by S. K Munt
‘What’s wrong with her now?’ Emmerly whined.
‘Yeah, she kept us up all last night with her weeping…’ Rayleigh gave me a dirty look. ‘Are you tattling for what I said about the dolls?’
‘Who cares?’ Emmerly gave the woman a foul look. ‘She’s just a maid.’
I was going to cry again so I pushed past them, into our room, and shut them out by shoving them out with the closing door. I went to the closet and began pulling out my things, certain that I must have overlooked an envelope, but I found no paper at all. However, my mood lifted when I picked up my soccer ball and saw that black print had been scribbled across one of the Hexagons.
Dear Larkin,
I already miss my best soccer buddy! I’ll see you again, as soon as I can, so keep practicing that mean kick of yours!
Love, your brother, Finch.
Tears began to roll down my cheeks again. I kissed the soccer ball, then put it up on my bed then took the doll, and put it back into the cupboard of bad memories. The note hadn’t been from my mother but in that moment, I felt a little bit better about everything.
Maybe it was his turn to write today, and mother will be next...
‘You girls need to be kind to Larkin,’ I heard the maid admonish them from the hall. ‘You will all become sisters in here, if you allow kindness into your hearts.’
I didn’t hear what the girls said in response, but nothing changed after that night. Regardless of what had brought us together, I didn’t like them and they didn’t like me and so I lived the first few months of my life in the dorm completely alone. In fact, Emmerly and Rayleigh shared a bunk and moved their things down one row, leaving a whole empty bed between us. It hurt my feelings but I didn’t want them to know that, so I shifted my own position down a row in the opposite direction, leaving two beds cordoning us off and ignoring them when they’d chant: ‘Night duckling dear!’ And then laugh as though they were comedians.
It was lonely, but I barely used the dorm anyway, spending my lunch hours with Kohén kicking around my brother’s soccer ball, and the times when I was alone to read out in the courtyard and pretend that I was like one of those princesses, but a Blue Collar one who would build her own castle and fill it with books, sort of like the Archangel Miguel had started his own society- only my society would cater only to me and my gardens.
And Finch.
And maybe Kohén.
And definitely anyone who was as lonely at night waiting for letters to arrive that never came, as I was.
8.
By the end of my first four months within the palace, another girl had joined us in our dormer, and two more had been sent off to a co-ed Corps division, leaving prince Kohén with a total of four ‘Companions,’ by the start of winter. All of the girls recruited hailed from different castes within the boundaries of Arcadia, all were third daughters turning five on the moon that they’d been reaped beneath, and all were utterly clueless as to what we were doing there.
The mystery continued to irk me, but the knowledge that I was not the only one navigating their life path blind, caste-less and without a surname brought me some comfort, because for so much of my short life, it had felt as though everyone were in on some secret about my future, except me.
But clueless or not, it was obvious that the other girls had been better prepared for the transition from child to student than I had been. Emmerly Ronin had been there longer than any of us, and never ever got into trouble for breaking one of the conduct laws because (as she often bragged) Emmerly had been born into nobility, where behaviour was taken much more seriously than among the other castes, and she’d had a private tutor since the age of three as well, meaning that she seemed years older to me when I first met her, and I had been very intimidated by her self-possession.
Well, that and her looks. Emmerly had the typical Arcadian looks- nut-brown hair, tanned skin, dark eyes etc, etc, but her hair was sun-streaked and her skin a warm golden hue seemed less like a throwback to South American ancestry, and more like a girl who had been pale like me but had toasted perfectly in the sun, like a roasted nut. She practically glowed, and I learned quickly that her father was one of the ship captains who was responsible for sailing the Corps out to their new mission in the Pacifica region. He had departed the morning of my arrival with Kohl Barachiel on board, who was going to be trained in the Corps like everyone else, but though that continued to bug Kohén, Emmerly said that Kohl was lucky, because her father swore that the islands he was being sent to were beautiful and a vast improvement over the places where previous Corps parties had been sent- like to scuba dive artefacts out of the drowned New York City, or face-off with the pirates who had once inundated the now re-claimed coast of Los Angeles, which we called St Miguel Harbour.
Her closest companion, Rayleigh Gentry, wasn’t a noble, but her mother was an actress (from within the Artisan caste) and good with make-up and presentation and movement in general, so she had taught Rayleigh and her two older sisters how to twist and braid their thickets of wild brown hair so that they always looked tidy and interesting, which pleased out governess, Maryah.
Emmerly and Rayleigh were thicker than thieves, and in exchange for braiding Emmerly’s hair and teaching her the basic ballet steps, Emmerly would catch Rayleigh’s behavioural slights before they could be noticed by Maryah. And my goodness, but there were a lot of behavioural infractions one could commit, especially as a Given child! I’d always written with my left hand but now every time I tried, I was hit over the knuckles with a ruler and told that was incorrect. I also slouched when I ate, rested my elbows and wrists on the table cloth when I ought never, and went to sleep with my hair loose which apparently was one of the worst crimes that a young lady could commit. My mother had always been hard on me for doing anything unbecoming in public, and I’d considered myself to be a well-mannered child. But once I learned that I would be policed even when I slept, well, I began to realise that I acted like a common thug compared to the other girls, who would make even my pretentious sister look oafish.
Needless to say, being the third one to join the dorm after Emmerly and Rayleigh had already bonded made me feel left out, so when Lette Careth, also from the Artisan caste, joined us one month after my introduction, I hoped to befriend her. But, Rayleigh had recognised her from her own village instantly, and that had given the new girl an ‘in’ which I had not been offered, and the exclusive duo became a trio straight away, even though Lette was as small and young looking as I was, and not especially pretty.
But Lette was a beautiful dancer and taught Rayleigh and Emmerly things that were years beyond our current level of training which until then had boiled down to flexing and pointing our toes and turning pirouettes on our chubby little legs. Lette could leap and split her legs and kick over all of our heads and after awhile, Rayleigh and Emmerly learned to mimic her. The trio made up dances together to wow Maryah with, while I stood by the barre alone and tried not to cry or look like I wanted to. Heaven knew that they already thought me emotional and ugly- I didn’t want it to look as though I were ugly on the inside as well and as jealous of their natural talents as I was! After all, envy was one of the sins that God frowned upon the most!
So I remained a shoddy soloist who was always that one step behind the other girls, even when I thought I’d pulled ahead. I could read better than both Artisan girls after a few weeks, for I’d practiced hard every night in bed alone, but that fact wasn’t apparent because of the way I was constantly admonished for printing with the wrong hand. Besides, Emmerly would simply whisper the correct answers to the teachers questions to the other girls anyway, and make it seem as though they were all literally on the same page, just as Rayleigh made Lette’s rather plain brown hair look more elegant and fuller than it was, and just as Lette always stood in front of the other three but behind me in dance class, so the other two could watch and copy her moves from the rear, while I fumbled in the front row, going off memory. It was sick of Maryah to put me
in the front row in dance class, given that I was the most un-coordinated dancer of them all, but she told me that I was the smallest and the smallest always had to go in the front. That, and that being in the lead would force me out of my shell in time. Ha! I hadn’t even had a shell until I’d moved into the palace and now, I wore one to every communal class like a hermit crab, which was sort of how I danced- in small motions that went sideways in fear more often than forward with purpose.
We Given girls didn’t know what we were all in for or what we were working toward with our fancy classes, but being taught how to do all the same things and encouraged to excel at everything, then being praised on individual progress in front of one another let us know that we were in competition with each other for some unknown prize, and without an ally helping me through, I knew that it was a competition that I was sure to lose. Favours were traded like tokens of friendship between them, and I didn’t have the kind of currency they had because I’d come from the most utilitarian of all the castes which had taught me nothing about being a woman at all, let alone a beautiful, graceful, well presented and studious one! Every night that I went to bed, I turned over my sister’s parting words about how I’d been lucky to have a chance to live within Eden’s walls and after not very long- I understood that for once, she had been honest with me, for Jaiya would have loved it here. I, on the other hand, did not belong there anymore than I had in my Blue Collar family, and every night when I went to sleep, I would stare out my window at the north star, and pray that one day, an angel would swoop down and carry me out of Arcadia forever- and take me to somewhere that I belonged. I wanted someone to call friend, or family, and though I was pretty sure that he was not listening to me, I prayed harder with every day that that wish didn’t come true.
After all- God did encourage hope.
*
Though my maid Lindy sometimes found a way to sneak me into her and Coaxley’s chamber so that I could play with her little girls, the only close companion I had for the first six months in the palace was Kohén, and he proved to be more loyal than I’d ever imagined any friend ever could. We had a very long break in the middle of the day- two whole hours opposed to the one hour I’d gotten at home- and when the other girls sat down on their breaks to eat their lunches together and giggle and dance in the ballroom, I would take a book outside with my sandwich, pick a shady tree to hide within and read until Kohén found me. To keep things interesting, I always chose a different tree and a different branch to sit upon, and Kohén would grin when he found me and climb up to join me, boasting over how well he’d do as a tracker in the corps, but that he’d have to start playing hide and seek with the other girls to hone his skills, for my fair hair and the white dress we were made to wear made me too easy to find among the emerald tree tops.
After he’d found me, we would eat our lunch together beneath a large hemlock, which allowed us to glimpse the crest of the tidal fall beyond the palace walls, and then we’d sneak off to the furthest end of the grounds to kick around my soccer ball. Kohén was very quick on his feet and though my frilly white dress inhibited my movements, Lindy had started sneakily sewing darts in my petticoats and loosening the elastic on my bloomer cuffs to give me a little more freedom of movement than Emmerly would have had. I had good aim and a hard kick, hard enough to ensure that those fast feet of his had to work fast to track down the ball, and after a few weeks, I was almost as good as Kohén and he swore that I’d become harder, but more fun to play with than his departed twin, Kohl. That made me feel proud, and chased away some of my misery over being the one furthest behind in our studies.
I hoped that I was helping him feel better about losing Kohl as well, but Kohl did his part by writing to Kohén monthly and sending him odd little trinkets as gifts from the island village that Kohén and the rest of the corps were trying to rebuild on the recently named Caldera Island in Pacifica. First, he sent a bracelet of wooden beads and then, he sent a tooth, which he swore came from the jaws of a shark, that Kohén had his parents make into an amulet for him to wear.
I wasn’t sure how much use a five-year old boy would be in those situations at first and when I questioned Kohén about it, he started bringing the letters and reading them aloud to me. Through those pages of chicken scrawl, I got to learn all sorts of things about Kohl Barachiel. He got seasick something terrible and had found the voyage over by ship to be a miserable experience, he wrote and read even better than Kohén could, and he was spending a lot of time helping the older boys in the Corps dig stuff up, which he could help with because he’d been born with the power to manipulate water, unlike his twin and father who could summon electricity energy, and Prince Karol, who could only heal. Kohl would make it rain a little on the digging sites to soften the mud and could bring in the tide a little to wash away debris, and was praised for it, but unfortunately, when he lost his temper he could make it hail as well, and a few of the natives clicked stones together every time he passed to prevent his bad voodoo from setting off another volcano. I giggled a bit when I read that, knowing that Kohén didn’t know that every person who lived in Eden wore rubber-soled shoes to keep from being zapped by HIM when HE was in a foul mood!
Apparently, they were attempting to remove debris from what had once been the main, most-populated island, to see what they could find of the old civilisation that could be salvaged beneath, and then burn or ship off the wreckage of it to make room for a new one to begin- the kind with roads and buildings like ours. The islands, which had once been jointly referred to as ‘Hawaii’ had three small villages on them now after having been almost completely reclaimed by the ocean and the mountain that had exploded above them in God’s rage, hundreds of years before during Armageddon. But once upon a time, they’d been a paradise, and the king wanted to make it so again. It was important to all of us that the world be restored slowly, carefully and artfully. Never again would anyone have to live in a place that was barren or dangerous. Never again would people starve.
Kohl said that Kohén had to come and see him when he got a chance- preferably over the winter holidays which would be the first opportunity for the summer Given to see their families- and so that Kohén could see too. The Arcadian government had purchased it from the villagers established there already for one hundred thousand Callielian gold coins- which was a steal- but only on the condition that the smallest of the three islands remain private property to anyone who had Hawaiian blood in their veins from the time before.
The kingdoms had different ways of claiming land, but violence and bullying were forbidden and bartering for rights, resources and boundaries the most typical method. If we discovered an area that had been underdeveloped, we claimed it in the name of Arcadia, but if there were people living on it already, we would either retreat or offer to purchase the land and sign a treaty with the people. Once territory was claimed, the people of Arcadia would elect an individual from within the nobility to establish a monarchy there, funded by Arcadian money.
So far the continent of Calliel had four individual Kingdoms; Arcadia was the biggest and had two provinces- North and South Arcadia. We in the capital were in the north, along with the city of Rachiel, but two smaller towns, St Miguel Harbour on the coast, and Nitika (which was inland) were in the south. The kingdom of Tariel began just north of where the city named Mexico had once been, and spread all the way down to the southern tip of the continent, then Janiel was on the east coast, and Yael was in the deep south. Pacifica had not yet been appointed a ruler and was still just a province of Arcadia, but Kohl confessed in his letters that he suspected that his parents would one day nominate Kohén to be appointed monarch of the region with Kohl as Duke beneath him. Being first-born, Karol was due to inherit Arcadia of course, but Kohén was being trained to handle an equal amount of responsibility, just as King Elijah’s own younger brother was the Duke of Nitika, which was Arcadian’s gold-mining city.
Excited at the idea of seeing or ruling the islands one day, Kohén took me
up to the Collection room and let us in using the special little ring that he wore on his finger, which matched his mother’s, father’s and brother’s rings exactly. It was a silver band with two wings jutting out of it, and those wings could be inserted into every lock in the castle to grant access to the royal family, which was how he always managed to get us into areas that were closed off or locked- everywhere but the north wing which we were forbidden from entering the lower level of.
Together, we pored over a map of the old world, which was framed in glass above the fireplace. But when we found Hawaii printed on a crease and a collection of tiny dots, Kohén was devastated to see that it was further from the mainland than St Miguel was from us, which was where the last salvage expedition had been sent.
Kohén wrote back that he had asked his parents and they’d said no he wouldn’t be traveling there this winter for it was too dangerous to sail in the colder months, but that they’d all go together the following spring. Then he’d told Kohl that he hoped he wasn’t too lonely. He said that he was all the time- except for when he was with his new friend Larkin. Then he told Kohl all about me, and how good I was at kicking a soccer ball, to which Kohl replied, three weeks later: ‘You’re not replacing me with a GIRL are you?’ and Kohén and I had both laughed.
But the next time Kohl wrote after that, he included a small wooden ring for me that had been carved by hand into the shape of a wave. It only just fit over my thumb, but I wore it every day, and slept every night with my soccer ball. With it was a note: ‘Thank you for playing with my brother. But I’m still going to be able to out-kick you, little bird!’ The note was funny and because I didn’t want to lose it, I stuck it behind my picture of Finch and Jaiya, in the frame.
I much preferred being called ‘Little bird,’ to duckling!
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.
