sent my mamá to the loony bin,” Bea had said darkly. “For three months, until she told them what they wanted to hear, what they already believed was true.”
Bea’s mother, it seemed, was the only exception to the rule of untrustworthy adults. Liyana’s mother, however, being a mere mortal, a boring human from blood to bones, had to remain unenlightened. Liyana didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to be locked in a bin either. The choice then, when it came, proved a fairly easy one to make.
Bea
Bea had no such compunction about lying to her own mamá nor, indeed, any fears of being locked in a bin. She knew she would escape easily enough. She would succeed where her mamá had failed. While Cleo foolishly allowed herself to be contained by institutions like the dreaded Saint Dymphna’s, Bea would simply flee to Everwhere and fly away.
Lately, Bea had been spending much of her time watching birds take flight. She wanted to freeze-frame them, to study every movement, every moment, every feather. She was most attracted to ravens. Blackbirds too, but ravens more. She loved ravens for their size, their stature, the high battle cry of their call. Bea wanted to announce herself thus: swoop into rooms, arms splayed, chest forward, trumpeting her name with a throaty howl. Instead of stepping in softly with a shy smile.
Lately, Bea was finding herself angry. Why was it that in one place she could be so strong, so brave—could soar into the skies and scream up into the heavens—while in the other she was expected (by everyone but her mamá) to be sweet and small, to look pretty and act likewise?
Bea didn’t give a damn for prettiness now. She used to wear dresses with bows and frills, used to let her abuela, aunts, foster mothers lace her long brown hair into plaits and tie them with ribbons. No longer. Now she wanted to shred every ribbon unfortunate enough to curl across her path, wanted to rip holes in every sequinned dress, wanted to wear only black and pretend to be a raven. Lately, Bea had found herself wondering if it was possible to go to Everwhere one night and never return to Earth.
Scarlet
“You know what burns well?” Bea said to Scarlet, looking pointedly at the falling leaves.
Scarlet frowned. “What?”
Bea smiled. “You’ve got no secrets from me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Bea reached up to catch a falling leaf between finger and thumb. She twirled it slowly, this way and that. “Oh, I think you do.”
“What’s she talking about?” Liyana asked.
Scarlet was silent, but Bea’s smile widened.
“Our sister likes to burn things,” she said. “Don’t you, sis?”
Scarlet gave a slight shrug, as if this particular piece of information was of no importance at all, as if Bea might have remarked on the colour of her hair.
“It’s too wet here,” Liyana said. “A fire wouldn’t catch light.”
Bea slipped from the rock she was sitting on. “Oh, I don’t think a little thing like water could stop our Scarlet, do you?”
Liyana seemed slightly perturbed by this comment, though she also seemed to not entirely understand why.
“Scarlet could set this whole place alight,” Bea said, “if she wanted to.”
I glanced at Scarlet to see a flicker of a smile—of gratitude and pride—and felt proud of her too.
“But why?” Liyana protested. “Why would she want to do that?”
Bea laughed. “Oh, keep your knickers on. Not even our Scarlet is so supreme. Anyway, no one can destroy this place. Not even him.”
I glanced at each of my sisters in turn, wondering which one of them would be first to ask her who.
Leo
On nights when the sky was clear, when the clouds drifted to the edges of the Earth and the moon was bright, Leo curled onto the cold stone ledge of his dormitory window and gazed, unblinking, at the stars. As Christopher’s snores shifted the air, Leo reached up to press his palm to the glass, as if trying to reach into the sky and set himself among the stars. On these nights Leo felt drawn to them more strongly than anything he’d ever felt before. He couldn’t understand it, though he tried. But stranger than his attraction to the night sky was his sense that this attraction was reciprocated, that the stars longed for him as deeply as he longed for the stars.
17th October
Fifteen days . . .
3:33 a.m.—Goldie
A week into my dreams something starts to change. The scenery is still the same: the white willow trees,