The Night Sister

“For God’s sake, Rose! Let go!” Sylvie cried, frantically trying to snatch her arm away. But Rose held firm.

They spun, stumbling, scratching each other. Rose grabbed Sylvie’s hair and jerked her head forward, half expecting to see a terrible mouth hidden on the back of her sister’s head. Sylvie shrieked, dug her nails into Rose’s arm, and raked them down, leaving trails of blood. They twirled together, stumbling like drunk dancers doing their own version of the twist. The stars above them blurred. Everything took on a sickening yellowish tinge. Rose staggered, her legs suddenly not working right. Sylvie’s nails felt as if they were clawing their way down to the bone. Rose dipped forward and sank her teeth into her sister’s forearm until she tasted blood. Sylvie cried out and released her grip. The terrible dance slowed. Sylvie looked, unbelieving, from the wound on her arm to Rose’s face.

“My God,” Sylvie breathed. Her face was white; her lips were colorless; her eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. “What’s happening to you?” She pulled back from Rose with all her strength.

Sylvie slipped from Rose’s grasp. Rose fell to the floor. Sylvie, suddenly free, stumbled back two steps and hit the wall hard. It caught her at the waist, and she was gone, over the edge, flipping over backward in a clumsy dive.

“Sylvie!” Rose screamed, only it came out as a strangled-sounding growl. She tried to get up, but found her body was frozen, her muscles unable to respond to her mind’s command to move, her head swimming, the pain in her head pulsing. She lay there for what felt like ages, while strength returned to her limbs and her vision cleared a little.

At last, in slow motion, she was able to stagger over to the edge. She willed herself to look down, to search the pool of darkness at the bottom for her sister’s crumpled body. But there was nothing—only the cold shadow of the tower.

“Sylvie!” Rose called, her voice hoarse and strained, searching the darkness. Surely her sister couldn’t have walked away from the fall—it was a good thirty feet down.

But where was she?

Gone. Sylvie was gone.

“No,” Rose moaned. She sank down to her knees, head hurting so bad she was sure that something inside was going to explode.

Then, at the edge of her vision, she caught movement: a quick fluttering, the slight glow of nearly iridescent wings.

And there she was: Sylvie, in luna-moth form, rising from the darkness below, coming to rest on top of the stone wall. With her pale-green wings spread wide, she was beautiful, luminous, glittering, as though made of stardust.

Slowly, Rose felt for the pack, which had fallen off during their struggle, reached inside, and pulled out the butterfly net. She stood up and crept forward slowly, net behind her back.

“Got you!” she cried, slamming the net down on top of her sister.

She held the butterfly net closed carefully as she climbed back down to the base of the tower. In the kitchen, she used her flashlight to find the large glass jar that her mother sometimes made sauerkraut in. She put the moth inside and screwed the lid on tight. Then she took the jar out to the shed, found a roll of baling wire, and wrapped it over and over around the jar, making a metal cage, so that it would be impossible for her to transform back into a human.

Once she was back in her bedroom, Rose placed the wire-wrapped jar on the floor beside her bed.

“I’ve got you,” she said again to the moth in the jar. It was clinging to the inside of the glass and seemed to make no move to find a means of escape. The moth was perfectly still, as if she knew she’d been caught at last. Maybe she even wanted to be. Maybe it was time to surrender.





Rose


Rose woke up in the morning with a tinny taste in her mouth, her body spent and exhausted. She’d dreamed of knives and claws, and razor teeth. She lay there for a minute, breathing a little too hard, eyes closed, listening for her sister.

Then she remembered.

Rose turned and reached for the jar beside her bed.