Crown of Coral and Pearl Read online

  “You’re right,” I said, chastened. I knew better than most what it was like to be judged by one’s appearance.

  Zadie twisted her wet hair at the side of her head, letting the fresh water from her bath drip into the bucket we used to rinse our dishes. Zadie never slept with seawater in her hair at Mother’s behest, though fresh water from Ilara was expensive and meant to be saved for drinking and cooking.

  “Would a wicked man bring you this?” Sami asked, proffering the brass button in its mother-of-pearl serving tray.

  She gasped, then folded her arms across her chest. “I suppose he would, since an honest man could never have come by this.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder, then moved closer to Zadie. “You like it, don’t you? Please say you do. I wanted to make you a cloak to take with you to Ilara. It will be cold in the mountains.”

  “You don’t know I’m going yet,” she said, though her posture softened. “Besides, where would you get cloth for a cloak?”

  “An honest man would never betray his source.”

  “An honest man wouldn’t have a source to begin with.”

  I pretended to stir the stew—even watered down, it was barely enough for the four of us—while I watched them from beneath my lashes. I was grateful Zadie hadn’t chided him for wasting money that could have gone toward food, but they should be distancing themselves from each other, if they knew what was good for them. If not for my scar, perhaps I would be the one going to Ilara. Then Sami and Zadie could marry as they pleased, and I would get to see more than an engraving of a rose on a silly brass button for another girl.

  Maybe in another life, I thought bitterly. But not in this one.

  “What’s that wonderful smell?” Father asked as he entered the house behind Zadie, sending Sami stumbling away from her. Father had just come back from fishing in deeper waters, judging by the sea salt crust on his brow and his wind-chapped cheeks.

  “The same thing we eat every night,” I said. “Unless you caught something today?”

  He gave a small, sad shake of his head, and my stomach grumbled in response. I tapped the spoon on the side of the pot to cover the sound. “That’s all right, Father. The last time Zadie cooked fish, the house stank for a week.”

  Sami laughed, and Zadie pretended to be offended, gently pushing Sami aside. Even my father allowed himself a small smile at my attempt to lighten the mood.

  My parents had noticed the way Sami and Zadie acted around each other—it was impossible not to—but Father was a little more tolerant than Mother, who wanted nothing to distract Zadie from fulfilling her ultimate purpose in life: becoming queen, since Mother herself had not. Twenty years ago, that honor had gone to another young woman, and Mother wasn’t about to let history repeat itself. I was her safeguard, though in the past year or so, when it became more and more clear Zadie would make it to the ceremony unscathed, she’d focused the bulk of her attention on my poor sister.

  Father cleared his throat and turned to Sami, who quickly hid the button behind his back. “I believe your father is looking for you. Something about you being missing earlier today, when you were supposed to be delivering firewood to your aunts?” He arched an eyebrow, but I could hear the amusement in his voice.

  “Yes, sir. I was just leaving.” Sami turned to give Zadie a kiss on the cheek, then me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow,” Father reminded him. “The girls will be preparing for the ceremony, remember?”

  He wasn’t a particularly imposing man, at least not to me, but Sami flushed. “Of course. At the ceremony, then.”

  I wished Father would leave and give Sami a chance to say a proper goodbye. The next time he saw Zadie, she would be as good as betrothed to the Prince of Ilara.

  “Goodbye,” Zadie and I said in unison as Sami ducked out onto the balcony, where a rope ladder led down to the water. Our house, like all the houses in Varenia, was made from the wood of a sunken ship, but every few years we painted it an orangey-pink, a shade Mother favored that was also easy to see on the horizon, guiding us home during the daytime when a lantern would be of little use.

  Father settled down onto a low stool carved from driftwood. “I see Nor is cooking tonight. Does that mean Zadie found the oyster?” He gestured to the shiny gray glob of flesh I’d laid in one of our cracked porcelain bowls. Some of our possessions were traded for, but others had been pulled up from shipwrecks. Mother never asked how I came by such items, particularly if I found her something that appealed to her vanity, like a hand mirror or a tortoiseshell comb.

  Zadie and I shared a glance. To admit Zadie found the oyster meant admitting that she had been swimming today, against Mother’s orders. She was counting on the impressive bride price the prince would send to the chosen girl’s family once they married, but we had to eat in the meantime. And who knew how many oysters there would be tomorrow, or next week? Sami had overheard his father speaking to the elders at night in hushed whispers, so we knew things were worse than our parents let on.

  “I found it,” I said. “But I bet her there would be a pearl in it, and there wasn’t.”

  “That’s a shame. Well, as long as I get to eat the oyster, I suppose it doesn’t matter who found it.” Father winked at Zadie as she handed him the bowl. “You’re good girls, both of you.”

  As he tipped back the bowl and let the oyster slide into his mouth, Zadie and I came to stand on either side of him. “I’ll miss whichever one of you is taken from me,” he said. “But I always knew this day would come. That’s what I get for marrying the most beautiful girl in Varenia.”

  Mother stepped into the house from the balcony, twisting her own freshly washed hair into a braid. She had never dived deep enough to burst her eardrums—something many of the older villagers did to help with the pressure—and her hearing was some of the sharpest in the village. Only a few fine lines pulled at the corners of her eyes and lips, a testament to the benefits of wearing a sun hat (and of rarely smiling).

  “Our beauty is a reflection of the favor Thalos has bestowed upon this family,” she said, gazing out the window at the darkening waves, as if the ocean god himself were watching. A sudden burst of sea spray shot up through the cracks in our wooden floorboards, and Mother’s eyes blazed with satisfaction.

  “We will honor him with our sacrifice,” Father added.

  I squeezed Zadie’s hand behind his back and wished the sun would never set. The ocean never gave gifts without expecting something in return, it was said, and Thalos was a hungry god.

  2

  The next two days were spent in the large yellow meetinghouse with the other girls of marriageable age. I personally thought it was silly to spend two full days preparing ourselves for the ceremony when some of us had been preparing our entire lives. Each elder had already made his or her decision, and for most of us, no amount of primping and preening could possibly make a difference. I would have rather spent the time alone with Zadie, knowing she’d be leaving me soon. But it was tradition, and in Varenia, tradition was as much a part of our world as the ocean.

  The mood in the house was lively, almost giddy, like we were children preparing for a festival. The room buzzed with the sound of female voices, punctuated every few minutes by laughter. None of us were old enough to remember the last ceremony, but a few mothers, including mine, were there to supervise and tell stories while we fasted and bathed ourselves in fresh water that ought to have been saved for drinking. Zadie and I rubbed perfumed oil into each other’s skin and braided our hair into intricate patterns, then unraveled them and started all over again to occupy the long hours.

  I glanced around at the other girls, most of them friendly acquaintances. In a village as small and isolated as ours, there were no unfamiliar faces, though our overprotective mother had done her best to keep us away from the other girls our age. At night, she would often tell us st
ories of sabotage among young women old enough to participate in the ceremony: braids cut off in the middle of the night, stinging sea nettles rubbed on healthy skin, even hot oil burns.

  Boys may be physically stronger, Mother always said, but girls could be twice as vicious. I had never seen any behavior to support her claim, but then, I hadn’t spent enough time with the other girls to argue. With Zadie and Sami around, I was never lonely, but I would have liked the opportunity to make more friends.

  As the sun extinguished itself on the horizon, anxiety and tension began to mount. The favorites, Zadie and Alys, sat surrounded by friends, who heaped praise on their girl while whispering insults about the opposition.

  “Perhaps if Alys had never opened her mouth for the past seventeen years, this would be a fair match,” a blond girl named Minika murmured. “But unfortunately for her, she’s as gabby as a gull.”

  I cast an apologetic glance toward Alys, who in truth had only one slightly crooked tooth. Her mother had attempted to straighten it with fishing line made of horse hair, but the results had been minimal at best. Still, with her auburn hair and green eyes, Alys was undeniably beautiful. As was Ginia, with her bronze skin and tight black curls, and Lunella, whose large blue eyes and delicate features were the pride of her entire family. How the elders could possibly choose between them was beyond my comprehension, like trying to choose the most beautiful seashell.

  Zadie gave Minika an admonishing look as she wove my hair into what I hoped was the final braid. My scalp itched and burned from her handiwork. “Enough, girls. Alys is a friend, and perfect just as she is. And if she is chosen to go to Ilara, I will pray for Thalos to carry her safely to shore, as will the rest of you.”

  “You are too kind,” Lunella said. “As soft and pliant as a cuttlefish. The prince will have you for his supper if you don’t watch out.”

  Zadie blushed and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  “What do you think the prince is like?” I asked no one in particular, hoping to divert some of the attention away from my sister. “We know so little about the Ilareans, though they seem to know everything about us.”

  “Like how beautiful our women are,” Minika replied.

  Mother sat in the center of the room on one of the colorful cushions that covered the floor from wall to wall. The house was barely large enough to contain thirty girls and women, not to mention all their cosmetics and clothing. “It’s more than that,” she said, “as you all know.”

  We all did know. Our history was woven into our childhoods like sea silk threads, so fine it was hard to tell where one stopped and another started. But we all settled in now, turning toward Mother as she began to tell the story. It seemed fitting to hear this tale, tonight of all nights, the night before my world would be changed forever.

  “Many years ago, in a queendom whose name has been lost to time, there lived a wise and powerful queen. She gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Ilara, after the celestial goddess. Ilara’s smile was as radiant as the moon, her hair as dark and shimmering as the night sky. It was said that her laughter made the stars shine brighter. Beloved by her people, she loved them all in return.

  “One summer, when the princess was just sixteen, she journeyed to the shore with her family. She went to lavish parties and met many handsome young men, but none so handsome as Prince Laef, whose own land, Kuven, was far across the Alathian Sea. After weeks of secret meetings and stolen kisses, he asked her to marry him, and she happily accepted.

  “But despite their mutual affection, Ilara’s mother forbade the marriage. Kuven was a small and weak kingdom compared to the queen’s, which at the time spanned the width and breadth of an entire continent, and Laef’s father was a cruel ruler, who took much from the sea but gave nothing in return. Ilara’s mother had planned a far more advantageous match with a prince from a powerful kingdom to the east, though that prince was said to be old and not particularly charming. As much as she loved her daughter, the queen could not afford to let her put the queendom in jeopardy.”

  Several girls groaned in disapproval.

  Mother frowned. “I don’t need to remind any of you of the importance of duty, do I?” She looked directly at Zadie as she said this, though no one understood the weight of her responsibility more than my sister. Zadie nodded solemnly while I barely managed to keep my eyes from rolling.

  “Ilara and Laef returned to their homes, but the night before her wedding, they each gathered their most loyal servants and stole ships from their parents. He was an inexperienced sailor and she had never been at sea, but they loved each other too much to be parted. The next evening, their ships met in the middle of the Alathian Sea. For several days, they stayed on Laef’s ship, there in the ocean, delighting in each other. They were married on the seventh day, with a plan to return to Kuven. Laef’s father approved of the marriage, for he was certain Ilara’s mother would have to agree to an alliance that would be greatly beneficial to his kingdom.

  “As the sun rose on the day they were set to depart, Ilara’s laugh danced over the waves like a skipping stone, and the prince took her in his arms to kiss her. The lovers had no idea that Thalos, the sea god, had been watching them. He saw that these two would bring happiness beyond measure to Laef’s father, a happiness he did not deserve. As a punishment for never giving the sea what it was owed, Thalos vowed to take the one thing that meant the most to Laef—Ilara.”

  A shiver ran over my sore scalp, and I pressed closer to Zadie.

  “Thalos summoned giant waves that tossed the ships about like driftwood. The lovers clung to each other, vowing to die together, if that was what it came to. But Thalos himself rode the crest of a wave taller than the ship’s mast, and he tore the princess from Laef’s arms, dragging her into the deep in his deadly embrace.”

  We all looked at the governor’s house through a large bay window, where the figurehead of Ilara’s lost ship rose from the prow that formed Governor Kristos’s roof. She was a maiden carved from wood, her paint long since worn away by the wind and sea, a single hand raised above her head as though she were reaching for her lover’s grasp.

  I didn’t believe the story, at least not the part about Thalos, who I imagined was more of a spirit than a corporeal being. But the idea of a forbidden romance, of two young people risking everything to be together, had always resonated with me. To meet a stranger from a faraway land, to leave duty and responsibility behind for love... It was a fantasy I turned to when the thought of spending the rest of my long life in this one small village overwhelmed me.

  There were murmurs among the girls. Even though we all knew the story, Mother had a way of telling it that made my skin feel prickly, like the hollow shell of a dead urchin.

  “What became of Prince Laef?” a girl asked.

  “When Ilara was pulled from his arms, he leaped into the water after her. He was never seen again. It is said the first blood coral grew there, from the hearts of the two lovers who had been separated in life, but were reunited in death.” My mother looked at me now, and I fought against the tingling in my cheek. The blood coral had not only given me my name, but also my scar—and it had nearly cost me my life.

  “And the servants?” another girl asked.

  “Loyal till death. They had promised to look after their prince and princess and refused to leave the place where they died. This place, where Varenia now stands. They signed a decree, vowing that no Varenian would set foot on land until a new crown princess was born to replace the one they had lost.”

  “Why do we send them our women?” I asked, surprising even myself. It was a question that had haunted me for years, but which I’d never dared to ask before. Now seemed the perfect time to ask, since Mother couldn’t ignore me here.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “As a penance for losing the princess, the servants sent gifts from the sea to Ilara’s mother, who renamed her queendom in her d
aughter’s honor. In the years that followed, a plague swept through the land. Thousands died, and many of the women who survived were left barren. The monarchy had always passed through queens until this time, but the queen had no other daughters, just a sickly son. And when he came of marrying age, there was a dearth of suitable brides.

  “But Varenia, which as you know means fertile waters, was spared from the plague. When they sent a beautiful girl to deliver pearls and sea silk to the queen, the Ilarean prince fell in love with her, and thus began the tradition of the Varenian bride.”

  I watched Mother answer questions from the other girls, questions we all knew the answers to but asked anyway. It was part of the ritual. The air in the room had grown warm and pungent with perfume, and someone opened a hatch in the roof to let in the breeze along with the moonlight, which shone down on Mother’s hair and face.

  Our poor mother, who always believed she should have been chosen at the last ceremony but lost to another girl instead. Father still called her the most beautiful girl in Varenia and said he was grateful the elders were so foolish, because otherwise he would have lost her to the king. But Mother’s resentment was too great to be appeased by the sweet words of our loving father, and nothing but Zadie’s selection tomorrow would quell it. Sometimes I wondered if even that would be enough.

  Late that night, Zadie and I tossed and turned next to each other on our cushions, along with every other girl in the house. It was too hot and stuffy, and there was too much riding on tomorrow to sleep. The repeated slap-slap of the waves against the pillars below us, a sound that normally lulled me to sleep, grated on my already raw nerves.

  Zadie’s breath was warm against my skin when she spoke. “Can I tell you something? Something I’ve never told anyone?”

  I rolled toward her, my heart beating a little faster at the thought that Zadie had a secret. I told her everything. I always had. “Of course.”

  “I hope they pick Alys tomorrow.”