The Night Sister

Or almost alone.

There, against the far side, on one of the stone battlements, a large moth flexed its wings.

Rose moved closer.

It was a luna moth—a good four inches across, wings of the palest green with long tails and delicate, feathery antennas.

Rose knew it was far too cold out for a luna moth to appear—they usually made their appearance in early summer. She blinked, sure she was seeing things, but the moth remained.

Rose reached for it, and it took off, launching itself from the edge of the wall, flying drunkenly away from the tower, a fluttering ghost of a thing: there, and then gone.

An impossible thought came to Rose as she watched the moth disappear into the cold, dark night:

That luna moth was Sylvie.





Rose


“I saw you outside last night,” Mama said, face stern.

Rose was doing her Saturday-morning chores—feeding Lucy and the chickens. She wore high rubber boots and last year’s winter coat; it was too short at the sleeves now, but still warm.

“Me?” Rose finished filling Lucy’s trough with grain and made sure she had enough water.

Taking care of Lucy was her favorite chore and had been her responsibility since she could remember. Though the cow had been born the same day as Sylvie, making them twins of a sort, it was Rose who truly loved Lucy best of all. When she looked into Lucy’s large eyes, she believed the cow knew things, things that could never be spoken.

Rose loved all the animals. Once, when she was very little, they’d had a shaggy black farm dog named Ranger. Every night, he slept down in the kitchen, next to the stove. Some mornings, little Rose would wake up beside him, snuggled against his warm black fur.

“What are you doing out of your bed?” Mama would scold, and Rose would say that old Ranger must have come to pick her up and carry her down to sleep with him so he wouldn’t be lonely.

“Rose thinks she’s a puppy,” Sylvie said. And Rose rather liked this, and went around barking instead of speaking until Daddy threatened to give her a good spanking.

“Please don’t lie to me, Rose,” Mama said now, coming into the pen. If she was up here, then that meant Sylvie or Daddy must be watching the office, dealing with checkouts. “It was after midnight. What reason could you possibly have to be wandering around outside after midnight?”

Rose gave the old Holstein a pat, right on her Vermont-shaped spot. “I was looking for Sylvie.”

“Sweetheart,” Mama said, lifting Rose’s chin so that she would look up into her mother’s eyes, “I asked you not to lie.”

“I’m not lying!” Rose insisted—why was it she was always the bad girl, the liar, the one who got caught? “I woke up and she was gone. I came downstairs to look for her and saw her outside, going into the tower.”

Mama gave her a disbelieving look.

“I went out and followed Sylvie into the tower,” Rose explained. “And then she…disappeared.”

But she hadn’t just disappeared, had she? She’d climbed to the top of the tower and turned into a moth.

“People can’t just disappear,” Mama said.

“Well, Sylvie did.”

But not really. She just…changed. Rose had been thinking hard about it all night, puzzling over it, and again and again she came back to one startling conclusion: her sister was a mare! Just like in the stories Oma told her. Maybe Oma had even known; maybe that’s why she told Rose so much about mares, to prepare her for the day she would realize that her own sister was one.

Rose wished, more than anything, that she could talk to Oma about all of this.

“Perhaps you only imagined you saw her,” Mama suggested. “I’m sure she was right there in her bed the whole time.”