by S. K Munt
Adeline the curvy redhead! Her aunt is the favourite of the next in line! Oh my goodness!
‘Does the palace know?!’ Elfin demanded.
‘I don’t know.’ Martya cleared her throat. ‘I mentioned to Kohén on the day we met, that my aunt Adeline lived here as a servant or something too, and he got really excited and said that he knew her- she was close to his big brother, and I think that’s why he said yes to me, you know?’ She sighed. ‘At first I was excited to think that I’d have some sort of bond with someone in here, but she hasn’t spoken to me at all.’
‘To keep the secret?’ Kelia guessed.
Martya shrugged and adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, and I saw that she had my book on botany. ‘That could be it, but I don’t know. Truthfully, I don’t know if she even knows who I am and because we’ve been forbidden from conversing with the court, I haven’t dared introduce myself, because I thought she and the others like her were noblewomen.
‘So did I,’ Emmerly said bitterly. ‘And I wanted to grow up to be just like them. How sickening!’
‘Me too,’ Lette said morosely, pulling her knees to her chest. ‘They’re so beautiful and poised… I thought they were like angels not…’
‘Sex isn’t a sin,’ I said to her quietly, offering what I could.
‘Nor is whoring a virtue, duckling.’
I winced and looked away, knowing that placating these girls wasn’t my job. How could I offer them any comfort or wisdom when, if I hadn’t had Kohén’s promise, I would have been going ballistic and staying there?
‘How can you NOT have spoken to your aunt?’ Kelia cried. ‘I’d kill to have a member of my family close-by! If I were you, I’d be running to her right now!’
‘I’ve considered that but... I mean, we’re technically family and all, but we’ve never been introduced. Adeline would have been told that her sister had had a baby years ago, but I wasn’t born until she’d already been here for three years and she’s never once gone home for a visit and even if she did, it would be to the farm she grew up on, not to see my mother in the village.’ She looked at me again. ‘Just like you. I mean, if your big sister, um…’
‘Jaiya,’ I offered quietly.
‘Right, Jaiya… had a child, would you recognize her a few years from now?’
I thought it over, and then shook my head. I didn’t even have a picture of Finch’s son, Ibis yet!
‘Exactly. I recognised Adeline because she looks like mum with that red hair, but I look like dad and she wouldn’t be looking for me, even if I didn’t. My big brothers she might recall, but I’m a stranger to her, and I don’t know if I should change that...’
‘You’re your mother’s only daughter?’ I asked softly, and Martya bit her lip and nodded sadly. I felt a pang for her poor mother- having two boys and then having to give up the girl was pretty bad luck. At least my mother had gotten to keep one of each.
I call her as a friend but I know nothing about any of these girls! Forgive me God, I will try harder!
‘Adeline? I know her too!’ Emmerly erupted, as I climbed out of bed and sat beside Martya. I wasn’t sure if we were close enough to hug or anything, but I felt her trembling before I even touched her, and instinctively wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
‘You’re so warm,’ she whispered, resting her head against my shoulder. ‘Like slippers, that have been worn for awhile,’ and I chuckled, rubbing my palm briskly down her arm.
‘I saw Adeline with Karol this afternoon, getting out of the carriage with him!’ Emmerly went on. ‘He was singing some silly song and helping her out, and the lyrics rhymed with her name!’
‘HER?’ Elfin’s eyes were wide. ‘She’s that big girl who was hanging off him at the ball, right?
‘And the markets on the Common during the Fall Festivities,’ Lette piped up, smiling. ‘Karol was spooning Ice Confection into her mouth remember?’
‘Ew,’ Emmerly snarled. ‘Food as foreplay? Well, I guess that’s what does it for the big girls, huh?’
‘She is very curvy, yes,’ Martya said hesitantly, but now that I knew who they were talking about, I understood that Martya was understating that, because Adeline was more than a ‘little’ curvy. I’d been noticing her for years, because she was the one who laughed the loudest and the most heartily and all but spilled out of her slinky gown.
‘Oh shut up, she’s huge,’ Elfin sniped. But she smiled at Martya. ‘She has a beautiful voice though. I heard her singing in the gardens one day.’
‘My mother said her little sister had always had the voice of an Artisan,’ Martya agreed. ‘And she’s sort of the exact opposite of me in every way, which is why I’m afraid to talk to her.’
‘Whoa…’ Kelia said softly. ‘So you don’t think being pretty matters at all?’
‘It probably counts,’ Martya said softly. ‘But not as much as you think. I mean, Adeline has a very pretty face, she’s just a bit generous everywhere else, and some men like that. Clearly, Karol does because I see him taking her out more than anybody else.’
‘Me too,’ I agreed, speaking up for the first time yet. ‘But I don’t think any of this matters. I mean, who cares if we’re Kohén’s favourite? We’re all screwed anyway.’
‘Literally,’ Martya said, chuckling and even I couldn’t help but smile.
Not me.
‘Well, I still think that being pretty counts plenty,’ Emmerly said, sounding annoyed and eyeballing Martya, as though admitting that the aunt she didn’t know was a Companion was a move on Martya’s part to usurp Emmerly as the front-runner. ‘And I intend on using my looks to make certain that if I must stay here, it will be as Kohén’s favourite.’
‘You do that,’ Martya said listlessly, patting my back and then leaning back against her pillow and opening her book, clicking her little penlight back on. ‘Meanwhile, I plan on keeping my wits about me.’
‘Ugh, you academics are all the same…’ Emmerly groused.
‘Smart?’ the retort popped off the tip of my tongue before I had a chance to check myself as I rose to my feet, and the collective giggle that followed it chimed like bells. I looked around the room as I ascended the ladder to my own bunk again, almost as shocked by having made the other girls laugh as I had been by Maryah’s revelations.
But Emmerly wasn’t laughing, and the look on her face was positively poisonous. ‘Watch yourself, ugly duckling. We all know who Kohén’s favourite is now, but if you think it’s going to stay that way, you’re in for a rude awakening.’
‘As is Kohén, when he wakes up to his new ‘favourite’ without any make-up on...’ Martya whispered, and this time, I was the one who giggled and when I did, everyone turned to look at me, surprised yet again.
‘What did you just say?’ Emmerly demanded, raising her voice.
‘She said that she and I already know that we’re out of the running when it comes to seducing a man with our looks, okay?’ I said, lying back on my pillow. ‘So save your breath, your threats are falling on deaf ears.’
‘Tone-deaf ears,’ Martya corrected me. ‘I can’t sing any better than I can dance.’
‘And I can’t dance any better than I can braid,’ I agreed. ‘So take Kohén. Take the biggest suite. Take the damned palace because you’re right, Emmerly- NO one deserves this life more than YOU do.’
In response, Emmerly stomped across the room and drew her drapes closed and then from behind me, I heard the flap of Kelia doing the same thing and just like that, the room fell dark and eerily silent for precisely ten seconds before the sobbing started.
Then it was dark and grievous. I pulled my soccer ball out of the corner of my bunk and clung to it, wanting to pray for them, but not knowing who to pray to anymore.
16.
The winter holidays began the next day but as Maryah had predicted- no one showed up to collect us. We were members of the Companion caste now, and no longer the daughters of our Blue collar, Noble, Academic or Artisan parents a
nd severing that connection was supposed to make it clear that we did not truly belong with our birth mothers.
Not that we ever really had.
According to Maryah, who did receive a visit the next day- from her aunt- the family visitation rights had only ever been offered as a way of padding our entries into this strange world. Our parents knew from conception (or when they’d learned of the duchess’s conception that same year) that we were to be the ones who were the exception to the Given rule and if we were chosen- would end up in training for the royal harem. Though Maryah was trying to tell us that the position in society would be a positive one which people admired, there was still a seedy undercurrent running through people’s minds as far as sex went, and who could blame them? Sex before a marriage or a joining was illegal, so obviously the people who did it outside of such binds were morally barren in some way. By only offering our parents to option us twice a year, they were offering them the opportunity to phase us out of their lives and hearts. For my mother it had been easy, but Kelia’s mother had taken every drop of her daughter’s company that was offered, and was probably as much of a wreck as her daughter was by then.
The other Given children however, would continue to get visits until they were twenty-one and had served their sentence right up to the age of independence. There was a chance that we’d see our families and friends again of course- at balls and parties and on the street, but our caste was an exclusive one that was strictly invitation-only, so the chances of remaining close were slim. I understood now that Finch had offered me the chance to live with him after because like everyone else, he assumed that I’d be the least wealthy of all the girls when I left and would need somewhere to stay. I was touched that he’d made such a promise, but I saw straight away that it was one I’d never be able to take him up on- not if Kohén had used me anyway, because whores weren’t allowed to live with children or raise them. I don’t know if he knew that or not, but I had a feeling that his spouse would work it out and put her foot down before I could cross her threshold. So much for being superstars!
It was strange, but after all I’d been through and learned- it still saddened me that Finch had not held out for love. After I found out about my obligations and Kohén’s friendly loophole, I started reading my favourite parts of Romeo and Juliet every night before bed, so I wouldn’t let the bitter zest to love in Arcadia turn my heart away from the concept of love in general. There had to be happy couples out there, I just knew it. Why, people in Arcadia always seemed to be of good cheer, and I’d seen plenty of banded couples dancing cheek-to-cheek at balls or embracing by Miguel Barachiel’s cottage for anniversary photos. Musicians still serenaded it, painters still captured it and writers still wrote of it- so it had to be out there somewhere, didn’t it?
Things got awkward with Kohén right after we were told of the harem. For the first few weeks, he was later to lunch and earlier to leave, and I understood that he had as much as a right to feel uncomfortable as I, and took it in stride. It was winter after all, so we had to pass our time up in the Collection room, which meant that instead of getting to run about, we had to talk, and there was very little in our lives that we could discuss without the harem rearing its ugly head. By then Kohén could not only play Poker, Snap, Gin Rummy and Solitaire- but he could beat me in every game so though I didn’t mind playing him still, he started to grump that it was getting boring and pulled out a chess board instead. This time however, he was the master and I the apprentice.
For a few weeks, life got a little easier for we had something to talk about that had nothing to do with palace life, but at the end of winter, there was a knock on the Collection room door and in walked Martya. I started at her in shock at first for none of the girls had ever followed us up there, and immediately wondered if she’d gotten lost but no, she blushed and admitted that she’d been looking for Kohén. She said that she needed a book from the library and not from the usual section we always used, but the antiquated one, which had a special key that could only be opened with the winged ring that the royal family wore. We had to be supervised when we were in there, which meant that she needed Kohén not only to accompany her down there, but hover at her side until she’d found and taken a photocopy of what she was looking for.
It was only the very beginning of lunch and I’d just finished laying out my white chess pieces, so Kohén apologised to me and said that if I’d like to wait, he’d be back quickly and Martya assured him that she only needed ten minutes. That left us with well over an hour so I shrugged and opened Gone With The Wind, and waved them out the door. I tried not to feel strange about it. I tried not to think about the fact that Martya had styled her hair into a sleek bun ringed with a plait, and I tried not to feel any sort of paranoia toward my clever friend. If she said she needed a special book- she needed a special book and that was that.
But when the bells sounded over Eden and Kohén had not returned, I was feeling all sorts of things, and every single one of them was laced with paranoia.
At the start of spring, the ship came in from the islands and with it was a very special book- one that was wrapped in brown paper and addressed not to Kohén but to me in Kohl’s messy scrawl. That book was called Memoirs of A Geisha. I was not more than ten minutes into the book when I realised that I was reading a mirror image of my life, and I began to cry. It didn’t matter in that moment that this wasn’t to be my life, because it had been other girls lives for thousands of years, and even my dear, sweet Kelia would suffer such a rough fate.
So, even Kohl knows now, I suppose! And if he hasn’t discussed this with Kohén yet, then he clearly believes that there’s no point sending me romances anymore… gosh, how long until he stops writing to me too?
I’d been waiting Kohén to come meet me at ‘our’ hemlock so that we could take advantage of the sunshine and moist earth after comparing gifts, but he didn’t come and when I walked inside, was shocked to see him with Emmerly. She was leaning against one of the glass windows to the rear courtyard and sobbing into her hands, and he was asking her what he could do. My stomach turned at the sight, and I didn’t know why.
Martya ran down the steps then, looking tall and slender in our new white gowns, which were empire wasted and fell to our ankles, showing the skin on our shoulders and décolletage. They were hardly risqué, but they were a lot more grown-up than the pinafores and puffed sleeves that we’d been wearing for years and it made every one of them look older except for Kelia and I. Her auburn hair was once again pulled up prettily, but she still wore her spectacles and that hid the fact that she had large, almond-shaped green eyes, and that didn’t do her any favours, because her eyes were the only part of her that were outstanding. Aside from them, she had hard features- a long face, a long straight nose and thin, mannish lips. And those lips twisted into a sneer when she followed my gaze and saw Emmerly wrap herself around Kohén and sob. Kohén looked more than awkward, but that didn’t make the situation any less repellent to me. I turned my face on an angle and continued toward the stairs, meeting Martya on the way.
‘She’s starting early…’ Martya whispered, but my responsive smile was tight, for Martya had been the first of them to start angling for Kohén’s time.
‘She is,’ I said softly, reminding myself to breathe- I didn’t want Kohén, and they did. End of story. If getting out of there meant allowing the other girls to monopolise his time, I had to let that happen.
Martya looked at me, and there was something guarded about her expression. ‘Larkin…’ she frowned and then swallowed, holding up a stack of papers for me to see in her left hand. ‘Can I show you something? I mean… unless you’re waiting around here for some reason…?’ she let the true meaning of that question dangle, but her eyes shifted to Kohén and Emmerly again, communicating plenty.
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I most certainly am not.’
Martya’s face relaxed into a smile and suddenly; there was an excited gleam in her eyes. ‘The king has given me
a larger plot of earth at the back of the garden, and I’m going out there now to see it for the first time! Do you want to come with me? It was going to be a project of mine, but if you have free time…’
I glanced over at Kohén again. Hmm… wait around for Emmerly to chew him up and spit him out, or go commune with nature?
I followed Martya outside fast and prayed that Kohén would see us depart and follow. When he did not, I realised that I had to stop hoping for things that didn’t matter, and concentrate on passing the time and letting the hurts of being best friends with a crown prince pass me by.
It was two weeks before Kohén found the chance to come see Martya’s garden, which was in a special fenced garden to the rear of the common. He spent every lunch before then inside with Lette, Emmerly and Elfin, who had a stream of excuses as to why they needed five seconds of his company.
The battle to become his new favourite had begun.
*
Martya had gotten special permission to grow a vegetable garden for the palace as part of her experimenting, and though the project didn’t pay off the way she’d hoped it to at first, by the time my fourteenth birthday rolled around, we’d contributed to at least seven meals with the vegetables that we’d grown.
As with before, I was the one responsible for planting the seeds and supervising their growth, and she was the one who worked hard to protect them by poisoning them but not killing them. When she’d gone to the special antiquities section of the library, she’d gotten her hands full of old horticulture books and had studied all of the old-fashioned ways of caring for gardens which did not include the use of the toxic sprays that humans had used in the time before. There weren’t many alternatives to using chemicals, but there were some and she tried each combination, determined to find one that would combat the sort of locusts that we had to deal with in Arcadia. Once we had a full crop, we’d start harvesting, and though the vegetables on our thin strip of land were bigger, better tasting and grew more quickly than the ones in the castle’s acreage, they were subjected to as many pests as the others, much to Martya’s dismay.