And then there are no more songs. I don’t know how many there were. But when I look at Merile, I know there won’t be more. Every single one of the discs is gone, shattered into black dust and rubble that has piled on the gramophone, the oval table, and at her feet. Yet, she cranks the gramophone as if she’d noticed none of that.
The darkness withdraws between two eyeblinks, and light returns to the room. Maybe it was never dark. Maybe I just imagined it. Maybe if I tell myself so many, many times, it will be as if I’d never seen what I saw. I can but try.
On the dance floor, my sisters curtsy to their last partners, Celestia at Boots, Elise at Captain Janlav, and Sibilia at Boy. Celestia, Elise, and the guards stroll to the oval table, to catch their breaths and sip the punch and enjoy the sweet and salty treats. The ghosts trail after them, arms linked together. But Sibilia and Boy retreat to the other side of the room, to the sofa placed before the tall mirror.
I know I shouldn’t look at them, it’s not polite to spy, but I can’t stop myself, because this at least is real. Besides, as I’m too far away to hear them, it can’t really count.
Sibilia arranges her dress better over her knees. Boy tugs his trousers straight. He meets her gaze, asks her something. She giggles behind a raised palm. He places his hand on hers, and she nods. He leans toward her—I don’t really know why. She whispers something short and turns her head aside. His lips brush against her cheek, and then both of them pull back and resume sitting on the sofa, blushing redder than the maple leaves.
“Here you are!” Captain Janlav’s voice startles me. I jump a step aside. Did he catch me spying? That is, not really spying. “I was starting to wonder where you’d slipped off to.”
I turn my gaze aside from Sibilia and Boy. I don’t know what I saw, but now they’ve both already got up from the sofa. I’m not going to say a word about this to anyone, not even to the ghosts. But I must say something, and so I say, “I slipped nowhere. I was here all the time, watching you dancing.”
Captain Janlav kneels before me so that his brown eyes are level with mine. He’s always been nice to me. And tonight, he’s the only one apart from Olesia who’s come and talked with me. Merile shouting at me really doesn’t count.
I toy with my hem as I sway from side to side. Knowing Elise and Sibilia, they might come and steal Captain Janlav away any moment, and then I’d be alone again. “I would have wanted to dance, too, but Elise and Merile wouldn’t let me.”
“I know.” He pats my head, and his touch is solid and soothing. “You have to wait but a few more years.”
This evening things have been happening too fast, and they continue to do so. Words come to me, and I let them out. “I always have to wait. I’m always too young.”
“Oh, little Alina,” he chuckles, “there’s some good things about being young, too.”
I glare at him. He’s very wrong. There’s nothing good about being the youngest. “Like what?”
He glances at my sisters and the guards, then winks at me. “You get to ride piggyback.”
Ride piggyback! Elise and Sibilia always refuse to carry me piggyback. The last time I got to ride Captain Janlav was…
“Up you get.” He turns his back to me. Without a second thought, I climb up. He prances his arms as if they were feet, and his red epaulets swoosh. Tonight no one is as they should be, and now he’s a wild stallion. Like Bopol. “Ready?”
“Yes!”
Captain Janlav gallops around the room, though Celestia and Elise look at us, brows arched like angry gulls, Merile frowns in what I know is envy, and the guards laugh. I don’t care. I giggle and flick his braids as if they were reins. “Gallop. Gallop.”
He obeys me like a good steed should, but still he’s not a real horse. I try and forget that, but can’t. And too soon, he stops by the sofa and lowers me onto the floor. “How about that?”
I brush my hem down again, to hide my patched stockings. Piggybacking is fun, but so is… “I wish I could ride a real pony.”
“Well, I can’t help with that one,” he says, as I knew he would. All the horses in the stables belong to Captain Ansalov. But then he lowers his voice in a way people do when they’re about to tell a secret. “But soon you’ll get to ride in a train again.”
Elise really likes Captain Janlav, and I like him quite a lot. Maybe he really is my friend, too. I wink at him because that’s what you do when you remind someone of a shared secret. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?” His brows furrow, and he glances at Elise. Did my sister not tell him? Or did he simply forget the plan?
“Either we all go or no one goes, and I think it might be the latter.”
He jolts like a spooked horse might, away from me. As he stares at me, eyes wide, I realize I’ve said a thing that should have been kept a secret, though I don’t really know why.
Chapter 12: Merile
Sleep. I can’t sleep. My companions snore between Alina and me, keeled over on their backs, with their tiny paws propped up, their tongues lolling out of their parted mouths, their bellies bursting full. The air smells of musk and wet fur, but it’s not my stinky sillies that keep me awake. It’s Alina.
My little sister was so very upset after the Ball. She cried for what must have been two hours, but wouldn’t tell me why. She might have just been tired from all the excitement. Or she might have been afraid of the gagargi and the Great Thinking Machine, and who can really blame her when he as much as admitted to wanting to feed her soul to the machine! But I don’t think it was a case of either. I’ve seen her cry enough times to be able to figure out what ails her.
Creak. There’s a creak where before there was only silence, a long and sullen creak. It’s the drawing room’s door. Someone has pushed it open.
I stare over the blanket’s edge at the door Captain Janlav locked behind him. I grip it with both hands, knuckles white, unable to move. Are Captain Ansalov’s soldiers coming for us, in the middle of the night when Papa can’t see what comes to pass? Is this what Alina somehow sensed? She knows more than she tells us.
The door creaks again. Now, it’s being pushed closed. Ha! People don’t close doors behind them when they’re up to no good. I’m no longer at all afraid. Really, I’m not. I want to know who’s in the drawing room.
“Rafa, Mufu.” I keep my voice low because I don’t want to wake up Alina. My sillies continue snoring. And smelling.
Groan. The long floorboards groan under the steady, cautious steps that don’t belong to any of my sisters. Whoever walks in the drawing room doesn’t know the silent path. I shall call them “mystery visitor.”
“Mufu.” I curl up and poke at my pretty companion. She flinches awake, but remains lying on her back. Her belly is so full it might just split open. “Watch over Alina, will you?”
Mufu’s tongue disappears inside her mouth as she glances sideways at Alina. My sister is crying in her sleep. She hinted that she’d done something she shouldn’t have done, but I’ve no idea what she meant because she refused to tell me more. “Just watch over her.”
Mufu snuggles closer to Alina. It’s safe for me to get up and investigate. And this time around, I’ll be careful. I won’t leave the room, not that that’s an option, because Celestia has the key ring. Really, I won’t be placing my sisters at risk even in the slightest.
Tiptoe. I tiptoe to the door and press my ear against the panel. The creaks are closer now, as if the mystery visitor were hesitant to go through with their plan, whatever that might turn out to be. And what could it be? I have no idea.
The steps stop, not behind this door, but before… At first I’m not sure, and then I am, because we’ve been locked in this house for so long that I’ve learnt to recognize every screech and sigh of every room we’re allowed in. The mystery visitor stands before Elise’s door. How curious! Who would have anything to say to Elise in the middle of the night? She’s become friends with some of the guards, but surely whatever they have in mind can wait until morning!