constance sparrow, four

i will tell you one of her stories. 

backbones of our existence, they are. i loved them once, hung off them with foolish revelry, which turned to dust as i grew and understood them for what they were. if there is magic in this world then childhood stands at its gate, and for better or for worse i have been barred from entry.

it was long ago, but not so long ago as you might be inclined to believe. time has a funny way of sneaking up on you. she always began with this sort of thing, the mere suggestion of truth laid in the groundwork, presenting the tale as a memory eked from the stairways and corridors of her own lifetime. she would not entertain questions, only transfixed silence. we'd all sit a row on the edge of her bed and provide the adoring audience she needed, produced the sustenance that kept it all alive. i, at the end of the row, the smallest and stupidest, gave the most of myself.

living at the edge of district four, where the sea met the land, there were five brave little girls. 

"us?" one of my sisters would inevitably breathe. 

"not you, no," ophelia would scold. "now, hush. do you want to hear what happens next?" 

then we would sink back into obliging, breathless silence, willingly trading our obedience for her words, although we had heard them a hundred times before. 

their father was the captain of a beautiful ship, and their mother had died when the youngest of them was born. they lived small, tidy lives, with neat edges. they looked after one another. 

it was not, then, a story about us. our mother was a nurse, and our father a carpenter who spent his days carving intricate designs into the lids of coffins. that was before the drink whittled him away to not much of anything, back when i bought the narrative that all fathers were brave and strong and sturdy and all mothers were soft and wise and kind. our life, unlike the girls' in the story, was frayed all the way around. 

one night, a terrible storm tore through all of panem. their father was out to sea, that day, and the girls huddled together to keep warm. all night, they stayed up, listening to the howling of the wind and hoping that he would come home safe. 

i knew what happened next, but i gasped anyway, when she said it. 

when they awoke in the morning, their house had been torn to pieces around them, and their father was nowhere to be found. the world had gone quiet and still again, but nothing in their lives would ever be the same. 

here, anthea, a year older than i was, wiped a dramatic tear from her cheek, and sighed heavily, but did not dare speak, lest the story stop and we be ushered unwillingly into our own beds before hearing the end. 

the girls went down to the docks to see if they might be able to find their father. the smallest ones were weeping, but their oldest, bravest sister held their hands tightly. 

my oldest sister, mirabelle, would look at us smugly, here, exalting in this nod to her superior position in the family. 

when they reached the sea, they saw the boat floating there. it had not been destroyed by the storm, as they had feared - in fact, it was completely untouched, almost a miracle. around it in the waves floated the shattered remains of the other vessels that had been on the water, but it was pristine, perfect, still. 

we were well trained to accept good luck only as a foreboding precursor for what was to come. each of us gritted our teeth; mine a full mouthful of milky baby pearls.

filled with hope, the girls climbed aboard the ship. they checked the decks and the captain's quarters. they even went below the decks, into the darkness of the cabin, although they hated it there. it was completely empty - their father was nowhere to be found. 

when our own father - and our mother, too - disappeared, six years afterward, i thought of this part of the story; the between time, where hope is jittering on a precipice, growing smaller and smaller with the passing of time. i wondered if the children in the story also found it difficult to draw the line, to decide when to give up, because - 

they did not find him that day, or the next day. they slept on the boat, because their house was no more. they dreamed that he was looking for them, desperately searching and fighting to regain his daughters, but these were, of course, only dreams. they never did see him again. 

- and somewhere, in between mirabelle gently setting her hand on my shoulder, which twitched with irritation at all of the pompous self-importance that being sixteen had brought her, and untying the ropes which attached us to land, somewhere i came to the same realisation about my own mother and father: we would never see them again. as soon as i dared think it, it became quite apparent that it was the truth. 

their story did not end here, though. in fact, it was only the beginning. all of the girls were very, very brave, and very, very strong, and once they realised that they must fend for themselves in this world, they realised that they must look after one another. 

between mirabelle and anthea sat the twins, isadora and cressida, who shared a spiteful glance, for they were in the middle of one of their violent rows. they were full of vitriol, and did not appreciate our grandmother's pointed suggestion. 

they worked very hard to learn to work together to sail the boat - it was not easy, not at all, but it was the sort of thing that five very clever and very determined children can achieve, if they work together. they got quite good at it, spurred on by necessity. the oldest in particular felt the heavy burden of her family fall on her shoulders, and knew that she must keep her sisters fed and clothed in her father's absence. 

we did not know about the boat until much later. at the time, it was just a fantasy, a backdrop for an exciting series of tales about the exploits of five mischievous pirates which carried us through from the cradle until the cynicism of adolescence caught us one by one. when it finally happened, i was the only one still perching on ophelia's bed begging for one more story. my sisters had all grown up enough to see it coming. 

it's getting awfully late, girls. your mother will scold me if she finds out i've been keeping you up again. 

this was our cue, our permission to speak again. we became a chorus, begging for more. 

"you must tell us about what happens next - about how they first became pirates!" anthea cried. 

"and the one about the secret island!" chimed in isadora, just as cressida wailed, "i want to hear about when they rescued the kitten!" 

even mirabelle couldn't help herself. "will you tell us about when they fought the peacekeepers, and won?" 

"tomorrow," my grandmother assured us, and kissed us each on the forehead, one by one. this kind of touch was precious to us - withheld completely by our mother - and each of us lapped it up, content with the promise of the following evening.

now, after everything, we are much less certain about things like tomorrows, as we have found them to be generally untrustworthy and prone to mistakes. these days, ophelia does not send us to bed; we are too big and too old now, and, besides, the gift that she has given us - the boat - has made us steely and haughty. we accept no kisses or goodnight stories; we sleep in the cabin below the deck and put out our candles and gas lamps ourselves. it is the ocean that rocks us to sleep. 

the girls in the story were never us, and yet we became the girls in the stories, as was our destiny. they weren't just lessons laced in fables, they were something tougher and more deliberate than that; they were a set of instructions, a manual for survival. somehow, ophelia foretold that we might need it, one day, when she was too old to properly look after us, and our parents, in one way or another, would let us down. did she see it coming, right from the start? 

when i say that we are grown, and brave, and no longer in need of bedtime stories, i am not quite correct. there is one of us who this does not apply to; he is small and afraid of the dark, and came into the world right as our parents departed it, left like a present which squalled and demanded our care and threatened to roll off the decks of our grandmother's ship and into the sea. cressida suggested we drown him, and i'm not sure if she was joking, but there is no question of that anymore. he is three years old and every night we tell him stories. 

once, it was believed that there were no such thing as sparrow boys. my mother, and her sisters, and my grandmother, and her sisters, and their mother and aunts before them, all the way back through time, since the very beginning - there had only ever been sparrow girls. that's what ophelia said. she was quite surprised to see him, bright red and kicking, motherless. 

"what will you name him?" she asked us. we looked at one another in bewilderment, the first shadow of responsibility cast over us, throwing us into darkness. 

nobody spoke until i did, eleven years old, on the very last day of my childhood, going down with my beloved fairytales like they were a sinking ship, "selkie," i whispered, remembering the mythical shape of a creature that a girl called rory had once met in one of ophelia's tales. it had been sweet and kind and silly, all of the things i hoped our tiny brother might become. 

it's a pirates life for meeeee tris 🍒