as the other girls. She was too tall, too clumsy. Her teacher, Mrs. Keen, insisted she had real talent. She’d come into the locker room while the other girls went in to warm up and told Elv it was time for her to be serious about her work. All Elv had to do was make the commitment. A dancer’s life was one of both commitment and sacrifice. She was such a beautiful girl, she could have whatever she wanted. Elv had sat in the locker room afterward. Things echoed in there. The air was heavy and smelled of sweat. She could feel the beginnings of her black wings. She was from Arnelle, a stolen girl. Mrs. Keen hadn’t seen who she was. She didn’t know the first thing about her. That was when she’d begun skipping classes.

      “Which sister am I?” Claire wanted to know when she was told that the old Queen was looking for someone to take her place. The next in line must be able to place her hand inside the mouth of a lion, her arm inside the jaws of a snake, her entire body into a nest of red fire ants. She must be able to tell the true from the false with her eyes closed. The scent of a lie was the stench of turpentine, dirty wash-water, green soap. She must be able to escape from ropes and metal boxes, to spy treachery from a distance.

      “You’re the best sister, Gigi.” That was Elv’s nickname for Claire, taken from gig, the Arnish word for sister. Elv’s long black hair was pinned up. She stroked Claire’s head, which was filled with knots from spending so much time in bed and from sleeping so fitfully.

      “No,” Claire said. “That’s you.”

      Elv curled up closer. She spoke in a whisper. “Once upon a time I saw a demon on the road. I ran away, but then I realized I’d left you behind.”

      “You came back for me,” Claire said.

      Elv linked her arms around her sister. They both laughed when one of Claire’s casts bonked against the side of the bed.

      “Le kilka lastil,” Elv said. You could kill someone with that.

      “Je ne je hailil,” Claire said. I would if I had to.

      “No, you wouldn’t.” Elv smiled. “You’re the good-hearted sister.”

      Meg came home, her backpack overflowing. She sat at the foot of the bed. She knew her sisters stopped their conversations whenever she was around. “Everyone’s talking about you at school,” she told Claire. “You’re famous.”

      “No,” Claire said. “I’m not.”

      “Oh, yes,” Meg insisted. “Über famous. ‘Page Six’ famous.”

      Evidently there had been an article in the New York Post about the mistreatment of carriage horses. The reporter had mentioned the girl from North Point Harbor who’d done her best to control a runaway horse. There were animal rights activists who had built a shrine to her and the fallen horse in Central Park, on the Great Lawn. It was made out of horseshoes and stones. People brought flowers and left them strewn about the grass.

      “Se breka dell minta,” Elv said solemnly.

       We should all bring you roses.

      “Well, I brought homework instead.” Meg brought forth the papers and books she’d picked up in Claire’s homeroom. “I’ll read the questions, then you answer and I’ll write them down.”

      “Why don’t you just do it for her?” Elv said. “It would be much easier.”

      “Because I don’t know how she would answer.” Meg had the habit of chewing on pencils, even though she was afraid it might give her lead poisoning. She had recently found she had a lot of nervous habits. More and more often, she wanted to be alone. She wished she could move into one of the smaller bedrooms downstairs, but she didn’t want to hurt her sisters’ feelings. She couldn’t wait to