Skeleton Sister
Winter stole the breath from my sister’s lungs. Leached the spirit from her bones. Left her cold and lifeless on the earthen floor, where we slept together beneath a rough woolen blanket. Now I kneel beside her riverside cairn, unstacking the stones one by one. The rough granite chafes my palms; my bloodied fingers tremble in the chill night air. As I work, I cannot help but glance around, scouring the dark in search of onlookers. For what I am doing is blasphemy—no, worse than that. If I am caught, I will be accused of witchcraft, tied to the stake; my sister’s slow death in winter’s embrace will seem a mercy by comparison.
But the night is quiet, the village’s outskirts nothing more than a few vague silhouettes in the distance. All I hear is the keening wind, the burbling river, and my own ragged breathing, frantic and far too loud in my ears.
Beneath the stones, my sister’s body is all skeleton—ridged vertebrae and cavernous ribcage; the delicate shapes of her phalanges. All the flesh has rotted away, or else been devoured by worms and rodents. But even in death, I recognize the curve of her spine, the shape of her torso, the fingers I used to hold clasped in my own. Even in death, I know her, as surely as I know my own reflection.
I collect my sister’s bones in a roughspun knapsack. Then I steal away into the night.
***
Any witch knows that breath and spirit are intertwined. And I felt it, the moment my sister breathed out her last wisp of spirit. I was sleeping beside her that night, the way we’d slept since we were born—since before then, even. For our mother once told us that we were born with our bodies pressed together, brows touching, arms interlocked. Sisters inseparable even in the womb.
That night, I dreamed of our village during summertime—verdant fields blooming with wildflowers, the river a glittering thread of silver in the light. My sister was running along the riverbank, bare feet squelching in the mud. Fleet as a deer and just as nimble; her nightgown flying like a banner in the wind—hers was the beauty of a falling star, swift and inexorable in its trajectory. I ran after her, the sun’s light kissing my skin, a pollen-scented breeze tangling my hair, laughing from the sheer exhilaration of it. For in a winter as cold as this—when could we laugh, if not in our dreams?
We kept running until we reached a cave we’d frequented as children—dark, cavernous, akin to a rock-carved maw in the earth. The sight was enough to make me smile. Countless times, we’d shirked our chores here, clambering up rocks and shouting gleefully into the darkness. Shouting until we heard our own voices echoing back.
At the mouth of the cave, my sister turned to face me. And as I met her gaze…a slow dread pooled in my belly. Because even though the dreamscape around us bloomed with the colors of summer, my sister appeared as she did in life, in winter—sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, slender bones wrapped in the thinnest veil of skin. Her body tenuous as a thing made of parchment, whittled down by cold and hunger.
“Sister,” she said. “I have to go.”
“Go?” I asked.
“I can’t stay any longer,” she said. “It’s cold, so cold in my own skin.” She outstretched her arms, pallid flesh webbed with a latticework of veins. Not the beauty of a falling star, I thought. But the beauty of something lovely gone to rot. “My spirit’s hold on the body grows thinner by the day.”
I wanted to deny her words. I wanted to scream my defiance to the heavens. But hadn’t I seen her wilting away these past few months? Hadn’t I seen her thinning bones, sallow skin; the specks of blood that sprayed every time she coughed? It was the cruelest winter our village had ever known, and a winter as cruel as this rarely left a household untouched by grief. But if one of us had to go, I had hoped—desperately, despairingly—that it would be me.
“I’ll find a way to bring you back,” I said. “With this.” I gestured to the soft skin of my wrist, where the blood of a witch flowed through my veins. “With this.” To my chest, where breath and spirit flowed through my lungs.
My sister’s face grew immeasurably sad. “At what cost?”
What cost indeed? For any witch knew that magic always came with a price. And the price of a dead sister’s spirit, the essence that animated a body with life—what would be the price of that?
Before I could think of a reply, my sister turned, vanishing into the darkness of the cave. At that same moment, I jerked awake. Immediately I scrabbled for her in the darkness; I pressed my ear to her lips, hoping to hear the telltale flow of her breath, her spirit. And I heard it—the moment she breathed her last. The feather-light brush of her spirit against my skin. Followed immediately by silence, by stillness—the sort of stillness that could only come with death.
I don’t recall when I started screaming. I don’t recall when our parents came running, or what I said when they did. All I know is that I clutched my sister’s body until my nails cracked; I howled and keened and wailed like a banshee, because she was gone, she was gone, the words reverberating like an echo in my head. Like an echo reverberating from the depths of that cave, filling the silence where my sister should’ve been.
I could’ve shattered the world with my grief, then. Cracked the earth, drained the river, reduced our whole village to cinders. Such thoughts were the only thing vast enough to capture the weight of my devastation.
***
Now, I carry my sister’s bones to that same cave I visited in my dreams. Only now, the earthen ground has been etched with runes; its perimeter encircled with braziers of incense. Sage, rosemary, a hint of camphor. Smoke fills the cave with a heady perfume, mist and moonlight shrouding the world in silver.
It took me months to master drawing the runes. Longer still to gather the herbs—particularly that rare hint of camphor. Yet now, I cannot help but hesitate, feeling as if I stand on the verge of some invisible precipice. I wonder if this will work. Wonder what our mother will say when she finds out. I wonder if this is what my sister would want, if she were alive—but then the wind picks up, I see the tracery of my sister’s ghost swirling in the mist, and the grief shears through me like a battle-ax, ravaging me anew. I hiss, clutching the knapsack tight.
No. No. No turning back now.
I will leave this cave unburdened by my grief—or I will not leave at all.
I empty the knapsack onto the cave floor. I arrange my sister’s bones—carefully, meticulously, as if arranging pieces of a mosaic. I place her in the fetal position, spine bent, knees crunched to her chest. Then I curl up beside her, just as we were in the womb. And I breathe, every exhale stirring the incense-thick air between us.
Any witch knows that breath and spirit are intertwined. And with every breath, I breathe out my hopes, my longings, my recollections of the past and dreams for the future. I breathe out the memory of my sister’s smile, the color of her eyes at sunset, the warmth of her sleeping body beside mine. With every breath, I beg her, wake. Wake, sister.
Take my spirit and wake.
Beside me, my sister’s bones begin to tremble. They clack and clatter with a sound like grating stones. Meanwhile the incense swirls and thickens, sliding between her ribs, her vertebrae, the empty sockets of her eyes. And as I breathe in that camphor-scented warmth, I realize I feel cold, terribly cold. As if there is frost corroding my lungs. Why can’t I feel my fingertips? Why is my flesh sloughing like candle wax off my bones? Is this how she felt in her final moments—alone and afraid and so terribly small, as if she were a pinprick of light in a sea of roiling darkness?
I clasp my sister’s hand, the way I did so many times in life. Only to startle at the impossible texture of skinbeneath my fingers. I look down, and sure enough, there is new skin blooming over my sister’s bones, layered with muscles and tendons and veins. Her mortal flesh being born anew, even while my own wilts and withers away.
If one of us has to go—let it be me.
A faint smile touches my lips. I press my cheek to the rune-scarred earth. Touch my brow to my sister’s skull. As my vision fades, I think I see a flicker of light, blooming within her empty eye sockets. And somewhere in the encroaching darkness, I hear my sister’s voice, crying out my name.
