The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier Page B

the present. Unwashed for weeks, with cakes of dirt and bloody crusts hopelessly entangled in its curly mesh, Lilli’s hair was a cruel reminder of everything they had lost.
    Myrina turned her head away and clenched her teeth, forcing it all from her consciousness—the sounds, the smells, and all the dear, familiar forms. “Stop thinking,” she commanded herself, over and over, until nothing was left but those two words and their lingering echo.
    A S THE SUN ROSE and the time for departure came, Myrina took off her necklace and gave it to the fishermen in return for their hospitality. They all shook their heads and refused the gift, but Myrina was determined; although she and Lilli were poor, they still had their dignity.
    The necklace was a string of a dozen delicate buds—not from plants, but from the salt plains, which occasionally gave birth to stone flowers of extraordinary beauty. It had been a gift from Myrina’s father to her mother on the occasion of Myrina’s birth—a small pledge of interest from a nomad who called himself a husband but never visited long enough to be so.
    “You might as well take this,” Myrina’s mother had said one day, when she was going through her finery. “Here.” She had closed Myrina’s fingers around the necklace with a frown of determination. “Maybe your wearing it will remind him—wherever he is—that he has a daughter.”
    Since that day, Myrina had not dared take off the necklace for fear its removal would sever her from her father forever. But now, with their home in ashes, she knew he would never be able to find her again, necklace or no.
    And so she and Lilli left the fishing village well rested and with full bellies, but poorer than ever. There was not a single good arrow left in Myrina’s quiver, and with her necklace gone, too, they were unlikely to procure another meal until they reached their destination. “I suppose we could sell Mother’s bracelet,” muttered Lilli, as they walked together along the road to town.
    “No!” Myrina took the traveling satchel away from her sister. “She wouldn’t want us to give it away. And we’re so close now—”
    But when she saw the city rising before them on the horizon, with its jagged, man-made mountains of building upon building glowing brightly in the morning sun, even Myrina began to wonder whether they were truly that close to their journey’s end. To someone who had never seen a town bigger than the village at home, with its three dozen houses and one central common, a settlement as colossal as this defied all natural sense.
    Soon, the road became busy, and people and carts pushed past them impatiently, never stopping to greet them or inquire where they were from. Although she did not say it out loud, Myrina found it all deeply discouraging. In such a vast and busy place, where humans seemed no more mindful, no more welcoming, than beetles, she began to fear that she and Lilli—for all their mother’s assurances—just might discover that they were of next to no consequence to the Moon Goddess or to anyone else.
    “Do tell me what you see!” begged Lilli. “Can you see the temple yet?”
    But Myrina saw nothing that looked like the magnificent building their mother had described. The Temple of the Moon Goddess, apparently, was as tall as it was wide, and made of brilliant, otherworldly stone. From the splendor of this lofty dwelling the Goddess controlled the ebb and flood of water, cured the ailments of women, and stood up boldly against the reign of the Sun, defying him by lighting up the night sky behind his back. Throughout their long journey, Myrina had been confident that if she and Lilli ever did reach the city on the sea, the temple of this powerful deity would dwarf any other structure around it. How wrong she had been. Walking through the teeming streets with Lilli in tow, she saw many marvelous buildings, some impossibly tall, but none that looked as if they were made out of anything other