I don’t know what to say, and so I stroll to the closest chair. I pick up the simple dress folded there. Thin black and blue stripes with a wild floral pattern run down the front of the dress. The frayed hem has worn smooth. The smell of root cellar fills my nostrils. I was nervous the first time I abandoned white in favor of the colors of my people. I’m more nervous now. “I…”
Lily pads to stand behind me, so close that I feel her breath against my shoulder blades. She hums an encouraging little tune. She means well, but…
“Please stop.” I clutch the dress against my chest. Every lie I tell to Sibs adds more weight on my shoulders. She suspects already that I’m up to something more than a simple romance, and it’s just a matter of time until I plunge through the shards into a coldness that will never leave my bones. “I can’t do it.”
Lily clicks her tongue, in sympathy I hope, for she has never disapproved of me. Not even when I led a life of leisure, wasting what could have been cherished. The veins on her sinewy arms seem more pronounced as she places the necklace on the table. She straightens it out of old habit.
As I step into the simple dress, I shiver, but not from cold. A Daughter of the Moon should only ever wear white. That’s her right. That’s her duty. If my celestial father could see me now, he might curse me or merely laugh at me. But he can’t, and he won’t. I can’t go to where I need to go as a Daughter of the Moon.
“Do you know where he’ll take me tonight?” I ask Lily. I never know the destination my love has in mind beforehand, but I suspect Lily knows the details. Every time he shows me more. I feel akin to a novice in a cloister who is tested to see if she’s really devoted enough to take the vows. Perhaps my love and Lily still doubt my commitment to the cause or fear my tongue might slip. I can only continue to strive to show my worth to them.
“All in good time,” Lily replies.
Though I have practiced, I’m still slow at dressing on my own. Who could believe two full-length sleeves and a few buttons can pose such a challenge to me? It embarrasses me how useless I was. Still am. The captain of my heart, he knows this, and yet he loves me.
“How do I look?” I ask as I finally finish fumbling with the dress.
“Hmh…” Lily eyes me from head to toe. She pulls my sleeves straight and nods at the buttons I had forgotten to do. I’m not used to long sleeves. “The cause has come to rely on your contribution.”
I lick my lips and taste tallow. I think of those who would be glad of these candles, who must live in darkness through the cruel winter months because they need their meager coins for rye bread and salted herring. The necklace, lounging lazily on the table, dares to glitter.
How many mouths could one feed with its cost? Many. So many, and I wouldn’t even miss it. There would be a new one to replace it before too long. Some nobleman would send one as a token of love that would never be. Or worse, a poor town might spend what they can’t afford to send me a gift to gain my favor. All the same, both useless acts doomed to fail. I don’t want an aristocratic lover. Political favors are not for me to grant.
“There won’t be more if I get caught,” I reply at last. This isn’t about the superstition that I should look after the beads gifted to me. No, not about that. If Celestia or my mother or anyone else were to ever learn that I conspire to change the empire, I would… I have often thought of it. I would be sentenced to death or exile. And yet, I have never felt more alive than I do now.
“Sell the dress”—I nudge my fine slippers off my feet and step into the borrowed sabots—“Sell the shoes. Sell the shawl and gloves. But we must find some other way to milk money from the empire than selling my jewelry.”
Lily nods, the veins on her neck tight and taut. I think that sometimes she fears I’m not fully dedicated. That this is just a phase for me.
But it’s not. I—my kind—can’t exist with the cause. But I can’t exist without it anymore. It has brought an end to my ennui. It fuels me and gives my existence a purpose.
I button my sleeves around my wrists. It’s time to become what I was meant to be.
A knock on the door—short and short, long and short—means that my love is here at last. I give my woolen scarf one last tug. Tied tight under my chin, the poppy petals shift, but the scarf itself won’t budge. Good. For if my true identity were revealed, if I were caught unprotected outside the palace grounds… How curious it is that I’m risking so much, and both sides would wish ill for me if they knew.
Lily strides to slide off the bolt. Her low heels clack against the floorboards. The bolt squeals. These sounds, no matter how normal, itch my nerves. Yet at the same time my heart pangs with indecipherable joy. Even a moment apart from my love feels too much for me to bear. A day is pure torture.
The door opens, and I see my love at last.
Captain Janlav is handsome, though he’s no longer dressed in his midnight blue uniform with silver epaulets and gleaming crescent buttons. A black newsboy hat, with flaps tied under his strong chin, hides his loosened topknot and the shaved sides of his head. He has pulled up the collar of his factory-woven coat. It has a stained, murky brown hem, and it stinks of wet lambs. A knitted red scarf bulges out from the front. He wears workman’s leather gloves, likewise red. He doesn’t look at all like an imperial soldier, which is good. A disguise is almost as important to him as it is to me.
My love meets my gaze from across the room, and a ripple of tingles runs through my body. His brown eyes—the shade of young pines—are bright and full of love. As he smiles at me, his glorious brown moustache rises with the curve of his lips. His is uniquely the boyish mischief mixed with a grown man’s seriousness.
“Are you ready?” he asks with a lopsided grin, as if he were truly a railway man courting a factory girl.
I cant my head in a somewhat coquettish fashion before I can stop myself. He shouldn’t have needed to even ask. I will follow him wherever he leads me. For ever since our gazes met at Alina’s name day ball three months ago, I knew, I simply knew he was the one. My destiny.
“I am,” I reply, even as I dash to him. I fling my arms around his neck and rise on my toes. Our lips touch, and we breathe the same air. But only shortly, for romantics come later. First we shall make the world a better place.
As we leave the room, he doesn’t say where he’s taking me, and I don’t ask. I simply follow behind him, never glancing back. It drizzles in the tunnels, and I can’t keep track of the turns. We are somewhere under the palace garden, in the tunnels between the canals. That is all I know.
Though this isn’t my first time in the tunnels, I would get lost without my love, for we always take a different route, always go to a different destination. It’s warmer here than outside, and yet my toes go numb in the slightly-too-small sabots. Algae and mold cling to the rough walls. My eyes water and nose dribbles. My sisters and I, we have always known of the existence of these tunnels, but not about their true extent. I suspect my sisters don’t know the truth about many things, my younger sisters even less.
I fell in love with my captain upon first laying eyes on him. In the beginning, when our romance was merely budding, we slipped out of concerts and balls, into balconies and courtyards, just to talk and gaze at the stars. Gradually we grew bolder. We sneaked into the forgotten parts of the garden and sought shelter from abandoned pavilions. He could see straight into my lonely heart, how I longed to be more than beautiful, how I yearned to do more than just exist, to see what lay behind the palace grounds. He listened to me, and then after a month or so, on one starlit night, he promised to show me the world as it truly was. And though he warned me that there would be no turning back, I didn’t hesitate.