of the bath. I held her for a long time.
As I held her my hands grew warmer. I closed them over her, like an oven. I don’t know how long I sat there, but after a while I started to feel a shift, a jolt. As if the faint thump-thump of her faded heartbeat was twitching back to life. I frowned at this impossible thing. But then, after my experiences in Everwhere, my parameters of possible had fallen off the edge of the earth.
I opened my cupped hands to peer down at my tree. She didn’t look different, still bare and bereft of leaves and, it seemed, life. But she felt different, as if she were gasping for breath after breaking through ocean waves.
She was reaching for life and I reached back. I touched every branch, every root; I whispered to her, breathing fresh carbon dioxide into her air. To make her strong again. Eventually, I got up to search for a new pot in which to plant my little tree. I found an old margarine tub under the sink being used to catch a drip. I took Juniper to the park at the end of the road, dug up handfuls of soil, and replanted her.
Three days later my tree’s first new leaf started to sprout, a bud of bright, insistent green.
Two days after that, the kitchen flooded. Ma had a fit.
Liyana
Lately, Liyana had been arguing with her mother. They’d started fighting over the littlest things. Liyana said she was old enough to walk to school alone; Isisa said not until she turned thirteen. Liyana wanted to ditch ballet and take up kickboxing; her mother declined to pay for the classes. Liyana refused to hold her mother’s hand when they crossed the road, so Isisa seized her wrist instead, clutching so tight that Liyana’s skin was mottled for hours afterwards. Last week, Liyana had demanded a lock on her bedroom door; Isisa insisted that the only lockable door would be the bathroom.
One night, sick of enduring the torture of hair-straightening any longer, Liyana shut herself in the bathroom and cut her hair with the kitchen scissors, chopping off every controlled curl until they lay on the tiles like decapitated snakes. For a moment Liyana thought of those myths she’d learned in school—of Medusa and Samson—and was shot through with regret. Had she just cut off the source of her power? But when Liyana caught sight of herself in the mirror, she dismissed the thought. Her hair was short, shorn to the scalp in places, with frizzy tufts sticking up like a drunkenly mown lawn. Her mother would certainly kill her but, for once, Liyana didn’t care. It looked completely and utterly splendid.
For good measure, Liyana found the bottle of Dr. Miracle’s No-Lye Relaxer in the cabinet and tipped it down the sink, grinning as the stinging white gloop glugged down the plughole. She would pay for this, but it would be worth every smack.
Bea
“Kick-ass hair,” Bea said. “I bet your mamá had a stroke.”
Liyana walked into the glade, self-consciously tweaking the uneven tufts of her hair.
“Mamá would’ve slapped me so hard,” Bea said, grinning as if this were a fate to be devoutly wished. “She’d have set fire to the fucking house.” We all looked shocked and she laughed, the sound disturbing the air like a crow. “You’re all so sensitive, I’m going to have to toughen you up”—she paused, looking to each of us in turn—“Before it’s too late.”
Her words drifted into the air, parting the fog, waiting to catch our attention. I wanted to ask what she meant but waited for one of my sisters to ask instead. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long.
“Before what’s too late?” Liyana asked, snapping the bait like a fish.
But Bea just smiled her enigmatic smile.
Scarlet slid down from her tree branch. “Let’s do something fun,” she said. “We can do anything we want here. Why waste our time chatting or letting her”—she nodded at Bea—“Tease us with silly riddles?”
“I like chatting,” Liyana said. “It’s nice to get to know each other. None of us have sisters in the real world so—”
“This is the real world,” Scarlet informed Liyana, then turned back to Bea. “Now, stop being so annoying and tell us what you’re talking about.”
“The choice.” Bea sighed, as if under duress, as if she hadn’t been the one to bring up the topic in the first place. “If you don’t choose dark you’ll need to be strong to survive.”
“Survive