And there, sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, Tesali began to weave.
Even as the spell took shape beneath her hands, she feared it wouldn’t work, certain there must be more to magic, a threshold she couldn’t cross. She told herself she was just a girl playing a game, imitating the real thing.
But then, as she knotted off one of the threads, the owl lurched, a ripple of motion that ran through its bones, and made her heart leap into her throat. She worked faster then, as if the spell were a fragile candle flame, one that might gutter and die if she let out a breath.
It didn’t.
In fact, it came together, settling over the owl like a net. Soon it ruffled its bone wings. It clicked its bone beak. It lifted its bone skull, and seemed to stare at her through empty sockets.
Time fell away as Tesali worked.
Her senses narrowed to the little owl, and nothing else. Not the murmurs of the house. Not the motion of the door swinging open.
“Kers la?”
Tesali jerked, pulling her hands away as if burned. Serival was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes narrowed to hawkish points.
“Kers la, ri sal?”
Ri sal. Little rabbit. She hated that nickname—and her sisters knew it, so of course, Serival refused to call her anything else. When she didn’t answer, her sister took a step into the room. Her feet were bare, but her heels still managed to click against the wood.
“What do you have there?” she asked, and in that moment, Tesali made a terrible mistake. She should have stared blandly up, made nothing of it. Instead she flung her skirts over the little owl. It was an instinct, born of being the youngest sibling, but she might as well have confessed to a crime.
Serival didn’t rush forward. She simply continued, three slow steps until she was there, standing over Tesali. And then she knelt. Serival wore trousers, not skirts, so nothing but her shadow pooled around her feet.
“Show me,” she said, the words like a hand on the back of her neck, and Tesali knew that if she refused, there would be a struggle, and she would lose. She knew because she was stubborn and had done it a hundred times, and it had never gone her way. Still, she was tempted, the denial on her lips, but what scared her off was the wicked smile on her sister’s face, which seemed to say, Go on, little rabbit, try and run.
Tesali drew the skirts away from the owl.
“What a morbid little pet,” tutted Serival, amused. She reached out and tapped a gloved finger on the bird’s beak. Tesali held her breath. So long as the owl didn’t move, she could pass it off as just a piece of fancy, another ornament for her cluttered room.
But then Serival said, “Are you that lonely, little rabbit?” and the owl twitched to life, and looked up, because of course, she had made it that way, designed it to react to the uptick in a voice, the sense of being asked a question. So she could talk to it. It had been a novel idea. Now she cursed it.
Serival’s eyes narrowed, the humor vanishing from her face, replaced by something sharp and shrewd. They had all grown up with the glorious bird, of course, and knew how rare the spellwork was.
“Now that,” she said, reaching for the owl, “is a pretty piece of magic.”
Tesali lunged, but her sister was faster. She plucked up the little bird in one gloved hand, and turned it over, studying the bones and the silver thread that joined them. Tesali knew she was searching for the marks of a spell, the articulation of magic, knew she wouldn’t find them. The owl ruffled and twitched in Serival’s fingers, as if trying to get free.
“Give it back,” she said, but her sister’s grip only tightened.
“You could never afford a thing like this,” she said. “Which means you stole it. The summer-glass, too.”
“I didn’t,” gasped Tesali, insulted.
“Don’t lie,” warned Serival, squeezing the owl. She would crush it, and all her hard work with it—and in that moment Tesali didn’t care about the magic—that she could redo—but the dead little owl seemed so alive—she had brought it to a kind of life—and it writhed and opened its beak in a silent plea and—
“I made it!”
The words were out, and for the briefest moment, she was proud of the surprise they triggered on her sister’s face. And then Serival’s eyes narrowed, just like their father’s, and she wished she could take it back.
“What do you mean?” she asked calmly, but Tesali had recovered her senses enough to hold her tongue. Serival looked down at the owl.
“Perhaps if I smash it,” she ventured, as if to herself. “You did say you had a knack for fixing broken things.” Serival raised the little owl over her head. “I’d like to see how you—”