The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

Chapter 15: Celestia

It is a quarter to nine, and only forty-two days remain before the autumn equinox. Though I keep track of the hours, for a long time, I couldn’t be sure of when our time in this house would come to an end. Yesterday, during our daily outing, the swans at the gate sang to me, and though my swan-self has left me, I haven’t forgotten their language.

They sang it loud and clear. The gagargi’s men are coming.

Many are the moments when I have felt alone and beyond exhaustion, trapped in this house. But I haven’t shared this with my sisters. As I sit on the drawing room’s sofa, my back straight, my hands folded on my lap, I maintain the façade of calm as I always do.

Alina, Merile, and Sibilia play on the carpet with the two dogs. Lately, Sibilia has been increasingly interested in the dogs. I don’t know if it is merely because she ran out of pages and ink and can no longer keep a diary or because she knows every sacred passage of the scriptures by heart already.

Perhaps it is because she detests Elise’s attempts to reconcile with her. The one, who betrayed our mother out of her own will, mends the sleeve of her dress on the padded chair next to me. The dull needle parts again and again the fabric so worn that no amount of thread will ever suffice to make it whole.

I am tempted to pace the room, worried of what may come to pass so soon. But it isn’t my right to despair, not now when we are so close to the end, not even after the end. My duty as the Crescent Empress is to persist, and that I shall do. My beloved, the Moon, is on our side. I am stronger now than I have been ever in my life. But at the same time I am weaker, too. I have stayed up through every cloudless night, to bask in my beloved’s light. My eyes ache constantly as if they had sunk too deep in my skull. An iron circle encloses my head, another, heavier one presses against my chest. One day they shall lift. One day my sisters and I shall walk free, even if it costs me my soul.

Though I don’t know if that will come to pass tonight. My beloved, he hasn’t shown me what he sees yet, and I do wonder at times if something went wrong during the ceremony. Questions crowd my mind, but there are never answers. Only light brighter or waning.

“What.” Merile’s voice is unmistakable, childishly confident. “What did you hear, silly?”

The black dog has trotted to the curtained window closest to our chambers, there to tense with one paw up, head cocked left. Of course it would be one of the dogs that heard the arrival of the gagargi’s men first.

Sibilia’s knees click as she gets up from the carpet, slowly towering to the full height she isn’t yet accustomed to. She meets my gaze, but chooses not to say a word. We have talked of this moment before. As the older sisters, it is up to us to remain undaunted.

And then, though walls separate us from the autumn evening, we hear the howls of Captain Ansalov’s hounds, the shrill wails not that far away from those of their kin, the wolves. Barks, too, cascading into cacophony. Someone is approaching the house. There are orders shouted, words replied, both too faint to reach us. But I know their meaning.

I rise up from the sofa then, with exaggerated slowness as if I were in control of the situation, though that I am not. Elise snaps the thread, quickly knots it to secure her handiwork, and places the needle and thread on the table, disturbingly excited. Sibilia stays with Merile and Alina, but her hand slips into the pocket of her dress, there to fidget with her pearl bracelet.

“They are coming,” I say, for sometimes people are reassured by the simple act of the one they look up to stating the obvious. Mother once said that it makes them feel as if they could affect their fates. “Now we must wait.”

The ghosts appear before the captains, guards, or soldiers do. Alina and Merile greet them, still unaware of how dire the situation may soon become. The ghosts’ outlines are blurry, hems limp and heavy, hair untied, slowly swaying as if they were submerged in a river. The news they bear is important, but I can’t rush these poor creatures any more than I can maintain the illusion of security.

It becomes apparent that the ghosts have lost control of their bodies. I shouldn’t pray—for that rarely helps—but I do pray that they still have enough control left of their minds. I need to know what awaits us, though I have done my best to prepare for every eventuality.

“Troika,” Irina wails. “Troika. Troika.”

“Away,” Olesia adds, and I can tell that they are trying their best, though each word costs them more than any have ever cost me. Soon there will be nothing left of them but a fading memory of younger Daughters of the Moon.

“Thank you.” I nod at the ghosts. This is what I agreed with the gagargi. Though it is late already, whichever of the two captains enters the room, he will demand I leave this house immediately. Any more delays might mean that I mightn’t arrive in the Summer City in time for the ceremony.

“Which one of us will you choose?” Elise asks, her voice bright as if she really expected me to follow through with the deal I manipulated the gagargi into accepting. She has changed more than I have, but out of her own will or under someone’s influence, that I don’t know. But I shall not forget she betrayed me once already, that she is young and idealistic, dangerous to a degree.

“Either we all go or no one goes.” I repeat what I have said so many times before. I won’t leave this house with one of my sisters and abandon the others in the hands of Captain Ansalov, regardless of what Elise may insist.

Sibilia nods at me, glares at Elise. Merile takes hold of Alina’s hand. But little Alina, she seems completely unafraid, the last thing I expected. As I meet her gaze, I realize she is sure I will keep her safe, that I will live up to my promise to protect her from the gagargi and his horrid machine.

“Coming.” Irina drifts to the door, fists clenched against her chin. As she quivers her shape disintegrates, her voice hoarsens. “Coming. Coming.”

And then the heavy, determined steps already rattle on the stairs. Those familiar. Those these hallways haven’t known for weeks.

“Let us be ready then,” I say to my sisters, and step forth, to stand at the exact center of the room. My sisters hurry into an arc behind me, in the order of age, though Elise does so reluctantly. No matter what she claims, a part of her believes that I will triumph tonight. Indeed, the time has come for me to use the strength bestowed on me, that of my very own soul, to alter the mind of the person who steps through the door.

The door opens with a slow creak. The ghosts flee, out of their own mind or out of fright I don’t know, and presently I must focus on the task at hand, the one that surpasses all others in its direness.

I pronounce the glyph.

“Evening.” Captain Ansalov marches in, a letter with a broken red seal creased in one outstretched hand. His curly brown hair springs with his steps, but his beady green eyes are without emotion other than fierce devotion. From this I know the gagargi addressed the orders to him. He is in charge tonight.

Captain Janlav follows two steps behind Captain Ansalov, quick and sure with his movements, but undecided yet in his mind. I can tell this from the way he stares at Captain Ansalov, how his gaze darts from us to the door and the guards and soldiers that crowd the hallway beyond. His gaze meets Belly’s, and the guard wide and tall closes the door before anyone else can enter the room. Though my sisters and I may have appeared meek in the captain’s eyes for many months, he is no fool. He knows that I will not simply give up.

And this is exactly what I have counted on him doing, sealing us in with no unnecessary personages left to witness what may come to pass. I part my lips and let the glyph out. “Good evening to you, too, Captain Ansalov. Captain Janlav.”

As the glyph transforms into a spell, it feels as if I were standing in the Moon’s light. The silver threads of the spell bear my beloved’s touch, and they are visible only to Sibilia and me. I feel inhumanly strong, almost invincible, but this is just an illusion. I didn’t triumph over the gagargi, merely delayed this moment. I must proceed with the greatest care and caution.

As Captain Ansalov strides toward me, I wrap the threads into a cap around his head. He halts abruptly, a step away from me. Now that I am married to the Moon, his magic comes to me in a more structured, more understandable way. This spell is intricately woven, one for me to control, not one as wild as the one with which I so crudely attacked the gagargi.

“Daughters…” My sisters and Captain Janlav wait for Captain Ansalov to announce his grim news. Captain Ansalov clenches his jaw as I press the silver net through his hair, against his skull. He scratches the back of his head, fingers sinking deep into his thick curls.

Captain Janlav clicks his heels together. Though the silence has lasted for mere seconds, he is suspicious, aware that I may be trying something he might not even comprehend. He glances past me at Elise, searches for a confirmation. The walls of this house are thin—I have heard if not seen the bonds forged between them. I can discern all of this in his voice. “Good evening, daughters.”

My sisters remain in the arc behind me, as I have earlier instructed them to do. Apart from Sibilia, they don’t know about the glyph or the spell. Yet they have placed their lives in my hands. Alina, Merile, Sibilia, even Elise, they believe in our father’s powers, if not yet in mine.

“Daughters. Celestia.” Captain Ansalov brandishes the once-sealed orders. I ram the cap against his head, push it through the skin. I don’t plan on altering his mind, rather the orders he thinks he has read. For the closer I stay to the truth, the easier Sibilia says it will be to make him believe what I say. “Gagargi Prataslav has sent for you.”

I meet his gaze, boldly, as is the right of the oldest Daughter of the Moon and that of the Crescent Empress. His skull, though made of bone, yields under the spell. Captain Ansalov’s body tenses, and his winter-bitten fingers curl tighter around the letter. Some might consider it terrifying to have this much power, to be able to change the course of events, history even, with mere words said. But this is how it has always been for the Crescent Empress. “My sisters and I are ready.”

And from this moment on I am alone, as the empresses of the past have always been. I dare not to divide my attention to how my sisters fare, to more than one mind. I have chosen to tackle the more dangerous man first.

For mine is the touch of my father and my husband, and under it, Captain Ansalov’s mind is red and raw, a tangle of orders received and followed. I sense this, though I don’t know the details, I don’t possess the skill to see them. But I can imagine their content. The orders are from those higher in rank than him, a few are from my mother, and then, some are from the gagargi himself. I can also sense that this isn’t the first time his mind has been tampered with.

I had expected that with my beloved’s help I would be able to separate these commands from each other with ease. But there is no way to further tell them apart. Quickly I realize the only available approach is to alter as many as I can. And that is what I do.

Three decades of service translates to hundreds, if not thousands, of deeds done in the name of those more powerful. I imprint my will against each order, perfectly aware that I am thus fast draining the strength my beloved blessed me with. But soon I realize, not Captain Ansalov’s. His will has been eradicated so many times that the only thing that has persisted is a blind sense to obey without reason or thought for consequences; the only way for him to bear this is to enjoy doing so.

“Shall we, then?” Captain Janlav’s question brings me back to the moment.

A headache buds behind my eyes, and the silver threads connecting me to Captain Ansalov’s mind flicker. What I have done may suffice or then turn out to be nowhere near enough. At this point, perhaps the best course of action is to wait, simply maintain the spell with what little is left of my beloved’s strength.

As I hold Captain Ansalov under the spell, he remains dazed, Captain Janlav suspicious. I rub my forehead, to clear my thoughts, before I can stop myself. The question to ask is: if Captain Janlav came upon a chance to protect my sisters and me, would he grasp it? Yes, I think so, he is a decent man, once loyal to my mother, now dedicated to our people. Having grown close to Elise, he will not willingly hurt us if provided with an alternative that doesn’t put his men at risk.

“The order.” Captain Ansalov glances at the wrinkled paper. Flakes of red wax shiver onto the carpet. I refuse to think of this as an omen, though a hundred white dots bloom before my eyes from the mere effort of prolonging the spell. “The order…”

Now Captain Janlav knows that I have indeed pursued the path of resistance. His lips part, but not to form a protest. It is more as if he were in awe of me. Intriguing. Though he knows me as the oldest Daughter of the Moon, doesn’t know me as the empress, my powers shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him.

“My sisters and I are ready to come with you,” I repeat, meeting Captain Ansalov’s eyes. His mind, it pulses under the spell, violent and violated. More orders surface, from this year or from decades past, that I can’t tell even as I feel the last flecks of my beloved’s blessing waning.

“The orders are to…”

I will myself behind the spell with my full mind, with my whole body. I will see my sisters to safety, regardless of what that might do to me. And so I alter the orders as they spring up in Captain Ansalov’s mind.

A guttural grunt of refusal slips out from between Captain Ansalov’s lips. But it is too late for him to repel me and of that I am glad. For every action I commit consumes a part of my soul. But I have no time to regret my choice, no regrets. And so I press the spell against his mind and everything it contains.

Captain Ansalov recoils. His eyes widen, then narrow. Captain Janlav stares at me, indecision marring his forehead. I arch my brows at him. What did he expect? A Daughter of the Moon simply giving up? And at the same time, I am equally surprised by my own power.

Captain Janlav’s mouth pulls taut, and he strides to Captain Ansalov’s side. He clears his throat as he claps his heels together. A part of me wants him to speak up, another part to forever remain silent. One of my wishes is granted. “We shall take the daughters with us.”

Elise glides beside me, nods passionately. A peculiar, soothing feeling—relief, I realize—washes over me. She does care for our sisters. Given the opportunity, she is willing to protect them.

I share a quick look with her. Now that Captain Janlav has decided to side with us, we must leave this house, reach the troika, preferably the train, and be on our way toward the Summer City before Captain Ansalov can regain his composure. “We are ready.”

For a moment that is so short, but so long still that I believe the fallacy, I think the situation is under my control. There is the slightest easing of tension. A flicker of hope in my younger sisters’ personages.

Then Captain Ansalov blocks my way bodily, ending up so close to me that only a paper’s width separates us. He smells of wet horses and gunpowder, not like my seed did, but terrifyingly familiar still. Under the spell, his mind shifts, like a rogue wave rolling against a rocky shore. “No.”

I force myself to complete stillness. This is it then. When I thought of this encounter before, I knew it might come down to this. I must sacrifice myself to save my sisters. I draw more of my soul and enforce the spell.

“The orders are…” Captain Ansalov glances at the paper, at me. He crosses his hands behind his back. “The orders are…”

I fill in the missing words even as my knees buckle from their sheer intensity. “To take us to the gagargi.”

“There are many orders…” Captain Ansalov trails off, shakes his head. He is a soldier at heart. It is in his nature to fight against the insurmountable odds, even if doing so may hurt him. And this is exactly what he does. “That. That is not. That is not—”

I push myself as far as I can. Farther.

As I am connected to his mind, I feel the exact moment of its shattering.

In the stillness that follows, that beyond the night’s last hour, that of the morning’s first, I realize to my horror that there is nothing more I can do. Captain Ansalov’s mind is broken by the commands said decades ago, by my attempts to change them. Even if I were to drain my soul dry, I don’t possess the skill to mend his mind. It becomes a meaningless endeavor to hold on to the spell, and so the best course of action is to simply let it fade.

“Captain Janlav…” Captain Ansalov’s gaze steadies. He motions sharply toward us, a gesture of terrible inclusion. “Bring them with us to the cellar.”

A chorus of gasps comes from behind me. I refuse to make a sound, though this command can’t be the one he received from the gagargi. It can’t be, for the gagargi needs me alive! But I can’t allow terror to even touch me. I must understand where this command stems from to decide the best course of action.

“No, not that one.” Captain Janlav places a friendly palm on Captain Ansalov’s shoulder, but he looks past the captain at me. Having seen my powers, he wants to know if there is more I could do.

I dare not meet his eyes, answer him. I don’t yet have a plan.

“The orders are to clean this house,” Captain Ansalov insists. I realize it then, this order comes from the past. He doesn’t know anymore which of the many orders crowding his mind he has already obeyed and which are yet to be fulfilled. In his confused state, he will not listen to my words. He is beyond my influence, that of my father.

Captain Janlav pats Captain Ansalov’s shoulder, a jovial attempt to save what he can. “No, no, no, the orders are written and sealed. Shall we have one more look at them together?”

And it is only because Captain Ansalov is still befuddled that Captain Janlav manages to distract him and direct him out, his last favor to us out of loyalty for the ruler he once served.

I am not alone with my failure, but in the company of my sisters. I had thought through many scenarios, but none wound up like this. I was prepared to sacrifice my soul, my very life, but in the end, even that wasn’t enough to keep my sisters safe. Defeated, I stare at the flaking paint of the pale blue door, closed and locked once more. For us, another one will not open. Or if it does, it will be that of the cellar, the one we shouldn’t walk through.

My sisters wait patiently behind me. I can hear their nervousness in their shallow breaths and the floor creaking under weights shifted. Turning around, facing them, feels more challenging than confronting Captain Ansalov. “My sisters—”

“He would have helped us!” Elise claps her delicate hands against her chest, awed by the man she once loved, whom she can now admit she never stopped loving, impervious for a moment more to our impeding fate. “All this time, and I didn’t know!”

“Well, now you know,” Sibilia remarks, as disappointed as I am that our sister cares more for her heart’s chosen one than our own well-being. She slips the pearl bracelet around her wrist. She fidgets through each pearl before she finds the courage to ask what I should have willingly provided. “What are we going to do?”

What pains me the most is to see the absolute trust in Alina’s deep-set gaze, hope in Merile’s dark brown one. Sibilia already knows, though she pretends otherwise. We have talked of this often enough. The grimness of our situation is only starting to dawn on Elise. She really thought she would be leaving the house tonight.

“We must decide together how we wish to proceed.” And I lay down the facts and only the facts, no feeble promises of better prospects. I couldn’t change the orders Captain Ansalov received. Captain Janlav’s offer, born from a moment of opportunity, is something we can but forget. Now that the gagargi’s orders are in the air for both his guards and Captain Ansalov’s men to hear, defying them and engaging in a fight that is likely to end in gunshots and blood spilled is not something he is willing to risk.

“One.” Merile picks the black dog up in her arms. It climbs to rest against her shoulder, prods my sister’s neck with its nose. “So you must choose one of us to go with you?”

Alina intently studies my shadow, that of Elise. She nods to herself and kneels to summon the brown dog to her. “I know who you should pick.”

Out of all of us, Alina is the one least afraid. She alone still believes that I will live up to my promise. A thought bordering on delirious comes to me. Could it be that my frail little sister can glimpse our future in the shadows? If I had thought to ask this earlier, could I have saved us? Could any knowledge have made the difference?

“Either we all go or no one goes,” Sibilia repeats. She must have realized, too, that with his mind tampered with, Captain Ansalov will order anyone staying behind in this house executed.

“I don’t agree with you.” Elise has her chin angled up, gray eyes afire with defiance. “Celestia, you are the Crescent Empress. What will become of our people if we meet our end in this house? With us gone, there will be no one left to champion for them. Don’t say no to the gagargi’s generous offer for purely selfish reasons.”

For a moment, there is but silence, for what else could there be? And in this silence, the room feels smaller, the shadows in the corners darker, the light of the chandeliers feebler, the carpet akin to sinking ground. Where once the whole empire was mine, now I am hesitant to confront my own sister. For I don’t know if there is anything I can say to make her see that I am not defying the gagargi because I loathe him for what he did to me, what he did to us and our mother and her sisters. I am saying no to his plan to save her and our younger sisters and the whole empire from oblivion.

In the end, I don’t have to say a thing. A thin, white shape forms beside Elise.

“Drinking,” Olesia wails. Her shape is translucent. “Men drinking downstairs.”

“Oh no,” Sibilia gasps, a hand flinging to cover her mouth. “Celestia…”

I lift my forefinger minutely, a sign she shouldn’t say more. Men drink to gather courage when faced with commands they aren’t willing to obey sober. This is no longer my choice. The two captains will force me to go to the gagargi, to abandon my sisters. Or then, the order they think they must obey is the grimmer one, the one from the past that has already been once carried out, that led Irina and Olesia to their graves. But Captain Ansalov may not remember that, and it is my fault and no one else’s.

“My sisters…” I have always known that as the Crescent Empress I might need to choose from two equally appalling options. But never did it even occur to me to speculate which of my sisters deserves to live the most. For that is a decision I can’t make, one that I can’t ask them to make for me either. “I…”

“Celestia, wait,” Sibilia says, so quietly, so shyly, uncertain and yet so sure of herself. “There is one more thing that we could try.”

“Tell us.” Merile speaks in my place.

Without saying another word, Sibilia strides to the window closest to our rooms and yanks at the curtains. It takes her three attempts to fully part them. The thread tears loose just as we gather around her.

My beloved, he hasn’t yet risen to the sky. Yet, where there should be but dark, a faintest silvery glow emerges. It finds its way into the room through the crack in the glass, the gap between the planks, past the open curtains. “Our father showed me something that for a long while only confused me. But I just realized what he might have meant. That is, I’m pretty sure I know what he was after.”

The silvery light draws me toward it. My sisters and Olesia hear the call, too. It can be but a message from our father, for we are all his daughters.

“When I read the scriptures, I came across a spell that might enable me to change the souls between two willing bodies.” Sibilia glances at Alina and Merile, and then… at the two dogs. No wonder that my sister is hesitant. Her idea is straight out of a children’s story. “He has shown me the dogs running through the forest, following the magpie. I think that…”

She doesn’t need to say more. She is suggesting switching Alina’s and Merile’s souls with those of the two dogs, to be guided to safety by the witch who demanded too much from me in her greed. And then she wants me to leave the house with…

“Could you bind the spell?” I ask, though this is a ludicrous conversation to have in the first place. But I must know the answer to make a decision of any sort. It is very challenging to maintain a spell while moving, and if the spell were to snap, the souls would no doubt return back to their original bodies.

“I’ll stay here,” Sibilia replies, her voice steadier than mine. “Captain Ansalov will have no reason to go after the dogs.”

The rest of her plan dawns on me. She wants me to leave the house with Elise. Elise, of all people!

“No.” I cup Sibilia’s cheeks, kiss her forehead. My dear sister, the one I once chose to stay behind with me, the one I promised to never abandon, is ready to sacrifice herself to save her younger and older sisters—a duty that was mine, but which I couldn’t carry through. “No, no, and no.”

But my sisters care little of me rejecting the dreadful idea. They don’t yet understand the price it bears, the sheer number of unknowns. What would happen to our youngest sisters once their bodies cease to breathe? Would they remain captive in those of the two dogs forever? Or would the witch know a way to bring them back?

“Yes, that’s it!” Elise claps her hands. She isn’t cheerful as much as relieved. “Celestia, can you not see it? This is our father’s will.”

Alina squeals with delight. “I’d be a dog!”

“But what of my dear sillies?” Merile asks in a quiet voice, though she must know the answer already. There is nothing left in this house for us, for them, but despair.

“Please, be quiet,” I plead with them, pacing away from the pale light. Sibilia’s plan is far-fetched, its implications more terrible still. If her spell were to fail, the lives of our youngest sisters would be forfeit. If it were to work, beyond all logic, beyond all sanity, four of us would have a chance to live. But one of us would fall.

“Rifles.” Olesia’s shrill whisper interrupts my train of thought. “Irina says… Men loading rifles.”

“Father Moon, forgive me,” Sibilia mumbles even as she marches to me. She grabs my wrists and pulls me with her into the beam of light. “Will you show your wife your will and let us get on with it?”

Before I can tell her that it is outrageous of her to ask this of our father, demand my husband show me what he sees when he hasn’t chosen to do so before, impossibly, the light turns luminous. I can’t move, wouldn’t even want to move, as it swallows me whole. My beloved reveals his blessed face to me, the drawing room fills with his silvery presence, and I can at last see that which has come to pass under his celestial gaze.

The Great Thinking Machine has grown in size. It is blacker than the night, an oiled creature with a thousand spindly, insect legs. It hisses in hunger, though dozens of men feed it small amber beads in a constant supply. Another group of men piles holed paper sheets in its gaping maw, questions that the gagargi demands answered. The cogs and wheels spin as the machine crunches through numbers without thought or care. All this is possible only because…

A peasant woman with more white in her hair than one of her age should have presents her newborn to a country gagargi. The man in black robes extracts the child’s soul from the writhing body with practiced ease, a glyph pronounced, fingers flicked. The small glass bead fills with amber light. The baby ceases to move, to breathe, to be. The gagargi nods, satisfied with a job well done. He offers the limp body back to the woman. She attempts to hide her tears without success. This is the fate of every other child.

There are more visions of my empire, but they change too fast for me to catch more than a glimpse of each. But in many of them there are weapons fired without thought or reason, snow and frozen ground stained with blood, houses and fields left behind for someone else to claim. I don’t know why my beloved hasn’t shown this to me before, but now isn’t the right time to ask. Not now when the vision changes once more, and I see with my own eyes the one that first confused, then inspired Sibilia.

A black dog, a brown dog dash through the midnight forest, thin tails extended straight behind them, ears pressed against their heads. Theirs is speed, theirs is devotion, as my beloved lights their way through the unnamed, winding paths. A bird black and white flies before them, wings beating fast, but whether it is fast enough…

“Celestia.” Elise’s whisper is soft, wavering. “Please come back to us.”

I blink and find my sisters huddling around me, my beloved’s light receding. I understand now what I should have realized on my own a long time ago already. When one is taking, one isn’t looking. That is why I didn’t see these visions before.

“What did he show you?” Sibilia asks, and my younger sisters stare expectantly at me. They know that I now know my beloved’s will.

“I must return to the Summer City, there to put an end to Gagargi Prataslav’s rule.”

Men arguing. Glass shattering. Furniture being pushed aside. These harsh sounds carry through the house, and we hear them clear now. The impatience and anger unleashed.

“Hurry.” Olesia flickers out of sight, back. “Irina says to hurry.”

I have always prided myself on being able to think rationally even in the direst of circumstances, and this occasion is no exception. Sibilia’s plan is our best and only option. It pains me to accept this, but there is no other choice.

I stoop down and pat my knees twice in quick succession. The dogs bounce to me, brown coat, gray coat gleaming under my beloved’s light. I meet their big, round eyes. “Let me have a look at you.”

My sister’s dogs are more than themselves tonight. There is a deeper understanding present in their glistening gazes. They are ready to sacrifice themselves to save their mistress, her little sister. And for that I love them as if they were truly my sisters.

“Alina, Merile.” I address our youngest sisters even as I rise up. Elise herds them before me, not quite able to conceal her own haste. Sibilia peeks out through the crack in the glass, the gap between the planks, thoughtful. Olesia falters out of sight, returns fainter, but there is nothing I can do for her. “I have seen what Sibilia has seen. Will you let Rafa and Mufu help you?”

“Yes!” Alina agrees as if she had been waiting for this moment for months and then again months. And perhaps she has.

“Other way.” Merile pouts her lips. Tears glitter at the corners of her eyes. “There is no other way. Is there? One where…”

Elise wraps her arms around Alina and Merile. Regardless of what she insisted earlier, it isn’t easy for her to part from them. It isn’t easy for me either. I should have been the one to sacrifice myself, not Sibilia. “I am afraid there is none.”

Merile blinks, frustrated and furious. Finally, she nods. “What do we need to do?”

Sibilia stirs by the window. Her gaze is full of wisdom and my beloved’s secrets. For a long while after her debut, I wondered if my swan-self kept her word, if she flew to the highest skies, if she conveyed the news of my sister’s coming of age to our father. Now I know she did. As I have been blessed by our father, so has my sister. “Not much. Elise, where did you put that needle?”

Elise quickly fetches the needle from the table while Sibilia instructs us to settle into a crescent so far away from the window that the beam of light barely touches our sabots. She nudges the gray dog before Merile, the brown one before Alina. I have no role in this ceremony. It is up to my sister to perform the rite.

The sounds from downstairs intensify. Men searching for courage have perhaps found it from the bottle, and have no other option but to cope with their commands. Olesia’s shape shivers worse than before. She doesn’t need to tell us to hurry.

“Father Moon,” Sibilia addressed my beloved, her tongue clicking with the glyph, I recognize this now. “Four willing souls, four bodies, will you save your daughters?”

The silvery beam of light flowing into the room gleams in reply. My beloved has at last risen to the sky. The two dogs trot to the purest of lights. Alina and Merile follow them, as does Sibilia. Elise shifts to do likewise, but I seize her arm. This rite doesn’t concern us.

My hand clenches blue bruising tight around her slender arm.

“Finger.” Sibilia beckons Alina, the needle already poised.

Alina sticks her forefinger up. She winces as Sibilia stabs it. A drop of blood swells on her fingertip, scarlet in color.

“You, too,” Sibilia says to Merile.

Merile hesitates. She glances at her dogs, at us. I meet her gaze. Does she not hear the sounds from downstairs? Does she not realize this is our only chance? I will my eyes to convey all this.

Merile sighs and extends her hand toward Sibilia. Our sister sinks the needle in her flesh.

Next, Sibilia squats down. The dogs offer their paws at her, one after the other. She draws their blood, her movements growing clumsier. “Now, what was the thing I was supposed to do next?”

There are footsteps pounding up the stairs. More than two pairs. Many more. The captains are coming for us with their men. But telling Sibilia to hasten the spell would only confuse her more. And if even this were to fail, more than one of us would fall.

“Ah, that bit.” Sibilia swiftly rises up. She waves wide circles with her hands. She lets another glyph out…

If I had thought my beloved’s light bright before, I had no idea of how bright it could be. The Moon’s light floods the drawing room so bright that for a moment I can’t see. When my vision returns, Merile and Alina are already changing. They writhe and whine. They shiver and shine. Then their gazes dull, their souls leave their bodies.

And the dogs before the girls change, too. They curl down, twitch, go limp. Did the spell not work? Or did it go wrong like so many things have done of late?

But no, the dogs stir, bounce up to their feet. Now their big eyes glint with confusion, not with fear. They open their mouths as if to speak, but only a curious growl comes out. They glance up at me.

“It worked,” I say. The impossible, the improbable worked. I bless my beloved’s name.

Sibilia purses her fists against her hips, satisfied. Elise’s lips part as she wonders at the girls that are not our sisters, the dogs that are.

The footsteps reach the hallway beyond the locked door.

“My dear sisters…” I must persist, hold on to my composure just a little while longer. As much as I would like to, there is nothing I can do for Sibilia. I can’t switch places with her, for she must stay behind for the spell to remain intact. And intact it must stay for the two captains to believe Alina and Merile dead. That is the only way for them to flee. However, it is up to me to save Elise and myself, even if she has acted treacherously in the past. I don’t yet know what consensus the captains have reached, but I pray to the Moon that they are still willing to obey the gagargi’s original commands. “Let us be brave.”

A mere heartbeat later, the door swings open. Olesia shimmers, disappears out of fright. Or altogether. I wish we could do likewise, but we are not yet ghosts.

“Daughters.” Captain Janlav enters first, his eyes hard as beaten copper. The offer born from opportunity is gone, as I knew it would be. I can but accept this.

Captain Ansalov strides in after him, the bayonet attached to the end of his rifle gleaming in my beloved’s light. Beyond the open door, in the hallway, wait both the guards and the soldiers, every single one of them armed. The tension between them is so dense that one could march on it.

“We meet again.” I spread my arms in a greeting fit for an empress. Let them see me as I am, not as a woman afraid of her life, that of her sisters. Beside me, Elise smiles more luminously than ever, disquietingly ecstatic. Sibilia whispers what may be a prayer. The dog-girls stare at their feet. The girl-dogs sit against their feet.

Captain Ansalov staggers to a halt. He isn’t intoxicated, but broken inside. I look past him at Captain Janlav, Beard, Belly, Tabard, Boots, and Boy. The hardness, determination of the youngest of them is merely a shell for a boy not ready for the deeds that men bearing rifles must do. Whether the guards are ready to admit it or not, for these past seven months, three weeks, and twenty-one hours, they were our family as much as we were theirs. And though they knew that this is how it would eventually end, they must have hoped that something, anything would change along the way, that it wouldn’t come down to this.

But now it has.

“Well?” Captain Ansalov snaps at Captain Janlav, and I can read the consensus they reached from his impatience. He is beyond certain that I will not bend to the gagargi’s will, that my life and that of my sisters will soon be in his hands.

I say the words that pain me more than anything the gagargi ever did to me. “Elise and I are ready.”

Sibilia and the dog-girls are allowed to follow us to the hall where Captain Ansalov and his soldiers wait, rifles ready. Of the two ghosts, there is no sign. I don’t think anyone of us will see them ever again.

My heart sinks as I notice the door leading to the cellar is ajar, for my sisters and I know what this means. But there is no taking back my words, the decision that in the end wasn’t even mine to make.

“Sibilia…” I embrace my sister, the one who is to stay behind, to walk down the stairs into the darkness, never to see light again until she rises to the sky, there to forever bask by our father’s side. Tears throb at the back of my mouth, and though I haven’t wounded my flesh, I taste blood. I wish there was some greater wisdom for me to share as my final words to her, but there is none.

“Oh, Celestia, it’s all right! It’s all right to feel!” My sister places her palms on my shoulders, her gray eyes completely tearless. “I’m not afraid. Truly, I’m not.”

I have never heard such sincerity and honesty in anyone’s voice, and it is only because of that that I can bring myself to part from her. She is so brave, much more so than I am. My little sister, the dreamer who taught herself what I couldn’t learn even when guided by the best of tutors!

As Elise says her good-byes, or perhaps she begs forgiveness from Sibilia, I bend and kiss each of the dog-girls on their foreheads. They peck small kisses on my cheeks. They stamp their feet. If they still had tails, they would wag them. “Farewell, my dears. Farewell!”

Captain Janlav clears his throat. He is anxious to leave this house behind, to gain distance between himself and what will soon happen here. “Celestia, Elise, let us be on our way.”

Despite his words, I kneel to pat the girl-dogs, my sisters Alina and Merile. There isn’t much time left, but I don’t know when—if ever—I will see them again, if someone will eventually find a way to summon their souls back to human bodies.

“Run,” I whisper in Alina’s ear, to Merile, “run as fast as you can and never look back. Run as soon as you see our father’s light.”

Captain Janlav pushes the door open. “Now.”

The girl-dogs dart forth, past his worn boots, into the true night that awaits only some of us. One brown dog, one black one, two Daughters of the Moon, soon become but shadows.

Elise and I follow Captain Janlav to the yard.

As the troika speeds through the night, I hearken my ears to the sounds I know to expect. Elise leans against my shoulder, eyes closed, unable to hold back tears. Despite what she may have done in the past, I am not cruel enough to deny her comfort at this terrible moment. I cradle her slender palms between mine. Her fingers are colder than mine, her heart, too.

I know now what lies beyond exhaustion, at the end of everything. Numbing vulnerability, but also the frailest flicker of hope, the belief that our father, my beloved, will protect us.

And then, gunshots, followed by faraway barks.