Courtney and I looked at each other. Without warning, I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I so desperately wanted to remain stoic in honor of the moment, to show my sisters strength, but the thought that we could have wound up naked was ridiculous.
“I am surprised Mother did not order us to strip down,” Courtney said. “If she knew we would be left with nothing, perhaps we should be.”
“Mother would not do that to us,” Bella said, dropping my hand to place it on her hip. “Mother might have left us with nothing, but she would not be so cruel as to leave us with no clothes on our persons.”
“Mother did not tell Ava to use a spell to protect us,” Courtney pointed out. “You do not know what she wanted.”
“And you did?” Bella asked.
“Sisters, sisters,” I said, trying to stop them from fighting before they began. “We must control ourselves. We still need to figure out what to do.”
A gust of wind blew across the field we stood in. Petals fell off the wild flowers that grew nearby, leaves danced to the ground, and our hair slid out of the intricate knots we had teased them into in order to keep them from getting in our faces.
“I’m sure that was Mother telling us to shut our mouths,” Courtney said.
“After purposefully pitting us against each other, as she was wont to do,” I agreed and burst out into laughter once again.
The situation was so insane, so intense, so... surreal, there was only one way to break the tension. And the image of all three of us naked, in a meadow, was enough to make me laugh until I couldn’t stand, until I rolled to the ground and shook with the release of pain.
Tears rolled down my face and I cried and laughed until I forgot what I was feeling, until there was nothing left. Courtney did the same while Bella rubbed her eyes with her fingers. She did not want to cry in front of us. She could not help it, though.
In that moment, I longed to reach for her, to take her in my arms and give her a tight hug. But I knew that was the last thing she wanted right now.
Finally, I stopped laughing. I was sitting in the dirt, my heart broken and my sisters around me, waiting for me to do something. Part of me resented that I now had to step into the role of leading my sisters rather than being on equal footing with them. I never liked the expectations that the older child had to set an example for the younger ones, that the younger ones could do whatever they wanted while I had to be perfect. But I also was aware that right now, my sisters needed me. I could let my resentment fester and turn into a bitter hag. Or I could step into this new role with grace. I didn’t know if I possessed grace at all, but at the very least, I could try.
So, I got up. I had to. They were looking at me for guidance in this insane new world we found ourselves in. I couldn’t let them down, just because there was part of me that resented the situation. I promised myself that I wouldn’t be the reason my own sisters were bitter or resentful.
I swayed on my feet. Bella handed me a handkerchief from her pocket as she too stood up. She tugged Courtney up as well. I wiped at my face and took some slow, deep breaths. I needed to collect my thoughts. Just because I wanted to help my sisters didn’t mean I had any idea what I was supposed to do next.
There was a way forward. I just had to find the path.
“Okay,” I said, clapping my hands together. My fingers still tingled from the magic I had used to protect us. “Well, first things first. Mother said that we should build a house nearby. Somewhere to keep us safe.”
And that was the priority: keeping my sisters out of harm’s way.
“Us?” Courtney repeated, her characteristic frown coming down over her blue eyes. Our mother’s eyes. We all had them—right blue eyes with sparkles of violet.
Though mine were more sky blue, Bella’s had a touch of green, and Courtney’s were a darker, ocean blue. But we were our mother’s daughters.
“Yes. You,” I repeated. “Me. Bella. All of us.”
I began to head to the land my mother had indicated before she passed away. This place felt foreign to me, even though we technically lived here, only in a façade of magic.
I wasn’t sure where we should actually start building a house. Hell, I didn’t know how to build a house in the first place. All I knew was that I had to start somewhere. And I had to take it one step at a time.
Courtney crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Where are you going?”
I bit my lip.
“We can’t stay here forever,” I said. “Well, I suppose we can, but I don’t want to. And I know you guys don’t want to, either. We need a place here, a safe place where we can live and practice our magic in peace. A place that’s not going to disappear from under us when someone or something disappears. But let’s not kid ourselves. We’ve all wanted to do other things, things Mother told us we weren’t allowed to do. We’ve always wanted to go to the magical realm, meet our family, learn from the old mages. You know it in your bones to be true.”
To be honest, this had been mostly my dream, but the others had never liked our mother’s rules either. Surely, they wanted to explore the world as much as I did?
Courtney narrowed her eyes even further.
“You mean our father,” she said. Her voice was inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if she was suspicious of my motives or if she needed some time to try and solve what I was trying to say. It wasn’t as though I was trying to make it difficult. I wouldn’t lie to them, though I couldn’t promise that they would understand everything I chose to do. “You want to meet him, don’t you? Even though mother’s dying words were to forbid us to go to him.”
I stepped closer to her, annoyed that she was criticizing my decisions already. Mother hadn’t been gone an hour and already her lack of trust in my abilities had proven it lived on, even though she wasn’t here.