Leena Likitalo: The Five Daughters of the Moon

I must have drawn the short straw when Mama decided to assign Nurse Nookes to look after me. Elise’s governess, Lily, tells her the latest court gossip. But Nurse Nookes—her cruelty knows no limit! She makes me read the scriptures every single day. Soon I’ll know them by heart whether I want to or not.

A ghastly thought. Perhaps that’s been her intention all along!

Tonight I had enough. I lied to that wrinkled witch that my stomach hurts (it does, since it’s that time of the month. I can’t believe I ever looked forward to getting my wretched days). She ordered me to bed. I pleaded her to fetch me a cup of hot chocolate. She frowned at me, and for a moment I feared my ruse had been revealed. Then she left. As soon as the heavy thudding of her waddle faded, I fled.

The one good thing about the Summer Palace is that here I only need to walk down one drafty corridor to reach any of my sisters. My heart pounded wild (not as wild as it did when I danced in secret with K at Alina’s name day celebrations) as I tiptoed to Elise’s door. I was sure Nurse Nookes would return at any moment. Luckily, she didn’t, and I managed to sneak into Elise’s room uncaught.

“Just in time! But do close the door before my precious heat escapes,” Elise called at me from before her vast vanity table. Her red-gold hair, gathered in a chignon atop her head, glowed like a halo. She was dressed in a beautiful, silver-encrusted ball gown, but she hadn’t donned her gloves. She didn’t need them yet—the tile stove in the corner glowed with pleasant heat. “Could you fetch my dove pearls? The ones with the tangling diamond crescents?”

I pushed the door closed, but tilted my head in a way that stated I’m no servant, as my sister should know. There was a silver tray with an arrangement of different chocolates on the side table to my right. Though there were no beautiful bitter dark ones, I popped one in my mouth anyway. My luck had it that it had that awful berry paste inside it. Why, oh why are the cooks so stingy with chocolate these days?

“Pretty please?” Elise gazed at me, begging like Merile’s rats might. Her dress did look terribly stiff with the heavy embroidery. She probably couldn’t get up on her own.

I swallowed the rest of the chocolate and sighed. “I will, but just this once.”

“Perfect!” Elise clapped her hands together and cast me her best smile, the one she’s used to charm every single count and lord and captain she’s ever met. Dear Notes, though she and I are of the same seed, I fear I will never manage to look as elegant as Elise. “I knew I could count on you! Believe it or not, I have a concert to attend, and I’m nowhere near ready to be admired by half the empire.”

“Ah, the concert…” I had completely forgotten that Elise was going to an event tonight. Well yes, Notes, that’s actually a lie. I knew very well that she and Celestia had accepted the invitation from Marques Frususka and were due to leave in an hour or so. K had been invited too—Lily had told this to Elise upon some prompting from me. “A friend of mine will be there, too.”

“Great!” Elise clapped her hands again, but this time she studied herself in the mirror as she did so. She shook her head minutely. Then clapped again. She met my questioning gaze through the mirror. “What? Practice makes perfect. You should try it, too.”

I could hardly contain my annoyance and envy as I brooded across Elise’s room. Every single piece of her furniture—the bed at the alcove, the lush sofa with a round table before it, the massive wardrobe (though she naturally has a separate clothes room)—is made of mahogany. The carpets are white, as are the velvet bedcovers and the silver-embroidered sofas. Hers is a grown-up room. Mine still has a dollhouse in the corner, and though I’ve told the servants to take it away on multiple occasions, it always returns. Just as we don’t really exist before our sixth name day, we’re but children till we debut at our sixteenth.

“Sibs, what is it?”

Of course she was spying on me through her mirror. We, the Daughters of the Moon, are nothing if not cunning.

“Nothing.” I yanked open the wardrobe’s doors.

Countless dresses hung crammed in there, silk pressing against satin and chiffon. Each had carefully worked sequin, pearl, or soul-bead details. Every single one of them had a high waistline and short sleeves, some feather trimmings around the low necklines. One had a vine of hummingbird beads twining around the bodice. I would kill to get to wear that one in public. Swear to Papa I would.

Despite the wretchedly gorgeous dresses, Elise’s jewelry box was impossible to miss—it’s the size of my dollhouse, a lacquered construction with two dozen drawers, each etched and enameled with variations of crescent patterns. In his midnight blue uniform and ostrich-feather bicorner hat, K is impossible to miss, too. With that black hair of his tied in a bun and the grin-to-die-for on his tanned face, all the young ladies present in the concert will be swooning after him. Right at this very moment, I fear.

“You’re a poor liar,” Elise chided me, but still wouldn’t get up from the stool. If I were the one invited to the concert, I’d be bouncing all over the room. But I’ll have to wait till next summer, which is completely unfair. What if the recent restlessness spreads here, too? What if there will be no balls next year? What if K is simply no longer available then? What if someone else snatches him first?

“It’s about that friend of yours, isn’t it?”

Dear Notes, you know it too well, Elise always has to have everything. Nothing less suffices. At that moment, I was so truly worried about my sister stealing K that I pulled the drawers open like a burglar pressed for time. One after another.

“Oh, Sibs!” Elise called me as if I were indeed her servant. “In the bottom drawer.”

It was then that I noticed it, with half of the drawers open already. Each was empty, or close to empty. No pearls lay on the velvet beds, no earrings waited to be donned, no bracelets to be slipped around slender wrists. My sisters and I, we have so many dresses that we often wear them only once before handing them over to our friends or servants. That’s necessary, too, since they know the latest rumors and expect repayment in one form or another. But jewelry we never give away, especially soul beads, for the person such a piece is bestowed upon holds the responsibility for the souls and the power they contain.

I rattled the drawers as if I could thus by some miracle make the missing pieces reappear. I couldn’t. There was but one possible explanation—someone had stolen my sister’s jewelry!

“Where are all your jewels! We must call the guards at once,” I blurted. And my heart jolted with excitement. A theft in the very palace. In my sister’s chambers. Perhaps there could be some action in my chambers, too!

“What?” Elise froze, right hand poised to apply rouge on her freckled cheeks. She blinked slowly, working through what to say next. I know my sister well, but an emotion I couldn’t quite name slipped through her composure. Worry or anxiety, perhaps? “No, we won’t.”

I glanced at the barren drawers, my slippered feet tapping the question I didn’t dare to ask. Who was she protecting? Or was there something else at large?

“I sent them to be cleaned, silly Sibs.” Elise met my gaze through the reflection, brows drawn sharper and raised as if that was obvious to begin with. “You’ll find the dove pearls in the bottom drawer.”

I curled my fingers around the silver knob, the metal cool against my skin. Something didn’t quite add up. But to call a theft, that would cause trouble for everyone, and I like all of our servants.