CHAPTER ONE
False Starts
Mama and I, we understand sarcasm. Not just the obvious kind, but the subtle sarcasm too, the kind most people miss. Sarcasm lies everywhere, occasionally disguised as irony, but still the same old punch-in-the-face as always. But I like sarcasm. We’re old friends. The big irony in my life is that the I’m so lacking in real, human friends that I made some up, and I act them out as if they were real. There’s Amory, the noblewoman with the big nose, and Peiter the gardener, the one with several lady-friends.
No. I’m doing this all wrong. I knew I would, I’ve always been bad at this journalling stuff, especially when I know someone’s going to read it. But I have to write, because I have something worth saying, something no one else knows.
Why is this so frightening? I’ve faced swordsmen with two blades bared, I’ve stood between two raw powers and stopped a battle, I’ve crawled through the dankest levels of the dungeon, but I am scared of a small black notebook.
Okay, I’m going to start again, for real, and this time it’ll be better.
Old Memories
I sat beneath the ancient maple in the front yard, watching with world unfold before me. I was only six years old and every sight and smell and sound of outside was new and exciting. Mama and I lived on a narrow bar street, so all kinds of interesting people bumbled by. Sailors tripped and stumbled, heading for the wharf, dropping their caps and cavorting on without a backward glance. Well-dressed women dragged their unconscious or puking husbands from the taverns, yelling at them in high-pitched wails. As I sat there under my tree, it didn’t seem to matter how different I looked from them, or how much they would hate me if they took a break from their lives to notice me. Because as long as I could observe, I would be happy.Mama swooped through the gate in her flowing robes and hid me inside them, blocking me from the street. “Elle, child, no! You must always stay inside, always! There’s no telling what would happen if they saw you.” As soon as she hustled me in the door and shut it behind me, she relaxed and let me come out from her robe. “I’m sorry, love, but you must understand. Do you understand?”
I nodded, even though I mostly didn’t understand. “I can’t go outside because I’m too ugly and people wouldn’t like me any.”
Mama nodded slowly, her hand drawing a line down my small cheek. “But not for long. Look, Elle, arm braces. Soon your arms will be just as long as everyone else’s. And colored eye lenses, no more yellow eyes, sweetheart. And just think, in a few weeks we’ll get your special skin cream.”
“But why do I have to look like everyone else, Mama?” I looked up at her, at the arm braces and the little wooden box that held my lenses.
“Because, Elle honey, it’s the only way you’ll be beautiful.”
My First Costume
I was ten years old and I had seen the outside world a total of two times, enough to know what I was missing. I paced my bedroom, trying to ignore the constant pain of the arm braces and the sting of the skin cream and the dozen other pains brought on by Mama’s cures for ugliness. I needed to escape. I needed to feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair and the dirt between my toes. Every day was a curse, every moment another scar on my soul.
I dug in Mama’s closet and found her smallest gown, one from the days before she began to work the streets. I shed my own wool robe and donned the soft, cool dress. It felt wonderful against my hot skin, like the caress of cool water on a summer’s day. Not that I would know what that felt like. I stuffed two of Mama’s scarves into the chest of the gown to hide my lack of womanhood and carefully applied Mama’s face paints and powders to hide the chalky gray of my own skin. And I stared into the looking glass.
Mama always said that my hair was the only part of me that wouldn’t have to change. It was a beautiful orange, like tongues of fire that, when tames, framed my face just so. And, covered by Mama’s make-up, it was a beautiful face. Looking so wonderful made me want to cry. Always, always, there was another thing that needed to be changed, another part of me that wasn’t as perfect as Mama wanted it to be. Now, my arm braces hidden under the billowy fabric of the gown, I could see nothing that I wanted to change. I looked like a woman, and a lovely one at that.
In that first moment of stepping out onto the soil in the front yard, I knew I wasn’t going back. I knew that I would never see Mama again, never wonder what lay beyond the curtained windows of our house. I was free. I wandered up and down the tavern street, reveling in the smell of ale and the taste of soup boiling on some fireplace, the way that sailor men looked at me and saw a young woman in a nice gown and not a deformed ten-year-old runaway.
Hope and excitement blossomed on my tongue like a juicy pear exploding when I bit into it. And with that hope and that excitement came fearlessness. I marched into the Three Bards Inn, sat at a table of rowdy traders and listened to people who weren’t my Mama talking.
“Three barrels o’ rum, only forty gold, come on men. A good deal. Straight from Stratisport, best in seven years.”
“Aw, shut up, Wenton, that rum’s mostly water. Ten, and no higher.”
“Ten! The very mention of it and my beard begins to curl and die. Ridiculous.”
“Your beard needs to curl and die, if you ask me.”
“I don’t believe I did, Mr. Jibril.”
“Quiet over there, girls, do you mind?”
I stood and left the table, a skip in my step and a song in my heart. My first encounter with the outside world was a successful one; no one ridiculed me for my looks, no one shot me dirty glances or avoided my gaze. But I reminded myself that I was only ten years old, and this world of taverns and sailors was not my own. I needed to find someplace where I could be a child, and learn what other children were like. But first, I needed a child’s costume.[pre][spoiler][/spoiler]
