“This may come as a surprise,” I say, “but I have both ears and feelings.”
It’s my second week as a Royal Flyer, and any confidence I accrued from getting selected has shriveled and died. Each morning, we wake up and stretch, and Adelaida reminds me I’m not flexible enough. The studio is so cold at dawn that my feet go numb if I’m not wearing slippers. Then we have our breakfast of rye porridge and cloudberries. We practice our elements until lunch. Once we’ve eaten, we practice more. We practice individually and in synchronization, fundamentals and complicated elements. When it’s finally time for dinner, my stomach is roaring. We eat bread—good!—and muskrat—very bad. Sometimes we have seal, which tastes fine but makes me sad because, obviously, seals are adorable. After dinner, we have, in theory, free time until nine o’clock curfew. When Sofie first explained this schedule, I thought it sounded manageable. But that was over a week ago, when I was young and foolish. Now, old and wizened, I know better.
I don’t have free time after dinner. I don’t have free Saturdays and Sundays. While the other girls filter away to read or sleep or giggle with the guards, I practice. Adelaida tells me I’m about as graceful as a porpoise, and just in case such glowing praise might get to my head, she adds, “On land.”
Maret and I did plenty of planning. She asked: What will you do if the guards find you snooping? I asked: What will I do if the assassins Nikolai sent for Cassia are somewhere in the palace? She asked: What if Adelaida sees your tattoo and tries to dismiss you?
Neither of us ever asked what would happen if I simply did not have the chance to leave the flyer studio. Other than the first night, when we went to the Stone Garden, I haven’t explored an inch of the palace. I haven’t even gone outside. Nor met with Maret. We agreed to meet at the apartment every Saturday, but I had to stand her up last weekend as Adelaida put me through more drills than should exist. I hope she doesn’t think I’ve run away and pledged allegiance to Nikolai. I don’t dare send her a letter, so she’ll just have to wait.
At the announcement of Nikolai’s fairy-tale ball—a chance to dance with the king, goodness me—Adelaida told us we’d be performing for the partygoers. Everyone is stressed, but Adelaida and Natasha seem particularly manic about it. I try not to let my disdain drip over when Natasha starts talking about Nikolai and her stupid plan, but I’m not sure I do a very good job.
And now, here they are, arguing about how terrible my planche is. A planche is a move that requires a flyer to hold her body perfectly perpendicular to the silks with just her arms and the strength in her abdominals, and they can argue as long as they’d like, because I’m simply never going to be able to do it.
“If we put Ella in the middle,” Natasha says, “and Ness and Gretta on the outsides, it can still be symmetrical.”
“Except that Ness can’t do half of these elements either,” Adelaida says. She glances around. “Speaking of which, why isn’t Ness here?”
“Because she’s already practiced ten hours today?” Natasha says.
“That,” Adelaida says, “is not the attitude of a principal flyer.”
“Well, good thing we’ll be dead before Ness can audition for principal,” Natasha says.
A stillness descends over the room. Natasha and Adelaida watch each other, bristling.
Sofie clears her throat. “Here, Ella, I’ll support your feet if you try again.”
When Adelaida finally waves us away to sleep, Natasha disappears into her own bedroom while I follow Sofie into ours.
“You’re doing really great,” Sofie says. “Don’t listen to Adelaida. She’s just like that.”
I give Sofie what I hope is a grateful smile. I think it’s more of a wince. I’ve never been so sore in my life. “She and Natasha fight a lot?”
“You have no idea.”
Every night, when I finally collapse into bed, sleep clubs me over the head. I fall asleep quickly and easily, my arms deadened, my shoulders aching. But every morning, long before I’m rested, twisty dreams chase me awake. Drowning dreams; flooding dreams; bang bang Cassia shot in the head dreams.
When I wake the next morning, I lie in my small cot and stare at the ceiling with no way to know how many hours of sleeplessness I’ll have to endure until the other girls finally rise. I can feel the lump of the barometer. It faces knife-side down beneath my pillow. In case I ever forget why I’m here.
The darkness flattens the shapes and shadows of the room. Sometimes, I consider getting up. I could start practicing early; could make a fire in the studio; could sneak my way into the heart of the palace. But there’s something about these post-nightmare hours that locks me to my bed. If I move an inch, my arms touch freezing sheets. When I breathe, the sound is scratchy and bare. I feel like a tree has grown up through the middle of me and taken my lungs with it, pinning them to the ceiling and me to the bed.
Get up, I tell myself. Stop lying here.
I can’t leave, I say back. This tree is in the way.
Or maybe the nights just last so long because they’re the only time I let myself really, truly think of Cassia. It’s the only time I can’t help myself.
The first time Cassia kissed me, just a few days after we met, we were drunk on cider in the Terrazzan foothills. Maret was asleep in a rented room at an inn. We were supposed to be asleep too, but Cassia coaxed me outside. She pressed her back to the inn’s wall. Her curls—springy, blond—framed her face. When she smiled, I could see the sharp points of her canines.
“If you were a noble’s daughter at the palace,” she said, the words slow between long drinks from her golden glass, “I would’ve hated you. Here, try this.” And then she was tipping a sip of her cider into my mouth, cold and crisp and dizzying, and she kept her eyes fixed on me the whole time.
I swallowed. Licked my lips. “Hated me?”
“Hated you! You’re beautiful, so I would’ve been snarky, but you probably would’ve been even snarkier back. So I would’ve told the servants to spill wine on you every time we had a party.”
Had anyone ever called me beautiful before? “Maybe I would’ve started a new trend. Wine bathing.”
“Then I would’ve spread a rumor that you kill baby bunnies for fun,” she said.
“I’d tell everyone the bunnies were plotting against the throne.”
Cassia took another sip. “Then maybe I’d have to tell everyone you were a siren.”
My heart jolted. Did I look afraid? How much could she see written on my face?
“You’re right,” she said. She pointed to me. Touched her finger to my collar. Then hooked the fabric of my shirt, pulled me a little closer. Her stomach, her chest against mine. I could feel the shape of the royal brooch she always wore, hidden behind the fabric of her coat. “Who would ever believe that?”
When I lie in bed, I can still taste the sour cider from her mouth. I can still feel the point of her canine tugging my lip.
* * *
~~~
I’ve started to worship the sun. Dawn spreads the curtains from the window with rosy fingers. The tree melts. I melt. The other girls snuffle and wake. I pretend to do the same.
I think I’ve done a fine job pretending until the end of my second week, when Natasha pulls me from the stretching circle. She has a mug of nettle tea in each hand. She offers me one.
I take it.
“You’re not sleeping,” she says.
“What?”
“I can tell,” she says. “Drink it. It’s good.”
I take a sip. It’s hot, but it’s not good. “It tastes like grass.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she says, ignoring me.
Her expression isn’t cold, exactly, but it’s intense. She seems to wear that expression when it comes to anything to do with the flyers, whether it’s an element Ness isn’t getting right or an old injury in Sofie’s knee or Gretta w
aving away food, insisting she’s not hungry, even when she’s hardly eaten all day. On my family’s farm, we had a herding dog to help with our sheep. When I first met Natasha, I thought she looked like a fox, but the longer I spend with her, the more she reminds me of that herding dog.
“It’s . . .” I fumble for an answer. “Stress?”
“About your flying? About the storms?”
Seas, she doesn’t rest. “A little of everything, I guess.”
Her eyes search mine. Her mouth is tight.
“Can I go back to stretching?”
She waits a beat. Then she nods. “Drink your tea.”
When dawn stirs the next day, Saturday, I expect I’ll spend all of it practicing again. But when I wander into the studio, Natasha waves me out.
“Go,” she says. “Take a day off. Your body will thank you.”
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Go back to sleep,” she says, and a smile tugs at her lips.
I don’t go back to sleep, but I do go back to the flyer bedroom, where the other girls are getting up and changing.
“We’re going to see Pippa today,” Sofie says. “Do you want to come with us?”
“Oh, you should come,” Ness says. “Pippa’s so lovely.”
Katla snorts. “Sure, that’ll be fun. Here, Pippa, meet your replacement.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Sofie says. “Pippa will love you.”
“Oh,” I say. “Um. Natasha thought I could use some more sleep. So. I’ll just stay here.”
My heart is buzzing. The other flyers are leaving. I won’t be trapped in practice. Yes, I should go see Maret, but—this is a chance to explore. To finally start gathering information about Nikolai, about Cassia.
I’m going to see the palace.
I’m finally going to find something to report back to Maret.
23
NATASHA
I wait for the other flyers just outside the blue door. I was waiting in the studio, but Adelaida started bustling around making pointed comments about Nikolai and what sort of wedding gown his bride will wear. It made me feel nauseated. Nervous. So here I am, shivering in the wind. When the door opens and only three girls appear, I frown. “Ella’s not coming?” I ask.
“Nor Gretta,” Sofie says. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Gretta’s still upset we didn’t invite her last time,” Ness says.
“Let’s walk, then,” I say. “We’ll turn into icicles if we don’t get moving.”
As we set off into New Sundstad, I try not to notice the Ella-shaped space. It’s not unusual for Gretta to hang back, but I half expected Ella to forgo a nap and come meet Pippa instead.
Actually, I’m not sure what I expected. She’s too slippery for my expectations to stick. Now that she’s been flying with us for two weeks, I feel like we know each other. But when I think about what I actually know of her—questions I’m sure I must have answers to—I realize I am blank. Does she have family in Kostrov? She has a faint accent, but she’s never mentioned her home, her parents. Anytime any of us asks a personal question, she gives us an answer silly and distracting enough that we forget we’ve never heard the truth.
“What of your family, Ella?” Ness asked once over dinner.
“Funny you should ask,” Ella said. “I’m actually Gabriel Gospodin’s illegitimate daughter. Don’t tell anyone.”
I laughed. Ness looked affronted.
And what about the tattoo? I’m not sure whether any of the other girls have noticed.
Clouds have subdued last weekend’s sunshine. The blustery air is salty with sea and the promise of not so distant snow. A gondolier shouts to a fishmonger; a butcher yells at a pigeon for pecking at the strips of seal meat hanging out his window.
Before Storm Five, I never realized New Sundstad was so full of birds. Flocks of pigeons on every street corner. Rafts of ducks in the canals. The occasional hawk, austere from the eaves of a tall building. When the butcher yells at the pigeon, I ask the girls, “Did all its friends fly off without it?”
“That’s kind of tragic,” Sofie says. “You wake up from your nap and realize ninety percent of your species left you.”
It takes us an hour to walk as far as Southtown. With each passing bridge, the grime on the buildings grows a little thicker; the water in the canals a little grayer. My mother and I lived all over New Sundstad, but we always seemed to end up back in Southtown. When everything starts to smell like dead fish, Ness puts her sleeve over her nose and says, “Oh, foul.”
I can’t call it foul. This is where I was born. I am of dead fish.
“Did Iskra let Pippa into the house without a fight?” I ask.
“As if Pippa would tell us otherwise,” Sofie says.
“Iskra has taken to calling it The Clipped,” Katla says. “As in, the place flyers go when they get their wings clipped.”
Shivers runs down my shoulder blades, where wings would grow if I had them. “Cute.”
“There’s just three of them there now,” Sofie says. “Iskra, Pippa, and Rasa.”
“What happened to Josephine?”
“She went back to Roen,” Katla says. “To find her family.”
“I can’t believe she never wanted to meet me,” Ness says. “It could’ve been such a lovely rite of passage.”
Katla catches my gaze and rolls her eyes. Between the two of us, we’ve seen our share of flyers come and go. On the whole, they don’t tend to be eager to wave goodbye to the palace. Josephine left right after the storms started. Her family was an ocean away and she was convinced they would die in the storms. There’s no right way to handle the end of the known world, but there are certainly a few wrong ways. Throwing away a position as a Royal Flyer is a wrong way.
My footsteps stiffen as we near a familiar stone bridge. I’m tempted to call out to Sofie, who leads the pack, that wouldn’t it be faster to take a different route? But Sofie charges ahead, and Ness chatters on about ex-flyers, and even Katla doesn’t realize what this street means to me. I lock my teeth and walk on.
A little farther down, there’s a ruined apothecary with a smashed front window and a heap of shattered jars across the floor. On the left, a butcher’s shop, a stuffed goat head watching us from the glass display with wide, rectangular eyes. That butcher’s shop closed years ago.
Above the butcher’s shop, there is a window. The curtains are closed. A trickle of light fractures the edges.
This is the last place my mother and I lived before she died. A dusty apartment, too hot in seal season and too cold in bear season, above a butcher’s shop.
I wonder if they still have the sofa my mother lounged on, feline, absorbing scraps of sun. Where she read me fables from Tamm while I sat on the floor, dragging my fingers through the dust in tidal swirls.
How badly I wished those stories were true. That I could be a brave princess with eleven clever sisters and a true love. That I could find a castle made of ice or make friends with a bird or row down a river to a different world. That I could go somewhere, be someone, else. This was before I discovered that Tamm’s stories are just like Kos’s stories. Just meant to keep us calm. Just meant to give us false hope.
There is no river to a different world. My mother taught me that.
I’m still staring at the window of the butcher’s shop when Katla clears her throat.
“Tasha?” Katla says. “I hate to break it to you, but if you’re trying to befriend that goat, he’s dead.”
“Right. Sorry.”
I hurry to catch the other flyers. A few subdued minutes later, we stop at our destination.
It’s a blue door—I think it might be an homage to the door in the flyer hall in the palace. The buildings on this street creep in on each other, shoving their neighbors like oversized teeth in an undersized mouth.
M
y heart pounds steadily faster. The shadows of the bowed buildings want to swallow me. They recognize me and want me back, and I don’t want to go. I pull at my collar.
Sofie pounds on the door with her fist. “Pippa! Iskra!”
The door opens a crack. Big eyes gaze up at us from knee-level. I recognize him, but only vaguely. Children’s faces never make an impression on me. The boy turns back, calls into the house.
“Mama?” he says.
My whole body revolts at the word. Sweat leaks down my neck. If I’m ever to have some sort of maternal instinct, it has yet to develop, because when this small, helpless animal stares up at me, all I can think is: I can’t save both of us.
Maybe that’s what my mother thought too. She couldn’t save both of us. She chose to save me.
I hear a shuffle from behind the boy. The door opens all the way, revealing a woman a few years my senior, shark-like, with a flat white face and wide-set eyes.
“Iskra,” I say.
“Flyers,” she says. Then she breaks into a pointed-tooth smile and says, “Pippa will be glad to see you.”
I let out a breath. I’m never quite sure which version of Iskra to expect. She’s as likely to smile as she is to tell you to take a swim in a canal. Once, in one of her smiling moods, she told me she couldn’t afford to be predictable, because nothing about life outside the palace is.
We shuffle single file into the narrow home. It’s as dark and leaky as the tunnels beneath the Stone Garden.
Iskra’s little boy stares at me through eyes that I’m quite sure are too big to be human. He clutches Iskra’s arm. “She fall.”
I try to scoot farther away from him, but in the cramped corridor, there’s nowhere to scoot.
“She did,” Iskra says. “It was very embarrassing.”
“And how’s the bad leg doing?” I say.
Sofie bats me with the back of her hand. “Tasha,” she says. “Don’t.”
“I’m just being friendly,” I say. “Showing collegial concern.”
Iskra holds her son tightly to her chest. Her eyes narrow. “Pippa is upstairs. I’d hurry up there, if I were you, before I change my mind about letting you in.”
Girls at the Edge of the World Page 11
