Giselle and a Nightly Man-Eating Sorority

Giselle

Months later, I woke from my burial to hear Myrtha singing while sitting by the fountain. She was singing a mournful dirge in Spanish, and, having flunked high school Spanish, I couldn't make out a word of what she was saying. French was more my strong suit, it being the primary language of the classical ballet culture I had been steeped in since toddlerhood.

I crept over to Myrtha and sat next to her. "What are you singing?" I asked her. She managed a reluctant smile. "A lullaby. I was reminiscing for my childhood in the convent," she said. "Ah," I replied. Myrtha had told me multiple times about her upbringing and heritage, as I had told her mine.

"What's troubling you?" I asked. Myrtha turned away. "It's really stupid. I-" I moved closer to her. "Try me," I said. "Even with my painted mask, you can still see the real and monstrous me where the veneer is cracked and peeling like warped pottery," Myrtha murmured, gazing wistfully at her reflection in the fountain.

"What's wrong with that?" I wanted to know. "All my life I've been just a shadow of who I really was, even when I sought liberation on the shores of Britannia. The closest thing I ever had to love was some sailor who abandoned me. I feel like I've been hiding the ugly parts of who and what I really was because I was afraid that I'd be less valuable, less lovable," said Myrtha. "That's not the you I see at all, majesty," I said. "You're always so...clear. And regal. Not completely ugly for an undead woman, either. You always seem to know exactly what you want and what to do, and I love that about you."

"Zelle. Your view of me, and the world in general is somewhat tinted by your rose-colored glasses. Look at me now," said Myrtha, turning her face toward me. The face I knew her by was gone for an instant and replaced by a face rotted away into foulness and untimely ash, replete with sunken sockets of hollow bone, and eyes shrewd with malice that glimmered gold as stars.

Hers was a face that gave truth to her aforementioned claims of the lurid bloodshed she wreaked and of being a sexually fluid debaucher beneath a mask of painted colors, wearing the stolen hearts she had conquered like an iron cross over a cage of bone in her chest. Her cavernous ribs surely rang hollow as a gong from lack of heartbeat like she had once claimed.

Despite all this, I couldn't turn away. Her face returned to its usual appearance. "Do you see me? Do you still love me now? Or worship me as your sovereign queen? If so, you're a fool, and a blind one at that," cried Myrtha thunderously. I laid a hand over hers, steadying her tremorous sigh. "I have never seen anyone or felt anything clearer in all my life," I declared. Myrtha gazed at me in a daze of raptured shock. "Even while I was dancing. I-" I began to say, but I couldn't find the words. I couldn't describe how I felt. Seeing Myrtha watch me in a perplexed but fascinated way made me want to hold her all the closer.

I suddenly kissed her, and she kissed me back. Her mauve-lipsticked lips grazed against mine. I kissed her as if crushing the slightest shadow of doubt of what exactly she meant to me into finely ground sand. I felt like I had swallowed a liquid flame that engulfed my throat. We continued to kiss, tasting each other's breath like some elixir of the life neither one of us possessed. It wasn't until dawn breached the clearing that either of us began to pull away.