[10]
Come morning, I’m ushered out of the Cloud Gate by Tanya, who seems to know just what to say in order to part the crowds that have gathered to watch our arrival. Edward is nowhere to be seen, but he doesn’t need to be. I can hear his words, feel his presence as if it’s been seared into my skin.
In Tanya’s opinion, we’re going much too slow, and she keeps tutting impatiently. “Places to be, things to do, darlings.”
She says “darlings,” but the real cause of the delay is me, because I’m gaping at all the different kinds of buildings in Volterra. There is no sense to be made of the hodgepodge of architectures. On one street there might be a many-tiered pagoda right next to a Victorian mansion, complete with huge storybook windows. Not to mention the vampires. There are almost as many here as there are people in District 2, and Volterra can’t be half the size. The streets are packed with lean, beautiful red-eyed monsters, and they’re all staring at me.
Finally, we make it to a sleek, black, three-story building. I’ve seen pictures of it on the feeds from previous Morphing Games. It’s the stylist headquarters.
“Make over time.” Tanya chirps. “Have to look pretty for the opening parade.”
My stomach twists into a nauseous knot at the thought of even more vampires staring at me. The streets will be packed for tonight’s processional.
Tanya nudges me forward with more force than necessary. “You won’t win sponsors looking like you do now, Isabella.”
Winning sponsors is an important part of the game. Anyone who has enough money, and it does take quite a bit of money, can send gifts to the Prospectives. Anything from food to weapons to life saving medicine can be tied up to a silver-parachute and dropped into the arena.
Also, Tanya’s right. Beauty is an important part of winning sponsors, because the vampires are evaluating you not only a contestant, but as someone who may be joining their city and society in the future. No one wants an ugly new arrival.
I wonder if I’ll even need to bother with sponsors, since Edward seems to have a huge amount of influence. Not to mention he’s trying to over-throw the government; what role do sponsors play in a revolution? I still can’t accept or even understand his plan—what he told me of it at least, which was nothing really, besides a few cryptic remarks. Even less do I understand why he touched me and did . . . those other things.
I mean, I understood why he did it: to manipulate me. Dazzle me with dark touches, diamond-stars and feelings I did not and do not understand.
What I don’t understand is why it worked. (Bella is so damn naive, but it’s part of her charm and the joy of writing this story is how she’ll grow to and learn about herself)
Oh, it won’t work for the long-term. I’m not killing children for him—not for an imaginary rebellion—not for anything. I’ve lost so much of myself already. I can’t afford to lose any more, do any more evil. He can think that I am following his orders. In fact, my plan, rough and unformed as it is, depends on it.
But I couldn’t think about that when I was with Edward. All I could think about was . . . well, I couldn’t really think of anything.
I just wanted to be near him.
Somehow this thought is almost as disturbing as the Prospective whose eyes I clawed out in a dream. The little girl.
After we enter the building, Jasper and I part ways with little ceremony, Jasper heading to the second floor and I to the eighth, via an elevator. Again, vampires have all these powers and yet they still have machines to do things for them. (MACHINES MACHINES FORSHADOWING FORSHADOWING) It baffles me.
I wait for a little while outside of a door that leads into a room with walls of tinted sepia glass. Just as I finally get up the courage to knock, the door swings open, and in front of me are two vampires, one dressed in bright floral prints with what appears to be a giant petunia on her head, the other clad in a rainbow-neon leopard print unitard.
“Cynthia,” says the one with the flower on her head, “she could be worse, right?”
“I don’t know, her nose looks like it was added on as an afterthought,” the leopard-lady says. (Cynthia and Bree were vaguely inspired by the two crazy-hatted antdees at the Royal Wedding. I also wanted them to be darker than the original prep-team and unsympathetic. But in a sense this shows how they’ve been changed and warped by the society too.)
“I’d say it was added on without any thought at all.” Rejoins the walking garden.
They chuckle in unison.
I would find this much more amusing if my life didn’t depend on getting sponsors, and if getting sponsors didn’t depend on me not having parts of my body on crooked.
No, that’s a lie.
I would hate them no matter what.
Before I can vocalize my distaste, they’ve put me in a chair and have begun the smelly process of, washing, dying, cropping and clipping.
I wonder how they know they have the right person—they didn’t ask me my name. What if they’d accidentally kidnapped some poor wandering human for a make-over attack? Upon further thought, I suppose they don’t have to worry about that, there are only twenty-four humans in Volterra right now.
Bree, aka flowery lady, aka botanical bitch with bright red eyes, doesn’t acknowledge me until after she’s already put three coats of foil on my head and painted some chunky white goop over my hair that smells like permanent markers.
“Isabella, this is going to hurt just an einie-minnie-mo of a bit.” She turns to Cynthia and whispers, “That is a human expression—right?” (I had a lot of fun writing their dialect–can you tell?)
As she brings two fingers to my nose, one of her flower petals from her head piece gets in my eye. I’m about to wave it away, but the pressure from her finger increases.
Crack.
“Fuck!”
I think she just broke my nose. (I loved the idea of upping the stakes compared to the Hunger Games here. They’re not just waxing etc–they broke her nose!!)
They both titter in amusement at the explicative.
Normally, I would fight them, or struggle do something, but it’s pointless. They’re a million times stronger and faster than me, and any action on my part would be an embarrassment at best and suicide at worst.
“What a charming little human!” says Bree.
A rainbow-leopard-print-clad boob is shoved in my face as Cynthia reaches over my head to grab something from the shelf above me.
The pain isn’t that bad, but I’m a little nervous about the small trickle of blood running over my lip. It’s hot, pure, and flowing fast. I know that vampires have their blood lust fixed chemically, but there’s still a reason why no humans live in the Capitol.
Both Bree and Cynthia seem entirely unaffected by the wound. I, however, am not. It’s beginning to throb unpleasantly. It’s not that I can’t handle the pain, it’s just that my strategy for coping with pain is to deal with it; patch it up, run it off, do something else to take my mind off of it. I can’t now though; I’m trapped between a rainbow-leopard and a moving plant.
I should start thinking up strategies, because there’s no way that I’m going to get sponsors if it’s their fashion sense I’ll be subjected too.
“Here you go for the pain, Belly-da-Boop,” chimes Cynthia, her chest now away from my face. She dabs at the blood lightly with a cotton pad. Her touches are so gentle and fast, so I’m amazed that these are the same monsters who can pull a tree out of the ground like a weed. Then she spreads another goop, this one blue and slightly runny, over my nose. The pain dissipates instantly.
Bree kneels down, takes off my shoes and plunges my feet into a bubbling mixture.
“So are you absolutely, over the top, amazing-thrilled for the Morphing Games?”
“I’m honored to be given the opportunity.” I repeat the stock line. I’ll have to think of some other ones, considering eventually all the Prospectives are interviewed.
Bree makes a whistling noise through her teeth and sticks my hands into a concoction similar to the one my feet are floating in. “Posh, posh! Come on Bella-la-lella, you can give us the real ice-cream scoop. I was just like you once!”
Cynthia is at my hair now, removing the foil. Her fingers brush the base of my neck, tilting my head back. Does my neck need cosmetic surgery too. Just a quick dab of cream and a cotton pad to fix it? I shudder.
“Head back, and tell us all about how you’re feeling. We’re here for you.” She coos as she speaks, but as I tilt my head back into the tub, I can see in the mirror they exchange a brief snicker.
If I’ll ever find vampire confidants, I don’t know, but these two are definitely not them. That doesn’t mean I can’t use them, however. “Which Morphing Games did you win? I don’t remember seeing you.”
Bree drips something hot over my eyebrows. “I was in the third one, actually!”
I try not to wince at the heat. “Really? How’d you win?”
“You didn’t watch it in history class?” she asks through pouted lips.
I flinch as the hot substance solidifys on my face. Is my face so ugly they literally are casting a new one? “I think that’s one of the few I haven’t seen.”
Rip!
Cynthia pulls off the layer of wax from my face, taking what feels like half of my eyebrows with it. It hurts only slightly less than my broken nose. “Oh pity-party for you then, Bree was a genius.”
The sound of my teeth grinding almost drowns out my own voice. “Yeah?”
“Yeah?” Bree mocks as she removes my feet and hands from their imprisonment of scented water and bubbles. “It was a year set around a lake. They did everything to us you could imagine, quick-sand, sun poisoning, forest fires—you name it.”
I don’t say that these horrors are pretty tame compared to the later Morphing Games. One time the food in the arena was poisoned—all of it. Another time, the dead Prospectives were resurrected by electricity and set upon the few remaining ones.
What feels like millions of tiny jets of water shoot towards my skull before Cynthia’s hands begin to massage my scalp. I can tell it’s Cynthia by the neon bracelets that jangle as she washes my hair.
“The problem was everyone was all spread out; lots of good runners and hiders in Bree’s year. Anyway, like the clever girl she was, she figured out that everyone needs water; right? And all the water in the arena has to come from somewhere. So, she took all the poison from her darts and just poured it in the lake. It was strong poison—vampire made, sent by a sponsor, but no one would have thought it was strong enough to poison a whole lake let alone all the rivers connected to it. ”
Bree begins filing all of my nails into shapes so perfect you might find outlines of them in a trigonometry problem. “Watching the re-caps was fun, too, seeing how they all shriveled up and just sort of cried. One big boy just kept running around yelling ‘Wha happe,’ as all of his teeth—and eventually his tongue—fell out before he died.”
Cynthia gives a long titter accompanied by the groan of a fan starting. “It was delightful!”
“Lovely.” My is sarcasm as thick and hot as the goop on my face.
The neon-Amazon Cynthia wields the hair-dryer like a weapon. With a click she turns it on, and its hot-air pushes my cheeks back with its force. Soon my hair is a tangle of dry strands instead of wet.
Cynthia has about three brushes in her hands, and each one pulls my head in a different direction. “I’m almost sad I was turned before the Morphing Games started. I’m sure I would have done something clever, too. Maybe use giant magnets to pull out all the iron from their blood, causing it to rip through their skin.”
Clouds of flowery scented mist envelope me as Cynthia sprays me with something to make my hair shine. (This mist and it’s purpose will play a role in later chapters, keep an eye out.) I see in her reflection in the mirror that her nose wrinkles from the smell.
“Then I would be able to drink from all of them without that yucky iron after-taste. Gross.”
“Everyone knows the bodies of the dead Prospectives get auctioned off to the highest bidder, Cynth, so you wouldn’t get to drink it.” (Ugh, this is so gross. But this is about how disturbing this story is going to be. Hold your horses people.) Bree files my toenails with a clam efficiency, not even looking up as she rattles of the sickening facts—like it’s gossip. “‘Sides, a magnet that would be powerful enough to take the iron out of their blood would be powerful enough to reverse the poles.”
God, it’s just too much. These stylists sit here calmly talking about horrible deaths, deaths that could be my horrible death, that could have been Emily’s. I wonder if they’ll buy my body if I die. Will they sit here drinking me from bottles as they talk about how Cynthia just should have gotten the opportunity to be in the Morphing Games because she would never have let her insides be torn out by a giant magnet?
Bree mistakes my disgust for impatience. “Just a few more seconds and you’ll get to meet Esme, Bella-Boop.”
“Esme?” What more can they do me, what else can be left? I haven’t even entered the arena, and I want to give up.
Bree says, “she’s your stylist, silly.”
My brow furrows. “I thought you were my stylist.”
Cynthia sighs, as if thinking about a vid-star. “No, no, no! We’re just the prep team. We can only aspire to the level of genius of Esme Cullen.”
“You think they’d let us handle a tribute all by ourselves?” Bre barrels onward at close to vampire speed before I can answer. “Of course not. We’re just the sous-chefs if you will, and Esme Cullen is like the waiter.”
I would correct their metaphor, but I’m too curious about Esme. “Oh yes, Edward told me all about her.” I offer this lamely, trying to seem as if I do have a clue— or if not a clue then maybe at least a hint.
Simultaneously, both stop their bustling.
“Did you say ‘Edward?’” asks Cynthia.
Shit. Was I not supposed to mention his name? No, that wasn’t something he had told me last night.
“No.” I hedge. If they seem surprised by the fact that I’m associated with Edward, so perhaps it’s better that they don’t know. Maybe he has a rebellious reputation already.
“Of course she didn’t say ‘Edward.’” Bree glares at Cynthia. “Sometimes you’re as dumb as a bad-hairdo.”
“Who’s Edward?” I ask, playing pitch perfectly the part of the naïve Prospective Edward seemed to think I was.
Cynthia gives a little twitter. “Right, I forgot they leave him out of the history books. You know, honestly, I don’t think I learned about him until recently—and I was here for the change.”
She lowers her voice, as if that could stop her from being picked up by the bugs, which are surely listening in. “Apparently, he used to be one of the founders.” (FORSHADOWING FORSHADOWING!)
“But there are only three founders,” I say. I know it makes me sound stupid, but it’s best for them to think that’s all I am. I consider the possibility that Edward was in fact a ripped out chapter from the history books. He had said he had made mistakes. Not to mention that if he was telling the truth, he had chosen me, which meant he circumvented very old and established laws. Then again, these are just stylists, and not even head stylists at that.
“Cynth, remember what Esme said about us focusing. Let’s just finish it.” Bree’s tone makes it clear that “us” really means “Cynthia.”
“No, we have to put something of our own on the look.” Cynthia talks so fast I almost don’t understand it. “We have to show her our genius.”
Their genius, as I can see in the mirror, is a small pink butterfly clip with wings that flap slowly. I think it’s getting glitter in my hair, but I nearly fail to notice it, because I’m caught staring at the reflection of a girl who’s almost pretty. I think she’s me; she’s certainly glaring like I do.
Now my brown hair is darker, almost the color of my mahogany eyebrows, my skin has lost it’s pallor, and my lips seem fuller. Everything about me feels smooth. I run my finger-tips over my eyebrows, tracing the strange new arch of them and then my nose, which now rests right in the center of my face. It doesn’t hurt anymore, either.
“I know—huge-mungo transformation, right? You almost look like Belle instead of the Beast—no offense of course,” says Bree.
I want to tell them that talking about drinking the blood of humans and buying corpses is more offensive to me than insulting my hairstyle, but I know that no matter how “respected” Prospectives are by people back home, our position in the Volterra is tenuous. I want to tell them that just because it’s the way things are doesn’t they mean they can talk about it like it’s gossip.
People are going to die.
One them will probably be me.
“Esme should be in shortly!” Cynthia grabs a puffy bubble gum colored coat to put over her dress.
How does Esme know we’re done? Could she smell the transformation or something? Before I can ask, the pair of them are out of the door, travelling at vampire speed, having no need to slow themselves for my human eyes.
It’s not long until I hear a gentle clap from the other end of the room. The door slides open. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps a badly-dressed blur to come up to me and start poking and prodding?
Instead, comes a woman dressed in a poofy skirt with a waist no bigger than my fist. Unlike the leopard and the plant, there is nothing revealing about her outfit. The neckline barely reveals the delicate bowing of her shoulder blades, and below the skirt are opaque ivory tights. (I was in a show called Assasins and I played a 1950s houswife and I had the most awesome dress. This dress was the basis for all of Esme’s character. I really wanted to give her some unique characteristic, and I like the idea of her being from a more modern time period, but by their standards the 1950s are still ancient!)
She walks slowly, her skirt so voluminous that it swooshes behind her with each small step. She stops a few paces away before tentatively raising a hand and giving a short elegant wave. “Hello.”
I lean back into the head-rest of the chair. “Uh, hello.”
“I’m Esme.” She takes a step closer, her eyes focused calmly on me. It’s a very different gaze from Edward’s; I don’t feel as if I’m being evaluated, but acknowledged instead. “I assume Edward told you about me.”
Is she actually concerned for my personal space? I let out a sigh, and I’m relieved—until her eyes begin to squint in annoyance. “May I touch your hair, Bella?”
“Sure.” I offer hesitantly.
Her hands fish around in my newly volumized hair until they pluck out the butterfly. Its wings slow and I could swear it turns its mechanical head and looks bashfully at Esme with its cheap rhinestone eyes.
“Hello there, little one,” She whispers.
Delicately, she brushes some of the glitter off its wings, and it follows suit shaking off its wings until they’re clean. What’s left is small and reflective, appearing to be made out of the same substance as the balloon. ((LOOK AT THAT! MORE MACHINES!)
She gives a rich laugh, and it’s the most human sound I’ve heard from a vampire. I didn’t know vampires could even do that: smile and laugh in a way that doesn’t seem foreboding and wrong.
Then I’m laughing, too, because the little butterfly is trying to flap it’s wings away from Esme, who looks at it like it’s an untied-shoe.
My laughs turn to thick guffaws, seizures of hilarity. It’s not really that funny, but if I didn’t do something I was going to explode. I can’t afford to burst into tears. Not in front of my stylist, a woman whose faith in me will determine whether or not I get a good concept design for my outfit. A woman who was an affiliate of Edwards wasn’t someone I wanted to upset, if Edward’s temper was any indication.
“If you don’t stop laughing, you’re going to fall down.” Esme warns, voice tinged with authentic concern.
Still, I can’t stop, and I literally manage to fall out of the salon chair—laughing. Esme catches me, and deposits me with infinite grace back into the chair.
“That’s a pretty accurate reading you had there,” I say.
“Oh.” Her voice is light like summer breezes through summer leaves. “Just womanly intuition.”
She touches my hair, stroking it lightly, and it feels embarrassingly good. I’m a little disappointed when she stops and takes out a brush and begins to part my hair absentmindedly. “I’m sorry about my assistants. To say they don’t quite know how to act around humans would be an understatement. It’s hard living here. One forgets what it’s like to be human. To be able to die.”
I flinch.
No, what’s hard is losing your mother.
What’s hard is trying to decide whether to kill yourself or an innocent.
What’s hard is knowing that in the end you might not even get the luxury of the choice.
(Yeah Bella’s not bitter /at all/.)
“Come, let’s get lunch before you fall out of that chair again.” She offers me a hand.
I take it and we walk at normal speed, thankfully, to a small antechamber that holds a small table and two chairs. Sitting on the table is a white plate filled with rice and covered with strips of grilled chicken and a steaming red sauce
At the center of the table is a centerpiece made of three pink flowers and one white. Surreptitiously, I glance toward Esme. It matches her dress perfectly.
More real food. I can hardly believe it. I’m so skeptical, in fact, I hang back.
“Please sit down, Bella,” Esme says, “I promise it’s not going to run away.”
“Can you read minds, too?” I ask as I tuck my chair in and pick up my fork.
She joins me. “No, that’s the domain of my son.”
“Son?” I scoot my chair into the table. “I thought vampires couldn’t have children?”
Esme’s expression clouds. “I never got the privilege of having children as a human. So I . . . adopted Edward.”
“Edward?” The man who looked into my soul, if you say I had something like that, and dissected and then rebuilt me to fit his parameters. It was hard to believe a creature like him having a mother, it made him seem so human.
She nods. “Yes, there’s a reason why I’m your stylist. Much like Edward, usually I prefer not to involve myself in the Games directly.”
If it wasn’t crazy I’d say she said Games with almost as much as disdain—and maybe even despair—as I do when I think it.
Mention of her son reminds me of my family. I wonder what Ben’s doing. He’s probably with Prim. It’s a good thing she’s there, maybe she can take care of Charlie, too. Someone will have to, without me there. I don’t think Ben ever realized how much I did for them. I think my attack on him after Mom died blinded him to a lot more than just the world around him.
And it was all because of the vampires.
“I don’t blame you.”
“What?” I am shaken out of my reverie to see Esme’s small mouth pursed slightly.
“For hating us.” (This bit is stolen verbatim from Hunger Games, a lot of this chapter follows the HG very very closely. I really wanted something to inspire me and give me a plot-line and HG does that. Obviously this is definately my own twist on it, but this fic is definately a cross-over in the traditional sense.)
“I don’t. Vampires shoulder the burden that humanity can’t.” I rattle off quickly. Have I been that transparent? Edward is going to kill me—literally. He doesn’t seem like the type to renege on death threats.
“Bella, I’m not going to get angry at you for the way you feel, let alone report you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I can’t take the chance that this is a trap.
There are stories of Prospectives’ families being hurt when they tried to escape as well as stories of Prospectives committing suicide before the games. If I were to be reported for treason, what if they tried to get to Ben or, even worse, Jacob? Also, I’m sure Edward would make my own death long and unpleasant.
She gives a frustrated sigh, but then smiles warmly. As she shakes her head her pearl earrings jangle. “If I didn’t know that you are going to trust me eventually, I’d imagine this conversation would be much more frustrating.”
I shrug. Even if she’s right about me trusting her, which seems very unlikely, she also could just be saying this to get a confession. I try to keep my eyes wide and innocent. “Sorry, I don’t quite know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, Bella, what has been done to you?” She reaches out a hand, and suddenly her eyes seem so old.
I have to change the topic. “What are you thinking of for the concept?”
For the opening parade every district usually dresses in a costume relating to the industry that their district comes from. For us in District 2, it meant some skimpy parody of a Peacekeepers uniform. A couple of years ago there had been an experimental stylist who dressed the Prospectives in yellow unitards and said they were the color of justice. That didn’t go over well. I hope Esme has something better planned for me.
Her sense of fashion isn’t deplorable like the prep team’s, but it looks like something from the history books of the time before. I hope she puts me in something a little less girlish. I’m going to be entering an arena to fight for my life, not attending a party.
“I have an idea for what to wear, but you’ll have to tell me if you like it.” She smiles, leaning forward. “District 2 produces peacekeepers—protectors of the peace. Well I wondered, what if we connect your outfit to a fairy tale?”
I must look confused because she backtracks.
“You know how you volunteered for that little girl? Many people were impressed by that.” She looks down at the centerpiece thoughtfully. “Myself included. They—we saw you as a hero, brave and self-sacrificing.”
“I’m not a hero.” I can never be a hero, not after what I did to my brother, not even if I do save the world. Edward made that painfully clear. I may be able to be good, but I will never be pure again. The world doesn’t work like that; people don’t forget the bad stuff you do just because you do something good, and even if they do, you don’t.
Esme shoots me a look both kind and admonishing, and I quiet because I know that look; my mother used to give it to me. “You were like something out of a fairy tale up on that stage, like a knight going out on a quest to save a maiden. So why not make you a knight?”
(The thing I love about making graphic/trailers, is that often when I make the trailer it totally inspires me for writing the fic. It helps to have concrete real images to work off of. So yeah Bella being a knight was definately a case of the graphics inspiring the story.)
“But aren’t knights supposed to be boys?” This is not my real objection. My real objection is that I am not a knight, not a good guy. I’m pretty sure that to most everyone in my life, I’m the villain.
She gives a small, bitter laugh. “A hundred thirty years go by, I lose my husband and I still haven’t escaped sexism.”
“What?”
“You’ll look perfect in this costume, Bella. Just trust me.”
And the odd thing is, I do.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I will not look like a fool, that’s good. “What’s Jasper wearing?”
Usually partners coordinate, but he’s not here, so I’m not sure he’ll be getting the same costume.
She frowns. “I can see that he’s decided not to coordinate with you.” She looks over at me hesitantly, deciding whether or not to mention something. “He doesn’t see you as someone to reckoned with . . . at least not yet.”
I grit my teeth. Hale thought he was better than me with his fancy training and brave façade, but he didn’t know the truth; everything he had gotten: all of his bravado, his house, his life—it was stolen from me.
“I want a big sword,” I say.
Esme grins. “I knew you would agree, Bella.”
Jasper Hale had better watch out, because in the arena I’m going to take back what he stole. (This is a direct quote from the Labryinth. Because as I said, in spirit this is a Labryinth/Hunger Games/Twilight cross over.)
The Morphing Games 