Getting sidetracked. I swear, Scribs, this isn’t intentional on my part.
As mentioned, I was once more reading through the scriptures (and yes, it’s a bit challenging now, because I’ve written sideways over half of your pages already). I don’t know if it was because of me lacking anything else to do or because it was blessedly silent in the house for once, but I got really immersed in the passages, and before I knew it, the letters floated off the pages, and just hung there, over the paper. And as I stared at them, they morphed into glyphs I’d never seen before. The hairs on the back of my neck jumped up, and I got goose bumps all over!
These glyphs were of a foreign language, and if I were to have tried to pronounce them, I think the sounds would have been guttural, something between a croak of a bird whose beak has been glued shut and a howl of a wolf that has lost its voice. Yet I knew what each meant instantly. They formed incantations, summoning our heavenly father’s attention.
I barely dared to breathe, let alone move. I sat there, with the book open on my lap, with the slanting morning light wrapping around each glyph. I think the only movement was that of my mouth a-gaping.
Really, who am I to blame Alina and Merile for making up imaginary friends when I’m seeing things myself? Except that I’m not. The glyphs are real. They make sense to me.
“Sibs, are you dreaming of chocolate once more?” Elise’s question made me blink, and the glyphs fled back onto the pages, there to completely fade away. My sister studied me from across the table, her embroidery on her lap, smiling mischievously.
“I…” I stammered, staring at what now was completely ordinary text. I fanned the page, hoping to somehow coax the glyphs forth again. But they wouldn’t reappear. And what was it that Elise had asked? Scribs, you know it, there’s one magic word that every older sister is always happy to hear when they’re waiting for an answer. “Yes.”
I’m pretty sure she mentioned chocolate, though. We haven’t come across any since we left the Summer Palace. Though Millie seems to like us (at least much more so than the ever-changing servants that attended us during the train journey), the meals we eat are simple and there’s rarely any desserts. And if there’s dessert, it’s lingonberry kissel or at rare occasions butter rolls with NO sugar sprinkled on top.
Luckily, the grandfather clock decided to strike eleven then. With the paddling swan that heralds every new hour with a different song, I find it very beautiful. Celestia says it’s purely mechanical, which makes it even more marvelous to me. Speaking of Celestia, she swiftly rose up from her sofa chair, set the coat down on the table, and clapped her hands twice. “It is time.”
And you know what eleven o’clock means in this house, Scribs! But today, I was so puzzled by the glyphs that I forgot all about the best part of the day, the dance practice! Can you imagine that?
I know I’ve said many things about Celestia in the past and not all of them have been exactly flattering. Back in our old lives, she was distant and cold toward us younger sisters. But now that I think on it, perhaps it wasn’t entirely her fault—I suspect that back at the Summer City she may have been under Gagargi Prataslav’s spell! In any case, now I’ve got my sister back, and she’s a very good sister. We share the same room, and though we don’t exactly talk the nights through, she’s always there, ready to listen to my worries and comfort me, even if she doesn’t exactly confide in me. Also, the dance practices were her idea.
“Gather around!” Celestia clapped her hands again, the movement smooth and graceful, even though I’m absolutely certain that, unlike Elise, she’s never ever practiced anything before her mirrors, and I know for sure she hasn’t done so since we arrived here. Yes, Scribs, perhaps I once swore that I would start practicing myself, but I haven’t. Not even when I seem to have all the time under the Moon. “Elise, please help me move the furniture. Sibilia, would you be so kind as to fetch Merile and Alina?”
Herding in our little sisters is always better than hauling the furniture around (I’m pretty sure I would get bruised from even thinking of pushing a chair aside or moving the table against the wall). Yet, Elise never complains about the tasking. I wonder what’s got into her. She claims she enjoys sewing, and she even partakes in setting up the table for the simple dinners we eat every night with the guards in the sparsely furnished second-floor hall. That, if anything, is peculiar.
“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).