Leena Likitalo - The Five Daughters of the Moon

A timid knock on the door saved me. Elise and I exchanged looks. Her right brow arched in question.

“It can’t be Nurse Nookes,” I whispered hoarsely, but yet I pondered if that old raisin really could sense when I was up to something.

Elise shook her head, and the white-gold crescents tangling in her chignon clinked. “It can’t be. I sent Lily to keep her occupied. It must be Celestia.”

But Celestia, the empress-to-be, would never knock. For a moment, I entertained the thought that Elise might have succumbed to the temptation and done the unthinkable—acquire a lover before our eldest sister had officially announced hers! She sure had shared more than one dance with that handsome young captain, what was his name again? Captain Janlav, I think.

The door slowly opened. But instead of our oldest sister, the visitor was the youngest. Alina slipped in, tears in her deep-set brown eyes, clutching both hands against her narrow chest. She wore but a nightgown and white slippers, as if she’d climbed out of bed midway through the night.

Elise and I glanced at each other. Not again. Dear Notes, sometimes it’s hard to believe that Alina is our sister, a Daughter of the Moon. Not only does she look different from the rest of us—frail and vulnerable and borderline mousy—but this weakness seems to affect her mind as well. Most of the time it’s harmless. She’s just immersed in her own world, but when the concoctions Nurse Nookes brews wear off—or Alina has managed to spit them out in secret—then our youngest sister turns erratic.

Though dressed in a gown that must have weighed half of her own weight, Elise squatted down akin to a mistress waiting for her poodle to come and greet her. “What is it, dear?”

Alina dashed to Elise and fell on her knees before our sister. A sob shook her whole slender frame, from the gray-brown hair to the tiny lamb-fur-lined slippers. “Oh dear…” Elise glanced at me from the corner of her eye before she met Alina’s tearful gaze. “Shouldn’t you be in bed already?”

The balcony curtains remained parted, and the whole sorry scene was visible for the Moon. I didn’t know whether I should go and draw them or not. Then again, a father deserves to know when something ails his daughters. And lately, a lot has been ailing the youngest.

“The sh… sleep won’t come when it spies on us.” Alina produced something shiny from the cradle of her hands and thrust it at Elise. When Elise cupped her palms to accept that something, I caught a glimpse of more details. Alina wanted to rid herself of a shiny blue-green object no bigger than her fist. “Take it.”

“Alina!” Elise called out as she recognized the object. General Rasvatan had given the mechanical peacock to Alina. I tutted, too. How could Alina even think of passing onward the name day gift of her own seed?

“Can you take it?” Alina’s gaze darted from Elise to me. I shivered, though the palace had rooms much colder than Elise’s. How could my little sister look so gray and haunted? What was it that she was seeing? I wondered if we should call for Nurse Nookes, no matter the consequences.

Elise rustled up, shaking her head as Alina drifted from her to me. I stared at my little sister in something approaching horror. Alina was akin to a sleepwalker. But the dark circles under her eyes spoke a different story. She was wide awake, had been for hours. Or days. “Sibs, please, you take it.”

I shouldn’t have, but how could I refuse when distress so tortured her. I accepted the mechanical bird. It weighed more than I’d expected, and I almost dropped it. “But just for safekeeping.”

Relief shook Alina as she rid herself of the peacock. She wrung her hands together and swayed from side to side. “Thank you! Thank you so much, Sibs.”

As I turned the mechanical bird in my hands, I tried to understand what had so frightened my sister. The peacock was a marvelous gift that must have cost General Rasvatan more than he could have possibly afforded. Powered by a peacock soul, the mechanical bird could mimic the true bird in shape, form, and sound. I touched the spring under the bird’s tail, about to wind it.

Alina twitched, shied away from me, toward the door. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

Elise hurried to comfort her. The hem of her dress, so heavy, didn’t follow her movements. That wasn’t quite right. Everything always followed her way.

“Why?” I asked as this silly, creeping anxiety of theirs, the wrongness, started to bother me as well. Why, Notes, I can’t tell. The bird was of a workmanship of the most magnificent kind. The enamel feathers so carefully carved. The claws decorated with platinum details. But it was the sapphire eyes I was drawn to. Like everything else powered by a soul, the peacock automaton had a life of its own.

“I can’t sleep while it watches me,” Alina replied, and then she was crying again.

Elise hugged Alina. She glanced over our sister’s shoulder at me. I knew what she was thinking. Our poor, fragile sister, so sensitive, so frail. How could a seed from General Rasvatan result in such weakness?

Ashamed by my thought, I strode to the tile stove and hastily placed the bird on the sill, facing against the wall, as far away from us as possible. Then I hurried to join the embrace. Behind us, the Moon shone brighter, or that was how it felt. I prayed to Papa to make our sister stronger. A Daughter of the Moon wasn’t supposed to be this vulnerable!

Amidst the embrace, the door flung open. Alina shrieked. Elise and I tightened our hold around our little sister. It didn’t matter who’d arrived. Even Nurse Nookes took pity on Alina.

“Sleep. How are my companions supposed to sleep for all this laughter and crying?” Merile limped in, wrapped into a too-large pristine white cloak with a thick fur lining. The cloak trailed after her, and those rats of hers, all thin fur and thin legs and thin spindly tails, didn’t quite know whether to step on it or rush to her sides, and so they bounced from left to right, yapping. To top the already ridiculous entrance, the rats wore coats that matched with her cloak. They were another garish set of gifts from her seed, no doubt about that.

Elise cast an acrid glare at the intruders, and I did likewise. Merile had to understand that the world couldn’t always revolve around her, even if she’d been caught experimenting with dusk, even if that had resulted in a sprained ankle and a limp that wouldn’t quite heal. Merile halted, realizing it wasn’t just Elise and me in the room, but also little Alina. The problem with acting older than you are, I’ve been told, is when you misjudge a situation, you end up acting like a fool.

“Dear Merile,” Elise said sweetly, but anyone who’s ever tasted Nurse Nookes’s concoctions knows that syrupy tones often hide a bitter aftertaste. She gently guided Alina around, so that our little sister could see that it was only Merile who’d arrived, not anything one should be afraid of. Unless one counted the fashion disaster the cloak was, too big, too white for someone of Merile’s dark complexion. “Would you be so kind as to take Alina back to her room?”

Merile squatted down to pick up one of her rats, and cooed at it. The other one—sure, she repeats the names often enough, but I have long ago decided not to encourage her in this unhealthy affection she feels toward them—rose to its hind legs to lean against her. “I…”

Merile struggled so badly to say something coherent that little Alina managed to recover before her. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed. “Would you, Merile?”

Merile cradled the rat against her chest. She stared adoringly down at the pile of steel gray legs and the whipping tip of the tail. Her brown face lit up with her smile. “I just might. Bedtime. It was bedtime for Rafa and Mufu already an hour ago.”