Work Text:
Eva’lanté is born on the 37th day of Oodak by a woman who leaves so quickly, she never grows to learn the name. The sailors that gamble on the docks tell her behind gap-toothed smiles, ‘that is why you’re wild, Sea-Sprite.’ The women that work out of the Red Houses in the Second Ring tell her while they watch her from their balconies, ‘you’ll be as easy to pin down as the waves.’ The other orphans that are raised by the ever-changing tides of pirates and sailors and by the folk who sell out of Red Houses and behind shady doors, all agree: Eva’lanté Daughter of No-One, Cared for by None is untamable.
For seven years Eva lives in a lean-to made of planks and burlap outside of a shop that makes fishing nets. Most of the Wayward Folk look after her by teaching her how to steal and how to sail and the Courtesans give her soap and, sometimes, a quick scrub in their tubs. Most nights Eva is alone with just a lumpy sack to curl up with and most nights she sinks into a terrible mental place where she wonders why she is so unlovable and why she has to rely on a network of strangers to care for her. Most nights she prays for family knowing she will never have it because she did something wrong before she was ever born. By day she studies the trade of pick pocketing and sword work from half sober pirates or orphans who have spent their whole lives on these streets. Her hands get fast alongside the quickness of her feet that learn, quickly, how to keep her steady on rocking ships and how to traverse across rooftops unnoticed.
Then, one night, Eva is visited by the kindest woman she has ever met and her life changes.
It is raining which is very rare on the Jewel Islands where everything is perfect all the time because of the yearly 115 that are sacrificed to the island’s heart. Rain only comes when the crops need watering or when their drinking water begins to wane. They never suffer on the islands, not because of the weather. Still, it is raining the night Eva meets Aisling Borage. The rain forces Eva to huddle in her lean-to that night, deep into the corner of it with her dirty blankets cocooning her skinny frame. The rain on the islands is never cold but it makes the streets run over with filth from months of build up and the drunken sailors get rowdy so she tries to make herself small and quiet to avoid it all. She is nervous in her little hut so when there is a gentle tapping on the wood frame and a cooed, ‘Hello in there’ she reacts by shouting the raunchiest curse she’s been taught and tosses her boot out.
“Go away! I have a knife!”
There is a faint, feminine snicker from outside, “Is that so?”
“And I know how to use it!”
“That is quite impressive,” There is a pause that is broken by the sound of jangling jewelry and a thoughtful hum, “I do not have a knife nor do I know how to use one but I have something else.”
Eva, the wilding that she is, ever compelled by curiosity, scoots closer to the opening of her hut so she can peer through a rip in her roof. Outside it is a lithe woman with dark skin and sable hair pleated with jewels and green silk ribbon. Her hands are tattooed with vivid red ink in swirling patterns clear up to her elbows and in them she is holding a basket that a red cloth has been tied around. It smells like cooked spice bread and ripe fruits. Eva’s stomach remembers then how empty it is.
“What is that? Is it for me?”
The woman beams and Eva notices her lips are painted dark red and her nose—long and pointed at the end—is pierced with a chain hanging form it that connects to one of her many earrings. Slowly the woman squats down in the rain and reaches past the flap of Eva’s hut to set the basket inside.
She barely gets her hand away from the broad swipe Eva makes with her knife.
“Don’t reach in here!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I didn’t want to bread to get wet in the rain.” She retracts her hand and holds it against her chest, covering the small gash seeping red along the outside of her palm.
Eva swallows against the lump of guilt that lodges in her throat. She hooks her knife around the basket handle and slinks back into her dark corner, flipping the cloth open with the tip to survey the insides. There is a half loaf of dark bread that smells of strong spice and still steams in the night air. Beside it is a small bowel of diced fruits coated in a layer of honey and another smaller bowel of thinly sliced meats and cheeses. It is the most food she has ever been offered or ever had the chance at stealing. Naturally she throws it right back into he street all across the svelte heeled boots of the stranger.
“Go away! I’m not for sale!”
The woman is quiet and in the quiet Eva thinks the adult is confused or perhaps angry. Adults are always angry.
“I just thought you would like something to eat.”
“Listen here lady,” She decides to be bold, so this woman knows who Eva is and what she means, she decided to crawl out of her safety into the rain in front of the very tall woman and point her knife right at her hip, “I know a fancy when I see one and you’re right fancy. Nanette told me you Ladies like to pay kids to come do chores but I’m not for sale! I don’t scrub pots or shoes or scummy fireplaces and I’m not gonna braid your hair or wash your clothes. I’d rather throw myself off the Emerald Gates, you hear? And if you try to take me, I’ll cut you.”
It annoys Eva (and frightens her) that the woman does not seem phased by her threats and in fact smiles at her with big soft eyes and a tilt of her head.
“You are very much like your brother.”
Eva’s tiny chest gets real tight then and her knife hand starts to tremble, “I don’t have a brother.”
The woman’s smile turns sad and she adjusts her skirts so she can crouch down to Eva’s level. It folds the intimidating height of the adult in near half for Eva to stand almost taller than her which she likes. Her arm flinches with the knife but this time the woman catches her arm around the wrist and gives it a gentle squeeze. The instinct to jerk her arm away from this stranger is oddly absent which just makes her tremble and her lower lip poke out as a warning for the tears burning her nose.
“Who are you? Are you doing magic on me?”
“Certainly not though you are hellish with this knife,” The woman squeezes her arm again, gentle as before but somehow sweeter this time, “My name is Aisling. I’m the wife of your father and the mother of your two brothers and sister.”
Aisling gets three more cuts from Eva’s knife and an ear full of curses over the next three days with each visit she makes to Eva’s hut. On the fourth day she finally convinces a tired and hungry Eva to come home with her to the castle. At 7 Eva had been a short skinny thing so it had not been difficult for the Queen to pick her up and carry her the whole way. Eva grumbles I can walk but when Aisling attempts to set her down she clings to the woman which Aisling does not acknowledge aside from smiling.
Eva’s new siblings are not what she expected them to be considering that each of them are born and raised royalty. Originally, she planned on winning them over just long enough to rob them blind and sneak out in the middle of the night but somehow they win her over instead. It starts with her sister, the least friendly Borage sibling, and a secret shared between the two of them.
The castle has gone quiet because it has fallen into the hour where everyone should be slipping into dreams. Eva is careful not to let her bag jingle as she creeps down the hallway, barefoot and tired but determined. The man who works in the room with a black door and painted windows gives gold to anyone who brings him shiny things and if she has gold then she can buy a boat and go wherever she wants! Somewhere without the Cesar who sneers at her anytime she toddles into a room behind Aisling. There is enough shiny stuff in the castle that Eva is sure the Man Behind the Black Door will give her all his gold. Enough to buy her own island; one that is bigger than her stupid father’s island.
“You’re a real lousy thief, Little Sister.” Imani’s crisp, no-nonsense tone cuts through the quiet and startles Eva enough that she drops a shiny plate from her bag. The edges, which had been so fine she could see through them, shatter into hundreds of pieces the moment they touch floor.
“Shit!”
“You cuss a lot for a kid.”
Eva spins around to glare at her and point as cruel a finger as she can at her older sister, “I’m not a kid! You’re a kid!”
Imani snorts indelicately and folds her arms, “Mature come back.”
“I don’t know what that word means but I bet it’s what you are.”
“It is. Because you’re a dumb kid.”
“No I’m—fuck off Imani!”
Imani’s face pinches up and she flicks out a hand to hangs in the air between them, “Um, no? You’re stealing my grandmother’s china.”
“Am not.” She hefts the bag over her shoulder with a sly grin.
Her sister, to Eva’s surprise, just chuckles and shakes her head. There is the soft sound of feet padding against carpeted floor and suddenly her tall sister is beside her and helping her lift the heavy bag by taking one corner.
“Hey! What are you—“
“Why are you stealing anyway?”
“None of your business.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
Eva’s nose twists up, “Princess’s aren’t supposed to cuss.”
“You cuss all the time. In fact, you did so not two minutes past.”
Eva huffs and rolls her eyes. For someone that is called the smartest child of her age by all the adults around her, she is really stupid.
“I’m not a princess.”
“Yes, you are, you dolt. We have the same father,” Imani holds up two fingers that she touches together as she speaks, indicating some kind of relation between them, “Mine is the Cesar as is yours so if he makes me a princess that makes you one too.”
Eva jerks the bag out of Imani’s grip so she can stomp ahead, her lower lip poked out in a fierce pout, “It’s not the same.”
“I understand that you’re behind on lessons because of living in squalor and all that but this is simple maths sister.”
There Imani goes again using big words that Eva does not know and cannot parse the meaning of but understands the prissy tone and does not like it. She glared up into Imani’s brown eyes that squint back at her behind her big, round spectacles.
“It’s not the same. He wants you and brother Charlie and brother Edwin. I’m not supposed to be here. He hates me.”
Something utterly miserable and somewhat broken darkens the color of Imani’s eyes and turns her mouth down. The ridged line that her shoulders had been caves down into a broken curve and her head tilts in that thoughtful way Aisling’s does sometimes. Eva dislikes how that makes her eyes water and makes her want for childish things like hugs and comfort. Stupid smart Imani understands something silent between them, something Eva is saying with her body instead of words and tugs her into a hug that is tight and smells like cinnamon.
“That does not make it different, Eva. It makes us the same.”
Eva says to herself I will fight this, but tears gather on her lashes, and she wraps her skinny arms as tight around Imani’s shoulders as they can go.
Imani continues in a gentler voice, one that is almost a whisper, “Just because our father was disloyal to our mother and had you with a strange woman does not make you any different than me. He hates us both and if he could, he would do away with all his children that aren’t named: Charleston Vervain von Aisling zu Bert Borage. And you are supposed to be here, Little Sister. Mother would not have gone down into the slums to get you if you did not. I know that I want you here.”
Eva sniffs pitifully, wipes her snot and tears on the sleeve of Imani’s night dress, and blinks up at her sister, “You do?”
Imani sounds deeply thoughtful and slightly suspicious when she asks, “Can you keep a secret?”
Eva scoffs, rolls her eyes, and says, “Duh.”
“I’ve missed having a sister. I always wanted one and when Edwin was born, I thought I had one but as it turns out I simply had another brother. And I do love my brothers, but they want to do boy things like wear fancy dresses and have tea parties with their toys. Which is fun but only for a little while.”
Eva offers her sister a serious and solemn shake of her head, “That does not sound fun. That sounds boring.”
“Precisely. So perhaps you’d consider staying? For my sake. And,” Imani’s lips purse like she’s trying to keep from smiling, “Mom would cry if you left.”
“No she wouldn’t.”
“Would so.”
“You don’t know anything, shut up,” She hikes up the bag back over her shoulder and turns to go back where she had come from, “Are you gonna tell King Dad I was gonna steal grandma’s old dumb plates?”
“I won’t if you don’t.”
After they have finished replacing all the platinum cutlery and the heirlooms, Imani walks her by hand back to her room and crawls under the blankets with her. In the quiet of the room, Eva asks, “Mani…what does prodigy mean?”
Imani’s voice is stained from their pre-sleepover chatting and from the sleep that had been taking her, “Where did you hear that word?”
“Aisling said that’s what you are.”
“Mm. It means perfect and beautiful and basically a god.”
Eva’s nose wrinkles up with disgust and she grabs a fistful of her pillow to swing it around, on top of Imani’s head, “You are not!”
“Mom said it, not me!”
“Mom’s stupid!”
“She is not!”
“Then you’re stupid and she’s a liar!”
Imani cackles so loudly for so long that a sleepy Edwin appears ruffled in the doorway, clutching a teddy in one hand and Charlie’s in the other.
“What’s going on?” Charleston croaks, his dark chestnut hair loose and knotted from sleep.
“Imani is a dumb liar!”
Edwin, sleepy as he is, grins, “Yeah, that’s true.”
Imani throws a pillow at him, but it falls just short and slides across the floor into his shins.
“Go back to bed. You’re interrupting our sleepover.”
Charlie pokes out his lower lip and begins inching towards the bed with Edwin, “A sleepover? Why didn’t you invite us?”
“Girls only.”
“Says who!”
“Says me,” Imani nudges Eva’s hip and grins at her, “right Eva?”
“Yeah. No boring boys.”
Edwin pushes a lock of brown hair out of his eyes, frowning first at Eva then up to his older brother, “We aren’t boring.”
“Are so.”
“Shut up Imani!”
“Make me.”
Edwin lifts his teddy bear threateningly and the whole group of siblings feel the playful tension enter the room, lifting the tiredness from their young bones.
“Eva! Defend the ship from invaders!”
Her eyes widen with delight and her heart feels lighter than she can ever remember it being.
Eva loves her siblings but only to an extent and that is not due to a lack of love on her part but because she is afraid to let them in. By her second year in the castle, she has still not grown entirely comfortable with her new family. Namely this is her father’s doing who has made it abundantly clear on multiple occasions that she exists inside the castle only by Aisling’s good graces. Were it left to him, she would still be in the street stealing her supper and learning the trade of pirating. Once he tells her in the privacy of his study after he summoned her, ‘You were an accident, and your very existence shames me. I think Aisling brought you here just to anger me.’ Eva had been just barely 8 then and it had hurt her feelings so badly that she ran to the woman who saved her—the woman who became her mother—and cried. Aisling had touched her hair and assured her she was not a ploy to upset her husband and Eva had believed her. Still, she does not trust her place inside the castle. Part of her—the part that grew up on the craven streets of the Water’s Edge—knows that it is all temporary and the moment she slips up and stops being their new princess, she will be gone. Charlie begins a new tradition of locking himself away for hours inside his room and when he comes out, he does so as a ghost of himself, red-eyed and lethargic, and he has no mind for Eva’s constant chattering. The lonely part of her always whispers fork-tongued and foul, ‘he is tired of you. That’s another strike. Bye-bye Eva!’. Things grow exceptionally tense after Imani returns from her Pilgrimage on the mainland with shorter hair, a hollowness in her eyes, and with a towering redheaded woman that Imani clings to. Over the course of six months away Imani seems to have turned into a ghost that now haunts the halls of the castle, appearing as a shell of herself that is now waspish and skittish. Twice Eva had attempted to speak with her just because she was bored and lonely and both times Imani slunk away with pursed lips and half a glare. Even her favorite sibling Edwin was not there for her in the growing storm that was their home along with Eva’s second safe harbor Aisling. Both had gone off to their mother’s home country of Eybre so that Edwin could receive extensive magical augmentation that would shape his body to portray his gender in a way that made him comfortable in his own skin.
In those days, dark thoughts creep ever higher in her mind until she comes to the painful decision to leave before they can kick her out. Quietly she packs a bag with stolen trinkets: a blanket from Imani’s bed, one of Charlie’s perfume bottles, Edwin’s teddy bear, and a handful of Aisling’s rings strung around a string necklace. This time her heart hurts to take it and this time she does not intend to sell any of it to the Man Behind the Black Door. It will be a treasure that she guards with her life down on the bay where the Wayward Folk live. This time she does not wait until nightfall to sneak out because she does not need to. Charlie was swept under their father’s wing the very moment Aisling left the castle and he has only been freed to eat and sleep since then. Imani, similarly, is barely found in the castle these new, awful days and when she is, she is always under the awning of Aylah’s arms neglecting her duties as a priestess in training. There is no one around to stop her.
She takes her time strolling through the long halls and through the many different versions of sitting rooms and dinning halls. That is why she stumbles upon her brother quite without meaning to and why her plans for leaving change in an instant. Charlie sits slumped in a chair in one of their thousands of sitting rooms with his knees drawn to his chest and his hands pressed tight over his ears. Most of his hair—hair that he is proud of and takes very loving care of—has been shorn and lays in a pile on the rug in front of his chair. There is a small trickle of blood beading up behind his ear where the shears got too close to the skin. At first glance she is bothered only because of the blood and thinks perhaps her brother should have asked for help if he wanted his hair gone. Then the thought occurs to her ‘why would he cut his hair?’ and her stomach gets uncomfortably tight.
“Vee-Vee?”
Charleston curls tighter into himself and shouts, muffled against her knees, “Go away Eva!”
“Ah, no,” She moves into the room low and slow, eyes flicking to the corners to seek out danger that might be lurking there, “What’s going on?”
“None of your business.”
Once she is closer to the chair Charlie is curled up in, she touches the top of his head very gently and frowns when he flinches. Once she is closer, she can see that the cut is poorly done and horribly uneven, there are patches that are too close to the scalp and other areas where the hair is still inch or two long. Down by his feet are a pair of metal shears glinting from atop a pile of Charlie’s hair.
“Did you do this?”
Charlie stays deadly silent for a long, long time. Long enough that Eva begins gathering up the hair to throw into the fireplace. With the ambiance of the smell of burning hair and Charlie’s quiet sobbing, she finishes cleaning up and climbs onto the sofa beside her brother. His body trembles against hers.
“Father said my hair was getting too long and I needed it shorn.”
Eva does not hide her frown nor the disgust his comment evokes in her young heart, “Did you want it cut?”
“Father said that Cesar’s traditionally do not have long hair.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what father says Vee-Vee. Did you want it cut?”
Charlie sniffles and gives a half shrug as a response, avoiding her eyes.
“Okay well, did he do it or did you?”
“What does it matter?”
“You’re so fucking annoying.”
“You’re so fucking annoying!”
“Am not.” She wiggles onto her knees so she can wrap her gangly almost-teen arms around his head and hug it against her chest. Muffled sounds of sadness grow steadily louder the tighter they cling to each on the uncomfortable sofa. They talk in whispers for the next handful of hours despite having no need. It is almost as if should she speak any louder than that, Charlie will become a crystal figure that will shatter into hundreds of pieces that could not be made whole again. It sits heavy on her chest, squeezing the breath right from her lungs and mangles her already bruised heart. The frightened girl she has always been—the one that had packed a bag and wanted to run—covers her ears the mess of her brother and tries so hard to push it all away for the way it sinks into Eva and changes her. Charlie is older than her by four years and much larger than she is yet something in her grows resolute and fierce and decides in that instant to be her brother’s protector. He tells her in a wrung-out voice, wet with tears, ‘He gets so much worst when Mom isn’t here.’ And, ‘I don’t know how to fight it Eva. Nothing I do is ever good enough and all he ever does is tell me what is wrong with me. I’m not the thing he thinks men are, I’m not strong enough to be Cesar, I’m too forgiving of the way Imani talks to me—sometimes he tells me I’ll be alone. That I will have to take a wife and…make sure that only my children can be the next in line. What does that mean? I don’t want to think about what he means…’. Eva has always known her father has hated her and that he has wished she was not there, and she has done her best to stay out of his eye for that reason. Whether that means not being present for celebrations, sitting against Aisling during meals so he can’t see her, or just dipping into the shadows when she sees him coming. When they are alone his tongue turns sharp and cuts deep and she lives in fear of that special kind of pain. But—
“Don’t worry Vee-Vee. I’ll make it better.”
But—
“Eva, don’t say that. It’s embarrassing. I’m your big brother, I’m suppose to protect you.”
But if it means keeping Charlie’s heart—a heart that has not suffered the kind of darkness Eva’s has, so young, and one that is considerably gentler and full of love—safe from the very same kind of pain she fears, she will be his shield.
“Okay, well, that’s fine. Let’s protect each other then. Make sure neither of us are ever alone in the castle. Even if Imani runs away with Aylah or if Ed doesn’t come back or even if Mom isn’t here. We are always together. Deal?”
Charlie stares at her with a seriousness set into the triangle shape of his jaw and the furrow of his thick brows and gives a sharp nod.
“Deal.”
After their deal is struck, Eva becomes the focal point for their father’s hatred and disappointment in his children. Things proceed for a few years in chilly microaggressions and obvious contempt, but Eva grows strong beneath the weight of it all. Charleston looks guilty sometimes when it finally dawns on him that Eva’s deal had always been a guise for turning herself into their father’s enemy so that all his ire would fall on her rather than him. They are inseparable as a pair.
Until she gets sick three weeks after she turns elven years old.
The island is perfect in every sense of the word, that is the main reason they prosper on the level that they do. The Jewel Islands is the smallest continent in the world of Veh’hehla but it is by a large margin the most wealthy and the most pleasant. The weather is always perfect, they never struggle for water or food, there is never blights or plagues and the people are never starving or in need. Most of the world’s arts and platinum comes from the Islands and makes them a coveted destination for outsiders. For locals they know even more than this: they never get sick, they never die. The island sustains them, gives them what they need, and they worship it for that very reason. No one is ever lost to the crippling illnesses that render children rotting in graves, they do not bare children marred by disease or malformed and non-able. So long as they supply their beautiful island with proper supplication.
Every year, one hundred and fifteen people get sick. It is not the same kind of sickness that those of the mainland know because people of the island do not get sick. The Sickness is a form of marking that allows the Priests and Priestess’s of the Island to know which one their magnanimous land has chosen to feed it for another year. Traditionally it is celebrated, and it is a great honor to be the family member or loved one of a Chosen and an even greater honor to be one of one hundred and fifteen. The Sickness can affect anyone and, when they are presented at the Time of New Growth, their families are traditionally given a small stipend and a small gift from the current ruling Cesar as a thank you for gifting their entire island their sacrifice.
Everyone is affected except members of the royal family. Never in the entire history of the island has a member of the Borage family—even members with nary a drop of the Borage blood!—has ever become one of the one hundred and fifteen.
Until Eva’lante.
She wakes before the sun because her face feels tacky and her body is burning beneath the thin silk blanket Aisling has draped over her the night prior. Edwin jerks awake when she does and looking grumpy for it until he sets his half-closed eyes on her and screams.
“Mama! Mama! Eva’s eyes are bleeding!”
She touches her face as if in a daze because her body feels sluggish, and her head is filling with a warm kind of fuzz and pulls her hand away wet with red. Similarly, the pillowcase has crimson stains in it and the edges of the blankets are soaked with it. The sight of her own blood twists her stomach into an ugly bow that pushes bile up her throat. Edwin jumps from the bed when she begins heaving, fat tears of confusion and terror rolling over his freckled plump cheeks though he keeps his arm extended so his hand can wrap tightly around hers.
“Mama!”
Eva’s head bobs beneath dark waves that she struggles to stay above for the next handful of hours. There is shouting and the soft touch of Aisling’s tattooed hands on her face and the unpleasant low timbre of her father’s voice. She remembers Charleston’s tears brought forth by a rare display of anger towards Frederick. She is awake enough to see Imani become unhinged, to watch her older sister shove her father to the ground and threaten violence upon him if he does not make her better. Though Eva, floating in a sea of loss and dizzy from being overheated and feeling not quite right, cannot understand Imani’s aggression because she knows there is nothing her father can do. Eva has been chosen and she will have to live in the Heart of the Island for now and forever. When she is taken from her mother’s arms—no, when she is ripped from a raging and screaming Aisling’s arms—the priests comb her hair and whisper softly, “Immortality is a great gift Eva’lante Borage. You are ever so lucky to live among the many who go to their Second Life beyond the Void.” The priests gasp and whisper fervent prayers when she sobs, “I don’t want to be immortal, I just want my mommy! And my brothers! And Imaini! Please, I don’t want to go down there, please! Pick someone else!”
Cries of a faithless child fall on deaf ears so quickly she is ushered into a large chamber with domed ceilings to be kept with the other one hundred and fourteen. Over the course of a week, they undergo a special kind of Rite where they are slowly prepared for what is not death—immortality! What a gift!—but feels like death to an eleven year old girl. Gifts, after all, need a special kind of preparation before they can be given. Meager meals are presented to them only once a day alongside chalices of bitter wine that Eva coughs on. The food is a dark black color and spongy like bread but tastes like meat and whatever it is makes all one hundred and fifteen of them violently ill. Blood rises with the retching, blood colors her vision red and wets her cheeks, blood soaks the floors and smears the bottoms of her feet when she trudges past condemned souls. Each day she grows steadily worst, marked by the priests who come into their den and one by one pokes a new tattoo into their skin. Eva’s go over her clavicle because she is a child of Aisling so tattoos already dress her hands and feet where the others are being marked. They are simple hatch marks to show the time: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and finally VII. By the seventh day, Eva’s senses exist far away from the mortal shell of her body.
On her last day, they bath her, shave her to the scalp and dress her in perfume-soaked linens that make her blood burn so hot it feels as if she is being occasionally stabbed by a white-hot poker. They leave her head exposed as they do for the rest and lead them into a square where the loved ones of the one hundred and fifteen can offer their final goodbye. Typically, Frederick is not there but she would not have wanted him even if he had been. Aisling stands with a sobbing Edwin clutching himself at her side and an Imani who looks bereft, misery coloring every line and crack of her face. Charleston is absent. The hallow cave inside her skull is a slippery prison that she can easily drown in now, so she does not know if she is seeing that correctly or not. Charlie would have come, wouldn’t he? She is his closest confidant, his best friend, his—but no. He should not have come; Eva is blessed by unseen forces that her brother is not here to see her this way. Half starved, stinking of perfume to cover the smell of vomit and piss, and still crusted in her own blood.
(The priests had said that a bath would sully to process of preparing them, that the blood was important.)
“Oh my Eva, my little girl,” Aisling’s voice is horse, run through by the tears that fall over the sharp cliffs of her cheekbones, “what have they done to you?”
The voice of her mother pierces through the cracked edges of her sternum into the soft, bleeding parts left of her heart. She thinks she cries but she feels too dehydrated for that, too dizzy and lost to the sense dulling wine she felt perpetually drunk on.
“Mama? I’m…not so good…”
Somehow Aisling is kneeling in the dirt in front of her. She only realizes it because there is a cacophony of gasps and murmurs that rise to see the Queen in the dirt and the prince and princess right beside her. Edwin’s hands tremble and his spectacles are fogged from his crying. In her addled mind, there seems to almost be a... glow in his blue eyes. His eyes—a purple glow that shifts and swirls like smoke around the pupil of his eyes but also like the sheen of dirty oil mixed in water—widen when he seems to understand, somehow, that she can see him.
His hands tug furiously on Imani’s billowing sleeve, “Imani, they did something to her. She isn’t the same. I can see—“
Imani’s jaw gets tight, her dark eyes narrow to thin slits and she cuffs Edwin upside his head. Quietly, she hisses, “Shut up Edwin.”
For once, Aisling does not admonish Imani’s sharp tongue that occasionally lashes too deep. The waters rise in Eva’s head; she thinks she hears them sloshing when she tips her head back to catch her sister’s eye. Never has she seen her sister so unhinged. There is sweat on her brow and her lips are chapped from how she constantly runs them between her teeth. Bloodshot eyes that are rimmed with tears and anguish beset into the deepest part of her, rising to surface for anyone to see. It is unlike her. It is unnerving. It again makes Eva wonder if any of this is real.
Her prolonged staring—how long does she stare? She cannot tell anymore—makes Imani’s lips quiver and purse, and her nostrils flare. She realizes Imaini is trying to keep from crying. She does not think she has ever seen her sister cry.
“Mani? You…real? You’re…crying.”
Aisling does not cry, does not sob or wrench at her breast that heaves from great gasps. She does look heartbroken and so, so sad.
“Darling, your sister isn’t here. It is just me.”
Eva blinks at her mother once then at Edwin who sniffles and clings to Imani then at her sister who is oddly absent the mainlander she eloped with. They stand just behind Aisling: not beside her as they would normally do and without clinging to her hands the way scared children do. Eva’s head fills with such dark waters she begins to lose her sight as she sinks into it.
“Eva’lanté,” Soft hands touch her face and her hair, tug her forward so that she is held firmly within Aisling’s strong grip, “stay with me.”
“I’m so scared Mama. I can see it already…it’s so dark. I’ll be alone, forever.” Her head lulls against her mother’s shoulder so that her gaze can fixate on the massive hole in the earth that is held sacred to the islanders. Those that fall “sick” and those that grow old are taken here where they are cast into the Void beneath the Island where the Heart lives and where they begin their Second Life. None who have gone down return but still they are certain: all who go to the heart find immortal life. Eva can hear them whispering in her head already—has heard them for a week now—but now that she is up closer to the Void, their manic voices mix into one horrible noise that say many things but only mean to convey: join us.
Aisling grasps her jaw to bring their foreheads together and for a moment it keeps her buoyant above the dark waves.
“Do not give up hope yet. I promise you will not be one of them. You’re a Borage—“
“I don’t want to be. I hate him. I just want—“
“Hush. For now, you need to be his. Just long enough for me to fix this and then I’m going to take you and Imani and Edwin and Charleston and we are going to leave this horrible island,” Aisling swipes her thumbs over the apples of Eva’s sallow cheeks, both of them making soft sounds of despair that accompany their tears, “Alright? Do you believe me?”
“You mean it as a promise?”
“I do. And don’t I always keep my promises?”
Eva nods with a tight throat, her forehead bumping against her mothers.
“Alright then. I’ll go speak to the priests. Just—stay calm, darling. I’ve got you.”
The moment her mother leaves the dark waters begin filling her head agin, pouring from her ears to trickle across her sensitive skin in little cool pricks. Imani crouches down by her—or maybe Edwin, she cannot see a face, just feels a bond—to touch her face. Their eyes shift color between glowing purple and oil on water. When they speak their voice is both siblings at once, “Don’t go down there, Little Sister.”
“Mama said…”
They speak again: Imani’s voice crisp and clean, Edwin’s shaky but gentle and a third undertones them both. One that is not Charleston
“The Heart will eat you alive.”
Their voice grows quieter, singular, deep and masculine from the end of a long echoing hall: her father.
“Go quietly Eva’Lantè.”
Time gets wiggly around her. There is a short expanse between when Aisling left and when she is being led down a line, step by step, for her turn to be given to the Heart. It must be slower on the outside because she is at the back of a line that is one hundred and fifteen strong and each body is formally introduced and sent away joyously with songs and cheers from the gathered crowd. Time zips in and out like her own breathing: in and she sees the faces of hundreds watching her, out and she is sinking into freezing black waters. In and she hears her mother screaming, sees her being held back by priests, sees her long arms reaching for Eva to no end. Out and she hears the whispers of her family, her father, her grandfather, and their fathers too, all beckoning her home. All except Charlie.
Thank the Gods Charlie is not there.
“Eva’lanté, daughter of the Wayward Folk, daughter to the Cesar Frederick Borage, Princess of the Jewel Islands,” Beady eyes suddenly are all she can see, great spots of lifeless hazel inside a hole of darkness created by a deep priest hood, “we the people thank your body for it’s good deeds and know that we envy your gift. Go now to the Heart of our Island and live immortal. May it be that we see you again!”
“May it be that we see you again!”
“No! Eva, no! Don’t touch her, please! That’s my daughter, you can’t! Please!”
Calm my hands settle around her shoulders to guide her to the edge of the Void, knobby fingers that skin is pulled over like wet paper. They pet her hair in a way that must be encouraging because it is not comforting.
“I’ll kill you! Don’t touch her! Don’t do it!”
The Void down below whispers in the voices of her forebears, “Come now Eva, feed the land well.”
The gnarled old hands of the priest give a parting squeeze and then push.
Aisling’s scream echoes down through the Void, off unseen walls as she drops into darkness. The fall feels like forever, down and down into nothingness that seeps into her clothes and fills her body and heart and soul with wet blackness. Were she not empty of all things it might have hurt, it might have been terrifying too. It makes sense then and only then as she is lost to all senses and to time that wiggles unnoticed and to the mortal vessel she should be inside of: this is immortality. Perhaps the old ones in their theatrically bright robes had been right about something for once. Maybe she would live forever. Alone in the dark haunted by a family that abandoned her just like how her life first started.
Then, she hits water that is pierced through by stars of green and blue. Bones make awful sounds of snapping and giving beneath flesh that cannot contain the shards and all that was empty and listless before is now a burning ball of nerves that scream pain. The water does not move right when she slips beneath its surface. It is too heavy, too slow, too hard for her to get through and the stars inside it converge on her where she has been broken and ripped open. They burn hot green and sink into her, into the blood that flows and—
Suddenly, Aisling is there in the Not Right Water, fighting against its thick texture to clasp her arms around Eva. There is a feral look in her eyes and the stench of burnt ozone that cuts through the metallic smell of blood. She moves her mouth and her hands fidget against the middle of Eva’s back and then they are gone from there. In a blink they are back on top, on the knees panting for breath and hacking up the Not Right Water and the Green Stars onto the cobblestone in front of them. The crowd stumbles back gasping and shrieking and the priests point and curse at them.
“Blaspheme!”
“What have you done!? You’ve doomed us all!”
“Throw her back! Throw her back quick before the Island renounces us!”
“Call the Cesar!”
Eva is pulled tight into Aisling’s arms that tremble but hold firm. Blearily she looks up at her mother, unsure if she is truly seeing her or if she still inside the Void, floating and lost eternal.
“Mama?”
“I promised,” Aisling drops her head against Eva’s in her exhaustion, nose smushed against her brow so she can press a tired kiss against Eva’s forehead, “and I always keep my promises.”
The pain and blood loss coupled with a week of starvation and being fed more wine than she has ever had in her life begins to catch up with her. Her head starts to droop against Aisling’s shoulder, teetering back and forth on the knife’s edge of consciousness. Something keeps her fighting it though, something she can’t let go of, “Where’s Charlie? I couldn’t hear him. Is he okay?”
“Don’t worry about that now, darling. Sleep. I’ll fix all this, I promise.”
“Okay.” Everything hurts so badly but she is safe now, her mother saved her just as she always has. It will all be okay.
When she is not fully healed and not ready for trauma worst than whatever happened to her in the Void, Aisling is banished. Imani’s wife, Aylah, has to hold her up so she can see over the tall walls of the Emerald Gates as her mother is escorted by a group of ten guards through the streets of their island. Many have gathered to jeer at her and curse her name, curse her bloodline, and wish her the worst of all things. Edwin—soft hearted Edwin—cannot bare to watch it and flees back inside the castle. Banishment on the Island is their punishment that is worst than death since death, as a concept, is blasphemy. They will take her to a place where she cannot escape from and that has no name and cannot be found on a map. Somewhere that immortal citizens of good faith and better hearts cannot stumble upon such a cursed creature in their foreseeable future.
Somewhere her children will never find her. It is not death because death is not real. It is worst than that.
At the end of the road where the upper districts of the highest part of the streets turn into the second ring where the middle-class dwell, Aisling stops. She tilts her head up to the wall where Eva is held up between Aylah and Imani. It is too far for her to see her mother’s face, but she knows there is a doting smile on her face.
“Love you.” Eva whispers into the wind and is surprised when she the wind whispers back in her mother’s voice, “I love you too my darling. Look after the others, they aren’t as strong as you are. I know you’ve always felt like you’re the odd one out but you’re not. You are the thing that keeps this family together. Without you, we wouldn’t have a heart. I’ll be back. I promise.”
“You have to keep it and mean it!”
Imani gives her a side glance that is calculating but not unkind. Just, Imani.
Aisling, from even further away this time, answers again, “I always mean it.”
“Wherever they take you, I’ll find you.”
Now Imani seems to have found her answer—her eyes flick down to their mother’s retreating form—she takes Eva’s bruised hand into her own and smiles down at her before she says, “Tell her I’ll help. We both will. Right my love?”
Aylah nods, serene and silent as she has always seemed to be.
Aisling’s only response is another proud murmuring of praise and love for her children and then she is gone.
Later, when Imani brings her back into the castle with a jaw firm as stone and lightening crackling in her eyes, after a tense supper that is absent Charleston, after Edwin breaks in her arms and she finds that she has no strength left to cry: she changes one last time. It is not a drastic change, but it allows for all the pieces she had been molding throughout the years to slot together and complete the picture.
Once Eva’Lantè bastard half-elf of No One from Nowhere, she becomes her final and truest self.
She becomes Eva’Lantè—
(“—it’s an elfish name, I think,” The Courtesan that looked after her most often and kept her alive when she was a baby told her in his gruff voice when she was six, “‘s why I gave it ya.”)
—von Aisling—
(“Why are all your names so long, anyway?” Eva asked her big brother Charleston who laughed and tapped the end of her nose all sweet like. “It’s because we are important, and our names carry weight. Every word means something, Little Sister. Von Aisling means child of Aisling. It’s something to be proud of, to be her son. Or…her daughter.”)
—Doewl—
(“It’s all I could find about your birth mother, darling. Apparently, she was a pirate,” Aisling shrugs and smiles over the rim of her teacup, “ghastly business, pirating. Seems a lot more work than I’d ever enjoy doing.”)
—Borage.
(“I hate you and I will always hate you and that’s why I’m going to keep your name. So that you can hear everyone say, ‘there goes Eva Borage, bastard to the Cesar’ and I can revel in knowing that it burns you. I was your shame, and I will always be your shame. Out of spite.”)
She grins into the mirror, a spiteful broken creature that decides to live only for the loyalty she has for her family.