Chapter 10
When Aradella woke the next day, it wasn’t yet dawn. After today, she thought, everything will change.
She listened carefully but she heard no sounds. But then, with yesterday’s free-flowing beer and that divine beef, people
were probably sleeping it off.
Not long after the arrival of Arit and Ian, Olina had sent more guards. Aradella knew it was a symbol of her anger. The visit
of the men wasn’t going as she’d planned. Maybe she was afraid that the princess would somehow join with the men. Then what
would happen? Aradella would lead an army to reclaim the throne? Or maybe Prince Nessa would get angry and refuse to marry
her.
I should be so lucky, Aradella thought as she put her arms up, her head on her clasped hands. How wonderful yesterday had been!
There was Mekos in bed with her in the early morning, then sneaking into the palace to hear Sojee give orders to the men.
The memory of the men’s looks of defeat made her laugh.
The rest of the day had been full of visitors, all of them bursting with news.
Three women from the sewing school came by to measure Aradella for what would be her marriage gown.
Of course the robe had been made months before, but the idea of seeing the reclusive princess was too much to forego.
They’d made up excuses to visit. The women felt the pads under Aradella’s big dress but they made no comment about them.
Instead, at Aradella’s encouragement, they excitedly told her what was going on outside.
“Men are seeing their daughters for the first time,” one gushed.
“No one is talking about how those conceptions occurred,” another one said.
They all knew the husbands sneaked across the water to get to their wives. And the women risked their lives to spend a few
hours in the secret meeting. Afterward, when the warning came that Olina or one of her suck-ups was coming, the pregnant women
were hidden away.
But on this day, families were openly together. Girls who’d never been around men in their lives were seeing their fathers
and brothers for the first time.
“And mothers are seeing their sons,” they told Aradella.
The whole island experienced the tears and horror of a boy’s seventh birthday. That’s when he was taken away and sent to Selkan
to be with the men. The wails of the women were so deep, so loud, that the birds left the trees to seek the safety of the
ground.
Those boys had returned to their mothers, many of them now grown men.
“But you wouldn’t know they were men from the way their mothers tend to them,” one of the women said. “They treat them as
though they’re toddlers!”
“The women have been baking for weeks and they ply the men, young and old, with breads and cakes and pies of every flavor.”
“Don’t forget the wounds on the men! If a man so much as scratches his shoulder, a woman will insist on applying salve to
his back. His bare back.”
“And his front,” a woman added and they laughed together.
“My favorite was the men teaching their daughters how to fight.”
“I heard, ‘Just punch her in the nose,’ a dozen times.”
Aradella listened to it all, smiling deeply. “I heard that the women are wearing very little clothing.”
“Well . . .” they said hesitantly. “They’re trying to entice the men away from working on the houses.”
“But they’ve failed.” Aradella’s eyes were sparkling.
None of the women had ever viewed Aradella as one of them, someone they could share with, but when she laughed, they loosened.
“Today, my friend couldn’t lift a basket of carded wool, so one of the men carried it for her,” said one woman. “Yesterday,
I saw her go up a two-story ladder with a barrel strapped to her back. That woman has thighs like that dragon we saw, but
around the men, she is helpless!”
“Ferms!” one of the women said and her eyes nearly rolled back into her head. “Fertile men. Has there ever been a more grand
sight on this planet?”
“No,” the other women—including Aradella—agreed.
All day had been like that. At one point, Aradella realized the women were coming to say goodbye to her—and she knew why.
It was the day before she was to be married to a slime like Nessa. There were many subtle remarks made that showed they knew
him. She asked a few questions, and yes, he’d visited the island several times.
“Let’s just say that he’s not the Reaver,” one said.
“I thought the Reaver was a woman,” Aradella said innocently.
At that, the women laughed, then they enlarged the rare sightings of a person running across rooftops into stories of the
Reaver leaping from one crater to another. There were hints that he could fly. Soar, not fly, Aradella thought.
The women brought food and drink and as much laughter as they could create. And best of all, her beautiful cousins were nowhere to be seen. It was wonderful not to be looked on with pity, then see their sad eyes. Poor Aradella seemed to be written across their foreheads.
The rare treat of being with the happy women made Aradella think about how life could change in an instant. For years, she’d
been the treasured only child of a king and queen. She’d freely gone places, talked to people. When she went to the craters
on her pony, people ran forward to give her gifts of food and handmade objects. Of course they were hoping to sell them to
the palace, but still, it was nice.
In one day, Aradella’s life changed. On the day that her parents died, Aradella had been put into insolation and fed sugary
cakes. Her only “companions” were her two cousins, who she despised.
Now, years later, everything had again abruptly changed. Tanek had brought Mekos and eventually, he had given her love.
Aradella came out of her reverie. Morning light was coming into the room, and when she heard a sound in the next room, fear
seemed to engulf her. If they didn’t succeed today, she didn’t want to think of the consequences.
She knew Mekos had the mask, and he had Prince Nessa’s beloved dragon. The plan was for Mekos to use the animal to entice
Nessa away from the ceremony, then Mekos would . . .
Aradella closed her eyes in prayer. Then Mekos would stand beside her for the marriage ceremony—and they’d leave the big hall
as one, united forever.
She didn’t want to think about what could happen after that. Olina might declare war. But with the men on the island, she
wouldn’t win it. But then, what did the men care about who the princess of another island married? It wasn’t any of their
business.
Like all the women on Pithan, Aradella had had a lifetime of hearing how “evil” men were. All of them. No exceptions. It was
said that men cared about only one thing and once they got that, they discarded the women.
These complaints were what had originally separated the men and women.
The Empyreans had decreed that the sexes would be happier if they lived apart.
So a separation was ordered. Women stayed on Pithan in their pretty, well-kept houses, while the men, and boys over seven, were sent to the sparsely populated island of Selkan.
Over the years, as their homes deteriorated, the women began to learn how to restore them, but there was too much too fast. The women made themselves feel better by spreading rumors that the men were building fortresses and violently attacking each other.
The women’s roofs may be leaking but at least they were safe!
As Aradella grew up, she remembered her fear that her beloved father would be sent away to live with the men.
“I am fortunate that I’m the king,” he’d said, but he didn’t sound “fortunate.”
She remembered the talk of rebellion that went on after the separation was first enforced. There was a hero, a man named Haver
Beyhan, who’d fought to take the islands out from under the control of the Empyreans. Aradella remembered her father crying
over Haver’s “disappearance.”
“He didn’t ‘vanish,’” her father shouted. “He was killed. Murdered!” He’d broken down into tears, holding on to his wife as she too cried. “Haver was our last hope.”
It wasn’t until years later that Aradella found out Tanek was the grandson of that glorious man.
“And Mekos is his great-grandson,” Aradella said aloud. That knowledge made her wonder if she and Mekos were about to start
another revolution. She hadn’t yet come to terms with having killed a person. Yes, Valona had been evil, but she was still
human. So far, there didn’t seem to be public knowledge of her death. What would happen when people did know? Would it become
part of what Mekos’s great-grandfather started?
And look what happened to him, she thought.
He had “disappeared” and later it was found that he’d been killed.
Would the Empyreans be so enraged at what she and Mekos did that they’d do what they’d done to Haver’s big Homestead?
They dropped bombs from machines that no one on the islands had ever seen.
In a matter of hours, the once thriving business of the people of the Order of Swans had been destroyed.
Afterward, Haver had gone undercover. He’d led the revolution in secret.
But ultimately, it had failed. Had she and Mekos restarted it?
As she remembered all this, Aradella’s heart began to race. What will Mekos and I cause to happen? echoed through her mind.
Hale opened Aradella’s door. “It’s time,” she said, then left the room.
Sometimes Aradella thought her friend knew what was planned, but she didn’t say so. If it worked out, this could be their
last day together in such close companionship.
Aradella got out of bed. Was this her last day to wear the hated pads? Or was it her last day of being alive?
Aradella was hidden away at the end of the big room where her union to Nessa was to take place. She hadn’t been allowed any
rehearsal for the ceremony. Nor were the Beauty Girls allowed to use their talents on her as they’d done with Kaley. Aradella’s
lashes and brows were very light and with her nervousness, her face looked as though it had been erased. Her robe was so thick