The Five Daughters of the Moon

by Leena Likitalo

  “Great!” Elise clapped her hands again, but this time she studied herself in the mirror as she did so. She shook her head minutely. Then clapped again. She met my questioning gaze through the mirror. “What? Practice makes perfect. You should try it, too.”

  I could hardly contain my annoyance and envy as I brooded across Elise’s room. Every single piece of her furniture—the bed at the alcove, the lush sofa with a round table before it, the massive wardrobe (though she naturally has a separate clothes room)—is made of mahogany. The carpets are white, as are the velvet bedcovers and the silver-embroidered sofas. Hers is a grown-up room. Mine still has a dollhouse in the corner, and though I’ve told the servants to take it away on multiple occasions, it always returns. Just as we don’t really exist before our sixth name day, we’re but children till we debut at our sixteenth.

  “Sibs, what is it?”

  Of course she was spying on me through her mirror. We, the Daughters of the Moon, are nothing if not cunning.

  “Nothing.” I yanked open the wardrobe’s doors.

  Countless dresses hung crammed in there, silk pressing against satin and chiffon. Each had carefully worked sequin, pearl, or soul-bead details. Every single one of them had a high waistline and short sleeves, some feather trimmings around the low necklines. One had a vine of hummingbird beads twining around the bodice. I would kill to get to wear that one in public. Swear to Papa I would.

  Despite the wretchedly gorgeous dresses, Elise’s jewelry box was impossible to miss—it’s the size of my dollhouse, a lacquered construction with two dozen drawers, each etched and enameled with variations of crescent patterns. In his midnight blue uniform and ostrich-feather bicorner hat, K is impossible to miss, too. With that black hair of his tied in a bun and the grin-to-die-for on his tanned face, all the young ladies present in the concert will be swooning after him. Right at this very moment, I fear.

  “You’re a poor liar,” Elise chided me, but still wouldn’t get up from the stool. If I were the one invited to the concert, I’d be bouncing all over the room. But I’ll have to wait till next summer, which is completely unfair. What if the recent restlessness spreads here, too? What if there will be no balls next year? What if K is simply no longer available then? What if someone else snatches him first?

  “It’s about that friend of yours, isn’t it?”

  Dear Notes, you know it too well, Elise always has to have everything. Nothing less suffices. At that moment, I was so truly worried about my sister stealing K that I pulled the drawers open like a burglar pressed for time. One after another.

  “Oh, Sibs!” Elise called me as if I were indeed her servant. “In the bottom drawer.”

  It was then that I noticed it, with half of the drawers open already. Each was empty, or close to empty. No pearls lay on the velvet beds, no earrings waited to be donned, no bracelets to be slipped around slender wrists. My sisters and I, we have so many dresses that we often wear them only once before handing them over to our friends or servants. That’s necessary, too, since they know the latest rumors and expect repayment in one form or another. But jewelry we never give away, especially soul beads, for the person such a piece is bestowed upon holds the responsibility for the souls and the power they contain.

  I rattled the drawers as if I could thus by some miracle make the missing pieces reappear. I couldn’t. There was but one possible explanation—someone had stolen my sister’s jewelry!

  “Where are all your jewels! We must call the guards at once,” I blurted. And my heart jolted with excitement. A theft in the very palace. In my sister’s chambers. Perhaps there could be some action in my chambers, too!

  “What?” Elise froze, right hand poised to apply rouge on her freckled cheeks. She blinked slowly, working through what to say next. I know my sister well, but an emotion I couldn’t quite name slipped through her composure. Worry or anxiety, perhaps? “No, we won’t.”

  I glanced at the barren drawers, my slippered feet tapping the question I didn’t dare to ask. Who was she protecting? Or was there something else at large?

  “I sent them to be cleaned, silly Sibs.” Elise met my gaze through the reflection, brows drawn sharper and raised as if that was obvious to begin with. “You’ll find the dove pearls in the bottom drawer.”

  I curled my fingers around the silver knob, the metal cool against my skin. Something didn’t quite add up. But to call a theft, that would cause trouble for everyone, and I like all of our servants.

  And indeed, the dove pearls rested on the velvet of the bottom drawer, gleaming with the souls that the gagargis had coaxed from the birds. I picked the pearls up gingerly. If I were a thief, would I leave behind something this valuable? Nope. Not even if I was out of practice or a butterfingered novice.

  A rustling sound interrupted my train of thought. Elise had got up at last. She clutched the hem that must have weighed a ton. She must have applied too much rouge, for her cheeks glowed brighter than fitted her. She kept her gaze down. “Will you help me fasten it?”

  I dangled the pearls from between my fingers as I ambled to my sister. On the way, I bumped into the sofa. I lack the grace that comes to my sister so naturally. Or perhaps I haven’t practiced enough before my mirrors. Notes, I’m writing it down here and hold you accountable for reminding me, I shall start practicing graceful gestures and movements at least once a day. No, make it twice a day.

  Elise held her head down and red-gold hair up as I fastened the pearls around her neck. After I’d secured the clasp, she straightened her back. Of the flush I’d seen earlier, there was no sign. She took my hands in hers.

  “Do you want to hear the latest rumor?”

  “Depends,” I replied, wary. She’s my best friend, but she’s also cunning. More cunning than I am in so many ways.

  “The thing is, my dear Sibs”—she gave my hands a squeeze, but her voice wavered—“I think Celestia has a lover.”

  At first I failed to register the importance of Elise’s statement. Then my legs gave in, and I would have ended up on the floor if she hadn’t been holding my hands. “She . . . she has a lover at last?”

  Elise hugged me tight. The sequins pressed against my chest almost painfully. How she could stand to wear the dress, even think to wear it all night, I couldn’t even imagine. But I admired her for that.

  “She’s sneaking out all the time,” Elise said as she detached from me. She ran a finger down the length of her necklace. “And there’s this glow, a dreamy look about her.”

  I swayed, I’m afraid to admit this to you, as I pondered on this revelation. Could my eldest sister really be in love at last? If there had been a change in her, it had completely escaped me. Though Celestia has always been different from the rest of us, so regal and rational. Then again, she has to be—she will be the empress one day. We won’t.

  Unless she were to die, that is. Which isn’t something I wish to happen, just to be clear, dear Notes, as that sort of statement will see one to an early grave or to an exile in the least.

  “Perhaps Papa has finally taken note of our plight,” I replied gingerly. During the past two months, I’d asked Papa to facilitate a romance with K often enough, not that I would ever admit that aloud either. “I thought he’d wait till we were all old hags.”

  Elise skimmed a step back and held her hands out for me. I clasped them.

  “Come next year, come your debut,” Elise said. We started spinning together as we sometimes did when we were much, much younger, both still wearing girl dresses. Now her dress, heavy with silver sequins, positively crepitated. My nightgown merely whooshed. “You can charm as many young men as you want. And for myself, I have just the right handsome young captain in mind.”

  I leaned back, smile widening with mad glee. For I could have K as my lover! At last! Unlike Celestia’s, our lovers won’t become generals and court officials by default. We are free to love whomever we choose, provided she picks a lover first and we maintain caution. For messing up the successi
on order never ends well. One only has to think of Mama’s sisters and what became of them. They’re . . . gone, as if erased from history.

  I was so concentrated in thinking of this and basking in joy that I didn’t notice Elise’s intention to halt. And as she halted, I stumbled and collapsed with her.

  “Elise . . .” I chided her, panting against her shoulder. The world still spun around me. “What was that?”

  “I have an idea.” Without offering further explanation, my sister pranced toward the doors leading to the balcony, despite the weight of her dress. When my sister spoke, her voice chimed with excitement. “Come!”

  “Where?” I blurted, always, always so hatefully clumsy compared to her.

  In Elise’s room, pristine white curtains embroidered with crescents guard the balcony’s double doors. Elise swooped her hands around them and pulled them apart. She turned the key twice in the lock and pushed the doors open. Night breathed in the chill of late autumn.

  “Come now,” Elise said, disappearing outside.

  I followed her like a lamb. As the Daughters of the Moon, our lives are full of transitions. Name at six. Debut at sixteen. Death. Returning to the sky to shine next to our Celestial Father. What was following my older sister where she deemed fit compared to these?

  The smell of algae and rotting leaves instantly flooded my nostrils, but I ignored it. The garden lay below, canals crisscrossing its length. At this hour, only the imperial guards haunted the tiled paths. And one untired magpie, it seemed. The Moon peeked through the thin, gray clouds, and the guards’ shadows mixed with those of the many willows and poplars.

  “Dear Father Moon.” Elise curtsied between giggles. I curtsied, too, heart beating with guilt and excitement. Nurse Nookes would chide me if she learnt of this. To sneak from my room, to fool around outside without a coat or gloves!

  But Elise spread her arms wide, bent her head back, and addressed our father. “Please send us lovers, handsome and tall.”

  “Elise! You can’t just . . .”

  Elise glanced at me, grinning. She fluttered her painted lashes. “I can’t just what? We are the Daughters of the Moon. We have the right to call out for his help when in desperate need.”

  At that moment, I did consider if I really was that desperate to meet K again. His lineage is impeccable; not that I care about that sort of thing. He adores me. I’m sure of that, though we shared only one waltz, in secret, during Alina’s name day celebrations. But the look he cast me afterwards, from across the dance floor. Smoldering.

  “Your turn.” Elise elbowed me.

  “Ouch.” Dear Notes, my sister has the boniest, sharpest elbows.

  Elise looked at me expectantly, and I knew it then: if I didn’t ask something from our father, she would ask something much more daring in my place.

  My voice was but a whisper, but this is what I said: “With curious mind and wandering hands.”

  Elise gasped, shocked by my plea, and I was pleased to see that. “Why, Sibilia . . .”

  The guards in the garden below stirred to these sounds. They glanced around, hands tensing around their rifles. In their sky blue uniforms and the black bicorner hats, they looked menacing, men ready to spring into action on our behalf. They hadn’t yet spotted us, but inevitably . . .

  I fled inside, Elise at my heels. She pulled the doors shut, while I blushed embarrassingly furiously. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said what I did. Perhaps Nurse Nookes’s diligence is my punishment for yearning for what I should wait one more year to have. But surely if Celestia has a lover, I can take one, too. What difference does a year make at this point anyway? I’m already a woman!

  “Are you all right?” Elise asked. No matter how bossy she can be at times, she has a good heart.

  I fanned my face—blush often creeps to my cheeks. Oh, that night with K, I was blushing all the time when we danced, but he seemed to find that charming, can you believe that, Notes?

  “Sibs?” Elise placed a palm on my shoulder.

  I really didn’t want to let go of my fondest memories, but if Elise caught me dreaming, she’d extort the juiciest details in no time. “Um . . .”

  A timid knock on the door saved me. Elise and I exchanged looks. Her right brow arched in question.

  “It can’t be Nurse Nookes,” I whispered hoarsely, but yet I pondered if that old raisin really could sense when I was up to something.

  Elise shook her head, and the white-gold crescents tangling in her chignon clinked. “It can’t be. I sent Lily to keep her occupied. It must be Celestia.”

  But Celestia, the empress-to-be, would never knock. For a moment, I entertained the thought that Elise might have succumbed to the temptation and done the unthinkable—acquire a lover before our eldest sister had officially announced hers! She sure had shared more than one dance with that handsome young captain, what was his name again? Captain Janlav, I think.

  The door slowly opened. But instead of our oldest sister, the visitor was the youngest. Alina slipped in, tears in her deep-set brown eyes, clutching both hands against her narrow chest. She wore but a nightgown and white slippers, as if she’d climbed out of bed midway through the night.

  Elise and I glanced at each other. Not again. Dear Notes, sometimes it’s hard to believe that Alina is our sister, a Daughter of the Moon. Not only does she look different from the rest of us—frail and vulnerable and borderline mousy—but this weakness seems to affect her mind as well. Most of the time it’s harmless. She’s just immersed in her own world, but when the concoctions Nurse Nookes brews wear off—or Alina has managed to spit them out in secret—then our youngest sister turns erratic.

  Though dressed in a gown that must have weighed half of her own weight, Elise squatted down akin to a mistress waiting for her poodle to come and greet her. “What is it, dear?”

  Alina dashed to Elise and fell on her knees before our sister. A sob shook her whole slender frame, from the gray-brown hair to the tiny lamb-fur-lined slippers. “Oh dear . . .” Elise glanced at me from the corner of her eye before she met Alina’s tearful gaze. “Shouldn’t you be in bed already?”

  The balcony curtains remained parted, and the whole sorry scene was visible for the Moon. I didn’t know whether I should go and draw them or not. Then again, a father deserves to know when something ails his daughters. And lately, a lot has been ailing the youngest.

  “The sh . . . sleep won’t come when it spies on us.” Alina produced something shiny from the cradle of her hands and thrust it at Elise. When Elise cupped her palms to accept that something, I caught a glimpse of more details. Alina wanted to rid herself of a shiny blue-green object no bigger than her fist. “Take it.”

  “Alina!” Elise called out as she recognized the object. General Rasvatan had given the mechanical peacock to Alina. I tutted, too. How could Alina even think of passing onward the name day gift of her own seed?

  “Can you take it?” Alina’s gaze darted from Elise to me. I shivered, though the palace had rooms much colder than Elise’s. How could my little sister look so gray and haunted? What was it that she was seeing? I wondered if we should call for Nurse Nookes, no matter the consequences.

  Elise rustled up, shaking her head as Alina drifted from her to me. I stared at my little sister in something approaching horror. Alina was akin to a sleepwalker. But the dark circles under her eyes spoke a different story. She was wide awake, had been for hours. Or days. “Sibs, please, you take it.”

  I shouldn’t have, but how could I refuse when distress so tortured her. I accepted the mechanical bird. It weighed more than I’d expected, and I almost dropped it. “But just for safekeeping.”

  Relief shook Alina as she rid herself of the peacock. She wrung her hands together and swayed from side to side. “Thank you! Thank you so much, Sibs.”

  As I turned the mechanical bird in my hands, I tried to understand what had so frightened my sister. The peacock was a marvelous gift that must have cost General Rasvatan more than he could have po
ssibly afforded. Powered by a peacock soul, the mechanical bird could mimic the true bird in shape, form, and sound. I touched the spring under the bird’s tail, about to wind it.

  Alina twitched, shied away from me, toward the door. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  Elise hurried to comfort her. The hem of her dress, so heavy, didn’t follow her movements. That wasn’t quite right. Everything always followed her way.

  “Why?” I asked as this silly, creeping anxiety of theirs, the wrongness, started to bother me as well. Why, Notes, I can’t tell. The bird was of a workmanship of the most magnificent kind. The enamel feathers so carefully carved. The claws decorated with platinum details. But it was the sapphire eyes I was drawn to. Like everything else powered by a soul, the peacock automaton had a life of its own.

  “I can’t sleep while it watches me,” Alina replied, and then she was crying again.

  Elise hugged Alina. She glanced over our sister’s shoulder at me. I knew what she was thinking. Our poor, fragile sister, so sensitive, so frail. How could a seed from General Rasvatan result in such weakness?

  Ashamed by my thought, I strode to the tile stove and hastily placed the bird on the sill, facing against the wall, as far away from us as possible. Then I hurried to join the embrace. Behind us, the Moon shone brighter, or that was how it felt. I prayed to Papa to make our sister stronger. A Daughter of the Moon wasn’t supposed to be this vulnerable!

  Amidst the embrace, the door flung open. Alina shrieked. Elise and I tightened our hold around our little sister. It didn’t matter who’d arrived. Even Nurse Nookes took pity on Alina.

  “Sleep. How are my companions supposed to sleep for all this laughter and crying?” Merile limped in, wrapped into a too-large pristine white cloak with a thick fur lining. The cloak trailed after her, and those rats of hers, all thin fur and thin legs and thin spindly tails, didn’t quite know whether to step on it or rush to her sides, and so they bounced from left to right, yapping. To top the already ridiculous entrance, the rats wore coats that matched with her cloak. They were another garish set of gifts from her seed, no doubt about that.