Page 117 of Persephone's Curse
That one of them said, “Happy birthday, Winter.”
That one of them said, “I miss you, too.”
Epilogue
So what, then, becomes of the Farthing sisters?
What becomes of the children of the in-between, of the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the gods?
Well, we continue, of course.
We persevere.
We practice our gifts, we find new gifts, we go forth into the world and make a life for ourselves.
In a lot of ways, we are more fortunate than Persephone, because we are bound to no one, to nowhere, to nothing. We can change our minds a hundred times. We can try one college, drop out, try another, move to Vermont, eat croissants every single morning for breakfast, spend hours in coffee shops drinking lattes and missing our sisters and writing down our story while it is still fresh in our memory. We can take art history classes and go to therapy and heal generational trauma from a generation that most people think only existed in myth.
But what is myth, anyway, if not stories?
And what are stories if not recounts of our history? And no matter how embellished, no matter how many times a story is told and retold, there is always truth there. There is always some basis in reality.
So, yes, the Farthing sisters are real.
The Farthing sisters continue.
And we are just fine.
I turned eighteen.
It had been a mild winter, much milder than last winter, and Mom insisted on an afternoon garden party, setting up a long table in the backyard and crossing her fingers that the weather would hold. I submitted my very short guest list. Bernadette and Aunt Bea drove down from Vermont. Evelyn took the train from Boston. Maybe rang the front doorbell around three; she wore a long-sleeved floral dress and her floral Doc Martens Clara loved so much and she had put her hair into twin braids.
“Oh, man,” I said when I pulled the door open. “You look so beautiful.”
“Happy birthday, ghost girl,” she said, and held out a small package, wrapped sloppily but perfectly in dark-purple paper.
“I said if you brought a gift, you wouldn’t be allowed inside.”
“I’m a rebel. Now open it!” she said, bouncing on her heels in excitement.
It was always best not to argue with Maybe, especially when it came to gift-giving, which she took very seriously and was very good at.
I tore off the paper to reveal a square jewelry box. “Maybe… I can already tell that this is too much…”
“You can tell nothing of the sort,” she said, still bouncing.
I opened the box and actually gasped.
Sitting inside was a beautiful silver cuff bracelet with a quarter-sized blue stone. The stone was a soft, delicate blue-gray and it sparkled in the light of the small foyer chandelier.
“Oh my gosh…”
“I had it made for you,” she said. “By my friend, the jeweler. I just couldn’t find anything that was perfect, and I couldn’t find anything that wasyouenough, so I asked her to—”
I cut her off with a kiss, then pulled away and carefully put the bracelet on my wrist. “I love it.”
“The stone is celestine,” she said. “To strengthen communication with ethereal beings.”
“Oh…” I said, looking at her, feeling tears well up in my eyes.
