The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  “It is symbolic.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of our own . . . lack of vision and understanding. Master Ivo blackens his lips as well.”

  “But . . . he is the Highest Keeper. He holds great power.”

  “Next to the gods and the Norns he is nothing. He is flesh. He is subject to fate and death and the gods’ displeasure. So he blackens his lips to show his words are not God’s words. He blackens his eyes to signify his sight is not omniscient.”

  “But you do not blacken your lips.”

  She felt odd speaking of his lips, and her eyes bounced from the swell of his mouth to his steady gaze before she fixed her attention on her shoes to avoid looking where she should not.

  “Ivo is the only one who does both. And they are always black . . . though the keepers are the only ones who regularly see him. He doesn’t leave the temple grounds unless the king summons him.”

  “Does the king summon him often?”

  “The king wishes to make his authority and his dominance known. Especially over the keepers. Ivo finds it wiser to appease him on things that don’t matter. The king would rather we didn’t exist, I’m sure. We are a check on his power, and he certainly doesn’t want our opinions. There is a tunnel—there are tunnels all over the temple mount—from the temple to the castle. From the sanctum to the throne room. The kings before Banruud made use of them often. Banruud has not used them yet. He summons us to him instead.”

  Ghost knew there were tunnels all over the temple mount. She’d found the one in the garden that night, years before, when she’d decided to leave her daughter in the arms of the queen. Now the queen was gone. And Alba needed a mother.

  “I am not a keeper,” she protested, but she had already made her decision, and she saw by the fleeting triumph that crossed his face that he knew what it was. Still, he insisted on extracting the word.

  “Will you stay, Ghost? Will you help us?”

  “I will stay.”

  “The ghost is unharmed?” Ivo asked, his voice muffled in his robes, his face flickering in and out of the darkness. Dagmar sank onto a bench before the altar, suddenly weak from the afternoon’s excitement.

  “Not completely. Her injuries will heal . . . but she was covered in blood.” Dagmar choked on the memory. He cleared his throat and attempted a firmer tone. “They slaughtered two of the sheep, but the wool and flesh will not be wasted. Bayr has moved the herd inside the walls, but we will need to find someone else to tend them from now on.”

  “All is as it was meant to be. She is safe within our walls. You will bring her to see me on the morrow.”

  Dagmar’s eyes clung to the dancing flames lining the sanctuary. It took two hours to light the candles each morning and another hour to extinguish them each night. “I have feared this day,” he murmured.

  “Be careful what you fear,” Ivo replied, grave. “We draw the attention of the fates when our fear grows too loud. The fates are cruel, and they will reward you with what you fear most.”

  Dagmar could only nod, knowing Ivo spoke truth. He had feared so many things that had come to pass. But Ghost’s death was not what he feared most. Her life—her presence in his life—scared him even more than her loss, for he knew how to mourn. He knew how to survive tragedy, to abide grief. But he wasn’t sure he could withstand love.

  15

  On her first birthday, Bayr gave Alba a doll he’d made himself. He’d filled a small linen sack with grain and sewed the opening closed. Buttons for the eyes, nose, and mouth, and wool for the hair. The queen had helped him fashion a gown and a blanket from an old coverlet. Alba had loved it—it had been repaired many times—and named the doll Baby Bayr in his honor.

  For her second birthday, he trapped two small mice and built them an enclosure so Alba would have pets. When the mice started reproducing, the queen had insisted he set Alba’s “pets” free beyond the temple walls, but Alba still remembered them and was convinced she would find them again someday.

  For her third birthday, Bayr whittled her a whistle, fashioned her a drum, and restrung an old lute so she could make music whenever she wished. For her fourth birthday, he painted a picture on each of her four walls, with the queen’s approval. He wasn’t a talented artist, but Alba had loved his misshapen animals and awkward landscapes. He’d drawn a picture of the two of them, Alba on his shoulders, climbing to the top of Shinway Peak.

  On her fifth birthday, he’d found five blue robin’s eggs, just about to hatch, and he brought her to watch their birth. Alba had been enchanted, and the mother robin had preened and whistled as though she knew she was in the presence of royalty. The robin had flown away to find food for her young, and Alba had wanted to fly too, so Bayr ran through the castle, holding her high above his head, letting her soar, her arms spread out like wings. Alba never grew weary of their games, and Bayr never grew weary of Alba. But now she was turning six, her mother was gone, and Bayr was at a loss.

  He wasn’t certain anyone in the palace knew what day it was. The king was not concerned with such things, and even if he had been, there was war in Ebba, and he had not returned. Bayr’s own birthday often came and went without much fanfare, though Dagmar always remembered. Life was not a celebration on the temple mount. Life was hard, and survival was the most constant aim. But Bayr loved Alba, and her happiness was his chief concern. Lady Esa had moved into the queen’s chambers, but she was easy to avoid and appease. She’d been there the day he’d lifted the altar from her husband’s body, and he often found her staring at him with an awe and fear that embarrassed him. She was also easily tired and unaccustomed to Alba’s energy. That day, when she retired early, Bayr loaded Alba on his shoulders, and without permission, he stole from the palace and loped through the queen’s gardens toward the wall between the temple and the castle grounds.

  “Are we going to find my mother?” Alba asked. She had asked him the same thing every day since the queen’s death. She had not grasped the fact that her mother was gone forever. Each time, Bayr could only shake his head. He scaled the wall like he’d done a thousand times, and Alba tightened her arms without being asked.

  Evening meditation had commenced, and the bells had tolled. Ivo would be in the sanctum, the keepers in their private quarters. Bayr knew where the girls would be too; he’d helped move the heaviest relics to other parts of the temple to clear out the long room where they now resided. He’d seen them traipsing behind Ghost in their purple robes like goslings behind a goose, and he knew their names and the way they spent their days. He guarded the temple the way he watched over Alba, though thus far, he’d done so from a distance.

  He hoped Ghost would be among them. She slept in one of the beds in the long row, and Ghost knew him. She could speak for him. But when he and Alba slipped through the heavy door into the chamber of the girl children, Ghost was not present, and he hovered near the door with Alba on his shoulders, wishing he had practiced his words. Alba clapped excitedly, but he didn’t set her down. He needed her weight to give him courage.

  “It is h-her b-b-birthday,” he said, in an effort to explain their sudden presence. The girls looked at him with varying expressions of fear and fascination. He was big and he was still a stranger, but they’d all seen him profess his protection in the courtyard the night they arrived. And he carried a princess on his shoulders.

  “You are the Temple Boy,” the girl from Joran stated. Her warrior’s braid was gone. All their hair was gone, red, gold, and black length snipped away, leaving close-cropped caps behind, and Bayr wanted to hide his own braid in commiseration. They were dressed like supplicants, but their small bodies and big eyes betrayed them. The freckled one with the red hair, the girl who was closest to his own age, stood and took a step toward him and Alba.

  “Happy birthday, Princess Alba,” she murmured. “I am Elayne . . . of Ebba.” She pointed to Juliah, the next oldest, and then to Liis. “This is Juliah from Joran and Liis from Leok.” Liis did not smile at Alba or even ackno
wledge her presence, but Alba repeated her name anyway. Elayne continued. “Bashti is from Berne—she and Dalys are not much older than you, Highness. Dalys is from Dolphys . . . like you are, Temple Boy. Brother Dagmar too.”

  “He is Bayr,” Alba protested softly, patting his cheek. “Not Temple Boy. His name is Bayr.”

  “Why have you brought her here?” Juliah asked, her eyes hard.

  “It i-i-is h-her b-birthd-day,” Bayr stammered again.

  “You said that,” Juliah snapped. Elayne flinched and Bayr stiffened. Slowly he brought Alba down from his shoulders. He’d wanted to give her six unique gifts. One for every year of her life. Then he’d realized there were five girls just over the castle wall. Five girls. Five friends. And Ghost. Ghost made six. And he’d brought Alba to see them, knowing it would please her more than anything else he could do. Now he stood before them, tongue-tied, helpless to explain that she was as alone as they, that she was motherless and sad, that she was everything good in the world. He touched Alba’s pale hair, hoping she would not be hurt by the obvious hostility emanating from several of the girls.

  Alba walked to Juliah and without hesitation, took the girl’s hands and tipped her own head back with a smile.

  “YOU-LEE-UH!” she sang the girl’s name. “I am here to see you!” Alba laughed, the sound like sunshine through colored glass, and Juliah wilted.

  They stayed an hour, Alba singing and hopping from bed to bed, making the girls smile in spite of themselves. Bayr hung back, watching, listening for prayers to end and the sun to set, and when the bells tolled again and the song of the keepers rang out to usher in the moon, he scooped Alba up and bowed to her new friends.

  “Th-thank y-you,” he stammered.

  “Will you bring her back, Bayr?” the smallest girl, Dalys, asked. He nodded swiftly, and little Dalys wasn’t the only one who smiled in response.

  “I don’t want to go, Bayr. Not yet. I want to stay here, in the temple.”

  He patted Alba’s leg, dangling over his shoulder, but turned to go. It was time. With Alba’s protestations in his ears and her small hands clasped around his neck, he whisked her away to her tower room, wishing they never had to go back.

  They still slept in fitful huddles, small bodies beneath thin covers. Dalys cried in her sleep. Elayne cried before she slept. Juliah screamed and Bashti thrashed. Liis was so silent and still she hardly made a dent beneath the blanket. Ghost wasn’t sure she slept at all.

  The keepers had emptied a room of relics and replaced the ancient artifacts with a row of beds and a wooden chest at the base of each one for the girls to store their possessions. None of the girls had possessions enough to fill the space. The new supplicants were fitted for the purple robes of the keepers, and Ghost kept their hair short. It wasn’t so different from shearing sheep; they weren’t so different from the little lambs. The keepers weren’t unkind, but they were awkward and afraid. None of them had been fathers. None of them were comfortable with women—of any age—and they avoided the girls with bowed heads and skittering eyes. They avoided Ghost. All except Dagmar and Master Ivo.

  Master Ivo looked like a great, stooped vulture with talons and a beak of flesh. His black eyes and lips weren’t as alarming as they might have been had Dagmar not explained their significance. Ghost found she trusted his ugliness. She’d learned long ago the physical form was simply a shell for all manner of evil. Master Ivo looked evil. But he wasn’t. It was Ivo who insisted the girls be treated like little keepers—supplicants, he called them. They were instructed in reading and writing, and they were learning the songs and the incantations.

  When Dagmar had brought her to the sanctum where the Highest Keeper spent most of his time, Ivo had studied her colorless skin and white hair with great interest, but it was her eyes he seemed most fascinated by. He had stood from his throne and drawn close, peering into them like a thieving magpie.

  “They are like glass,” he muttered. “A man will look at you and see himself. His beauty—or lack thereof—will stare him in the face.”

  Dagmar cleared his throat, and Master Ivo raised his unruly brows and flicked his hand toward him. “Go, Dagmar. I must commune with the ghost.”

  Dagmar sighed and hesitated, but Ghost did not watch him go. The Highest Keeper did not frighten her.

  “So what do you see looking back at you, Master Ivo?” she asked, bold.

  “I see my age . . . and my youth too. I see the sanctum . . . and my seat upon the dais. It is empty.”

  Of course it was empty. The Highest Keeper had vacated the dais when he moved to stand before her, but Ghost did not question him.

  He asked her about her time in Eastlandia. Her birth. Her life. Her journey to Saylok. She was honest about everything. Everything except the king. Everything except Alba. She made no mention of either of them.

  “You had a child.” It was not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “But no longer?”

  She stared at him as though the question had an obvious answer. There was no child in her care. That much he knew already.

  “The father was an Eastlander . . . like you? A servant?”

  “No. He was as dark as I am light. He came from somewhere else. He was lost and alone. The shunned often find comfort in one another. We were both very young.”

  “You are still very young.”

  “I am old inside,” she whispered, and he nodded as though he understood.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes didn’t waver. “He found his way. Comfort is not love, Master. Mayhaps it could have been, but time did not allow for such revelations.”

  “Time does tell us many things. Will you stay long enough for me to discover some of them, ghost girl?”

  “I have nowhere else to go.”

  “There is always somewhere else to go.”

  “There is nowhere else I want to be.”

  He inclined his head, seemingly pleased. “Then we have an agreement. You will stay. And we will learn what time has in store.”

  It had been six months since the children had been brought to the temple, since she had been summoned, and they had all settled into a daily routine.

  But they still slept fitfully.

  Ghost shared their room, listening to their muffled sobs and feeling their longing to be somewhere else. They’d been afraid of her at first. Bashti was the first to thaw toward her, as if Ghost’s strangeness lessened her own and she found comfort in it. Weeks after Ghost had come to the temple, the little girl crawled in bed beside her in the middle of the night, curling at her back. The next night, Dalys beat her to it. After that, Ghost suggested they push their beds closer together so they wouldn’t feel alone while remaining in their own beds.

  She’d cut her own hair short in solidarity with the girls. She would be a supplicant too. She donned the purple robe Dagmar had given her five years before and used the strands of her hair and a thin stick to craft a paintbrush for painting her face. Using the soot from the fireplace, she created a black paste that she used to rim her eyes and darken her white lashes. Her reflection terrified her; she looked like a monster with her silvery gaze emboldened by the thick black lines. She even rubbed a bit of the sooty paste into her brows. The effect changed her face. Instead of looking like a ghostly specter, she looked like a demon bride.

  When Dagmar saw her shorn locks, he looked shocked. He reached toward her as though to smooth what remained, and then seemed to think better of it.

  “I will miss it,” he said softly. “It was glorious.”

  She’d wanted to cry then. Why hadn’t he ever said so? She would have braided it around her head in a tight cap and kept it. Now it was gone, and she was left with a word. Glorious. He had thought her hair glorious. He said nothing about her blackened eyes and brows.

  “Will this help us see?” Elayne asked, mimicking Ghost’s actions. She looked more like a forest creature with her bright hair and glowing eyes, but the eff
ect was still startling.

  “I think it will help us to not be seen. We will look like the keepers. It is like a disguise. If we all look the same, we will be a group. A clan of our own,” Ghost reassured her.

  Alba did not sleep in the temple, though Bayr brought her to see the girls as often as he could. With the king squelching skirmishes in Ebba, those living on the temple mount exhaled and let the little princess have her way whenever possible.

  There were rumors about what the king had done to the midwife, Agnes, after his wife’s death. The palace staff and the royal guard whispered about it amongst themselves and grew even warier of Banruud. Ghost already knew to be wary of him and tried not to dwell on the day when he would come back.

  The old queen was indulgent, and Dagmar had convinced her that the princess should attend lessons with the temple daughters. Whenever Alba visited, the girls greeted her with curtsies and bowed heads, but Alba embraced them with such enthusiasm and delight that they bloomed in her presence. Ghost bloomed in her presence. Each day was an awakening, a rebirth, and sometimes her joy was so intense, she thought her heart would break.

  When it all became too much, Ghost would seek Dagmar and his quiet companionship. He was often stooped over scrolls, a quill in hand, turning one language into another, one man’s writings into his own, but he would greet her with a smile and she would tuck herself nearby and let his presence calm the exquisite agony in her chest. Often, they never spoke at all, and Ghost would simply slip away when she could breathe again.

  The Highest Keeper placed meaning in everything, from the contributions of a field mouse to the formation of the clouds in the sky, and Ghost became aware of things she had never thought about before. She was included in the education of the young supplicants, and she learned the prayers and practiced the incantations with an intensity that raised Ivo’s brows and the corners of Dagmar’s lips. Her fingers were always stained with ink and her eyes were often slightly dazed, deep in thought even when she performed her daily chores. She opened herself to the temple the way the temple had been opened to her, and her enthusiasm for learning was an example to the girls she’d been tasked to care for.