Duckling Ugly

by Neal Shusterman

  M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.

  I felt like I did when I stood in my room, before my mirror, daring myself to tear away the sheet. Spelling the words in my head always helped move me forward.

  D-E-C-I-S-I-V-E.

  One step more, and I entered the mouth of the cave.

  D-E-S-T-I-N-Y.

  I reached into the darkness, felt Aaron grab my hand, and he pulled me out of the light and into the bowels of the earth.

  15

  The Cauldron of Life

  We lingered in darkness for a moment, then I heard the whoosh of a flame, and I could see his face again, lit in orange flickering light. In one hand he held a torch.

  When my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cave, I could see a narrow slope leading deeper into the mountain. He didn’t speak as he led the way down.

  “What’s down here?” I asked.

  “Best to see for yourself.”

  We went through one cavern after another, and when I thought we had reached the bottom, there was yet another deep, winding pathway taking us farther down.

  “Stay close to the light,” he said when I started to lag too far behind. “There are things living down here.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “They don’t have names—but they won’t come near the light.”

  I tried to imagine what could possibly live here beside bats and rats, but my imagination hadn’t prepared me for the “things” Aaron was talking about.

  We rounded a bend, and only for a moment I saw it scuttle up a wall and out of sight. It looked something like a koala, with soft, furry eyes, a small snout…and eight spidery legs that clung to the wall as it scurried away. I groaned slightly. Seeing that was more information than I needed, and from that moment on I stayed as close to the light as I could possibly get. Even Aaron seemed frightened by it, but only slightly—or maybe he was only being brave for me.

  “No one’s ever been hurt by the things down here.”

  “Always a first time,” I told him.

  The caverns, which began as empty stone chambers, slowly began to change their nature the deeper we got. Massive stone formations, almost bonelike in shape, stretched from floor to ceiling around us. Stalagmites grew from the ground like jagged teeth, and stalactites dangled from above us like limestone icicles. They all shimmered like they were covered with diamond dust, reflecting Aaron’s torch in every color of the rainbow. The fear I had when I began our descent was slowly replaced by wonder.

  Finally, we reached the most magnificent cavern of all, and Aaron doused the torch because he didn’t need it anymore. The walls themselves were glowing, giving off a strange light as bright as moonlight on snow. It was hot and humid here; my clothes stuck to my body, and yet it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. The air hung motionless, smelling like mint and eucalyptus and cinnamon wrapped together in a rich earthy peat. Miss Leticia would have liked this place.

  Aaron spoke in a whisper, but here the softest voice sounded loud. “Abuelo says God needed a cauldron to brew up creation, and here it is. We call this cavern El Caldero de Vida—the Cauldron of Life. After He was done, God might have cast the cauldron aside, but it’s never entirely empty.”

  We walked forward into the cavern. The floor was covered with moss greener than the grass in the valley. I couldn’t imagine anything green growing down here, about a mile down, and yet it did.

  “Take off your shoes,” Aaron said.

  As I remembered from my days in Sunday school, that’s what Moses had to do when he approached the Burning Bush. “Why?” I asked. “Is this holy ground?”

  Aaron shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he smiled. “But I just like the feel of the moss on my feet.” He was right about that. Once I took off my shoes, it felt like I was walking on plush green velvet.

  “Abuelo believes the earth itself is a living thing, and this is where its soul lives.” Looking at this place, I could see why the old man felt that way.

  “Do you believe that?” I asked.

  Aaron thought about the question and, rather than answering, said, “Abuelo is sometimes very crazy, and sometimes very wise. It’s hard to figure out which is which.”

  We stepped forward across the massive domed cavern. In the very center, hanging from the ceiling, was a single stalactite, tapering down from the roof and coming to a pinpoint about ten feet above the floor. It was glistening wet, and I got a shiver, because it reminded me of something, and I didn’t know what. I stopped walking, but Aaron gently took my elbow and urged me forward.

  I slowly approached the great glistening stalactite. The only sound now was the squelch of my feet against the soft moss and a rhythmic drip of water. Suddenly it occurred to me what the stalactite reminded me of.

  An uvula. That strange dangle of skin at the back of your throat.

  Beneath it was a stone formation growing from the cavern floor. It looked like a pedestal widening into a basin, like a birdbath just a foot or so wide, full of water. Moisture had collected on the stalactite, and every five seconds or so a single drop of water fell from the tip into the basin, with a delicate plink. The sound was like the faintest, highest note struck on a xylophone.

  There was a mist across the surface of that little pool of water. The closer I got, the more I could feel its heat.

  Plink.

  “Mineral water,” Aaron said. “Just what your face needs. It’ll open those pores and get rid of that acne.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh,” said Aaron, “I know so.”

  Plink.

  Then he put his finger in and swirled it around. “It’s just right,” he said. “Body temperature.” The steam cleared away as he stirred, and colors played in the water like the aurora borealis—the northern lights captured in a shallow stone bowl. When he took his finger out, he wiped the water beneath one of his eyes, and then the other, as if it were invisible war paint. Then he licked his fingertip.

  Plink.

  The surface of the water was glassy, and for a strange instant I had the impression that someone was in there looking out at me, until I realized that it was my own reflection. I was just as horrible as ever. There was mustard on my lip from our lunch, and smudges of dirt from touching my face after touching the cavern walls. It was the longest I’d ever been able to see my own reflection, because this water did not cloud.

  Plink.

  “Go on,” Aaron whispered, standing right behind me now. Then he brought his lips as close to my ear as he could without actually touching it and whispered, “Your face is dirty. Wash it off.”

  Plink.

  Between one drop of water and the next, I dipped both my hands deep into the pool and splashed the water onto my face. Once. Twice. Three times.

  It burned. Not like the heat of water, not like the heat of flames, but a different kind of heat that soaked in through my pores, like fine needles penetrating so deep I could feel it all the way to the tips of my toes.

  I opened my eyes, thinking they would sting, but they didn’t. And when I looked at my hands, the water had already dried up, absorbed into the dryness of my skin.

  “There,” said Aaron. “All your skin needed was a good deep cleaning. No more acne for you.”

  The shimmering lights were gone from the pool, and it had misted over again. Another drop plunged from the pointy tip of the stalactite into the stone bowl.

  Plink.

  “Come on, Cara,” Aaron said. “Let’s go home.”

  16

  Unveiling

  It was already dusk when we emerged from the caverns, and by the time we made it back down into the valley, the sun was long gone from the sky.

  There was a celebration at Abuelo’s mansion when we got back. The entire population of De León was there. This time they weren’t scattered around the mansion as I’d seen them before. Tonight, everyone was in that great room at the top of the stairs.

  Musicians played, and people danced. Harmony was the first to hurry to me, and she
gave me a bone-crunching hug.

  “It’s so good to finally see you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her. “I just saw you yesterday.”

  “Let me take you to Abuelo,” she said. “I know he’ll want to see you right away.”

  We weaved through the dancing couples. The band played a melody that was a strange cross between classical and swing. I had never heard that piece of music before, and wondered if it had been written by one of the citizens in the town.

  I looked around for Aaron, but he had already dissolved into the crowd behind me, and then, as we moved through the couples spinning one another to the music, there was Abuelo, on his settee. Next to him was an intravenous stand, and a plastic bag of clear fluid dripped down a narrow tube that went into the vein on his left arm.

  I had seen this before, on my own grandfather, when he was dying in the hospital. However, this old man seemed in the best of health. Truth be told, he seemed more radiant than any other time I’d seen him.

  “What’s the matter, Abuelo?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

  He found this amusing, and turned to a woman beside him who was not quite as old as he. They shared a look and a chuckle. It irritated me that I couldn’t be in on their little joke.

  “I am, as you say, fit as a fiddle. Even fitter, for a fiddle will break its strings, whereas I will not.”

  He saw me looking at the intravenous bag.

  “Oh, this thing. It’s just a little pick-me-up. My annual beauty treatment.” He and everyone within listening distance laughed.

  He called to the musicians to stop playing, and they did almost instantly. The dancing couples turned around to see what was happening, and as Abuelo stood, they cleared the floor.

  He went out to the center of the room, rolling his intravenous stand with him. “My dance partner is slender and graceful, no?” Then he turned to me and gestured with one hand. “Come.”

  I didn’t like being ordered around like a dog, and I didn’t like being the center of attention. I felt the way I had beneath the lights at the spelling bee, but with the eyes of everyone in the room on me, I had no choice. I thought about the ritual of flowers when I first arrived, and wondered if some other ritual was in store for me today. Was today the day I would be cast out? Had they grown tired of looking at me?

  The old man put his hands onto my shoulders, like a real grandfather might, and looked into my eyes.

  “Ah, my ugly one, my ugly one. Do you have any idea at all who I am?”

  Although I had no idea, I was beginning to sense that the answer was not something I was prepared to hear. Not just because of the cunning twinkle in his eye, but because I chanced to look at the intravenous bag hanging beside him and noticed something I hadn’t noticed before. The clear water inside wasn’t entirely clear. It was swimming with faint colors like the northern lights.

  “My given name is Juan,” Abuelo said. “My family name is Ponce de León.”

  I rolled it over in my mind. Juan Ponce de León—one of the great Spanish explorers. “You’re one of his descendants?”

  Abuelo slowly shook his head. “Think again.”

  As I recalled, Juan Ponce de León had laid claim to Florida—but he was best known for his folly, which was searching all his life for something he never found.

  Or had he?

  I thought back to the mineral pool deep in the “Cauldron of Life.”

  “The Fountain of Youth!” I said out loud.

  It made the old man smile.

  “You see,” he said, to all those assembled, “every schoolchild knows of me.”

  “But that’s impossible! That would make you hundreds of years old…”

  “Five hundred and forty-six—but who’s counting?” He laughed heartily. “Alas, I found the fountain too late in life to be eternally young. Instead I am eternally old. It could not restore me, only sustain me, keeping me at the same age I was when I first partook of its waters. But I am not bitter—for I have learned that youth is overrated. It is the fountain’s other gift—its true gift that I have come to value far more than youth.”

  Now I was beginning to feel like the butt of an elaborate joke. “You expect me to believe this?”

  “Believe what you like,” Abuelo said. “Believe that the moon is cheese, the world is flat, and that I am just a crazy old man.” Then he smiled, cupping my face in his hands. I wanted to back away, but I was transfixed by his eyes. “And now, my little mud hen, time for the unveiling.”

  He turned and shouted, “Uncover them!”

  Then people all around the room, standing close to the walls, turned and tore off the white satiny cloths that covered the mirrors. Suddenly light zigzagged in paths across the room from one mirror to another. Those mirrors were everywhere. There was nowhere I could look without seeing one. I closed my eyes and knelt on the floor, covering my face.

  “Please don’t do this,” I said, my voice not much more than a whimper. “Don’t you know what will happen?”

  But the old man gently helped me up and moved me toward the mirrors. I still couldn’t look at them.

  “Come now, Cara,” he said. “These mirrors will not hate you. They want to love you. Every one of them. Look at yourself.”

  I lifted my eyes to see my reflection, still believing that the mirror would shatter.

  And the person I saw looking back was not me at all.

  This face in the mirror—it could have been a relative: a sister I never had. The opposite of me. This reflection had my mother’s graceful cheekbones, my father’s soft eyes. A face with all the good genes that had been denied me was now peering at me through eyes that were perfectly shaped.

  I reached up to touch my face. My skin was clear. No rashes, no pimples, no boils. Smooth and soft as the skin of a peach.

  “You see?” said Abuelo. “The fire of beauty now burns within you.”

  I looked around for an explanation, but all I could see was everyone smiling at me. Happy for me. And most of all, Aaron.

  Abuelo, still holding my shoulders, stood behind me as we gazed into the mirror together.

  “The fountain’s greatest gift is the gift of eternal beauty. There is a legend that the Angel of Death is beautiful, and she will never take the life of anyone more beautiful than she. This, I believe, is why we here in De León live forever. Not because the fountain makes us eternal, but because true beauty never dies.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of myself. It was the first time I could truly look at my reflection. How could I be this beautiful creature?

  Then I heard a gentle voice behind me. “I have something for you.” It was Harmony. I turned to see her unfolding a dress. Simple, clean, and, like all of their clothes, made from swan gossamer.

  The old man stepped back, the women surrounded me, and there, within the cocoon of the women of De León, they took off my cotton dress and clothed me in the velvety white garments of the eternally beautiful. I felt like a bride.

  Soon the band started up again, the room so much brighter now with all the mirrors. It seemed to be filled with a thousand people instead of just a hundred. Everyone danced in circles, catching their own gazes in the mirrors that had been covered since the day I arrived.

  I danced with everyone who came for my hand, but mostly I danced with Aaron.

  When the celebration was over, I walked back with him, arm in arm, down the winding path to my little cottage on the opposite end of the valley. Perhaps it was still the effect of the water, but I felt like I was hovering over the ground in a daze. I was myself, yet I was not myself, and it felt wonderful.

  He left me at my door with a kiss. This was nothing like that awful kiss I had stolen from Marshall Astor on homecoming night. Aaron’s kiss was as perfect as he was. As we both were.

  “You’re truly one of us now,” he said. “You always have been, you just didn’t know it.”

  After he left, I closed the door, took off my beautiful dress, and slipped beneat
h the covers, for the first time feeling sheets against skin that wasn’t pocked like the surface of the moon—a moon that, for all I knew, really was made of cheese, because all the rules that had made up the world I knew were now in serious question. Life was suddenly magical and full of wonder.

  Right here, right now is my “happily ever after” moment, I thought. I would have been perfectly happy for time to stop and the universe to come to a satisfied end.

  But, of course, it didn’t.

  17

  Postmortality

  I won’t try to explain what it’s like to go from hideous to gorgeous. There are no words to describe the feeling—at least not in any language I knew…or at least any language I knew yet. Let’s just say Miss Leticia had been right all along. I did have a destiny.

  In those first days after the unveiling, I soaked in my new self, just as my skin had soaked in the water of the fountain. It was amazing how many mirrors there really were in De León, once they had all been uncovered—and I must have caught my reflection in every one, preening like a model for the camera. I know it sounds awful, but I just couldn’t help it. It’s like I needed to see that beautiful reflection over and over again to make myself believe it was real. Hair like mocha silk; soulful caramel eyes; skin as smooth as my swan-gossamer gown; and a figure with all the right curves from whatever angle you looked.

  I posed for Giancarlo, the portrait painter. “Venus herself would be jealous,” he said, and Abuelo promised to hang the portrait in his mansion once it dried.

  I visited everyone, spoke with everyone in De León those first few days, and if I had questions before, I had even more now. This time, though, everyone was much freer with their answers…although they all acted as if the answers should be obvious.

  “If it’s the Fountain of Youth and Beauty, why isn’t everyone young?” I asked Aaron as I helped him prepare for a treasure hunt that would take the citizens of De León most of Sunday to complete.