“What’s the difference between ugly and very ugly?” he sipped his soup calmly.
Those questioning answers again, Iris. Is he messing with your mind intentionally, or is he just humble and hurt?
“I don’t know.” She gave up. Since she’d arrived, no one fought with her or resisted her, lowering all her defenses. How could you fight a Beast when he is not attacking you? And if he’s not attacking you, should he still be considered a Beast?
“I don’t mind looking at you, whatever you look like,” curiosity was eating her alive.
“I don’t mind looking at you either,” another puzzling answer.
“So you know what I look like. You can see me clearly from behind the veil,” she was making a statement.
“Oh, I know what you look like,” he laughed. His laugh made her tremble. It was loud and hollow. Too confident. Too bossy. Suddenly, she understood her confusion. It was his contradictions that confused her. He ate like a monster, then wiped his mouth elegantly with a napkin. What kind of species did that? “I, and my fellow Masters, have seen you challenge us with the red rose in your hand. That was quite a show.”
“Was that funny to you?” she squinted.
“Funny?” he seemed to think it over. “No. It was admirable. That’s why I haven’t treated you like other Brides.”
Iris heart sank into her belly. “What is it you do to other Brides?” she stood up. He did not fidget. “Do you hurt them?” He continued sipping his soup. Iris took a step forward, pondering the thought of attacking him. “What did you do to Zoe?”
The doors sprang open and the ghost girls entered. They held metallic rods with red lights in their hands.
The Master signaled them to a stop, standing up. He threw his napkin on the table and walked closer to the curtain. “I said you’re not ready to see my face,” he said firmly. “I like my words respected and honored. But I understand this is a new environment for you. You’re away from home, and you’re never going back. It takes time to believe it and cope with it, so I will forgive your misbehavior.”
“You’re in no position to forgive me,” Iris’s cheekbones tensed. “I’m not a Bride. I came here on my own.” She heard the girls in white sigh and lower their heads, afraid she’d angered their Master.
The Beast took a moment again, before speaking. Secretly, she couldn’t help but admire his stable posture and the silences he cherished before uttering a word. It was as if every word had to be calculated. Every word meant something, and he made sure it did. She saw him tap his fingers slightly on the table. “I’d prefer we end our dinner now. I like my Bride to be in a good mood.”
Iris was going to object, but she was silenced by the warning hand he raised up in the air. She felt the urge to stop instantly. He wasn’t fighting with her. He wasn’t rude. And he didn’t look like he was going to hurt her—at least, not now. His behavior made her snapping look ridiculous, even to herself.
“I advise you to go back to your chamber and clear your mind, then stare at the stars,” he followed.
Clear my head and look at the stars, Iris thought. All this nonsense again. She stood silent as the girls circled her, and were about to drag her back to her chamber.
“I will see you again in a few thousand heartbeats,” he said.
“Heartbeats?”
“We measure time by heartbeats here,” he explained. “Because we cherish every moment in life. By a few thousand, I mean about four to five hours. I’d like to continue this conversation later.”
“If you say so,” Iris said. It was hard to tell if she was still playing fair until she learned enough about the Beast to find Zoe, or if she was really complying. She’d always been fascinated with Colton’s personality, but this supposedly young and ugly prince exuded a calmness and grip over the situation like she’d never felt before. It was silly and unacceptable, thinking about him this way. Whatever they had sedated her with must have messed with her emotions. Iris gave in to the girls in white as they escorted her to the door.
“One more thing, Iris,” Master Andre said before she left. “You need to know something before we meet again.”
“I can’t imagine what that might be,” she said flatly, pretending she wasn’t impressed with his personality.
“We have some sort of a list we use in choosing our Brides,” he said.
“How sick of you,” she said.
“It’s a very delicate list,” he continued. “Each Bride has been chosen very carefully, in ways you could not imagine.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because next week’s Bride was going to be you,” he said. “I thought you should know, so we can get over this part about you challenging us. Your actions were daring and immensely admirably by the Masters, but let’s just be open about the fact that I was going to have you next week, no matter what.”
“Is that why you’re treating me unlike other Brides?” Iris shrugged. “Because, according to your schedule, my time has not come?”
Silence again, for about a hundred heartbeats. “I’m still trying to figure that out.” Master Andre said.
46
Back through the hallway, the girls escorted Iris toward her room. She didn’t know why, but she stared at the stars beneath her feet again. Something felt so out of place. She wished she could figure it out.
Even though the girls were many, she seriously thought about escaping them to explore the ship. How hard could it be? She’d been escaping the android guards at school for a long time. She let the girls walk her as she glanced over, trying to see anything that made sense. There was nothing. All white walls, all the way. If she was going to escape, she needed a direction to run to and hide.
Where are you Cody? She thought. Would he have a way to hack the Beasts?
A silver device in one of the girls’ hands beeped. The girl held it up at eye-level and closed her eyes. She looked as though she was listening to something Iris couldn’t hear. “I’ll do as you please, My Master,” she said, and clicked the device’s button. Iris believed it to be some kind of cellular. One that worked on the mind.
“Master Andre wants you to see something,” the girl told Iris. “He says you will like it, and it will help you clear your mind.”
“I doubt I will like it,” Iris said, then wished she hadn’t. What was wrong with going somewhere else and exploring more of the ship. “On second thought, why not?” she smiled.
“As you wish, My Beauty,” the girl bowed and told the others to leave them, then ushered Iris to another room. The door opened with the same technique; the girl whispered to it, and it opened. Everything in this ship seemed to work with the power of the mind.
“Please,” the girl showed her into a new chamber.
This one was a bit darker. It reminded her of her father’s basement, full of paintings, brushes, portraits, and tables to draw on. It took Iris a moment to realize this was a painter’s studio. And she understood why Andre thought she’d like it. This was where she could practice her most desired hobby, the one that made her question everything around her, and brought her here.
“I do like it,” Iris said. She couldn’t deny it. It was from the heart. The place was filled with instruments and chemicals used in her dad’s Pentimento studio. It reminded her of her family and her childhood.
Her curiosity urged her to explore the paintings, until she came upon Fragonard’s Fountain of Love. Iris stood inanimate before it for a while, wondering if this was a copy or some kind of fake. Did Fragonard paint another one, or did the Beasts steal it from her father? If yes, when did they do that? She remembered last seeing it two days ago.
Iris pulled the painting toward a black light nearby and looked through, wondering if she’d see the boy was really a beast. She saw it. The boy had been designed as a beast in the beginning and then changed. It was either her father’s copy, or the same painting.
“I told you.” Andre appeared from behind a painting. He was wearing a white vei
l, just like the girl. Only this one was embroiled with golden stripes. Andre looked a bit taller now, standing only strides away.
“I thought you said you wanted to continue the conversation later.” Iris said, as the girl excused herself out.
“I still do,” Andre walked around her. He smelled of red roses. She wondered why he wore a veil, making him look like a ghost. Couldn’t the Beasts invent a technology that would make them disappear and become only sounds or something? “This is something entirely different,” he followed.
“Do you even know what this place is, or did you just steal my father’s paintings?” Iris sneered.
“We didn’t steal anything,” Andre said. “This Fragonard painting has been here for ages.”
“How can you say that? My father discovered the Pentimento underneath it. The boy was originally a beast. You’re lying.”
“No, it’s been here since long ago,” Andre insisted. “We’ve been studying it, and interpreting its hidden messages since long ago. Aren’t you curious about the message?”
“There is a message?” Iris’s eyes moistened. She’d been waiting to know why the boy was a beast for most of her life. Although she assumed Andre was lying to her, she couldn’t resist listening to him about the real meaning behind the painting.
“A message about the future, yes,” Andre said. “In this case, Fragonard’s future, which is the ‘now’ for us.”
“What is it? Was he trying to warn us about you?” Iris stepped forward. “Do you Beasts look like the Beast boy hidden beneath his painting?”
“Pentimento is an old art,” Andre said, walking away from her, checking out some of the other paintings, discarding her questions. “I like to work here for hours. It clears my mind in so many ways.”
She wasn’t going to comment on the “clearing his mind” part. And she wasn’t going to push for answers she knew weren’t easy to get. Seriously, she had enough. She was rather interested in an ugly Beast who practiced Pentimento. She had to stick around until he spilled out the truth. Iris needed to find the Beast’s weakness.
“Are you trying to convince me you actually practice this art?” Iris said.
“Why would you doubt that? Because I’m ugly?”
“Why? Are you kidding me? It’s prohibited by the Beasts. If you practice it, how can you make it illegal on Earth?”
“It’s a bit too soon to talk about that,” Andre considered. “I was hoping you’d ask me something else.”
“Like what?” Iris sighed.
“Like what I like about it. Why I do it.” He had a point, Iris thought. She let him continue. He sounded passionate about it. “When I was a kid, an old Master once told me a peculiar story about the continent of America when it was first discovered.”
“America? You mean The First United States of America?” She found herself asking one question after another, clueless to Andre’s vague stories, and his habit of answer a question with a question—or some other irrelevant story.
“It wasn’t called The First at the time. It’s a name humans made up later. But if you prefer to call it that, be my guest,” he nodded.
“Okay. What about America?”
“America was originally inhabited by Red Indians, the original locals of the land, a very, very long time ago,” Andre laced his hands behind his back as he circled her. He wore white gloves, so she couldn’t see his hands.
“Then a man called Christopher Columbus, if I remember right, discovered it by chance, as he sailed across the oceans.”
“Really?” Iris thought Cody, Colton, and Zoe would like to hear this story, if they were here. This was a story about The First before it became The Second, a story told by the Beasts, who ruled the world and owned the key and knowledge to what really happened in the past. “I’ve never heard this before. Go on.” She welcomed his story.
“The Indians were a primitive nation. They lived in tents called ‘teepees,’ and ate directly from the products of the earth. They loved their lives as they were, and thought that was all there was. Never had they even pondered the thought of sailing the ocean and discovering the world beyond the tides. The ocean was their world’s end,” Andre said. “But then, when Columbus first arrived in his ships, something incredibly unexpected happened.”
Iris was all ears, all eyes, with heart and soul. There was nothing more exciting than knowing who her ancestors were. That’s why her father had taught her the Pentimento, in hopes to know who they really were someday. Why Andre lied about the Fragonard being in their possession all this time, still didn’t make sense. “What happened?” she wondered.
“Are you sure you can handle it?” Andre said. “Because you need a really clear mind to imagine it.”
“Enough with the clear mind thing,” she said. “I am a big girl. I am handling you. Tell me the story.”
“Alright,” Andre said. “What happened is that the Red Indians didn’t see the ships.”
“Are you kidding me? The ships sailing the ocean must have been huge. Ah, you mean Columbus had some kind of technology that could make these ships invisible, right?”
Andre laughed. Iris didn’t like anyone laughing at her. “There were no such technologies in their time,” he said. “But still, the Indians didn’t see the ships with their eyes at first glance,” Andre said. “It happened later, when one of them saw the ships and told the others there was something in the water. He thought it was a creature of the sea with wings and that it was far away, but was getting bigger and bigger.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“It’s not nonsense,” Andre said. “It’s how the mind works. The Indians had never seen a ship. They had never even been exposed to the idea that a ship existed. The idea of sailing in the sea was utter madness to them, and they had never been introduced to it. So think of it this way: the Indians’ minds saw a certain reality in front of them, a reality that their mind had not been introduced to before. So what do you think the mind does to a human when challenged this way?”
Iris felt dizzy, but she liked the story. It was hard to fully comprehend, but she could relate to it, not understanding why. A strange feeling overwhelmed her briefly. “What does this story have to do with you practicing the Pentimento?” she asked.
“This story was the first time I was introduced to the idea of Pentimento,” Andre explained.
“But Pentimento is only a painter’s term.”
“That’s where you and I, and your father probably, differ,” Andre said. “The ships the Indians couldn’t see was a Pentimento of sorts. In fact, there are all kinds of Pentimentos in this world. When you look at a flower that reminds you of someone and it takes you back to an old memory deep inside you, that’s Pentimento. When a photograph reminds you of how you felt in a certain moment, that’s Pentimento. And when you neglect someone’s looks for a moment and learn about them, talk to them, and share experiences with them—a moment when you see their true beauty, that’s Pentimento.”
Iris suddenly wanted to leave the room and go back to her chamber. It had only been an hour or so, and Andre’s conversation made her feel an unexplainable, unreasonable, an almost inhuman attraction to him. It was so wrong, she could not understand it. The only way to accept it was to believe the words he’d just said; to forget he was a Beast, that he was ugly, a monster, and unrighteously took girls from her world.
The thought made her want to see his face right now. She needed to lose her interest and attraction right now, and she thought seeing his beastly face would solve that for her.
She was in love with Colton. And although she might not see him again, it didn’t mean she’d stop loving him.
But Andre not only shared her hobby; he understood it, even deeper than she thought he did. He understood her need to know, to explore. He was a beast with a heart of an artist. He was dominant, grounded, and passionate about what he loved. And she’d learned all of this about him within an hour. An hour of talking, not seeing his face. Andre
was like an ugly rock, sitting solid by the shore, content with what it is, and all Iris needed was to crash into him like a foolish tide.
“Do you understand me?” Andre repeated. All she could do was raise her eyes back to him. Her lips were sealed, her mind wandering, and her heart thudding. “Pentimento actually describes the human condition. People are made of layers upon layers. Somewhere in that deepest layer lies the true self, what they were meant to be in the first place. Some stay true and surface with a layer that is no different than the deepest one, and some lose their way and become something else.”
Iris shrugged. She felt numb, and again, she didn’t know why. She was being lectured by a Beast about humanity and it puzzled her how they saw right through them. “Is that Picasso?” she changed the subject, trying to silence the emotion buzzing in her mind.
“It is,” Andre pointed at a painting on the table. “The Old Guitarist, one of the most famous Pentimentos in the world. What we see and what he’d painted initially are two different things.”
“Did he have as message as well?” Iris inquired reluctantly.
“I don’t really know.” Andre said.
“Strange. Aren’t you are a Beast? I mean, a Master? You must know everything.”
“We know what we’ve had a chance to interpret or investigate. But generally, you could say we’ve arrived too late,” he explained. “The world was already destroyed.”
“Was is that bad?”
For the first time, Andre lowered his head behind the veil. She couldn’t tell if it was guilt, empathy, or respect. “Like many other things, let’s not talk about this now,” he said. “I wanted you to see this room and maybe explore the many paintings I have here. I thought it would make you happier, and help us continue the conversation later today.”
“The one about Zoe,” Iris insisted. “Are you going to tell me what happened to Zoe?”
“Shouldn’t you be worried about what’s going to happen to you?” he said.
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