Dark Days, Bright Nights
I am Nabla, sixteenth of my name, crown princess of Kubal. I do not know what my face looks like.
They do not allow mirrors, saying that it could activate the curse upon my head. Clocks are also not allowed, and visitors are discouraged from looking me in the eye. Whenever I ask someone what I look like, they simply mutter, “Beautiful.” But I know that they have to say that. I know that I am probably not.
I may be a monster. Often I have woken up with sheets tangled up around me, damp with sweat, after slaughtering innocents and eating them.
I have told my nurse about these dreams. She tells me that I am not a monster and I am beautiful. I try to believe her.
I wonder why people think that I need be reassured that I am beautiful. That does not matter to me. I would rather be told that I will live to see womanhood. That my parents will not be killed. This would be a lie, but I would feel reassured nonetheless.
They tell me that if I am extremely careful, the curse can be avoided for months, years after the typical date. But there is no way to avoid it forever. I will be taken, the same as my mother before me and her mother before her. My father will be killed, the same as his father and his father’s father. I will return and never speak of what happened when I was held captive in the depths. And then I will die, just as my mother will soon die.
I have asked my mother many times what happened to her in the depths. She always shakes her head and begs me not to ask her. Her eyes grow red and she says that it is because she loves me that she will not tell me. She says be grateful for the time I have, because these happy days will be over soon.
I do not know how days can be happy if I know they will be over soon. I would rather not know and be taken by surprise.
Some days, they let me leave the ziggurat and travel into the town outside. I always have to have an escort of at least thirty guards and stay in the procession. As I travel through the streets, the people stare at me and the guards poke at them to get them to stop staring. I am allowed to stare at the people, though. They all look so different. People tell me that my mother and I are nearly identical, and my father looks very normal. And my guards are all named Phil or Janet, and all wear the same thin blue robes. I have asked why all of the Phils and Janets are the same, and no one seems to know, not even them. It’s just the way they’re born, I guess. I wonder if you get to choose to be born a Phil or a Janet, or if a life of servitude is decided from the beginning for you. If you never get to choose, then I feel like that isn’t very fair for them. But then I remember that my parents will be killed this year, and I'm not able to choose that, either.
I live in a strange place.
Tonight, my mother gets emotional. She pulls out our old careworn book of fairy tales and reads bits and pieces to me in bed. She isn’t able to focus on any one story. It’s like she’s trying to read all the happy parts and gloss over the parts where things get dark. Her eyes are watering again, and I wish she wasn’t so sad all the time. She tells me that fairy tales hold a lot of truth to them, even if they’re just stories, because they teach us that things are never as hopeless as they seem. I wonder whether she’s trying to convince me that the curse isn’t going to happen this time, or if she’s simply filling my heart with hope before fear and grief set in.
I do like the stories. They’re written by an old Fae that lives in the Wilds and anywhere else that living things grows. No one knows how to find her, but if someone is truly hurt or sick, she knows how to find them. Every once in a while, an explorer will find another bundle of pages scribbled in the woodland language, and that will be another fairy tale to add to the collection. The stories apparently come to her in dreams, and they are always set in the same strange world of roaring metal beasts that carry people in their stomachs alive, and of flat stones that can create any picture and connect to any other stone. Humans are the only things that talk there, but with such incredible magic I do not think I would miss the other species too terribly. I think a lot about that world and what I would do in it. I guess that’s why she writes the fairy tales, to give children a whole world to use their imaginations to think about.
Mother tells me that the old Fae uses a lot of exotic ingredients in her potions that can trick the senses, and that’s why her stories don’t always make sense. She tells me never to accept strange mushrooms or pinecones, and I ask her how someone would ever give me one. She sighs and says fair enough, and leaves me alone to sleep.
But I do not sleep.
I have an idea.