The Core of the Sun (4 page)

“Now think the other way around. Pretend that you're a clever shepherd girl, and you're just dressed up in pretty clothes, and you're trying to make everybody believe that you're a spoiled, empty-headed little princess. So no one guesses that under your clothes you're a brave shepherd girl who climbs trees and chases away wolves with your staff.”

A fun, challenging game. I nodded enthusiastically.

“I know you can do it, sweetheart. Even the little girl in the story must have found it very useful to know how to be a fancy princess sometimes and a clever shepherd girl at other times. She had to be the most capable shepherd of all when she was with the shepherds, and the kind of princess who demanded ten mattresses to sleep on a pea when she was in a palace.”

The inspectors found two little flaxen-haired, pink-swathed darlings. They inspected our toy box with a single glance, watched for a little while as we played house. I was the mother and you were the child and the baby doll was the other child and the teddy bear was another and the sofa cushion was the daddy, who went to the sofa to go to work. The inspectors nodded with satisfaction and smelled as sweet as jelly. They gave Aulikki a thick stack of booklets and notebooks with instructions for early eloi education.

When they had left, Aulikki put the notebooks and booklets aside and took a key out of her pocket. She went to the wide cabinet with the glass cupboard on top where she kept the good china. She unlocked the lower doors of the cabinet. All the books were kept there, out of sight. She gave me permission to touch the books again and read them. But all the toys I liked best had to be kept in the barn loft from then on, and I could play with them only where you couldn't see me.

It surprised me for a moment, but then I understood. “If Manna accidentally tells someone then everyone will know that I'm a shepherd in princess's clothing.”

A smile spread over my grandmother's face and her eyes shone. “Vanna, you might be the smartest little girl in Finland. And I mean that literally.”

Her tears smelled like a warming sauna.

I didn't want to keep secrets from you. I didn't want to treat anyone wrong. But I trusted that Aulikki knew best.

I miss you so much.

Your sister,

Vanna
(
Vera
)

MODERN DICTIONARY ENTRY

morlock —
A popular unofficial vernacular word, first entering the language in the 1940s, for what is now properly called a
neuterwoman
. Refers to the sub-race of females who, owing to physical limitations (infertility, etc.), are excluded from the mating market. The word has its roots in the works of
H. G. Wells
, an author who predicted that humanity would be evolutionarily divided into distinct sub-races, some dedicated to serving the social structure and others meant to enjoy those services. The morlocks are a disposable segment of society whose use is limited mainly to serving as a reserve labor force for routine tasks.

Dear sister!

Do you remember the tests? There were two of them each year at the little school in Kaanaa.

We sat side by side at shiny, varnished desks with slanted tops that opened on hinges. The pupils who attended regularly could keep their pencils and notebooks inside.

The tests were exciting and fun. I got to play princess. I wrote in poor penmanship and purposely forgot my spelling and pretended not to understand the questions. We wrote shopping lists and read them aloud, said the names of plants and mushrooms and fish on classroom charts, remembered what temperature to use to wash wool or cotton. We calculated how to alter a recipe for four to feed six. I'd heard that some elois never learned to read, but they could listen to their recipes on recordings. You were a good learner. You were smart for an eloi. I always thought of those delicate, lively little kittens as I watched you toil over your notebook, writing down the numbers, and sometimes you erased them so many times that you almost wore through the paper. Sometimes I peeked at your paper and copied your mistakes.

The eloi class had a room where we practiced making beds and washing windows. We boiled potatoes, made gravy, mixed bread dough, scrubbed grass stains out of fabric. We knew how to darn a sock and sew on a button. I was older, so I learned to iron a man's shirt, too. It wasn't a skill I particularly needed at Neulapää, but you had to show you could do it to pass the class. The higher levels of education like child care weren't taught until we were at the eloi college, the National Institute of Home Economics.

We had both learned the basics of planting, watering, thinning, and weeding the garden; hilling and harvesting potatoes; staking pea vines; and drying onions from Aulikki. Do you remember how little you liked those things? Sometimes when you had to put your hands in the dirt you would hesitate, as if there were dangerous things that could bite under the ground.

I, on the other hand, enjoyed many of the garden chores, like grafting the apple trees. It was magical to me that one tree could grow several kinds of apples if you wanted it to.

But school and chores didn't take up all our time. When Aulikki didn't need our help in the kitchen or the garden and was sure we knew everything that would be asked on the test, we could use our time as we wished. Do you remember the little porcelain tea set with roses and lilies of the valley on the saucers? You never tired of setting out meals for your dolls on those plates. In the winter we slid down the little hill on our sleds and I built a lantern out of snowballs and Aulikki put a candle inside it in the evening.

I remember so clearly one fall evening when we were sitting next to each other on the sofa in the living room. Aulikki was sitting in her favorite chair listening to music. She had a small collection of records, mostly classical music and jazz records she'd brought from Sweden. She didn't care for the state music.

I was ten. You had just turned eight in August. Aulikki was listening to Mozart's Requiem.

I had a heavy encyclopedia in my hands.

The
Concise Encyclopedia
was my favorite thing to read, although the books my grandfather had left at Neulapää included plenty of books on individual subjects as well. I was most interested in biology and botany, but I also read about physics, geography, and world history. I muddled through the basics of French and English for fun and learned the table of elements by heart. Aulikki had brought a collection of European and American literature with her to Neulapää, and the worlds it described were as strange to me as the alien cultures in my father's old science fiction novels.

I was sitting there with volume M through P of the
Concise Encyclopedia
in my lap. The pounding, stirring music had awakened a desire in me to know more about Mozart.

You were holding a copy of
Femigirl
magazine.

It was sent to all elois' homes when they turned six. It had romantic stories, written in the simplest sentences, about elois competing for the same masco, and one girl would always get him in the end through feminine wiles. There were pictures of elegant weddings and instructions on ladylike behavior and proper dress. Your lips moved when you read, painfully, slowly making your way through the stories, but you waded through every issue again and again.

I understood for the first time—sharply, painfully—the depth of the difference between us.

I couldn't help noticing that for a long time your favorite game was wedding.

I wasn't the prince or the knight in our games anymore; I was the groom. You would don a pillowcase veil and clutch a crumpled bouquet of dandelions and cow parsley, but the light in your eyes showed how real it all was to you. You didn't see a sister beside you; you saw a future where you would be supported and safe, sheltered by undying love.

I'm sorry I couldn't give that to you.

Your sister,

Vanna
(
Vera
)

“LITTLE REDIANNA”

Eloi Girls' Best-Loved Stories
National Publishing (1951)

Once upon a time there was a very pretty, very good little girl who was always obedient and kind to everyone. She liked pretty clothes, and she especially liked the color red. That's why everyone called her Little Redianna.

One day Little Redianna's mother asked her to bring some medicine to her grandmother, who was sick. So Little Redianna put the medicine into her basket and set off for her grandmother's house. On the way there she met a wolf. The wolf told Little Redianna that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He said he wanted her to be his wife.

Little Redianna told the wolf she couldn't marry him because she liked her grandmother very much and she wanted to bring her some medicine. Then she continued on her way. But the wolf found a quicker way to the house, and when he got there he ate her grandmother up. Then he put on her grandmother's nightgown and lay down in the bed to wait for Little Redianna.

When Little Redianna arrived at her grandmother's house with the medicine, she noticed that her grandmother looked strange.

“Grandmother, what big eyes you have,” Little Redianna said.

“The better to see you with, my dear,” said the wolf.

“Grandmother, what big ears you have,” Little Redianna said.

“The better to hear you with, my dear,” said the wolf.

“Grandmother, what big teeth you have,” Little Redianna said.

“The better to gobble you up and make you a part of myself and keep you as my own for the rest of my life,” said the wolf.

Then the wolf leaped out of the bed and threw off his wolf's skin, and Little Redianna saw that he wasn't a wolf at all but a handsome prince.

“Because you didn't obey me and agree to be my wife, and decided to bring medicine to your grandmother instead, I'm not going to marry you,” said the handsome prince, and he left Little Redianna at her grandmother's house, and she never, ever got married.

The End

Dear Manna,

It was inevitable that we would grow out of our games.

You won't remember this because you weren't there. I was twelve and I was working in the garden on a hot day, wearing a bikini. I noticed Aulikki glancing now and then at my bikini bottoms and it was obvious that there was something she wanted to say.

“Well, what is it?” I finally asked.

“It's, um . . . that.”

I looked down at my crotch. Aulikki pointed at the little curls of blond pubic hair peeking out of my bikini. I thought it was interesting that it was curly when the hair on my head was naturally straight.

“You have to shave,” Aulikki said.

“Is there something wrong with hair?” I asked.

I had seen Aulikki in the sauna, and she didn't shave her own body hair. Aulikki looked uncomfortable and fumbled for words. She said we had to be careful in case someone dropped by on a hot day and noticed it.

At first I didn't understand, and then I did and rolled my eyes. It was another one of those eloi things that kept popping up more and more every year. This new rule about hair was inconsistent, though. I was supposed to let the hair on my head grow long so no one would mistake me for a morlock. And I was supposed to wear a bikini in the summer because elois liked to wear bikinis in the summer. So if the hair on my head was so sacred, why should the hair farther down have to be kept out of sight, particularly when I was supposed to wear clothes that were obviously going to show it?

Then Aulikki suggested I shave my armpits as well, and I asked if I should shave off my eyebrows, too. I meant it as a joke, but Aulikki said that it might be a good idea to start plucking them now, and I should keep my leg hair under control, too.

I marched inside to do some research. According to one book, a person's individual smell was an important factor in mating. The hair in the armpits and on the groin traps special odors that exude their scent to those close by. This made shaving seem even more stupid than I'd thought. Why purposely destroy a physical characteristic specifically linked to the survival of the species?

Judging by the pictures and the mascos I'd seen, they weren't required to trim anything except their beards and the hair on their heads, and even that rule seemed to be loosely interpreted.

Then it said that hair on the groin and armpits was a visible sign of sexual maturity. That in ancient human societies it may have helped to identify whether another individual was of mating age. If elois were required to shave off this identifying characteristic, did that mean that mascos actually wanted to mate with children?

Another book said that armpit and pubic hair also had a health function. It protected the extremities from chafing during movement, provided cushioning, and promoted air circulation.

But I was supposed to shave it off.

There were many, many more bizarre aspects to the world than I could have imagined. I realized I'd been stupid. It wasn't enough anymore to be a brave shepherd girl inside. My body was betraying me, turning me into a princess against my will.

We both were going to become narrow-waisted, big-breasted, long-legged elois, but you were the only one who approached the change with curiosity and excitement. You started to talk more and more about entering the mating market and the debutante ball you would have when you turned fourteen.

I was so jealous of you, Manna. You grew and developed such poise, like a young tree, but I was afraid and filled with angst about the unknown life ahead of me.

Luckily, Aulikki saw that.

Aulikki was already nearly eighty when I reached the age of coming out. Because of her age and lack of resources, she got permission to put off my debut for two years so the two of us could come on the market at the same time. That meant I could spend two more precious years at Neulapää.

I never told you how important it's been to my whole life to have a sister like you. I would never have learned how to behave, how to talk to strangers, if I didn't have you.

With eternal gratitude, your sister,

Vanna
(
Vera
)