What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Seven

 

London 2014:

 

I was twelve years old when I bled for the first time. 

 

“You have your moon blood, Rebecca,” said my mother, proudly, as if I had just graduated to using the toilet on my own. “Oh, my dear baby, how the years have sped by.” She reached out and hugged me with a fierce joy that left me wondering whether now was perhaps a good time to ask her for a pony? 

 

I so wanted a pony. I had been begging my mother for over a year, but she had remained steadfast in her resolve. “Where would we put it, darling? We don’t have a stable.”

 

“Mother?” I had stained the bed sheets last night and my initial reaction was one of fright. Had I injured myself? The blood was clearly coming from between my legs. But when the house maid had secretly smiled at me that morning, and nodded her head in tacit understanding, I knew I wasn’t going to be told off. 

 

Father had been lost for words. He had looked clearly uncomfortable with the idea that he might speak to me about whatever had happened.

 

“Your mother will explain things, Rebecca.” And then he headed to the safety of his study before anyone might include him in the conversation. I heard the door lock with a degree of finality which meant he wasn’t to be disturbed. When my mother did talk to me, it was with a formality I hadn’t expected. I had been told to wait for her in my bedroom.

 

I sat on the edge of the bed, the stiff folds of my dress pressed to one side, when Mother came in. She carried a small box in both hands, as if it were something heavy and fragile, and placed it on the dresser without speaking.

 

She turned to me at last. “Rebecca,” she said softly - not the usual sharpness of tone when I needed to be lectured, but not warmth either. “You have begun your season. It is time you understood what that means.”

 

I looked at her, uncertain. I had felt something strange in my body earlier, a warmth and pressure I did not know how to name.

 

Mother lifted a cloth from the box. It smelled faintly of soap and something else - something like quiet authority. “This,” she said, “is to help you. You will need it. And you will need to remember what your body now signifies.”

 

I did not speak. I only watched.

 

“It means you are counted,” she continued. “Accounted for. Your blood marks you as ready - ready for duties you cannot yet imagine, and for obligations your father carries on your behalf. It will make you noticeable, and that is the point. You must be steady, Rebecca. You must stand correctly. Move only as required.”

 

I nodded. I felt a small catch in my chest, a mixture of fear and… something else. Pride? Perhaps.

 

Mother’s eyes softened for a moment. She reached out and smoothed the hair at my temple. “This won’t hurt,” she said. “It is only a change. But you must watch yourself. Guard yourself. Be measured. That is how protection works. That is how value is preserved. One day you will finish school, and you will be presented to the Great Families at your Coming Out Ball. You will have a beautiful dress – I’ll make sure of that, and you will have so many eligible young men competing for your attention. And your father will select one of them to be your Companion. You have so much to look forward to.” She stroked my hair again. “Oh, my sweet girl – the world will be yours in time.”

 

She placed the cloth carefully back into the box and closed it. Then she kissed my forehead lightly, a rare gesture, before leaving the room.

 

I stayed where I was, staring at the box. I could not yet understand everything she had said, but I felt the weight of it - of being counted, of being ready, of being seen. I knew, even then, that nothing in the world would ever feel so certain again.

 

Behind the scenes, father made an important phone call. There was an order to these things, and now that I had bled for the first time, I would be presented to our Ubar.

 

Three days later I was told I would be meeting the Ubar Karl Magnus in London. This time it was my Father who broke the news, and I could see his chest swell with pride as he told me. “He is a man of Treve,” said father, as if that was meant to mean something to me. 

 

I wore the grey dress they brought from storage, the one wrapped in paper and kept on the highest shelf. It was heavier than anything I owned, and when my mother lifted it free it did not fall open, but kept its shape, as if it remembered how it was meant to be worn.

 

The cloth was stiff against my skin. Not rough exactly, but firm, like being held in place. When I put my arms through the sleeves, the seams pressed at the inside of my elbows and made me straighten them. The sleeves fastened tight at my wrists, so I could not push them back even when they felt warm. That seemed to be the point.

 

The dress collar came up high, close under my chin. When I swallowed, I could feel it move. It made me careful about how I breathed. I did not mind. Careful felt correct. My mother hooked the back of the dress closed, one small fastening after another. I stood still while she fussed around me. I could tell from the sound that the hooks were metal. They were cold when they touched my skin, and I thought that meant the dress would last a long time.

 

“These are the same fastenings that women wear in Treve,” she explained. “The Ubar will appreciate such small details. You will look so pretty, Rebecca. The Ubar will offer you his protection, and confirm you as a woman of his Home Stone.” 

 

There was a narrow band sewn into the waist of the dress, darker than the rest of the cloth. My father’s mark was worked into it so finely that you had to look twice to see it. I liked that part best. It made me feel finished, as though I had been placed properly into something that would hold. It was a subtle declaration that I was ‘of my Father’. I wasn’t just Rebecca palmer, I was ‘of Charles Friedrich Palmer’.

 

The skirt came down past my knees and did not move much when I walked. I took shorter steps without thinking. The hem was weighted, and I liked knowing it would not lift or shift if there was a draft. It made me feel steady.

 

My shoes were new and stiff. The leather shone, and the soles were thin enough that I could feel the floor through them. When I walked, they made a sound I was not used to hearing from myself. It was not loud, but it was clear.

 

My hair was pulled back tight and tied low. When my mother smoothed it, her hand paused at the back of my head, just for a moment, before she let go. I could feel the pull at my scalp whenever I moved. It reminded me not to turn too quickly.

 

When I looked at myself, I did not think I looked pretty. I thought I looked right. Like someone who would not be corrected.

 

I remember feeling proud that the dress made it easier to stand still.

 

“Mother…” I dared to broach the question. “Now that I have had my Moon Blood, may I have a pony?”

 

She smiled softly and stroked my hair again. “Where would we put it, Rebecca? We don’t have a stable.”

 

I was told to wash my hands twice before we left the house, and to keep them folded when we arrived. My mother watched to make sure I did it properly, as if something could be seen on me if I didn’t. My father wore his formal coat. That alone told me this was not a small thing.

 

No one said where we were going, exactly, other than it was a house outside of London. It had been explained earlier, in pieces that I had crossed a line by shedding my Moon Blood for the very first time. There would now be a record, and the tradition of the Steel Worlds meant that it was fitting I be presented now, rather than later. The words were ordinary, but the way they were said made them heavier. I knew better than to ask questions that would slow us.

 

The building where Magnus received people had once been a hall of instruction. The desks were gone. The banners remained. They showed the same symbols I had been taught to draw at school: continuity, unity, the long chain unbroken. I stood between my parents while officials checked our names against a list. My name sounded strange in their mouths, like a thing being tested for weight.

 

We were taken into a chamber with no windows. The floor was stone. It smelled faintly of oil and old paper. Several men stood along the walls, all Inner Party, all silent. I recognized none of them, though I recognized the way they looked at my father - measuring, acknowledging, setting him in place.

 

Karl Magnus stood at the far end of the chamber.

 

He was taller than I expected, though not so tall that he seemed distant. What struck me first was the weight of him - the way he filled the space without moving. His shoulders were broad, his chest firm beneath the dark jacket, and even standing still, the lines of muscle beneath the fabric made me aware that every inch of him was capable, disciplined. He did not slump, did not fidget. He simply was.

 

His hair was black and thick, combed back from his forehead, not a strand out of place, though it had the look of being easy to toss into a fight if needed. It made him seem younger somehow, like a man who had survived but not yet been worn down by years. And yet, beneath the youthfulness, there was the sense of experience, of battles fought and won.

 

I noticed his hands resting lightly at his sides. They were large, not soft, and I imagined the strength they could wield - enough to command obedience, enough to enforce promises. And then there were his eyes. Dark, steady, unblinking. I felt them before I saw them, like the pressure of air before a door closes. Other men might glance away, distracted, even afraid, but I could not. I had to look at him. It felt impossible to look away.

 

Even his face was startling. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, but not severe. It was the kind of face that could order a room without raising a voice, that could punish or protect without a word. I felt small and measured in the same instant.

 

When he finally spoke, his voice carried the same weight his body did. Low, certain, and deliberate. I did not feel threatened – exactly - but I felt correctly positioned, as if every inch of me had been observed and accounted for before I even knew what I was.

 

And in that moment, I understood something I would never forget: some men could hold the world steady simply by existing, and Karl Magnus was one of them. My father stopped three paces from him and bowed his head. I followed, because I had been taught to follow.

 

“This is my daughter,” my father said. He spoke clearly, without warmth. “Rebecca Palmer. Born under registry seal in the eyes of the Steel Worlds. Sound of health. Of my blood.”

 

Magnus did not look at me at once. He looked at my father, long enough that I began to feel I had vanished. When he spoke, his voice was rough, as if it had been used often and without rest.

 

“She has come into her season,” he said. It was not a question.

 

“She has,” my father replied.

 

Magnus nodded once. “So the line moves forward.”

 

That was when he looked at me.

 

Not the way men visiting the house sometimes did, quick and sideways. Not the way instructors looked when they were deciding whether to praise or correct. He looked as one looks at a mark cut into stone - checking that it was true, that it would hold.

 

I stood very still. My hands were folded. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears and thought, absurdly, that perhaps he could hear it too.

 

“She knows who she belongs to?” Magnus asked.

 

My father answered for me. “She does.”

 

Magnus considered this. “And you will teach her what that belonging costs.”

 

“I will,” my father said.

 

There was a pause. In it, I felt something settle, like dust after a door closes.

 

Magnus stepped forward one pace - not toward me, but toward my father. He placed his hand on my father’s shoulder. The gesture was firm, not affectionate.

“You have served,” he said. “You have held your place. You have not broken faith.”

 

My father did not speak.

 

“Then hear me,” Magnus went on. “What is yours stands under my hand. Your house will not be diminished while loyalty is kept. Your children will not be taken from you without cause. This one” - and here, at last, his gaze returned to me - “will share my Home Stone.”

 

Home Stone. I did not know exactly what the word meant, only that it was important.

 

“She will be guarded, as is your right,” Magnus said. “Her name will not be spent cheaply. Her future will be weighed as part of yours.”

 

I felt something like relief then, though I could not have said why. It was the feeling of being placed somewhere solid, of having an edge drawn around me so I would not fall away.

 

Magnus removed his hand from my father’s shoulder. He did not touch me.

 

“Remember,” he said, to both of us or perhaps to neither. “Protection follows obedience as shadow follows form. Break the form, and the shadow is lost.”

 

My father bowed his head again. I followed. And then Manguns finally spoke to me.

 

“Rebecca, of Charles Friedrich Palmer, you are hereby protected by the Sword of Treve.” A sense of great pride swelled up inside of me. “That will be all,” Magnus said.

 

We were dismissed.

 

As we were led out, I looked back once. Magnus was already speaking to an elegantly dressed woman, whom my father later identified as a close confidante of the Ubar – a Miss Madison. The Ubar’s attention shifted as if I had never been there. The certainty of that stung, though I did not understand why.

 

Later, walking home, my father’s stride was lighter. He placed his hand briefly at the back of my neck, guiding me through the crowd.

 

“You did well,” he said. “I’m proud of you, Rebecca. He is our Ubar. He will always protect you.”

 

I held onto those words for a long time.

 

Foolishly, perhaps, I honestly believed them.