by S. K Munt
‘Oh she’s very plain…’ a woman whispered pityingly as we stepped onto the bridge and began to pass the market people set up on the overpass.
‘Pale, like a Northerner,’ a man agreed, his voice muffled by the gurgling white water beneath him, but not enough for my eager ears which had been waiting for some sort of helpful information to present itself for weeks. ‘They’ll put her in the Corps, I’m certain.’
‘But she’s an Artisan’s daughter, I think- and they usually blossom the brightest within the harem.’
I knew what an Artisan was, and I was not one of them. My father was a Blue Collar and that meant that I was too, so whatever an Artisan’s child was expected to be able to do well, I would surely not be able to do it.
But my mind hung onto the word ‘Harem,’ I didn’t know what that was, but I reminded myself to look into it when- or if- I got the chance. I’d memorised most of the names of the castes within our society from largest to smallest: The Blue Collars, The Academics, The Farmers, The Artisans, The Given, The Nobility, The Nephilim, The Athletes and The Royals… but ‘Harem’ was not one of them. I hoped it was a factory of some sort, and not a caste from the outside world- something sinister like the Fallen or the Pirates.
‘The beautiful ones perhaps, but that one is anything but. She’ll end up in the gardens, mark my words, if not sent off south.’
Garden? I could work here in Eden? Oh, that would be lovely!
I ignored the offensive parts of the woman’s commentary because they rolled off me like water off an ugly duckling’s back. I’d been attending classes with the other kids in my village for two years by then, and there wasn’t a mean word that these adults could fling about to describe me that I hadn’t heard before.
I was more excited by the prospect of working with flowers to pay her any mind beyond what I wanted to hear. Finch had warned me that I’d probably end up hard labour until I was twenty-one, but working in a garden didn’t sound so bad at all! If I’d been able to stay amidst the Blue Collars, that is probably exactly what I would have wanted to do once my time to work came. My father had been a builder and my mother a seamstress and they seemed like very boring choices to me. But working with blossoms outside? That I could get excited about!
‘With that skin? Heaven’s no. If they don’t keep her inside, she’ll become a pile of ashes!’
I frowned at that, staring down at my knees beneath the hem of my gold dress, and saw that they were bruised from where I’d copped a few soccer balls to the shins from Finch the day before. Now my complexion looked almost sickly in contrast to the purplish smudges on my legs, but I wasn’t red or blistered. I could live with being plain, but not being locked inside the palace walls! And I oughtn’t be, because as white as my skin was, I’d yet to see it freckle, peel or burn from exposure to the sun. My mother tried to keep me indoors because she’d always worried about the same thing, but I snuck outside every chance I got and I’d never been sun-stung. Finch said that I was so bright that I simply reflected the sun and burned those around me, and Jaiya agreed, saying that I was the reason why she had so many ‘darned’ freckles!
I don’t know why they bothered her, for Jaiya was beautiful; she had straight dark hair, sparkling eyes and creamy skin, and the freckles across her nose were like pretty little cinnamon-coloured constellations. Just like mother. Would she grow up to be tall like her, or more like father, who was also dark but squatter, darker and more muscular? And what if I never got to find out? Jaiya had told me that sometimes the families gave their children away, and never gave them a second thought after, and if that was true and I turned out to be one of them, I’d never survive the rejection!
My heart was racing. For years I’d tried to learn more about what being Given to the crown meant for my future, but now that I was on the precipice of knowing what my path would be, I wanted nothing but to turn on my heel, run home and never give any of this business a moment’s thought again! I hated being a girl. What I’d give to trade places with Finch and learn how to build things when he turned sixteen, the way my father had! What I’d give to be fortifying the bridge I was crossing into Eden with stones and mortar and gold dust like father had, rather than be propelled forward into uncertainty!
‘Her hair is grey!’ exploded a girl of about thirteen who was fanning herself from the spring heat from behind a stall selling jars of preserves. She burst into a fit of giggles. ‘She’s like a little grandmother! Kohén won’t want HER in his face every day!
Why would I be in Prince Kohén’s face? Gosh is there really a chance that I could work right here in the palace?
‘Eglantine, be nice,’ her mother chided. ‘It is her birthday month, and she is being taken from her parents, so she must be very frightened! And dear Kohén needs another friend today more than ever before- perhaps he’ll accept this one for that reason alone.’
Eglantine ducked her head, feigning shame, but it was not her words that had bothered me, but her mother’s. What did the prince’s state of mind have to do with my arrival? And why would my looks prevent me from working within the castle? We were crossing the second side of the golden palace gates and everything loomed above and seemingly over me, growing taller and larger with every step I took closer, and I began to shrink down under the weight of the auspicious moment.
Could I be overlooked for Garden duty because I am not pretty? But I am so good at it! The caste system is in place to ascertain that we are all doing what we do best… and I grow things well! What do my looks have to do with that? Could I really end up canning fish instead of working with flowers because I am unattractive?
I shuddered and glanced out over the sparkling ocean to the side of us, silently begging God to return now- to take us all up to heaven so that I could stay with my family forever from then on or before my wicked thoughts could alert Satan to my misery. But God did not grant my wish because God could not do anything to help his mortals’ souls anymore. If I wanted him to save me when he returned, I had to save myself in his name and stop whispering pleas to Satan.
The people I’d passed stopped whispering about me and started selling their wares again, and my mother was walking faster as though she were a tourist from one of the other kingdoms who wanted to touch the stone palace walls. Visitors came to North Arcadia for that purpose all the time; to stand where the angel Miguel had given up his life for mankind’s second chance. The fortress that he had started building for his wife and son, the tidal falls rushing from the Wildwoods river and the beautiful palace grounds surrounding it, had come to be known as ‘Eden’ which was a name taken from one of the old bible stories from the time before. We didn’t like to put much weight into any of those silly stories, now that we knew how many of them had been lies, but ‘Eden,’ had been a real place- the first place- and had meant paradise to mankind before and now, it stood for that for the same thing. Except within the walls of our Eden, apples grew in abundance, people wore beautiful clothes instead of fig leaves (honestly, the old world had believed the most ludicrous stories!) and everyone was allowed in if they had just cause.
Right then, I could see that members of the castes who were at their leisure were milling about on the common to the left of the castle, having picnics while Artisans danced, painted and sang for their amusement. I had always begged my mother and father to take me to the common more often, as had Jaiya, but they’d been too busy since father’s accident which had happened the year before my birth and had haunted our family since, as much as my arrival into the world had. Walking that far pained him, and mother was too busy sewing uniforms for the Corps to go anywhere while the sun was out.
Finch said that before I was born, and before father’s fall, mother and father had gone to one of the palace balls at least twice a year. But they’d stopped since they’d broken the rules, probably for fear of being shamed when they were asked about their offspring. In fact, they rarely went anywhere, or took me anywhere, for that precise reason.
So
I watched the people enjoying the common grounds as we passed it by, getting so distracted by a beautiful dancer in an outfit made of chiffon and dangling beads, that I didn’t realise that we’d arrived at my destination until my mother stopped walking, and I practically collided into the back of her.
2.
‘Larkin!’ my mother used her least pleasant tone in her softest voice. ‘Remember yourself!’
I did, and in doing so, I immediately forgot the jingling of bells and the curve of the dancer’s belly. In fact, everything good and interesting about Eden was sucked up into my emotional vacuum and all that remained was I: Larkin Whittaker. Five years old, third-born to the Blue Collar caste, and about to be motherless. There was no sun, no music and no strength in my legs. I was at the castle doors, and strangers were approaching my mother and I from every angle in numbers too numerous and colours too bright to be separated from one another- they were a blur and so was I. Arcadia had always been surrounded by a high, electrified fence which served to keep the creatures and banished who lurked in the Wildwoods out of the city streets, and I could feel those humming walls closing in on me now.
God… please… oh! I wish you could hear me!
‘Good morning…’ a husky, female voice said. ‘Sapphire Whittaker, I presume?’
‘Yes, madam,’ my mother curtsied before me, her plain cream dress pooling slightly on the stone tiles. I got my balance and stepped back from her, my little chin lifting so that I could follow the folds of crystalline blue chiffon up until they landed on eyes of the exact same hue. I caught my breath- the duchess of Arcadia was even more beautiful up close than she was in her portraits! Her hair was black and twisted into a rosette formed of braids above her left ear and her eyes the palest blue. Her skin was the same tone as most of the Arcadians’; a sweet brown that was both creamy and metallic, and her eyelashes were so thick that I wondered if every day was an overcast one to her. She looked exactly how royalty ought to look, except for the way that her painted lips were pursed in displeasure.
I’d heard only good, sweet things about the King’s wife, and yet the woman examining me now had a line between her dark brows, wet cheeks and red eyes- just like mine. She’d been crying, and she looked angry, and when she spoke next, I assumed that I was to blame: ‘So… this is your donation?’
Donation? No, no I’m not a coin! I’m Larkin!
‘Yes, this is Larkin Whittaker,’ my mother responded softly, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it, and like she’d activated some sort of pump, my hottest tears began to chug free. She was still here with me! I’d been feeling so alone!
The duchess looked me over and then to my mother, a confused expression on her face. ‘Has she Albanian ancestry? Alaskan?’
I felt my mother bristle the way she did every time that question was asked of her. I didn’t know where those places were, but they had to be from the time before, and I assumed that the people from them had been very fair.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Her father and I can trace back both sides of the family tree to the first year, and our patriarch, Renal Cueveres, was from south of the American border, like most of us. Her fairness must be a throwback from more than seven generations ago.’
‘She’s more than fair,’ the duchess leaned over and peered at me, her expression still quizzical. She had a startlingly bright yellow stone around her neck and it swung toward me like a pendulum, winking in the sun and making me hum in barely restrained delight. I’d heard of gemstones, but I’d never seen one with my own eyes before! This wasn’t just any gemstone either- but a perfectly cut heart surrounded by shiny white stones that I knew had to be diamonds- REAL diamonds to match the large one on her left hand! How had she come about them? They were supposed to be all gone, carried off by the Fallen and their greedy minions during Armageddon. I scanned her other fingers and found a pewter ring with angel wings unfolding from the centre and though it was made from a plain metal, the detail in the feathers was unequalled.
The duchess touched my hair, breaking me from my stupor, then wrinkled her nose and straightened to address my mother. ‘If she has no northern heritage, she must have some sort of pigment defect, yes?’
I looked up at my mother, and saw that her lips were so tightly pressed together that they were almost as white as my skin. ‘She is in perfect health,’ she said softly, ‘no birth defects at all. We have a doctor’s certificate to prove it.’
‘Well then, that’s of some comfort to me, though it doesn’t make her any less perplexing to look at, does it?’
I stared down at my feet, wondering if it really was as hard to look at me, as my sister had said. Finch teased me by saying that I was as bright as pure snow or a sun ray, but Jaiya had called me ‘freaky-looking,’ more than once, saying that sometimes it seemed as though I haunted our house, rather than lived there.
‘Her skin tone is lovely, and her eyes unusual enough to be alluring, I believe,’ my mother said. ‘But most importantly, she’s a good little worker. She teaches herself to read and has grown three full gardens at home.’
I shot my mother a look, as shocked by her flattery as I was by the way she was selling me. Did she honestly believe that I could belong here amidst these silk-clad women, or out in some factory in one of the other kingdoms? Couldn’t she suggest that if I was unsuitable, she could simply take me home…?
‘Perhaps that’s all true…’ the duchess allowed. ‘But crying all morning hasn’t done you any favours has it, little Lark? And your posture is rather poor.’
I nodded. I’d been cautioned not to cry and now, I was being humiliated for it. That is another thing that has not changed in our world; there are tears, and there will always be those with beauty and those without. We have been conditioned to turn a blind eye to birth defects, retardation, race and even sometimes, gender, but beauty will always stand out and those without it will always fade under indifferent or displeasured gazes.
I was not beautiful- I was too fair, almost snow white and in some light, my hair looked grey, like a used mop. My mother had told me many stories- old world ones- and in most of those stories the beautiful princess had always been fair-headed, and she’d tried to assure me that one day, I would grow up to be like those girls too. Only she’d said so while looking everywhere on my face except at my eyes, before looking away, and I knew that the girls in those stories had had dark golden hair like Milla Floret, and tiny noses, like Patrice Kimble, who were both girls in my class who had many friends. Golden hair and skin was beautiful- like Heaven Barachiel had been. White and washed-out was not.
It wasn’t just my colouring either. My nose was too long and my skin and brows and lashes almost as pale as my hair, offering no contrast. The princesses in the storybooks had probably had vibrant eyes like my sister Jaiya, which glittered like coals but mine were the palest blue- a hue so faded that it was almost colourless. Those princesses probably had kissy lips like Milla, not a broad, man’s mouth like mine, and their fingernails were probably long and polished like Jaiya’s nails, not brittle and broken like mine were from the gardens I tended to at home.
Those princesses probably hadn’t hated being girls. Back in the olden days, girls had been treated as fragile and then in modern times, most nations had granted their women freedom- often to their own detriment. But in our time, equality was preached as an absolute for every member of society and yet- I didn’t see any five-year-old boys being handed over to the duchess of Arcadia! Apparently, I’d been born into a world where I was destined to be the exception to almost every rule no matter which way I turned or in this case- was pushed.
Or donated.
‘She’s not emotional often,’ my mother said somewhat limply. ‘But she turned five this morning, so I think she’s overwhelmed by all of the changes.’
‘A moon birthday?’ a woman asked, and I sniffled and turned to see the woman in the clingy white gown step forward and kneel before me, smiling a resplendent smile that made me feel, for a moment,
like everything was going to be okay. She was so beautiful! And the king was behind her, leaning towards me and smiling just as warmly. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice sounding like paper being eaten by fire. My lower lip wobbled. ‘I got this dress as a gift.’
The woman smiled at me again, but there was sadness behind her smile. ‘It’s very lovely,’ she said, and tucked a strand of my pale hair behind my ears, and from her earlobes, golden chandeliers sparkled in the sun. She was quite literally covered in golden adornments, from the butterfly clasp holding back some of her brown wavy hair, to each of her knuckles- right down to the sandals on her feet, which like her, were beautiful. Almost as beautiful as a Nephilim. Was she one of the magical beings, or just a noblewomen polished to perfection? There was a special division of the Arcadian Corps, which existed just to track down and reap those with Nephilim powers, and though many hid, it was heard that they were treated like nobility when found and only asked to work when required.
This woman looked like a lady who had lived a very refined life, but her eyes were as kind as though she truly had descended from an angel. She was old enough to have mothered children and yet nothing about her said: ‘Mother,’ save for her kind smile, so I checked her hands for the telling glow of power but saw none. ‘And the fact that you’re turning five in the same moon as the princes is very special. I’ll bet you’re very special too, aren’t you Larkin?’
‘I…I grow rather large pumpkins…’ I stuttered between sobs, hoping to prove that I had something going for me and that I ought not be sentenced to the hardest work in the darkest corner of Calliel because of my face. ‘And I’m good at ball sports. B-but I don’t think I’m special. Thank you, all the same...’
