Chapter 2

Hours later, Maryan fluttered around in a huff while Gwendolyn stood in front of the mirror in her parent’s bedroom. She had been dressed in a clean, new dress Maryan had sewn. Gwendolyn usually had the last pick of the clothing in her family, but on special occasions like fancy dinners with potential suitors, she was usually given a nice hand-me-down from Maryan or even a new dress. Maryan was still angry that her husband had not come home for lunch and had muttered about “lazy drunk” and “ungrateful men” under her voice for an hour while Gwendolyn tried to eat her lunch in peace. She was no longer muttering, but her brow was still furrowed in anger, hours later.

“Ayalla, darling, come here please,” Maryan called out the bedroom door in the pleasant, honeyed tones she used to address any of her children that weren’t Gwendolyn. Then she turned to Gwendolyn, and her voice changed to a harsh tone, as she nearly hissed, “can you not stand up straighter?”

Ayalla walked through the bedroom door at that moment, mercifully sparing Gwendolyn any need to answer.

“Oh, Gwendolyn, you look beautiful,” she said as she approached them.

“She’s certainly a beauty,” said their mother, begrudgingly.

Gwendolyn didn’t reply, instead examining herself in the mirror. She had long, waist-length blonde hair the color of barley in sunset. It was true that she was pretty, with a small, upturned nose and dimples. She had only a small smattering of freckles right across the bridge of her nose. Ayalla had freckles across her whole face, and often bemoaned them, but Gwendolyn envied them.

“I simply love that color on you,” Ayalla continued, lavishing her with an unusual amount of praise. It was also true that the bright pink nicely offset Gwendolyn’s large blue eyes, though it had a neckline that made Gwendolyn blush slightly, as she was used to high collars and long sleeves. “You look like a porcelain doll.”

“Thank you, Ayalla,” said Gwendolyn demurely. She tried not to look suspicious as she made eye contact with her younger sister. Ayalla didn’t treat her with the utter disdain and indifference of her parents and older siblings, but neither did she treat her with the adoration of the five youngest, who Gwendolyn had practically raised. There were three distinct attitudes toward Gwendolyn in her family. Those already there when she was born— her parents and two older brothers— treated her with unkindness. The two who came right after Gwendolyn— Ayalla and their younger brother Arden— treated her with a neutral sort of indifference laced with occasional, irregular kindness. The youngest five— Traya, Dieon, twins Bartin and Baseal, and three-year-old Tannia— showered her in love. Without the youngins, she was fairly certain she wouldn’t get up most mornings.

“Ayalla, since Gwendolyn and I won’t be here this evening, and your father has probably passed out somewhere with a woman or two in bed, you’ll need to see your siblings fed and put to bed, please.”

“Of course, mother.” Ayalla nodded, but her expression gave nothing away, and Gwendolyn didn’t think she looked as if it was new information. She had a sinking suspicion that wherever she was going this evening, Ayalla already knew.

Gwendolyn swallowed her fury over her suspicions that her evening was a mystery only to her. Her mother had bid her sister get out the makeup that Maryan kept in a closet for special occasions.

“Stand up straight,” Maryan hissed at Gwendolyn once again, the sound of Ayalla rummaging in the closet almost drowning out her voice.

“I can’t stand any straighter,” said Gwendolyn, “sorry.” She tried to stand straighter but succeeded only in getting a twinge in her back. She felt a separate sting in the small of her back and looking around she saw that her mother had swatted at her.

“Don’t talk back,” said Maryan. “And remember to smile.”

At that moment, Ayalla emerged from the closet with a basket full of minerals that Maryan used to beautify herself. Maryan immediately began rummaging in it, pulling out powders and potions that Gwendolyn couldn’t identify no matter how many times Maryan tried to force her to learn.

Maryan dipped her fingers into an earthenware pot of some light pink powder, then used her hands to dabble the powder across Gwendolyn’s cheeks. Using her other hand, she rubbed the powder in.

She stood back, and in doing so, she cleared Gwendolyn’s view into the mirror. Looking at herself, she used the back of her hands to rub the powder into her skin, because she wasn’t fond of the vibrancy of the bright pink color against her pale skin.

“Stop that!” ordered Maryan, as she cleaned her hands with a cloth. “These are expensive, luxury items. Don’t waste them undoing my work. We need you looking your best,” and with that Maryan grabbed Gwendolyn’s hand and rubbed the back of it with the cloth until the pink powder displaced there was gone. “And First God forbid you stain your new dress.”

“Sorry, mother,” muttered Gwendolyn. Maryan began rubbing Gwendolyn’s cheeks again, muttering, “made it uneven,” under her breath.

Suddenly, mother and both daughters turned toward the bedroom door and the rest of the house just beyond, as the front door hinges creaked and a second later, it slammed closed.

“Maryan,” came Gwendolyn’s father’s voice. “Maryan!”

“What?” her mother shouted, in a voice even angrier than the one she usually reserved for Gwendolyn.

“Where is m’ stew?” Gwendolyn noticed her father slurring.

“You lazy drunk, who says I saved you any?” Maryan shouted, rushing out of the room and to the left, where the small hallway hiding her parent’s bedroom opened into the kitchen.

Gwendolyn sighed and glanced out the window. The sun was just beginning to set, so she assumed it was somewhere around 6:30 in the evening. She assumed that the dinner she was attending was another dinner with a group of suitors and other young women, and such dinners usually started around 7:30. She sat on the edge of the bed as her parents began arguing twenty feet away, trying not to listen.

“You do look beautiful,” said Ayalla, who crossed the room to shut the door.

“Thanks, Ayalla,” said Gwendolyn, staring into her lap at her folded hands.

“They’ll be at this for a while,” said Ayalla, with a vague nod toward the door. “Let me help with the makeup.”

Unlike Gwendolyn, Ayalla had studied her mother’s makeup techniques with vigor. Ayalla was beautiful in a very different way from Gwendolyn. Though they both had blonde hair, Ayalla’s was almost silver, and her blue eyes were rimmed with a dark brown, giving her stare an intense and almost inescapable quality. Ayalla’s face was covered in a sprinkling of freckles, in greater quantity and over a greater area than Gwendolyn’s, and Ayalla had lips that curved slightly downward, giving her a permanently serious expression. Also, unlike Gwendolyn, Ayalla was deeply self-conscious. Though makeup was a luxury for a family of farmers with ten children, they were one of the wealthier farms in The Floating Valley, owing mostly to their extensive barley crop. After all, her father often boasted, “pubs are never empty, but they would be without barley to make the beer!” And, after all, he would know.

Gwendolyn sighed heavily and turned her head to better face Ayalla, who pulled out a small cow's hairbrush and pot of black charcoal.

“Look at the ceiling?” said Ayalla. Gwendolyn complied. “You know,” she continued, “I don’t know why you’re not more excited about this. Getting out of here.”

“And into the arms of a stranger?” Gwendolyn scoffed. She tried to keep her eyes open as Ayalla brushed the charcoal under her eyes. “No, thanks, regardless of what it's like here.”

“At least maybe you wouldn’t be such a bad luck charm in some other household,” Ayalla said, the cold edge returning to her voice.

“Ayalla, I had nothing to do with that. I was an infant,” said Gwendolyn, still peering upward.

“Yeah, and he was our brother,” said Ayalla, colder still. “All right, shut your eyes now.”

Gwendolyn didn’t respond, other than to shut her eyes and bite her lip.

After a few seconds of Ayalla brushing the charcoal onto her eyelids, she instructed, “okay, open up,” and Gwendolyn found herself staring into Ayalla’s eyes.

They sat in silence, staring at each other, for a long moment. Then Ayalla broke eye contact to look aside and set down the charcoal and brush.

Suddenly, words seem to tumble out of her mouth, “you may not have intended… but he’d still be here without you.”

“He was sick!”

“Yeah, because you were born first.”

Gwendolyn closed her eyes and sat that way, silent, for several long minutes. Her twin brother, Garryan, was the wanted child. She was unexpected. The midwife had told her mother she was carrying a single, male child. When Gwendolyn popped out instead, the midwife assumed the labor was over and that she’d simply been mistaken about the sex of the child. While Gwendolyn’s mother still labored, the midwife explained that it was particularly intense afterbirth.

She was on her way out the door when Maryan screamed in agony and the midwife saw Garryan’s head coming out at a strange angle. She wasn’t fast enough back to the bedside, so Garryan was born oddly tangled in birth cords and badly discolored. He only lived three weeks.

“I couldn’t control that, Alla, you know that,” she finally whispered.

“Don’t call me that!” snapped Ayalla, recoiling at the nickname that Gwendolyn hadn’t used since they were small. “Just, don’t. You were the mistake. Garryan should be here, not you. The midwife said so.”

This, Gwendolyn knew, was the crux of her family’s issues with her. That she had lived. That she wasn’t the boy they wanted. That the boy they had wanted had died, and the mistake they hadn’t expected lived.

“Okay, Ayalla.” Gwendolyn had stopped fighting it a long time ago, when she was barely ten. She had finally realized that her family didn’t care, at all, about the logic. They didn’t care at all about Gwendolyn.

“Look,” said Ayalla, and her gaze pulled Gwendolyn in again, “all I am saying is, maybe being married off wouldn’t be so bad. For you or for us.”

“Maybe,” said Gwendolyn without any conviction.

“Hold still,” said Ayalla, “I’ll finish your lips and you’ll be ready to go.”

From the kitchen, they heard the sound of something heavy crashing into a wall, or maybe the kitchen table. Gwendolyn nodded and said, “probably best to get mother out of here,”

Ayalla snickered, and Gwendolyn smiled a bit herself. It was the first such moment they had shared in many years.

Ayalla’s movements became gentler as she rubbed a pink-ish red paste across Gwendolyn’s lips.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, “what do you think?”

Gwendolyn opened her eyes and stood, approaching the mirror. As little as she wanted to attend another dinner where the young people sat around a table, alternating boy-girl-boy-girl and making painful small talk with the randomly selected single individuals around them while their adult chaperones sat at a table nearby and cast furtive glances at their charges, she had to admit she looked incredible.

Her lips perfectly matched her dress, and her eyes seemed to glow, a brighter and lighter blue than usual. Her skin looked flawless.

“I look… well, I look lovely,” she murmured.

“I’m glad you like it,” Ayalla said, coming up behind her and pulling her hair back a little bit to show more of her face, “come on, let’s go stop them from killing each other.” As she spoke, another loud thump resonated from the room to their left.

“Yes, before they destroy all the furniture.” Gwendolyn said, turning away from the mirror and walking out the bedroom door to extract her mother from another pointless argument with her father.