Leena Likitalo: The Five Daughters of the Moon

“I had to send Beardard back.”

He doesn’t need to tell me more. I can see the sad scene unfolding before my eyes. Beard wading through the snow banks, rifle swinging against his back. The small cottage at the end of the lane. The witch hearing the approaching sounds, the snow crunching under his boots. He wasn’t there to ask her to remain silent, but to unsling his rifle and make sure that she would take what she had seen and heard to her grave.

At that moment, I can’t imagine how I ever could have loved this ruthless man.

“The thing is,” Captain Janlav says when we are but ten steps away from the carriage, “when he came to the end of the lane, to the very spot where we’d smoked a pack of cigarettes mere hours earlier, he found nothing. Nothing at all.”

I glance at him from the corner of my eye. His serious gaze is riveted on the train. I can’t decipher if he’s lying to me in a futile attempt to soothe me. A part of me doesn’t even want to try.

“Our footprints led to an abandoned yard. But there was nothing there. No trace of the old woman. No trace of the wee cottage. Not even a shadow remained.”

He meets my gaze at last. His eyes gleam with… earnestness. Does he really believe he’s serving me, not the gagargi? Does he really speak the truth?

“Beardard returned, ashen-faced. We thought he’d been drinking. Or smoking dusk. I took two good men with me and retraced our earlier path. Only to find out that Beardard hadn’t been mistaken. Where I’d expected to find the witch, I found but a magpie staring accusingly at us.”

As he escorts me back to the train, I decide he isn’t lying, at least not consciously. But can I ever forgive this? The witch may have escaped, but that doesn’t change the fact that he ordered her silenced.

When we reach the steps leading to the platform, he offers me his hand, to help me climb the steep metal steps. But I’d rather scorch my hand again than accept his help, and that’s what I do. Once I’m up, I glance at him from over my shoulder. His expression is one of utter confusion, and I do feel as if I should be the one apologizing. “I…”

But we are saved from further awkwardness by a shrill hoot that pierces the night.

He stills. His posture tenses, and his gaze glazes over. When he looks up at me, he no longer sees me, but someone else. A Daughter of the Moon. Whatever I might have been tempted to say no longer matters.

“The guards are done with the snow.” He quickly climbs up after me. As if nothing had changed. And yet everything has. “Time to return inside.”

I brush past him, into the confinement that has become home for my sisters and me.

I know every town and city, their names and exact coordinates. I know every stretch of railroad, every junction and station. I have flown from north to south, over the mountains and tundras. I know the face of the Crescent Empire, for I am the empress-to-be.

The pearl bracelets weigh on my gown’s two pockets, through the wool, against my thighs. There are no clocks in the carriage. I measure the passing of time by the beat of my heart and the rhythm of the train clacking against the tracks. Today is the day I have been waiting for patiently for five weeks and two days.

I sip tea from the earless teacup, studying my sisters from over the gilded brim. They know I have a plan. They know I haven’t shared it with them. It is for their own good. What they don’t know, they can’t reveal. I count the clacks. The train’s speed is constant, but eventually it will slow down. When it does so, my sisters and I will flee.

Elise combs her red-gold hair, one long stroke at a time. She studies her reflection in the silver hand mirror, lush lips pursed, gray eyes narrowed. I want to tell her to hurry, but it isn’t yet the time. I must remain in full control of myself. I can’t afford to act hastily.

Sibilia reads the scriptures, elbows leaning against the marble-topped table. Her hair is braided against her scalp, her fingers buried in between the strands as if she is struggling to understand the passages. I don’t blame her. I know the scriptures by heart, but our father’s wisdom evades me. Perhaps when I marry him, he will reveal to me the secrets no mere mortal may possess, what he has seen from the sky.

That is one of the reasons why we ended up here. It was I who failed the empire when I fell under Gagargi Prataslav’s spell. If I had been wiser, it would have never happened. I think.

“Jump here, Rafa,” Merile calls at her dog from her usual spot on the sofa at the other end of the carriage. “Up here.”

The brown dog jumps. It lands on the sofa, tail wagging wildly. My sister laughs.

“No, here.” Alina pats the cushion on the sofa opposite to Merile’s. “Come back here, silly dog.”

And the dog lands on the floor, and then up it goes again.

My smile is a faint crescent, one I want to cherish, one I don’t want anyone else to see. My sisters, they are the future of the empire. Once I thought this role was for me to fill. Now I know that it will not be. Not for long.

If my plan works today… No, not if, but when. When my plan works, we will be free, but there will be a lot of work to be done, to bring my people together, to repair the damage the gagargi’s plot has brought unto the empire.

“You look thoughtful,” Elise says between two long strokes. The golden strands caught between the comb’s spikes glimmer under the timid light of the osprey chandelier.

I lower the half-empty cup and reply, “It occurred to me that you understand well indeed this empire: what we need, what the people need.”

Elise’s hand pauses mid-stroke. Her head cants to the right. Her lips part as if she wanted to say something, but then changed her mind. She isn’t the same girl who she was before, at the palace. The weeks in the train have changed her. “Perhaps I once thought I knew it. Now, I’m not so sure.”

Mother, the Moon bless her soul, always said that a wise person is the one who can admit that they don’t know everything. That is why even the empresses have advisors. But mother, oh mother, you chose your advisors poorly. You should have never let Gagargi Prataslav stay at the court, not when it became so obvious, so soon, that he could influence everyone he spoke to.

But mother is dead, and hence beyond blame. If anyone should be blamed, it is me. It was I who fell under the gagargi’s spell. It was I who…

I have rid myself of him. I have bled myself off his seed. I am no longer under his spell. Today, I will soar across the blue skies, over the frozen lakes.

“Sibs, won’t you close that terribly boring book and come and braid my hair?” Elise calls at our sister.

Sibilia stirs from her thoughts. She uncurls her fingers from her hair and tenderly presses the book of holy scriptures shut. “Sure. I need a break anyway. The thing is, I have this nagging feeling that some of the passages contain genuinely important knowledge. But I just can’t figure out which ones.”

“Oh, Sibs!” Elise’s laughter chimes like silver bells. “I’m sure that no one aside from the gagargis can.”

Sibilia bangs her knee against the table’s leg as she gets up. She curses under her breath, then blushes. She is neither in full control of her body nor her mind.

“What sort of braid would you like to have?” Sibilia inquires once she stands behind Elise.

Elise glances at me, as if asking how much time we have left. The clacks still come regularly. I nod minutely.

“Try something new, will you?” Elise replies. Though I haven’t told her that today is the day, she senses that the time has come. Soon we will fly free.

Fly. That is my swan-self’s thought. No matter how I pretend, I am not in full control of myself either. The gagargi still holds a strand of my soul, what he managed to breathe in that night I shattered the bead. What I shelter in my body contains traces of the swan he killed that night.