The very next night he kept his word.
The orphanage was located at what can only be called the bad part of this city. There decaying houses leaned against each other, leaving between them gaps so narrow that we could barely walk side by side. The lanes were aflood with mud and offal. He would have carried me the whole way, but I refused. That would have gathered too much attention.
My love had smuggled a breadbasket with him, throwaway pieces from the palace. Someone in the kitchen, a scullery maid or boy, had collected them during the week. Some pieces had a bite nibbled out, others sauce stains. I was embarrassed of that. Had I only asked I could have brought a cartful of loaves fresh out of the oven!
At the rusting gates of the orphanage a country gagargi greeted us. He didn’t recognize either one of us, disguised as we were as a working-class couple. He led us into the unlit house, there to meet the children.
The orphanage was like no other institution I have ever visited. Instead of timidly smiling children in starched black shirts and dresses, this house was full of scrawny creatures that I couldn’t tell apart from each other. With heads shaved bare to prevent vermin, with big staring eyes and hollow cheeks, with stick arms and legs poking out from the sheets and blankets they had drawn over their bent shoulders, they didn’t look like children at all, but prisoners most poorly handled. Creatures who wouldn’t live long enough to name themselves, for their souls to anchor to their bodies.
But there, in a hall with a low ceiling, at the end of a wobbly table, an equally scrawny woman stood behind a cracked ceramic pot filled with watery beetroot soup. As the children sat on the rickety benches, the country gagargi read a sermon. All who can should share. So be praised the Moon. I wondered then, had my family forgotten something along the way? Something very important? Why did we live apart from our people in a palace guarded by soldiers? Why did we waste so much when others had next to nothing?
The scrawny woman motioned my love and me to come and help her. At first I hesitated, but my love, he obeyed at once. As he revealed the contents of his basket, the children cheered and the woman cried. It was the first time in my life that I did something good. I swore then it wouldn’t be my last.
“Stop,” my love whispers.
I chastise myself for getting so lost in my thoughts. He holds his fist up, unable to shake off his military habits even when he pretends to be someone else than a man devoted to serve the empire.
I hear it then, too. Faint, regular thumps from right above us. Faded note of a horn. My heart beats faster, and the air, colder now, pinches my nostrils. We are in a tunnel much narrower than those right under the palace. How far have we come already? How far is there still left to go? When my love escorts me to the opera or theater, we can sneak out together, and all there will be is a scandal of a Daughter of the Moon embarking upon a fling. But now that we are both disguised, the guards would shoot us before asking for our names.
“Do not fear.” My love squeezes my hand and presses a kiss on my forehead. “It’s just the guard change at the gates. Now I know where everyone is.”
He continues to lead the way. I follow my love, him who opened my eyes and showed me how the people of our empire really fare. Though I step lightly, echoes follow me. Echoes always follow me. The age of my kind is running out. Soon I’ll be but an echo, too.
I refuse to feel pity for myself. It’s a terrible burden to know too much, and I have known too much for years. I was younger than Alina now is when I first realized that under the glitter the world is but a dark place. Perhaps my sister has realized this, too. Perhaps the visions that haunt her are but reality. I should talk to her and find out. I will talk to her.
The tunnel narrows even more, and I must fall behind my love. I seek comfort from the wideness of his shoulders, his steady gait. He must have sensed this, for he glances over his shoulder and smiles reassuringly. “Almost there.”
A part of me doesn’t even care where he’s leading me. I trust him, and Lily trusts him, too. And I trust her. After my visit to the orphanage, I asked her to tell me what really went on in my mother’s empire. She did so, honestly and without protecting my sensibilities. She told me that while we danced and feasted, the people worked long, hard days and starved. Starved as thanks for their servitude, and that hadn’t escaped the people either.
My love halts before an iron-reinforced door. The metal seeps coldness; I can feel it drifting past him. Though I hearken my senses, I can’t hear any sounds, hints of what awaits us.
My love pulls out a jingling key ring from inside his coat. “Ready?”
Suddenly, despite all my apparent altruism and determination, I’m not sure. My love has taken me to many desolate places. Places where sounds are harsh and loud, where there’s no escaping the stink of offal and sweat and dust and tar and crushed bone. Places where families are broken apart, to never see each other again, orphanages and workhouses. Hospitals, where wounded soldiers are out of sight, out of mind. Proud men sobbing in crammed rooms, on filthy straw mattresses, unable to serve the empire, simply waiting to die.
“Elise?” The brightness of my love’s voice brings me back, into the tunnel, before the iron-bound door. He has turned the key in the lock already. He is only waiting for me. “Are you ready?”
I tug my scarf tighter. I secure my red mittens under my coat sleeves. Wherever he is leading me, I will follow, no matter how the reality may frighten me. “Yes.”
We step through the door.
The stink of urine assaults us. It’s dim in the room, which has pale blue walls and a bare concrete floor. I blink to prevent my eyes from watering as Janlav locks the door behind us. It feels to me as if we are being watched.
Janlav secures the key ring back inside his coat. He takes hold of my hand. “Come.”
I can’t make myself move. For I can see that we aren’t actually in a room, but in a short corridor. Steep stairs lead out into the night, but even the icy wind can’t chase away the incredibly strong stink of urine. Two rooms flank the corridor. In the doorway to our right, an old woman clutches a shawl around her bony shoulders.
Janlav follows my gaze. But rather than tensing, he smiles at the woman. As he leads me past her, he nods at her. “Evening, little mother.”
The old woman smirks at us. Her cheeks are red either from the cold or liquor. “Evening, young lovers.”
I turn my gaze down as if embarrassed. She has no idea of who I am or that the door we closed hides a tunnel that goes all the way from the palace to a . . . public latrine. She just thinks that my love and I are a young couple embarked on mischief that might result in babies. Though that we aren’t—Celestia has yet to announce the name of her first lover.
Resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdness of it, I climb up the stairs, into the night that awaits us.
The main street stretches before us, as empty as I have ever seen it. It’s so late that not many carriages or carts brave the low temperatures. Wind swirls light snow above the wide flagstones and iron tracks of the trolleys. The air is full of pinprick flakes, and soon my cheeks and nose glow red.
“Is that the railway station?” I ask, unable to believe my eyes, that the tunnels could really lead this far.
“It is.”
The railway station stands right before us, an imposing building with an elaborate stucco facade, complete with carvings honoring my father. I glance at the sky, all too aware of how I’m betraying my sacred family. But the night is cloudy, and I can’t catch even a glimpse of my father. I pray this means that he can’t see me either.
“Come,” my love urges.
My sabots slip on the frozen pavement as he leads me toward the station. Are we going to leave by train? Do trains still go this late? Will we make it back in time, before I’m missed? A thousand questions bud in my mind, but I can’t ask them, lest I break my disguise.
We don’t enter the railway station, but halt at the trolley stop before it. It’s nothing more than a slightly wi
der stretch of pavement with a sign hanging from an iron arch and a pen made of planks painted gray. The pen is full already, full of people wrapped up from head to toe in factory-woven coats and shawls and blankets. A few sport lamb furs, tattered things showing decades of stains. My love greets these people with a nod. They nod back at him. I don’t know what to do, but it doesn’t matter. When I’m with him, I belong everywhere.
“Are we going to take a trolley?” The mere thought of doing so sends my heart pounding. Whenever I travel farther than I can walk, it’s either with the imperial train or in a comfortable carriage with a platoon of soldiers escorting me.
My love draws me into an embrace that smells of wood smoke and cigarettes. He places his chin on my shoulder, and I can feel his warm breath through the floral scarf shielding my cheeks. “I love you.”
I cling to him more desperately than I care to admit. The night around us is cold, but at that moment it doesn’t matter. He loves me, and I love him.
It’s a new experience for me to wait for the trolley. For a Daughter of the Moon, everything always happens at once. When I’m her, I don’t wait—others wait for me. But I’m not myself tonight.
More people gather at the trolley stop. A group of railway men huddle right next to us. The biggest and burliest of them sips from a dented flask and offers it to my love. “Care to wager a bet, man? I bet that on a night like this the imperial family drinks mulled wine as they roast deer before a roaring fire. All wrapped in their nice white furs, sipping nice hot drinks, while we ordinary people chill our arses off.”
I tense and cringe despite myself. Though the railway man masks his displeasure with jokes, the undercurrent of anger runs so strong that eventually it will flood. For he’s right, even as ashamed as I am to admit that.
My love, he just chuckles, declining the flask with a jovial shake of his head. When he speaks, his voice is different from what I know. Rough around the edges, as if he, too, worked at the railways, day after day. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’m not much of a betting man.”
The railway man shrugs. He sways toward us and halts right before me. He peers down at me, as if trying to see what my scarf hides. “What do you think, young lass?”
“Ah, don’t tease her.” Janlav nudges him on the shoulder, just a friendly reminder that I’m with him, not someone to be bothered with unwanted attention. “My love, she’s a shy one.”
The railway man snorts, mucus frosting under his nose. His bushy beard glistens with snowflakes. His breath smells of rye liquor. “What sort of rebels are we if we don’t listen to what our little misses have to say?”
He squats down and stares at me with such unrelenting interest that I can’t bring myself to turn my face away. How does he see me? As I am or as I pretend to be?
Every day I see my face a thousand times in the mirrors scattered around the palace. My skin is pale as porcelain, kept more so by cream and powder. My cheeks are freckled, stubbornly so. My eyes are gray, rimmed by blackened lashes. Mine isn’t a face that belongs to a factory girl.
Be that as it may, I can but try. I lift my chin up and meet the man’s stare, not with defiance, but with a smile as luminous as a flame first summoned to life. I should be afraid. But I like this world, the world without ranks. Where people are what they are and nothing more or less. I say, “The cause is right. The cause is just. That is what I think.”
In my ears, my trained voice is akin to a nightingale’s song. True enough, the railway man staggers up as if I had cursed at him. I hold my breath. Behind me, Janlav’s pose has changed. He’s a soldier dressed in plain clothes now.
A screech of metal on metal tears through the night. Neighs and clicking of iron-shod hooves scatter against the ice-laced flagstones. The people crammed into the pen swarm out. I dash to my love before I realize it’s just the trolley arriving.
The trolley draws to a halt, and people surround us. The railway man still stares at me in wonder, for he hasn’t—I know it for sure—ever before seen or heard one like me.
“You.” The railway man points a trembling finger squarely at my love’s chest. “You are one very lucky man. Never let go of her. Never let her go.”
My love’s pose eases. He swoops an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. I shiver out of sheer exhilaration of being so close to him. “Never! I swear as the Moon is my witness. I will never let go of her.”
The railway man chuckles, and then he’s already boarding the trolley. He pushes people around him aside to make space for us. “Hop in, friends!”
My love smiles wildly at him, and we board the trolley. As the trolley jerks onward, my love whispers in my ear, “You did good.”
I don’t reply a word. I truly am one amongst many. This is the future.
It’s silent in the trolley, almost as if we were in a church, listening to a gagargi speak. As the trolley rattles over the stone bridge that arches over the Navna River, I stare through the window fogged by the breath of dozens of people. The train bridge runs alongside this bridge, but no locomotive steams through the night. Was it just this spring when I leaned out of the imperial train’s window, so overjoyed to arrive in the Summer City? This bridge was then crammed with people waving white handkerchiefs at us.
“Or perhaps it was just pieces of cloth, ripped from old sheets and shirts,” I mutter under my breath before I can stop myself.
The trolley screeches as it changes tracks. The people gripping the poles or holding on to each other sway. My love bumps into me, but not by accident. “What was that you said?”
“Oh, nothing important,” I say as I realize something I was too blind to see earlier. All the people in the trolley wear red gloves or mittens.
* * *
The trolley rattles through the city for a good hour or so before it draws to a halt before a massive warehouse. The red-brown bricks bear a white veil. Snow rests on the slanted roof.
Sensing that I can’t place us on the map, my love says, “We are at the train depot.”
People disembark the trolley in an orderly, even jolly manner. The current carries my love and me out, toward the sliding doors that yawn wide open.
“Stay close.” My love squeezes my hand.
“I will,” I reply, though he wouldn’t have needed to remind me. Even if he isn’t wearing the imperial uniform, he radiates such confidence, bears such an air of command around him, that people shuffle out of our way without even noticing that they are doing so. I clutch his hand as people close in behind us. For if I were to lose him, I would never find him again in this crowd, and I might not be able to navigate my way back to the Summer Palace without risking revealing my identity.
The train depot is a vast steel structure with a large lattice of windows as a ceiling. Thin snow covers the glass panes, piled by wind into waves. Huge lanterns hang from the iron bars spanning across the whole hall. The tiny lights flicker, too weak to chase away this many shadows. I think they are powered by chicken souls, but it might be another cheap soul that’s in use.
“At least it’s warm here.” A man in a peasant’s baggy shirt nudges his mate with his elbow. His shirt is cinched at the waist with a leather belt re-holed too many times. “Eh?”
“Now, if there only were a piece of bread to be had, then we’d know what it feels like to live in the palace!”
I glue my gaze down, on the oil-stained concrete. If these two men only knew how much goes to waste in the palace! We nibble and sample and taste for fun, only to send away practically untouched plates because some minor detail didn’t quite please us. Or because we have changed our minds about what we want for breakfast or lunch or brunch or dinner. I can’t plead innocence, having committed those crimes too many times to count. My sisters and I, we are as guilty as any who dwell in the world that these men can’t even imagine.
Because I gaze down, I happen to lock eyes with an elderly woman whose head comes only up to my knees; she’s standing in a longitudinal depression that runs all the w
ay to the end of the hall. A railway track, I realize. I stare back at the woman, impressed by her boldness. People don’t often meet my eyes, not when I’m a Daughter of the Moon. The woman presses her fist tight against her heart. She, too, wears a red mitten.
I repeat the gesture, though I don’t know what it means. The gloves and mittens and rags around hands, they must signify something. But what, I can only guess. All these people in the train depot, they are connected by the same concerns and goals. And there are enough of them, in the small towns and cities, spread across the whole empire, to make a difference at last.
“Come.”
I let my love lead me farther into the hall, where the crowd gets thicker and louder. Even the railway depressions are packed with people. Railroad workers in their loose trousers and boots that have seen too many feet, faces black with oil and coal, stuck in permanent grimaces carved by the harsh winters. There’s militia, too, men whose coats and trousers bear silver stripes, huddling in groups of two and three, mainly footmen. Women stand proud alongside these men, floral scarves tied around their heads, with furs on their shoulders, lamb and fox and wolf, with aprons peeking from under their long coats. Some don’t have coats, but many dresses layered for warmth. There are too many children to count, the scruffy sort that live on the streets.
A thought occurs to me, one that I try to push aside, but that’s too sharp for me to touch. These pits with rails, they are full of people, thousand-eyed trains. Smoke, it’s from their breath. The hoots, from their mouths. And once these trains roll into motion, they will be unstoppable.
I hear a snippet of conversation, but can’t pinpoint the person talking. The words are no less impactful. “How can the Moon watch over us when the empire has tripled in size? Perhaps he simply doesn’t see our plight. Perhaps that’s why he lets us suffer.”
The Five Daughters of the Moon Page 7