Crown of Coral and Pearl

“What should I wear?” I asked, flipping through my small stack of clothing.

“A simple tunic and skirts. There will be clothes for you in the carriage. And leather-soled shoes, or so I was told.”

I stared down at my bare toes. Mother sometimes forced me to wear slippers for special occasions, but I preferred to go barefoot. “I have to wear shoes?”

Zadie’s head fell back as she laughed, and I realized she didn’t appear to be in pain for the first time in days. The worry lines on her brow were gone, and she no longer winced every time she moved.

“Are you feeling better?”

“I am, actually.” She unwound the bandages on her thigh, and I was pleased to see that the wounds, though still pink and raw, showed no sign of infection. An image came to my mind of Sami someday tracing those winding scars with his finger, and I felt a moment of peace. As long as they had each other, I wouldn’t worry for my sister. She loved it here. She always had.

I changed into my best white tunic and pale blue skirts. Zadie helped me apply the stain from Elder Nemea to my cheek, and we both marveled at how well it worked. If I waited just a little while, it didn’t come off even when I rubbed at it. After, I ate a small bowl of porridge with dried figs. I was afraid I’d be ill if my stomach was too full, and I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.

“Nerves,” Father said. “I expect it’s normal to be anxious on a day like this.”

“Yes, Father.”

We turned at the sound of Sami calling from outside the house.

“It’s time,” Father said.

I looked around for Mother. “Where is she?” Even she wouldn’t miss saying goodbye to me, I thought, though doubt nibbled the corners of my mind like a hungry fish.

“She said she had something she needed to do.”

“But surely she’ll be back to see me off?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t say.”

I clenched my jaw to keep it from trembling and picked up the trunk. “Help Zadie out, would you? She’s doing better today, but she could still use a hand.”

I went to where Sami and Governor Kristos sat in their boat, both looking dignified in their finest clothing. I’d always thought Sami looked more like his mother, but today I saw some of his father in him.

He reached up to help me with my trunk. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, though the eel in my belly writhed violently. “I think so.”

“Where’s your mother?”

I shrugged, trying to mask my hurt. “She’s not here.”

Even the governor frowned at my words.

“It’s fine,” I lied. “Let me just say goodbye.” I turned to my father, who held my sister in his arms like a child. He set her down gently so he could remove something from his tunic. It was a long silk pouch, red with pale pink embroidery.

“What is it?” I asked as he placed it in my hand. The object inside was hard and thin.

“It’s a knife, made from the blood coral that nearly killed you.”

I nearly dropped the pouch. “What?”

He smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s sheathed.”

I slid the opening of the silk pouch down an inch, revealing an ivory handle carved with seaflowers. “Why do you have this?”

“While you were sick, when we thought we were going to lose you, I found the blood coral and smashed it to pieces with a mallet.”

“What were you thinking?” I asked. “You could have been killed!”

“I was careful. Well, careful enough.”

I removed the knife from the pouch. The sheath covering the blade was made of stingray leather. I pulled gently on the handle, just enough to glimpse a sliver of the coral blade.

“The coral itself can’t hurt you,” he explained. “Not when it’s dead. But if it breaks the skin, the cut will be lethal.”

I searched his eyes. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“Turn it over.”

I obeyed him and gasped. Even Kristos’s eyes widened at the sight of the massive red pearl set into the hilt, the size of my thumbnail and perfectly round. But it was the color that shocked us all: a bright, radiant red, as red as any blood coral I’d ever seen. I hadn’t even known red pearls existed. It had to be worth as much as twenty pink pearls.

“Where did you get it?” I asked, stroking the pearl reverently.

He tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “From the oyster you and Zadie found that day.”

“Why didn’t you sell it?” I asked, thinking of all the food and supplies we could have purchased with it.

“It belongs to you. It always has.”

I tucked the knife back into the pouch and wrapped my arms around my father, squeezing him tightly. “Thank you, Father, for understanding me so well. I will miss you.”

“I will miss you, too.” He didn’t try to stop the tears welling in his eyes. “Thalos blessed this family when he brought you to us. Both of you.”

“Take care of Mother,” I said, my voice breaking on the words. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she will miss me.”

“Of course she will.”

I turned to Zadie and cried harder.

“Don’t cry, darling,” she said, though she was weeping as hard as I was. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

She managed a smile. “Now who’s the one who will be as swollen as a puffer fish?”

“I don’t care,” I said.

She dried my tears with her sleeve anyway. “You’ve sacrificed everything for me, and I will never forget it as long as I live.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

“But you didn’t ask it.”

I held her as hard as I dared, once again surprised at how small she felt in my arms after embracing Father. A wave of fear washed over me. “I’m not sure I can do this,” I whispered into her ear.

She leaned back to look me in the eyes. “Mother always told us that beauty is power. She believed that our value was something that could be weighed and measured like a pearl at market. But for the last seven years, since I scarred your cheek, I have watched you become independent and strong. Your curiosity leads you to ask questions other girls never even think of. You’ve always been beautiful, Nor. That scar on your cheek? Most people in the village don’t even notice it. That’s not what made the elders choose me over you. They chose me because they believed I would go along with their plans, that I would make the prince a docile and subservient wife.”

“Zadie—”

She placed her hands on my shoulders. “Mother was wrong, Nor. You have the power to do anything and everything you dream of, more than any person I’ve ever known. And that power, that inner strength, that is what makes you the most beautiful girl in Varenia.”

I shook my head. I didn’t feel powerful at all in that moment. I felt sad and scared and very small. “I love you” was all I could manage.

“I will see you again, in this life or another. Now go, meet your destiny.” Zadie pressed a kiss to my forehead and stepped back as Father helped lower me down to the boat.

Sami put his arms around me, not like a brother or a lover, but like a friend, and I was more grateful for him than I’d ever been. The governor himself took up the oars to row us to shore.

I told myself not to look back. I kept my back straight so that Zadie’s last image of me would be one of the power and strength she was so sure I possessed. What she couldn’t see were the tears, the way I dug my nails into my palms and bit down on my lower lip, so I had a different kind of pain to focus on.

As Zadie’s cries were lost to the wind, I recited her final words in my head, attempting to draw strength from them. I was not abandoning the people I loved; I was meeting my destiny, just like we had talked about.

Realization slammed into me like a wave. I may not have asked her to sacrifice for me, but she had done it anyway. She hadn’t told me about her plan because she knew that I would never risk her life if I believed I was going to profit from it in some way. But somehow she had wrested our destinies from the hands of the elders, from Mother, from Thalos himself, and put them to rights.

Bittersweet tears slid down my cheeks. How could I have ever doubted her?

I turned abruptly, hoping I wasn’t too late. All the houses of Varenia, painted in their pinks and yellows, reds and oranges, stretched out across the horizon like a glorious sunset. In front of our rapidly shrinking house, I could barely make out Zadie’s tiny figure in the distance. I raised a hand to show that I understood, and the sob I’d been holding in burst out of me as she raised hers in return.

Sami held me tighter, and I cried until I was finally out of tears.