The Five Daughters of the Moon

by Leena Likitalo

  I snuggle against him, and as I shift, a sticky rivulet coils around the inside of my thigh. I am torn in mind and body alike. This pain is but one of the many prices to be paid. Yet for some reason, I am more ashamed of this than the fact that I am about to depose my own mother.

  “There is nothing to feel ashamed of.” The gagargi wraps his arms around me. I brush his oiled braid aside and bury my cheek against his chest. How did I bear to harbor such horrid thoughts earlier? He has always been a frugal man, who never gave in to the pleasures that would have been available plenty in the court. He placed the best of our people above himself, something Mother failed to do. “Yours is the empire. Our children will rule it in peace. For that is what you want, isn’t it?”

  And . . . yes, that is what I want. Peace and prosperity for the Crescent Empire. This great man, Gagargi Prataslav, he wouldn’t have tricked me into anything. For he always promised to wait for me, for the day I am ready.

  On the eve of the coup, I have to be ready.

  * * *

  We are in his laboratory now, both dressed up; though, without a servant to help me, not all of my gown’s buttons are fastened. The long, narrow room has neither a fireplace nor a coal brazier, for he prefers low temperatures when working with souls. The draft finds its way onto my shoulder blades. Lingering in the doorway, I adjust my shawl. Better to hide my state of undress than risk causing rumors or catching cold.

  “Do come in. Close the door.” Gagargi Prataslav sits at the back of the room, on a three-legged stool before a massive desk littered with soul beads and the instruments of his art. His braided head is bent down in concentration, and he murmurs incantations under his breath. He is holding something white on his lap, and that something is big and alive.

  A part of me wants to see where his relentless pursuit of knowledge has led him this time around. Another part of me already knows, and this calls forth shivers that ripple down the whole length of my body. This room is also in the cellar, and dust clings to the row of tiny windows above the desk. My father can’t see us here either. I push the door closed behind me and enter the gagargi’s den . . . I shake my head sharply, for this drowsiness that ever accompanies me these days has tangled my thoughts once more.

  “What are you working on?” I ask. The gagargi should be preparing himself already. We should be preparing ourselves. It is a mere two hours until midnight.

  But the gagargi is too absorbed in his incantations to answer. I must go to him to find the answer. And so I do.

  The laboratory is lit with soul beads, the harsh white light of ospreys and hawks. Black wrought-iron lanterns hang from the low ceiling and the hooks attached to the un-tapestried brick wall. I pass the small round table where his dinner lays, without doubt untouched, under the silver dome. Next to it is a candelabrum that holds five speckled soul beads. Owls, perhaps. But even in the plenitude of light, this place is haunted by shadows. The animals that enter the room leave it without their souls.

  I breathe deep and unclamp my fingers from the folds of my shawl. I need not fear here, with him.

  Gagargi Prataslav toured me around the house once, the second or third time I visited him on my own—I can no longer remember the details. He doesn’t entertain. He doesn’t hold servants. The rooms that aren’t occupied by his apprentices are filled with cages of domestic birds and birds of prey alike. Not all of them are white. And not all the animals are birds. In the room that always has a roaring fire he keeps big black apes imported from the south at a great cost. He has been experimenting with them a lot lately, and part of it is from my urging. I think. Our plan for the better empire has but one weakness. The Great Thinking Machine requires human souls for fuel.

  “The machine needs the intelligence to calculate the results correctly, just as any other being needs their soul to guide them through their lives.” Gagargi Prataslav turns on his stool, replying to my unasked question. As I meet his gaze, I veer to a halt. Though he has never claimed so, I believe he can catch glimpses of the world beyond this one, a skill that has been lost to the empresses for centuries, a secret guarded most closely. “Look at this swan, for example.”

  I can only break the eye contact upon his prompt. No matter how curious I was earlier to see what he was doing, this couldn’t compete with his undivided attention. Now, as he so told me, I look at that big white something: a swan that isn’t quite alive anymore, but not yet dead either.

  The sacred messenger of my family rests on the gagargi’s lap. The bird’s webbed feet clutch at his black robes. Its neck is looped around his right arm, and its elegant head rests on his palm. The bird’s beady eyes have already glassed over, but its folded wings shift with its faltering breaths.

  Why a swan? I want to ask. Why my family’s heraldic charge and not some other animal? What spell does he need the bird’s soul for? I have seen him separate a soul from the body a hundred times or more. But swans are . . . they are reserved for ceremonies, not for him or anyone else to practice his art. The gagargi smiles, revealing his slightly crooked teeth, and it is almost as if he were amused by my confusion.

  “What is there to look at?” I avert my gaze from both him and the swan that is about to die. It annoys me that he is playing guessing games with me. There is precious little time left. Not for me to change my mind, but to prepare ourselves for the coup. Perhaps it would be better if I left now. My carriage has been waiting for me for hours already. “I . . .”

  “You should stay,” he suggests, and it is as he says. I want to stay with him. In any case, I will be allowed entry to the palace, no matter what time I arrive. Only guards that are sympathetic to the cause man the posts tonight. With my seed, the great General Monzanov, supporting us, there was no difficulty in finding such soldiers. “Observe.”

  Gagargi Prataslav hums an incantation as he gently strokes the swan’s back. The way he focuses on each caress reminds me of Merile and her dogs. My sisters . . . they might hate me after tonight, for having to send mother to Angefort. For a while, there won’t be balls or concerts or any of the other frivolities Elise so enjoys. Sibilia might have to settle for a less extravagant debut than the one she has been dreaming of. Merile will be fine as long as she has her dogs. The three of them will adapt, but little Alina, with her mind already so fragile . . . What will become of her? But this is a risk I must take. Eventually, if the Moon shines bright, they will come to see I was right to take action, that there really was no other choice. The Crescent Empire, such as it is, can’t continue to exist. I must depose mother, and eventually marry the Moon.

  “Contrary to the popular belief . . .” The gagargi’s voice draws my attention back to him. He twirls his forefinger and middle finger back and forth in a pattern too complex to describe with mere words. The swan twitches. Its black beak parts, revealing a pale pink tongue, but no cry comes out. Instead, the thinnest of white wisps protrudes through its eyes, faint but impossibly strong at the same time. The beak clenches shut, but it is too late. The wisp coils through the air, around the gagargi’s fingers like rings spun from mist. “It is possible to extract only a part of a soul.”

  This I didn’t know, and it is an honor to have such information bestowed on me. Curious now, I meet the swan’s gaze. Its eyes are dull, but the bird is still very much alive. “What does it mean for the bird?”

  The gagargi gets up, rising to his full, towering height, and only a palm’s width remains between his head and the ceiling. He unloops the swan’s neck from around his arm and then offers the bird to me. “It depends.”

  I glide the rest of the way to him and hold my hands out, for what else could I do? Yet nothing could have prepared me for the weight of the bird, the stiffness of its body, the oily sheen of its feathers. My knees buckle, but the neck remains looped, just as he left it, with the head perched in a perpetual tilt. How can the bird remain so still?

  The gagargi plucks a down feather from the sleeve of his black robes. He raises it to the eye level of the bird, th
en lets go of it. The feather drifts down, finding the currents of the laboratory’s persistent draft. “Done with great skill, by taking the strands of the soul that affect autonomy, the subject becomes unresisting and obedient.”

  As if suspended by an invisible string, the feather floats just above the floor. Then it touches the cold stone tiles and settles there. The swan remains unmoving in my trembling arms. The gagargi meets my gaze. His eyes bear the strangest sort of fondness, but his mouth is drawn into a . . . smirk?

  I can’t bear the weight of the swan any longer. I lower it onto the stool, more unceremoniously than it deserves. The bird retains its unnatural position. Will it be frozen in this posture for the rest of its life? If so, I can’t imagine a crueler torture. That can’t be the purpose of this demonstration. Souls shouldn’t be played with. Not even animal ones.

  “Can you . . .” The thought is almost too horrifying for me to voice. But we need the Great Thinking Machine to calculate the optimal decisions for us, and the Great Thinking Machine needs a constant supply of its terrible fuel. That is the weak point of our plan, something the gagargi has been working relentlessly to overcome. Is this his solution?

  The gagargi grunts, or perhaps chuckles, I am not sure, and I am not sure why it occurs to me to think he might be amused. He lowers his hand on the swan’s head once more. His lips move, and he twirls his fingers. A few heartbeats later, a thicker wisp coils through the bird’s left eye. He snaps his fingers, and the bird falls limp. The neck can no longer support the weight of the delicate head. The head plunges down and ends up with the parted beak mere inches from the ground. Oblivious to this, the gagargi curls his fingers into a fist around the last wisp. He picks up from his desk an empty—I think—glass sphere no bigger than a child’s fist. He hums a short incantation, and as he opens his hand, the wisps are gone, inside the soul bead. But something must have gone wrong. A swan bead should glow white. Instead, this one bears a pale yellow hue.

  I in turn study the dead bird and the gagargi. For some reason it feels as if I have had this very same conversation with him before. That I have forgotten it more than once. I feel distanced from myself, almost . . . almost as if I were watching myself from afar. But still I have to ask, “Can you do this to a person?”

  The gagargi inspects the soul bead, nodding to himself as if pleased with his handiwork. The white swirls bear a definite yellow hue. I am sure of it. But the question to which I am waiting for an answer is too important for me to get sidetracked by trivialities.

  “I can.”

  The relief is such that I must seek support from the desk. There is no free surface, and pieces of metal and glass press sharp against my palms. I don’t care. This breakthrough must be recent. It fills in the last missing piece in our plan. I am grateful, so very grateful, but also drowsy. But tonight is an important night for my empire. I can’t allow myself the luxury of feeling tired.

  “Yours will be a different empire.” The gagargi places the swan bead on the desk, amongst the cogs and wheels and pliers, empty glass spheres and golden springs and pieces of silver cable. The light of the newly created bead meets green and blue. “The time has come to put an end to mindless waste. No more children starving to death. No more soldiers sent to certain death.”

  His voice is like the sweetest nectar. He places his long fingers on my right shoulder. His gaze is luminous, lit with promises of the better world. But my attention is drawn to the green and blue that emanates from . . . Alina’s name day gift.

  “The Great Thinking Machine,” I whisper. My youngest sister was almost as afraid of the mechanical peacock as she was of the Great Thinking Machine. I remember promising to take the peacock away, but not bringing it here. How curious that is. How curious of me to think of it now that it is certain that the coup can’t fail.

  “People will accept our guidance. They are ready for the machine.” The gagargi leans toward me in that way of his that I at first found intimidating, then later on irresistible. For he is fully focused on me, and only me. “Adult souls, though tarnished by name and past deeds, will suffice at first. There will be volunteers and those volunteered. Convicted prisoners. War criminals. Engineer Alanov has made extensive calculations and projections. Even if we cannot extract the whole soul at first, partial extraction will suffice for the first year.”

  His words wash over me, so comforting. I tried my best to comfort Alina. But, haunted as she was by her visions, her grim imagination, there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. But perhaps time will heal her. And what was that last thing the gagargi said to me?

  “What happens after the first year?”

  He cups my cheeks, lips a mere paper’s width apart from me. He is more intoxicating than any wine I have ever tasted. “There will be more volunteers. Once the Great Thinking Machine brings the people equality, or at least the promise of equality, they will not want to go back.”

  I don’t want to go back either, and there is no return anyway to the idealistic, simple childhood of mine where things were ever golden and unchanged. The old world, that of traditions, that of my foremothers, will come to an end soon. The new world, that of machines that can count and equality for all, is upon us.

  “Imagine an average family in the countryside, dwelling in one of those villages that are not even marked on the maps. The father works in a dwindling coal mine. The mother takes care of the pitiful cottage. They have six children. The four boys are conscripted to war. Years later, one or none comes back. The father dies of a lung disease. The mother and daughters fall to poverty and starve. It is likely they won’t survive the next winter.”

  This is the reality, what has become of the mighty Crescent Empire. Mother has been so keen on expanding the borders that she has forgotten the price. And though I have tried to make her see that, she has chosen to remain blind. I wonder what would have happened to the empire if it weren’t for the gagargi and me, my seed, and the people ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause that is most just.

  “These people are never heard of, never seen.” The gagargi’s mouth is so close to mine that we might as well be kissing. As he exhales, I inhale. I drink the wisdom he shares so willingly. “Imagine they were offered an option. What if there were a tax that applied to everyone, regardless of their birth and origin?”

  This is my cue. I have asked this before. I have heard the answer before. But I can’t stop myself, not when nothing separates us anymore. “What would we tax?”

  The gagargi kisses me. His mouth is hot against mine as he pries my teeth apart with his persistent tongue. Soon, it throbs inside me, though I didn’t invite him in. Yet I can’t tell him to go away, because I need him. Because I want him.

  I think.

  He breaks the kiss too soon, and I want to beg him to continue. But before I can do so, he simply says, “Every other child.”

  I blink, abashed that I got distracted by a kiss, of all things, when we were discussing matters of state. Tax every other child? But of course, he has told me this before. He has kissed me before. I followed him into his bed, under his sheets.

  “My studies have confirmed that children’s souls are the purest form of energy. Their souls are easily extracted whole. Nothing goes to waste.”

  It is because I have my gaze averted from his, my head bent down, that I catch a glimpse of the mechanical peacock again. No matter how I always tell Alina that her fears are irrational, she is certain the gagargi means to feed her to the Great Thinking Machine. I think the bird reminded her of that, just as it now reminds me of my sister’s disquietude.

  But in the light of the gagargi’s words, perhaps she is right. No. Nonsense. Why would I think such? Even if some people were willing to gift their soul or their children’s souls for the better of the empire, for the Great Thinking Machine, my little sister has nothing to fear. Of that I am almost sure.

  “Celestia, tell me, what are you thinking?”

  I keep my chin stubbornly pressed down. It
is almost a crime itself to doubt him who has placed himself at such great risk on my behalf. After all, if anyone were to find out that we are plotting a coup, if we were to fail tonight, it would be exile for me, execution for him.

  “You are filled with such good intentions,” I reply, for how could I refuse him? Yet at the same time I ask myself, how does the gagargi know all this that he is sharing with me? Has he been experimenting with people more extensively without keeping me informed? It wouldn’t be difficult for him to get a child from an orphanage or a workhouse. It would be easy for his apprentices to dispose of a body.

  “Of course I am.” He prods my chin up, to meet his eyes. I blink rapidly, a futile attempt to keep my thoughts straight. “Ours will be a merciful empire. But it will only come to be if you play your assigned part.”

  His gaze locks on to me, and his words bind me. What am I doing resisting him, discarding the sweet bliss of his guidance? I can’t afford second thoughts now. I must—

  Someone knocks at the door.

  * * *

  “Ah, it’s time,” Gagargi Prataslav says, and pulls his hand away from my chin. His gaze, however, remains locked with mine. He doesn’t seem fully satisfied with me. “Do enter.”

  Captain Janlav steps in. He bears proudly the midnight blue uniform with silver epaulets and crescent buttons, but he wears red gloves. He has a rifle strapped across his back and a curving, ceremonial sword at his hip. He clicks his heels together in a salute and says, “Gagargi Prataslav, everything is ready.”

  Captain Janlav notices me only then. He offers me a crisp bow and, as he straightens his back, a knowing smile, as if we shared something more than the same side in the coup to come. What could that possibly be?