FlitterPuff

Hello scribblers! I'm back. I've decided that for now I'm gonna do once-weekly chapters, and hopefully, move up eventually to doing two a week. Today's chapter is being posted on a Thursday night (at least for EST,) but I've been thinking about whether I want to move to another day. I'm partial to Mondays. Does anyone have any preferences or opinions on the best day or times to post?

The dress was a simple off-black color, lined with grey lace. It laced up and around my neck, leaving a small hole about where a small amount of cleavage might have been seen if I’d had any. Still, it didn’t look as terrible on me as I’d imagined. The dress reminded me a little of the maid outfits I’d seen, though it was clearly different enough not to be one. I had rather limited experience with what sorts of things those who worked with and served the noble class wore. They did tend to have rather nicer outfits than most people, though. I assumed it had to do with the nobles showing off their wealth, making it so even their servants were of a higher class than everyone else.

The person in the mirror staring back at me was, well… still me. It was still my dull brown eyes, my tidied-up hair, my nose, and chin, all disappointingly still me in many ways. The makeup had done something, though it was difficult to say what specifically it had changed. Perhaps my cheeks were a bit fuller. The small amount of facial hair that had grown over the past few days had disappeared without even a shadow. I could tell I looked more feminine, yet all I could really see was a slightly more feminine-looking version of myself, of Nathan the boy. 

I glared over at Isabel. “You said I’d look like a girl. Not -- not this.” I waved my hand at the mirror. Despite what I’d thought to myself earlier, I had inadvertently let hope well up within me, it seemed. A hope that had been mercilessly crushed. 

“You do.”

She studied my face as though trying to see what I saw. I glanced back over to the mirror, peering into it once more, only to again see the feminine-looking boy. 

“I definitely don't.” 

She hummed, still studying me, bright blue eyes peering into my own.

“I didn’t expect this.”

Scrutinizing her, I asked, “Didn’t expect what?” 

“You really don’t think you look like a girl?”

“The mirror doesn’t lie. I’m sure you think I’m a fool, but I’m certainly not blind.”

She hummed again. “I can assure you, you look as much a girl as any other. You just can’t seem to see it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Are you saying I see through the magic or something?”

“No, I find that unlikely.” She paused a moment, putting her thoughts together. Her hand went to her chin, pondering. “I think you see what you want to see, what you expect to see.” 

“But it’s a mirror.” Was it the work of the magic?

She grabbed my shoulder facing me back in front of the mirror once more. Behind me, she asked, “Your nose. When you see it, do you see a boy's nose or a girl’s?”

What sort of question even was that? “It’s just my nose.”

I watched her eyes roll through the mirror. “Yes, but does it seem like one of a girl’s or boy’s?”

“It’s a boy's nose. I mean, of course it’s a boy’s nose. It’s my nose.”

She smirked. “There’s your problem.” I looked at her, befuddled. “You see yourself, the various parts of your face, as one belonging to a boy. It’s what you’ve seen in it your whole life. So now, when you look again, where everyone else will see a cute young girl, you can only see what you’ve always seen, despite all the changes.”

It took a moment for me to really parse through her meaning. “I don’t believe you.” Mirrors were mirrors. What you saw was what you got. If I didn’t look like a girl, I didn’t look like one. It was simple. If she wanted me to believe some nonsense like this, she was gonna have to do a lot better than that to sell me such a lie. 

“We’ll see.”

She left it at that, pulling me from the mirror towards the door. 

“We aren’t going to take it back off, then?” My feet made an effort to bolt themselves to the floor. 

“Let us see what the tailor thinks of you.”

I didn’t want to see what the tailor thought of me, not at all. She continued to pull me, my feet alternating between sliding and stumbling in front of me. I looked at her, pleading to not go through with this, to just take the ridiculous paint back off and keep all of this between us. Why this of all things had me in terror, when I’d already been in a dress in the first place, I had no clue. The look Isabel gave me back was one of amusement. 

“You may be a bit cuter now, but that’s not going to work on me, Little Bell.”

We went back to the main storeroom. The tailor, Roselyn, stood in front of us, seeming in good spirits. As she studied me, I watched as she shifted from simple joy to confusion to curiosity. She came closer and studied my face. Not knowing what to do with myself, I stared off to the side, hoping she didn’t ogle for too long. 

“Either I’m going senile, or you didn’t look like this when you came into my shop.” She glanced between the two of us. “How on Oleum did you manage this?” she asked both of us. 

Isabel gave her a proud grin. “It’s something I’ve been working on for a long while now, a magical makeup that enhances beauty.” She winked. Of course she winked. 

“Well, I’d certainly say it works. If I hadn’t seen you both when you came in, I’d think you were playing me for a fool, telling me that this cute little thing was a boy.” 

I attempted to swallow down my nerves and embarrassment as I fiddled with my dress. Isabel shot me her trademark smirk, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. This proved nothing. The woman was clearly buttering us up. 

“How much?” Roselyn inquired. 

“The makeup is not for sale just yet, and I think it may end up a bit out of your typical client’s price range, unfortunately,” Isabel told her. 

Roselyn sighed. “I should have guessed. Still, I’m sure some may be willing to buy it. You’ll let me know when it’s ready and give me a price?” The tailor stared Isabel down as though ready to stab her if she refused. Isabel was of course unfazed. 

“Certainly.”

With the promise of a new potential product, Roselyn seemed in fairly high spirits after that. She hummed happily as they dragged me up onto a wide stepping stool and began to make adjustments to the dress. 

“Do we really need to do this?” 

The door to the shop was still wide open, and I couldn’t help the dread that stirred within me as I watched every person who walked by the shop. Most people went past without a glance, but I could feel the heat on my face the couple of times someone had looked in. 

“This is a fine dress. Nothing a noble would ever be caught dead in, but still among the best we common folk are allowed. It would be absurd to not fashion it properly,” Roselyn explained.

My further complaints and mutterings were ignored until an annoyed look from the tailor silenced me. My eyes still anxiously lingered at the door, praying that no one else came in. After perhaps the longest quarter-hour of my life, she finished. I was allowed down from the stool and Isabel approached us with two dresses in hand. 

I was luckily saved from trying them on, as she decided I was perhaps not up for trying on more. 

“You can bring them back if they don’t fit. It’ll be no trouble,” Roselyn commented. 

“Are you ready to leave, then?” Isabel asked me, a suspicious grin across her face. 

“Sure.”

I hesitated before turning back to the changing room to the side. 

“That’s not the exit, Little Bell. Your head must be quite a bit more scrambled than I thought.”

I turned back to the smiling witch. “You don’t actually expect me to go out like -- like this?”

Of course she did. What was originally an offer to simply ‘try on a dress’ became ‘wearing one for a prank’ once we arrived at the shop. She fully expected me to go outside like this.

“That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

“It was definitely not the deal,” I replied, calling her bluff. “I will not let you parade me around the city to humiliate me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. It may take a moment, but you’ll get used to wearing it. No one will see anything but a well-dressed young girl.” 

Part of me wanted to go through with it, to live the charade for just a bit longer, and throw it in her face when someone pointed out that I didn’t, in fact, look like a girl. I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to face it, not with people that I’d have to look in the eyes afterward for the rest of my life. Assuming I lived through all this. 

Isabel shared a glance with the tailor, who gave her own input. “Life is full of risks and challenges. You are the only one who can decide whether this one is worth it.” The annoyed glance that Isabel shot her revealed this wasn’t exactly the response she was hoping for. Roselyn didn’t seem to notice. “Though if you are worried that they will recognize you, I find it unlikely. I do not think anyone is likely to confuse the unkempt boy who entered with the beautiful young woman before me.”

My eyes shifted away from her at the blatant flattery.

“What about my voice?”

Roselyn hummed. “You’re still young, and your voice isn’t particularly deep. You may want to find a way to work on it in the future, but you sound fine for now, dear.”

Isabel spent the next few minutes convincing me to stay in the dress. I suspected she had a hidden reason behind me continuing to wear it, though I couldn’t imagine what that might have been. Eventually, I agreed, with the caveat that we wouldn’t go back through the main part of the market and that the moment I suspected someone saw through the feminine disguise, I would change back. Perhaps the risks that came of wearing it weren’t worth it, but I didn’t mind them just this once. It might have been my only chance to really experience being a girl, whether I lived through the day or not. 

Isabel paid for the clothing and we said our farewells to Roselyn, who mentioned I would always be welcomed back to her shop. As we walked out, I looked over to the two other dresses Isabel had gotten for me. They weren’t nearly as flashy as the one I currently wore, being neither dyed nor of a complex design. Why was I wearing this one instead of something simpler? It was odd. What game was she playing here?

“Why do I even need two other dresses?” Why did I need one? I’d been so occupied with just trying one on and then going out in public with it that I hadn’t thought much at all about the fact that she had actually purchased them for me. Renting would have been cheaper.

“You’ll need them for the future, I expect.”

 Did she really expect me to believe that she cared about what I would need in the future, even if she did go through with her promise? It seemed more likely that she was willing to spend a bit of money in order to convince me that her offer was legitimate. She could always take them back to the tailor later, claiming I’d changed my mind.

The rest of the day went surprisingly uneventfully. Our first stop had been the inn Isabel was staying at. She wanted to drop off the two other dresses. She then tried to convince me to go to the cobbler’s shop for some newer boots. I put my foot down on that one, figuratively speaking. My shoes were perfectly decent. Well-made boots were something my father had always insisted on us having, despite his tendency to lose most of the coin he made on pricey alcohol and gambling. I liked my boots.

It did take me a while to get used to physically wearing the dress. Though perhaps ‘used to’ was a bit of an exaggeration. I was accustomed to the feel of cloth between my legs from trousers, and the absence of that felt strange and naked. When I noticed a number of people staring at me, I was nearly scared off from wearing it, but Isabel assured me it was because I looked like a cute young girl of decent wealth rather than them seeing me as a boy. I couldn’t help but eventually and grudgingly agree when we ran into a food merchant that I was fairly familiar with. There was no hint of recognition in his eyes, no signs of disgust or suspicion. He simply referred to me as a young lady, we bought our two overpriced sandwiches, and we left. It helped to lift the worry off my shoulders. 

 It was the strangest day I’d ever had for certain, and it was clear Isabel had as little of an idea about what to do together as I had. Most of the day we spent around the outskirts of the market, getting small samples of food, and looking at various goods. She may not have been a fish merchant, but Isabel was clearly at home in a marketplace and spent plenty of time explaining the workings and strategies of it all, along with where various things came from. Listening, watching, and learning from people seemed to be how she got a lot of her entertainment in life. She also paid for private baths for us, and I was somewhat relieved to find the makeup didn’t come off with water. I spent over an hour soaking in that warm relaxing tub. Hot baths were a rare luxury. It was all friendly and enjoyable in its own strange way. If she wasn’t as a witch, I could have almost seen myself becoming friends of a sort with Isabel. 

As evening came, I could see clear signs of anxiousness growing within her, continually biting her lip and adjusting her hair. It was a strange sight for the abnormally mirthful and witty witch. My repeated attempts at getting a straight answer on what it was she wanted from me were frustratingly unsuccessful. Perhaps she was worried about me declining her request. I remembered what she had told me when she first put the knife to my throat, that she didn’t want to kill me but wouldn’t hesitate to if she felt it was necessary. Would she kill me if I turned her down? Was I dead no matter what I did by this point?

“Alright,” she said. We were away from the crowds of people, stopped beside an abandoned storage building that no one had yet bothered to fix up. “I’ve got several runes up in this area so no one will overhear us. It’s about time I stopped avoiding this.” I gave her a simple nod. “You’ve heard of the Butcher?” 

I nodded to her once more, “Yes.” 

The Butcher was a well-known witch hunter, not because of the number of witches he had killed, but because of the slaughter that took place before he found each witch. He was known for using a sword that could slice a man clean in two, or more accurately, a woman. People said that for every witch’s life he took, a dozen other women were slain. The Inquisition used him as one of the examples of why witch hunters were ultimately a menace to society. They were rogue vigilantes who eventually led to lawlessness. True justice needed order, not chaos, and while the Inquisition was often not seen to be as effective as independent witch hunters, it was the better option by far. Everything had a cost, including effectiveness and efficiency. Nothing showed that better than the Butcher.  

“He’s here in this city.” She paused for a moment, staring off at the wall before meeting my eyes. “I want you to help me kill him.”

I stared at her, unable to believe what I was hearing. She was truly mad. What on Oleum did she think I could do against the Butcher? What could I possibly contribute to such a fight? What could anyone do against him?

I glanced down at the needlessly extravagant dress I was wearing. The dress, the makeup, the walking around to get used to wearing it. My face paled slightly as I began to connect the dots. She wanted me to play bait. Was this why she had waited to tell me? Was he already on the way here? In a sudden panic, I turned and began darting my eyes around us, staring into the dark shadows. He could come from anywhere. I jumped as a hand gripped my shoulder.

“Calm down, we’re safe here.”

I glared at her. I was a young girl in a dress standing next to a witch, a witch who was being hunted by the Butcher. Not to mention, the Inquisition and who knew how many other witch hunters were searching for her. 

“Perhaps ‘safe’ was a poor choice of words. Still, this isn’t where I have planned for things to happen, and I’ll know if someone comes this way.”

Before she could continue, I interrupted her, “You want me to be bait. You’re asking me to die so that you can attempt to murder a man.”

“Not just any man, the Butcher. And we’ll have more help than just you and me. You will be fine --”

“No. No! Don’t you dare try and tell me I will be fine. This is suicidal. It’s insanity.”

“Bell, I have a --”

“Shut up! This whole time, all of this,” I gestured to my dress, “it was always about you. You never cared about me. The dress, the makeup, all of it was for this! You’re a demon, a parasite who just wanted to use me, to manipulate me. You're a wicked creature, a soulless gods-forsaken abomination. You -- You…” I took several ragged breaths. I was going to die here. Either she would kill me or the Butcher would. I was a fool, and she was a monster.

“I am.”

I looked into her eyes, the eyes of someone long broken. It was not the look of someone breaking down from hearing my words for the first time, but rather someone who'd heard it all before, who'd been hearing it for a long time. Someone who perhaps believed it all herself. My words hurt her, but they were nothing new. 

I hated her. I hated her for making me care despite how she’d done nothing but manipulate me. Because despite it all, I did care for her, at least a little. Perhaps it was naive and wishful, but I still wanted to believe that some of today was real. And I did think that the Butcher needed to be eventually stopped. It was a subject that I’d heard Inquisitors bring up plenty of times before in the past, yet everyone knew nothing would be done of him until he did something truly heinous, like killing some young nobleman. So long as they were still killing witches, hunters tended to get a free pass from much of the law. 

“Bell...” Her hand lightly grazed against my shoulder and I stumbled backward, moving away from her reach.

“Don’t,” I said while eyeing her. I’d been getting too comfortable with her. She could kill me at any moment, and would if she felt I wasn’t going to accept her offer. I was a liability. 

“I have a plan,” she said. “You won’t have to do anything. He’ll be dead before he can even get close to you. It’ll be an ambush, and while he’s dealing with that you’ll run the other way.”

“Why can’t you do it then?”  

She stared at me. “I need to be somewhere else for it to work.”

“You’re a coward,” I accused.

She shrugged but said nothing to counter it. For a long moment, we quietly looked at each other, me pondering, and her waiting to see what I’d say. 

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll do it.” 

In a strange way, it was perhaps my best chance of getting through this alive.

FlitterPuff

Oh, also I made a cover image. It's simple and not particularly interesting, but it'll do for the time being. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Please do leave a comment or a review if you did!