Leena Likitalo - The Five Daughters of the Moon

Celestia turned on her side to face us. She muttered something under her breath, still half sleepy or dazed by pain. “Elise? Sibilia? What are you doing here?”

I was too flustered to reply, and so I stared at her stained sheets. Celestia followed my gaze. But rather than looking shocked or even abashed, a faint smile spread across her face. “I have paid the price. Everything is well now.”

What she meant by that, I can’t even begin to guess, Scribs.

While I was still puzzled by Celestia’s words, Elise helped our sister up, to sit on the bed’s edge. The exhausted glance Elise cast at me revealed that the dread that turned me sluggish had also crossed her mind. First Alina. Now Celestia.

The servant brought cold water and towels. Elise and I assisted Celestia in cleaning as much as she’d let us. We turned aside as she used the chamber pot, but when she pushed it under the bed, I noticed that she bled very heavily. Was this the witch’s doing, somehow? Or has my sister always suffered from really, really bad wretched days?

“Let us not keep them waiting,” Celestia said once she was fully dressed and padded up. She leaned against the wall as another set of cramps tore through her body—that much was obvious from her grimace.

“Shouldn’t you rest here for the day?” I asked. Elise nodded, echoing my opinion. “They really can’t be as cruel as to deny you that.”

Celestia met us with that celestial gaze of hers, blue as the skies, deep as the oceans. “And break the routine? Don’t be silly, my dear sisters.”

With that said, she swayed to the door and announced us ready. Our younger sisters had already been escorted to the day carriage. Captain Janlav led us there to join them.

Though Celestia insisted she would be fine resting on her customary sofa chair, I urged Captain Janlav to help her to my divan. As soon as she lay down, she dozed off. We had to practically chase the captain away. And he didn’t stay that way for long—he kept on checking on us every half hour.

Scribs, I have a theory that I’ll tell you only under one condition. You mustn’t call me silly or laugh at me. You mustn’t claim me superstitious.

I believe Captain Janlav’s fate is permanently interwoven with ours. Even if the anxiety he first felt for Alina’s well-being and now for Celestia’s is that which he feels for his own, there is more to him. Kindness that shouldn’t exist in a soldier that the gagargi has chosen as his pawn.

Ugh. I don’t want to think of the gagargi and his plans now. I will stop writing after this paragraph, lest I might run out of ink. Soon, there should be lunch. I hope against all hope that there will be dessert. Even a morsel of cinnamon biscuit would do wonders to my spirit. It’s been a miserable two days, and at some point next week, I’ll need to face the wretched days of my own, and I’m not looking forward to them. At. All.

The train squeals akin to a child of iron whose limbs are torn apart, like a daughter of ice about to receive a shattering blow, like a shadow of a maiden abandoned into a lightless cave, like a glorious figurehead crafted from silver that the journey will tarnish and that can never quite be polished back to her former shine.

I stir from the shallow sleep, the only kind of sleep I have known for weeks, as I bump against the cabin’s wall. I remain there, leaning against the lacquered panel that seeps coldness through my clothes onto my skin, then onward into my bones. This isn’t the first time the train screams nor the first it halts in the middle of the night.

Yet something is different, the stillness and slowness of time. I quickly get up, slip my feet into the sabots that have long since ceased to chafe me. Though the curtains of my cabin are drawn down, though the guards have told us not to look out, I swiftly part them.

We are in the middle of nowhere, where the vast expanse of snow stretches on forever, glittering regardless of the cost that such display of wealth might require. The sky is black and scattered with stars. My father’s gaze is kind, a golden halo against the velvet.

I know at once, this isn’t a planned stop.

For a moment, my heart throbs and my breathing comes in dizzying gasps. My fingers tremble as I slip out of my nightgown, into the simple woolen dress. Even though the buttons are big and on the front, I struggle to fasten them. If Lily were here, she’d hum one of her melancholy tunes. But she’s not, and I don’t know what became of my friend. She never revealed to me what her plan would be once the side we both supported triumphed. I thought her cautious, not wary of me, but perhaps I was wrong about that, too. Perhaps it’s better I don’t know what became of her, just as she’s blessed not to know what has and will eventually happen to me.

I lift my mattress’s edge and retrieve the stash of sequin necklaces. Celestia has a plan, but she hasn’t entrusted me with the details either. I loop the thin chains around my neck, around my wrists. This might be the night we are at last rescued, and in case it is, I want to be ready for every eventuality. For I’m partially at fault in my family’s demise.

I thought I could cease to be a Daughter of the Moon. I funded the insurgence. I gave away jewelry a thousand times more valuable than the sequins that pinch the back of my neck, that grow cool even as they press against my skin. Back when life was simpler, when we still lived in the palace and I sneaked out with the man who no longer remembers my name, I cherished the thought of absolute independence. I wanted to be a woman amongst others, nothing more. I naively thought the revolution would set me free. It didn’t.

I thought that I was so smart. I foresaw an exile of an undetermined length, not this bone-rattling journey to a destination yet unnamed. I knew to expect a wave of uncertainty, one that would pass soon after the people had accepted the new order. I thought my sisters and I could then return without our titles, to live a normal life. How foolish was I in my dreams!

Wait, are those approaching steps? I shuffle to the door and press my ear against the panel. Someone is running down the length of the corridor beyond. No doubt it’s the guard on the night watch. I don’t know if he’s the one who now ignores me, or one of the others that go by the nicknames my younger sisters have bestowed on them: Beard, Boy, Belly, Boots, and Tabard. While the nightly isolation is a source of comfort to me, for it gives me time to reflect, the thought that they may enter and leave as they please unsettles me. As it must unsettle both Celestia and Sibilia, though we never talk about it—how could we, without causing more distress to our younger sisters? Even though our guards rather pretend we don’t exist, isn’t it just a matter of time before someone less civil boards the train, someone who thinks that a captured Daughter of the Moon doesn’t need to be revered, but should instead be tarnished?

The train has fallen silent. I squeeze my ear against the panel so hard that it hurts. I can distinguish but faint cursing. For a long while, there’s nothing else. My sisters and I never make sounds during the nights. This is something Celestia forbade, and upon her insistence, we stick to the routine. She has a plan. She has thought through every eventuality, even the ones that the rest of us are too frightened to consider. That is how she is, rational beyond reason.

Even the cursing ceases. I pace the short length of my cabin. Five steps to the window. Five steps back to the door. Perhaps it was nothing. The train could have halted for many different reasons. Perhaps it hit a snow bank. Perhaps the coal shoveler fell asleep. Perhaps…

Then I hear it. Someone strides up the corridor. The rhythm, the footfall of hard heels, reveals haste. Could it be our potential rescuer, one of our seeds or a nobleman loyal to my family, Count Albusov or Marques Frususka, leading a platoon of soldiers in blue? Or is it someone who wishes us ill? How can I find out for sure?