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- Herausgeber: Francis Rosenfeld
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
It is never easy growing up different, but when no one has looked like you in seven generations, social life can become quite difficult to manage. Of course nobody blames you, poor innocent child, for being born a green eyed blonde in a village full of raven haired people, certainly not your aunt, who loves you just the way you are, for the most part. No enlightened elder would give heed to ridiculous superstitions such as “the blond curse” or “the fair maiden of the apocalypse”, nor will any reasonable person believe that one glance from your clear green eyes can render cows barren, but… There’s always a but.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Francis Rosenfeld
Fair
Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About the Author
© 2016 Francis Rosenfeld
Cover Design by Daniela
Chapter 1
Mary
"Stop lollygagging, Mary! The world is not going to wait for you to catch up, it's almost sundown!" Mary's great-aunt Lucille scolded her, as it was her habit.
Mary didn't flinch, she knew how difficult it was for people to be around her, and how much gratitude she owed to the one person gracious enough to take her in. The shocked reaction everybody had when they laid eyes on Mary was a never ending source of pain for the young girl and a great inconvenience for her great-aunt, whose neighbors and acquaintances, people whom she'd known for decades, had started avoiding her because of her little charge. Lucille was a self-assured woman who had worked very hard to assert her authority over the Ladies' Circle, the charities group and the church committee, and this kind of snubbing constantly irritated her.
She tried not to show it, of course, it wasn't the poor child's fault she'd been born that way, and taking her in was definitely the right thing to do after Mary's birth family decided that parting with an abnormal child like that was what faith and tradition demanded. Lucille was not in any way related to Mary by blood or family, a small detail the great-aunt had decided to keep to herself.
It was irksome enough that some of the villagers had made unseemly assumptions about the origins of this unfortunate child, despite the fact that Lucille's advanced age made it quite unlikely that she was trying to hide an indiscretion by pretending the girl was adopted. The plethora of cheek stinging gossip made it a bit harder for her to miss some of the people who left her circle, but the fact that nobody could look at her protégé without averting their eyes started grinding her nerves by repetition, and she often questioned whether doing the right thing did anybody any good. She sighed, then, looked up with a martyred look on her face, and told herself that even if people didn't agree, this was definitely what God wanted; she consoled herself that she was suffering for a good cause.
Still, she never got quite used to the child's odd appearance, and no matter how much she kept telling herself that the being in front of her was an innocent deserving of love, she surprised herself trying to find reasons to avoid Mary's presence.
After these awkward soul searching sessions, she occasionally praised the wisdom of her village elders, whose religion forbade the ownership of mirrors altogether. The community reviled these traps for vanity and self-centeredness which did nothing to advance the growth of the spirit. The absence of mirrors provided Lucille some comfort, however meager, and her spirit rested in the knowledge that her great-niece, whose lot in life was so unfair, would never get the chance to see herself as others saw her and be haunted by her own image for the rest of her life. The good lady was pleased that at least she managed to instill into the foundling the basic virtues of diligence, cleanliness and economy that would make her life a little bit more tolerable.
In her advanced years Lucille was still an imposing woman, with thick and lustrous jet black hair framing her pale features, a very striking figure even in their village, where everybody looked more or less like her.
She had been considered a great beauty in her youth, when she had had countless suitors, was the belle of the ball and had quite a few marriage proposals. At the time she was the envy of every girl in her circle of friends. After she got married, her status grew even more prominent, due to her husband's privileged position in society. If she thought about it, Lucille couldn't think of any way her life could have been more pampered.
Sadly, the Lord had taken her husband home a couple of decades ago, may he rest in peace, and after that she decided not to remarry. Her children went on to live their own lives, and she had grown fastidious with the passing of time, quite set in her ways, so adjusting to a new relationship and the societal expectation to submit to a new husband didn't seem like something she was eager to take on. In time she had gotten used to being the authority figure in the village and she ran all sorts of societies and committees, ran them, that is, until she chose to act out her faith and adopt Mary. Every expectation of normality fell through the cracks and vanished after that.
Lucille often contemplated how much better her life might have been if she remarried instead of adopting this one person social life wrecking ball, at least she would have consolidated her privileges and kept the deference of the people! Every time these thoughts crept up on her she blamed herself and sought strength in the knowledge that she was doing the right thing.
Lucille liked life neat and proper, things always in their place, dresses clean and modest, foods simple, and she kept Mary's hair always cut very short, to avoid it becoming a source of distraction for the girl.
Some of her closest friends decided to brave ostracism and stand by her in her misfortune, and they didn't miss the opportunity to offer a wealth of advice; some suggested that maybe it would be easier for Mary, and quite frankly, for Lucille, if the latter managed to dissimulate some of the girl's striking attributes, but sadly, the girl's eyes were so startling and impossible to avoid that they drew even more attention to the disguise.
Lucille dreaded the future, she didn't know what she was going to do with Mary, who was approaching fourteen and started showing her age. She deplored the fate of the poor girl, who was never going to attract anybody and was doomed to a miserable life of loneliness and rejection. She never told Mary that, though, and tried to put a brave face on this whole situation, because after all she had been providentially guided to take care of the child, who was to say what destiny had in store for her?
"Walk faster, girl! Those grapes will turn to vinegar before we get home!"
Mary picked up the pace in silence, as she'd gotten used to over the years. Since she had started walking she noticed that people were repulsed by her, and even if she didn't understand why, she was fully aware of the negative implications of her unusual appearance. Sometimes she wondered what exactly was it that people found so disquieting that they couldn't be in her presence for more than a few minutes. She spent her childhood in solitude, but didn't mind it, because she was an introspective type and didn't know how to miss something she never had. As she grew older, she could feel her great-aunt's growing discomfort over her life situation, and wished she could do something about it, but didn't know what.
The basket of grapes was heavy, and carrying it on her head made her neck hurt. She stopped for a second to lay it down and rest. The basket weave got stuck in the short hairs on the back of her neck and pulled them painfully. She winced.
Lucille looked back, annoyed by the sudden interruption, sighed and stopped to wait for her, standing and stomping her foot to express that she didn't appreciate this change in the established schedule.
Mary rested for a few seconds, and then picked up the basket quickly, to shorten the discomfort of buckling under her great-aunt's disapproving stare. There was a little gleaming strand stuck in the basket weave, something that would have passed for hair, except for its color, which looked like that their mare Rosemary's mane. Nobody she had ever known had hair like that, nobody! She shuddered, terrified by the countenance she presented to the world, and for the first time in her life she really wanted to know why everyone was avoiding her, and what did all of those people see to make them avert their gaze.
All her other features, her body, her hands and feet, looked like everybody else's, but her own face she had never seen, so she assumed that whatever it was had something to do with it or her hair. She made it her first priority to figure out a way to see her own reflection. This was easier said than done in a village with no mirrors, no open wells, and no lakes or ponds. One was hard pressed to find open waters in an arid climate like the one they lived in.
She tried every excuse in the book to dissuade her great-aunt from cutting her hair, but Lucille was relentless in the neat and proper management of her locks, which got even shorter than before.
Mary looked around for anything the least bit reflective, but there was nothing, really: the food bowls were matte porcelain, the silverware was dull metal, and the dark painted wood planks of the floors were always covered by overlapping wool carpets whose busy and colorful patterns made her dizzy. She figured if she stared in her great-aunt's eyes she might be able to get a glimpse of her own reflection, but Lucille couldn't bear to look straight at her, ever.
In time the preoccupation with her own appearance reached the point of obsession, which made her great-aunt more and more concerned about the poor girl, whose behavior was spinning completely out of control. Lucille deplored this newfound attitude that made her great niece even less socially acceptable, if such a thing were possible!
Mary spent the next year surreptitiously looking for reflective surfaces, under a barrage of criticism, resentment and complaints about being difficult and ungrateful. She wasn't happy to see her great-aunt angry with her, but it didn't matter: whatever it was that made her an outcast, she thought she had the right to know. Sometimes, when the pressure of Lucille's disapproval surpassed the limits of her endurance, she snuck out to the desert to watch the giant moon cast gleams and shadows on the dunes and make them look soft and liquid, like waves of molten metal.
It was during one of these nights, when the moonlight bounced off of the dunes, that Mary caught a glimpse of her own face in the shimmering sand, polished like a silver mirror. She gaped at this complete stranger, whose large eyes shone in the most unusual shade of green, eyes so remarkable they overshadowed the rest of her features, the oval face surrounded by short wisps of hair the color of corn silk, the straight nose, the high cheekbones, the graceful arch of her eyebrows, the well contoured lips, tightly closed in defiant silence.
She stared for a while, incredulous, at the eerie reflection, her eyes growing wider to take in the unexpected image and then she smiled and thought:
"Oh, my God! I'm beautiful!"
Chapter 2
The Fire Maiden
Mary arrived home before the break of dawn. She tried to make as little noise as possible, knowing full well that she couldn't bypass aunt Lucille's superhuman scrutiny. The old lady had the senses and instincts of a mountain lion. As expected, her great-aunt was waiting for her in the kitchen, seated at the table with a prayer book in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, in order to press the point that her ailing old body had a very hard time coping with Mary's lapses in discipline.
She hadn't been crying, of course, because she secretly felt that at her age she was entitled to the privilege not to, but she liked to display that handkerchief in critical instances, as a symbol of her grave disappointment. The second she saw the dreaded piece of cloth, Mary knew she was in trouble.
Aunt Lucille sensed the girl slide quietly into the kitchen, but didn't turn her head. Her shoulders were so tense they loaded the whole room with an uncomfortable, almost palpable weight. Mary stopped and waited for Lucille's chastisement, which was usually doled out in installments: hurt, disappointment, anger, rejection, humiliation and submission, always in the same sequence. Mary had learned this pattern so well that she could anticipate her aunt's words, those words that tore at her heart with pangs of guilt. Lucille uttered a shrill sigh, and the young girl was almost relieved that her aunt had decided to start directly with installment three.
"Where have you been, Mary?!" her aunt wanted to raise her voice, but her throat had tightened up with all the tension she had accumulated in the last two hours, so the words came out in a strange, almost silent shriek. Mary paused to choose her words.
"Aunt Lucille, why didn't you tell me?" she asked, strangely poised.
Aunt Lucille turned and pinned her down with a probing stare, despite the discomfort she always experienced looking in those clear green eyes. There she saw the truth, which made her gasp and bring the handkerchief to her mouth.
"Oh, child, what have you done!" she muttered, terrified.
The mirror taboo was so ingrained in the old lady's heart that she considered Mary all but lost, her anger dissipated instantly and managing this crisis became her only priority. The girl tried to interject a comment, but her aunt was on a roll.
"Did you look in a mirror? Where on earth could you possibly find such a cursed thing around here? Did anybody see you? Mary, please tell me that nobody saw you! We can fix this, you know? Don't worry, your aunt Lucille wasn't born yesterday, I'll smooth things out with the Ladies' Circle, we're just going to have to be very careful," she went on, outlining the plan that had already started congealing in her mind.
"Why is it so wrong to look in a mirror, and why didn't you tell me my hair was... different?" Mary managed to overcome her aunt's verbal avalanche.
"Why, of all the things...! How could you....! The shame I have to endure....! How are we ever going to show our faces again...!" Lucille tried starting several of her favorite penalty sentences, but they all seemed to fall on deaf ears, except for the last one, which filled Mary with outrage.
"Aunt Lucille, I couldn't show my face in public before, how is this going to be any different? Why am I this way?" she asked her aunt directly, in a tone that required a response.
Lucille stopped for a second, glancing swiftly at the girl to assess her state of mind, and quickly calculated the pros and cons of telling the truth, weighing exactly how much of that truth she had to divulge in order to make this dreadful situation go away. She finally answered.
"We don't talk about these things! You are called fair, dear, or blond," she spoke softly, looking down, embarrassed.
"So what!?" Mary blurted, forgetting for a moment that aunt Lucille abhorred insolence.
The latter ignored the unseemly behavior, determined to be done with the awkward conversation as quickly as possible.
"It's been a long time since someone... like you has been born in this village, we were all hoping that..." she didn't continue, concerned she would hurt Mary's feelings if she completed her sentence.
How could she tell the poor child that the village had hoped, after so many generations, that God finally forgave their transgressions and the blond curse was extinguished from their kin. When Mary was born, the village fell into such despair that nobody got out of their homes for three days, and when they finally emerged, they did so dressed in mourning garments and consoled each other like after a terrible loss. Despite her conservative nature, Lucille had been so outraged by this display of injustice towards an innocent baby that she decided on the spot to adopt Mary and protect her with her life if need be. Ignorant heathens!
"What's wrong with being fair?" Mary asked, more curious than upset.
Nobody discussed it and few remembered its origins, suffice it to say that being blond was considered a bad omen in and of itself.
"I don't know exactly, dear!" she brushed Mary off. "Did anybody see you?" the great-aunt continued compulsively.
"No." Mary grumbled. "What difference does it make? Nobody looks at me anyway!"
The morning sunshine crept over the tops of the trees and bathed the young girl in a sea of golden light. Her face glowed radiant and her hair caught ablaze, surrounding her face with light, like a halo. Lucille didn't know how to react to this unearthly vision, so beautiful in its own way, the harbinger of doom. A chill went through her bones, she shuddered, then composed herself.
"Don't give it another thought, child. We'll discuss this later," the good lady changed the subject. "Whatever possessed you to seek your own reflection? Don't you know it is sinful and forbidden? Do you want to get banished?"
She would have liked to give Mary the standard speech about how God would be saddened to learn that she needed to feed her vanity and gaze at her own beauty, when He put so many loving hearts around her to reflect this gift with their friendship, appreciation and kindness, but then she remembered Mary's specific situation and reconsidered.
"I could, maybe, color my hair..." Mary suggested tentatively.
"Good graces, girl! Is there no end to your dissent? Whatever did I do to you to shame me so! Coloring your hair! How can you ever harbor such a horrible thought! What would people think?" Lucille built herself up into an outrage.
The conversation suddenly took a familiar turn and Mary found herself, wretchedly, facing installment one.
"What am I to do, then?" the young girl asked, and her aggrieved tone made her great-aunt dial down her indignation.
Lucille wrung her hands and started pacing to chase away her growing panic. What were they going to do, what was she going to do, what will people say, how was she going to explain this, and did she have to? She knew she did, there was no question about that, one of those nosy busybodies in the Ladies' Circle must already know something, she could swear they had a special sense for gossip, those ladies, and nothing moved in the village without their knowledge and consent.
The more she thought about it, the more she panicked, and a deep muscle shiver set in, against her will. What was to become of Mary, anyway? She couldn't help but jolt at the thought that there may be some truth to the blond curse, otherwise why would so many wise people hold it in such dread? One has to remember that traditions are usually born of common insight and who was she to judge the reasons behind the warnings of her ancestors?
How was this fair child born of raven haired parents anyway? Lucille's panic turned to sadness at the fate of Mary's mother, poor thing! Her entire life had fallen apart after the girl's birth, and nobody believed her innocent. The whole family repudiated her and she had to leave the village with only the clothes on her back and without her child. Lucille could only hope that God, in his kindness, found a place for Mary's mother, because the latter was a kind and saintly woman who deserved to be protected.
Lucille remembered all those stories she had heard when she was a child, of a maiden born of fire, whose locks were the color of gold and who was going to herald the end of time. Nobody ever elaborated on what that meant, exactly, and none of the children knew what to expect, after all there hadn't been a golden hair person among them for generations. When Mary was born, though, there was an instant recognition of the omen from everybody, young and old alike. There was no doubt whatsoever that she was the fire maiden and since she'd already arrived into the world, there was nothing anyone could do to stop the reckoning.
The old lady shook her head to chase away these superstitions, for she liked to think of herself as an enlightened woman, who doesn't let her mind be filled with this kind of nonsense, but she had to admit she never thought the fire maiden would be born in her lifetime, and couldn't help being constantly distracted by Mary's eerie appearance.
She finally looked at the girl, who stood there, wide eyed, waiting for her to answer, oh, those huge, clear eyes that put a shiver through the old lady's bones!
"We'll figure it out, Mary. Aunt Lucille will think of something, don't you worry about that! You should go to bed, child, you didn't sleep a wink," she remembered her motherly doting.
Mary turned around, obediently, and started up the stairs to her bedroom, and her faint halo of golden light lit up the darkness as she ascended.
Chapter 3
Matching Wits
As predicted, a couple of the most involved members of the ladies' circle showed up at Lucille's door within hours, with appropriately concerned looks on their faces and spelling trouble from a distance. Lucille crushed a few choice words between her teeth and remembered to smile. She sometimes wished that the mores of their society allowed women to express frustration in the same care free and irreverent way men did, but alas, she was a lady, and ladies never lost their composure. She took a deep breath to let irritation settle down, raised her chin and opened the door.
"Rosemary, Giselle, what a pleasure to see you so early! Everything is well, I hope?" she mimicked concern, at the same time managing to point out the etiquette gaffe of showing up at one's house so early in the morning.
