I took the quickest route through the gardens, but we were still half frozen by the time we entered the forest’s edge. Along the way, I kept an eye out for any signs my sisters had come this direction, but the howling winds obscured any traces they might have left. I tried to ignore the growing fears in the pit of my stomach as they twisted my hopes with grim pragmatism.
It was too cold.
They’d been gone too long.
There was no way we’d find them alive.
No!
I pictured Rosalie and Ligeia huddled in the thicket, cold and disoriented, but we’d cover them in our cloaks and bring them home. They’d warm up in front of the fire, cheered with cups of hot cider and a good meal, and we would all laugh about this one day.
We raced through the woods as fast as the snow would allow. In some parts, there was hardly a dusting, but our ankles snagged on frozen roots and vines. In others, the drifts came up over my knees. Within the protection of the trees, the wind wasn’t as sharp, and our visibility increased tenfold.
Cassius caught himself before tripping on a fox hole. “What would they be doing out here?”
I pushed aside a low-hanging limb, but it swung back, catching my face. My cheeks were too numb to feel the sting. My feet ached, frozen and tingling, as they trudged through the heavy snow.
Up ahead was a flash of red, the first true color we’d seen since stumbling into the tree line. The berry bushes!
They clustered together, forming a thick, circular hedge. There was a break farther along the bushes, opening on a small clearing in the center. In the summer months, we often packed picnics and spent whole afternoons hidden in the verdant thicket.
I spotted footprints in the untouched snow.
My heart soared, so full of hope I thought it might burst. They’d been here! “Rosalie! Ligeia!”
Cassius was ahead of me now, following the prints around the hedge. I wanted to push him out of the way and run faster, but snowbanks pulled at my skirts, keeping me several feet behind.
I counted three sets of tracks. “Look! Do you see? They might still be here!”
He halted abruptly at the opening of the thicket, blocking me. Cassius grabbed at me as I ducked around him. His fingers briefly slipped over mine, but it wasn’t enough to stop me.
“Annaleigh, don’t!”
I stopped in my tracks. Everything in the world froze except the beating of my heart. It pounded harder and harder, faster and faster, until I felt its tempo in the hollow of my throat, cutting off my breath.
I think I screamed but I heard nothing, just the sharp whine of a silence grown too strong.
I wanted to go to them, but the only way I could move was down as my knees collapsed from under me and I fell into the snow.
I don’t remember how I reached them—I must have crawled—but suddenly I was there, with my sisters, my hands feeling for a pulse in their frozen throats, their pale blue wrists. I pushed my ear to silent chests, desperate to hear a heartbeat, but there was none.
“Rosalie?” My voice constricted into a sob as I cupped her cheek. Tears streamed down my face. She was cold. She was so cold. They’d been out here far too long. “Ligeia? Ligeia, Rosalie, please wake up,” I begged the cold shells of my sisters before throwing my arms around them and howling.
They lay in the center of the thicket on their backs, their frozen eyes looking up at the sky. If you could see past the icicles on their lashes, the frost beneath their nostrils, and the blue of their lips, they could have been watching clouds go by, pointing out funny shapes they saw.
Cassius was at my back, trying to pull me off the bodies. No. Not bodies. Rosalie. Ligeia. My beautiful, carefree sisters. They weren’t bodies. They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be….
I allowed his arms to enfold me as he tried to absorb my grief. Sobs ripped from my chest as if they would splinter my sternum in two, but he held me tight, pressing kisses in my hair, stroking my back, keeping me together and whole.
When I turned back to my sisters, I noticed their hands were clasped together, and I recalled the story Mama loved to tell about the day the triplets were born. Having spent so many months crammed and squished tightly together, none of them could bear to venture out into the great unknown world on their own, so they formed a chain, holding on to each other’s hands, their bond broken only as the midwife pulled them free. First Rosalie, then Ligeia, then Lenore.
Ligeia had reached her free arm out into the snow, searching for the hand of her sister, looking for Lenore, desperate to leave the world as they had entered it. Together.
Tears filled my eyes, blinding me, and I knew no more.
