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 elsewhere 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…”