"Come on in, pumpkin." Tina pokes her head around the door at Mama's voice.
"You've got a little sister," Papa says, taking her hand and guiding her to the bed.
The baby is wrapped up in a knitted blanket, sleeping in Mama's arms.
Tina reaches out a hand to stroke tufts of blonde hair on the baby's head, her eyes alight when her sister shifts in the blankets.
She looks up at her parents in wonder, and they smile at each other, like they do when she asks for another story at bedtime.
"What do you think?" Papa asks.
"I love her," Tina says, quite seriously. Papa chuckles, stroking the top of her head as she holds onto his leg, and Tina is lost in the excitement of having a baby sister to play with.
A lot of sisters say they're close, but even at only eight years old, Tina Goldstein is pretty sure that she and six-year-old Queenie are closer than many.
Queenie comes into her gift quite young, and in the innocence of their bond and their youth, Tina's thoughts and emotions pour into her sister's mind.
She is there, as well, when Queenie realizes far too young that not everyone's thoughts are pleasant or kind. Queenie must take in everything around her, good and bad, and so Tina becomes her sister's protector, determined to keep her mind, bombarded with so much of both darkness and light, good.
Tina finally manages to stop crying that night. They both miss their parents desperately, but Tina has seen how it weighs on her eight-year-old sister, to bear both Tina's pain and her own. And so, a week after the funeral, Tina calms her own tears and sings the lullaby Mama had taught them. Queenie drifts off to sleep tucked into Tina's bed.
A sound from the sitting room draws her out of her bedroom.
Mama had always said that she and Aunt Florence were close growing up. Like you and Queenie, she'd explained, and she'd also said that they weren't anymore.
Why Mama? Tina had asked, unable to imagine it. Mama had not told her.
But she'd heard Grandmother and Uncle George talking at the funeral. If only she hadn't married him, Uncle George had said, and she's begun to understand that Mama was part of an important family of American wizards, and that she had gone to Europe and married the Jewish son of a poor witch and a no-maj.
And Mama's family didn't like it.
Tina walks softly into the sitting room, padding up to her aunt's chair. She places a tentative hand on her shoulder.
Aunt Florence jumps, and spins around. "What are you doing, child?"
"You were crying," Tina says.
"No," Aunt Florence quickly wipes away the tears. "I was doing no such thing. Go back to bed, Porpentina."
She hates that name. Papa used to call her that, but he was always teasing, happy. It sounds all wrong.
"Now," Aunt Florence insists.
Tina withdraws her hand and hurries back to bed.
