“Make me pretty.”
I stood in the center of Rachel’s shop as the night’s blue light spilled across the old carpet. It was quiet there. All the customers and the other shop workers had long since gone home. But Rachel, of course, was working late.
She’d let me in with only a small frown at my unexpected visit. It had been ages since we’d seen each other. But she was the same old Rachel.
“Pretty?” Her sweet voice was soft. “I’ve told you before. You are pretty.”
“No,” I said. “I might be passable. But I’m not like you. We both know that.” Something behind her eyes flickered. She agreed with me, even if she didn’t want to say it.
“Is this about Koen?” she asked, a gentle smile lifting her lips. But I scowled at her, and her smile fell.
“No. Didn’t you hear? I told Koen I don’t want to marry him. It’s not about Koen.”
Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. It was an unfamiliar expression; Rachel was usually so sure. Her uncertainty made her look odd. Older. “Someone else, then?”
“Yes, someone else.” Even I could hear the rough edge to my voice. I forced my lips to soften. I tucked my hair behind my ear and let out a small, unhappy laugh.
“I need to find someone else. Someone who will really care for me. I don’t think that will happen unless I start, you know, dressing nice and stuff. But I’m terrible at that. You know I am. I have gelt, if it’s that. I can pay you. Please?”
“Oh, no.” Rachel reached out and took my wind-cold hands in hers. Her pinkie fished for mine. I hadn’t expected the small, familiar gesture. It had been so long. Guilt peaked within me. “I can’t take your money. Of course I’ll help you. We’re friends. I’m glad you came to me. Only . . .”
She hesitated, looking at me sidelong. I couldn’t help but frown as she examined me. “What?”
She reached out with both hands, pulling a handful of my long, sallow hair from either side of my shoulders. The frizzy waves nearly reached my waist. She played with them, tugging the soft locks straight. Her expression was thoughtful. “I think we should start with a haircut. When’s the last time you cut your hair, anyway?”
I tightened my lips as I thought back to it. I’d been almost twelve. Momma had trimmed my then shoulder-length locks in our galley, as she always had. The split ends of my hair now were the same strands that her hands had touched.
“I dunno,” I said, shrugging. For some reason that made Rachel giggle.
“You wouldn’t,” she said. At last she dropped my hair. Then she went to the register and fetched a pair of scissors. They were the kind you cut cloth with, all metal and gleaming sharp. I wondered if it would ruin the edge to use them.
“Are you okay with this?” she asked, reaching out to smooth down the rumpled locks of hair once more.
“Yes,” I lied. “I’m great.”
Rachel grinned. She tangled her fingers in my fingers and led me toward the rear of the store. “Good,” she said, and then added, in a whisper: “I’ve wanted to do this for ages.”
Without the heavy weight of my hair, the whole world felt different. Though my stomach had turned somersaults as Rachel had made those first tentative cuts, I had to admit that this was an improvement. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I could see how I’d transformed into someone new—a grown-up. And now, walking through the commerce district, watching as men turned their heads toward me to follow my progress, I had to admit that it had been a worthwhile sacrifice.
But it wasn’t just the haircut. The makeup and clothes that Rachel had chosen for me changed things too. She’d given me the best stock in her store: a pair of dark purple stockings, a pleated skirt, a pale yellow sweater that was too big on me. It kept spilling down, exposing the blue veins over my shoulders. I’d tugged the sleeves up, but then Rachel had flicked me on the ear.
“Stop it,” she’d said. “It’s supposed to look like that.”
She’d lent me her coat, the olive-green one with the brass buttons. And a cream-colored scarf so soft that it felt like it was spun from the down of a baby bird. The only thing I owned that she’d deemed acceptable were my boots—the ones she’d helped my father buy. Still, even though I wore her clothes, I didn’t quite look like Rachel as I gazed at myself in the mirror. I looked like me, but a new me, a different me. A Terra I’d never met before.
“Are you sure you don’t want money for this?” I asked as I stood in the doorway of the shop. Rachel just shook her head.
“No, just . . . just come visit me more, okay?”
I gripped her and hugged her then, squeezing her tight.
“Thank you,” I said fiercely.
My steps were light down the pavement. It was bitter cold outside, and my naked ears burned against the wind, but I didn’t care. I just smiled and said hello to the boys who nodded at me as I passed. The weight of their attention was so new, so strange. I almost felt optimistic, but I didn’t allow myself the luxury of that emotion. What I was about to do was terrible. I had no reason to be happy.
I headed to the aft district, where the Council quarters all stood in an orderly row. It was just about suppertime now. People would be sitting down to eat potatoes and cabbage and handfuls of pills to keep them awake until the ship’s lights dimmed overhead. The thought of the pills put a bitter taste in my mouth. Of course, I’d still have to take them every day for the rest of my life if my body was to obey Zehava’s long days and even longer nights.
But I’d never trust them again.
I reached Silvan Rafferty’s front door. They had a buzzer—all the high-ranking families did. It felt odd to jab my index finger into it instead of knocking.
But sure enough, soon the door cracked open to reveal Silvan’s dark-eyed mother.
She didn’t smile. Her red-painted lips were pursed. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Silvan,” I said. His mother tilted her head, dark curls tumbling over her shoulder. Her son took after her—beautiful but spoiled. I drew in a breath. “I’m here to ask for his hand.”
24
I’d never seen the inside of a Council member’s home before. Though the gray-faced town houses looked the same from the outside as every other house, from within I could see how the rooms stretched back twice as deep. Past the entry hall and the galley—whose wood-block counters were newer and less deeply marred by generations of dull knives—there was another room. I could see the polished surface of a fine dining table there and, beyond, a long sofa made out of animal leather. It was a sitting area, a new notion for me. Gatherings on the Asherah took place in bedrooms or workplaces or, at best, over meals. And yet Mazdin Rafferty and his wife had a whole separate area of their home for sitting.
It was suppertime, but you could hardly tell. Their galley was clean, dim, and empty. I stood by the door with my hands in my pockets and watched as Silvan’s mother went to the stairwell. As she called for her son, I became intensely aware of my tongue. It felt much too big for my mouth. I wondered if this was how Koen had felt the day he’d come to declare his intentions to me.
“Silvan?” his mother called. She looked at me sidelong, arching her plucked eyebrows at me. “Sil? There’s a girl here to see you! That Fineberg girl!”
She waited, her head inclined. I waited too, for the pound of adolescent feet against the stairs. But no footsteps came. She let out a small sigh, lifting her hand from the banister.
“Go on up,” she said. I hesitated, peering up the stairs. Part of me couldn’t quite believe that I was going to do this—was going to ask a boy for his hand. And Silvan, no less. I glanced at his mother, but she’d already walked away, leaving me alone there gripping the rail. So I made my way up the narrow steps.