Prologue

Excerpt from the Diary of Piya Young October 17th, 2198

My youngest sister- the daughter of my father’s sixth wife- goes on and on about commitment. She wants a promise ring, and sweet words, and longing glances. She’s a dreadfully ugly girl, poor heart, but I could tell her a thing or two that would change her life.

“First,” I’d say, “You have to be a little bit easy. Hint that he can get further with you than he can with the pretty girls. Let him touch your breasts, slide his fingers into you, kiss you all over, but don’t let him stick it in. Hold that part back. You can do that because you’re still young enough that he isn’t getting any from anyone else, anyway, so the best he’s going to get is your chest- flat as it may be.

“Then, when he’s gotten used to getting to touch you, and you see his eyes divert from you a little- that’s when you have to start touching him back. Pet his dick a little, look at him with big doe-eyes and tell him that you don’t know what you’re doing. Let him teach you how he likes to be touched. And get really, really good at touching him like that. The relationship will shift, and you’ll find yourself giving more than you’re getting. But that’s okay because he’s becoming more and more obsessed with you without realizing it. Soon he’ll want to please you because he so appreciates it when you please him. Get really good at giving blowjobs, and you’ll get your pretty words.

“But to get the commitment? For that, you will have to work really hard. Cook for him. Cook for his friends. Bake for his mother, for his mother’s sister wives. Become a servant; bring his father cough drops when he’s sick. Fold the towels while the servants rest their feet and take the dog for a walk so that the page boy has a break. Make everyone important to him become ingratiated to you. They will whisper to him about how kind you are, how sweet, how giving. And in his mind, a switch will flip, and something will click into place.

“Then, disappear, just for a couple of days. Make him wonder where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing.

“When you get back, he’ll present you with that pretty little box. The one with the commitment in it. The one with the pretty little silver commitment, all shiny and new.”

But I can’t say any of that to her because she doesn’t know that she’s ugly. She can’t go anywhere until she realizes her weakness so that she can overcome it.

There are twelve of us girls. My own mother is Second Wife, and I am First Daughter, so I enjoy a lot more power in the family dynamic than my youngest sister. If I were her, I’d be sucking up to me. The other girls get that, but she doesn’t. It’s her loss, and I’m not just saying that because I’m full of myself (although maybe I am full of myself; I have to be. No one else will ever be full of me).

Of course, we all know the numbers, that there are approximately thirty-seven women for every one man born in this district, and that it’s pretty much the same all over the world. We all know that all of the members of my sex are destined to be either a sister wife or a whore, basically, and I am not going to be a whore. Shanna might be a whore, but that’s not on me. I would help her if she would only admit to her greatest genetic fault- not her linear thinking or her late birth, but her genes- her ugly face.

We have the same father, but it’s like we’re not even related. I am First Daughter and Daughter of Second Wife, both positions of power. In contrast, she is Twelfth Daughter and Daughter of Sixth Wife, both positions of lesser importance- really, no importance at all, if you think about it objectively and not politely-, so perhaps that’s what makes all of the difference between us. She’s almost forgettable, and that’s such a dangerous thing to be for a woman.

First Wife Young is favored, and she represents my- every woman’s- goal. She birthed a son, and she was a First Wife before she birthed my only brother, so she is a Queen among women. She’s important inside of our considerable household, inside of the gate that holds my family and our servants and various close friends and acquaintances, but she is a whispered deity in the gated community that surrounds us.

The birth of a son is always cause for celebration, of course, and even a forgettable Sixth Wife can be elevated to the esteemed position of Son Bearer if she, obviously, bears a son. But for a woman to be fortunate enough to become a man’s First Wife and bear him a son, she becomes famous. She carries the titles of First Wife and Son Bearer, which tie together nicely to create one simple title: Queen. First Wife is Queen Young. There is only one other child-bearing-aged Queen in our village, and she and Queen Young are the best of friends or the worst of enemies, depending on their moods. First Wife is known simply as First Wife by those of us who are related to her, and respectfully as Queen Young by those who live outside of this household.

My brother Wills got married to my best friend Charity, and this made me intensely popular. All of the girls wanted me to insist that Wills marry them next- as if I had any influence over his pick of First Wife or any of the wives he chose next. He loved Charity for the same reason that everyone else loved her- she’s beautiful. Beauty is everything.

The secret is- I did have influence. A lot of it.

I was ugly. I was very, very ugly, but unlike my sister Shanna, I had two nicely powerful positions to cushion that genetic blow. I also had a charming disposition and the guidance of First Wife’s tutorial to guide me into the dating pool, and the gift of beautiful Charity’s friendship to cast a little light on me. I now have options.

“You have the potential to become a First Wife,” First Wife told me long ago, applying considerable mascara to enhance my tiny eyes. “You are smart, cunning, very wise beyond your years. You’re charming and can even appear to be kind when it suits you, but you know how to make yourself a priority without making others think less of you. These are all skills that you must have inherited from your grandmother.” She was speaking of Father’s mother, the Revered Queen Young before her. “I know you never met her, but you are so like her. You have her spirit and her looks. This is part of the reason Father spoils you as he does. He sees his mother in you.”

“How do I become First Wife?” I asked eagerly, discarding this valuable information about my grandmother. Even then, at fifteen, I knew that the best source of water would come from the experienced well and the best advice from she who is, not she who wishes she was.

First Wife put down the mascara wand and looked at me closely. She squinted her pretty eyes and tilted her head, considering me.

“If I had a daughter, I would save this advice for her, as you would be her competition,” she said, giving me the honor of her blunt honesty. If she didn’t care for me, she would woo me with sweet words, but because she loves me, she never uses anything but the truth in her instruction of me. “But because I only have Wills, and my granddaughters are not yet conceived and will not be your competition, I can tell you this. You have to embrace your faults and overcome them, and then you will be on a level playing field with the other First Wife contenders. Next, you must eliminate the competition. This is beneficial to both of us. You will help me bring the prettiest, sweetest, best, most promising girls into this household. Together we will make Wills fall in love with them, one by one, until you are the best prospect left on the market, and I have a harem of the most beautiful, well brought up young daughters-in-law who will give me grand daughters and a grandson.”

I looked at her hopefully, at her crimson hair falling over her pale shoulder, at her perfectly crystalized eyes. She was a sheer beauty to behold, and I loved her in that moment more than I’d ever loved anyone. “What are my faults?” I asked, all innocence.

She took a deep breath. “You’re ugly,” she said flatly.

My heart squeezed tightly in my chest and, at the same time, I felt myself deflating. To be an ugly woman is an awful thing, and in my childish willingness to learn, I hadn’t steeled myself against all of the possibilities that could be presented to me when I asked to be confronted with my faults. Of all of those possibilities, this was among the worst. The two words stung; that they were coming from her, whom I idolized and adored so much, hurt much worse.

Immediately my mind started racing, trying to better the situation.

“I am not lame,” I said aloud, ticking my points off on my fingers. “All of my body parts work. My cycles are regular and cause me little pain. I’ll have good child bearing hips, like my mother. I-“

“You’re making excuses,” First Wife said, quietly interrupting me. “You’re looking for the good in yourself. I’m asking you to look for only the bad. You can’t fix it if you don’t confront it.”

“What can I do, then?” I asked, weakly. I wanted to impress her, so I hardened myself against my tears. “How can I overcome ugly? How can I fix ugly?”

First Wife lifted her chin and looked down at me. “It will be painful, but it can be done,” she said. “You will have to learn to wake up before everyone else and be rigorous about your beauty standards. And Piya… Piccola Bellezza,” she said, using the child-like nickname that meant little beauty- a compliment that stung now like a tiny, angry bee deep inside of my chest- “how far are you willing to go for this?”

I lifted my chin and straightened my back, the same as her. “I will do what it takes,” I said, and First Wife could see that I meant it.

“Then forgive me, forgive me, my sweet Piccola Bellezza,” she said, tears welling in her eyes, and she picked up a wooden plank lying beside her floor cushion. It was an innocent thing, used as a door stopper on its busy days and forgotten on its worst; just a simple plank of wood, but that day, it changed my life when she slammed it into my nose. The worst part about the whole encounter is that I did not black out from the pain.

Now, running my finger along the bridge of my nose, I can feel the tiny bones beneath the flesh. Looking in the mirror, I can see the tiny scar along the left side of my face, right beside my nose, where the board broke the skin. But my nose, my nose. It’s my nose, not my mother’s bulbous nose, and not my father’s pug nose. It’s a beautiful, aquiline, Roman nose, long and straight and narrow, and carefully formed by a doctor who did what he was not supposed to do. He altered my genetic look and gave me something that my babies cannot ever inherit: my perfect nose.

He was later caught doing this same procedure for another girl, and as punishment, she was left scarred and broken, her nose unfinished, and his precious miracle-bringing hands were cut off. I’m told that she is now a whore of the cheapest kind, and he is her hapless dependent, a love story for the ages.

While I would love to shove a wooden plank into Shanna’s nose for purely selfish reasons, I don’t love her enough to be blunt with her. I could tell her all of the things that First Wife told me, for I now understand that First Wife said those things out of love, but I won’t. She’s twelve now, and eventually, she’ll figure it out.

Or not.

As First Wife said, I have the ability to put myself first when need be, and the current situation is definitely a selfish one. After all of my hard work, I am getting married, after giving First Wife five daughters-in-law of the highest quality- all of them except for the last could have easily been First Wife to some lesser man themselves- she has come through. I am being married today to a man of the highest esteem, as his First Wife.

The Beginning