Лаура Гилман - The Underwater Ballroom Society

A cloak of coarse brown, battered men’s brogues, a bundle of kindling in her gnarled hands: she was so much the picture of a hedge-witch that I wondered if I’d imagined her. As a child, I’d had a book of tales that showed just such a crone as this. But when she doffed her hood and looked up at me, I blinked at the steel-rimmed lunettes balanced on her nose. I would never have invented a hedge-witch with spectacles.

“The King is dying,” she said, by way of greeting. Her voice was both deep and sharp.

I inclined my head. So close to the castle as we were, this was common knowledge.

“Are you prepared?”

“The remaining princesses arrive today.” I turned and pointed to the castle chimneys, two dozen of them wafting smoke. “All are making ready.”

“Are you prepared, Princess?”

I swung back to look at her more closely. “You recognize me?”

“Princess Ling, of course.” Her eyes gleamed, even behind glass. “The unmarried one.”

As the youngest daughter, I was never destined for marriage; my duty was to our aging father and the keeping of his household. Yet I cherished my spinsterhood. How could I not, with the example of Anya’s husband ever before my eyes? Besides which… I had a secret.

My sisters were dispersed and our nightly revels undone, but I held fast to our history. They were now queens and empresses of far-flung nations, but in my underground domain, I reigned supreme. And each time I descended to our secret dreamworld, I felt as close to them as we’d ever been, a dozen and more years ago.

I chose my words with precision. “Am I prepared to bid farewell to my father, the King? He has lived a long and useful life.” Despite his very careless handling of his daughters, the King had been a monarch who avoided war and fed the poor. One could not hope the same of Anya’s mercenary.

“And have you made preparations for his successor?” asked the hedge-witch. She was enjoying this interview.

I hesitated. “What sort of ruler do you predict he’ll be, mother?”

“You don’t need a scrying-glass for that, Princess. You know precisely what sort of king the soldier will make.”

He was a brute and a braggart and a bully. A sneak, too, who used his cloak of invisibility still: to eavesdrop on Anya and me, to make free with the treasury, to frighten the King into doing his will. Why would any of this change once he wore the crown? Thick sadness clogged my throat. “Excuse me, mother,” I said. “I must go.”

Her hand twisted the soft wool of my mantle. “A minute more, Princess.” She was very strong.

“Why?”

“I have a confession to make.”

“Then you must find a divine.”

“Oh no,” she said slowly. “You, Princess Ling, are the one who must hear my confession.”

“Is that so?” I had been an obedient child, but nobody said “must” to me, anymore.

“I gave him that cloak of invisibility,” said the hedge-witch.

I stared, wondering if I could possibly have heard aright.

She looked furtive and sour, and I realized it was an expression of shame. “I had planned to give the cloak to a good-natured swineherd. But the swineherd was delayed—his pigs got loose—and when the soldier came along at the right time…” She sighed and tapped her spectacles. “I couldn’t see so well, back then. Didn’t have these. And the two men were of an age, and his sword looked quite like a swineherd’s staff…”

“You mistook a sword for a stick.”

“And have regretted my mistake ever since.” She paused. “The swineherd was far from dashing—oh, how he reeked!—but he was a decent man.”

For long moments, I was too livid to speak. She regretted her mistake? When Anya had paid for that blunder with her dignity, her health, and the entire course of her life?

“You understand, Princess Ling, that the kingdom ought not suffer the consequences of my error.”

I fixed my gaze on the glittering white horizon for several deep breaths. Then I straightened my spine and asked, “And will you grant me a gift, mother, to aid in his defeat?” I would steel myself to any horror for this task.

“I will.” She proffered her right hand and chanted, “A kingdom’s hope: the midnight knell. Twelve sisters work a timely spell. A cape changes the soldier’s shape, but answers to the shell.”

I peered at the small, brown orb lolling between the deep creases of her palm. So much for a vial of poison, an enchanted knife, or my own cloak of invisibility. The hedge-witch was offering me… a walnut? “And what must we—I—do with this?”

“Fair’s fair, Princess: I can but give you the tools. You must make your own fate.” And, by extension, the fate of the kingdom. Just as the soldier had.

I took the walnut.

My sisters arrived laden with spouses and children and maids and jewel-cases and accounting books—and, in the case of Bunmi, a pet snake named Ejò from which she refused to be parted, despite the shudders and complaints of Genevieve. After supper, in the vast, chilly dining hall, I requested a private gathering of the twelve princesses; nothing official, merely a fond sisterly reunion. Their consorts—even Anya’s soldier—smiled and waved their fingers indulgently.

Once in our old sitting-room, the infants consigned to their nurses and the others to cups of spiced wine, a sense of expectation settled upon us. “Charming idea,” said Fatima. “But why are we here, Anya, and not attending the King on his deathbed?”

“Anya, sister, you look utterly exhausted,” interrupted Damla. “All that childbearing… do you truly think it wise?”

“Really, Anya, we know you are devoted to our mother’s memory but there is no need to recreate her life so exactly,” said Johanna. “Do you want to die giving birth to your twelfth?”

Esther and Hasnaa rushed to defend her, but Anya held up her hand for silence. Then, holding Johanna’s gaze, she unwound the lace scarf from her neck. “No, Damla,” she said quietly. “I do not think it wise.” The bruises were purple by candlelight.

A parched silence descended upon the room. The fire crackled. Someone exhaled. I watched my sisters string together echoes of stray remarks and casual moments, like beads on a silk strand. Their eyes grew dark.

“He must pay for this,” hissed Keiko.

“What can be done?” whispered Isolde.

Anya shivered. “Ling has a proposal.”

They stared at me in astonishment. Finally, Chanda grinned. “The tadpole has grown up. Speak on, Ling.”

“Before we begin our vigil for the King, I suggest that we visit our dreamworld one last time.”

There was another startled silence—and then an explosion of protest, all aimed at me. Esther’s voice rose above the rest. “Our father, the King, destroyed the enchanted lake and castle a dozen years ago!”

“We all heard him declare its destruction complete,” said Fatima. She sounded as choked and heartbroken as we’d all felt that terrible evening, on the eve of Anya’s wedding, when we’d been hauled before the assembled court. Officially, it was the king’s proclamation of our purity and repentance. In practice, it was a ritual of humiliation, a demonstration of his mastery over us, and a warning to wayward daughters throughout the kingdom.

Johanna’s cool voice broke the silence. “And how does this relate to Anya’s… problem?”

“I promise you, it does.” I paused, feeling a drift of warm, stale air on the back of my neck. Or perhaps I’d imagined it? “While the King dammed a river in order to drown our dreamworld, he failed to destroy it.” Eleven perplexed faces looked at me. “I discovered this myself, quite by accident, ten years ago. It is still there.”