Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen Page B

after those tracks and, at last, lost them both when night closed in. She was neither angry nor frustrated; only suddenly Marda’s treason gnawed anew. Once Selna had nothing left to do but make a hide in a tree for sleeping, her unhappiness came over her again, wave after wave of it, like a river in flood.
    Sleep would not come. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw Marda leaving.
    â€œWe will think of you,” Marda had said, kissing her on both cheeks. We. Once, Selna knew, that would have meant Marda and Selna. Now it meant Marda and her dark sister, that black-haired, black-eyed echo, that moon child.
    â€œI hate her!” Selna said aloud.
    Below her in the woods a cat coughed in answer. Selna reached for her knife and, holding it in two hands, waited a long time for the dawn.
The History:
Here in the Museum of the Lower Dales is the only Daleite mirror archeologists have recovered, though mirrors play such an important part in Hame histories and legends. The ornate wood frame has been reliably dated at two thousand years, of a laburnum that has not been found in those parts for centuries. It was found in the dig at Arundale, wrapped separately and buried some hundred meters distant from the buildings.
    Many scholars have ventured informed guesses about the mirror. They include Cowan’s thesis that the mirror was the property of the Hame’s ruling priestess and that only she was allowed to own such a priceless treasure; Temple’s more conventional opinion that the Hame, being a place of women, would naturally be filled with mirrors; and Magon’s bizarre and discredited idea that the mirror was part of a ritual in which the young girls called up their twin or dark sisters from some unnamed and unknown alternate universe.
    Note that all the carvings on the mirror frame are mirror images of one another, a symmetry that has been much commented upon. We do not really know what they stand for.
    â€”FROM AT HAME IN THE DALES, MUSEUM BOOKLET PRODUCED BY MUSEUM OF THE LOWER DALES, INC.
The Story:
    Dawn came before the cat. Or instead of it. Selna had finally napped a bit, just enough to take the edge off her exhaustion. The imprint of the knife handle seemed etched into her palms. Her hands ached, and her back and legs. As she climbed down the tree, her stomach rumbled as well. Spending all night in a tree was never comfortable, but as her teacher always reminded them, Better the cat at your heel than at your throat. And there had been a cat.
    She shoved the knife back into the belt and went to find something to eat. There would be berries down near the river. She had long since learned which mushrooms could be safely eaten, which could not. A good hunter never went hungry in the woods. She could always fish. When she and Marda went fishing …
    And there it was again, the ache when she thought of Marda. It was as if she had been halved with a great sword, cleaved in two. Everything she had done before had been done with Marda. And now nothing ever again would be. Always and always Marda’s dark sister, Callo, would be between them, whether or not there was moon or candle flame to call her out.
    The ache was so real, she clutched her stomach with it, turned off the path, and thought she would vomit. Only nothing came up. Nothing.
    â€œI am a warrior,” she reminded herself. “I am a hunter.” It did not stop the tears. It did not stop the pain.
The Song:
    Beloved
    Oh, my beloved,
    My sister, my friend,
    I do not know where you begin,
    Where I end.
    My hand is your hand,
    My breast your breast,
    The soft pillow
    Where I take my rest.
    Oh, my beloved,
    My sister, my wife,
    If you are severed from me,
    So is my life,
    So is the earth gone,
    So is the sky,
    So the life from me,
    And so I die.
    Oh, my beloved,
    My sister, my friend,
    You are the beginning of me
    And the end.
The Story:
    She fished anyway. Wanting to die and dying, she found, were two separate things. The pain in her