by S. K Munt
When the beautiful clock in the great hall chimed the third hour of noon, Kohén and I would part; him to study combat in the east wing of the palace and me to my deportment classes. At first, it irritated Maryah that I always arrived for the ‘pretty’ part of the day sweaty with my hair in disarray and grass stains on my skirts, but as soon as she learned that I was keeping the little prince occupied, she stopped huffing quite so much.
Kohén and I kept our budding friendship a secret from almost everybody for awhile, but when the weather began to cool down in October, he was forbidden from playing outside and so he began to invite me up to the Collection room and so people saw us together more often- palace workers mainly and though the servants seemed surprised to see us together so often at first, after a while, I suppose we just became part of the scenery to them: the little prince and his lark. The girls in my dorm however, teased me endlessly about it, complaining that I had boy germs and that was when I learned that Kohén had never asked any of them to play, and they’d never offered. It was strange, but learning that improved my perspective on life a lot. Maybe the other girls were all prettier, smarter and more graceful than I- but that didn’t matter to Kohén, and that made him matter a great deal to me.
Once, the king and duchess walked in on me showing Kohén how to bounce the ball off my head in the east courtyard by Miguel Barachiel’s cottage, and though the duchess obviously found the trick to be the odd sort for a girl to possess and worried about me playing with a ball so close to a national treasure, the king had laughed and encouraged me to do it a second time, and then had told Kohén that he expected him to be able to do all of my tricks by the end of the month, making his approval of our odd friendship clear, just as Maryah had.
It begged for me to wonder why, but I’d given up asking what my purpose would be within the castle and what I was studying so many contrasting subjects for. Kohén swore that he did not know, Maryah cut us off from asking, and the other adults within the castle avoided our wing and all of the children in general.
We couldn’t really play inside in the Collection room during those chilly months, given how the walls of the opulent rooms were sheathed in glass to display the discovered treasures of the failed civilisation before ours, but we’d pull out the cards so that I could teach him Poker, and when we grew tired of that, Kohén would show me what things were (or sometimes what he THOUGHT they had once been) and for me that was almost as fun because it helped give form to the words I’d read in books such as: ‘typewriter’ ‘telescope’ and ‘telephone.’ I was a slow learner who was full of questions, and Kohén liked feeling important and so he never complained that I asked too many, not like my parents had and teachers still did- he just talked on until the bell chimed.
In many ways, I think Kohén was more of a teacher to me than Maryah was, and I was jealous of the fact that he knew so much more about the world at five and a half, than my brother did at fourteen. Perhaps the different social castes in this world were more equal than they had been in the old, but there were still classes and some definitely had advantages over the others. And if the Blue Collars found out that a third of the nobility had funds enough to have their children privately tutored, instead of being crammed into classrooms like sardines, it would certainly raise questions! As far as I’d ever known, each caste had its own school building that everyone was expected to attend, so why had girls like Emmerly had a governess instead? How had her family afforded it, given that the nobility wages were not that much higher than the Blue Collar ones?
But I was a girl of five and not a great thinker, and because we’d been told by God that putting our faith in the royal family was equal to putting faith in him, I accepted that things were as they ought to be, and lived the life I’d been given without wondering if I ought to be entitled to more than Kohén’s company, or he to less. No one got to keep their caste of birth after turning twenty-one, after all- not even the nobility- so I supposed that a silly, spoiled girl like Emmerly needed all the extra education that she could get.
And that was how the days went on during the colder months and well into spring- either Kohén sharing with me what he’d learned in his advanced studies, or me showing him what I’d learned amongst the Blue Collars- things like card games and whatnot that were entertaining, but not useful at all. With every passing month from when we first met, he grew more clever and I more enlightened and more often than not, I counted myself as blessed to have come to the palace after all. I was not needed there, but I was wanted, and by the time that the trees had began to drop their snowy burdens, I had stopped crying for want of my family every night, and sought out ways to make the prince laugh instead, because when Kohén laughed, the palace felt like more of a home than my old one had ever been.
9.
Palace life ran like clockwork, disturbed only when a new ‘Given’ girl joined our ranks, or when the royal family had to go off and visit one of the other kingdoms to compare progress and ascertain that all four on the land that had once been known jointly as ‘America’ was on its way to become a whole again, harmoniously as was God’s wish under the new name of ‘Calliel.’
The palace was quieter when the royal family was gone, but much more relaxed, and on those weeks, Maryah would allow us to explore the other parts of the castle, but only under her guidance. However, despite how many times she chose to teach us outside, and how many days she allowed us Given girls to run wild with our hair out and our feet bare at the base of the tidal falls at low tide, the northern wing always remained strictly off limits with guards posted at the door, which disturbed my curiosity to no end. One night, while I was practicing my ball tricks, I found myself gazing toward the northern wing while chewing on my lip and wondering if I’d get in trouble if I merely peeked through one of the windows. But I never did, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, but rather because the courtyard which sat between the north and west wings had a steel trellis draped with ivy lining the windows on the inner side, which blocked not only access physically, but all visibility. I wasn’t supposed to spend time in that courtyard either unless I was using the pool, which edged into it from beneath the west wing’s wall, and only when accompanied by an adult (I couldn’t yet swim) so I retreated. The outer side was a bust too- the windows opened outwards, but each window pane was bordered with its own individual trellis, and thick white-silk curtains fell behind those, and not once did I ever find them pulled to the side.
The vines however, were thick and lovely and I couldn’t wait until I had a home of my own that I could drape in blossoms!
By the time Kohén and his parents returned from their third trip away, I’d long since given up hope of spying on the northern wing at all, but the idea of sneaking in through the door one day began to hold more appeal to me. After all, everybody knew that the royal family- who were considered the most important individuals on the face of the planet- inhabited the upper level of the north wing… so what was going on in the lower level that was so darned important? Once, while lingering in the cross section of the castle that was used as the throne room, I saw prince Karol duck into the north wing, and not come out again for hours. But he looked neither vexed nor pleased when he finally came out after supper, which gave nothing away.
I tried asking Kohén what was in there of course, but as when I’d asked him about my future, he’d simply shrugged and said: ‘Beats me,’ and I’d believed him because his eyes hadn’t betrayed any emotion aside from disinterest. After that, we’d gotten into an argument over the expression: ‘Beats me,’ and where it had originated from, and the north wing had taken a backseat in my mind to the thrill of a damned good argument.
I had four classes a day for that first year: reading in the morning, music studies after, then lunch with Kohén, followed by deportment and rounding out with dance. After that, we Given girls would all have dinner together in the southern wing, and then have two hours to our leisure before lights out. We had Saturdays to ourselves, which I almost alway
s spent with Kohén, but on Sundays, we all had to attend a communal meeting in the throne room after lunch, much like the meetings I had gone to back in the village on the common, followed by a short Shepherd service. We had a man there, just like in my village that was referred to as ‘Shep’, but he did not claim to have any sort of favour with the missing God- only a full grasp on the events that had led to the fall of mankind.
Shep had been born as an Academic but had been granted the title of Shepherd and taken up by the nobility, after writing a series of children’s books on theology- books that I had actually read. It was his job to remind us weekly, about what the first civilisation had done to incur God’s wrath, and how even the angels had been corrupted by vanity, greed and dishonesty afterwards. He would read us stories about the horrible wars that had been waged in God’s name, and those before us had ruined the planet so much that God had had no choice but to wipe civilisation out and start again. Then, he would round up his lecture by reminding us that our king was the descendant of the Angel Miguel, and that every time we put our faith in the king, we were putting our faith in God and ensuring that when HE returned next, he would be pleased to see how we had learned from the mistakes of the fallen. Then he would point out the flaws in the old religions to explain why they had caused more hate than love, and why they were illegal now. As ludicrous as some of the old Christian and Islamic stories were, I loved hearing anything about the AD and BC worlds and listened eagerly.
There was something else that amused me about Sundays that had nothing to do with the old stories and more to do with the girls in my dormer. I noticed that the other Given girls were always that little bit nicer after Shepherd services, as though they were trying to purge a weeks’ worth of vanity and envy from their systems by sharing cookies with me and avoiding primping in front of the mirrors. But then Monday would dawn and they’d wake up and act as cliquey, giggly and exclusive as they had the previous morning, and after a while, I ceased to care. Really, my mother and sister had been shutting me out of their feminine bonds for years; so living with three more indifferent girls was nothing new or intolerable, not so long as I had Kohén’s company at lunch to get me through those lonely classes anyway.
10.
Two more girls arrived under the first full moon of the fall. Martya Rice, from the Academic caste and Eflin Cabot, another Artisan’s daughter, which confirmed Prince Karol’s theory that the less inhibited Artisan’s broke the third child rule more often than others. Apparently, seventeen third children had been born the same year as us and out of those fourteen; eight had been from the Artisan caste, which was more than half.
When Elfin arrived at the beginning of winter, it was in an extraordinarily pretty gown made of many colours and layers, and before we’d even learned her name, she announced that her mother was a seamstress who had designed gowns for the duchess, which made the other girls ‘Oooh’ and ‘Ahh,’ and made me melt into my comforter in embarrassment. My mother was a seamstress too, but she went to a factory every day to reproduce uniforms for other factory workers- she’d certainly never sewn anything creative or lovely. That sort of thing ought not have bothered me, but it did- I was tired of coming last all the time!
Elfin had hair almost as pale as mine in places, but the darker, complexion born by most southerners, and an easily given smile. She might have looked a lot like Emmerly but everything about her was longer from her facial features to her height to her hair, which swished about her waist, and she was so tall that she towered over most of us by several inches, despite being months younger than us all! And when she announced that her parents had been married, not joined, everybody practically fell about themselves to compliment her, because that was the one label you could glue to yourself to be considered ‘better’ than others.
Young adults have between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one to find someone they would like to marry, or volunteer to be joined with, but after that, their names went into a lottery according to caste, fertility and age and couples are reaped from there to be joined for breeding purposes. Married couples weren’t a rarity, but they were uncommon, because it is considered a Godly act, while joining is one of necessity. So the families with holy unions were revered, as my parents relationship had once been.
The Joining’s were done twice a year in large groups, and were regarded as legal contracts. The couple got a house, bred and when their children turned twenty-one, the partnership was dissolved and the couple given a single dwelling each in the retirement villages or single communities if desired- or a smaller home for two if the couple wished to continue to live together, or even marry after. The spouses still had to work for the exact amount of time each in the Blue Collar ones, but whether they did this week by week or year by year or for ten years at a time after the first child was born was up to them, so long as one parent stayed at home with the children while the other worked.
Marriages, on the other hand were the same as in the time before only the rules were more strict- the vows were repeated in front of a shepherd and in God’s name, and the union classed as unbreakable. Adultery, abandonment and battery were seen as heinous crimes and were punishable by banishment. You had until you were thirty to have children, and if you did find that love to have them with, you were rewarded with a very large savings bond from the kingdom that, if guarded carefully, could lead to the couple investing in a farm down the line, or paying a private tutor to enhance their children’s education or building a larger, more lavish home or even traveling.
My parents had been married, but their savings bond had been eaten up by having me. Once again, this could have been called unfair but once again, it was my parents’ mistake for having a third child instead of using the birth control that we were given for free. Our system was fair but there were cracks in it and between my birth and father’s injury well- I had slipped through every one of them.
But love and fertility were not priorities for everyone, and people continued to be fussy about who they mated with, now that they knew that God didn’t demand it of us, so you have the right to turn down one of the government-appointed Joinings if the match didn’t appeal to you. And if you hit the age of thirty and were still single, you were sent off to live in Rachiel, which was a sister city of ours.
Rachiel was where the largest farms in Arcadia were located, as well as several factories, a few Corps barracks and a cluster of fishing wharves, so everybody had somewhere to work whether they were Blue Collar or Artisan or Academic. In Rachiel, most of the accommodations provided were single-dwellings and aside from a few clusters of self-made homes, those large apartment blocks housed most of the residents there. There was no family culture in Rachiel and the breeding laws were strict- when you entered the city, you were given the infertility elixir, and if you did not take it and conceived out of wedlock, you were banished from Arcadia. All singles had to work until they were sixty, and though they were permitted to fall in love, marry and move back to Arcadia after the age of thirty, they would never be able to have children or get the monetary reward. This suited a lot of people, either because they had no choice or because they preferred to live alone, but there were also a lot of depressed people living in Rachiel, who regretted turning their nose up at the joining system.
The city attempted to mask that stale misery with a number of taverns, balls and festivals but the simple fact was that eighty percent of Joined unions went on to get married after, and when they did not work out so well, at least the spouses had children and a home of their own to show for the first half of their lives. If you were single though, you had to pay rent or buy a dwelling of your own and work longer, and you would never belong to a neighbourhood in Arcadia unless you were a live-in servant, which was the number one place in the new world that everybody aspired to live in.
I of course, was practically guaranteed to end up living in Rachiel, and that did not bother me too much. The rules were in place to ensure that people in Arcadia continued to breed within sa
fe parameters, while encouraging the nuclear family which was still regarded as the ultimate arrangement. There were barely any children born unwanted or adopted in Arcadia, the population would never exceed the region’s natural resources, and the divorce rate was non-existent, which lead to fewer broken hearts and homes. The other kingdoms in Calliel mimicked our system, but no two were exactly the same because of the diversity in economics. In Tariel, the breeding was capped at one child per family but in Janiel, there was no limit so long as all citizens were prepared to work in the fishing industry without complaint.
As with everything else, the Arcadian government swore that one day the systems that had been put in place to control us would be rendered irrelevant, because our kingdom had been built with a strong moral compass pointing to God, that we would one day volunteer to follow without laws restricting us. But until then, everyone was protected, and even homosexual couples were granted the right to raise children first and then go about finding a mate without being considered ‘irregular’.
So, Elfin being born from a happily married couple made her special indeed- as though she didn’t already have enough going for her, and a bawdy, sparkling personality to boot! It was clear that she was going to be accepted into the fold of gossipy Given girls for her confidence and style alone, but then, she told us that her mother was going to continue to sew her pretty dresses for special occasions like the New Year’s Eve ball, and might even make some dresses for her very best friends too- so Emmerly, Rayleigh and Lette immediately began to pile compliments on top of her, hinting that they’d very much like to be included amongst her ‘best’ friends. And just like that, Elfin went from being the new girl, to the leader.
In contrast to Elfin’s bubbly demeanour, Martya (who arrived exactly one month later) was by far the most reserved of all of us to move into the dormitory. She was soft spoken, rarely smiled and almost always had a book in her hands, like me- only hers were adult books without pictures. Martya was neither warm nor especially pretty, but when I mustered up the courage to ask her what the book she was reading was about, she explained it to me in great detail and even took the time to inquire about mine. She was reading a book from the time before: an actual old one with fragile paper pages numbering two hundred and thirty-six… and I was reading a fairy-tale written AA, but she did not laugh at me or my baby book, but actually wrote down the titles of a few fairy-tales that I would enjoy once I’d graduated from picture books. I could not read the long, complicated words within the titles but I pinned the list to the dresser mirror across from my bed and stared at it every day for as long as Rayleigh stared at her pretty dark complexion, silently sounding the words out in my mind until I at least understood the words ‘Count’ ‘Mermaid’ and ‘Briar.’
