Chapter 15:
It took them all morning to find their way back out of the library. “It’s a maze,” Oshta explained at one point. She didn’t say anything else to Mayah. Mayah didn’t feel like talking either, so it was okay. After they finally found the elevator again, they went back down to the cafeteria for dinner. The other princesses were already there.
“How was the library?” Shanti asked.
“It was really boring,” Mayah said quickly.
Oshta nodded. “Yeah, nothing happened.”
“Hm.” Shanti glanced at them. “So you were wasting your off day?”
“No,” Mayah said, even more quickly. “We went there to read about the Eternal Queen Sarana, like you said. But that wasn’t boring, it was really exciting, it was just going there that was boring, it took forever, but I mean, we really wanted to read about the Eternal Queen Sarana anyway so that’s why we went.”
There was a pause. “Well, uh, did you see any senior princesses?” Qat asked.
“Senior princesses, senior princesses, oh, senior princesses!” Priva sang out.
Rihani said nothing.
“Yeah, we saw some, they were great,” Oshta said. “They were nice.”
“Yeah,” Mayah whispered. “Really nice.”
***
That night, Mayah waited until she was sure all the other princesses were asleep, and then she got up and sneaked out into the lounge. She knocked on Sukren’s door. “Sukren,” she whispered loudly.
He came out at once and closed the door behind him. “What is it?”
Mayah swallowed. She was feeling a lot of things, so many things, but she didn’t know how to say them or even really what she wanted to say. It had been scary in the library. So scary, Mayah was scared even now, she’d been too scared even to go to sleep, because what if she woke up and Shanti and Priva and Oshta and Qat and Rihani decided that she was bad and needed to be shouted at in front of everyone? What if Mayah messed up really bad like that princess had? Mayah was trying really hard to follow all the rules but she didn’t even know what the rules were because she wasn’t from a castle!
“I went to the library today,” she whispered.
“What?”
Mayah jumped a little. Why did Sukren sound so upset? He looked upset too, frowning at her like that. “What do you mean you went to the library today? You went by yourself?”
“No – no, I went with Oshta.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to go?”
“I thought… I thought I had.”
Sukren frowned again. “You can’t do that, you can’t go off like that without telling me where you’re going.”
Mayah bit her lip. Why did Sukren have to be mad at her? She didn’t want anyone to be mad at her ever. Not Oshta, not Shanti, not any of the princesses in her dorm, and definitely not Sukren.
“It’s fine if you go to the library, you just have to tell me ahead of time.” Sukren looked up at the sound of someone’s door opening. “Take your medication with lots of water, Princess, and you’ll feel much better. Now it’s best if you get to bed.”
“Okay,” Mayah whispered. Without looking up – what if whoever it was saw her and thought she was doing something wrong? – Mayah ran for her dorm door. Once she got in, she tiptoed to her bed. She didn’t want to wake any of the other princesses up. What if they got mad at her for it?
***
“Who was that?”
“A princess who wanted some medical advice,” Sukren replied.
Ganithe was on her bed-shelf, propping herself up by her elbows. Ul was awake too, but he was at the table. He and Ganithe exchanged a glance. Sukren gritted his teeth. A little over four diurnals had passed since he and Mayah had come to the castle and he felt like he had spent all of them in a net and bitty-bat game with his dormmates. Where are you going? How is the princess? Why don’t you take a break? And then when Sukren tried to, he’d found Ul following him, oh, just happened to be in the same totally other zone.
It had gotten to the point that Sukren suspected Ul had never been sick. He and Ganithe had worked out some kind of deal to get Sukren out and away so Ul could trail him to Lady Nari, or maybe it was to get access to Mayah without Sukren around, or maybe it was just to drive him crazy because it certainly was doing that! Rock-god, Sukren had been giddy with happiness the one day he’d managed to trick Ganithe into leaving the dorm – and him – alone. It had never happened again, of course, though not for lack of effort on Sukren’s part.
“What kind of medical advice?” Ul asked, leaning forward, his face full of friendly concern.
Sukren forced himself to smile. Ul and Ganithe never let up their pleasant, even jovial attitudes; they never acted like they were anything but Sukren’s best friends. The fact that Sukren had to go along with it was the worst part. Other people’s constant pretenses he could handle; his own were another matter.
“She needed to drink more water with her medication is all.” Sukren grabbed his robe and made his way into his bed-shelf. He drew the privacy curtain around him and closed his eyes, touching both eyelids in prayer for no more questions. “I’m pretty tired, I have to sleep,” he said as soon as he was done.
It was a lie. Sukren doubted he’d be able to fall asleep for hours yet. But he was getting used to dissimulation. There was no other way to gain any space to breathe. Sukren couldn’t even figure out how to get a message to Lady Nari about Mayah and his mission. How could he? Wherever he turned, he saw Ul’s smiling face, and whenever he was at the dorm, there Ganithe was too, waiting and watching.
Maybe Sukren could send a telegraph to Lady Nari somehow. But what would he even say? MISSION FAILING STOP MAYAH MAKING FRIENDS STOP CAN’T PERSUADE HER AWAY STOP, yeah, that would go over really well. Rock-god! Sukren clenched his jaw. He was trying, he was trying his best, but could he really be faulted for feeling relieved whenever Mayah referred to another princess as her friend? Surely Lady Nari didn’t want Mayah to be mobbed and punished by the other Rajas?
Or did she?
Sukren rolled onto his side so that he was facing the wall. Maybe if he tried to sleep a solution would present itself.
“Are you sleeping, Sukren?”
Sukren covered his face with his hands. I can’t keep going like this. I can’t. I can’t. Rock-god, find me a way out, or even Sarana, I’ll pray to you too, I’ll pray to anyone, someone, please find me a way out…
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
***
“I love dancing, it’s my favorite!”
Mayah smiled. Kind of. She was trying really hard, but Priva was weird. Although Mayah didn’t really mind. At least Priva never said the wrong thing. And she didn’t act like Mayah had to say the right thing, either. Priva was even better than Oshta for feeling safe with. That was why Mayah was smiling at her now, although, to be fair, she would be smiling at her anyway. No matter what it took, Mayah was going to make sure every single princess in the dorm liked her even mean Qat and rule-follower Shanti.
“For the next four diurnals,” the regent at the front of the studio was saying, “you’re going to practice a dance for Queen Rathi Day. You’ll vote now on which choreography you want to do.”
Mayah hugged her knees to her chest. The mat under her bottom was hard. She was happy to stand up to get her ballot from the regent. But then the regent bent her head closer to Mayah’s. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “Two weeks is too short a time to learn a new dance, so I won’t give you a leading part. Just don’t volunteer to audition, and you’ll be fine.”
She was gone before Mayah could say anything. Quickly Mayah sat back down onto her mat and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed the regent talking to her. Qat had, she was giving her the you’re weird look again. Mayah scrunched down. She stared at the ballot in her hand. She didn’t want to be a fraidy-fish, but she was feeling nervous again. The regent made it sound like all the other princesses already knew all the dances on the ballot. Start of the Queens, For Love of Sarana, Exile of the Cursed…
Mayah had no idea what to pick. She leaned over to Priva on her right. “Which one are you going to vote for?”
“I love all of them,” Priva sighed. “But I like Exile of the Cursed the best. They got what they deserved!”
Okay, Mayah would choose that one then. “That’s my favorite too!” she said aloud. She pulled the tab next to Exile of the Cursed off the ballot. A little bit later, the regent came back around to pick up their votes. She took them to the front of the room and counted. “The winner is Start of the Queens.”
Cheers filled the room. “I love Start of the Queens!” Priva sang out, clapping her hands. Mayah tried to smile at her. Priva was so weird.
“There are fifty of you in this class, so most of you will together play the bio-dome. We’ll need someone to represent the Eternal Queen Sarana, though, as well as Matter and Intelligence and some other roles.”
Mayah wanted to scrunch down even more into her mat, and maybe hide forever too. A big reason why she had gone to the library with Oshta was so she could learn the stories everyone else seemed to already know. But she hadn’t been able to read even a single book, so she still didn’t know anything! Jroya and Pal, Mayah didn’t like feeling dumb, she didn’t like it at all.
“We’ll start with the auditions. Everyone who wants to can come up here to try out for the leading roles.”
For a second Mayah had a crazy thought. The regent had said not to try out but what if Mayah did anyway? What if Mayah went up there and did the perfect dance and then they all chose her and then during the Queen Rathi Day celebration everyone would see how great she was, and they would all cheer and clap and like her and she would be so happy!
Mayah almost stood up. But then she stopped. What if she tried out and did such a bad job that everyone laughed at her? It was better to listen to the regent, whoever she was. Mayah still didn’t know why the regent was helping her so much. Maybe she was friends with Sukren?
Checking a sigh, Mayah watched Oshta and Priva go up to the regent. Of course they would try out, especially Priva. She loved dancing.
But what were the rest of them supposed to do? Mayah looked around. Rihani was on the mat in front of Mayah, sitting quietly on her hands. She was second to last on Mayah’s friend-list, but she was close by so Mayah crawled up to her and tapped her shoulder. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Rihani whirled around so fast that it scared Mayah. But Rihani looked even more frightened, so frightened that Mayah felt like she should apologize. “I’m – I’m sorry,” Mayah stammered. “I – I just – I didn’t know what we were supposed to do –”
“Do?” Rihani whispered.
“Yeah, I – what are we supposed to do now?” Mayah pointed to the front of the room. “While they audition?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Huh? I don’t want you to do anything. I want to know what I have to do.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Yeah.”
Rihani looked at her blankly.
“Never mind.” Mayah crawled back to her mat. By the time she got to it, Rihani had turned back around and was sitting on her hands again. Mayah shivered a little. Then the regent, thank Sarana, called for everyone’s attention. “First up is Nye,” the regent said, gesturing towards a small princess wearing a pretty pink blouse. The princess started dancing but Mayah was more interested in her clothes. The pink was so pretty! Could Mayah get a shirt like that? She liked a lot the Rajas clothes she already had, especially all her many-colored frocks, but Mayah thought Nye’s blouse was the prettiest shade of pink she’d ever seen.
All of a sudden everyone around her started clapping. Oh, the dance was done. Mayah clapped too. The next princess was Priva. She actually was a pretty good dancer. Oshta was okay, as were the other princesses. None of the princes tried out, although Mayah didn’t know if that was because they weren’t allowed to or because they didn’t want to. After the auditions, the regent passed out another ballot again, along with styluses. “Write down next to each role who you think should get the part.”
Mayah wrote down Priva for the Eternal Queen Sarana, then Oshta for Matter, then Nye for Intelligence because Mayah felt a little bad that she hadn’t paid attention at all to Nye’s dance. She didn’t remember any of the other princesses’ names, so she left the rest of the ballot blank.
“Priva, come on up,” the regent called, after collecting all the ballots. “You got the role of the Eternal Queen Sarana.”
Priva was smiling so big, it made Mayah feel happy for her. She leapt to her feet when the regent gestured everyone up. “All of you with supporting roles, you will be pretending to be the bio-dome. In the first part of the dance, the Eternal Queen Sarana will welcome Matter and Intelligence into the dome. After she does that, you will all sing the chorale.”
The regent didn’t look like she was going to pass out any more sheets of paper so Mayah guessed that everyone already knew the chorale. That was okay. Mayah could listen to everyone else and learn the song really fast. And in the meantime, she could move her mouth around but not sing anything. Mayah watched the other princesses and copied them as they linked their hands and arms until they were in one big circle. Then came Priva, still smiling her head off, followed by two princesses Mayah didn’t know but who the regent had said were going to play Matter and Intelligence.
“I am the Eternal Queen Sarana,” Priva sang. “Welcome to my bio-dome.”
The two Rajas holding hands nearest Priva let go of each other and made a gap between them. Priva danced in through the gap to the center of the circle, along with Matter and Intelligence. As soon as they were in the center, the singing started. Mayah opened her mouth. Watermelon, she mouthed randomly, then, yummy fruit, oh, watermelon is a yummy fruit.
Then she halted. What… could that really be the song… that… what…
“From Matter comes flesh, from Intelligence comes sentience,” the Rajas around her were singing. “They have entered us now, to rule our desires. For this is what you shall want, every princess among you: to give birth to girl children, as many girl children as you can. You shall breed and cross-breed, and one day, if the Eternal Queen Sarana smiles upon you, you shall give birth to a queen.”
Mayah felt like she was going to be sick. That was how you made a queen? She almost wanted to drop hands with the princesses on her either side. Breed and cross-breed, that meant doing it with as many princes as you could. But that was nasty! Oh Sarana, was that what senior princesses did? Was that what would happen to Mayah after she got her cycle?
She managed to keep pretending to sing, and even managed to learn some new dance steps during the second half of the class. But as soon as it was over, Mayah rushed back to her dorm floor. She banged on Sukren’s door. “We have to go back to the village,” she said as soon as he opened it. “We have to go back right now. I can’t become a senior princess. I can’t.”
Sukren looked startled. He glanced over his shoulder. “Come walk with me. I want to show you a new balcony I found.”
Relieved, Mayah reached for his hand. She remembered in time, though, and pulled back. Yes, they definitely had to go back to the village. No more pretending, no more scary stuff, no more bad paintings. She couldn’t wait!