“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 watches 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.