I push the hall’s double doors open with both hands and sway into the freezing, black night. Even though my carriage is waiting for me, I fear the gagargi may be right. Everything is ready for the coup. By the time I reach the palace, it will be too late to stop it. There will be blood, and some of it may be my family’s.
I glance up at the sky, at the Moon’s glowing face. Oh, Father, please help your strayed daughter!
Chapter 6: Alina
As soon as Nurse Nookes closes the door behind her, I open my eyes, as I have done on every single night since my name day. I will stay awake for as long as I can and longer. At some point, I might fall asleep. Though I’ve asked my sisters and even Nurse Nookes how to distinguish dreams from reality, I’m still unsure of what happens in my room after the lights go out, and I don’t dare to ask more questions, lest they start worrying even more about me.
Shadows live in the world beyond this one. As I’m the youngest, it’s impossible for me to see there. And yet, the shadows arrive mere moments later.
I lie very quiet under my down-feather duvet as they shift in the corners of the room, as their forms strengthen. The shadows are smaller here than in life. Diminished. I can’t yet name who has come to visit me tonight. Usually it’s birds, but sometimes animals I’ve never met in life.
Tonight I’m visited by a swan, an owl, and a hairy creature that stoops on two legs. It’s a monkey. No, it’s bigger. An ape. I nod a greeting to the animals, but I don’t dare to speak, lest someone may hear me and alert Nurse Nookes. I can still taste the sugary mixture she urged me to swallow before tugging me to bed. I spat it out when she had her back turned to me. I know she means well, everyone does, but I hate how her potions cloud my mind.
As always, my animal visitors play out scenes from their lives. Their shadows dance dark against the white wall opposite my bed. I watch each of their performances, stifling yawns, forcing my eyes to stay open.
The swan flies, flies to faraway lands, to nest and raise its hatchlings on the shores of a clear-watered lake.
The owl hunts. It swoops over glittering snowfields, toward the sounds it hears from under the snow banks. Then it dives, talons spread. Its beak pierces the ice-crusted snow. The scene ends in the owl’s victory. In a mouse’s death.
The ape leads a slow life. It clings to a tree and munches leaves of plants I don’t recognize. It scratches its friends, and they scratch it in return.
Though I can’t know for sure, I think these might be the best moments of the animals’ lives. It’s well possible that some of my visitors have shown me what they wished they’d done differently. In any case, be it memories or regrets, it’s my duty to watch, since if I don’t watch then I fear that no one else will do so.
After the ape retreats back into the corner, I nod again at the shadows. They nod back at me. It’s so hard not to yawn, to remain awake. Sometimes each animal has only one scene to play. Sometimes several. Sometimes they share with me what might be their nightmares. I don’t know for sure.
The shadows slip onto the wall together. Each performs the same story. They’re caught and caged. They’re taken to a house I don’t want to name for fear of somehow summoning his attention. Their cages are carried down a steep staircase, into a long, narrow room and… after that the animals cease to be as they were and only their shadows remain as their own.
“How can I help you?” I whisper as loudly as I dare. I’ve asked this before. They never reply, just stare back at me. Maybe I’m the only one willing to hear of their fates. To remember rather than to ignore and forget.
The swan stirs from its posture of defeat. It unfolds its wings from against its sides and raises its head high. The beak parts, and…
“Alina?”
I scramble back on my bed. The swan spoke to me. It knows my name.
The owl and ape stare at me. They seem as confused as I feel.
“Alina?” the voice asks again. It doesn’t belong to the swan but to Nurse Nookes.
“Hide,” I whisper to the animals.
The swan tilts its head. The owl looks as if it were about to hoot. The ape merely scratches its armpit.
“I’m coming in,” Nurse Nookes calls through the door, even though she received no reply.
“Hide!” I command the stubborn animals, even as I slip farther under my fluffy duvet and pat it smooth around me.
But only as the door creaks open, the shadows scatter back into the corners. Relief eases the knot in my stomach. If you don’t know where to look, you won’t see them. I learned of their presence only after I got my name.
“It’s me…” Nurse Nookes slips into my room, shading a duck-soul lantern. Her low heels tap softly against the carpet though she’s round like the plumpest of summer apples. I think she could move silently if she so wanted, but she makes sounds so as not to frighten me in case I’d stir to her entrance. “Nurse Nookes.”
I quickly close my eyes before she notices I never went to sleep in the first place. What is she doing in my room when I’ve done nothing to warrant anyone’s attention? I haven’t cried or shouted in my sleep, I’m sure of it! And it can’t be morning yet. I’ve stayed awake through so many nights that I know the hours that lie between this moment and the relief that dawn brings in its wake.
Maybe I did fall asleep. This might be a dream. It’s also well possible this is a nightmare. If it is, I hope that it won’t be one of those where the gagargi threatens to feed me to his Great Thinking Machine.
“You must wake up.” Nurse Nookes shakes my shoulder, voice shaded by worry, of all things. But something is off. I’ve known her since I was born, and tonight her concern has nothing to do with me.
Be this a dream or a nightmare, I can’t leave her facing it alone. She’s always been there for me, even if it’s been with her potions. I turn to my side, to face her, and rub my eyes as if she’d woken me up. “What is it?”
Nurse Nookes peels the duvet off me. She doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “The Crescent Empress has summoned you and your sisters to the sacred observatory.”
This is… This might still be a dream. It certainly doesn’t feel like reality. Nurse Nookes is never afraid of anything. Mama has never summoned me or my sisters to the sacred observatory in the middle of the night. Dreams, on the other hand, are full of people acting out of order, and other pure impossibilities. Running, but never reaching your destination. Packing, but never remembering everything. Those sort of things.
I hide a small smile. When you realize you’re in a dream, sometimes it’s possible to control it. I crawl to sit on the bed and dangle my legs over the edge.
Nurse Nookes squats down before me, as she always does. She looks me squarely in the eye, frowns like drapes drawn apart. “Do you need to use the pot-pot?”
I shake my head, though rather to hide my secrets from her than in reply. In any case, I don’t feel like I’d need to pee anytime soon. Either not enough hours have passed since she tugged me into bed or this is indeed a dream.
“Can you take off the nightgown while I fetch your clothes?”
My insides squirm as the wrongness sharpens. A Daughter of the Moon never dresses or undresses by herself. Of course I shouldn’t keep Mama waiting. But this need for haste… Nurse Nookes wouldn’t ask this of me unless we’re in a great hurry.
I tug the nightgown over my head while Nurse Nookes rummages in the clothes room.
“Something warm. Something…” she mutters in the dark. Why she hasn’t switched on the lights, I can’t guess. “Can’t waste more time. This will have to do.”
I jump down from the bed as she waddles to me. She clutches a thick winter dress against her very round bosom. It’s not the kind of dress I’d usually wear for an audience with Mama. But rather…