The Belles

by Dhonielle Clayton

  “Are you ready?” she asks.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’ll be in the main salon.”

  I open the back of the balloon, and fish the note from the compartment. My fingers tremble with curiosity, confusion, and excitement. I open the privacy casing, breaking the seal.

  Newest Favorite Belle,

  Make sure not to turn anyone purple.

  Good luck.

  Yours,

  Auguste

  I laugh, and read his words three more times. Bree returns to the room.

  “Lady Camellia,” she says. “What is so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I say, holding the paper to my chest.

  “Her Royal Highness Princess Sabine has arrived. She is in the main salon.”

  I turn around. “Then let’s go.”

  I tuck the tiny paper inside my Belle-book, then press a hand to my chest, trying to get my heart to slow. The cool surface of the mirror brushes against my skin. I take a deep breath, hold it, then walk to the main salon.

  I am ready.

  Ivy sits at the edge of the room. She almost blends in with the room’s trappings, like a flower arrangement. On a puffy cream settee is Princess Sabine Rotenberg. Gray and white strands snake through dark hair. An attendant announces me. The woman whips around and leaps off the couch.

  “Lady Camellia.” She takes my hands and sweeps me into a hug. She smells of rose water.

  “Your Highness.” I pull back, then discreetly wipe my arms and face. Powder covers my hands.

  “My apologies. I’ve been waiting so long to see you, I had to resort to covering my skin to hide the gray, and I’m even wearing eye films. They’re so painful, you know. I almost broke down and went to the Chrysanthemum Teahouse. As I’ve gotten older, it pushes through so much harder.” She pats her forehead with a handkerchief. “It’s disgusting, like in the old days. People would walk around court looking like rotten chicken ready for frying.” She thrusts the beauty key into my hands. “And this, before I forget.”

  “Yes, and thank you.”

  Bree approaches, takes the key, and fits it into a slot on a velveteen board.

  Princess Sabine is strikingly beautiful, despite the tiniest hints of gray. Sand-colored skin, a perfectly sloped nose, and a rosebud mouth. She’s wearing one of the Fashion Minister’s new “vivant” day dresses that vary their color every few seconds. Hers changes from gossamer to quicksilver to a stormy blue. She motions at one of her attendants, who sets up an easel with a beauty board on it. The surface is covered with courtier portraits and tiny beads from broken beauty-scopes. I run my fingers across the color swatches she’s tacked onto it, and the rouge smudges smeared at the corners.

  “I want you to combine a few looks,” she says, settling back on the settee. Bree brings out the tea tray, and she takes a cup. “My beauty consultants mocked this up. They are certain the next beauty trend will be textured hair-towers, heart-shaped faces and lips—like a matched set—and freckled skin. Don’t you just love freckles? And I want my waist as small as possible within the queen’s limits. After my last child, deeper body work around my middle just doesn’t settle for long. One slice of bread too many sends me back to the Belles quite often.”

  I nod, my head filing each request into my memory. “I plan to bring round waists back into fashion as they were last year.”

  She bites her bottom lip. “I’ll try that next time. For now, more freckles. Did I say that already? They’re so youthful. On my nose, especially, like little ants on a log. Could you get rid of some of these wrinkles, too? And I’d like my nose smaller this time around. Don’t overdo it. One time, last year, a Belle made my nose so small I could hardly breathe. I should’ve never gone to anyone other than Ivy, but I was in a pinch. I had a gala. I felt light-headed for a whole week. I had to be carried around in a palanquin. I got so tired of hiring the man power to lift me.” She giggles.

  “Your nose shape fits well with your face. The heart shape—”

  “You’re so kind.” She pats my hand and gulps down the rest of her tea. “Do they train you all to lie so well?” She waves the empty teacup in her hands for a servant to take away. “So, I’d like to use my beauty token for the waist adjustment, and I’ll pay spintria for the other services. I’d like an eye color close to yours. I know it’s impossible to have your amber-colored eyes, but let’s try, shall we? And let’s start my blond transformation. Dark blond, then I’ll go gradually lighter to white as the snow comes—yes, yes—that’s what I’ll do. My ladies will be amused. The newsies might enjoy the transformation. I’ll get more press. Maybe another feature in the scopes—or better yet, a scope and a profile in the Dulce pamphlet. My husband likes darker hair, but I don’t care.” She stands, and marches over to the wall mirror. “Also, if we have time, could you fix my lips? They’re looking very fishlike today.”

  “Are you sure you want all of these things done at once? What about the pain?”

  “Of course.” She scoffs, then eyes me. “If I could have you rebuild me from the bones out, I’d do that as well. I can tolerate it. I’m strong.” Her eyes glaze over with tears. “I’d do anything to be beautiful.”

  Her statement thuds inside my chest. Heavy. Maman’s words echo inside me: The people of Orléans hate the way they look.

  She takes a deep breath and the tears vanish.

  “We won’t need all of that. We could just touch up your skin and—”

  “Stop lying to me,” she shouts. “I know what I look like.”

  Movement in the room freezes. I bristle and look over at Ivy. She clutches her hands together in a tight, tense squeeze. I don’t take a breath. Why did I question a client again?

  The princess places a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to yell. It’s just, when I don’t look my best, I don’t feel settled inside or like my true self.” She sits up straight. “You can soften my temper while you’re at it, too. I need to become nicer. Sweeter. I’m a hard edge these days.” She lets out a sigh. “I’m ready. I’m looking forward to our time together.” She snaps at her attendants, and they lead her off to the bathing onsen. Nerves flutter inside me like bayou fireflies.

  “Just do what you’re told,” I whisper to myself, “and everything will be fine.”

  24

  I flip over the one large hourglass on the mantel in the treatment room. Sand swirls from one end to the other, keeping track of the beauty-treatment time.

  I take deep breaths. Princess Sabine lies underneath a lace cloth. The House Orléans crest is all she wears—a tiny emerald serpent swallowing a chrysanthemum over her identification tattoo. This indicates she’s a direct relative of the queen. The pendant sits on her bare collarbone.

  Sabine is the first of many. There will be more men and women waiting to be changed, anticipating perfect results. There are expectations: to be better than Amber, to please Sophia, to satisfy the queen despite being her second choice, to make the kingdom fall in love with me. The pressure curls around me like the serpent on Princess Sabine’s emblem. I gaze down at her body. Her desires parade through my mind like a series of télétrope images—each more complex than the next.

  Servants wheel in tiered trays bursting with skin-color pastilles and rouge pots, brushes and combs and barrel irons, tonics and creams, bei-powder bundles, waxes and perfumes, measuring rods and metal instruments, and sharpened kohl pencils. My beauty caisse is set up behind me, fanned open so the medley of instruments inside twinkle in the subtle light. I think of Maman’s Belle-book in its base, comforted by the thought that a piece of her is nearby.

  Tiny clusters of beauty-lanterns drift over the princess like night stars. Perfect beads of light reveal the cherry red of her fluttering eyes and the gray of her skin. They highlight what needs to be done.

  I look at the beauty board sitting on an easel. Color smudges streak across it and display Princess Sabine’s chosen skin, hair, and eye color palette, and bodily proportions.

  Ivy wat
ches my every movement. I try to be perfect.

  “Princess Sabine.” I lean forward. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, yes.”

  I fold back the lace and expose her graying legs. Their bodies always fade before their faces. At the end of each month, the skin color drifts away like dust caught in the wind.

  “Please remove the hair from the princess’s legs,” I direct a servant.

  “Yes, miss,” she replies, coating Sabine’s legs with honey-scented wax.

  After my client is hairless, I glide a kohl pencil over her skin like it’s parchment. Lines of symmetry run through the body like the architecture of beautiful buildings. It creates the perfect harmony preferred by the Goddess of Beauty.

  I mark Sabine’s breasts so they will be enlarged to the size of snowmelons, and move the pencil down her stomach, making a series of hachure lines so as to smooth out the small depressions. I draw circles on her waist and legs to indicate spots to polish. I place a measuring lace on her face, and my hand shakes as I draw contour lines along the fabric onto the woman’s nose and forehead and cheeks.

  I take bei-powder bundles from my beauty caisse and shake them over her. The white flakes coat her like flour. I use a paintbrush to spread the powder, a trick Maman taught me, to coat it evenly.

  “Very nice,” Ivy whispers.

  Her compliment spurs me forward.

  The deep lines of the kohl pencil on Sabine’s stomach show beneath the powder like avenues covered with snow. I step forward. I pull out her arms and cross them over her chest. The empty weight of them feels like Maman’s did before she died.

  “Pastilles, please,” I say.

  Bree wheels over a cart of chafing dishes. Triangular color blocks sit on tiered trays like a series of sugary petit-cakes. They melt in glass skin-tone pots creating every pigment imaginable: ink black, sandy beige, eggshell white, desert brown, lemony cream, soft sable, brown sugar syrup, and more.

  I use a flat blade from my beauty caisse to cut a slice from the ivory-white and sandy-beige blocks. I also take a wedge of the soft sable for the freckles. Bree hands me an empty pigment pot. I swirl the colors together until they blend into a richness that matches a sliced almond. I spread a smudge across her arm. It seeps into the dry and wrinkled folds.

  I identify all the smaller pigments—the rich browns and tans and whites—that help make the hue bright and uniform. Maman used to make me tell her all the pigments that made up the deep red of an apple, or the brown of a peanut. It was her nightly test for me while I was studying skin transformations. While the other mothers forced my sisters to trace their cursive letters, I worked on shades and spectrums. The core of beauty is color, Maman used to remind me when I complained about her exercises.

  All three arcana wake up inside me. I soften her temper. I push the color down into her skin. I smooth away the tiny wrinkles.

  The woman’s soft moans echo off the walls.

  I wipe off the paste. The color climbs over the woman’s body, changing it from pale gray to soft beige with yellowy undertones.

  Ivy circles me and watches over my shoulder. “Ask her if she’s all right,” she whispers.

  “Princess Sabine, how are you doing?” I say close to her ear.

  She grimaces out a reply. “I’ll be fine.”

  I use another flat blade over her stomach.

  She shifts a little. I close my eyes, picturing her body. I think of her hips as a pair of overly frosted crème-cakes. The tool scrapes away the layers. She squirms and sighs. I lift the blade and start to ask her if we should leave her natural shape intact. But Ivy’s hand finds mine. “Keep going,” she whispers.

  I rub the instrument across her stomach again, and it flattens with each stroke, the extra skin and bulk beneath it melting away, her waist growing smaller.

  She grips the edges of the table. Her knuckles whiten. I quicken my strokes. I chip away at the pelvic bones, just a pinch on each side.

  She cries out. “It’s much more painful than usual. I can’t tolerate it.”

  “More Belle-rose tea should help.” I wave for Bree. She approaches with a cup and helps to sit Princess Sabine up. Her stomach and hips glow red in the subtle darkness. She lifts the facial mesh and gulps down the tea. “Why can’t the Royal Apothecary give us something stronger to withstand it?”

  My brain is a fog of nerves and worries. “I . . . I—”

  Ivy steps forward. “Princess Sabine. It’s me, Ivy.”

  “Oh—Ivy.”

  “Yes.” Ivy’s soft voice puts Princess Sabine at ease. “Anything stronger than Belle-rose numbs the blood, Your Highness. The arcana will not work.” She holds the base of Princess Sabine’s teacup, helping her take larger sips. “I put Belle-rose elixir in this pot. It’ll be a bit stronger for you.”

  The princess’s eyelids droop, and her mouth softens. “Yes, I suppose that worked. I feel much better.” Bree helps her lie back down.

  “Quickly now,” Ivy says to me. “You’re taking too long—hesitating and perfecting too much. They can’t tolerate the pain in long increments, and it isn’t good for you, either.”

  “But she said she wanted it all at once.”

  “They always want it all at once, but we have to guide them. We have to be wiser.”

  I nod and look up at the hourglass. Almost time for my next appointment.

  In my head the rest of her beauty requests arrange like a checklist:

  New nose

  Smooth wrinkles

  New eye color

  Brighten skin color

  New mouth shape

  Freckles

  Smaller waist

  Lighten the hair

  Soften the hair texture

  Sweeten her disposition

  Sweat drips down my brow. I promised Sabine I’d get it all done. My heart accelerates. My hands wobble. She clenches her teeth. The grinding is loud enough for me to hear.

  I rush through the changes to her face. My eyesight is blurry from fatigue. I try to hold myself still, but my legs start to give. I drop a metal rod, the room swirls into a kaleidoscope of colors, and then—darkness.

  “Camellia!”

  “Camellia!”

  “Camellia!”

  My arms shake, and I open my eyes. Ivy stands above me. “You’ve done too much all at once.”

  Princess Sabine is craning over the edge of the table, vomiting into a bucket. She screams and cries as she spews. Her skin is an angry red, like she’s just stepped out of a scalding bath. Two servants drape a lacy covering over her naked body. Another holds her new honey-colored hair up above her head. Bree tries to hold the bucket steady.

  “I’m s-sorry.” My head feels like it might float off, like one of the beauty-lanterns.

  “Princess Sabine, our apologies,” Ivy says.

  Servants help Sabine back into the bathing chamber for an ice bath. Ivy reaches for me before my eyes close again.

  25

  The gentle warmth of a damp cloth wakes me. For a moment, I’m back at home. The bedcurtains fluttering across an open window. The bayou birds’ morning melody, floating through the room. Maman leaning over me. Her fingers sweeping back my curls. A kiss on my forehead. You’d kill yourself to be the best, she whispers in my ear. You always do too much.

  I reach for her hand, but my arms feel pinned to my sides.

  “Camellia, wake up. Can you hear me?” a voice calls out. “Camellia.”

  Maman’s face fades away like dust. My eyes startle open. Ivy’s dark veil frightens me. I try to sit up, but needles are sticking out of my arms, and tubes snake through the blankets.

  I panic and try to rip them out of my skin.

  Ivy stops me. “Don’t! You’re getting fluids.”

  “What happened?”

  “Be quiet,” she whispers, then looks behind her. “I don’t want the nurses knowing you’re up yet.” She climbs onto the bed and closes the curtains. We’re bathed in darkness until she lights
a morning-lantern and sets it afloat above us. It blinds me.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I need you to pay attention.”

  The beauty appointment with Princess Sabine floods back with a hot wave of embarrassment and shame.

  “Is Princess Sabine—”

  “She’s fine. In one of the recovery chambers. You pushed yourself, and the arcana, too hard when you tried to rush,” she says. “You can’t do those treatments all at once. You must learn to refuse. You should only do three at a time, especially when you have back-to-back appointments. Your arcana levels took a massive dip.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when Sabine was making her demands?”

  “I thought you knew better.”

  “How low were my levels?”

  “Three point five for Manner, three point two for Age, and two point four for Aura,” Ivy says, and it’s a punch to the stomach. “You’ve been asleep all day and night because of it. You missed your other two appointments.”

  All day and night?

  “I completed them for you.”

  “Thank you,” I say. Edel’s face unexpectedly pops into my head. “And have you heard anything about my sister Edel?”

  “It was just a rumor. She’s fine. I overheard Du Barry talking to Madam Alieas at the Fire Teahouse. She said it was pure fabrication.”

  A sense of relief washes over me, but questions remain. Edel told me in secret she was going to run away, and then there was the headline about it. What are the chances of that? Perhaps someone overheard her saying she wanted to leave—and a newsie got wind of it? I hope she’ll be more careful.

  I try to sit up again, but I’m weak and shaky.

  “Don’t try to move. If you’re too loud, the other servants will alert the Beauty Minister immediately. We don’t get much time”— she leans in—“away from others.”

  She’s close enough for me to see underneath her veil a little, and she lingers there, as if she wants me to. Tiny creases ring her eyes and mouth. Why would she have wrinkles? We don’t age the same as the Gris. Maman had very few, even up to her death.