As we tramp snow from our sabots and boots and brush it off the blankets, I hear a snippet of conversation coming from a room next to the hall, from what might be a library. The door is ajar.
“Once your men have unpacked the sleds, we will not be requiring further assistance,” Captain Janlav says. “Though do make sure nothing disappears in their pockets, will you?”
Captain Ansalov chuckles, and how I hate that sound! “We will try our very best.”
Captain Janlav grunts something under his breath. He may or may not have mentioned the gagargi’s name. Hrr! Thinking of him makes me shiver worse than the winter.
The two captains emerge from the room.
“Follow me,” Captain Janlav says. He takes us through the hall, past what indeed is a library, toward a wide, wooden stairway. I catch a glimpse of narrower stairs leading down, to the cellar. The simple, dark door gives me chills. Rafa and Mufu must have sensed the same, for they yap, but only once.
“Sillies,” Merile laughs, but the laugh is forced. “Up. Up we go!”
Though the stairs creak like a forest of hollow trees, I remind myself that I shouldn’t be afraid. Beard checked the house. Captain Janlav is tasked to protect us. He wouldn’t have brought us here, led us upstairs, if he weren’t sure.
And yet, with each step, I’m more terrified.
We don’t stop at the second floor, not in the big room that might be a dining room. We hurry along the long hallway. We continue onward to the third floor, there to at last enter a drawing room.
No curtains cover the tall, arching windows, and the night floods in unhindered. On the far side of the room, three doors hide what might be bedrooms. A grandfather clock strikes time, with a fireplace facing it from the opposite side. There’s no embers there, no flames, but the two chandeliers gleam silvery. I blink, and then I see more. In the light of the stars and the chandeliers, two elderly, pale ladies sit behind the oval table, facing the door, their faces sharp, eyes hungry.
“Olesia, you were right,” the older one says. “We have visitors, imagine that!”
I gasp and stumble back, straight into Elise’s arms. She looks around in alarm, and though she seems to be taking in everything in the room, her gaze slides right past the women. “What is it, Alina?”
I can’t reply to her. For it’s then that I realize, the light goes through the women. This house is haunted.
Chapter 2: Merile
Lambs. The gray blanket smells of wet lambs as Elise pokes it with the long, sturdy needle. She hums a light tune that fails to fill the drawing room with cheer. She can’t fool me this easily. The coat will be ugly.
“Peasants,” I mutter. We’ve stayed at this house for a full week already, but the winter here will no doubt persist for months still. Enough time for Elise to finish sewing coats for all of us. “We’ll look like peasants.”
Elise pauses both humming and sewing. She glances past me at Celestia, who stares out of the tall, arching window, into the walled garden beyond. She’s only half visible from behind the no-longer-so-white curtains we brought with us from the train. Her face is pale in the light of the day that still doesn’t last long enough to be of any use. The crown of her hair is paler, almost the color of swan feathers. She’s present, but away. No doubt she’s looking into the world beyond this one.
“And would that be such a bad thing?” Elise asks me, tapping the point of the needle with her finger. Once. Twice.
How can she even ask? Does she not realize how wrong that would be? We’re only ever supposed to wear white!
“Yes. Yes it would,” I reply, glad that Alina is taking her afternoon nap in our room with my dear companions and that for once I don’t have to shy away from an argument. We’re here to stay, though my older sisters won’t admit it aloud. But even if apart from the guards and the mute old servant, Millie, there’s no one around for miles, that’s no reason to forget who we are. “We’re the Daughters of the Moon.”
Sibilia has paused reading on the divan before the fireplace. Her shoulders are hunched from the hours spent over the book of scriptures. She’s intently listening to my conversation with Elise. Is this again one of those times they try and gauge if I paid any attention during Nurse Nookes’s monotonous lectures back at the Summer City, ready to tease me if I reveal that I didn’t?
Well, I did pay attention! I’ll set them right!
“Our power comes from the Moon himself. When the oldest of us marries him, she becomes the Crescent Empress. Papa will then send the men he’s blessed to her, and those men will become the seeds of her daughters, and then they’ll be appointed as generals and court officials and to other high positions.” There. Oh, wait, that wasn’t everything. “And then she’ll also tell the lords and ladies what to do. And then they’ll tell their landowners and mine owners and factory foremen what they need to produce and how much and when.”
Elise sighs as she kneels before me to check the front piece. Knowing my sister, there was nothing accidental about the sigh. But looking at the front piece, she’s holding it higher against my chest than the one she already finished attaching. As my sister reaches out for the mint green tin box perched on the edge of the oval table, I realize she’s somehow still unsatisfied with my answer.
“Simple. It’s really all quite simple,” I add, because really, it is, and I don’t want the coat to be any uglier than it has to be. Once it’s ready, I bet Elise will force me to wear it every single time I go out to play with my sillies, and I’ll have no choice but to obey her. I don’t know who lived in this house before us, but the only clothes they left behind are tattered summer dresses, ridiculously wide-brimmed hats with thinning plumes, and worn ankle shoes too big for anyone other than Celestia. No muffs or furs or anything else useful.
Elise attaches the front piece in place with two stitches. She eyes it critically. “Things are rarely simple in life.”
I, if anyone, know that. Our lives haven’t been particularly easy lately, not with the gagargi turning against Mama, not with Celestia’s previous escape plan failing, not with us ending up here in the middle of nowhere in a house so sparsely furnished that our bedrooms don’t even have carpets. It’s very difficult to be a Daughter of the Moon when you have to consider not only yourself but also how things happening to your family affect everyone else! “Peasant. When you’re a peasant, your lord makes sure there’s food on your table and clothes on your back and you really don’t need to think about anything at all. Being a peasant is really quite an easy life.”
The front piece slips from Elise’s fingers as she flinches away from me. It tangles against my belly, held back by the loosening stitches. I’ve never seen her gray eyes this wide.
“What?” I ask even as Sibilia lowers the book of scriptures on the divan and strolls to us. This is no longer about her waiting and wanting to tease me about something, I’m sure of that. And yet Celestia remains by the window, staring out. No, she’s not only staring out, but ever so slowly brushing her fingers over every inch of the sill. What is she doing?
“Don’t ever say that sort of thing aloud when the guards can hear you!” Elise’s chastisement gives me other, more urgent things to think about.
Because she’s being very unfair! I only told her what I know and what I’ve been taught. But something in her tone makes me control mine. “Why?”
Sibilia holds out for Elise the mint green box that once must have contained hard sugar candies, but much to her disappointment proved to hide only sewing supplies. We don’t talk with the guards in any case, not even with Captain Janlav, unless we absolutely must. But Elise does so out of her own will, and she might have learned something useful.