Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen

world outside the garden. Who would go with me?”
    Some of the fathers said yes. Some of the mothers, too.
    But there were two mothers who did not go. “We are happy here,” they said. “Where the sun shines on us and the wind cools us and the fruit grows without cultivation.” And so they stayed in the garden and raised their children.
    Only once in a lifetime, some of the children followed the others into the outside world we call the Dales.
The Story:
    Selna had never wanted a child to care for. Not a baby sister nor a little cousin. And so she had paid little heed to the Hame’s infirmarer during lessons about how children were got and how they were not. Of course she paid as little attention to the kitchener’s explanations about food. All Selna had ever wanted, even before she had to choose in the great ceremony before Mother, was to be in the woods with Marda.
    Her voice had never wavered when she and her seven-year sisters had been asked “Do you, my children, choose your own way?” Marda’s voice had been quiet, and Zenna’s quieter still. Lolla and Senja had replied in their high, light way. But Selna’s answer came strong and pure.
    And when she had marched up the stairs to touch the Book of Light, her knees had not wobbled. Not even when the priestess’s sour breath had touched her. Not even then.
    â€œI am a child of seven springs,” she had said. “I choose and I am chosen. The path I choose is a warrior. A huntress. A keeper of the wood.”
    No one, especially not Mother Alta, had been surprised.
    But now things were different, had been different for months. And Selna could not exactly say what was wrong, only that things were different. And Marda was gone. Marda, her best friend, who had trained all those years with her and who was her companion and blood sister—the last sworn with knives at the wrist where the blood makes a blue branching beneath the fragile shield of skin, a poultice of aloe leaves applied afterward. Marda had gone missioning.
    Selna’s mother had found her sobbing in the night. “She will return,” her mother reminded her, kneeling by the bed. “A mission year is but one world’s turning.”
    â€œOr she will not,” Selna had said, too miserable to hide her tears as a warrior should. “Some stay at their mission Hame. Or go to another.”
    Her mother nodded. “Or she will not. After her mission year in her new Hame, she may have other, newer dreams. But her decision will be between Marda and her dark sister. It is not between Marda and you.”
    â€œBut…” The cry was out before Selna could stop it.
    â€œBut what?”
    Selna’s traitor mouth would not contain the words. “But I was her sister. Her blood sister. There was no one closer.”
    Her mother’s dark sister kneeling at the bedside chuckled. “Soon you will understand, child.”
    â€œI will never understand. Never. I will be a solitary. I will call no one to take Marda’s place.”
    Selna’s mother stood and her dark sister with her. “Come,” the dark sister said. “She will know soon enough.”
    Selna looked up from her pillow. “The heart is not a knee that can bend,” she said. “Or did you not tell me that often enough?” Then deliberately she reached over and snuffed out the candle by her bed.
    Her mother’s footsteps were the only ones to go out of the room. Her mother’s dark sister, without a candle’s flame to guide her, was no longer there.
The Song:
    Dark Sister
    Come by moonshine,
    Come by night,
    Come by flickering Candlelight,
    Come by star rise,
    Come by shine,
    Come by hearthlight,
    Come be mine.
    In the darkness
    Be my spark,
    In the nighttime
    Be my mark.
    Come by star rise,
    Come by shine,
    Come by hearthlight,
    Come be mine.
    Come by full moon,
    Come by half,
    Come with tears,
    Come with a laugh.
    Come by star