Like an aneurysm, I only know it’s happening once I’m in the middle of it. I wake up from a nap, bleary-eyed, and look outside my window to check the time: but instead of just seeing the sun as it sets on the horizon, I see crowds of people in the eastern courtyard, and a band set up by the fig trees, and servants wearing the all-black outfits that mean we are having guests over.
I push open my window. A cold breeze rushes in, and it smells like money—the sharply alcoholic perfume I hate with a passion. It blows into my room hand in hand with the thin, reedy sound of a flute playing something unbearably cheerful; and for a moment I can only stare at them. All the laughing bodies, the rich cloaks, the lavish jewelry, the glitter of wine glasses in candlelight, the sound of the world turning without me, and not only that, turning with joy.
My mouth tastes like acid. I lick my teeth. I ring the bell by my bedside, and almost instantly Hadja pokes her head in, her dark eyes wide and expectant.
“What—“
My voice cracks. It is far rougher than I’d realized, still hoarse from sleep. It is the voice of someone unprepared—a voice shameful for a princess. My cheeks flash-burn. Hadja lowers her eyes, and finally I clear my throat and croak: “What is this?”
“Prince Pilate is throwing a winter’s eve party,” Hadja says; and still she does not look me in the eyes. Her voice wavers when she asks, “Would you like me to do your hair?”
I plod downstairs resentfully. Pilate has strung our spiral staircases with boughs of thickly-leafed holly; out of the corner of my eye their bright-red berries look like poison. Though this part of the mansion is empty, I can hear a soft, rich violin suite bleeding in from the courtyard. And in the foyer he’s set up tall, skeletally bare white oak trees, their boughs swathed in silver tinsel and decorated with glass baubles, which he’s filled with snow enchanted never to melt.
I have to hand it to him. I hate these damn parties, but they never fail to impress me.
A servant passes me with a tray of shots. Without stopping him, I snatch two, not bothering to figure out exactly what they are, and down one right after the other. A sharp, bitter heat flashes down my throat and through my chest: I cough and shake my head violently, just for a second, until the feeling subsides. The servant doesn’t even notice. I wonder for a moment whether I should chastise him for being so distracted, and then realize I don’t care at all.
It seems most of the attendees are in the kitchen—which has been turned into a bar, I realize as I pass it, and is crowded from wall to wall—or the courtyard, where the band has picked up pace and guests have begun to dance.
But when I duck my head into our hall of statues, I realize the gallery must have been opened up too. It’s not nearly as crowded as the other rooms, but a few strangers still loiter there, admiring the sculptures and, to a lesser extent—my brother.
I slink toward him. The alcohol is already starting to make me feel fuzzy and warm, and a smile even flashes over my face, briefly, as I drawl: “I thought parties were for when things are going well.”
I glance up briefly from the parchment I am writing on and that is all it takes—a moment of negligence—for a bead of black ink to roll loose from my quill and stain what had once been spotless.
I think there is a metaphor in this, somewhere, but as I watch the ink splatter morph into a many-headed hydra, a forest of necks blooming like rot before my eyes, I grit my teeth and knock the soiled parchment aside.
The quill drops back into the ink pot with a bitter plink.
“...Prince Adonai?”
“Sorry,” I say, though I am not. “Can you repeat that?”
She hesitates, swallowing softly as she looks from the parchment to the quill to me. I smile. Backlit by the fading sun, I look, I think, rather holy. This seems to reassure her. “The fur cloak, prince. I believe it once belonged to your father? At least, that is what princess Miriam told me.”
She smiles and curtsies, her ankles tucked in like a lord’s daughter, before she turns to my dresser and pulls out a cloak of rippling wolf’s fur. I see her stroke it lovingly, just once, before she brings it under the lantern light. The bottom of her long, black braid sweeps the floor in a dark halo.
“Ah.” I glance wearily down at the cloak as she holds it aloft before me. “It did.”
The beast that had once worn this magnificent skin had been killed by Father, a spear in the eye, on one of his famed winter hunts. A row of mottled sandy feathers had lined its hem, each as long as a dagger, plucked from the tail of a teryr killed in his glorious youth.
The cloak had been tailored precisely to my father’s measurements so that it would sweep grandly after him like an emperor’s robe. I lean over and caress the fur. Father had donned the cloak so often in the wintertime—to galas, to meetings, even to dinner—that I had once called him, in solemn jest, Thousandfurs.
How he had laughed at that.
The hem of teryr feathers has since been stripped, burned with him as part of the elaborate rituals demanded of a Solterran funeral. We had followed it to the letter; an Ieshan had written the book of rites.
Anyway, I had not gotten Father’s height, or much of any of him, besides this cloak.
And there are days when I miss him terribly.
“Yes. This is perfect.”
—✧—
My lyre is strapped to my side and I am strumming it softly, an aimless melody of minor keys, when a plume of red blows in at the far end of the statue hall. A smile breaks cleanly across my face.
“Miriam.” My voice echoes down a procession of marble busts. A drifting statue blinks languidly at me, staring for an exaggerated moment, before her powdered head swivels owlishly towards a guest who has come to seek her questionable wisdom. Yes? I hear her whisper, her tone Delphic.
I drift unhurriedly towards Miriam, my steps keeping loose time to the swells of sweet violin streaming softly from the opposing ballroom. I wonder if she had known about this party of Pilate’s—with a mere week of preparation even I am impressed by how well he has managed to pull it off—yet by the way she is bristling, I conclude that she doesn’t.
The thought comforts me greatly.
“Drinking already?” I smirk down at the two empty shot glasses trailing her like ducklings. Like our siblings had, all of her life. I touch my nose briefly to her braided updo, brushing flat a flyaway strand. Father's fur cloak presses ghostlike against her shoulder.
“You know Pilate. Things are always going well.” There is no bitterness in me tonight as I stand besides Miriam, wolf’s fur filling in for all the places I am hollow. When was the last time I had spoken—really spoken—to her? What—if anything—does she know?
What—if anything—does she want to know?
I am drained of answers. Instead, I gaze longingly down at the shot glasses. I wish to be like that. Ducklings, in Miriam’s shadow.
“As for you and me...” I begin walking again, towards the entrance, so that I can better hear the violin. I nudge her shoulder to beckon her to follow.
Dearest sister. Must I always depend on you so?
Ambition was my idol, which was broken
Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token
O'er which reflection may be made at leisure
Adonai is strumming his lyre when I sidle up to him.
For the brief moment before he sees me, I find myself staring at the strings as they seemingly pluck themselves. I see them tremble like doves in the air. Their song is faint and sad, but it comes at me with the force of a meteor, and all at once I am dragged back through the waters of time into my childhood, a year old again; half-asleep as my brother plays me songs on the veranda, drowning in sunlight. I have never been sad. I love him, and my heart is pure.
(But I know things have changed, because I realize: he would never have played me this song. It would have been something wind-chime-bright, way back when we had things to be happy about. I was happy once.)
I was happy, once. Maybe I could be again. When I look at Adonai—this boy I love, my brother, my blood—is when I am the most convinced of this.
Today he almost looks like our father. I often forget how handsome he is: partially because I have grown up around him and it is not a surprise; partially because, in recent years, I’ve avoided looking at him at all. I’m afraid of seeing him—at least, really seeing him. I’m afraid of seeing the way his hips stick out, seeing the slat of each rib in his side. I’m afraid of the bruise-blue circles under his tired eyes. I’m afraid of the dullness of his coat; I’m afraid that underneath Father’s fur stole, he is nothing but bones, that without the pelt clasped around his neck he might simply fall apart and clatter to the floor.
Most of all I am afraid of his eyes. When we were children, we laughed at ourselves for matching in that way—him silver and I gold. They were the eyes I knew the best, and if I had ever managed to draw him properly I know I would have started from his gaze and painted outward.
Now he looks at me and my blood runs cold. His face is the same, sweet and elegant as ever, but the eyes are—they’re—wrong. A wrong blue, a bottom-of-the-river blue. And if I look too long I know I will drown.
My mouth fills with brine and salt. My lungs tighten until I think I might be gasping, but even if I were I couldn’t hear it over the pounding of my heart. The edges of my vision grow opalescent black; I squeeze my eyes closed, just for a second, and see intricate patterns of blood-red blossom through them.
He says my name. Miriam. (My name doesn’t sound like my own anymore, except when he says it.) The noise of it rings in my ears; it crashes to a new height and splits, like cymbals.
He says my name, Miriam, the brother I love most, the one I literally have not lived a moment without, and—I smile. Just like that, I can breathe again.
Drinking already? he asks, and my smile turns into a huff of laughter. “If I started any later, we'd all suffer for it," is my droll response, and it is only droll because I know it is the truth. Drunk Miriam barely belongs here; sober Miriam certainly wouldn't.
And anyway, I don't want to suffer. I've suffered enough. We all have. Drunk Miriam forgets her suffering. She forgets everything—the grave plots in the courtyard, my knotted hair; the fact that my brother's eyes were, many years ago, silver instead of blue. She forgets, and she is happy.
I am happy.
My chest burns. Heat rolls over my skin like a thunderstorm rolls across the sky, crackly and overwhelming. I feel like I am going to explode, like I am going to burst at the seams and my insides will pour out in one long stream of sand, and just as I think it really will happen, Adonai begins to lead us toward the sweet sound of the violin, and the danger subsides. I relax.
I do not know why I ever doubted him. If he is sick, I am sick. And if I am suffering, if I am at all tense, he will know it too. I think this is why he leads us out at just the right moment—the second before I crack and spill and burst into flames, or a pillar of salt.
"How do you feel?" I ask, trailing after him, watching the statues fade away on both sides. And I hope he knows I don't mean his sickness; more than that, I want to know if he is bitter, or hopeful, or resigned to his fate.
Because no matter what he answers, I will make myself feel the same way.
