“Alina!”
I draw my hands away from the discs and spin around. Though I wasn’t really doing anything forbidden. And I was careful!
“Away.” Merile storms to me, Rafa and Mufu trotting next to her. Irina remains behind, a raised hand covering her mouth as if she, too, were upset with me. “Step away from the gramophone.”
“Cot-cot-cot.” I press my fists against my chest and wag my elbows, though Merile is taller than me. And older. She will always be older than me. But she can’t really be telling me no all the time! “Please, just one dance…”
“No.” Merile curls her fingers around my arm and pulls me away from the gramophone, past the table laden with so many treats that I can’t even count that far, to the curtained-shut window closest to our rooms. The ghosts follow us, but they don’t even try and make her stop. The guards barely glance at us. They’re used to Merile’s tantrums. “No. No and no.”
“You’re hurting me,” I squeal, though really she’s not. But she could if she wanted to.
“Too bad. Too bad for you.” Merile squats down to whisper harshly in my ear. “The point. The whole point of a debut is that you need to be sixteen or older to participate. And today Sibilia turns sixteen, and Papa be my witness, I forbid you to ruin the only ball she might ever get to participate in.”
I blink back tears, though I don’t know why I’m crying. I did want to dance. But I also want… Sibilia has always been nice to me. She plays with us in the garden. She reads the scriptures every evening. She smiles and laughs, though the gagargi said that she doesn’t matter to anyone, not even to Celestia. But then again, he said many horrid things.
He hinted that he’d feed me to his machine, as I’d known he’d do all along. He claimed that Elise had in some way I don’t really understand sided with him and plotted against Mama. During those agonizingly long minutes that we waited for Celestia to return, Sibilia said that the gagargi is full of lies. That must have really been it, at least as far as Elise is concerned, because neither Celestia nor Elise ever brought the topic up afterwards.
“You can let go,” I say in a tiny voice, placing my hand atop of Merile’s. My sister stares at me suspiciously, black brows drawn together. I bet the gagargi was just trying to turn us against each other. Or maybe not. Irina and Olesia have warned Merile and me about the inherent deceitfulness of older sisters many, many times, whatever that really means.
“Eye.” Merile taps her cheek with a forefinger. “I will keep an eye out for you.”
I remain completely still by the curtains as Merile strides back to the table with Irina, to count the glasses or something else Elise told her to do. Though I have my one task, I’d like to help more. But asking Merile now would only end in her raising her voice to me again, and I don’t want that. I don’t like people being angry at me.
“That leaf might fall.” Irina points at one of the maple leaves that the guards slipped through the thread holding the curtains together. The leaf does look lopsided, even before she prods it with her finger.
“I’ll fix it.” This is Sibilia’s debut, and I don’t like the way her shadow has acted lately. Maybe Merile is right. Maybe this will be Sibilia’s only ball.
But as I shuffle closer to the curtains, something crunches under my right sabot. I squat down to pick it up. This something is black and sharp. No, not really only black, but kind of see-through. “What is this?”
Olesia cranes down at the black grain. Then she glances at the door leading to Celestia’s and Sibilia’s room. “You should ask your older sisters.”
I close my fingers around the black grain so tight it bites my skin. I really don’t like the way the ghosts speak of my older sisters. “Maybe I will.”
But right at that moment, the door leading to Celestia’s and Sibilia’s room opens.
“Is everything ready?”
It’s Elise, and yet as she lingeringly pulls the door closed behind her, she’s not my sister. Or that is, she’s more so than she’s been on any day during this summer. With her gray eyes sparkling with mischief, the gleaming red-gold hair curled atop her head, and dressed in a thin white gown, she’s the very Elise, the silly, wonderful Elise with whom everyone wanted to dance back at the Summer Palace.
“I think we are.” Captain Janlav snaps his fingers once, and I wish his uniform were still decorated with silver ornaments, not with red ones. Beard and Tabard and Belly and Boots and Boy settle into a line next to him, at the edge of the carpet. There’s some tugging of shirts and lifting of belts and slipping of flasks into the back pockets. “Right, lads?”
“Yes, we are!” The guards’ reply is booming, cheerful—false, too—as if they really weren’t guards, but… Elise beholds them with a warm curiosity, as if they were our guests. Are they? She calls them her friends, but I’m not sure they’ll ever be mine.
“Merile?” Elise turns to our sister, still beaming at the guards. But her laughter doesn’t chime like it used to. It’s weary and worn, like the dress she wears, the one from which she and Celestia removed the sequins during the train journey. “How about you?”
“Ready.” Merile hides the hand mirror behind her back, and though Rafa and Mufu rub against her shins, she doesn’t bend down to pet them, which isn’t right either. No one is as they should be. “I’m ready. Alina?”
My sisters and the guards all look at me, and I shuffle a step back, bump into the curtains and the window behind. It’s as if we were playing a new game, but no one told me the rules. But though the guards play cards with us, they never play with us in the garden.
“Alina…” Elise tilts her head toward the sofa. I squeak as I notice the dance cards there. Maybe they did tell me the rules after all, but I just forgot them.
“Yes!” I dash to the sofa. The moment of the very important task assigned to me has come. “Yes! I’ve got them.”
“Perfect.” Elise claps her hands twice. Merile glowers at me from the gramophone, but Rafa and Mufu lay down on her hem, preventing her from moving. Irina wafts to her sister, who stayed by the curtains. The guards perch on the carpet’s edge. “I shall bring her in then.”
Elise disappears back into the room, only to appear a moment later with…
I clutch the dance cards with both hands as Elise and Celestia guide the blindfolded woman into the drawing room. She’s Sibilia, though she doesn’t look like her! A crown of maple leaves sits on her golden curls. The white dress that’s whiter than anything we’ve worn in months makes her seem tall and slender and round all at the same time. I recognize the crescent-embroidered hem, the high neckline. It’s the dress that Celestia wore the night we boarded the train!
“May I present you Sibilia, a Daughter of the Moon, of General Kravakiv’s seed?” Elise asks Celestia as they halt before us. My oldest sister looks more like herself than Elise and Sibilia, though the dress she wears is funny. It has puffy lace sleeves that have been split at the bottom so that her arms are both covered and bare, even though she wears gloves. The hem is lacy too, but only because… she has cut it that way, maybe?
“You may,” Celestia replies, the line that should have belonged to Mama. Her voice doesn’t waver, though mine would have. My throat tightens on its own. I miss Mama so much! May Papa look after her soul in the sky!
Having received Celestia’s permission, Elise glides behind Sibilia. Our sister stands very, very still while she unties the white blindfold. As Elise lets the blindfold drop on the floor, Celestia says, “Sibilia, meet the court.”
But Sibilia keeps her eyes squeezed shut, as if she were dreaming and didn’t want to wake up. My heart goes out to her. I know how it feels to see things, both the sort you never want to see again and those you don’t want to let go of!