Page 12 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Even at the best of times, Esther wasn’t comfortable with public affection, though not because she was embarrassed. It was the open declaration of feeling that frightened her. Open feeling was a vulnerability that was easily exploited, and even now someone might be observing, planning.

“Okay,” Pearl said, her voice uncharacteristically flat. She took a step back and Esther immediately regretted the distance. “Well. See you at dinner?”

“At dinner,” Esther echoed, chest hollow. She paused in the doorway to watch Pearl make her way through the galley, stopping once or twice to chat. The mechanic, Abby, had taken Esther’s own vacated seat next to Trev and she waved Pearl down, Trev nodding his head at her in welcome.

Esther left the room.

It was minus ten Fahrenheit that morning and the wind was brutal on the walk from the dorms to the electrical shop, the snow so dry it squeaked beneath her boots. She had to squint against the powerful glare of the sun as it glinted off the white ground and the walls of the squat outbuildings, and she knew Pearl would be wearing her enormous pink knock-off Ray-Bans to protect her hungover vision, looking like a cross between a 1970s supermodel and a car mechanic. If there was a more appealing aesthetic, Esther hadn’t encountered it yet.

She should have accepted that kiss.

The electrical shop was in a dome-roofed building that was little more than a glorified supply closet, packed with so much equipment Esther’s jaw had dropped when she’d first seen it. Wires and cords of every thickness and color coiled around wall-mounted spools, and the walls themselves were lined with towering cabinets full of coax connectors, splicing connectors and cable ties, and pegboards displaying every kind of plier known to man.

Today, the shop was also packed with people, the morning meeting full of unfamiliar faces she’d normally have been quite interested in looking at, but she was so spaced-out it seemed like only minutes later that she’d gotten her assignment and was back out in that freezing wind, headed to one of the labs to replace some wiring.

It was easy work but uncomfortable, hours spent wedged below a sub-floor, much of it on her belly and back drilling a set of holes above and below, cold because she’d stripped out of her coveralls to her jeans for better mobility. Normally she wasn’t claustrophobic, but today the smallness of the space got to her, how there’d be nowhere to go if someone trapped her in, and the job took her longer than usual because she kept popping back out into the open space of the lab to warm her hands or get a level or change a drill bit, or just sit there, reassuring herself.

She wished the work was more complicated, so it would distract her from the rotisserie of her thoughts. Thinking about books, about magic, was inextricable from thinking about her family—especially about her sister, living alone in that drafty house with only her books for company. Every time Esther’s mind drifted, it drifted in one of two directions: fear, or Joanna, and oftentimes the two paths crossed.

Her very first memory was the day Joanna was born, when Esther was three. This was also the day she’d learned—or at least absorbed—the truth that Cecily wasn’t her biological mother, that she’d been born to a different woman entirely, and that woman was dead. She didn’t know for sure whether she truly remembered this day or only remembered the story of it—but whether the memories were fabricated or not, Esther had them.

Jo had been born at home in their downstairs bathroom, in the enormous cast-iron clawfoot tub because Cecily said a Pisces should enter the world in water. Abe had spent nine months studying midwifery and delivered her himself, not only because Cecily wanted a home birth but also because Abe’s paranoia wouldn’t allow for the hospital. Not that Esther had known this at the time.

What she remembered from that day: the buttery taste of the cookies Abe had made to distract her; the sight of a floating cloud of red from between Cecily’s submerged legs; the sound of Cecily screaming louder than Esther had known a person could. And her father’s voice, answering one question and raising many more, “No, honey,yourmother had you in a hospital.” Then Joanna, crumpled and pink like a cast-off Band-Aid but with perfect tiny human hands and perfect, luminous human eyes.

Later, as the sisters grew, Esther hyperfocused on their differences, but as a little kid she’d been far more hypnotized by their sameness. They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats, loved putting sand in their hair so they could scratch it out later, loved watching their parents slow-dance in the living room to Motown records. They loved the sound of wind, the sound of breaking ice, the sound of coyotes calling on the mountain.

They disliked zippers, ham, the word “milk,” flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator, Cecily’s long weekends away, Abe’s insistence on regular chess matches, and days with no clouds. They disliked the boxes of books that came to their door daily or were lugged home by their father, disliked their dusty lonesome smell and how they consumed Abe’s attention. They disliked when their parents closed the bedroom door and fought in whispers. They hated the phrase “half sister.” There had been nohalfabout it.

Not until the day Esther was nine and Joanna nearly six, when Abe had sat Joanna down in the living room, Cecily hovering over his shoulder with a reassuring face but a fretful air she couldn’t tamp down. Joanna had been perched on the couch in front of the coffee table, and on the coffee table were seven books. The books, like most books their father concerned himself with, were very old.

“We’re just trying something out,” Abe said, which was not unexpected; he was always trying things out.

Only days before, he’d put a book in Esther’s hands, a very old one with a soft leather cover and pages like dried leaves, and asked her, “Canyou rip this up?” She’d stared at him suspiciously, thinking it must be a trick—how many times had he told her to be careful with the books, and now he wanted her to ruin one? “Go on,” he’d said. So she’d given it her all, yet despite how fragile the paper had felt between her fingers, she hadn’t been able to tear a single page. She hadn’t even managed to make a crease. Under her father’s watchful eye, she had tried to light it on fire, then tried to wreck it in water to no avail; it remained perfectly intact. Abe had been frustrated, but not with her, and she’d enjoyed his attention.

So she said, “Can I try, too?”

“Not this time, honey,” he said. “You know my important books, the books that make things happen—you know how they don’t work on you?”

Yes, Esther knew.

“Well, that’s special. It’s something special only to you. I’m checking to see if there’s something special in Joanna, too.”

“You’re already special,” Cecily said to Joanna, who’d looked alarmed at this.

“Of course,” Abe said, “of course. You’re both amazing little earthlings.” (They’d been in the throes of an obsession with aliens at the time.) “Now, Jo.” He crouched before her, his beard bristling with restrained excitement. “See these books? I want you to tell me if there’s anything unusual about any of them.”

Joanna accepted this task with her usual solemnity. A second later she said, “This one is very ugly.”

Abe looked at the book she was pointing at, a hardbound in stained brown cloth that was a lot thicker than the others. Esther could tell her father was disappointed, but she herself felt a twinge of gladness. Whatever test was happening, she wanted Joanna to fail. It was a new feeling, and it didn’t feel good.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s fair. I agree. Anything else?”

Joanna shook her head and Abe sat back, sighing. Cecily looked deeply relieved. But a second later Joanna said, “Except one of them sounds funny.”

The mood in the room changed instantly. Abe sat fully upright, incredibly alert, and Cecily sucked in a sharp breath. Both were focused completely on Joanna.

“What’s it sound like, honey?” Abe said.

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