The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

Chapter 11: Alina

The roses bloom red and pretty, but even so there’s something very wrong about them. I pick up Sibilia’s dance card from the sofa pushed against the wall and squint at the flowers Elise had to paint during the night so that our sister wouldn’t learn about the surprise. Every petal is as it should be, every leaf, too. But…

“Table. On the table. Next to the pastels.” Merile raises her voice at Beard. She holds the silver mirror in one hand, a piece of paper in the other. Being five years older than me, my sister gets to oversee the preparations while Celestia and Elise ready Sibilia for her big night. Though I don’t think she’d know what to do if Irina and Olesia weren’t there to advise her.

“Are you certain you’ve ogled at yourself from all the possible angles yet?” Beard asks my sister as he lowers the tray of meringues on the oval table that has been moved before the windows. Irina nods both in approval and disapproval, two thin fingers lifted to her lips.

“No.” Merile sniffs, tilting the mirror so that she can better see the ghosts. Rafa and Mufu spin with her. I’ve brushed their coats to shine copper brown and silver gray. “Punch. What’s taking so long with the punch? They’ll be ready any moment now, and we’re not—there’s still so much to do!”

But I think the drawing room looks like a different place already, as it’s meant to look. We—or the guards actually—have already moved the furniture against the walls and looped the maple leaf chains to hang from the ceiling. There’s not much left to do for me, apart from the very important task, but the time for that comes only later. I dangle my feet over the sofa’s edge. I’m bored.

As if sensing this, like Nurse Nookes always did, Olesia turns around and drifts across the carpet that’s been set very straight. She sits down next to me and brushes the roses with the tips of her pale fingers. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Pretty…” I whisper back at her, though with Merile overseeing—that’s what she calls it—the guards entering and leaving the room, no one is paying any attention to me, not even Rafa and Mufu, because they’re too busy hoping that one of the guards would trip and scatter treats. I glance at the roses once more. Though Papa looks at them fondly from the sky, he’s not yet up in this world and won’t be for some time still, as it’s not yet even five here. The time for shadows…

I realize what’s wrong with the roses. “They have no shadows.”

Olesia leans closer to me, to flick the dance card open. Though of course it won’t open. She doesn’t have a shadow. Or she does, but not in the way living things have.

I turn the dance card open for her, careful not to wrinkle the paper. “Maybe they’re ghost flowers.”

“Perhaps you are right.” Olesia tousles my hair that Elise refused to braid this morning and repeatedly told me not to braid myself either. Everyone has been tousling my hair lately, since… I’m not going to think about the gagargi or what I saw in his shadow. I don’t need to think about that. Not for three weeks or so at least. Not until he sends for us.

“Do you think we’ll start soon?” I ask the ghost.

Olesia glances at the locked door of the room Celestia and Sibilia share. Well, it’s not really locked, but I like to think it’s that way, because we have the key and if we wanted to, we could lock and open it at will! But we don’t want to do that, and we don’t need to do that, because Elise arranged with Captain Janlav that she and Sibilia and Celestia can use the room to get ready for the Ball, that’s how she calls Sibilia’s surprise. And that’s not the only thing she arranged—the decorations and the treats and the dance cards are all of her doing. She talked and talked and smiled and smiled until Captain Janlav and the guards agreed that they’d never wanted to do anything as much as to celebrate my sister’s debut.

“No, not yet,” Olesia replies after thinking about my question for quite a while, though neither she nor her sister actually bothered to go and check up on my sisters. Lately, they haven’t been very good ghosts. They haven’t done much of the floating around or walking through the walls and they don’t appear that often anymore either and when they do, they don’t stay for long. It’s as if they’ve grown lazy.

Though I could have, I haven’t grown lazy, and Nurse Nookes would be proud of me. And Mama, too! I can read and count all by myself now. But there’s not too many people around to tell about it. Nor that many things to read. Not that many things to count either, apart from hours and days.

“One. Two. Five.” I poke each dance listed. There’s five of them and then five again, with blank spaces left for the names of the cavaliers. Waltz, polka, the one with the tricky name that I call goose song, mazurka, and then there’s the chicken dance. “Ten.”

“I am looking forward to dancing,” Olesia muses, gazing at the guards from under fluttering lashes. They look different today, too, with their clothes freshly laundered, with their hair braided with red ribbons and thick red belts tied around their waists. “We have never had a ball in this house.”

“Surely you had at least one!” I say, because lately the ghosts have also started to forget things. They’ve always been pale, but now they’re definitely beyond any color. I realized this upon coming back from visiting the shadows. I could have stayed with them in the dark. They were very friendly, and the ape and the swan were there, too. They promised to take good care of me. But I told them I couldn’t stay for long because my sisters would grow worried about me. And when I woke up, my sisters were so relieved that I knew I’d been right to return.

“Perhaps we had.” Olesia glances at Irina as if hoping her sister would agree with her. But Irina is too busy guiding Merile to notice either of us. As she drifts closer to the table, farther away from us, she dims so much that I can barely make out her shape. Maybe the ghosts are fading because they’ve let me and Merile and Sibilia see them too many times. “Yes, we definitely had.”

I’m happy to see her happier, though I think she believes now what she wants to believe. But I don’t mind. There’s no harm in that.

“Tonight, I shall dance every single song. I shall start with…” Olesia purses her lips as she studies the guards. Then a man enters the room, and Olesia smiles as a cat with a full plate of cream just placed before her might. “That one.”

The man with no beard or moustache, with his hair braided up and boots polished to shine, doesn’t look familiar at all. As he crosses the room to join the other guards, his heels clack an excited tune. Who can he be? He laughs at something Captain Janlav said and tugs his shirt’s edge down with both hands as if it were too short. It’s only then I recognize him. “That’s Tabard.”

“Tabard? Yes, he is a fine-looking fellow, though those ribbons and belts should be white.”

That’s what Elise said, too, but red was all that Captain Janlav could find, so red is what we have to make do with. But I don’t want to think of that now. I’ve sat nice and still long enough already.

“I want to dance the chicken dance,” I announce, and jump down from the sofa. It’s not fair that everyone else gets to have fun tonight but Merile and me! The guards pay no attention to me as I sneak toward the gramophone, past Merile’s turned back. Done with the preparations, they’re patting each other’s shoulders and chatting, pleased with themselves.

“Which one is that?” Olesia asks, trailing behind me.

“It’s the tricky one.” I like how the steps form knots and watching my sisters stumble around, though usually it’s only Sibilia who gets confused.

Olesia frowns at me when we reach the gramophone. “I am afraid I am not entirely sure which one you mean.”

“Cot-cot.” The discs are in a neat pile. I shift the sleeves to spell out the names. The one I want starts with the sounds chickens make. “Cot-cot-cot.”

“Alina!”

I draw my hands away from the discs and spin around. Though I wasn’t really doing anything forbidden. And I was careful!

“Away.” Merile storms to me, Rafa and Mufu trotting next to her. Irina remains behind, a raised hand covering her mouth as if she, too, were upset with me. “Step away from the gramophone.”

“Cot-cot-cot.” I press my fists against my chest and wag my elbows, though Merile is taller than me. And older. She will always be older than me. But she can’t really be telling me no all the time! “Please, just one dance…”

“No.” Merile curls her fingers around my arm and pulls me away from the gramophone, past the table laden with so many treats that I can’t even count that far, to the curtained-shut window closest to our rooms. The ghosts follow us, but they don’t even try and make her stop. The guards barely glance at us. They’re used to Merile’s tantrums. “No. No and no.”

“You’re hurting me,” I squeal, though really she’s not. But she could if she wanted to.

“Too bad. Too bad for you.” Merile squats down to whisper harshly in my ear. “The point. The whole point of a debut is that you need to be sixteen or older to participate. And today Sibilia turns sixteen, and Papa be my witness, I forbid you to ruin the only ball she might ever get to participate in.”

I blink back tears, though I don’t know why I’m crying. I did want to dance. But I also want… Sibilia has always been nice to me. She plays with us in the garden. She reads the scriptures every evening. She smiles and laughs, though the gagargi said that she doesn’t matter to anyone, not even to Celestia. But then again, he said many horrid things.

He hinted that he’d feed me to his machine, as I’d known he’d do all along. He claimed that Elise had in some way I don’t really understand sided with him and plotted against Mama. During those agonizingly long minutes that we waited for Celestia to return, Sibilia said that the gagargi is full of lies. That must have really been it, at least as far as Elise is concerned, because neither Celestia nor Elise ever brought the topic up afterwards.

“You can let go,” I say in a tiny voice, placing my hand atop of Merile’s. My sister stares at me suspiciously, black brows drawn together. I bet the gagargi was just trying to turn us against each other. Or maybe not. Irina and Olesia have warned Merile and me about the inherent deceitfulness of older sisters many, many times, whatever that really means.

“Eye.” Merile taps her cheek with a forefinger. “I will keep an eye out for you.”

I remain completely still by the curtains as Merile strides back to the table with Irina, to count the glasses or something else Elise told her to do. Though I have my one task, I’d like to help more. But asking Merile now would only end in her raising her voice to me again, and I don’t want that. I don’t like people being angry at me.

“That leaf might fall.” Irina points at one of the maple leaves that the guards slipped through the thread holding the curtains together. The leaf does look lopsided, even before she prods it with her finger.

“I’ll fix it.” This is Sibilia’s debut, and I don’t like the way her shadow has acted lately. Maybe Merile is right. Maybe this will be Sibilia’s only ball.

But as I shuffle closer to the curtains, something crunches under my right sabot. I squat down to pick it up. This something is black and sharp. No, not really only black, but kind of see-through. “What is this?”

Olesia cranes down at the black grain. Then she glances at the door leading to Celestia’s and Sibilia’s room. “You should ask your older sisters.”

I close my fingers around the black grain so tight it bites my skin. I really don’t like the way the ghosts speak of my older sisters. “Maybe I will.”

But right at that moment, the door leading to Celestia’s and Sibilia’s room opens.

“Is everything ready?”

It’s Elise, and yet as she lingeringly pulls the door closed behind her, she’s not my sister. Or that is, she’s more so than she’s been on any day during this summer. With her gray eyes sparkling with mischief, the gleaming red-gold hair curled atop her head, and dressed in a thin white gown, she’s the very Elise, the silly, wonderful Elise with whom everyone wanted to dance back at the Summer Palace.

“I think we are.” Captain Janlav snaps his fingers once, and I wish his uniform were still decorated with silver ornaments, not with red ones. Beard and Tabard and Belly and Boots and Boy settle into a line next to him, at the edge of the carpet. There’s some tugging of shirts and lifting of belts and slipping of flasks into the back pockets. “Right, lads?”

“Yes, we are!” The guards’ reply is booming, cheerful—false, too—as if they really weren’t guards, but… Elise beholds them with a warm curiosity, as if they were our guests. Are they? She calls them her friends, but I’m not sure they’ll ever be mine.

“Merile?” Elise turns to our sister, still beaming at the guards. But her laughter doesn’t chime like it used to. It’s weary and worn, like the dress she wears, the one from which she and Celestia removed the sequins during the train journey. “How about you?”

“Ready.” Merile hides the hand mirror behind her back, and though Rafa and Mufu rub against her shins, she doesn’t bend down to pet them, which isn’t right either. No one is as they should be. “I’m ready. Alina?”

My sisters and the guards all look at me, and I shuffle a step back, bump into the curtains and the window behind. It’s as if we were playing a new game, but no one told me the rules. But though the guards play cards with us, they never play with us in the garden.

“Alina…” Elise tilts her head toward the sofa. I squeak as I notice the dance cards there. Maybe they did tell me the rules after all, but I just forgot them.

“Yes!” I dash to the sofa. The moment of the very important task assigned to me has come. “Yes! I’ve got them.”

“Perfect.” Elise claps her hands twice. Merile glowers at me from the gramophone, but Rafa and Mufu lay down on her hem, preventing her from moving. Irina wafts to her sister, who stayed by the curtains. The guards perch on the carpet’s edge. “I shall bring her in then.”

Elise disappears back into the room, only to appear a moment later with…

I clutch the dance cards with both hands as Elise and Celestia guide the blindfolded woman into the drawing room. She’s Sibilia, though she doesn’t look like her! A crown of maple leaves sits on her golden curls. The white dress that’s whiter than anything we’ve worn in months makes her seem tall and slender and round all at the same time. I recognize the crescent-embroidered hem, the high neckline. It’s the dress that Celestia wore the night we boarded the train!

“May I present you Sibilia, a Daughter of the Moon, of General Kravakiv’s seed?” Elise asks Celestia as they halt before us. My oldest sister looks more like herself than Elise and Sibilia, though the dress she wears is funny. It has puffy lace sleeves that have been split at the bottom so that her arms are both covered and bare, even though she wears gloves. The hem is lacy too, but only because… she has cut it that way, maybe?

“You may,” Celestia replies, the line that should have belonged to Mama. Her voice doesn’t waver, though mine would have. My throat tightens on its own. I miss Mama so much! May Papa look after her soul in the sky!

Having received Celestia’s permission, Elise glides behind Sibilia. Our sister stands very, very still while she unties the white blindfold. As Elise lets the blindfold drop on the floor, Celestia says, “Sibilia, meet the court.”

But Sibilia keeps her eyes squeezed shut, as if she were dreaming and didn’t want to wake up. My heart goes out to her. I know how it feels to see things, both the sort you never want to see again and those you don’t want to let go of!

“Court—” Celestia gently pats our sister’s arm—“meet Sibilia.”

It’s only then that Sibilia opens her eyes. Her gaze is gray and deep like mountain valleys and stormy seas, and it reminds me of… Mama. Our sister has grown so pretty and also very wise. I don’t know why this thought makes me teary, but it does. I rub my eyes quickly, before anyone can grow worried about me. This is Sibilia’s night.

“Father Moon.” Celestia holds a white feather on her upturned palms. I think it’s a swan feather, because though her hands are parted, the feather rests at ease. And though I’ve never been part of this ceremony before, I’m sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. She shouldn’t be the one introducing our sister to Papa. She shouldn’t be holding a feather. In her place should stand a gagargi with a swan soul bead. “Welcome your daughter to shine by your side, as in life also in death.”

There’s a heavy, swollen pause as we wait for the fall that must follow. My oldest sister’s hands tremble under the feather’s weight, just a little, but too much still. Though a week has passed since she sent the gagargi away empty-handed, she still tires easily.

“Honored swan, bear my message to the Moon.” Celestia further parts her hands, and it’s as if the two chandeliers decided to dim at that moment. I look around and realize, it’s only me again. Or no one else has noticed this.

The feather falls. No, it doesn’t fall, but floats, slowly, back and forth before Celestia. When it meets the floor, it should shatter and release the swan soul, though of course it can’t, not when it’s but a feather. And that’s wrong because Papa will never learn that Sibilia has turned sixteen, that if she were to die she should become a star by his side!

The feather sways, lands on the planks, against Celestia’s white hem. The guards start clapping, smile broadly at Sibilia. The ghosts clap, though their hands make no sound. Merile claps, and Rafa and Mufu wag their tails. I blink again and again because I’ve decided that I won’t cry, no matter what, and when I next look at the feather it has turned black.

No, not black. A thinnest veil of gray has stretched out from Celestia’s hem. It shifts through the feather, taking shape. I stare at the feather, glance at my sisters and the guards. They’re still clapping. This is again one of those things only I can see.

The gray shape twirls into the faintest shadow of a tiny swan. It perches on its webbed feet, extends its long neck, lifts its delicate head up. I don’t know where this shadow came from, or I know because I saw it. But I don’t dare to even glance at Celestia. I need to, want to see what happens next.

The tiny swan tries its wings. Finding them light and steady, it rises with ease into the air, beak parted for a song even I can’t hear. Three more flaps of the wings, and it soars past the chains of maple leaves, through the ceiling, and then it’s gone, on its way to tell Papa about Sibilia’s debut.

Though it’s all so strange, I feel better now that I know our father will know.

“You may congratulate Sibilia,” Celestia announces. I try and meet her gaze, but she is talking to the guards. I’m curious to find out if she noticed what just came to pass. Where did the swan come from? Was it of her doing? It wasn’t the same one that brought the news of Mama’s death, I’m sure of that.

“Thank you.” Sibilia giggles, a hand lifted to cover her plump mouth. Celestia smiles as she places a palm on our sister’s shoulder. She knows how the sacred ceremonies should go. She’ll follow them as well as we can here. Yes, she must have been the one who brought the tiny swan to life, though I can’t even begin to guess how she did it.

Sibilia straightens her back and extends her right hand toward the guards. Captain Janlav is the first to approach her. The ghosts watch in silence as he presses his lips on my sister’s gloved fingers and meets her eyes. She jiggles on the spot, giggling. Captain Janlav laughs. I’m pretty sure this isn’t part of the ceremony, but there’s no swans left to witness anything.

Beard, Tabard, Belly, Boots, and Boy follow their captain’s lead. They don’t laugh, though. Apart from Boy, but his snickering sounds nervous, and he blushes awfully lot, even worse than Sibilia!

“Now.”

Who spoke to me? I have to glance around me twice before I spot Olesia waving at me. Why is she doing so? Ah, yes, the dance cards! My very important task!

I tiptoe to Sibilia and curtsy as Elise taught me. “May I present you this evening’s dance card?”

“Why, Alina…” My sister’s cheeks glow in the same shade as the dance card’s roses. “That you certainly may!”

I give her the first dance card. Celestia accepts hers with a smile, as does Elise. I like seeing my sisters cheerful. But there’s something off in their smiles, something I can’t quite name. They’re happy, though we’re locked into this room, though nothing is quite as it should be. But they’re really happy, and maybe that’s all that matters.

After the official ceremony is over, which is pretty soon, Elise announces that it’s time to enjoy the refreshments, as she calls them. Merile cranks the gramophone, and the notes of the opera flap across the room like swallows with soaking-wet wings. Though I like music, my stomach knots. It’s the same sad song that the awful Captain Ansalov was listening to the day we first met him. My sisters and the guards chat by the table moved before the windows. They don’t seem to care about the music. They trust in the agreement between the two captains. It has the gagargi’s blessing, after all. Captain Ansalov won’t dare to break it.

I remain by the curtains closest to our rooms. I should join my sisters, but I don’t want to, not even if Rafa and Mufu are both there, as are the ghosts. I don’t feel like it, and I can’t make myself feel like it either, even though I try really hard.

“Punch?” Elise hands over glasses filled to the brim, though no two are matching and some should be called cups or mugs. There’s pastel cookies and treats of many sorts, but I don’t want any. Sweet things always make me dizzy, and I’m already confused and lonely.

Boots stomps to claim a cup. “Yes, please!”

I fidget with the black grain I found earlier. Everyone is in a great mood, even Celestia, though she has had to sit down on a sofa chair to rest. The guards jest with my older sisters and the bravest of them even ask to be favored with a dance or two. They think that everything that has happened so far will soon be over, though it won’t be. It won’t ever be over for me and my sisters.

Someone pokes at my knee. It’s Rafa, her big brown eyes wide and pleading. She’s mistaken the grain for a treat. I’ve got nothing for her. “Sorry, Rafa.”

And it’s because I talk with Rafa that I miss whatever happened by the table.

“Oh, well…” Elise laughs, flicking her hand, spraying red drops around her. Boy stands before her, blushing terribly, a half-empty glass in his hands. As the red drops land every which way, on Elise’s hem and the guards’ tunics, he mutters apologies. My sister will have none of that. “It’s only a glove!”

But it’s not only a glove. The white satin is no longer so, but very, very red, and for some reason this fills me with dread. I shrink back, toward the curtains, though it’s not night yet, and even if it were, Papa couldn’t see me.

“Really, it’s quite all right,” Elise repeats.

Rafa presses herself against my knees, back arched. I pick her up and hold her against my chest. Nothing is all right. My sister is lying.

The grandfather clock strikes six then, and everyone falls silent. Though I know what’s to come, I’m afraid. But I’m also sure that I’m the only one who realizes the foulness of this night.

“Why,” Elise exclaims, “I believe it’s time to dance!”

My sisters, the guards, and the ghosts gather onto the dance floor. Merile remains by the gramophone with Mufu. That’s her part tonight. She’s the orchestra.

“What’s my part?” I whisper to Rafa.

She tilts her head to lick my chin, floppy ears drawn back. Her brown fur glows under the light of the chandeliers. Dressed in white, next to the curtains, I’m invisible.

“Am I a ghost?” I ask her, glancing at Irina and Olesia. But even they’re more present than I am. Olesia has her arm hooked around Tabard’s, who has no idea about this. Irina fans her face with her palm, eyeing Belly rather coyly.

Rafa shifts in my arms, to stare at them. No, not them, but their shadows. She’s so much smarter than I am. I whisper in her ear, in agreement. “Tonight, I’m a shadow.”

And I won’t be in anyone’s way. No one will see me apart from those who know where to look for me. I tiptoe further into the hem of the curtain.

Merile changes the song. The needle scratches the disc for a while before violins announce the waltz. Captain Janlav strides from Elise to Sibilia and bows deep. “May I?” he asks my sister, though his is the name my sister scrawled down first on the dance card.

“You may.” Sibilia waits still as a statue, but not as still as I am, for him to step closer to her. She places her hand on his shoulder only after he’s positioned his behind her back. Though he smiles, she doesn’t move an inch. But when the waltz really starts, she melts in his arms.

He’s a fine dancer. His steps are sure and firm and never stray from the rhythm. When my sister stumbles he’s always there to save her, swirl her around or bend her back to make it all seem right. Sibilia’s smile widens with each note of the violins. Her crown is red and her hair is gold, but it’s her hem that’s very white, swirling up and down and up and down. My sister is a striking sight, but when she next turns, I catch a glimpse of her eyes, and for the shortest of moments, her gray gaze is keyhole-hollow.

“Shall we join them?” Tabard bows at Elise as the first part of the waltz is almost over. Beard strides to Celestia, to ask the same question.

My sisters curtsy at the guards, and it’s…

“We’ve never curtsied to them before,” I mutter to Rafa.

She nods in agreement. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that everything is unraveling tonight.

Led by Tabard and Beard, my sisters join Sibilia on the dance floor. Under the light of the two chandeliers, they’re wonderfully graceful, swans soaring across skies. I want them to stay that way forever, and that’s why I won’t look at their shadows. I don’t even glance at them as the polka starts and the dance partners change, not even when the polka ends and the couples shift to dance our version of the goose song.

Halfway through the goose song that reminds me of a three-legged table, Rafa shifts in my arms. She wants to stretch her legs. I lower her down. “There you go.”

And as soon as her paws meet the planks, she runs to Merile, without as much as glancing over her shoulder at me. My throat shrinks, though she’s her companion, not mine. Now I’m as alone as a shadow should be. As I know my shadow will soon be.

“Here you are!” Olesia glides to me, past Boots and Boy, who stomp in the merry rhythm of the mazurka. She looks different, too, a lady invited to a feast, though none of the other guests here can see her, dance with her. “Oh, why are you crying?”

Am I? I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. They come away wet. I don’t know why I’m crying, or I do, but I can’t say it aloud, because then everyone will grow worried about me.

“My dear, what is wrong?” Olesia bends down to cup my cheeks.

I swallow back tears, though my shrunken throat hurts. This is Sibilia’s night, not mine. Real shadows never draw attention to themselves. “My sisters look so happy…”

Olesia shifts so that she can look at my sisters. They swirl in the arms of the guards, not only happy, but somehow wild, too. As if we were someplace else, maybe back in the Summer Palace and not locked into the drawing room of a house so far up in the north that during summers there are no nights.

“I know, it is sad…” Olesia trails off, her gaze fixing on Sibilia, my sister crowned by the too-early autumn, “that she won’t ever leave this house.”

That sounds wrong. I grip Olesia’s ghost hand, but my fingers go through hers. “What do you mean?”

Irina and Olesia weren’t present when Celestia confronted the gagargi. They remained away when she returned victorious, when she spoke slowly the news that filled us with joy, when she drifted to sleep that lasted for three days. But I did tell them everything, word for word. When the gagargi sends for us, either we all go or we all stay. And if we all go, Celestia won’t let the gagargi feed me to his machine, she promised me that.

So why did Olesia then single out Sibilia?

“Nothing.” Olesia pulls her hands away and straightens her back. “Nothing at all.”

But I don’t believe her. Merile has always said that I shouldn’t trust the ghosts so blindly. I’ve always defended them, but now…

“Oh, this is the cotillion!” Olesia tousles my hair. “You will be all right.” And without waiting for my answer to the question that may not have even been one, she hurries to the dance floor, waving at her sister. “Irina, come and dance this with me!”

The cot-cot song, my favorite, has never made me as sad. I wish Rafa would return to me, but she’s busy with begging treats from the guards, and I don’t want to call out to her, because shadows are supposed to stay silent. When I’m silent, people sometimes forget I’m present and say things they didn’t mean me to hear. But for the ghosts, I’m the only one who can always see and hear them. I think everything they say is always of great importance, though I don’t always understand what they mean.

Waltz and polka and another goose song. No one misses me during the dancing, as the evening behind the sewn-shut curtains and tar-black glass and barred-shut windows arrives, but doesn’t darken. Yet, the room darkens so that all that remains is the brighter glow of the chandeliers, the whiter shapes of my sisters, and the redder belts and ribbons of the guards. Though the music is the same, each song is somehow faster than the previous, the steps of the dancers fierier than before, followed by soft pops. The guards spin and fling my sisters. They soar from one man to another, their feet moving in patterns so quick and complicated that I fear they might hurt themselves.

But faster they go, even faster, and soon their heels no longer touch the floor, and it’s as if both they and the guards are dancing in the air, rising higher and higher, toward a ceiling that’s no longer there, but replaced by a black sky as vast and wide as the one outside these walls.

And it’s all so impossible, so very impossible, that I need to know that it’s not true, that they’re not about to leave me in this house alone, and that is why I decide to look at their shadows.

The guards’ shadows are heavy, black and right, but those of my sisters…

When Celestia spreads her arms wide, in the deepest curtsy, she extends the wings that she doesn’t have, but still has, that I know aren’t strong enough to carry her.

When Elise spirals at the center of the dance floor, arms raised and twined together, head tossed back in a pealing gale of laughter, her shadow sways in a way that doesn’t make sense, as if it were hanging from such a great height that her feet can’t reach the ground anymore.

When Sibilia… I can’t look at her shadow. I can’t. My sister’s hair has come loose and she’s lost the crown of maple leaves. Yet her steps are lighter than they’ve ever been as she falls in the arms of Boy at the end of the song.

And then there are no more songs. I don’t know how many there were. But when I look at Merile, I know there won’t be more. Every single one of the discs is gone, shattered into black dust and rubble that has piled on the gramophone, the oval table, and at her feet. Yet, she cranks the gramophone as if she’d noticed none of that.

The darkness withdraws between two eyeblinks, and light returns to the room. Maybe it was never dark. Maybe I just imagined it. Maybe if I tell myself so many, many times, it will be as if I’d never seen what I saw. I can but try.

On the dance floor, my sisters curtsy to their last partners, Celestia at Boots, Elise at Captain Janlav, and Sibilia at Boy. Celestia, Elise, and the guards stroll to the oval table, to catch their breaths and sip the punch and enjoy the sweet and salty treats. The ghosts trail after them, arms linked together. But Sibilia and Boy retreat to the other side of the room, to the sofa placed before the tall mirror.

I know I shouldn’t look at them, it’s not polite to spy, but I can’t stop myself, because this at least is real. Besides, as I’m too far away to hear them, it can’t really count.

Sibilia arranges her dress better over her knees. Boy tugs his trousers straight. He meets her gaze, asks her something. She giggles behind a raised palm. He places his hand on hers, and she nods. He leans toward her—I don’t really know why. She whispers something short and turns her head aside. His lips brush against her cheek, and then both of them pull back and resume sitting on the sofa, blushing redder than the maple leaves.

“Here you are!” Captain Janlav’s voice startles me. I jump a step aside. Did he catch me spying? That is, not really spying. “I was starting to wonder where you’d slipped off to.”

I turn my gaze aside from Sibilia and Boy. I don’t know what I saw, but now they’ve both already got up from the sofa. I’m not going to say a word about this to anyone, not even to the ghosts. But I must say something, and so I say, “I slipped nowhere. I was here all the time, watching you dancing.”

Captain Janlav kneels before me so that his brown eyes are level with mine. He’s always been nice to me. And tonight, he’s the only one apart from Olesia who’s come and talked with me. Merile shouting at me really doesn’t count.

I toy with my hem as I sway from side to side. Knowing Elise and Sibilia, they might come and steal Captain Janlav away any moment, and then I’d be alone again. “I would have wanted to dance, too, but Elise and Merile wouldn’t let me.”

“I know.” He pats my head, and his touch is solid and soothing. “You have to wait but a few more years.”

This evening things have been happening too fast, and they continue to do so. Words come to me, and I let them out. “I always have to wait. I’m always too young.”

“Oh, little Alina,” he chuckles, “there’s some good things about being young, too.”

I glare at him. He’s very wrong. There’s nothing good about being the youngest. “Like what?”

He glances at my sisters and the guards, then winks at me. “You get to ride piggyback.”

Ride piggyback! Elise and Sibilia always refuse to carry me piggyback. The last time I got to ride Captain Janlav was…

“Up you get.” He turns his back to me. Without a second thought, I climb up. He prances his arms as if they were feet, and his red epaulets swoosh. Tonight no one is as they should be, and now he’s a wild stallion. Like Bopol. “Ready?”

“Yes!”

Captain Janlav gallops around the room, though Celestia and Elise look at us, brows arched like angry gulls, Merile frowns in what I know is envy, and the guards laugh. I don’t care. I giggle and flick his braids as if they were reins. “Gallop. Gallop.”

He obeys me like a good steed should, but still he’s not a real horse. I try and forget that, but can’t. And too soon, he stops by the sofa and lowers me onto the floor. “How about that?”

I brush my hem down again, to hide my patched stockings. Piggybacking is fun, but so is… “I wish I could ride a real pony.”

“Well, I can’t help with that one,” he says, as I knew he would. All the horses in the stables belong to Captain Ansalov. But then he lowers his voice in a way people do when they’re about to tell a secret. “But soon you’ll get to ride in a train again.”

Elise really likes Captain Janlav, and I like him quite a lot. Maybe he really is my friend, too. I wink at him because that’s what you do when you remind someone of a shared secret. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean?” His brows furrow, and he glances at Elise. Did my sister not tell him? Or did he simply forget the plan?

“Either we all go or no one goes, and I think it might be the latter.”

He jolts like a spooked horse might, away from me. As he stares at me, eyes wide, I realize I’ve said a thing that should have been kept a secret, though I don’t really know why.