Everything about our new surroundings felt magical—a spell that would expire, wishes granted, enchanted eggs, poisoned apples, royalty in disguise.

We were leasing the house and land, but they were actually for sale. They hadn’t sold after being on the market for some time, so our aunt, a real estate agent and our fairy godmother in disguise, had arranged with the owner to allow us to rent from him until he found a buyer. This meant that, from the beginning, we knew that midnight would eventually strike. The enchantment would vanish. We would be left standing in rags with only memories of glory.

Our neighbor and landlord boarded their horses in our barn, a dream come true. We were given a pony of our own, a desire that had been too precious to utter.

One fall, my sister Missi and I found a shiny, golden brown, spongy yet also paper-like parcel hanging from a branch in our yard. It was the size of a walnut, but we found it on a pine tree. Mystified, we brought it to Mom for identification.

It was a praying mantis egg sac, and she allowed us to keep it in the enclosed porch off the basement door. With flagstone paving and the upper half of the walls screened in, this porch was half indoors, half outdoors. Perfect for rainy days, messy projects, and nature collections. We marveled over our luck all winter and watched the egg sac closely as warm weather returned. On a brisk sunny day, when hundreds of tiny green insects poured out of the golden egg sac, we felt richer than Midas.

Just outside the porch door stood a yew tree. Its waxy, red berries, strung like jewels along branches of soft, pliable deep green needles, had skin so translucent that the berries seemed to glow. Each berry housed olive colored seeds so poisonous that three could kill a horse. The tree grew directly across the yard from the gate to the pasture. It was a narrow strip of yard, the distance of a few short paces, and we were warned never to feed any part of the yew plant to the horses. I often stood in the doorway of the porch, pondering the berries and their fearful power. They were marvelously beautiful, entrancing, enchanted.

In the fresh, bright morning light following a night of rollicking thunderstorms, I watched my sister transform before my eyes.

We had woken to the pounding of hooves.

Perhaps we had been a hurry fastening the gate to the pasture in the downpour the previous night and had not double-checked that it was secure.

The horses had escaped the pasture and were in our yard, frantically circling the house, seemingly unable to find the gate they had so lately come through. Careening around the muddy yard, their hooves were thudding, sliding, gouging.

I remember fear, thick and palpable. Mom was afraid they would go down the driveway, follow the short length of our small quiet road, and end up on busy Highway 55.

I was terrified they would eat the yew berries. I felt unutterably small, incapable, afraid, powerless.

Our neighbor Ms. Edmister was away, Dad was at work, Mom was frightened.

Swiftly, Missi took charge. With a fierce calmness, she announced that she would drive the horses back to the pasture. Shrinking and awed, I watched from the windows as she strode outside in her black riding boots. Into the thick of the flailing legs and pounding hooves she strolled. She was firm, commanding, comforting as she quieted and directed the horses, led them past the yew tree, and through the gate.

As she secured them in the pasture, she appeared regal. She was a queen; she was an enchantress; she was in her element.

Long after the mud dried, our yard was pocked by deep hoof prints—remnants of danger, fear, and fury and a reminder that my sister was stronger than them all.