Leena Likitalo: The Five Daughters of the Moon

“I wonder what that was about,” Merile muttered.

I was too tired to even think about it.

It didn’t take long for us to find out. The servant and Boy returned with the blankets that barely kept us warm during the nights. Captain Janlav entered the carriage almost at the exact same moment.

“Wrap into the blankets,” Captain Janlav ordered. Then he marched to the sofa, where Alina still lay wrapped in Merile’s fur cloak. He lifted her up as if she weighed nothing at all. Celestia hastened to tug the cloak better around our sister. He shrugged her aside. “Follow me. Say not a word. Run not a step.”

Those were the conditions we had to agree to. It wasn’t a hard choice for us. We wanted to help Alina more than anything else in the world.

We donned the blankets as cloaks and rushed after him like animals released from a cage. Our freedom was short-lived, however. As soon as we stepped out of the train, the four remaining guards, the ones that always stink of liquor and cigarettes, formed lines on both our sides. Boy held the back.

I didn’t care. I was ecstatic to walk under the open sky once more. The day was just about to yield to the night, and everything was of that particular shade of blue that not even the most talented artists can quite capture. The clouds, the snowfields, the shadows bore the blue veil proudly. The freezing cold air stung my nostrils, tickled my lungs. Yet I puffed white clouds in excitement. For at that moment I remembered what it felt like to be free.

The town was small. A dozen or so two-story log buildings loomed over the main street. There was just enough space for my sisters and me on the path that the townspeople had trampled during the day. Fresh snow crunched under the guards’ boots—they had to walk through the snow banks. We must have made a strange sight: Captain Janlav carrying my sister, four girls wrapped in gray blankets, akin to ghosts in the falling darkness, guarded by soldiers who might pass as our shadows.

We neither saw nor encountered anyone as we walked to the end of the main street. There, we took a lane to the right and continued a bit farther. At first, I didn’t see the cottage. The town had no streetlights, which wasn’t that surprising, since we hadn’t sped through a city in a week.

I wanted to ask if this was where the doctor lived, but then I remembered Captain Janlav’s instructions (which had sounded more like a warning to me) and bit my tongue instead. The same thought must have crossed Merile’s mind, for she and her rats trod on my hem. When I glared at her from over my shoulder, the question was writ across her brown face.

Since Captain Janlav was carrying Alina, he wasn’t the one to pound on the door. Beard was. As his red-gloved fist landed against the thick planks, it felt like an omen, and that made me think of Nurse Nookes, whom I’d sometimes called a witch, though she most certainly wasn’t one.

But perhaps it was witchcraft that I happened to think of her just then. I kid you not here, Scribs. You’ll believe me when I describe to you the strange events that unfolded next.

The door opened, but no one waited behind it. An aroma of crushed nettles and garlic gasped against us, so thick I could taste it. Captain Janlav stepped in without hesitation, Celestia at his heels. Elise made sure to tag along so close after her that no guard could slip in between, and I and Merile did likewise. Then the small cottage was already so full that the remaining guards didn’t dare to squeeze in.

“Fire. I shall warm myself by the fire!” Merile limped to the fireplace, where a black kettle boiled above glowing embers. Her rats trotted after her as if nothing else mattered. As if they were right at home in the cottage.

My eyes took a while to get accustomed to the dark interior. I first felt the bunches of dried herbs and feathers brush against my head rather than saw them. A crude table occupied most of the room. Jars and glass bottles lay scattered on the wide planks. There was a small alcove at the back of the room. A woman emerged from there.

“Honored midwife, the little one has taken ill.” Captain Janlav wagered a step toward the woman.

The old woman halted before him. A shawl as black as an old crow’s feathers drooped against her hunched back. Her gray hair rested against the nape of her neck, in a knot that I doubted could be undone. Age emphasized her features, the beaky nose and beady eyes that a milky veil of blindness shrouded. Her blue-tinted lips drooped against her teeth so that I could easily distinguish the shape of each. She glanced at Alina, then past me at the open door and the guards there. No, not quite at her or the guards, but at their feet. She croaked, “Close door.”

Beard met Captain Janlav’s eyes from across the room. The captain nodded curtly. The soldier instantly obeyed. From this exchange I deduced that both of them were (and still are) desperate to keep my sisters and me safe, if you can believe that, Scribs. But about that we can debate later. Let me tell you what came to pass now before I stop believing it myself.

Once the cottage’s door creaked shut, with the guards remaining outside, the old woman turned her full attention to us. At first I didn’t understand what she was looking at—our uncomfortable sabots or the snow we’d brought in. Then it struck me. Though blind, she was, quite impossibly, studying our shadows.

“You say honored midwife…” The old woman spat on the gnarled plank floor. She stamped her sturdy boot over the phlegm and swirled it as if to put out a cigarette. “Bah! Say as it be or me no help.”

Captain Janlav glanced at Celestia, then Elise. The corner of his mouth twitched, as did his moustache. There was indecision in him. Desperation, too. “Very well. I’ll say it.”

The old woman stared at him, her blind gaze bright with wisdom and age. In the light of the embers, it seemed to me that her black clothes shimmered and took on strange hues, red and yellow of autumn, those of glorious decay. Though I’ve worn the most luxurious of clothes myself, I’ve never seen any fabric behave in that way.

“Help the little one,” Captain Janlav said, “Witch at the End of the Lane.”

I gasped, for as soon as he named her, it all made sense. The cottage I hadn’t at first noticed, the old woman’s strange demeanor, his hesitation before her. My sisters and I, we’d been brought to a place of darkness, and danger, even. Celestia’s shoulders drew back as if she were about to speak, but of what, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

The witch waved my eldest sister quiet, barely missing a bouquet of herbs tied to dry from the low ceiling beam running across the length of the cottage. She was more commanding than my sister, the one who would be the empress sooner than any one of us could have predicted. Oh, Mama… No, I won’t think of that. I will write of the witch.

“No talk. Me look.” The witch hustled to the other side of the table and swept the bottles and jars aside. She motioned Captain Janlav to lower Alina. He didn’t move, not till he received a nod from Celestia. As frail and young as our sister is, she fit on the cleared table with space to spare.

The witch gazed beside Alina, at the shadow that folded itself on Merile’s white cloak. Her grin revealed the gaps between her crooked teeth. Then she gestured at the door, her words aimed at Captain Janlav. “Now you go out.”

Captain Janlav’s shoulders hitched up. His hands curled into fists as if he could only barely refrain from unstrapping his rifle and aiming it at the witch. “It’s my responsibility to…”

The witch cut the air like a bird’s wing strikes. Her almost see-through sleeve shifted about her arm long after the movement itself had ceased.