The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

by Leena Likitalo

  “Sure I will,” I replied. But first, I took you, Scribs, to the room I share with Celestia, there to hide you under my pillow. Only then I went to get Alina and Merile.

  I don’t know exactly why I did so, but for some reason I decided to press my ear against the door rather than knock. And true enough, I heard a curious exchange.

  “So, this was your house?” Alina asked in a chiming child-voice that before this day I hadn’t heard in months.

  Merile sounded more skeptical than a twelve-year-old has any right to sound. “How did you come to live here?”

  From this exchange, I concluded that my little sisters’ imagination had taken over any sense either of them have left in their tiny heads. They can’t fathom why these sorts of houses exist, scattered in the four corners of the empire. Scribs, I have a theory of my own about this house’s former occupants, but it’s something I want to talk about with Celestia in private. And even then, I suspect she mightn’t answer entirely truthfully. Some subjects are too delicate even after decades.

  “You can tell us,” Alina prompted. “Really, you can.”

  “Secrets. I won’t believe a thing you say if you keep secrets from us.”

  I knocked on the door then and proceeded to push it open without waiting for an answer, because being an older sister comes with certain privileges that I love.

  Alina and Merile turned to look at me as one, gray and brown eyes wide, thin-lipped and wide mouths gaping. They sat on the bed with Merile’s rats curled on their laps. They obviously wondered if I’d heard them talking. I pretended that I hadn’t.

  As expected, there was no one else in the room.

  No, Scribs, I didn’t get down on all fours to check if someone was hiding under the bed and neither did I pull open the wardrobe’s doors. If someone had been in the room, they wouldn’t have had time to hide. I’m sure of it.

  I’m just a tad ashamed to admit that at times I’m happy that the train guards with their rifles share the house with us. This is an old, creaking, croaking house riddled with drafts that put out fires and lamps that turn off on their own. Sometimes I glimpse white shapes in the mirrors, though that’s no doubt just dust catching rays of lights in odd angles. Even so, I don’t know how Elise has the courage to sleep the nights alone. I would never agree to that!

  “Alina, Merile . . .” I wiped my palms on my dress and clapped twice. It didn’t sound or seem as refined as when Celestia did so, even to me. “It’s time for the dance practice.”

  Alina and Merile glanced at each other. Alina studied me, as if to double-check if I’d seen something. She nodded to Merile, satisfied I hadn’t (because there was NOTHING to see).

  “Urgh.” Merile stuck her tongue out at me, insufferably smug. I think it would serve her right if the magpie that frequents the walled garden were to try and snatch it on one fine afternoon. “Do we really have to?”

  I waved toward the open door, at Celestia and Elise, who had by then almost finished hauling the furniture against the room’s sides. Even here we must adhere to the routine. And when the dance practices are concerned, I’m happy to enforce Celestia’s decrees. “Yes.”

  Merile sniffed, but Alina stared right before her, as if someone were sitting on the bed there. Then she blinked and snatched the silver hand mirror up. She pressed it against her chest as if to guard the reflection. “It’s all right, Merile. They’ll come with us.”

  I glared down my nose at the rats. Of course they’d come with us, to nip at our hems and bite at our ankles, and ruin our practice. Not that that has happened that many times to date, but I don’t want to trip over a rat and sprain my ankle. Limping becomes absolutely no one. “I’d rather they stay behind.”

  “Hurts.” Merile sniffed again as she ran her hand down the black rat’s back. I felt just a tiny bit ashamed. After everything we’ve been through together, asking Merile to be apart from her beloved, adored rats verged toward being cruel. “My leg hurts.”

  But even if I was partially at fault, I couldn’t exactly admit that or I’d lose my authority as a big sister. Besides, she injured her ankle months ago, enough time for it to heal three times already. I realized she was just trying to mess with me!

  “No, it doesn’t.” I pressed my fists on my hips and shot her my best scolding look. “But soon it will, unless you get up right at this instant.”

  Alina and Merile glanced at each other. Then they jumped down onto the floor and dashed past me, into the drawing room with the rats at their heels. Celestia always says that violence isn’t the answer, but threatening with it certainly gets things done.

  We arrived just in time. Celestia and Elise were moving the last sofa chair against the wall. I checked my posture in the tall mirror that hangs on the door side of the room. Ugh, Scribs, whenever my concentration sways, I end up looking like a hunchback. And these long, too-loose sleeves, I want to rip them off. There’s nothing I can do about the sleeves as such, because it’s too cold in the house to consider altering them, but if I remember to roll my shoulders back and push my chest out every once in a while, I think that I do look rather good.

  Celestia waited for us to form pairs. I always dance with Elise and Merile with Alina. We started the practice with a waltz—my favorite, as you know. I counted the one-two-threes in my head and let Elise lead me across the floor. My sister understands that I really need the practice and always lets me dance as a girl.

  Though the dance practices are the best part of the day, they also fill me with melancholy. Scribs, I miss music. I wish we could have taken the gramophone with us from Angefort garrison, but I bet that even if we had asked (and a Daughter of the Moon is never supposed to ask for anything), that awful Captain Ansalov wouldn’t have let us have it. The best we have here is Celestia tapping the rhythm against the paneling as she strolls the length of the drawing room, from the door of Elise’s room, past the mirror, to the light blue door leading into the narrow hallway and stairs. When we first started the practices, Merile’s rats trailed after Celestia, thinking she was hiding treats! The stupid rats still keep on trotting to her every now and then.

  Today, Celestia did look very thoughtful as she tapped the rhythm, and I bet her mind wasn’t busy with instructions on how to improve my pose or steps. Let alone those of Alina and Merile. Can you imagine this, Scribs, my little sisters danced both as girls! A waltz doesn’t really work that way!

  “Alina, Merile,” I hissed at them from under my breath when the steps took us to the furniture clustered by the fireplace, as far away from Celestia as the room would allow. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep track of the one-two-threes. Them messing around certainly didn’t help. “Could you at least try and concentrate?”

  I might as well have spoken to one of the rats. Merile sniffed, the tip of her wide nose pointed up. Alina lifted her hem high, revealing her knobby knees, and spun wild. They’re hopeless, both of them! When they swirled toward Celestia, the rats in tow, they left so much space between Elise and me that another couple could have easily fit in there. And despite all the fooling around, they managed to maintain that space, even when I intentionally pushed Elise toward them.

  “Sibs.” Elise drew me closer as if she were indeed a cavalier of the opposite gender. Her hand pressed lightly against my lower back. She tightened her hold around my right hand. “On the dance floor, all that matters is you and your partner. Nothing else can really touch you.”

  My sister picked up a tune of a waltz and softly hummed it under her breath. I don’t mind that she sometimes does so. It’s very nice of her to help me. I don’t want to make a fool of myself if WHEN I debut. Because we will return in time to the Summer City, and the palace will be there waiting for us in just the same glorious shape as we left it, and K will be there, and the lords and ladies will be there, and there will be servants with trays full of macarons and . . .

  No, enough of that. For the time being, I won’t fill another page with wistful thinking. I have, af
ter all, only a limited supply of pages left. But let this be said, one day I will own the dance floors of the Summer Palace, just as my sister once did.

  “Better.” Elise guided me into a swirl, and I simply couldn’t resist the temptation. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, though I could feel my coiffure unraveling. I laughed, and at that moment I felt . . . free!

  When I returned to Elise’s arms, I opened my eyes and caught my breath. Only to accidentally lock my gaze with that of Captain Janlav and lose it again. He watched us from the door leading to the hallway, those gorgeous brown eyes of his gleaming with interest, lips drawn into a faint smile. He looked positively dashing compared to the scrawny Boy next to him. That poor creature is all limbs and pimples and wet, straw-colored hair, but then again, according to Elise, he does have a bit of a tragic past.

  “Stop ogling him,” Elise chided me, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice. Of course there would be. She’s had her chance to sneak out and kiss with boys while I’m still waiting for mine!

  I stepped on her toes. On purpose, I admit that, Scribs. I wasn’t ogling Captain Janlav. I was admiring him. Bearded now, with his brown hair braided, he cuts a fine figure of a man. He’s definitely not a boy. Now, given the completely hypothetical and unlikely scenario that we mightn’t get out of this house in time for my debut, or in the worst case before we turn into old hags, if I had to ask someone to kiss me—because I do want to be kissed at some point of my life—at that moment, I did wonder what it would be like to kiss him. Would his beard scratch? Would he taste of smoke and cigarettes? Elise would know . . .

  Elise sucked in her breath. “Do watch out for my toes, Sibs!”

  The good thing about me blushing easily is that my sister thought me embarrassed of stepping on her toes, not because of . . . Scribs, guard my secrets well. No one must learn that I’ve fallen this low in my desperation. Because my first kiss is going to be with K, not with some turncoat guard, no matter how manly and handsome he may appear in my eyes after months of candy and eye-candy deprivation.

  I gathered myself quite well, I think. My sisters and I danced for some time more and, as I checked myself from the tall mirror, I didn’t look that terrible, not at all like a hunchback. Toward the end of the practice, Captain Janlav and Boy grew bored, though. They closed the door behind them, but didn’t lock it. They’re not concerned about us trying to flee. The nights are too cold and with the wolves hunting in the woods, we’re not stupid enough to try! And then there’s the garrison and Captain Ansalov and his hounds to think about, too. I’m sure Celestia has taken all this into consideration already. She’ll share her plan with us any day now.

  The grandfather clock’s swan chimed twelve silvery notes.

  “My dear sisters.” Celestia knocked the paneled wall with her knuckles, and then she knocked again, just to get our full attention. “This suffices for today.”

  Elise and I paused, flush-faced, leaning on each other for breath—but we weren’t so badly winded as we were when we first started these practices. My sister grinned at me, and somehow even that expression was dashing. “That was fun!”

  I nodded, pushing the pins holding my hair up deeper to salvage what I could. But it occurred to me that Celestia mightn’t be organizing these practices just for fun. She must have some ulterior motive of her own. I don’t know what it is, but the sessions leave us sweaty and sometimes even exhausted. Which feels good! The Moon knows we do enough sitting around, sipping tea, and strolling in the freezing garden.

  “I think we should let in some fresh air.” Celestia glided past the oval table and the sofa, to the arching, tall window. I knew to expect this, but not her next words. “Why, hello there, bird black and white.”

  And true enough, there on the windowsill, on the other side of the glass, sat a magpie with a shining white belly and glistening black coat. Had it, too, been watching our practice? Hopefully so, as I really need to get accustomed to performing before an audience, and it’s about time I don’t mix up my steps just because someone is looking at me.

  “A magpie!” Alina dashed past the furniture to the window. She placed her right palm against the pane. I really expected the magpie to take to the air, but instead it rapped the glass with its mighty beak as if greeting her. “Nurse Nookes once told me a story about magpies . . .”

  “Now did she?” Celestia wrapped an arm around our sister’s narrow shoulders.

  “Yes, she did!” Alina leaned against our eldest sister. “But I can’t remember it anymore. Do you know it? Will you tell me a story?”

  Though this house has a library, it now serves as living quarters for the guards. Also, I’ve been told, the books are all gone, no doubt burned for heat or the pages used in other disrespectful ways. Sometimes my sisters and I reminiscence about the past, but we never tell stories as such. It really hadn’t occurred to me earlier that back at the Summer Palace, Nurse Nookes still told Alina bedtime stories.

  “A story about a magpie?” Celestia mused. “I do recall one.”

  “Will you tell it?” Alina chimed. Merile and her rats drifted toward the window, too. I remained in the middle of the dance floor with Elise, though at that moment, I yearned for nothing as much as to hear a story, the sort where all ends well. “Pretty please!”

  Celestia unwrapped her arm from around Alina and kneeled before her. She placed her palms on her shoulders. “I will.”

  And then she spoke in a melodious voice that filled every nook and corner of the drawing room, and somehow, even the hollows where longing had etched in my heart.

  There once was a hungry magpie that the Moon took pity on.

  He bent his light into a ray and willed it to break into seeds.

  And when the magpie ate the seeds, its belly turned white as snow.

  Ever since that day, grateful, it has sung praises to the Moon.

  With the final word fading, the magpie took off. Celestia pressed a kiss on Alina’s forehead and then rose up. She opened the window, sighed deep, and stared after the bird. I wonder, did she at that moment dream of flying away? Sometimes, she speaks in her sleep about white wings and fallen feathers as if she thought herself a swan.

  “Can we go now?” Merile’s question broke the wonderful, solemn moment. Scribs, my sister really has no clue on what’s appropriate and when. “Alina, are you coming?”

  Celestia tousled Alina’s gray-brown hair. Though our little sister seems more cheerful these days, she hasn’t grown an inch since we boarded the train. I wonder if there exists a potion for that somewhere.

  “Go ahead, my dear,” Celestia replied.

  Thus liberated, Alina and Merile and her wretched rats disappeared back to their room, no doubt to continue talking with their imaginary friends, the Moon bless them.

  I would have really wanted to cool by the window for a while, but Elise twined her long fingers around my forearm and guided me to the exact opposite direction. “Oh, Sibs, your hair is in quite a state!”

  A part of me had realized that already. Often when I dance, my locks unravel regardless if they’re braided around my head or secured with all the pins available in this house. I don’t usually care that much about my hair (because once we’re back in the hem of civilization, I’ll have access to all the pins and combs I could ever possibly need). But then it dawned on me that my hair might have been in this state already when Captain Janlav watched us from the doorway. “Oh no . . .”

  As Elise led me to one of the sofa chairs by the fireplace, I thought not only about that, but also about the things I might have been lately speaking about while asleep. That’s the very reason I haven’t dared to ask Celestia about her dreams. I might want to broach the topic that gives me tingles with Elise at some point in the near future, but I don’t really want to talk about boys with Celestia. Though back at the Summer Palace Elise did suspect Celestia of having a lover, our oldest sister never made the official announcement. Elise, on the other hand, was romantically involved wit
h Captain Janlav, even if neither of them seems to be particularly certain about how that affair eventually ended.

  Elise patted my shoulder, and I think I caught a glimpse of melancholy in her gray eyes. I sat down, pretending I hadn’t noticed a thing, for I know how much it pains to be apart from your heart’s chosen one. While I can imagine my happy reunion with K and some alternatives to that as well, Elise should know that Captain Janlav is forever out of her reach.

  “Now then, shall we have a look at what we can still salvage?” Elise circled behind the chair and started unplucking the remaining pins. I nudged off my shoes (that is, the pair of heels Millie found for me), and pushed away sad thoughts. For my feet, they hurt, especially my toes! But it’s the good sort of pain, the kind we pay to look pretty.

  Soon Elise had her fingers around my locks, and thus when she asked the question, I was completely under her mercy. “Now tell me, dear Sibs, who’s the lucky chap who has stolen your heart?”

  And my heart stopped beating at that very moment, or that’s how it felt. I fanned my face, to banish my blush. That had been the giveaway. It had to have been, unless she can read my thoughts. And if I’d earlier worried about Captain Janlav seeing me dancing with my hair in disarray, now I had to wonder, had I been radiating scarlet ever since I locked gazes with him?

  “Do tell.” Elise playfully straightened one of my locks till it was as taut as a ropewalker’s wire. “It must be Boy. Please tell me it’s not Tabard.”

  At that moment, I was overjoyed that she couldn’t see my expression and that Celestia was busy with returning the furniture to its right places. Scribs, I really need to start practicing my expressions before a mirror. But how to do that in secret when I share my room with Celestia? Perhaps I can snatch back that silver hand mirror I brought with me, the one Merile has stolen from me for her own obscure purposes, whatever those might be.