I didn’t know it then, but I was being tested…I bowed my head that morning; I got a message from deep inside my heart. It told me I would have to let go of all my fears, all my doubts. I’d have to trust in God, completely, totally. That’s where miracles really come from, or at least that’s where they begin, from a remote place in your heart many people never reach.
I know you have a real problem with that kind of trust, Cease. And no one can blame you for that after what happened to you. But right now, all I ask is that you trust me. Things are about to get real for you. There will be real violence and real blood, and this reality, or this drama—whatever you want to call it—isn’t just a show; it’s more important than you’ll ever imagine. Think of the girls and boys writing you, watching…they need you…
Petit Fleur,
Thanks for the sermon, Miss Saint or whoever you are, but I don’t think it can help me right now.
Cease,
No. Maybe not. But there’s something I want you to see; why you’re afraid.
Petit,
I’m not afraid. Eve isn’t as strong as she looks. If she comes at me with a real weapon, I’ll plaster her face into the snow—and if I kill her, so what? I don’t know what it was like in your day, but here, now, it’s called self-defense. If Brad tries to rape me, he’ll get what Rex got.
Cease,
Yes. I know. You’re a strong girl. I was, too. But that’s not the reason you’re so afraid. It’s a gift, what you’ve got. Can you admit that?
Petit,
Yes. My brother taught me about what I’ve got. I don’t know where it came from. I know other girls have it, too. I don’t know what you called it in your age, but we call it chemistry, charisma, a magic that can’t really be taught, a gift…I will win today. I made a promise to my brother.
Cease,
A promise? That’s a load of crap. The kind of thing Eve’s going to tell the press after she kicks your ass today. What you’re really afraid of is where this gift came from. You were chosen, Cease de Menich. Charisma. Look it up in the dictionary…where it came from should tell you what you’re really afraid of. You’re from a long line of strong girls…
Petit,
That’s wonderful. Maybe I’ll put some of it in my speech after I get the sword at the church of Fierboy—by the way, if you’re so omniscient, Miss Saint, why don’t you just appear to me? Emails seem so mundane. Why not speak to me through that bright light in which Saint Catharine and Saint Margaret appeared to you?
Cease,
It was Fierbois. You should listen to your Aunt Nina and keep practicing your French. And that sword was made by the grandson of Charlemagne. I’m not the kind of saint who likes to appear. I prefer to be found in the details.
Cease, listen to me—before you get your head knocked off by your own stupid pride—you’ve got to trust me. This isn’t just some silly game that a bunch of kids will watch, a bunch of producers will make money on. It never really was. Would you just admit to me now that you’ve witnessed things on the set you can’t explain…that no one can explain?
Petit,
OK, sure. Weird things have happened. I don’t know how I made it this far. So, you’re trying to help me? What should I do?
Cease,
OK. This gift that you have didn’t fall magically into your lap. You were chosen. You’re from a long line of strong girls. My blood runs in your veins.
Petit,
Great. So, now who are you…Darth Vader? I’m related to a French saint? Do you know how crazy this sounds?
Cease,
Search your history. Search your heart. Search those genealogies your Aunt Nina has been keeping for you to find. You saw James reading them; only he didn’t want to share them with you. You didn’t have any secrets. You two were bound together by what your mother did. Admit it right now, you didn’t want to ask what your brother found in those pages, because you knew he had found something in your bloodline about this secret you’ve inherited, and it terrified you when he couldn’t share it.
Yes or No?
PF,
Yes.
C,
Good. Now, you must trust me…In a few minutes you’ll have to make a choice—isn’t that what they call it in acting? The moves you make…whether you shout or cry or punch out a bad boy. Choices. Real choices. At least they are to all the girls and boys watching and writing you online.
Petit,
Yes. So what should I do?
C,
Let go of who you think you should be, all those promises you made over your dead brother’s coffin. You and I both know what that was really about. You’ve made some interesting choices in the past, Cease—choices that got you noticed, that helped you survive. But you did them for all the wrong reasons. Orleans was my first victory. After I took the fort, I understood what God was trying to get me to see. Miracles are real, but they aren’t as magical or as unattainable as most people think…I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. They’re coming…
A knock on the door. I search the room for a place to hide the phone. A frizzy-haired, red-headed girl whose skin looks yellow from bronzer hands me my scene.
“There must be some mistake. This isn’t the scene Francis showed me—” but before I can finish, she shrugs and pushes a clipboard in my face—something for me to sign. I look down at the two cardinal rules all the actors have been required to obey since the first day on the set.
Actors may only improvise AFTER reciting all their required lines.
Any actor who willfully stops a scene will automatically be disqualified.
“I already signed this.”
But all I get is another shrug as she says, “It’s required.” The last rule has been circled in pen and she points to a small box after “disqualified” that I’m supposed to initial.
“Listen to me!” I shout. “I want you to get Francis, tell him I need to speak with him. This isn’t my speech—I mean, this isn’t the speech Francis showed—”
But I can she’s got no idea what I’m talking about. She walks down my steps, kicks snow off a war-chest filled with battle-axes, and makes her way toward Francis, who’s sitting on a crane being pushed by a huddle of men like some medieval weapon of war. I look back down at the words. It’s not a victory speech—it’s a confession.
I close the door, hobble back to my chair, put the ice pack back on my ankle. The snow has stopped and midwinter light casts perfect shadows across the white expanse. A glaring half-moon hangs over the darkness like a crude anvil. I fish through a yellow bag beside my desk for the raw almonds Nina told me to eat between takes. I munch, still troubled by what I am reading. I can’t call Nina.
My watch says 4:30 a.m. A lark sings over the muffled thuds of extras practicing swordplay in the clearing. I look back down at my scene.
Jeanne d’Arc. You will fend off attackers with Brad as you make your way through the forest. You will compete with Susan to find the sword that’s hidden near the church. Whoever finds it first will give it to Brad and be allowed first choice of weapons in your final battle.
Only one of you will move on to the next round.
I can feel the emotions rise in my chest; jealousy, betrayal—things that saints aren’t supposed to feel, but I remember Nina’s advice and remind myself I got this part because I played Jeanne as a real person, as a lost, frightened girl I know all too well. I glance down at a line I have after I confront Susan near the church.
“I think you should know, Susan, what I did to the last girl who stood between me and the boy I loved.”
She was real. Before she was a saint, she was a real person I remind myself as I look for the email exchange and am half relieved to see it’s disappeared from my inbox. A little girl? Probably not. Probably one of Francis minions trying to fuck with my head. What she wrote about James could’ve been found by anyone doing a little research into my past.
I hear another muffled thud and think it’s come from outside my trailer, but w
hen I look up to my small bookshelf I see one of Jeanne’s histories has mysteriously fallen to the floor. I go over to retrieve it and find the pages open to the testimony of her trial. The clergy is interrogating her on the sword Jeanne found in the ruins of a church. History, that crazy hodgepodge of names and dates…
Francis is strange, maybe even sick, but when it comes to the historical accuracy of my character he’s always been accurate.
Jeanne d’Arc’s sword was never recovered, but its provenance was verified by one of the witnesses who testified twenty years after her death. According to legend, Saint Catherine the archangel came to Jeanne and told her to go in search of a sword that lay inside a church in Fierbois that was her namesake—so went the history that I dismissed as stupid until Nina handed me these transcripts. Jeanne had asked a solider in the town of Tours to get it based upon directions she’d given him from a dream. He’d found it buried behind the altar of the church, in the exact place she’d been told to look—he testified to all this when the time came to clear Jeanne’s name after her death. Why would he make that up? He’d never been to that town before in his life. Saint Catherine informed Jeanne it had once belonged to the grandson of Charlemagne.
Isn’t that what Petit Fleur had written? So, could’ve found it in these pages. Saint have hagiographies. Their miracles must be listed. So what? Nina had shown me, the first miracle had been crossing the river; the second, the sword? I rub my eyes, tired and so tense my should feel like their attached to my ears by some primitive instrument of torture…
The judges at her trial had interrogated her about the sword. Historians had written about it. Five crosses had been etched on the blade beside the hilt—but no words, so the writers were just having their fun, probably trying to cross genres and turn this story into some kind of sci-fi fantasy.
I look out the window to see the torch-lit faces—small armies are filing down through the path into the darkness of the trees. An assistant with a torch holds three fingers to the blazing light, and that means three minutes. My ankle hurts but Molly’s wrapped it up and I’ve got most of my armor on. I watch Eve swing, harder and harder, through the moonlight creeping up over the pillared darkness.
I can defend myself. I don’t have to hurt anyone. If Eve really wants to win, she’ll have to kill me.
I run through the scenarios like an endless sea of numbers that just need to find the right equation. Susan will reach the sword first and attack me. I’ll disarm her and win. Brad will try to betray me with a few choice tidbits about my past that will make me feel as lost as I did in Manny’s studio…or when I first saw my brother’s lines in the script. But I’ll recover and challenge him; kiss him—round second base if necessary—until he sees that all those lost, lonely viewers back home would rather see him with a virgin than some crazy girl who can’t really act. But it doesn’t matter. Francis showed me my speech. It’s a victory speech as in I will be the last girl standing. Or at least, I get to go up against Catherine the Great in the final round. Even if I lose to her, I’ll come out on top. The runners-up almost always do as well or better in these shows.
I clench my teeth as I look out the window to the low tendrils of fog that lurk in the dense forest. My dream of holding Brad alongside tweeting birds and happy elves is Snow White…
Wake up, Cease. You’re going to kill or be killed… They won’t be elves, Cease. They’ll be real. With real weapons and real violence…Nina was right.
Francis smiles as he dips his head down to the viewfinder of the main camera attached to a giant crane. In the distance sit the ruins of a church and an ancient graveyard—old tombstones jutting out in long, crooked shadows like teeth in a skull. Francis looks like a wrathful God hovering overhead.
All that blood over virgin snow.
I close my eyes and feel the past close in like an approaching storm. I adjust my armor. Another knock on my door, and it’s about time.
“Where the hell do you get off switching my…” but it’s not Francis. It’s a tall man with thinning blond hair, glasses, and a black, down parka, belted at the waist.
The man steps forward and says, “Miss de Menich, I have to confiscate all your electronic devices.”
“Why?”
“We’ve had a problem with the plot being leaked. Francis is putting the entire set on lockdown.” He flexes his jaw as he says lockdown.
I look down at the phone in my hand. I know I dismissed Nina’s advice to keep it on me, but I must’ve picked it up on my way out of the trailer. I hand it over and say, “Tell Francis I’m waiting to hear…” but the man stares me down.
“You were also seen with a tablet computer. I need you to turn that in.”
“I must’ve left that at home.” I steal a glance at the pile of clothes on the bed. He reaches into his parka and pulls out a phone. He presses numbers into it and a soft jingle can be heard coming from beneath the heap on my bed.
“Maybe I did leave it…” I look down beneath my desk but he’s already looking suspiciously at the pile of clothes.
A message splashes across the tablet’s face as I slowly pull it from a pile of jeans and underwear. It’s from Petit Fleur…CEASE BE CAREFUL. IT’S A…
“I should really turn it off fir—”
He grabs it from my hand, rushes out, and closes the door behind him.
I walk out into the clearing. The fightmaster approaches, holds out the handle of a ten-inch dagger, and when I search for the button all stunt knives have to collapse the blade on impact I find none.
“It’s real, Cease—and so are these.” He holds up the darts for my crossbow to strap across my chest. “You’ll be going hand-to-hand in the fight scene with Eve, so be sure to use these only in the forest to fend off the attackers.”
“Aren’t we going to rehearse? I mean…you always do blocking on hand-to—”
He just turns and walks away. The assistant in the clearing holds up two fingers—two minutes until we go. I watch Brad adjusting his scabbard as the fightmaster hands him a sword—he smiles and I can tell he doesn’t have a clue as to what’s about to happen. Susan approaches, puts her arm around his neck and plays with his ear with her thumb and forefinger as I adjust my crossbow and armor. I look down at my confession and think about all those girls and boys who wrote me emails; all the anxious faces that looked up to me from Manny’s studio. In the speech I’ve been given I’m confessing to Brad why I’ve got to kill Susan. So this confession is necessary for me to be the last girl standing. At least, that’s one possible scenario. But there are others. I bet Susan’s been given a speech, too—maybe one where she confesses to Brad why she had to kill me. My Nina’s right. We are expendable, and if I kill either Susan or Brad, Francis won’t be charged with a crime. He’ll just tell the press and the police that I had a history of violence and killed in real life. I try to see Eve as Susan, a character thrown into a silly drama, but I can’t.
All I have to do is kill a girl I never really liked; a girl who knew the family that destroyed my brother.
I close my eyes and let the scene play out in my head. If Francis wants real, I’ll give him real…
“Whoa,” says Brad. He steps aside as I approach the fire he and Susan are warming their hands over. “If looks could kill—you look like you did just before you gave Rex that lesson in how to treat a lady.”
“Just wait until you see what I’ll do to get a kiss from the right boy,” I say.
Susan lets out one of her rich-bitch chortles, and I can tell by her dilated pupils her co-star for this scene is going to be Mademoiselle Cocaine. I don’t let it freak me out. She’s reckless. I’ll stay focused. I close my eyes, try to see myself in a churchyard holding the mysterious broadsword—it didn’t have any magical power. It wasn’t going to save me from Eve’s clutches. If she gets to it before I do, she’ll just start swinging until I go down.
Down as in out, Cease. Real blood all over that real snow. Enough real to give Francis wet dreams for the rest o
f his life.
Dark shadows of an army move through the trees in the moonlight as the crew crouches down. The assistant holds a single finger up to the moonlit sky, as my head spins with the endless scenarios…I will wound Susan and then kill her, before I confess. Brad will betray me and stab me in the back. Susan will wound me and tie me up; I’ll be forced to watch her have sex with Brad, and then she’ll kill me.
A deep breath, and then I feel the bolt of grief loosen in my chest. It feels as if someone’s standing behind me, working one of those wrought-iron instruments of torture Jeanne was forced to endure. But instead of turning the screws she was loosening them. Another breath, deeper…I close my eyes and see the space I found in my free-fall—as if I’ve suddenly found a clearing in the whirlwind of all this hate. I feel the exhilaration rising in my chest. All that pain behind the door to my past that had closed the day my agent called to say I’d been chosen to play you, Jeanne—all that pain had been there for a reason, and the door that now lay open before me led to secrets that I had to share with the world. Secrets about a gift I’d not just been born with but inherited.
I touch my fingers to my upper lip and feel myself transform. Brad crouches low behind a rock, and I join him as the assistant director begins the final countdown. I feel for my scapular. It’s missing.
“Wait,” I shout. Francis rises from behind the camera. I run back to the trailer. The tall man blocks my blocks my door.
“I’ve got to get—”
“I’m sorry, Cease. It’s just too much of a risk.”
“That’s a really stupid line. You should do television with a line like that,” I tell him. He opens his down parka. I see the gun.
“What are you going to do, shoot me? Good luck explaining that to my fans.”
He whips out a police wand and with the flick of a wrist telescopes the barrel. He swings at my ear.
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