“If it’s submerged like a shipwreck, I consider it destroyed,” said Keiko. “How much use or pleasure can there be in moldering rowboats and barnacled trees?”
The others murmured agreement but I shook my head. “It is protected by enchantment. We must swim to it but, once there, we can breathe freely.”
Fatima’s eyes were wide. “You’re saying it’s still there, in perfect condition? The lake, the trees, the castle, the princes?”
“Oh, the princes,” murmured Isolde. A chorus of tender sighs filled the room.
“It’s not exactly as it was.” It had taken me years to understand why. “Twelve years ago, when we danced there every night, our dreamworld was constructed by Anya’s imagination. She invented the silver, gold and diamond groves. The lake with the rowboats. And the princes who danced all night. It was her dreamworld, and she made it real.”
“Why Anya?” demanded Bunmi, with a second-born’s full measure of indignation. Ejò rippled against her neck.
“Primogeniture,” I said, with a grin. “If we had kept going after Anya was married, it would have been your turn, Bunmi. And then Chanda’s, and Damla’s, and so on and so forth.”
Genevieve shuddered. “Heaven preserve me from Bunmi’s snake-filled fantasy life.” She yelped as Bunmi pinched her.
“So as the last unmarried princess, it is now your dreamworld, correct?” asked Hasnaa.
“Ye-es.” But it was much more than a frivolous fantasy to me. While my sisters exchanged girlish dreams for political sway and families of their own, I remained powerless and alone. In the void of my adult life, the dreamworld became my inheritance: a legacy for the youngest, the unmarried. The left-behind.
“What is it like?” asked Esther.
When we were young, my sisters never inquired after my opinions or my dreams. There had always been so many of us, so much noise, so much busy-ness. Now, I felt terribly exposed. How could I explain that my dreamworld was more than mere consolation or diversion? It was a necessary outlet for the exercise of my mind, my will, my desires. “I kept the silver trees,” I said, slowly. “I always preferred them to the gold and diamond ones.”
“So much for good financial sense,” sniffed Johanna.
“Shut up,” muttered Keiko. “It’s her dreamworld.”
“I kept the lake, too, but instead of…” I shook my head and stood. “Sisters, if you want to know what it’s like, come see it.”
There was a long moment of hesitation. My sisters were no longer carefree princesses who spent their nights dancing holes in their slippers. They were monarchs and peacemakers, wives and mothers. They were women who negotiated with ambassadors and commanded lord chamberlains. They nursed children through fevers and knew how many haunches of venison would suffice one hundred guests. They were women who, granted one night of perfect freedom, would choose to spend it in dreamless sleep. But we were all here now. Our girlhood bedroom was just upstairs, its magic intact. I held my body perfectly still. I looked. I listened. When I heard the faintest of inhalations over my left shoulder, I bit back a smile.
I felt the room complete.
Keiko jumped to her feet. “Lead on, sister.” And suddenly they were all rising, striding towards the stairs.
“Wait!” I called. “This evening, we proceed in reverse birth order. Keiko, you follow me. Then Johanna, Isolde, Hasnaa, Genevieve, Fatima, Esther, Damla, and Bunmi. Anya, you will come last.” Her gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance and I felt a queasy rush of anxiety. “Anya? Are you feeling unwell?”
Her face was set like a mask but she settled her shoulders and said, “Entirely ready, dear sister.”
We entered our former bedroom in silence. Anya paused in the antechamber, her gaze on the straw paillaisse: the bed where our would-be betrayers had slept. The bed where the soldier had feigned sleep. She looked up at the rest of us, watching her, and tried a little smile. “It was here that I first thought, At least I won’t have to marry him.” After a moment’s pause, she closed the door firmly behind us.
In the chamber proper, our twelve narrow beds were still in position: six against one wall, six against the other, spaced with mathematical precision. They were draped in dust, not silk, but nevertheless they looked ready to receive us. Was that a momentary weight on the hem of my gown? I waited for the goose-pimples to subside. “Are we ready?”
My sisters nodded as one.
I set down my lamp on a chest of drawers, where it cast weird shadows on the walls. At the foot of my former bed, I clapped my hands thrice. The wooden frame sank down into the floor, revealing a trap-door that creaked open. Inky water lapped at its edges.
“Remember,” I said, “We begin by swimming.”
“How far?” asked Chanda.
“One breath will be enough.”
Damla frowned. “How can we see the way?”
“Once you are submerged, there will be light.” My sisters looked at each other. They were thinking of their children, their kingdoms, perhaps of their spouses. “I will go first,” I said, and without removing my slippers, I sat at the edge of the trapdoor and dangled my legs into chilly black waters.
I looked up, around the room, and felt twelve pairs of eyes on me. Heard twelve others sharing the stale air. “Will you follow me?”
My sisters’ eyes slid to Anya and the delicate lace wound about her throat. I saw their resolve swell twelvefold.
Keiko smiled at Bunmi. “It’s a good thing snakes can swim.”
I slipped through the portal. Beneath the surface, I watched my sisters drop one by one into radiant blue-green light, their looks of suspicion and determination melting into delight. I grinned at Keiko, at Johanna, at Isolde, at Hasnaa, at Genevieve, at Fatima, at Esther, at Damla, at Chanda, and at Bunmi—even at Ejò, undulating gently in the current. Then came a pause, and we all turned to look up at the dark square of the trap-door.
We waited.
The pressure of this enchanted water was no ordinary thing, trying to squeeze the air from our bodies. I was not anxious for my underwater sisters. Still, it seemed a very long time before we saw a pair of green silk slippers plunge towards us. Anya’s face was a montage of resolve, fear, surprise, and glee. We all laughed to see it, bubbles rising from lips and noses. Even Anya could not help but join in, even as she glanced over her shoulder.
When the bubbles diminished, I held out my arm and pointed. Below us glowed a bright orb of light: our dreamworld, furnished now by my imagination. I turned and swam down towards it and knew in my heart that my sisters followed.
Its threshold was a skin of light and air that pulsed slightly when I touched it. I peeled it back and held it open to give my sisters entrance, watching with amusement as Keiko stumbled in, amazed to find herself both dry, and on dry land. The others followed and, after Anya gave me the swiftest of nods, I stepped in myself and re-sealed the covering.
I turned and was startled to find myself bundled into a fierce, many-armed embrace. “Ling!” they whispered, “Oh, Ling! It has been so long!” For a long time, we hugged and laughed and wept and reminisced and wondered. And then, holding hands, we turned to explore this world of my creation.
The silver grove was much as it had always been and Anya, in particular, stroked the trees with an approving gleam in her eye. “Lovely, sister.” The lake was still on its far side. When we arrived on its shore, my sisters looked about expectantly.