The first dream came the day my name was chosen. I didn’t even know yet that they’d submitted my name—they don’t tell you unless you’re selected.
I woke that morning sweating and disoriented. Sunlight already streamed through the faded yellow curtains. I’d overslept. Both of my sisters had already risen, leaving the rest of the bed empty. The memory of what day it was crashed over me.
I tumbled out of bed, washed my face in the basin and threw on the dress I’d laid over the chair last night. I grabbed my boots and half fell down the ladder to the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I hissed at Grace as I crashed onto the bench beside the big wooden table and hurriedly began lacing on my boots. My older sister paused as she carried her porridge bowl to the washbasin.
“I tried,” she said. “You wouldn’t wake. I figured I’d give you a few minutes.”
“But on Choosing Day!”
“Beauty,” Joy said from across the table, nearly done with her own porridge. “Go easy on her. She’s nervous too.”
I bit my lip and redid the laces on my second boot. I took a deep breath. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled my own bowl of porridge toward me and wolfed it down. It was lukewarm and bland, but I barely tasted it. Grace came over with a comb while I ate. She buttoned the few buttons on the back of my dress that I couldn’t reach and braided my hair, expertly tying it with the blue ribbon that matched the dress I’d chosen. Joy took my empty bowl and her own to the sink. Mama wiped her hands on her apron and looked us over.
“You look lovely,” she said. She gave me a gentle smile. “No one would ever know you’d overslept.” Grace nudged me with her elbow, and Joy gave me a sidelong grin. I narrowed my eyes at them. Mama planted a kiss on each of our heads. “Have a good day, now. I’ll see you at the Choosing.”
We bundled up in our coats and scarves to go to school. Papa was already at work in the shop that occupied the front room of our house, so we opened the door to the shop on our way out to say goodbye. There were no customers yet; Papa liked to spend the early hours sewing quietly on standing orders before he opened. He looked up and smiled crookedly at us, a pin pinched between his lips.
We separated in the street outside. Joy walked the block to the lower school alone while Grace and I made our way across town to the upper school. Joy would be with us in the upper school next year. We would have one year all together before Grace and I graduated and joined Mama and Papa in the shop.
Grace and I huddled together against the wind. No snow had fallen yet, but the air was bitter. For some reason, the chill reminded me of my dream, for all that it was so opposite. I let my mind wander back, surprised at how vivid the details still were.
I had been in a cornfield. The ears were small, and the stalks were dry. I knew next to nothing about farming, but I could tell there hadn’t been enough rain. The sound of a strong wind rose, though the stalks around me didn’t bend and rustle in it. I didn’t pay attention to it as I reached out, frowning, to touch the nearest stalk. The sound grew and grew until it was a constant thunder.
That’s when I smelled the smoke.
“It’s spreading,” a voice said by my side.
I turned to look for the voice. A man stood by me: tall, handsome, dark-haired, and dressed in out-of-date but expensive clothing, like someone out of a portrait. He was looking in the direction the sound was coming from, but when he felt me looking, he turned to me. His eyes were dark and worried.
“Half of the midland fields are up in flames,” he said. “Will you help me stop it?”
I looked helplessly around. There was no water nearby, not a stream or a well or even a bucket. “How?” I asked.
But he said nothing, just turned back to the raging fire sweeping across the field. I could see the red glow now. The roar was louder than ever. It had consumed nearly the whole field in less than a minute, the dry stalks feeding the hungry flames. It was going to consume us too if we didn’t run, but my feet were rooted to the soil. I sought again for water and again came up with nothing. I could feel the heat beating against me. We would be swallowed up in a second—
And then I had woken. I shivered now, remembering, at the terror and the helplessness.
“Beauty? Are you alright?”
“Fine,” I said shortly. I wasn’t going to tell her about the dream. Not today.
We hurried on silently. A handful of other girls trickled into the large, whitewashed building as we approached; most of the students boarded. I heaved the front door open and held it for Grace, then slipped in behind her as the wind slammed it shut. It wasn’t warm in the entrance hall, but it was a relief to be out of the wind. I shivered as I took my coat off to hang it up on the hooks that lined the walls. I wished I could have kept it on, but the mistresses would never have allowed that.
Grace gave me a quick hug and hurried off to her first lesson. I had embroidery first—the easiest lesson in the world, thanks to having a tailor and a seamstress for parents—followed by history. On a normal day I’d have music after, but everyone got out early on Choosing Day. I loved music, and I’d been excited when I got to the upper school to have a music lesson twice a week. But our lessons focused primarily on singing, because most instruments weren’t respectable for girls. Unless it was the piano, but you had to pay for extra lessons to learn that. We did learn the flute, which was better than nothing. The notes were like light, happy birds that drifted on a warm breeze. But I couldn’t help thinking wistfully of the music that waited beyond my reach.
I arrived at my first lesson in plenty of time, found the sampler I’d started yesterday on the shelf, and worked through the class in silence.
The history classroom was down a short hall, and the whole class filed along together, whispers multiplying as we did, only tapering off once we’d settled into our seats. The history mistress glared us into silence before launching into a lecture about kings and stewards and the difference between them. I couldn’t focus, seeing again the face of the man from my dream, smelling the smoke, hearing the roar of approaching flames. I blinked and came back to myself, heart racing. The history mistress droned on, and I let my mind wander again. We’d been taught the same thing every year at school, and it all boiled down to this: once we’d had kings, now we had stewards, and no one knew why.
No one even knew exactly when the switch happened. It was all shrouded in magic and mystery. Granny Nalina, one of Papa’s long-time customers, once said that her grandmother had seen the king as he rode through their town. But she’d admitted uncertainty over how trustworthy her grandmother’s memory was, particularly as the matriarch had declared that the king had simply disappeared soon afterwards.
Either way, the line of kings had stopped, and the stewards, though ruling in nearly the same capacity, were officially guiding the country until the kings should return. As far as I could tell, no one actually believed the kings would return, or maybe it was just that high politics had such little impact on day-to-day life that no one really thought about it. None of us would ever meet a king or a steward. The closest I was likely to come to either was the portrait of our current graying-haired Steward with icy blue eyes that hung in the school assembly hall.
Our class filed out at the end of the lesson, joining the other classes in the hall and streaming out of the building to gather in the large square before the school. My classmates’ whispers had taken on a new quality, excited and anxious. Parents hovered around the edges of the square. The boys’ upper school had let out early too, and some of the boys now crept into the crowd of girls to take their places beside sweethearts. I found Grace suddenly beside me and clutched at her hand.
Mistress Stonebridge, our headmistress, took her place at the front door of the school. Each town was required by the Steward to submit the names of five upper-school girls over the age of eighteen to be considered every year. As there was only one girls’ upper school in our town, Mistress Stonebridge both submitted the names and announced the Steward’s choice.
“It is my privilege,” she began, her voice carrying over the quickly stifled murmurings of the gathered crowd, “to begin the annual Announcement.”
My ears were going funny. I heard her first few words clearly, and then somehow missed the next several sentences. I couldn’t focus any better than I had in history. This was Grace’s and my first year being eligible to be chosen. She was older than me by nine months, but for the winter we were the same age—both eighteen. Each year the choosing was the same: five names submitted, one name announced. One girl from the whole kingdom to win the honor of… something. No one knew exactly what she was chosen to do.
We had a neighbor when I was young, Hanne, who had been in the upper school. Her name had been chosen, and we didn’t see her again for a year, until after the next name was chosen. When she did come back to play with us, she was very vague about where she’d been and what had happened to her. Not because she was hiding something but because her memory of it was blurry, almost entirely washed away. She was quieter when she came home, and she startled easily.
She was not the first person from our town to have been chosen. Ever since Hanne, it had been a girl from somewhere else. But Hanne was the third of three daughters. Both of her older sisters had been chosen too.
I shivered, imagining Hanne waiting in the crowd of schoolmates, just like we were now, excited, terrified. Where had they taken her? The girls were not harmed, or so they claimed afterward—that was the only thing Hanne had remained clear on. But the mystery of it made it frightening.
The headmistress spoke of honor and history, and I heard one word in ten. Grace’s fingers were tight around mine.
The last sentence I heard clearly.
“This year I have the extra privilege,” Mistress Stonebridge concluded, “to announce a name that we all know, because the Honored Chosen is one of our own.”
My breath caught in my lungs.
“The daughter of William Tailor—”
Time froze. Grace’s hand and mine clenched so tightly on each other we’d have bruises. One of us. My eyes found my sister’s face. She was whiter than the snow that had finally started to fall. Please, not Grace. To see her come back quiet and skittish like Hanne—no.
“Anora.”
A cheer rose from the crowd. Grace and I remained frozen, silent. I barely registered my proper name. I was shivering uncontrollably.
The crowd dispersed, girls beginning to chatter and laugh. I heard none of it. A few of my classmates hugged me on their way by or patted my shoulder. Grace stayed by me, her hand still gripping mine. Mama and Papa pushed their way through the crowd toward us. Mama was crying and trying bravely to smile. Papa’s smile was strained but proud.
“That’s my Beauty,” he murmured, putting his arms around Grace and me.
Mistress Stonebridge approached. Her expression surprised me—I had expected more pride for the upper school and the town and less sympathy. “The carriage will come for you in two days,” she said. “Elana, you are also excused from classes until then.”
Grace nodded once.
I don’t remember the walk home. When I started paying attention again, my sisters and I were sitting on our bed, as we had so many times before. Grace was still holding my hand but gently now. Joy was home—had we stopped at the lower school on the way? There were tear stains on her cheeks, and her eyes looked very wet.
We didn’t talk at first, just sat together. What was there to say? I was being taken from my family for an entire year. Joy would be in the upper school when I came home. Grace—and, I guess, I, too—would be nearing graduation. Grace and I had never been apart for my entire life. I was relieved, at least, that Grace hadn’t been chosen. I couldn’t have borne a year without her, not if I didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her. No amount of honor could make up for that. If it had to be one of us, let it be me. Joy wasn’t old enough yet, thankfully—I couldn’t have stood her going either.
I lay awake in bed that night. I kept remembering Hanne’s face. She had gotten married and moved away several years ago, but her parents still lived next door. All three sisters, taken. There was a year or two in between where someone else from another school was chosen, but somehow fate played that family a rough hand. I could feel my sisters on either side of me in the dark. Faintest moonlight fell through our window. If I squinted, I could just make out Joy’s face. She looked so much younger when she slept. Grace’s face was turned away. Grace still had one year at upper school, one year when the headmistress could submit her name. And Joy would be eligible soon too. Would fate be kinder to us than to Hanne’s family?
I felt the effects of my sleeplessness the next morning. I was slow getting dressed and coming down to breakfast. My father, usually sewing in the shop by now, was still sitting at the table. My mother set bowls of porridge in front of us without looking at me. Her eyes were red.
“Beauty,” Papa said when he’d finished eating. He hesitated as if he wanted to say more but what he’d thought to say wasn’t good enough.
I gave him a weak smile, and he reached over the table to pat my hand. Then he got up and put his bowl in the washbasin and picked up his sewing box. He kissed the top of my head and disappeared into the shop. Mama followed soon after, still unable to look at me. We girls finished our breakfast and began washing up.
Normally on days off Grace would have gone to the shop afterward to help, but instead she came back up to our room with me. Joy followed.
“Beauty,” Joy began, just as Papa had. She hesitated too, then pulled her favorite green hair ribbon out of her pocket. “I want you to have something to remember me.”
“Joy—” I said. Her nickname choked me. Where was the joy in this? I looked at the ribbon in her hand, unable to meet her eyes.
“Me too,” Grace said. The ribbon she held out was pink.
“I couldn’t,” I said.
“Please,” Grace said. “We want to be with you somehow.”
I sighed. “You’ll always be with me. You know that.”
“Still.” Grace took the ribbon from Joy and carried them both to the jewelry box. There were only three precious things in that box, three gifts from the fairy who had blessed us at birth. Grace’s lily, my rose, Joy’s daffodil, each formed perfectly of gold, reminders of the blessings we were nicknamed for. Grace took the blue ribbon that I’d been wearing yesterday and braided it with the others, then strung them through the hole in the rose. Without a word, she brought it over and tied it around my neck. My hand went to it automatically, my eyes welling.
“It’s only a year,” Joy ventured. “That’s not so bad, right?” Her voice trembled.
“Maybe they would take me instead,” Grace offered, sitting beside me. I could read my sister too easily. She was a little jealous but also relieved that it hadn’t been her name chosen, and she felt guilty for it.
“No,” I said, hugging her. “It has to be me.”
Copyright 2025 by Eliza Prokopovits