Sisters of Grass by Theresa Kishkan Page A

for riding.”
    Jenny smiled. “So he’s come to his senses about that, has he? I hoped he would.”
    They sat in the dappled shade for a time, talking quietly of what they’d seen on the streets of Kamloops. Then Jenny took the children up to their rooms to help them get ready for the midday meal, which they ate in the pleasant dining room, joined by William.
    â€œWhat would you like to do after dinner, Tom? Shall I take you down to the river to watch the sternwheelers?”
    â€œOh, yes, Father!” cried Tom, and then Jane and Mary asked if they could come, too.
    â€œCertainly,” replied William, in an affable mood because of his new horse. “We’ll give your mother and sister a break from your chattering.”
    He took the children to the river, Mary and Jane each holding one of his hands and Tom racing ahead. Jenny and Margaret decided to shop for dress lengths and some notions needed for sewing, and the two walked out to the store Jenny was accustomed to dealing with.
    On an autumn trip to the Nicola Valley to celebrate a wedding anniversary, my husband and I stay in the Quilchena Hotel in a room facing the golf course beyond a row of Lombardy poplars. High ceilings and a tall window make the small room feel airy and light. Because I want to know how it feels to ride a horse to the tree line, urge it to a gallop along the ridge I can see from my window, look back to the lake in its bowl of afternoon light, we arrange to rent horses for a few hours.
    I have dreamed of a girl, have seen her shadow among the pines.
    My husband rides Chief, a tall pinto gelding with the narrow chest of a thoroughbred, and I am given Brownie, a quarter-horse mare with a brand on her left shoulder and a sleek bay coat. While the wrangler is saddling her, I untangle a length of wild rose stem from her mane and smell alfalfa on her breath. Riding her is both familiar and exotic, my muscles remembering the shape of a horse’s body but aching in the memory. Crossing Quilchena Creek, her feet toss up little sprays of cold water, but she doesn’t stop to drink. Her eyes are fixed on the trail and the rump of the wrangler’s horse, Minnie. Along the side of the hill, working to the top, pausing to look out at the perfectly clear sky and the patchwork of hayfield and pasture, green and gold, gold and green, threaded by tawny dirt roads on the valley bottom. Southernwood and dust are in the air, and I can hear magpies and crows squabbling down by the barn when a breeze carries their argument up. A girl riding this slope would have heard the crows, smiled at their quarrel. Her horse’s feet would have turned up dust and tiny seeds, her heart might have strained as mine does with longing. My horse is willing to jog, eases into a gallop at the tree line to take me across the ridge until I’m breathless with the beauty of the air and sky. At this high point we see piles of bear scat flecked with rose hips, and there are tall firs dangling cones and aspens on the edge of turning. A hawk hangs in the sky below us.
    I have so many questions and no one to ask. How bears can sustain themselves on roses, how wind can make such a subtle perfume of dust and leaves, how a young girl can age in the blink of an eye and never understand, until she is a middle-aged woman in red boots riding a borrowed horse, that something irreplaceable is lost and no one else recognizes the loss. A girl to shadow the woman, to take her hands as they walk into brilliant sunlight or under stars, to sleep beside in darkness, her back unbearably tender in her delicate nightdress. Or to dance with, alone in the grassy field, seeds caught in a strand of hair, the hem of a dress. I swing that girl by the hands, letting her fly out with her long skirt floating in wind. I don’t know I’ve let her go until it’s too late to bring her safe into my arms and she is flung into memory.
    Eating dinner in the restaurant that