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How dire it felt to say, that her father’s death solved her every problem. Unfortunately, the cruelness of the admission did not stop it from being true.
It was not that Magdalena von Westpfale hadn’t loved her father— far from it. She had adored him, and he her, when he had been around. This was the privilege of only children, and of only daughters especially, to adore and be adored. But nevertheless, Magdalena was a practical woman, and the feeling in her chest when she watched her father’s coffin be lowered into its grave was one of relief.
That had been a rainy, cold day on Odin six months prior, and Magdalena had left the planet immediately afterwards. There was business on her — no longer her father’s— estate to attend to, and then on Phezzan. Leaving Odin had been a test of her newfound freedom. The Baroness Westpfale, though only seventeen, had simply told her mother that she was going, and her mother could not object. Magdalena had gone alone.
She had made the best of the trip in all the ways she knew how to do, but it was a curiously lonely journey nevertheless. The feeling of freedom, and then the tinge of sadness and guilt that accompanied it, made even the most tangible joys feel barren and empty. Perhaps it was for the best that she felt this way. If her time on Phezzan had been an unmarred joy, she might never have returned to Odin. Things were so different there on Phezzan— easier for people like her.
She entertained people in her father’s expensive apartment there— not nightly, but close to it. The furniture was all her father’s taste— dark woods, paintings of forests, the leather of the couch slick underneath her hands. The only things that made the apartment feel like it was on Phezzan were the huge windows looking over the city, and the spire of the space elevator. It was monsoon season while she was there, so the windows were constantly thrashed with rain, and the elevator looked like a frozen bolt of lightning, perpetual in the sky, glowing golden from within until it vanished into the clouds. Magdalena was often drunk to the point of illness when she had her guests over, so their faces and names blurred into indistinctness in her memory, even by the next morning. The only thing that remained clear in her mind was the view of the elevator, and the growing sensation that she was running from something, rather than towards something else.
Magdalena despised that about herself, that feeling of weakness. What she was doing on Phezzan, at least in those months, was not finding happiness— it was simply avoiding fear. There was a distinct difference between those two things, even if the actions she might theoretically take to accomplish them were the same. Inheriting her title and leaving Odin had freed her from the specific troubles that had been haunting her, but it wasn’t as though the heart of the problem, herself, had changed. At best, the situation had been transmuted into something different, into a shape that she didn’t know how to feel out the edges of.
She was no longer a girl under the control of other people with power over her. She was a rare thing, a titled and unmarried woman, with money enough that she could do as she liked for the rest of her life— the rest of generations worth of lifetimes. She understood what that meant in a practical sense; she had always paid very close attention to her father’s business, and the easiest parts of her trip to her family’s estates and Phezzan had been dealing with the money. She could take the money and remove herself from the world of Odin, since all business worth conducting could be conducted from Phezzan. There were plenty of people like her who had made that choice. But that was running away.
So, when one morning Magdalena found that the monsoon rains had waned enough that the sun was streaming in through the windows in her bedroom and setting her hungover head on fire, she summoned her butler and told him to arrange her transportation back to Odin. He was an older gentleman named Herr Lauer, whom she had known for as long as she had been alive. He disapproved of her, as any sane person would. Unfortunately, she trusted him.
“Pardon me for saying, My Lady, but I hope you understand— you will not be able to behave on Odin as you do here. Your lady mother—”
“Should my lady mother ask,” Magdalena said, laying on her bed dressed only in her thin nightgown, clutching a pillow to her chest, “you can feel free to tell her I’ve been getting it out of my system.”
“My lady, you know that I am not in the business of telling your mother about most things.”
“Just tell her I’m coming home,” Magdalena said, then rolled over and covered her eyes with her pillow.
It had been an impulse decision to return to Odin, and one she regretted almost as soon as she had made it, but having made it, she would never allow herself to back down. She hated being a coward. It was strange to say, when she was a consummate liar, that she valued sincerity, but she did. She valued it in other people, and she held herself to high enough standards that she valued it in herself even more.
So back on Odin she was. Half a year away had been long enough to give everything in the capital a strange sense of nostalgia when she looked at it. The streets were glazed with summer light, looking more like a memory than real. Her manor home was too empty and quiet.
Magdalena avoided her mother, and threw herself into the business of managing her estate. She was certain that her solicitors and agents all hated her, because she had no hesitation in calling up their offices whenever she had a question or a proposal. She ordered rooms in the manor redecorated, and the gardens redone. She changed her wardrobe to the fashions of the season.
The one thing she didn’t do was make social calls. She should have— this was cowardice again. She set herself a deadline: the Summer Solstice. There would be a party at Neue Sanssouci, as there was every year, and the Baroness of Westpfale would be in attendance. The Baroness of Westpfale was a role Magdalena would need to get used to inhabiting.
The capital city on Odin was much further north compared to the planet’s equator than the capital city on Phezzan, so when she had returned home, Magdalena had been startled by the length of the days— hours longer than those she had been living with for months. The Summer Solstice was of course the longest of them all, the sun rising around three in the morning and not setting until after midnight. The party at Neue Sanssouci was an old tradition— they would have a bonfire all through the dark part of the night, to keep the light going, an unwinnable fight against the darkness. Magdalena had attended this party as a child, in the tow of her parents, but she had been forbidden from going as a teen, her mother thinking it too wild for her. But she was a free woman now, and this was how she convinced herself to attend.
Summer merited a light dress, gauzy and red, without the normal bustle that Odin fashion dictated. It was as much of a bacchanal as Odin ever got to see, so she wore one of her Phezzani dresses, figuring it would be appropriate for the occasion. As usual, a decorative fan dangled from her fingers, this one decorated with pheonixes to match her dress.
The gardens of Neue Sanssouci were splendid, full of roses and flowers of every kind. They stretched for kilometers, winding across the grounds. White marble pavilions dotted the landscape, paths crisscrossed and doubled back, and statues of goddesses were frozen in perpetual dance. Magdalena arrived around eight, in time for dinner.
She recognized a significant number of people gathered there, as she looked at all the people seated at the long tables on the lawn according to their station. She had a rather unpleasant seat next to Baron Flegel, who was not quite a close enough relation to Duke Braunschweig (himself a relative of the Kaiser through marriage) to merit a seat at the head table. Magdalena disliked the man immensely, and the feeling was mutual. Magdalena intended to ignore him, but Flegel made it impossible.
“Oh, Fraulein Westpfale,” Flegel said, after they had been served their first course, “I’m so glad you were able to join us today. I had heard rumors that we might never see you on Odin again.”
“It’s Baroness Westpfale,” Magdalena said. “And I had business on my family’s estate.”
“Of course,” he said. “But you were gone for so long. You must have been so industrious out there.”
“Perhaps I was,” she said, which made him laugh. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve missed me in the capital.”
“But of course we have. It’s been difficult to find new things to talk about, without you to create them for us.”
“I’m sure you’re creative enough to manage.” She took a sip of her wine and thought about dumping it on his head. It would do wonders for his white suit.
“Too true. Pity you haven’t been around to participate.”
“And why would I care what you’ve all been gossiping about?”
“It just seems like the kind of thing you’d be interested in.”
“Tell me about it or don’t, Thomas. I hate suspense.”
“Do you?” He laughed.
She made a point of ignoring him and going back to her food. It was a beautiful day out, still, despite the relative lateness of the hour. She let the wind brush her hair from her face, and she rested her chin on her hand in defiance of proper table manners. This was a bacchanal— they could dispense with proper table manners. Flegel grew instantly annoyed, though he sat on his annoyance for an admirably long time before giving in.
“Look over there,” he finally said, nodding his head at the front table where the Kaiser was sitting. He was surrounded by the upper echelons of Odin society.
“What am I looking at?” Magdalena asked.
“Next to His Majesty.”
Magdalena could see immediately what Flegel was referring to. At Kaiser Friedrich’s right hand was his mistress, Susanna von Benemunde, but on his right side was someone whom Magdalena had never seen before: the most beautiful girl in the world.
Marquess Benemunde, who had always, in Magdalena’s eyes, been a picture of composure in many difficult situations (she had a very precarious position, for many reasons) was clearly uncomfortable, though attempting to disguise it. Even from so far away, Magdalena could see her making frequent bids for the Kaiser’s attention, and not receiving much in return. The Kaiser’s eyes were instead drawn to the girl on his other side.
She was a girl, Magdalena thought. She couldn’t have been any older than herself, seventeen, and was probably younger by at least a year or two. She was short, and her figure was slender in the hips, not done growing yet. Her expression was the practiced smile of a much older woman, but her eyes stayed fixed ahead of herself— never looking at any guest directly, not Benemunde, and certainly not the Kaiser.
She was a girl, and she was excruciatingly beautiful, with blonde hair that just caught the wind, and a face like marble. Magdalena stared at her for a moment until she remembered that she was giving Flegel exactly what he wanted.
“And why would I care about that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Flegel said. “Isn’t it interesting that His Majesty has a new toy?”
“Benemunde doesn’t seem happy.”
“Why would she be?” Flegel laughed. “I would be unhappy, too, if I was her.”
“How old is she?”
“Benemunde? Twenty-five.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why do I care how old the Kaiser’s little amusement is?”
Too young to say in polite company, then. But Benemunde had been Kaiser Friedrich’s companion for as long as Magdalena could remember. She had always felt impossibly mature to Magdalena, even back when she had just been a visitor to the parlors of Magdalena’s finishing school, an older graduate coming back as a favor to impress the young girls with tea parties. But she was only twenty-six now, so she must have been young when the Kaiser had first chosen her for his own. Somehow, in the intervening years, her age had ceased to be a topic of contention, and had become one of derision.
Magdalena was silent, pensive.
“Aren’t you ever jealous that His Majesty didn’t pick you?” Flegel asked. “I think there are plenty who are.”
Magdalena whipped her head around to look at him. “Who is that girl?” she asked, her voice rough, almost vicious.
“Some nobody,” Flegel said. “Von Miller or von Mullen or something like that.”
“I have always been my family’s heir, Thomas,” she said. “It would be good of you to remember that.”
“Me? I’ve never forgotten. You must have, once or twice, though.”
Magdalena bit her tongue so hard that she was sure it would swell up inside her mouth. Maybe it would make her thick-mouthed and unable to speak. Good. That would prevent her from saying anything more to Flegel for the rest of the night.
The trouble was that he was right. Magdalena had been protected from many things by virtue of being her father’s heir, but she had enjoyed that protection of her fname without wanting to bear the responsibilities. Her presence today at the solstice party was testing the water, to see if responsibility was something she could bear. She might decide she couldn’t, and run back to Phezzan. No one could stop her. That, too, was the protection of her family name.
It seemed quite cruel that this girl lacked protection and had an overwhelming responsibility, one that Magdalena couldn’t imagine bearing. She watched as the Kaiser said something to the girl, and she hid her smile behind her hand— or she hid the falseness of her smile behind her hand, a charming kind of lie. Where could she run, if she wanted to escape? Nowhere, Magdalena was sure.
She tried to keep her eyes off the girl at the Kaiser’s side for the rest of the dinner, though this was a next to impossible thing to ask of herself. The girl never moved from her place, and Magdalena’s eyes constantly flicked over her, watching the way she reacted to the Kaiser’s attentions. She was good at the game that had to be played, but Magdalena couldn’t tell if she was naturally gifted at the game itself, or if she was naturally gifted at learning exactly what she needed to, in order to survive.
After dinner, the whole assembly turned to dancing. A band was set up just outside the dancing area, all strings playing songs that Magdalena could have whistled by heart. It was still quite light out; the sun was inching towards the horizon but acted like it feared to sink down beneath the trees. Magdalena couldn’t blame it.
In the center of the largest courtyard, the bonfire had been started already, smoke curling up into the blue sky. The dresses of the women flashed behind the fire, turning into a blur of blues and greens and other unnatural colors, like the fire was burning with coppers and other metals, rather than just wood. Magdalena stared into it, trying to convince herself to smile at one of the men on the sidelines, make some motion to get him to come over and ask her to dance. Some would eventually, even if she did nothing, but she liked to feel as though she were in control, as though the invitation was hers to offer.
She didn’t want to dance— not unless it was something wild like taking her shoes off and taking a running leap over the fire, or into it. That would have felt better than putting on some cloy expression, sickly and needy, and asking for someone to lead her around.
Her eyes fell again on the girl. She and the Kaiser had left the main table, and had come down to the dancing area, perhaps just to watch, as the Kaiser almost never designed to dance. Benemunde had been left behind at the table, or at least hadn’t joined the other two. For some reason, looking at her gave Magdalena some resolve. The girl’s face revealed none of her thoughts, yet there must have been an ocean of them just behind her eyes. Magdalena admired her, though it was a bitter feeling, a painful one. She turned away from the fire and leaned on the low stone wall at the edge of the courtyard. There was a gaggle of young men not far away, and she moved her fan in front of her face, hiding her expression, and looked at them with half-lidded eyes. The force of her gaze summoned one over immediately.
“Baroness Westpfale, isn’t it?” one asked. An indistinguishable man. Brown hair. Nothing to recommend him besides a name, which Magdalena didn’t know, or didn’t remember.
“It is,” she said.
“Would you care for a dance?” he asked.
She flashed her fan in front of her face again. It was a useful tool. “Of course.”
Magdalena was a good dancer, and she couldn’t even bring herself to hate that about herself. She liked the movement, and she liked being better at it than her partners, one after another after another. She threw herself into the dancing because it occupied her mind almost entirely with the functions of her body— she enjoyed things like that. She drank between dances, sipping glass after glass of wine, though she remained steady on her feet. She was a better drunk than she was dancer, and she was a better dancer than she was an actor. The men she danced with sensed whatever combination of boredom and desperation was pushing her along, and none of them stuck with her through more than a dance or two. She didn’t care. She couldn’t make herself care.
By the time the sun finally sank down beneath the horizon, most of the party had abandoned the dance floor, laying out on the grass, on blankets, eating small desserts and drinking. The older ones had gone home and only the young remained.
Even the Kaiser had gone, and Magdalena noticed that Benemunde had gone with him, or at least was no longer there. The girl remained, however, sitting on a bench at the edge of the dancing area, either watching the few remaining dancers who swayed on their feet, or staring into the pit of the fire. The fire, too, had died down to a reasonable size. It was no longer the roaring pillar of flame it had been when it first was lit. Now its light was paled by the fairy lights that were strung up around the outside of the courtyard, and that of the moon above. The sky wasn’t even completely dark— there was a strange glow at the very edge of the horizon, like the sun was hiding its face behind the planet, but failing to disguise its intent to rise soon.
Magdalena had no more potential dance partners left. They were all lying in the grass, having found some other partner to amuse themselves with, or were together in groups of single men, laughing about something inconsequential.
Although she knew it was a mistake, Magdalena walked over and sat down next to the bench next to the girl. This far from the fire, and free from the exertion of dancing, the night air was cold. The girl stiffened as Magdalena sat, though Magdalena was almost comically loose in her posture, flopping down and spreading out her arms across the back of the bench.
“I didn’t see you dance all night,” she said to the girl.
“I don’t know how.” The girl’s voice, more than her body or her face, belied her youth. She didn’t look at Magdalena.
“That is a pity.” She cocked her head at the girl. “But you’ve been watching all night. Do you want to?”
“His Majesty told me to learn.”
“You can’t learn to dance by watching, I’m afraid. You have to do it.”
The girl nodded, one quick motion. She didn’t believe Magdalena at all.
“But I don’t think that His Majesty really likes dancing, anyway,” Magdalena said. “He probably just wants to watch you do it.”
Something in the girl’s composure broke. She shivered. Perhaps it was just the cold night air, but Magdalena suddenly felt awful for this line of questioning. She softened her tone.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I didn’t catch it from anybody.”
“Annerose.”
“Family name?” The fact that she didn’t give it meant that it wasn’t important, but she thought she should ask.
“Von Musel.”
“Annerose…” Magdalena said. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to ask who I am?”
Annerose looked at her, eyes wide, firelight caught in them. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Magdalena.”
“And your family name?” Annerose asked— she seemed to understand what Magdalena wanted from her now, but Magdalena found this to be an unpleasant state of affairs.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “All my friends just call me Maggie.”
Annerose nodded again.
“Do you go by Annie? Rosa?”
Annerose shook her head.
“Well… Annerose… It’s too beautiful of a name to spoil with overuse, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Annerose,” Magdalena trilled, drawing out every syllable. She realized just now how drunk she was, and how little she should be doing this. “Annerose!”
“Please—” Annerose said, a little bit of emotion sounding in her voice for the first time. People had taken notice of the two of them sitting together, since Magdalena was not being quiet. “Magdalena—”
“Annerose,” Magdalena sang, to the tune of the song the band was tiredly playing, though she did it a little more quietly this time.
“Maggie—”
“Oh, so we can be friends. Well then, darling, anything for you.” Magdalena smiled. Annerose looked quite frightened, which had not been her intention at all. Magdalena smiled, and even if she had wanted to, she couldn’t take the genuineness out of her expression. She would have had to hide it with her fan— and she did, laughing a little. It was all a joke, after all.
“I’m quite a good dancer, you know, darling,” Magdalena said.
“I know— I saw you.”
“I’m so flattered that you were watching.”
Annerose didn’t have anything to say to that. Well— Magdalena hadn’t really expected her to. She put her fan down on the bench between them and said, “Do you want to see my favorite dance?” she asked.
“What is it?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t want to see, darling.” She stood up, gave Annerose a comical bow, and then turned towards the band, which was just finishing one song. “Conductor!” she called, “The lady here wants to hear “Dance of the Fireflies!” by Strasser!” It was a popular piece, one that had come out of a new opera about a decade ago, and had swiftly found a home in the dance lineups of this type of parties. The conductor and band surely knew it. The band struck up the piece, a whirlingly fast song, with the bases and the violins trading lines back and forth, echoing each other in a circular whir of music.
There was a dance that went along with it, a proper one, and Magdalena knew the steps quite well. She twirled and leaped, not missing a partner for this dance, at least. When she whipped her head around to look at Annerose, she was more than gratified to see Annerose’s eyes upon her. It propelled her faster. Her black hair fell out of the remains of its updo and fluttered out behind her.
Magdalena circled the fire in her wild twirling, and a terrible idea entered her drunken brain.
“Do you want to see the grand finale, darling?” she cried. She looked over at Annerose, whose face was flushed— she was holding her hand over her mouth.
She could have twirled herself to the ground. She could have kicked off her shoes and demonstrated to Annerose how she could lift herself to the very tips of her toes, even without pointe shoes on. She could have cornered one of the other remaining dancers and dragged him down with her. But Magdalena could never be anything but sincere, no matter how much that sincerity was unwarranted and dangerous. She could never do anything less than that.
As the strings screamed out the ending of the song, Magdalena charged across the courtyard, took as much of a running start as she could get, and leaped across the flames of the bonfire.
She felt the heat ripple across her skin, the rising smoky air lift the trailing edges of her dress, and the momentary fear of gravity dragging her back down into the flames. She cleared the firepit, but landed with a tumble on the other side, scraping the palms of her hands bloody and shredding her dress with her knees. She turned her head towards Annerose, who had stood up in horrified shock. Magdalena laughed, half crazed, then rolled over onto her back, staring up at the stars.
“Are you alright?” Annerose asked, her face looming into view over Magdalena’s. The other guests didn’t seem to know what to do, but Annerose crouched down next to her.
“Darling, you ask me that? Without even a ‘ Brava! ’ for my dancing?” Magdalena asked. “For shame.”