Girls at the Edge of the World

by Laura Brooke Robson

  As soon as Adelaida lets us go, I make a break for my room. My Evelina full-suit hangs off the back of my door, but instead of putting it on, I find a cloak, boots. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and pause. I look like a ghost, pale and hollow. I look like my mother.

  A knock at my door.

  I freeze.

  “Tasha?” Katla says. “It’s me.”

  The door opens. She takes in my clothes and frowns. “Going somewhere?”

  I hesitate.

  “Let me rephrase that,” Katla says. “Yes, you’re clearly going somewhere, which means that I am too. Let me get my cloak.”

  Ten minutes later, Katla and I are sneaking away from the palace with our hoods pulled up. Wind shivers over the waves. I hope this only takes a few hours. The flight is at sunset.

  Under my arm, I carry the thin botanical book from the library. The green one Ella told me about. Without slowing, I flip through the pages until I find the one Ella described. I show Katla the page. The tremble cap.

  “It just looks like a mushroom,” she says.

  “So you don’t know where I might find one?”

  “No. Somewhere boggy? I know the paths well enough to stop you from getting lost out there, but I’m not a mushroom expert.” She frowns at me. “Even if you find one of these things, what are you going to do with it?”

  “I haven’t exactly worked that part out, okay?” I say. “But maybe if I show Nikolai this, show him that it’s real—well, maybe he’ll confront Gospodin. I have to try, right?”

  “For the record, I think this whole thing is a bad idea.”

  “Why?” I say. “You hate Gospodin.”

  “Yes, but you’re my favorite non-blood relation,” Katla says. “And you’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “So what?”

  Katla lets out a sharp sound, not quite a laugh. “Who are you? Where’s Natasha?”

  When we step onto the raised wooden platform leading into the heart of the boglands, fog settles around us. It muffles the city. I can’t see farther than a hand’s distance in any direction. Katla is ghostly through the thick air.

  Somewhere in the distance, or maybe very nearby, bells tinkle.

  “What was that?” My voice echoes back to me.

  Katla appears at my shoulder. “The peat harvesters hang bells on trees for days like this. It’s how they find the main path.”

  “But we need to get off the main path, don’t we?”

  Katla nods. “Assuming Gospodin’s people collected hundreds of tremble caps, there probably aren’t any left in plain sight.”

  “So into the boglands?”

  She points off the edge of the wooden platform. “Into the boglands.”

  My feet squelch into deep mud. “Oh, that’s a pleasant feeling.”

  Katla leads me across the soggy earth. After a few sodden minutes, the ground shifts from plowed and plucked dirt to slippery gold-and-green growth. Wind-stripped pines dot the drier patches of land. The wetter sections glisten, long reeds swaying with the wind.

  Once, when I was eleven, I asked Adelaida if we could visit the depths of the boglands. I hadn’t yet met Katla and I didn’t know that people not only came but lived here, in these wilds. I’d never been beyond the fringes.

  Stay on stone streets, city girl, Adelaida told me. You have bigger things ahead of you than drowning in mud.

  The wind whistles. Bells ring. I jump and Katla glances back at me.

  “Scared?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Don’t be,” she says. “It’s not trying to scare you.”

  “Because it’s an inanimate landscape or because it’s trying to do something other than scare me?”

  The wind comes again, sliding through bells and branches. When it rushes, it could be saying my name. I start humming to scare away the sounds.

  “Natasha,” Katla says, “hush.”

  “It’s creepy,” I say. I don’t just mean that it’s spooky. I mean that the surroundings creep, twisting around me, too soft or slow for my city girl eyes to locate but moving all the same.

  “Let it creep,” she says.

  When I stop making my human noises, my words and my hummed songs, when I stop even considering things I might say to Katla, I find the opposite of silence. Not eerie quiet but vivid detail: the creak of a tree, the distant cadence of waves, the draining of rain through already saturated dirt. The smells, I couldn’t describe if I had to. I have no original words for smells, just similes. Like pine, like mud, like morning rain in a northern patch of Kostrovian boglands. The harder I try to find the right words, the less I notice the smells themselves.

  I’m struck by the overwhelming sense of being touched. Not only my feet pressing on mud, but mud granting my weight above it. Not only my ankle brushing flat-bladed grass but the grass touching me. I see little of the bog; it sees all of me.

  Only now that it’s gone do I fully realize the wrongness that settled inside me after Storm Four. But in the boglands, my body, my head, clears. It feels like . . . remembering.

  Katla stops walking. I stop beside her. She stands at the edge of a pond. The water reflects the bone sky. A tuft of grass, eye-shaped and no bigger than a rowboat, waits at the pond’s center.

  Obviously, that’s where I’m meant to go. If I say it out loud, I’m afraid I won’t remember why it’s so obvious.

  “Do you wish,” Katla says softly, for softly is the only way to speak in this place, “that the Sacred Breath never came here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s hard to imagine.”

  “The other flyers always acted like I was too cynical to believe in anything,” Katla says. “But I believe in everything.”

  Any other day, any other place, I wouldn’t have understood. But here, cradled in reciprocity with this land, it’s the clearest thing in the world. Not a deity or a spirit in this pond or that tree. The pond itself. The tree itself. The power of sap under fingernails and the feather nestled softly among the grasses.

  I think of a question Gospodin once asked me; a question I only answered as he expected me to and never once wondered for myself.

  “How do you think they survived the Flood?” I say. “The people who first lived here. In Maapinn. They didn’t have ships and agriculture and industrialization.”

  There’s a long not-silence in which neither of us speaks. “I’ve always thought,” Katla finally says, “that’s the whole reason they survived.”

  My mother didn’t believe in Kos, but she believed unfailingly in old legends and river rapids and trees and me. I have long tallied the things I inherited from my mother; I never before counted the feeling of detachment she felt—from family, from the Sacred Breath, from the boglands our ancestors called home. I’m not sure I ever realized it was part of my inheritance.

  “I’m going to pick the tremble cap,” I say.

  “Can you see it?” Katla says.

  “No.” I don’t bother to explain it. She too stopped at this pond, after all.

  I slosh on bare feet until the water reaches my waist. The mud rises through my toes. I stop, hands light on the surface, and I stand until my soul goes numb.

  The lapping water whispers the same thing again and again. I don’t know its tongue well enough to translate.

  The water streams off me as I reach the island. I pull the mushroom from the grass. It smells like clover honey. Its feathered gills are lavender as dawn. I wrap it in the corner of my cloak.

  When I reach Katla’s shore, she says, “Back to the palace?”

  My voice is soft and childish. “I don’t want to leave.”

  Katla takes my hand. “I know.”

  When we reach the edge of the boglands, the Storm Four feeling settles through me again. My stomach clenches. My lungs tighten. Grass clings
to my calves like little hands pulling me back. It feels like they’re saying, You’re leaving? So soon?

  I’m sorry. I glance back at the mist-swimming trees. I’ll be back. I just have to do something first.

  66

  ELLA

  I wonder if I’ll still be in here when the Flood comes. I imagine the way the water would fill this place—first the cracks in the stone. Then a layer of cold across my feet. Up to my knees. Buoying me to the ceiling. A crush of pressure. Darkness.

  That anxious, nauseated Storm Four feeling has been worse than ever since they put me down here. I’ve never wanted to see the sky so badly.

  I hear footsteps. Guards have brought me water a few times. No food. I wait for the telltale clink of a metal cup against stone.

  Instead, I hear, “Ella?”

  Slowly, I turn. Squint.

  Red hair. Stick-out ears. His eyes are huge.

  “I thought they’d executed you.”

  “Gregor?” I say. I crawl to the bars. “Where’s Natasha? Is she okay?”

  “She’s . . . she’s fine. Seas, I really thought you were dead.” Gregor keeps glancing over his shoulder, back at the stairs. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. Look, Pippa told me everything. She seemed to think there was some sort of—”

  A screech of metal. The door at the stairs opens, and Gregor jumps back. Another guard calls out, and Gregor glances over at me.

  For a moment, I’m almost hoping—

  But then he heads back up the stairs without another word.

  I swallow.

  Natasha is fine. That’s what matters. Gregor said she was fine, and he has no reason to lie to me.

  I try not to count the minutes ticking by. I curl against the wall, wishing I could sleep, wishing I could do something.

  When the door opens again however many hours later, I’m seized by this sudden, cruel hope that I’m going to see Natasha on the stairs. I know it’s stupid. It’s probably Gregor, or worse, Andrei. But when I look up—

  Two figures, not one. Yes, Gregor. But also, someone smaller. Not clomping down the stairs in heavy boots, but whispering on slippered feet.

  I sit up. And their faces come into view in front of the bars.

  67

  NATASHA

  The crowd surrounding the palace is loud and celebratory tonight. I suppose everyone is hungry for good news. Something to break the dark cycle of sickness and storms.

  “What’s Katla playing at?” Adelaida says. “How can she be late? Today, of all days?”

  I shake my head. After we got back from the boglands, we split up to gather our full-suits and makeup. That was the last I saw of her.

  Adelaida, Gretta, and I are waiting in the high tower room where Nikolai will present me as the future queen after our performance ends.

  Gretta sighs. “I’ll go look for her.”

  In the corner of the room, tucked under my folded cloak, I have my evidence. The green book. A poisonous mushroom hidden inside a velvet bag.

  I let out a shaky breath and smooth my full-suit. It’s white. Tulle.

  I’m suddenly reminded of my mother on one of her good days, dancing across the floor of our apartment in her stockings. I can hear her singing, Evelina, love, I should have known; your love was never stormswept or windblown.

  My mother is grabbing my hands. Spinning me. Evelina, love, you are my earth; you are my breath, my song, and all I’m worth.

  I press a hand to my lips.

  If I could see my mother right now, I’d say to her, All those fairy tales you loved so much? I’m in one. Just look at me.

  But when she dreamed of fairy tales—she was never dreaming about crowns or royal weddings, was she?

  The door opens and Gospodin comes in. I scrub my eyes and try to look excited.

  “Miss Koskinen,” Gospodin says.

  “Mariner Gospodin.”

  “Congratulations,” he says. “I look forward to working with you as queen.”

  I want to lunge at him. I force myself to breathe, steady myself.

  “Mariner Gospodin,” Adelaida says, touching his elbow lightly. “If I may, I’d like to discuss Natasha’s accommodations on the fleet. I think, you see, she’ll need an advisor . . .”

  The door flies open.

  Katla.

  Her full-suit is bunched in her arms. Her hair is a mess. Adelaida shoots her a lethal glare, but she’s too occupied with Gospodin to say anything.

  Katla collides with me. Her voice low, she says, “Ella’s alive.”

  My mouth parts. “What?”

  “Gregor told me,” she whispers. “He and Pippa want to break her out.”

  I’m slow to process what she’s saying. Break her out? Of where? Why would Adelaida tell me Ella was dead? “I—I have to go see her.”

  “No.” Katla grabs my hands. Glances back at Gospodin. “It’s the crowd around the palace, don’t you see? That’s how they’re going to get Ella out. Everything will be loud and chaotic, and everyone will be distracted by the performance.”

  She’s alive.

  I let out a slow, steadying breath. “Then we better make it a good one.”

  68

  ELLA

  “Look lively,” Pippa says.

  “Not too loud,” Gregor says.

  I blink. “What?” Shake my head. “I don’t—”

  Gregor pulls something from his belt. “Here’s the thing you need to know about Pippa,” he says. “She’s an excellent judge of character.” The lock thunks. The door squeaks open. “And incredibly persuasive.”

  Pippa shoves a bundle of clothes into my arms. In the dim light, I recognize the navy-blue dress the palace maids wear, and a dark, hooded cloak. “And what you should know about Gregor,” she says, “is that he’s a very kind person. But maybe not, you know, the best guard.”

  “Hey,” Gregor says.

  “Put those on,” Pippa says. “Come on. Don’t just stand there.”

  I take one unsteady step, then another.

  “What about us?” the Skaratan scholar asks.

  Pippa gives him an apologetic look. “We’re going for stealth today, actually, but I’ll put in a good word.”

  “We’re not making this a regular thing,” Gregor says.

  I suppose I’m still not moving fast enough, because Pippa starts yanking my mud-stained dress over my head and the new one on in its place. I don’t even have the time to be embarrassed.

  “Does Natasha . . . Is she . . . ?”

  “The flyers are performing on the Sky Stage in about . . .” Gregor looks at his watch. “Three minutes. We need to get you out while they’re performing. All the guards will be at the front of the palace corralling the crowd. No one will pay any attention to a guard and a couple of maids slipping out the back.”

  When we get upstairs, I see Gregor was right. The inside of the palace is deserted.

  “Dear,” Pippa says, “running might be a little suspicious.”

  Gregor barely slows. He keeps glancing over his shoulder.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Back to the dungeons, probably,” Gregor mutters.

  We turn a corner, and suddenly, I know where we are. The flyer hall. It’s empty. Gregor jogs through the studio. Pushes open the blue door.

  And then we step outside.

  The air is salty and cold. I can hear the music streaming from the roof of the palace. The violinists playing something slow, soft, sweet.

  “Oh, I love Evelina,” Pippa says, humming a few bars.

  “Come on,” Gregor says.

  We walk fast from the palace.

  I try so hard not to look back. But then I do. Back to the tallest palace tower. Back to where three white silks dangle from impossibly high wooden beams. Three girls spinning thems
elves in silk.

  And Natasha.

  I can see her hair, bright against the white of the silk.

  My heart hurts.

  “It’s Nikolai’s birthday,” I say, “isn’t it?”

  Pippa takes my hand and gives it a tug. “Yes.”

  “And Natasha . . . ?”

  “Once the performance is over, they’ll announce it.”

  “Oh.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s wonderful.”

  Gregor, a few feet in front of us, turns back to wave us forward. “I’m begging you to hurry.”

  Natasha’s going to be the queen. That’s good. Great. She deserves to survive.

  The music fades behind us. I don’t look back again.

  “Can you tell me where we’re going now?” I ask.

  “The harbor,” Pippa says. “There’s a boat waiting for you. It’s tiny, and there’s not exactly a crew for you—”

  “That’s fine,” I say. I learned how to sail well enough on my trip from Terrazza. “How did you get a boat?”

  “Sofie left me some money,” Pippa says. “She was always careful. She saved a bit while she was in the palace, and she had an inheritance.”

  I start shaking my head. “I can’t possibly—”

  “Don’t,” Pippa says firmly. “Sofie would want this.”

  I swallow. “Thank you.”

  Ahead of us, Gregor curses.

  “What?”

  “Something’s going on,” he says. “I see smoke.”

  The closer we get to the harbor, the more I smell it—burning. When we turn the last corner, I’m half expecting to see the royal fleet on fire. Instead, it’s a squat, nondescript building tucked between a few boarded-up shops. The street below is littered with glass. Sooty plumes blacken the sky.

  Gregor makes a disbelieving sound.

  “What is that place?” I ask.

  “Storage,” Gregor says. “For the fleet. No one’s supposed to know about it.”