Duckling Ugly

by Neal Shusterman

  “Nearest I can figure is that the water doesn’t move time backward, it just stops it where it is. Whatever state you were when you drank, that’s where you stay.”

  “So I’ll always be sixteen?” I asked.

  He laughed. “It doesn’t stop you from growing, silly—just from growing old.”

  I didn’t quite get it, until I remembered something I had learned in science—that there’s a point for everyone where they stop growing up, and start growing old. “I think girls are supposed to keep growing until they’re about eighteen,” I said. “But boys grow until they’re about twenty.”

  “So there you go,” said Aaron. “We’ll be eighteen and twenty forever. Once we get there, of course.”

  I laughed. Even the sound of my laugh had changed, filtered through a much more shapely mouth. Aaron looked at me and shook his head. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just that for all those weeks, I tried to imagine what you’d look like after visiting the fountain. I never even came close to imagining you the way you look now.”

  “What if it hadn’t worked?” I asked him. “What if I had stayed ugly?”

  “Why would you want to think about something like that?” He grabbed me and tickled me in the ribs until I laughed, and forgot the question.

  During one of my weaving sessions with Harmony and her friends, I asked about children again. I wanted to find out for myself whether the women of De León truly didn’t mind being barren.

  “Nature gives life in many ways,” she said. “There can’t be birth without death.”

  Gertrude nodded. “It would be unnatural.”

  It seemed strange to me that she would say something like that—after all, there was nothing natural about eternal life, was there? But then, if the fountain was a natural place, perhaps it was. Perhaps it was just a hidden side of nature.

  “There are times I wish I could trade postmortality for the chance to have children,” said one of the younger women. “But that’s not a choice we have anymore. Postmortality is forever.”

  “Don’t you mean immortality?” I said.

  Harmony strung a fresh thread of gossamer into her loom before answering. “Abuelo might talk of immortality, but none of us is truly immortal, Cara. We can live forever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will.”

  “I…don’t understand.”

  “Flesh is still flesh,” she explained. “We do not wither, but we do wear. We bruise, we bleed, we break, and if it’s bad enough, we die.”

  “That’s why we have to be careful,” Gertrude said, and then went into the long tale of poor Virgil Meeks, who was gored by a mountain goat and died at the untimely age of 137.

  I thought about this. “It’s actually a blessing that the fountain doesn’t make us truly immortal,” I pointed out. “I mean, what’s the value of life if you can’t die? How could you ever appreciate anything? This way life is still precious.”

  “Postmortality,” like everything else in De León, was perfect—but there was still something about it that bothered me. “Postmortality is such an ugly word for such a wonderful thing,” I told them. “Shouldn’t it be called something better…like…oh, I don’t know…Eternessence.”

  They all chuckled and repeated the word, trying it on for size. They liked it. They liked me. Now I had not only their acceptance, but their approval as well.

  I had finally stepped into that great destiny Miss Leticia had spoken of—and my destiny was perfection. But what happens once you’ve arrived at that final destination? What then?

  I should have stayed content to be one of the beautiful people of De León, but each night, it wasn’t the sense of belonging that filled me as I drifted off to sleep. More and more, my mind was filled with the faces of the people back home in Flock’s Rest.

  “It’s natural to think about them at first,” Aaron said. “Don’t worry, it’ll pass.”

  I believed him, but I had my doubts.

  Abuelo called for me two weeks after my “unveiling.” We met in his great ballroom. His throne room, now filled with a hundred mirrors: a grand reflectorium. Those mirrors would stay uncovered until the next poor unnaturally ugly soul found his or her way under Abuelo’s wings—and I would probably be the one to lead the new arrival down the gauntlet of flowers, as Aaron had led me.

  Abuelo rose from his golden sofa and gave me a powerful hug. Then he walked around me, looking me over like I was a sculpture and he was Michelangelo.

  “Harmony does good work, no? That gossamer gown is the finest she’s made yet.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Much love went into it. She has a special place in her heart for you, I think. Like a mother.”

  That made me think of Momma. Was Harmony taking her place? Was it okay to let that happen? One thought led to another, and in an instant my head was flooded with Flock’s Rest.

  “You are restless,” Abuelo said. “I see this. And I also know why.”

  “You do?”

  “It is because you have not found your place here. You have not yet found a task that fits you. Am I right in thinking this?”

  I nodded, because he was half-right. I still hadn’t found a purpose among the people here. It seemed to me all the good jobs were taken.

  “I think I know something you can do for us. Something that will fill the coming years of your splendid eternessence.”

  I looked at him at the sound of my made-up word, a little embarrassed. He laughed when he saw my reaction, then he opened his arms as if to hug me, but instead spun around, and in the mirrors, his many reflections spun with him. “All this,” he said. “All you see in the valley, it is a world unto itself. Do you not think so?”

  I nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “a world needs a language, don’t you agree? The people here come from all over the world. We speak English now because we are here in America, but we may not always be here. What we need is a language of our own. The most beautiful language in the world, like diamonds rolling off the tips of our tongues. I would like you to create this language for us.”

  My breath was taken away by the request. Create an entire language? Spelling was one thing, but this? “I can’t do something like that!”

  “You can,” Abuelo said, with absolute certainty. “Because everything about you is beauty now. Your face, your voice, and the works of your hands. You will build us this language, and then you will teach us all to speak it…and to write it.” Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh bottle of ink, which he put into my hand. He had asked me to leave one wall of my cottage blank—now I understood why. But even so, creating a language was more than just inventing symbols and painting them on a wall. There was grammar and structure—languages grew over eons. No one person ever created an entire language.

  “But…it’ll take years.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “Hundreds, perhaps. And now that you have been cleansed by the waters of the fountain, you have all the time you need.”

  And I realized he was right. Any task could be completed if there was enough time! “Thank you, Abuelo,” I said, genuinely grateful, and excited about the task.

  Then he kissed me on the forehead and turned me loose to begin.

  I could have left Abuelo’s right then. I should have—I was inspired—I was ennobled by this monumental task…but I hesitated. Abuelo had always treated me with kindness and wisdom. If there was anyone I could ask about things, it was him.

  I turned back to him. “Abuelo, I’ve been thinking more and more about the people back home.”

  His face lost a bit of its eternescent glow. Immediately I was sorry I had said anything. “You have only one home,” he said. “Your true home. The place you came from—that is nothing more than the broken shell out of which you were born. A worthless thing to be ground into the earth and forgotten. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Abuelo.” I left, vowing never to bring it up to him again.
>
  I spent the rest of the day in my cottage, beginning to lay ink on the white wall. I wasn’t bound by the seven strokes of Chinese writing, or even the twenty-six letters of English—I could do anything. I tapped into my inner self and began to experiment with shapes and swirls of a brand-new alphabet—and it was beautiful! It was true when Abuelo had said everything about me was beauty now, right down to my brushstrokes. I created sweeping patterns of motion, carving up the white wall.

  Yet even in the joy and absolute freedom of this wonderful task, unwanted thoughts kept sparking up, like shocks from a faulty circuit. Thoughts like, Momma would be so proud of me, or Marisol would be so jealous, or Gerardo would be so impressed.

  I hurled my brush across the room in frustration. It hit the wall and left an orphan comma. I didn’t even know why I should care about Flock’s Rest. I had a new family, I had new friends. I had Aaron, who was better than Gerardo in every possible way, and no room in my life for enemies like Marisol.

  It’s natural, Aaron had said. It’ll pass.

  And so I took a deep breath and didn’t fight the thoughts. I let them come, waiting for the day they would go away. But they didn’t. Instead they grew like weeds in a garden—and as any gardener can tell you, the only way to get out deep weeds is to go to the root.

  “You can’t.”

  “Who says?”

  “You just can’t,” said Aaron, pacing the width of my cottage. “Those are the rules!”

  “I want a reason,” I told him. “If I had a reason, maybe I could accept it. Maybe.”

  Aaron threw up his hands. “Why can’t you be happy with what you have here? It’s more than you ever had in Flock’s Rest, more than you ever could have there!”

  “I don’t want to leave,” I told him. “I just want to visit. I want to go back and say good-bye. I owe my parents that much!”

  “No one leaves!” he insisted. “And if Abuelo found out you were talking about doing it, he’d be furious!”

  Aaron stormed away, then stormed right back. Frustration bordering on anger flared in his eyes. “I never should have told Abuelo to send you that note! I should have just forgotten about you, just like I forgot about everyone else!”

  It stung to hear him say something like that, and I thought maybe there was still some ugliness in De León after all.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment. “I didn’t mean it.” But the damage had already been done.

  Then I turned to see Harmony standing in the doorway. I was so used to leaving my door open, I hadn’t thought to close it.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  I nodded. I thought to pretend like nothing was happening here, but I realized that would be pointless. “So I guess you heard everything…”

  She sat down in one of the chairs Willem and Claude had made for me and gestured to two of the others. “Come sit down. Both of you.”

  I pulled up a chair, and Aaron reluctantly did, too.

  “Please talk some sense into her,” Aaron said.

  “It’s not sense she needs,” Harmony said. “It’s perspective.”

  I didn’t like being talked about in third person. “So are both of you going to run to Abuelo and tell him I was talking treason? Does he have a torture chamber beneath that mansion of his? Maybe something from the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “Of course not,” Harmony said with a calm to her voice that just made me feel even more tense.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever left this place?”

  “No!” said Aaron. “Never!”

  But Harmony put up her hand to silence him. She took a long moment to think before giving me her answer, and then she began a tale she probably hadn’t told for hundreds of years, if she’d ever told it at all. Her answer to my question was a thread as finely woven as her gossamer garments.

  “I was one of the first settlers with Abuelo,” she told us. “I’ve followed him from San Juan, to Tibet, to Lourdes, to this valley—and when the waters shift and the fountain moves elsewhere, I will follow Abuelo to that new place, too.

  “The first time, when the fountain started to fail and we prepared to journey from San Juan, I feared that Abuelo was wrong. The fountain had grown shallow, our little hidden rain forest was dying—and I was convinced that the fountain was drying up forever. Abuelo said he could feel the pull—he knew where the fountain would next appear, but I didn’t believe him…so I ran away. I went back to my family in the American colonies. And do you know what I found?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “My sister had died of old age. My nephews and nieces were all older than me. The world had moved on, and there was no place for me. I raced back to San Juan, as quickly as travel in those days allowed, certain that Abuelo and the others would be gone…and as I traveled, an illness overtook me. A fever that I was sure would kill me.”

  “A fever?” Aaron said. “That can’t be. Once you’ve been touched by the fountain, you can’t get sick—Abuelo told us so!”

  “There is one sickness we can get.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Harmony thought carefully about her answer. “Consumption,” she said—but by the look on her face, I had a feeling it wasn’t the same kind of consumption you read about in medical books. “Luck was with me,” Harmony said. “When I arrived at our little settlement, they hadn’t yet left. My illness passed, Abuelo forgave me, and we sailed across the sea. I made the harsh journey with them across the Himalayas, and I was the first one to see the new valley. Once I saw the valley, I knew that I would never doubt Abuelo again.”

  “I’ve only been here a few months,” I reminded her. “The world may have moved on for you, but not for me. My family is still there.”

  “That is true,” Harmony said. “But it still doesn’t mean there’s a place for you in that world.”

  “I don’t want a place,” I told her. “I only want to say good-bye.”

  “Even so, it won’t bring you any happiness.”

  Then Aaron spoke up again, more gently this time. “I don’t want you to go. It’s a hard journey, and a hundred things can go wrong.” He took both my hands. “In a while you won’t care anyway,” he said. “That place, and those people, will feel like part of someone else’s life.”

  I knew he was right about that. “Maybe that’s why I want to do it now.”

  Harmony considered it, and Aaron didn’t seem so much angry now as scared—scared for me, or maybe just scared of losing me. “If I’m ever going to be happy here,” I told him, “I have to see my family one last time.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was more to it. It wasn’t just that I wanted to see them. I wanted them to see me.

  Finally Harmony sighed. “If you insist on going, we can’t stop you. All we can do is warn you. Going back will not be what you expect. Things won’t go any better for you than they did for me.”

  I thought about her story. She had traveled a much greater distance, and at a time when travel was much more difficult. She had left with no plan to return, but I would have a plan.

  “Two days to get there, one day to say my good-byes, and two days to get back,” I told them. “I’ll be gone for five days, that’s all.”

  “A lot can happen in five days,” said Aaron, but there was a sad resignation in his voice, because he knew I had made up my mind.

  I planned to go on foot, but Aaron, as opposed as he was to it, had a better idea.

  “If you go on foot, you could freeze to death. We don’t have any clothes here warm enough to see you over the mountains. It’s best if the monks take you.”

  “But don’t they serve Abuelo? They’ll never do it!”

  He gave me a halfhearted grin. “The monks won’t ever know they’re taking you.”

  He explained how, once a week, a group of monks arrived on a hillside to the east to deliver supplies and take away the garbage that could not be composted.

  On this particular week, I would be part of the
garbage.

  Harmony went to visit Abuelo that morning, to make sure he was distracted and his eyes weren’t on the hillside as Aaron and I climbed out of the southern tip of the valley. I took off my gossamer gown and dressed in something more “earthly” for my journey, and Aaron brought along a burlap sack. Anyone who saw us making our way up the hillside would think we were just taking out the garbage.

  This spot to the east and high up the hillside was the only place where mountains didn’t rise too high to climb. Grass still grew there, but it wasn’t as lush and green as it was lower in the valley. This grass had turned yellow, and spots were turning brown. As I looked back into the valley, I could see a thin rim of yellow grass that circled the entire valley of De León. I had never noticed it before. Aaron knelt down and rubbed his hands across the yellow grass, a look of worry on his face.

  “This is a bad idea,” he told me, in a last-ditch effort to change my mind. “No one in Flock’s Rest deserves your good-byes.”

  “Wouldn’t you have wanted to say good-bye to your parents?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said—but I could tell he wasn’t sure if he meant it.

  At the crest of the hill were a dozen sacks, like the one Aaron carried, all filled with the trash of De León.

  “Five days,” Aaron reminded me. “That’s all you get.” He opened his sack to show me that sewn to the inside were furry animal skins that, unfortunately, still had some of the animal attached. “I know it’s not pretty,” he said, “but it’s the best I could do on such short notice. It’ll keep you warm for the journey.” It didn’t look all that different from the bag of roadkill I had once carried out from my room.

  “Thank you,” I told him. It was all I could do not to lose my breakfast.

  “You should wear a heavy winter coat when you come back,” he told me. Then, looking around to make sure no one had followed us up, he gave me instructions for my return. “Be careful that no one from the outside world sees you. Come the way you did the first time—follow the path behind the old billboard.”