The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

by Leena Likitalo

  The grand maples and lindens of the garden hum, scattering drops that land on my shoulders. My younger sisters, including Sibilia, are barefooted, their hems knotted up just below their knees. With white roses bundled on their arms, with smiles and giggles exchanged, they look carefree and free. But I can’t bear the thought of joining them, for that we are not and shall never again be.

  I head toward the path that follows the shadow of the wall. Celestia notices my intention. She speaks softly with Sibilia, whose whole posture changes, gaze sharpens. Celestia must have tasked her with looking after our younger sisters. It’s a curious development, to see them again on speaking terms. For Sibilia swore to me on multiple occasions that she’d never forgive Celestia for intending to abandon her.

  It was this revelation that propelled me toward the crucial realization. As we drift down the same paths day after day, we might as well be ghosts already. There’s nothing we can do anymore to change our fates. But we may be able to affect that of the very empire.

  As Celestia and I slowly stroll past the thickets of fireweeds and thistles, I indiscreetly study my sister, her straight posture and steady steps. But before I can make up my mind about whether she has reached the same grim conclusion or not, a breeze of the colder sort carries with it a hint of smoke, revealing Tabard and Beard trailing after us. Celestia shakes her head.

  “What?” I ask. Did she somehow sense what I was thinking earlier? Is she the braver one of us, the one to bring up the topic?

  “Must you really?” Celestia glances pointedly at Sibilia, Merile, and Alina, barely visible through the leaves and branches of the blooming rosebushes. But I can hear their giggling still, the playful growls of Merile’s dogs. What bliss ignorance is! “That is such a vile habit.”

  My sister is worried about me sharing a cigarette with the guards, of me negatively influencing our younger sisters! I laugh despite myself and to despise myself. It doesn’t matter what I do and with whom anymore, if I socialize with those we were taught to ignore if we needed nothing from them. “Yes. I do think I absolutely must.”

  Celestia sighs, but doesn’t say a word. She knows that none of us apart from her will have time to regret any possible ill choices.

  On the even ground, plants reach out toward us from both sides of the path, but it’s not because they wish us to honor them with our touch. The rigid stalks of widow’s lace stick out in steep angles. The hundreds of violet fireweed flowers gape open like maws to display their thin, white tongues. Stems of lupines, blue flowers sodden with rain, arch down as if they can’t take, can’t bear their glory for much longer. I pause to tilt water out of one of the stems. There’s so much water. It’s almost as if the whole world were drowning.

  “Then I shall respect your choice,” Celestia says after too long of a time has passed for her reply to be genuine. She approves of the guards listening to Sibilia reading, for she thinks it’s our father’s voice that draws them toward us, nothing more. But me smoking with them . . . it is too much for her, even though the scriptures clearly state that before our father rose to the skies, he intended everyone to be equal under his light.

  At nights when I can’t sleep, I often wonder what my sister would be like as a ruler. She says she would be fair and just, but how could she be that when she hasn’t really comprehended the scriptures, our father’s sacred will? She says she would put an end to all wars and launch social reforms to ensure that her subjects would no longer starve and die of disease and exposure. But she hasn’t mentioned how she plans to accomplish this. I don’t think she has given much thought to what she would do after reclaiming her throne. Yet she vehemently opposes the equal redistribution of resources, the one solution that might just bring a better life to everyone!

  A thunder of shots fired. A chorus of shattering glass. Vicious jeers. Then, a moment later, the bitter tang of gunpowder.

  My sister’s steps remain equally spaced and graceful, though mine falter. A quick glance over my shoulder confirms I should have nothing to fear, for both Beard and Tabard are at ease. It’s just Captain Ansalov’s soldiers practicing shooting once more. Knowing that man, it isn’t a coincidence that they always do so during our daily outing. He’s preparing his men for the inevitable.

  It’s cold, suddenly colder in the wall’s shadow, but this is the way the path winds. Here plants must grow in the dark, here they never bloom as vivid, with as much ardor, as their kin that get to grow in the sun. But that is the way of the world. There will always, eventually, be darkness.

  I know for certain that one day soon Captain Ansalov will lead us down to the cellar. He will order everyone but Celestia to stand before the wall of granite. The soldiers will take aim. They will fold their fingers around the triggers, perhaps closing their eyes as they do so. How sounds must echo in the cellar when there’s no way out!

  “Elise?” Celestia reaches out toward me, to touch my shoulder.

  I evade her, brush a stem of thorny thistles aside, change my mind, and snap it off. It’s a law of nature that all beauty must eventually die. Our ruin is unavoidable. “Do you know when the gagargi will come for you?”

  Where gunshots couldn’t break through my sister’s composure, my question wounds her, just as I knew it would. My sister pulls her chin high, higher still until the tendons of her neck are taut. Her pale hair glistens in the afternoon sun, a reminder of the crown she still yearns to wear one day. Though she’s the empress-to-be, she lacks the courage to acknowledge the truth. “That I don’t know. But he will come for me as certainly as the sun rises each morning, as certainly as our father will travel the skies during the nights.”

  It’s almost a month since Merile’s folly, and with the summer solstice but five days away, anything might come to pass here without our father being able to help us, for he’s just a dim, white disc in the sky. That’s why this house was built here in the first place, to keep the Daughters of the Moon that have fallen from favor out of sight, out of mind. Guarded by the winters too fierce to defy. Isolated by the nightless summers.

  “Will you go with him?” For I can but speculate what happens to her and us if she does. But a more frightening thought is what may come to pass if she doesn’t.

  If she goes, my younger sisters and I will be shot, and of this I’m more than certain. The gagargi can’t risk keeping us around for fear we might one day plot to claim the throne.

  But if she doesn’t . . . Celestia seems to think herself almighty, though I haven’t seen any evidence that would suggest she possessed any power to alter our fates. Is she just perversely cantankerous? Or is she playing a game, one she thinks she might yet win? As much as I wish that she would emerge victorious, we must be realistic. If she doesn’t go voluntarily, the gagargi will claim her by force and us younger sisters will meet an end much crueler in the maws of his machine.

  Celestia and I are as far away from our younger sisters as the walls allow. I can glimpse but strands of Sibilia’s red hair from over the lush rosebushes, can’t see Merile and Alina. Yet the breeze carries over their muffled chatter. The gunshots didn’t frighten them. They have grown used to . . . to the confinement, the presence of the guards, and even the constant threat, it seems, though I find our strangling circumstances almost too much to stand.

  “I will not go with him, unless I can bring all of you with me,” Celestia says, and I do wonder what can possibly be fueling her confidence. Does she believe that our father will still somehow save us? Or does she have a new plan brewing in her mind, one she hasn’t mentioned to anyone? Has my sister not realized that the time for futile planning is over?

  Any escape attempt would be too risky, doomed to fail. Given even half a reason, Captain Ansalov’s soldiers will shoot us dead. If it weren’t for the Poet’s scarf, we would have lost Merile the night she thought the Moon was calling for her. Oh, my poor, silly sister!

  We have come to the stretch of the wall that blocks the view to the lake. Here, the gagargi is more present than els
ewhere in the garden. I suspect Captain Ansalov ordered the propaganda posters glued across the wall’s length to intimidate our younger sisters. And if this was his intention, he succeeded, for these days they prefer to play on the lawn. Even to me, it’s more terrifying to see the gagargi portrayed as kind and generous. For that he’s not, at least when my family is concerned.

  “I was thinking . . .” Kindness should weigh little when the lives of our people are at stake. My sisters and I have been isolated for months, isolated but safe, and the guilt I bear for this grows greater every day. It torments me during the nights. I haven’t slept an eyeful in ages. Back at the Summer City, before I knew that Gagargi Prataslav was the driving force behind the insurgence, I funded the cause most generously. Since then, I have done nothing toward those who suffer the most. Now, I have decided to stop wallowing in self-pity and take action.

  “Yes?” Celestia prompts me, and I do wonder: what would she do if she knew that I, too, plotted against our mother? There was a time when I considered telling her everything, during our first few days on the train when she was weak and vulnerable, when she confided in me in whispers and revealed what the gagargi had done to her. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her my secrets then, didn’t want to hurt the one who was in so much pain already. I can’t tell her now either, because then she would refuse to hear a word more from me, and mine are words that can no longer remain unsaid.

  “What if you were to go with him regardless?”

  Celestia halts, as if my words were iron chains snapped around her ankles. The rain has swelled the puddles before the wall vast. She teeters on the edge of the widest of them, glances at me from over her shoulder, and I have never seen such anger in her blue eyes, fear, too. “Do you not see, my dear sister, that that would gain us nothing?”

  “I didn’t suggest that lightly,” I say, and mean it. It’s a horrible thing for me to propose that she return to the gagargi, who would put her under his spell to make her his puppet ruler and impregnate her once more. Yet she would at least survive, live, whereas those of us left behind . . . None of that matters. It really doesn’t. “Since we left the Summer Palace, people have bled in our name and died in the hundreds, if not thousands. Our people are divided, and every day sees this gap torn wider. Brothers have drawn arms against their own brothers. Fathers have wielded their sword against their own sons.”

  Celestia listens to me, and oh, how she looks like a good ruler should, just like our mother always did when she had already made up her mind. But she looks different, too, attentive, contemplative, somehow stronger than I recall her being. Is it because of the way she holds her arms against her sides, like wings ready to lift her in the air, above us all? Or is it only the sounds of the swans nesting on the shores of the lake beyond that make me think this? Though, if our father could turn us into swans and let us fly away, he would have done so already.

  “My people are right to stay loyal to us,” Celestia replies only after she is sure that I have pleaded my full case. “Our right to rule comes from the Moon himself.”

  And with this said, she walks into the water, the puddle that could be an ocean for her, for that is how much space she wishes there were between us, I think.

  I approach her slowly, so very slowly, but I will myself not to stop. I wade deeper, the surface rippling in my wake. The water creeps up my hem. Puddles form inside my sabots. But neither discomfort me as much as the words I have no choice but to say. I owe them to our people. “And that is exactly what the gagargi tells them, too.”

  Nothing but silence, not the stunned sort, but of the more dangerous kind. My sister knows I’m right, but that’s not enough. She needs to understand, acknowledge, and act, not simply listen. With my drenched hem, I’m no longer a creature white, but gray as the clouds above, stained as the waters below. “Do you think our people even know what they are really risking their lives for? You see the posters before us. They have seen them, too. What does the return of the rightful ruler mean to them? They see the good old days of our mother as a time when children starved to death and soldiers were sent to meet their end at faraway continents for nothing more than profit.”

  “This has not escaped me.” Celestia steps away from me, toward the wall. She places a hand against the poster that portrays golden fields of wheat, chubby children at play. She brushes the stalks as if she could really feel them, but she doesn’t touch the children. She doesn’t see the brighter future that lies there right before our eyes. “Rest assured that my rule will be different.”

  “Will it?” I ask, so cold inside, so miserable, because I don’t believe a word she says. “Will it really?”

  “Yes. It will be much better than the other option.” Celestia glides to the next poster. In this one, a mother is handing her newborn baby over to a country gagargi. Happy children tug at their hems, smiling. Behind them, the Great Thinking Machine puffs soft, white clouds. “He feeds children to his machine.”

  Of course I know this. I have read the manifest and discussed its content with her many, many times. But sometimes a ruler must make difficult choices. During our mother’s reign, more than every other child died of disease and starvation. Is it not better for a mother to voluntarily give away her child before she forms a deeper bond with it? If our people are willing to pay the price, so should we be. “Sometimes the price of peace is high.”

  Celestia shakes her head, the movement delayed but unhesitant. “Do you think that I have not thought of that? Do you think that I allow myself to feel pity for myself, that I cry at nights because of what he has already done to me?”

  What could I possibly answer? Nothing. Nothing at all. My sister is placing our family’s safety above that of our people.

  “Do you think he would stop killing those who displease him if I were to stand by his side?” Celestia continues in a lecturing tone. She thinks me foolish, a girl throwing a tantrum in a puddle. But it is she who isn’t listening!

  For even a slight chance is better than none. “Once you marry the Moon . . .”

  “It will be too late.” Celestia strides to the next poster, the one after, and all the way to the gate that failed to lead Merile to freedom, and I have no choice but to follow her. “By the time he allows a gagargi to perform the ceremony, or perhaps he will choose to marry me to the Moon himself, there will be no one left to stop him. Even though our father may see all that comes to pass under his gaze, his capability to interfere is not as almighty as you might believe.”

  I halt a step behind her, my hem dripping dirty water. Where I didn’t expect this conversation to be easy, it annoys me she considers me ignorant. The Moon would have saved our mother if it had been possible. He would have sent someone to our rescue. He would have unlocked the gate for Merile. “You are only thinking of the worst possible outcome.”

  “Am I?” Celestia stares through the gate’s grille at the lake beyond. Swans paddle along the rocky shores, necks arched, wings pressed against their sides. Their cygnets are still gray, covered by down. When my sister speaks, she does so in harsh whispers. “My dear Elise, someone has to. Unlike you, I can’t afford the luxury of idealistic dreams. If I am to ever depose the gagargi, I can’t leave this house with him and leave you here alone.”

  This is the first time since we arrived at the house that I have seen her composure crack, glimpsed raw emotion, the human being beyond the hard shell she so dutifully maintains. I realize it then, the only way she will listen to my words is if I pry this crack wider, anger her, make her feel even more vulnerable.

  “My dearest Celestia,” I reply in a steady, merciless voice. “Could you stop thinking of us as children for even one moment? Some of us might have an opinion of our own in this matter. Have you ever considered asking any one of us if we would actually prefer you leaving with him?”

  Celestia’s fingers tighten into fists, she clenches her arms against her sides. She’s . . . disappointed in me. Good. Any emotion will do. “I didn’t say that becaus
e I think you a child. I said it because I want to keep you safe.”

  She’s acknowledging my opinion at last. She will hear, really hear, what I have to say. I must take advantage of that. “And what is more important to you, your sisters or your empire? There is nothing to be gained by resisting the gagargi. Just as much as he needs you by his side, you need him to put an end to the war you started together.”

  She spins around so fast that I don’t even see the slap coming. Her palm connects with my cheek with such force that I stagger back. My sabots slip on the mud.

  “Never speak of me needing anyone apart from the Moon on my side. Never even hint again that the harm he caused was somehow my fault. Never, ever dare to suggest that I forgive the man who killed our mother and tore my empire apart.”

  White dots pierce my field of vision, but I see her expression clear enough, her bared straight teeth, her flaring nostrils. I have accomplished everything that I desired. I will not take my words back.

  Celestia straightens to her full height, pulls her shoulders back. “I expected more of you, Elise. I expected you to be able to stand against his manipulation and propaganda. But you are even weaker than I was. You do not deserve to be called a Daughter of the Moon.”

  With that said, my sister turns around on her heels. She climbs up the gravel path, past Tabard and Beard, toward the house that may be the last place we ever call home. Her words, the pain she inflicted on me, cling to me.

  I am a Daughter of the Moon, just like her. And at the same time, nothing at all like her.

  * * *

  Celestia leans on the wall by the arching window, staring what would be out if the curtains weren’t sewn shut, the panes painted black and covered with planks. I let her fume there alone and take a seat on the sofa. Either she will come to her senses or then she won’t. There’s nothing more I can do. The pain on my cheek is an ample reminder of that.