Ugly Girl Read online

  Lane took in my twisted expression and dropped to her knees. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  “It hurts! It’s burning all over again! The air, it’s… Ah!” My leg started twitching on its own, and I watched with horror as the black puncture wounds began to seep green pus down my calf.

  “Bastien! Did you get the guérit root?”

  Reyn paused his lecture long enough for Bastien to answer from the kitchen. “Yeah. It’s right here.” He entered the room, grimacing at the state of my leg. “Oh! I didn’t realize it spread that deep already. I worked as quick as I could, but the root’s hard to come by. I went through five healers before I found one with any to spare. Paid way too much for it, too.”

  “Are you actually complaining about saving the princess’ life?” Lane asked imperiously, her nose in the air. She was always so chill with me; it was surreal to see her shaming Bastien like a true royal.

  Bastien shot Lane a hard look that told me he wanted to bite back, but knew he was in no position to. “Here you are, Duchess.” He pulled a gnarled piece of what looked like ginger out of his pocket and handed it to Remy, who was afraid to look at me.

  “Normally I’d have a patient just eat the root, but the poison’s been in you too long. You’ll have to eat part, and I’ll have to cut open your wound to put the rest directly into the bite.”

  “What? Cut me open? Are you sure it has to go down like that? I like the eating it idea.” I knew my voice was giving away my dread. Images of medieval bloodletting and other various torturous medical practices flashed in my mind. I shot Lane a look of sheer panic, but she only returned it to me amplified.

  “You’re cutting my baby open?” Her eyes were wide with fear, taking in Remy’s grim nod with dread. When she turned back to me, her voice tried to be light and reassuring, fooling no one. “It’s alright, sweetie. If that’s what Remy says he needs to do, then that’s what’ll happen. It’s nothing as scary as what you’re thinking.”

  “It’ll hurt,” Remy warned me, obscuring Lane’s pep talk. “There’s no getting around that. I’ll need you absolutely still, too.” He mimed to Bastien to hold me down, but Bastien couldn’t understand what he wanted. Poor guy. I couldn’t imagine trying to practice medicine without being able to speak.

  I spoke through gritted teeth as the heat spread up to my knee, making the joint immobile and adding a new layer of fear to my already panicked state. “No. I can hold still on my own.”

  Bastien addressed Remy, confused. “What do you need me to do?”

  When Remy insisted I tell him, I groaned, wishing I could disappear. It wouldn’t be fair to Remy if I only translated the things I wanted him to say. That would make me just as evil as Morgan, cutting off his words when they displeased me. “Bastien, Remy has to cut my leg open to put part of the root in. There’s no time to numb the area, so he wants you to hold my leg still while he… while he c-cuts me open. But you don’t h-have to stay. You can go.” My voice quaked on the last few notes.

  Though neither of us wanted him to, Bastien softened. “Hey, yeah. Of course I’ll stay.” His shoulders relaxed as he let the fight he always had on standby die inside of him, so he didn’t bite at me while I was already so thoroughly down. Lane whimpered as Remy got out his tools. I tried to look in the pouch to see what sort of torture devices he had to use on me, but Bastien blocked my view with his wide shoulders as he knelt next to me atop the mattress. “Look at me and nothing else. You don’t need to see what he’s got.”

  “Princess Rosalie, can you ask Reyn to start boiling the root with a sliver of ginseng? I’m giving him half, and he needs to boil it, and then mash it in with some water. Then he needs to strain it so you can drink the tea.”

  I explained everything to Reyn, who took a few seconds of being impressed by me before realizing I was speaking on behalf of Remy. “Ah. Yes, sir. Right away.” Reyn all but ran into the kitchen with half the root and set to work.

  Lane sat on my other side on the bed, holding my hand and conjuring up the worst fake smile I’d seen in a while. “It’ll be fine, Ro. Just a few minutes of a little sting, and that’s all.”

  “Thanks.” I tried to offer a smile to her. “I appreciate the obvious lie and the spirit in which it’s given. After this, can I get my real clothes back?”

  “Of course. I’m sure Bastien doesn’t mind lending you his shirt, though. It’s the very least he can do after letting those snakes bite you.” She shot him a glare, which he ignored.

  I heard Remy sharpening something metal, and I wanted to see what it was. There was a sick fascination to identifying the weapon that would be used to cut me up, but Bastien blocked me again. He shook his head and moved off the bed, making sure to cup his hand to the side of my face so I wouldn’t look at whatever Remy was doing. “Let’s get you situated. Here, lie down.” He motioned for Lane to move, and she scurried off the head of the bed. The two were careful as they turned my body and lowered my head to the mattress. I bit back a scream when Bastien moved my legs to rest on the straw mattress, and worried how much worse the pain would get when it wasn’t gentle fingers, but a knife touching me instead. “Oh, man. It’s turning blacker. And is the swelling getting worse? Remy, the black is spreading! Hurry!”

  “We need Reyn in here to catch the snakes when they spill out. The root will kill most of them, but it won’t do to let one of us get bit when you’ve got the only guérit root for miles inside of you.”

  “Wait, what? When the snakes spill out of where? Are there snakes in your house, too?”

  Remy put words to what Lane and Bastien were afraid to say. “The snakes are inside of you. The sadique snake bites its prey and leaves behind a few of its eggs to plant themselves inside the body. As the black spreads, so do the offspring. Once they reach your heart, you die. We’ve got time, but they have to come out now. Otherwise they’ll fill your body until it bursts, and your body gives birth to hundreds of sadique babies.” Then Remy paused, and I could tell he was talking to himself. “No, it won’t do to find the Compass and then lose her to something like this. It has to be now. Just ignore her screams when they come.”

  I’d been cool through an awful lot, but this set me back big time. I went from scared to full-on freak-out. I started slapping my body all over to kill the snakes hatching inside of me, crying out when the slightest movement caused agony to rip through my left leg. “Get them out of me! Get the snakes out! Hurry!”

  “I’m mashing!” Reyn called into the room to inform us of his progress. I could tell he was going as quickly as he could.

  Bastien cast Remy a look of deep disapproval. “Did you tell her? Why? She doesn’t need to know all that.”

  Remy nodded with his head bowed and kept sharpening his tools of certain death. He stood and retrieved a pair of thick leather gloves from a chest near the wall, and I caught a glimpse of a scalpel that was too large to be precise. “Mom, make it be over!” I begged, not caring how pathetic I sounded. My imagination was working overtime, picturing millions of snake babies worming their way through my arteries and bursting the pipes that kept me scoring goals and, you know, living.

  Lane shushed me and centered my head on the pillow, positioning herself above me so that when I looked up, all I saw was her upside-down face. Her tears dripped down on me, and I realized how much my fear was scaring her. Whenever I hurt myself, she cried worse than I ever did. When I was bummed about failing a test, she took it even harder. She was my biggest advocate, and aunt though she was, I saw in her green eyes that she was my mother, through and through. I took a deep breath and tried to let my body go limp as her tears peppered my face. “I’m sorry, honey,” she hiccupped as she wiped them away.

  Reyn came in with the tea that smelled like hot, fishy garbage. Bastien nearly got himself slapped when he straddled my thighs, but then he leaned down and wrapped his arms around me in a gentle hug so he could lift me slowly for the tea. Reyn pressed the cup to my lips as Bastien held me to his chest. I didn’t w
ant to feel comforted by Bastien, but that’s exactly what settled in my soul as the tea filled me with its acrid taste. I downed half the cup like a champ before Reyn pulled it away and took a sip. Bastien did the same, as did Remy and Lane. “It’s in case we get bit when the snakes… well, you know,” Reyn explained. “I boiled the water, so whatever poison’s in it hopefully won’t get into us.”

  Remy’s hand on Bastien’s arm told him what I already knew. It was hammertime. Bastien called over his shoulder, “Abraham Lincoln! It’s dinnertime.” He whistled for my bear, and Hamish followed in behind him. “Tell Hamish to wait in the living room. I don’t know if the snakes will try to eat him, or if he can handle the poison. Not worth the risk.”

  “Hamish, wait in the living room. I’ll be right out, okay?”

  Hamish was furious, yelling at everyone in the room just where they could shove their nuts as he stormed out. Abraham Lincoln was given a sip of the tea, and got ready for the dinner of a lifetime when I explained what was about to happen. Bastien laid me down again, only this time he remained on top of me, his heavy bulk crushing me down into the mattress so I couldn’t move much. Reyn donned a pair of long leather gloves that looked like the kind welders used.

  Lane’s upside-down face gave me a forced smile that cleared out the medical chatter I could hear Remy saying to himself as he poised his weapon. “Laney?” I whispered. “Will you sing the song for me?”

  Lane started crying afresh, nodding with a relieved grin that I wouldn’t stay mad at her forever, and that even though we were in a different world, we were still us. “Steady, Bastien. She’s stronger than she looks. Make sure you hold her still.”

  “On it.” His body tightened around me, arms and legs locking around me to make sure I didn’t spasm and rip my leg open farther than could be sewn up. He smelled like Christmas, replacing the stench of the hot dumpster tea with presents and bows and colorful sugar cookies that tasted boring but looked gorgeous. He pressed his lips to my cheek, then shifted so our temples rested against each other in a silent apology and forgiveness. It reset our constant battle to a state of temporary surrender, which apparently we needed at least once a day. “I’ve got you,” he promised me in a whisper that, despite everything, actually did reassure me.

  “Please don’t leave me,” I begged him. My voice was barely audible through my shame – I would rather risk him getting bit than have to suffer alone through a surgery with no anesthesia.

  “I’m not going anywhere, little Daisy,” he promised.

  Lane started singing my favorite song just before the knife cut into me with delicate precision. “‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long. And wouldn’t it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong.’”

  I stopped breathing and held in my oxygen as long as it would stay inside of me. I knew as soon as I let the breath go, the pain would be too much to muscle my way through.

  “‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new? And after having spent the day together, hold each other close the whole night through…’”

  That was all the air I had in me, and when I sucked in the next lungful, agony tore at my insides, announcing my white-hot torture to the room. I screamed, and Lane’s hand went over my mouth to stifle the noise. I tried not to thrash around, but Bastien’s grunts informed me that I was unsuccessful in getting my body to obey. The knife burned as Remy worked, tearing through my flesh as if it was butter.

  When the scalpel was moved away, I felt something ripping at my skin from the inside and spilling out of the incision in barfy ribbons. I thought it was blood, but when Abraham Lincoln started slurping, his fear for me replaced by the joy of gluttony, I realized the snakes were starting to pour out of my calf. I screamed at the pain. I howled for the horror. I was past the point of being able to cry – the pain too intense for mere tears. My leg wasn’t just on fire anymore, it was emptying itself of acid that felt like it burned as it left me. It wasn’t just my leg, but something in my stomach started pulling downward from its hidey hole behind my belly button. I wanted to scratch it out of me, but Bastien was ready. He tightened the wrestling hold he had on me, squishing the air from my body as the snakes poured out of my opened leg like hot spaghetti.

  My breath came in barely-there hiccupped bursts of life, and went out of me in exhales of endless torment. I could hear Abraham Lincoln slurping his dinner of snakes that had been hatched and grown inside of my leg. I was too grossed out to put anything in proper order of freak-out in my mind. Lane’s tears rained down on my face, reminding me not to pass out.

  The snakes finally seemed to be dwindling down, slithering out two by two, and then dropping out one at a time right into Abraham Lincoln’s open mouth. I sobbed at getting a reprieve, and I struggled against Bastien for a full breath. He only moved enough to let my arms have a little motion. “Hold onto me. The worst part’s still coming, sweetheart.”

  “What?” was all I eked out before Remy dug into my open wound with his hand. He spread the paste made from the root into the long slice to make sure anything still in my body that shouldn’t be there would die. I felt him touch my bone and screamed myself hoarse as Bastien held me in place.

  My fingers dug into Bastien’s sides, taking a little of my torture out on his skin. He took it like a champ, gritting his teeth as I raked at his flesh under his shirt that had hiked up in our wrestling match. “That’s right,” he hissed. “Dig a little deeper, Daisy. I know it hurts. Make me feel it.” He kissed my cheek again, wincing when I started clawing harder. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have dropped you in there. I was trying to keep you hidden. I wasn’t thinking. I do that sometimes – get the job done without thinking it all the way through.”

  I thrashed beneath him, punching him in the side. I didn’t have enough wind-up to really do any damage, but it was enough to deliver a decent sting. He let out a few “oof”s as he permitted me to beat on him while Remy sewed me up and wrapped the wound. The gash felt about a million miles wide, but Remy hid it beneath the wrapping. Bastien’s hold on me softened slowly through the whole ordeal. He let me hit him as many times as I wanted while the pain still rippled through my whole body in haunting echoes of “this’ll never be over.”

  When my arms exhausted themselves punching his sides, I brought my tired hands up and slapped him across the face. “You hurt me!” I shouted at him, my voice hoarse from all the screaming. “You threw me down there and didn’t care what happened! All because you were embarrassed I saw your scars and heard about your army life. Well now I have a scar! Are you happy?”

  Bastien had let me punch him without hesitation, but the slap across the face seemed to really hurt him. My intent was to smack a little sense back into him, but really it smacked a little sense into me. He watched my sadness with wide eyes and finally saw the depths of the damage he did when he went off on people and shut down like that. Though I’d just been cut open and sewn back up, Bastien was the thing that wounded me. He was the thing that made me bleed.

  My mouth fell open, appalled at my own behavior. That he’d brought out the worst in me wasn’t such a big surprise. That I’d let someone get to me so much that I’d lashed out certainly was. Bastien was careless with me, so I slapped him. I didn’t recognize myself. “I… I… I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry,” I said quietly, as if we were the only two in the room, which we most certainly were not.

  He leaned in, breaking eye contact at the last possible second, to let me get the full effect of his eyes that seemed to see straight through my hesitation for what it was – attraction. “Don’t let me get away with it,” he whispered.

  “You hurt me, Bastien. You scared me and you let me get hurt on your watch, in your house. I’ll have a scar now because of you. It shouldn’t work like that. You shouldn’t be the thing that hurts me – not when you were supposed to rescue me.”

  Bastien kept his mouth shut through t
he defiance in his eyes, and nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  My fight finally went out of me, and my sweaty arms slumped to the sides, my chest heaving like I’d just run a marathon. I had plenty to hurl at him, but no energy with which to make my fury better known.

  His legs uncurled from my thighs as he leaned to my right. He slid between me and the wall on the bed, slumping in relief that the worst was over. He traced the slope of my cheek with his rough thumb, looking at my sweaty face as if I was something precious and delicate. I’d never had a man look at me like that before. He kissed my cheek again, knowing that was the most I would permit him to do. Then he growled to the others, “Get out of here. She needs to rest.”

  Reyn was still coming down from the adrenaline high of watching snakes birth from a human, and then seeing his BFF crumple like a piece of paper with a girly love note written across his chest in bold letters. He helped Remy pack up his tools so I didn’t have to see the things that would only add more colorful illustrations to my nightmares. Then he helped Lane up off the floor, who was sobbing as she cleaned up my blood using a fallen sheet on the wood floor. When I’d been in grade school, I’d thrown up all over the kitchen, unable to make it to the bathroom in time. Flashbacks flooded me of Lane in the exact same position, mopping up my mess while worried tears cascaded down her cheeks in my honor. I’d known then and I knew now – the woman who cleans up your puke is your true mother. Though I still had questions for her, seeing her gather up the bloody sheet with nothing but love in her eyes for me, I knew I was hers, and she was mine. Mine, all mine.

  Bastien stood and lifted me only the once, so a fresh sheet could be laid down for me. “Go on out and get some air. I’ll watch her.”

  Lane hiccupped through her response, her face still wet and a sob on her lips. “Thanks. Not out of your sight.” Lane exited in Reyn’s arms, his handkerchief clutched to her face as he led her on wobbly legs to the kitchen.