by Flavia Bujor
“I’m definitely alive,” announced Jade dryly. “You might take that into account while talking about us.”
“You’re right, Mairénith,” said Loorine. “They are humans!”
“Thanks for noticing,” snarled Jade.
Amber and Opal examined the strange girls attentively, feeling more irritated than intrigued by the contempt in their voices.
“How happy I am!” cried Mairénith, batting her long, curving black eyelashes.
“We’re so pleased to meet you,” declared Loorine, with a smile that revealed her perfect white teeth.
“Aren’t you pretty!” said Mairénith merrily. “Don’t you agree, Loorine?”
“Yes, very pretty.”
“Thank you,” said Jade, “but would you please stop making fun of us?”
“Very pretty,” repeated Loorine. “We’ve never seen the like before, have we?”
“No,” said Mairénith. “Jade, tell me, do you find me pretty?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I just do. I’m a Nalyss, and nothing less. So, do you think we’re pretty?” she continued in a wheedling voice.
By now Jade, Amber and Opal were wondering just who these visitors could possibly be.
“Why do you ask?” said Amber.
“I really want to know,” replied Mairénith fretfully.
“Yes, you’re pretty,” said Jade in exasperation. “But you’re very strange and if I were you, I wouldn’t be so conceited.”
Amber and Opal smiled fleetingly to hear Jade mention her own greatest flaw.
“She thinks we’re pretty!” crowed Mairénith in delight, as if she hadn’t heard anything but that.
“Of course we are!” agreed Loorine.
A third girl then appeared. She was as lovely as the other two but did not resemble them, and it was easier to guess her age, which couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She seemed delicate but not frail, with exquisite features, a glowing complexion, bright red Hps, and silky hair that hung down to her slim waist. Her gaze seemed so pure and innocent that it was positively unsettling.
“Oh, Loorine!” groaned Mairénith.
“Such ugliness!” wailed her companion.
“I can’t bear it,” moaned Mairénith, on the verge of tears.
“Go away, quickly, you horrid creature!” shouted Loorine. “Leave us alone! Don’t come near these travellers!”
Then, as if appalled by such a repulsive vision, Mairénith and Loorine took to their heels.
“They are really something else,” said Amber, who would have burst out laughing if she hadn’t been so astonished.
“You said it!” agreed Jade.
“Anyway, why did they run off like that?” wondered Amber. “I thought they’d seen some dreadful monster — what a racket they were making! Honestly, I just can’t figure it out at all.”
Jade merely shrugged, while the newcomer approached and said with a smile, “My name is Janëlle.”
“Delighted to hear it,” observed Jade sourly.
“The girls you just saw are Nalyss. They’re rather bizarre, aren’t they?”
Janëlle sat next to the three travellers and began to tell them about the Nalyss, who were not uncommon in Fairytale. They were always female and never lived beyond the age of thirty. Extremely narcissistic, they spent their entire lives in passionate adoration of their beauty, an obsession so all-consuming that they had to avoid seeing themselves in a mirror or on the surface of a lake, for fear that they would never be able to tear themselves away from their reflections.
Janëlle neglected to mention that not many people could actually see them. The Nalyss had a very unusual gift which even they did not fully appreciate: they could see a person’s inner beauty, and saw it even more clearly than simple physical attractiveness. Only people who were beautiful both on the inside and the outside could see the Nalyss, and anyone else was repulsive to them.
The Nalyss spent their lives trying to meet as many people as possible who would confirm their own beauty. They were superficial and stupid and they amused themselves by captivating men they found worthy of their attention in order to drive them insane with love — and, occasionally, to have children, who were always born Nalyss.
At the end of their existence, very few of them realised that they had vainly pursued a meaningless ideal, that their beauty had brought them nothing, and that they had quite simply forgotten to live.
Her story told, Janëlle let a long silence fall.
“And you, who are you?” asked Jade, breaking the spell.
“I am Janëlle, and I guide people to their destination in return for food and a little pleasant company.”
“In that case, beat it,” said Jade, who had no idea why she was reacting so nastily.
“No, don’t go!” cried Amber indignantly. “Janëlle, could you take us to Oonagh? We don’t know anything at all about Fairytale and we’re a little lost.”
“Of course I’ll take you,” replied Janëlle, beaming with pleasure.
Saying nothing, Opal simply studied the smiling girl. She wasn’t happy about her arrival, but she felt no hostility towards her, either.
The party set out again, with Amber and Opal on one horse, Jade and Janëlle on the other.
It soon became clear that Janëlle was casting a pall on the three travellers’ spirits. Not daring to trust her, they kept quiet to avoid giving away anything important. And yet, Janëlle truly did seem inoffensive, so Amber decided to talk to her.
Janëlle quickly showed herself to be a nice, normal girl, and she explained to Amber that like her three new companions, she was fourteen years old. She was very poor, and instead of moping in her village she had preferred to explore Fairytale by becoming a guide.
“At your age?” marvelled Amber. “I didn’t know that such dire poverty could exist here!”
“Unfortunately, yes. Wherever there is life, there cannot always be happiness.”
Despite the furious looks Jade gave her, Amber responded to Janëlle’s friendly overtures by telling her own story, from the beginning. She had just reached the part when she had first seen her Stone when Jade interrupted her angrily.
“Be quiet, Amber! You’re not supposed to talk about that!”
Amber’s sweet face clouded over instantly.
“Jade, it’s not for you to tell me what I must or must not do. I can decide for myself. If you can’t manage to trust anyone, that’s sad, but it’s your problem. Not mine. I respect your opinions, so don’t judge mine. You should mind your own business, Miss Princess, and let other people take care of themselves.”
Secretly stunned by her own words, Amber didn’t flinch at Jade’s wounded expression.
“It’s funny when you realise how wrong you can be,” said Jade in a cold, numb voice. “You take the risk of respecting someone, even though she might be an enemy, a real danger to you, but instead of heeding such warnings, you think you’re creating a fragile friendship, a mutual understanding. And then you’re forced to admit what you’d thought you could ignore: suddenly you discover an enemy where you would have sworn you had a friend.”
Startled by the unusually heated argument between her companions, Opal tried clumsily to bring the conversation back to safer ground.
“What happened while I was still unconscious? How come I didn’t die? And is Adrien all right? Where is he? I dreamt… that he was in a kind of uniform, and I had the feeling that he was going to leave.”
“That’s true,” said Amber. “I’d forgotten that you don’t know the latest developments.”
And although her voice still showed her irritation, Amber began to tell Opal about everything that she had missed.
Jade rode along without looking up. Although she didn’t want to admit it, she didn’t feel like her usual self. She was gradually growing used to Janëlle and was beginning, not to accept her presence, but simply to forget she was there.
The girls rode through several villages
without incident. After Amber finished relating to Opal all that had happened during her coma, there was an awkward silence, which Janëlle tried unsuccessfully to dispel.
After a few hours, Amber’s exhausted horse sent her a weak telepathic message, asking her if he might rest.
“We have to stop,” she announced, and although they all agreed to halt there in the middle of a rugged plain, they could still feel a certain tension in the atmosphere.
“Do you think you’re special because you can read a horse’s thoughts?” asked Jade snidely.
“At least I don’t think I’m the centre of the universe,” Amber shot back.
“Stop it you two!” exclaimed Opal, growing more and more baffled. “Something weird is going on. Maybe we should use our Stones.”
“That’s right, you aren’t strong enough to take responsibility for yourself,” replied Amber. “You always have to ask for help.”
“So you think you can hurt me?” Opal asked Amber, stung. “Too bad, you’re wrong. I hope you aren’t going to start crying — because I know what a sensitive girl you are, so touchy-feely with everyone, and it would be so sad to see you all teary. Oh, sorry — how can I be saying such things to you, when you’re just so perfect? Of course, I wouldn’t dare mention that you’re just a poor, ignorant, sentimental peasant!”
Opal couldn’t believe she’d just spewed out those words — they had poured out of their own accord, harsh and uncontrollable. But now she wasn’t sorry that she’d said them, because blind hatred was starting to grow inside her.
The girls set out once more. Speaking soothingly, Janëlle tried to start a peaceful conversation, but it was hopeless: the other three lashed out at one another with increasing venom. Things deteriorated when Amber and Jade reined in their horses after two hours, saying it was time to rest again. They had hardly dismounted when they flew into a fury, slapping each other in the face. Opal joined in the brawl as well, giving a few vigorous thumps of her own.
At first Janëlle called out to them, but to no effect. Then she yelled her head off. It was a waste of time. She waded into the fray, receiving a flurry of vicious blows. Her slender body seemed to falter for a moment; then, with unexpected strength and determination, she separated the three girls.
With her jet-black hair in wild disorder, her clothes torn, Jade seemed beside herself, red-faced and menacing. A few drops of blood beaded a shallow cut on her cheek. Opal had come out of it with only a few scratches and the look in her eyes was more inscrutable than ever. The pain of her wound had flared up again, and she kept her head down to hide her feelings. As for Amber, she was fighting back tears. Her bruised lower lip was split, and she tasted the hot, disagreeable bitterness of blood in her mouth.
They glared at one another.
The situation had become unbearable.
Somehow the girls managed to mount their horses and continue their journey, but the air was filled with palpable tension and bitterness as they struggled to hold their angry tongues.
When night fell, bringing an end to a difficult and tiring day, the four girls stopped at the edge of a meadow, for Janëlle had persuaded the others to spend the night outdoors rather than in an unfamiliar village.
Unable to bear even to share some food together, Jade and Opal stalked off across the field in different directions to spend the night on their own.
Amber was alone with Janëlle. She felt no resentment towards their young guide, whose presence didn’t affect her bad mood one way or the other. Janëlle began to tell Amber about her past, how she came to be alone, working as a guide. Janëlle’s story was so similar to her own that Amber found herself opening up to the other girl and pouring out her grief over her mother’s death. She was relieved to have found a real friend, after being so let down by Jade and Opal.
When they grew tired, the two friends decided to go to sleep, promising to continue their conversation the next day. Amber slept heavily, without any dreams.
The sky was sprinkled with stars; the moon shone faintly. In the middle of the night, the silence was broken by a stifled cry. Amber awoke suddenly, gasping for breath; she felt a burning sensation spread throughout her body and slowly, painfully, she struggled to her feet.
“What’s happening?” she moaned. “I feel terrible!”
Janëlle did not reply. Her expression had changed into one of loathing and malevolence. She bent down and tried to pick up something in the thick grass, then straightened up with a shriek. It was impossible to deny: her eyes were flashing with rage.
“Janëlle!” gasped Amber, mesmerised.
“Leave me alone!” cried the other girl in a shrill, hysterical voice.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Can’t you tell? Don’t you want to understand?”
Janëlle slowly held out her clenched fist, then opened her fingers to reveal a palm disfigured by burns. At that moment, Amber saw her as the Nalyss had perceived her — as everyone would have seen her if her appearance had been the reflection of her soul: fat, with oily skin, messy black hair, dark eyes buried in puffy cheeks, a piggy nose, a massive and ungainly figure. Her eyes glittered with wickedness, and all her features betrayed a desire to destroy: she had become the incarnation of hatred.
“It’s your fault!” she screamed, as if demented.
“But — what is?”
“Everything! You don’t dare see what’s right in front of you? I hate you … I hate you!”
Amber felt sick. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t understand anything any more, and didn’t want to.
“You have everything for yourself, you’re the one I should have been!” wailed Janëlle. “You’ve stolen my place! You’ve stolen my life!”
“That’s insane,” stammered Amber.
“Of course, it’s easy for you to say that. Me, I’m just a poor miserable girl, I have no right to be important — that’s what you think.”
“No, no, not at all!”
“You still don’t get it? Then I’ll help you. Let’s go back to the beginning. I meet three girls, so I stop, and from what I hear them say, I realise that they’ve seen some Nalyss who ran away when they saw me coming! Of course, these three are perfect enough to have seen them, but not me!”
“I — I didn’t know,” whispered Amber, who felt the burning sensation in her body grow worse as her world crumbled around her.
“So,” continued Janëlle, “I decide to make friends with them. I want to show them that I, too, have a right to exist, to be appreciated.”
“I never said you didn’t—”
“But these three girls ignore me.”
“That’s not true!”
“They have everything on their side. Life has given them so much, and me, nothing. So I feel violent anger growing inside me: it fills me, possesses me, until it takes me over completely. I have to get rid of it. I concentrate, and with an ease I’ve never known before, I expel my hatred. It overflows… into the soul of another.”
“Jade!” said Amber.
“But this hatred keeps rising in me, so to control myself I shift it to you, then to the other girl, Opal, isn’t that her name? The anger gradually enslaves me and each of you in turn.”
“Why? We didn’t do anything to you!” protested Amber.
“Then you confide in me. I invent the story of my so-called life and you believe me, feel sorry for me. I hate your goody-goody feelings, your sympathetic manner. I was dying to spit out the truth, to tell you how I’ve infected people with hatred and brought about deaths, caused wars. When you told me about your Stone I realised who you were. And then I thought I was going to explode with rage. I wanted to outdo you, humiliate you, annihilate you.”
“No!” cried Amber miserably, still refusing to accept the truth.
“Tonight I tried to steal your Stone but I couldn’t, it burnt my hand. And you! You woke up, so trusting, with that perfect, smart, unbearable look on your face.”
Amber couldn’t say a wo
rd.
“What do you think? That I’m some tormented soul? That I turn to evil simply to escape from my problems? No. Evil nourishes me, gives me power! Without evil, I’m nothing. I serve it, but it consoles me, transforms me, makes me invulnerable! I need evil. When I see others suffer, when I feel evil possess me, I grow strong! With no more need to hide behind simpering smiles, to force myself to be someone else, to seem nice. Evil lets me be myself.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I know that it hurts you. My words wound you, make your bruised soul bleed — and I love that. You thought you were better than I am? You aren’t! You thought I was your friend? I was just the opposite, one of your most fervent enemies! Your tears give me incredible joy. You think I’ve betrayed you?
Well, I have no regret: I do as I please, I follow my own nature. I don’t flinch at the slippery world I’m forced to live in; I create evil, and I live off it.”
With these words, Janëlle smiled triumphantly and went away satisfied.
Amber thought she vaguely glimpsed a horseman in the distance, watching the scene, but that image could only have been an illusion, a mirage in the night.
She looked in the grass for her Stone, which had turned warm and comforting again. The bitterness and burning in her heart had vanished with Janëlle, yet her cheeks were still wet with tears, like pearls of deep dismay.
PARIS, PRESENT DAY
I was growing frailer, weaker. I barely touched the food the nurses brought me. For months I’d refused to look in a mirror; I could just imagine seeing myself: thin, shaking, my bones sticking out, my face drawn. I didn’t dare confront the despair in my eyes. I wanted to keep the image of Joa, not the spectre of an invalid huddled in fear. When I closed my eyes tightly enough, I still saw myself the way I used to be. The image would come to me slowly, and it was growing more and more blurry as the days went by. Then I was somebody else: Joa…
It hurt to remember how things used to be, and tears would sting my eyes. I had tried to forget everything, to file my past away in the depths of memory, and I had thought I’d succeeded. I wanted to accept my fate.