The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

Chapter 2: Merile

Lambs. The gray blanket smells of wet lambs as Elise pokes it with the long, sturdy needle. She hums a light tune that fails to fill the drawing room with cheer. She can’t fool me this easily. The coat will be ugly.

“Peasants,” I mutter. We’ve stayed at this house for a full week already, but the winter here will no doubt persist for months still. Enough time for Elise to finish sewing coats for all of us. “We’ll look like peasants.”

Elise pauses both humming and sewing. She glances past me at Celestia, who stares out of the tall, arching window, into the walled garden beyond. She’s only half visible from behind the no-longer-so-white curtains we brought with us from the train. Her face is pale in the light of the day that still doesn’t last long enough to be of any use. The crown of her hair is paler, almost the color of swan feathers. She’s present, but away. No doubt she’s looking into the world beyond this one.

“And would that be such a bad thing?” Elise asks me, tapping the point of the needle with her finger. Once. Twice.

How can she even ask? Does she not realize how wrong that would be? We’re only ever supposed to wear white!

“Yes. Yes it would,” I reply, glad that Alina is taking her afternoon nap in our room with my dear companions and that for once I don’t have to shy away from an argument. We’re here to stay, though my older sisters won’t admit it aloud. But even if apart from the guards and the mute old servant, Millie, there’s no one around for miles, that’s no reason to forget who we are. “We’re the Daughters of the Moon.”

Sibilia has paused reading on the divan before the fireplace. Her shoulders are hunched from the hours spent over the book of scriptures. She’s intently listening to my conversation with Elise. Is this again one of those times they try and gauge if I paid any attention during Nurse Nookes’s monotonous lectures back at the Summer City, ready to tease me if I reveal that I didn’t?

Well, I did pay attention! I’ll set them right!

“Our power comes from the Moon himself. When the oldest of us marries him, she becomes the Crescent Empress. Papa will then send the men he’s blessed to her, and those men will become the seeds of her daughters, and then they’ll be appointed as generals and court officials and to other high positions.” There. Oh, wait, that wasn’t everything. “And then she’ll also tell the lords and ladies what to do. And then they’ll tell their landowners and mine owners and factory foremen what they need to produce and how much and when.”

Elise sighs as she kneels before me to check the front piece. Knowing my sister, there was nothing accidental about the sigh. But looking at the front piece, she’s holding it higher against my chest than the one she already finished attaching. As my sister reaches out for the mint green tin box perched on the edge of the oval table, I realize she’s somehow still unsatisfied with my answer.

“Simple. It’s really all quite simple,” I add, because really, it is, and I don’t want the coat to be any uglier than it has to be. Once it’s ready, I bet Elise will force me to wear it every single time I go out to play with my sillies, and I’ll have no choice but to obey her. I don’t know who lived in this house before us, but the only clothes they left behind are tattered summer dresses, ridiculously wide-brimmed hats with thinning plumes, and worn ankle shoes too big for anyone other than Celestia. No muffs or furs or anything else useful.

Elise attaches the front piece in place with two stitches. She eyes it critically. “Things are rarely simple in life.”

I, if anyone, know that. Our lives haven’t been particularly easy lately, not with the gagargi turning against Mama, not with Celestia’s previous escape plan failing, not with us ending up here in the middle of nowhere in a house so sparsely furnished that our bedrooms don’t even have carpets. It’s very difficult to be a Daughter of the Moon when you have to consider not only yourself but also how things happening to your family affect everyone else! “Peasant. When you’re a peasant, your lord makes sure there’s food on your table and clothes on your back and you really don’t need to think about anything at all. Being a peasant is really quite an easy life.”

The front piece slips from Elise’s fingers as she flinches away from me. It tangles against my belly, held back by the loosening stitches. I’ve never seen her gray eyes this wide.

“What?” I ask even as Sibilia lowers the book of scriptures on the divan and strolls to us. This is no longer about her waiting and wanting to tease me about something, I’m sure of that. And yet Celestia remains by the window, staring out. No, she’s not only staring out, but ever so slowly brushing her fingers over every inch of the sill. What is she doing?

“Don’t ever say that sort of thing aloud when the guards can hear you!” Elise’s chastisement gives me other, more urgent things to think about.

Because she’s being very unfair! I only told her what I know and what I’ve been taught. But something in her tone makes me control mine. “Why?”

Sibilia holds out for Elise the mint green box that once must have contained hard sugar candies, but much to her disappointment proved to hide only sewing supplies. We don’t talk with the guards in any case, not even with Captain Janlav, unless we absolutely must. But Elise does so out of her own will, and she might have learned something useful.

Elise gingerly picks up a pin from the box and glances at Celestia. Her eyes turn steel gray as if she decided to go on regardless of whether or not our oldest sister is listening to us. “For the guards, joining the imperial army, signing their very lives to be the subject of our late mother’s whims, was the only way out to a better life. Imagine that, Merile, how wretched your life must be for you to willingly give it away in exchange for a few coins and a full belly. No, you can’t even imagine what a hard life our people, even children younger than you, lead in the distant corners of this vast empire.”

I don’t know what to reply. She makes it sound as if being a soldier were a terrible fate. She also talks as if I were somehow very ignorant. Though that I’m not. I really am not.

“It’s an honor to serve in the colors of the Moon,” Sibilia replies before I can. It’s a good thing she did so, because compared to her, I might have sounded just a little spiteful.

“Honor?” Elise shakes her head, the movement enviably graceful. “Dear Sibs, you clearly have no idea how rough life is outside the palace grounds, how the empire treats its veterans!”

“Tell us about the guards,” Sibilia says, completely missing the anger and urgency in Elise’s tone. It surprises me that Celestia has either chosen not to take part in this conversation or then she is too immersed in her own thoughts to really hear what we are talking about. We never really even broach these darker things when Alina and I are present.

Elise speaks very fast, very quietly, as if she were suddenly pressed for time but simply had to get the words out, off her chest. “Before Boots had a name, he worked in a mine up in the north, deep underground, pushing carts of ore until he fell down from exhaustion, being whipped to push more even after that.”

I can’t even think of her words, that’s how fast she speaks. I commit them to my memory, to ponder about them later, during the nights I shiver next to Alina despite my companions snoring between us.

“Boy’s mother cried for joy when he enlisted in the army, though none of the men in his village that went to war ever returned. But she was relieved to see him go because the previous winter two of his sisters starved to death when their lord did not leave them enough of the harvest to last through the long, dark months.”

Sibilia clicks her tongue, tasting the flavor of the stories. I don’t know what she makes of all this. Elise is saying such strange things.

“And Tabard…” Elise swallows as if holding back tears, though that can’t be right. “Poor Tabard—”

“Elise.” Celestia’s voice is mellow and soft, and yet it cuts like a soldier’s sword. “That is quite enough of such evocative tales. I agree we should not forget that the lower classes form the backbone of our empire. But neither should we dwell on the failures of a few personages.”

Elise’s right brow arches as it always does when she’s about to disagree. But before she can say another word, the grandfather clock chimes three times. The swan on the pendulum paddles back and forth, neck straightened, beak tilted up for the silver song.

A mere moment later, the door of the bedroom I share with Alina flings open and Rafa and Mufu burst out, wagging their tails, and I’m so happy to see them, though we were apart for mere hours. Oh, my lovely companions are so very pretty! Their furs positively shine from the dedicated care Aline and I have bestowed on them. We brush them from tail to top after every breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Alina darts to us. She leans over Elise’s shoulder, panting. Rafa and Mufu poke at our older sister’s hem with their glistening black noses. “Is it ready yet?”

Elise’s expression draws blank as she reaches out for another pin. I realize the moment for darker truths is over, and we must pretend together that nothing else is going on than her trying to make my coat less hideous.

“Oh my dear darlings,” I coo at Rafa and Mufu. Rafa stares at me with her big, chocolate brown eyes. Mufu sniffs my knees, her nose wonderfully wet. Both seem just a bit suspicious. “Of course I missed you! I missed you so much!”

Elise shakes her head, but whether at me or at the abrupt end of the conversation, I have no idea. She rises up to her full height, and she’s tall. Not as tall as Celestia, but even so I reach only up to her chest. She takes a step back, and eyes me critically, head cocked to the right. Though sewing usually makes her happy, she doesn’t look that way now.

“Well, will it take long?” Alina shifts her weight, wringing her hands as if she needed to use the pot-pot right at this instant. Though she’s old enough not to need help when it comes to that. She doesn’t look like she’s distraught, either. I’m not sure what’s going on. I need to find out what it is the soonest. My sister’s mind is weak, and nightmares pester her almost every night.

The machine. She insists the gagargi intends to feed her soul to the Great Thinking Machine, no matter how I tell her again and again that there’s nothing to fear. I’ll keep her safe. Rafa and Mufu will keep her safe. Celestia would never allow anyone to harm her!

“A moment more still,” Elise replies. She picks up from the table the slices of velvet that originated from the decorative pillows we brought with us from the train. She places them against my neck. She might be planning on creating a collar of sorts, but I can but bravely persist.

I click my tongue again, and Rafa and Mufu rush to Alina. They think whatever she has in mind concerns them. Which distracts her, and off she goes with them, to play before the fireplace. Sibilia follows them to the divan there and picks up the book of scriptures. But she keeps on glancing at them from over the book’s edge. Worried. She’s worried about Alina, too.

I want something else to think about than the gagargi and his horrid machine. But what could that be? There are days and nights when everything in this house that has fallen in disrepair reminds me of him!

“Coats,” I whisper. Yes. That’s a better topic. “Why don’t we simply ask for coats? Or why don’t we ask mute Millie to sew them?”

“Huh.” Elise lowers the piece of velvet back on the table as if she’d changed her mind about the collar after all. “It’s not polite to call people names.”

I wasn’t calling Millie names, just pointing out the obvious. Maybe Elise is simply having one of those days that she has to know everything better. Maybe that’s what her earlier comments were all about. “‘Mute’ isn’t a bad word.”

“And she isn’t mute!” Alina calls at us from before the fireplace, and then she’s already scampering up. She bounces back to me like a day-old foal. My companions yap at her, wonderful, high-pitched barks. Alina falls on her knees on the undusted carpet, and they roll onto their backs, to be scratched more. “She’s got her tongue still!”

Celestia lifts up her right hand, a sign that we should talk no more. But the routines we followed aboard the train are broken. We’ve reached our destination. We’re where the gagargi wants us to be. The guards no longer rush to investigate every sound and shout. Which is a good thing.

“And how under the Moon do you know that?” Sibilia asks. Her lazily combed red hair shines dully compared to Elise’s, even though she’s the one sitting before the fire.

“I asked her to show it to me.” Alina looks a bit sheepish, and I can tell she’s lying and that my older sisters don’t notice that. Liar. Alina has grown to be a very good liar.

Celestia and Elise merely look aghast, but Sibilia rolls her eyes at Alina. I fidget with my new coat’s front. Worn. The wool feels thin and worn and smells like imprisonment.

“Now, is it ready?” Alina asks, her brown eyes lit with excitement.

I meet Elise’s gaze. My older sister shrugs, if you can call the elegant movement that. She can’t concentrate on her sewing anymore. “That it is not, but you can take it off now. Do go and play with Alina.”

“Preferably in your room,” Sibilia adds. “With the door shut.”

The mirror. Sibilia’s silver hand mirror lies facedown on the gold-embroidered blanket Elise snatched from the sled. There’s something ominous in the way it glows in the light of the ceiling lamp, the one powered by an unreliable osprey soul.

“Come,” Alina squeals as she jumps onto the bed we share. She roams on all fours across it, to sit with her back against the musty pillows. She pats the mattress, inviting both me and my dear companions to join her. “Up here!”

Rafa and Mufu glance at me, corner teeth peeking out. Odd. I smell something odd in the room. It’s not the dank of a house kept cold for too long, only recently warmed, not the stink of cigarettes and frost that still clings to the embroidered blanket. No. It’s neither of those, but something thicker and sharper. Ever since we arrived at this house, Alina has been acting strange. Sure, she’s talked to herself—or to the shadows if you believe her claims—often enough in the past. But I’ve heard her talking as if someone were replying to her. That, along with this smell I can’t name, gives me chills.

Mad. I’m not going mad, even though my sister is that already.

“Up here, silly dogs.” Alina pats the blanket so hard it coughs dust. “Rafa, Mufu, there’s no need to be afraid!”

Rafa and Mufu stay still, though I limp a step closer. The ankle I hurt months and months back still jolts. With the door closed, I can’t hear what our older sisters say in the drawing room and I don’t think they can hear what happens in this room either. I’m not sure if I prefer or detest that with Alina acting as she does. “What. Don’t be afraid of what exactly?”

Alina gazes past me. That is, to my sides. But there’s nothing there, only a vanity desk with a cracked oval mirror and an armchair so worn that if you sit down on it, you need someone to pull you up from amidst the cushions. The dank smell—is it that of a cellar? I’ve never been in one and hope to never visit one—intensifies. Maybe I should call for Celestia or Elise. Definitely not Sibilia, because she teases me already more than is fair! Elise might be upset for one reason or another. And Celestia is occupied by… I don’t know what she’s doing. Now that I think of it, she seems intent on running her fingers over every wall and panel of the drawing room.

“Alina, it’s all right to tell me,” I say, and still the mirror glints facedown on the blanket, Rafa and Mufu refuse to move. “Tell me what it is!”

Alina stares at the mirror as if tempted to flip it around.

“I can’t. I can’t. You’re older than me.” Her lower lip trembles, but at least she isn’t crying. I bet that if she were to burst into tears once more, Elise and Sibilia would find a way to blame me for that, too. They’ve always been like that, pulling the same rope. “I can’t tell you. They forbid it. But I can show you.”

What should I do? What can I do? I sigh, and then I climb onto the bed, to her left side, with Sibilia’s mirror remaining between us. It’s after all just a mirror, not a rifle or a knife that Alina could hurt either me or herself with.

“Will you ask Rafa and Mufu to join us, too?”

I realize only then that my companions didn’t trail after me. Mufu whimpers, black tail pulled between her hind legs. Rafa growls, floppy brown ears pulled back, teeth bared. I pat the blanket, and still they don’t jump up.

“Oh, they’re silly.” I attempt a laugh, but I’m not exactly amused. Rafa and Mufu never disobey me. “Cold. Then, stay there on the cold floor. Yes. Cruelly on the cold floor.”

They lie down and hide their heads under their crossed paws. What under the Moon is going on? I nudge Alina with my elbow. “Well?”

My little sister flicks the mirror over.

At first, I see nothing else but the reflection of the flaking ceiling plastering and the chipped dome of the osprey soul lamp. I can also see my face, and it’s a pretty face. The winter hasn’t paled me, and my black hair is as gorgeously wild as ever.

“Well?” I ask, relieved, but also annoyed. As usual, Alina was just imagining things. I should have known better than to let her lure me into believing her.

“You can show yourself now,” Alina says.

A heartbeat later, two women lean toward us, their faces reflected in the mirror. They’re not exactly old, but weary beyond any age, I guess. And there’s something familiar in their bold faces and bolder gazes. The scent of the root cellar grows almost unbearable, and it has a vicious edge to it now. A bitter scent of… betrayal. Though I don’t know where that thought came from.

“Merile,” Alina says, and her voice doesn’t tremble at all. “Meet Irina”—she nods at the woman on the left—“and Olesia.”

I sit there frozen, with my back against the pillows. What is this that I’m seeing? It can’t be real. Really, it can’t.

I yank my gaze up, frantically glancing at my left and right. There’s no one there. Rafa and Mufu spring up, leap to the door, nails scratching the floor. Their eyes bulge with fear. They whine heart-wrenching short whimpers. If I weren’t almost twelve, I’d run to them and out of the room. But because I am, I mustn’t be afraid, not even if we’re in the presence of ghosts.

“Well?” Alina whispers, anxious to hear what I think.

I peek again at the mirror, just to be sure. The women stare back at me, unblinking. Their gray-white hair is gathered atop their heads in onionlike buns. Their faces are graying, too. Their gray dresses have puffy sleeves and multilayered lace fronts. Gray. No, they’re not gray all over but… “They’re fading.”

The two women smile at me, but it’s a cruel and calculating look that chills me to the core. Does Alina not see that? No, she doesn’t, because she’s still so young and gullible.

“Out.” I prod the mirror facedown with my forefinger, for I don’t really want to touch ghost-things. I grab Alina’s arm. “Let’s go out. Now.”

Despite Alina’s weak protests, I haul her with me onto the floor. Rafa and Mufu rush to me, to flank us as if they were guards assigned to protect us. My dear, darling companions!

“Why?” Alina squirms, trying to break free from my hold. “You didn’t even listen to what they have to say! You won’t believe how long it took me to get them to agree to meet you!”

Of all things! I prod her toward the door. “Rafa and Mufu… Rafa and Mufu need to pee. That’s why.”

Dying. The day is already dying when Rafa and Mufu leap through the snowbanks, sending white clouds up in the crisp air. I run after them, though my fur-trimmed cloak flaps against my sides like floppy wings. Though we’re allowed out only in the garden, after the weeks in the train my companions cherish every outing.

“Wait, Merile,” Alina calls after me. “Wait!”

I don’t. I’m not like her. I don’t see shadows. I don’t want to see ghosts. I need to get as far away as possible from both her and the house, from everything that’s not how it should be.

Soon, I’m but steps away from the barren rosebushes framing the stone steps that lead down to the orchard and the lake beyond. Snow floods my sabots, chafes my ankles and toes, but I don’t care. I have much bigger worries.

“Rafa, Mufu,” Alina pleads with my companions. And being soft-hearted sillies, they stop. They keep trotting in place, though. Despite their coats, they’re freezing.

“You want to wait for her?” I ask, annoyed that they’ve decided to side with Alina and not with me. No one ever sides with me these days!

My companions look anxiously at the house, at Alina. I realize they did sense the ghosts, and they’re definitely not mad. Well then, I’m not mad either! “Fine then.”

Alina scampers the rest of the way to us, her ugly gray coat open, her bootlaces undone. Frailer. Somehow, she’s smaller and frailer each day, though she’s the one who should be growing. It hurts to look at her, and so I look past her.

The house the color of a bruised peach looms behind my sister. Snow covers the black roof and makes the white sills even more so. Tabard smokes on the porch, his makeshift cloak barely shifting in the lazy wind. He’s not alone for long. Elise and Captain Janlav join him. Neither our older sisters nor the guards ever let us out of their sight for long.

“Merile, the ghosts…” Icky yellow snot runs down Alina’s thin lips. She sniffs, but it’s too late. She brushes her nose on her sleeve.

“Later.” I nod toward the porch. Our voices might still carry over. “And aren’t you cold?”

Alina glances down at her open coat. She’s wearing her woolen dress, but nothing else to keep her warm. Snow clots her hem up to her knees. “Yes. A little. Maybe.”

“Let me,” I say, swiftly buttoning her coat. My dear little sister, when she gets distraught, she forgets to take care of herself. I don’t know what would happen to her if she didn’t have us older sisters looking after her. “And if you don’t tie the laces, you’ll trip on those icy steps. Here, I’ll do it for you, but just this once. All right?”

But once I’m done, it’s darker already. The sky above the frozen lake is bleak blue and dull yellow. The garden walls cast shadows over the untended orchard. The iron gate has never looked as rigid, the stone steps leading down there as treacherous.

“Maybe we’ll take another path?” Alina offers as if reading my thoughts.

“Yes,” I whisper. We’ll walk a bit along one of the other trails leading down. There’s no reason to go all the way to the gate. We just need to find a place where we can talk.

We stroll in silence on the path that winds down the left side of the slope. The crisp snow cracks under our feet and my companions’ paws. A bird of some sort croaks and cackles. The barren oaks and maples rustle, their shadows taller with each moment. I hold on to Alina’s hand. I need to know what my sister knows, even if it means walking deeper into the darkness.

Soul and shadow. A person becomes a ghost when both their soul and shadow remain behind to sort out unfinished business. What caused these ghosts, Irina and Olesia, to decide to linger? Why are they being nice to Alina and attempting to be nice to me? What do they want from us? Why did Alina say it took her a long time to get them to agree to meet with me? As if we didn’t have enough worries of our own already! Thinking of the things Elise said makes my head ache!

The path turns to the right, and we enter the orchard. My eyes have grown accustomed to the dimmer light, and though the garden wall is high and its shadow thick, I’m no longer that confused or nervous. Not even when I hear the croak. For it’s but a magpie sitting on a branch of the hollow apple tree, right by the gate as black as true night.

“The white-sided one,” I say, even as Rafa and Mufu pause. They lift their forepaws at the exact same moment. They want to give the bird a chase.

I smile despite myself. My companions are getting plump from lack of exercise. Soon they’ll be as round as Sibilia once was. There would be more to cuddle then, but lifting them would become tricky. “Go!”

Alina and I admire them running, a brown and a gray arrow, a flurry of legs and tails. I have to remind myself we came down here for a reason. Alina must tell me everything she knows about the ghosts, for I don’t trust for even a moment that they’d have our best interests in mind.

I’m just about to demand that Alina do so, when something even stranger happens. Rafa and Mufu skid to a halt by the tree, barking. The magpie takes to the air, the white-striped wings spreading wide, the mighty black tail straightening. It swoops toward my companions—no, back toward the apple tree—and between two eyeblinks, it simply disappears.

And then, a hunched shadow of a woman steps out of the hollow trunk.

“A ghost,” I gasp.

Alina giggles. “No, she’s not!”

Where my companions refused to approach the ghosts, they’re not afraid of this woman in black who appeared seemingly out of nowhere. They bounce to her, heads bent low, ears pulled back in joy as if she were a trusted neighbor. And maybe she is something akin to that. “Can that be the Witch at the End of the Lane?”

“Yes!” Alina nods vigorously, and if I weren’t holding on to her hand, she’d run to the witch at once.

“Unexpected.” This is unexpected. Though I can’t remember much of our visit to the witch’s cottage, Celestia, Elise, and Sibilia all insist that the witch helped Alina when she was ill. I’m more prone to believe them than her. Or at least Celestia, because she never jokes.

“Let’s go and greet her.” Alina tugs toward the witch and my companions.

The witch must have heard her, because she turns to wave at us. Her black robes shift, not with the wind or because of her movement, but on their own. Rafa and Mufu poke at her hem, curious of the very same thing.

Should we? I glance over my shoulder, toward the house. Elise and Captain Janlav huddle at the top of the stone steps. They’re not really looking at us, rather at what passes for the sunset here. They talk in low voices, immersed in some topic of their own. I don’t think they have noticed the witch. It’s quite dark already. “Fine.”

But it’s Alina who leads the way, pulling me behind her. And when we reach the witch, my sister speaks before I have the chance. “What are you doing here?”

The witch cackles. Though she’s not much taller than me, she seems much more so as she leans toward us, watching us—no, our feet—down her beaky nose. Her breathing, it doesn’t form clouds like ours do, and her pupils are white as if she were blind. Which makes her next words even more peculiar. “Me come see you.”

Rafa and Mufu fall completely still. They don’t even shift weight, though the ground must still chill their paws. Stop. It’s as if the witch could make time stop for them. I wonder if this is why I can’t remember much of her cottage. That would be unfair, for her to have that much power.

“Why?” I ask because I really don’t know that much about the witch and her motives. People don’t visit these Moon-forgotten lands without a very good reason. And I don’t think anyone would come here voluntarily. Even Captain Ansalov and his soldiers left as soon as they could, and of that I’m very glad indeed.

The witch shrugs. Her bundled gray hair and layered dress shift as if she were caught in between two gusts that don’t know which way to blow. The dress is made of something gray-black and see-through, and yet she doesn’t seem to be suffering from the cold like I do. Which is also unfair. “When me help, me take interest.”

Allies. My sisters and I don’t exactly have that many allies left, not with Celestia’s previous plan going wrong and her seed being left behind at that desolate town to face the consequences. My seed. I don’t know what has become of my seed, whom I miss so very much! Celestia says we have to do with what we have. Since the witch is here now, I might as well let her help us. For I can’t tell my older sisters about what I saw earlier today or they’ll think me as mad as Alina is. “There’s ghosts in the house.”

“Ghosts.” The witch cranes her head toward the hill and the house. She sucks in the air, her pale blue lips pressing tight against her parted teeth. Smell. Can she smell the root cellar and old perfume? “Good? Bad?”

Alina gushes in, “Good, of course! They’re very nice old ladies!”

I think of their hungry eyes, Alina keeping them secret from everyone for who knows how long. “I’m not at all sure about that.”

“Wise,” the witch replies. Her nostrils flare wide. “Trust no ghost. Trust me.”

Which is a kind of foolish thing for her to say. I glance over my shoulder again. Elise and Captain Janlav seem to be arguing whether or not to descend the steps. Regardless of what they decide, there can’t be much time to talk with the witch before they’ll hear us.

“Why are you really here?” I ask.

“Moon, me, friends,” the witch replies, meeting my eyes with her white gaze. Truth. I think she’s telling the truth, but there’s no way to be sure before Papa rises to the sky. “Come summer, you flee.”

For a moment, my heart pounds so hard that I can’t form a single word, let alone a sentence. I often dream of leaving the house for good, but since we have no horses and Captain Ansalov’s hounds have our scent, even Celestia hasn’t been able to come up with a plan. Or if she has, she hasn’t shared it with us. Which would be so typical of her.

“How?” I ask, squeezing Alina’s hand. Things that sound too good are usually not what they seem.

The witch smiles, blue lips drawing back. Her teeth are big, barely fitting in her mouth. “Me help.”

Can I, should I trust the witch? It wouldn’t hurt to know more. Up in the sky, the faintest round shape yellows in the horizon. Can Papa already see us? Would the witch dare to lie in his presence?

But before I can ask the witch for more details, Elise’s voice carries through what may now be called night. “Alina, Merile!”

I dare not to move. Has my sister glimpsed the witch? Or did she hear us talking with her? Or even worse, did Captain Janlav notice her? That wouldn’t be good. I force myself to merely glance at my sister’s direction, rather than to spin around as if I were indeed doing something forbidden.

“Come inside, will you?” Elise waves at us, clinging to Captain Janlav for balance, halfway down the stone steps. I realize she doesn’t want to descend the rest of the way any more than I want to return to the house when I still have so many questions left to ask both the witch and Alina.

“Soon,” I call back at Elise, then turn back toward the witch.

But there’s no sign of her anywhere. If you don’t count the lonely magpie perched on the gnarliest branch of the old apple tree.