Mia Harper Fairgrieve / 2024-10-23
Chloe approached the next day with a steely confidence that at the time was unlike her, but would soon become like a second skin. She boarded her little raft, ancient metal dented from the stones thrown the day before. The marks on her boat only served as a fuel to her anger and determination.
Chloe approached the shore on the other side of the island, and the vultures came into view. They stood in a line on the bank, frilly pastel dresses blowing around their legs in the wind. Even from afar, Chloe could see their ominous smiles.
They spotted her seconds after she saw them, and the mischievous wind carried their voices across the water as they started up their chant.
“Here comes Ugly!
Pick up your stones–”
“Cut it out!” The sound was carried to shore by the wind, who seemed to be indecisive about who she held in her favour. Chloe’s hair whipped around her face, and to the vultures it looked as though there was a little girl on a boat who was on fire. It was quite an odd sight.
“My name is Chloe, not Ugly, and you have no right to rename me like that!”
“Aw, is that what your witch mother has told you?” Valentina snickered. The others followed her lead. Chloe thought with a sudden vindictive realization that they were not vultures, but pathetic sheep. She drifted closer towards the girls, but they still did not throw their stones, still clutched in their evil hands.
“My mother may be a witch, but at least she gifted me my name with great care. Your parents likely named you with no more care than they would a cellar cat.” The smirks on their faces faltered. “I’d wager that they didn’t even give you true names.”
The night before, Krakiln had given her daughter an important lesson on true names. If you have the true name of a monster, animal, faerie or human, you can use it to your advantage, and they become subject to your every whim.
“Every living creature possesses a true name. The trick is figuring out what it is.” Mother had said. “Most important monsters and entities have had their names recorded in books, but for these girls, your ‘Valentina’ and ‘Arabella’--”
“And Darla and Elizabeth, Mother.”
“Don’t interrupt. For creatures that you do not hold the knowledge of their true name, you must trick them. Goad them. Insult them. They will want to give you their true name as proof that they have one. Everyone knows their own true name.”
A flicker of a thought crossed Chloe’s mind. “I don’t have one”, she thought. “Mother has never told it to me.” Then, as though rising like a kraken from the depths of the ocean, her true name arose in her memory. It was a whisper in her ear while she slept, a breeze on a hot day, a single tear, it was comfort and it was sadness.
“Do you know my true name, Mother? I believe I do.”
“I do. It is the duty of a mother to give a baby their true name. It is a secret that, until the child remembers and starts giving it out willy-nilly, a mother keeps. You, and likely your personal roach infestation, have remembered their true names. You are at the right age. You are also at the right age to be foolish enough to give it to somebody.”
“I won’t tell anyone, Mother.” Chloe promised, horrified at the possibility.
“Good. Now what will you say?”
“I’d wager your parents didn’t give you true names.” Chloe repeated.
The vultures’ faces grew red, and Valentina said, “Of course we do! I bet you’re not old enough to know yours! After all, you’re a little baby who went crying to her mommy.”
Chloe did not falter. “You boast, Valentina. I don’t believe you. If you all have true names, then prove it.”
“My name is Hunter.” Valentina smiled smugly, her arms crossed across her chest. When no one else spoke, she gave Darla a swift kick on the back of the leg. “Say your true name!” she hissed.
The other girls looked uneasy, but they spoke, one after the other.
“My true name is Looking-Glass.”
“My name is Ifinite.”
“Mine is Sap.”
Valentina’s smirk fell away when she heard Chloe begin to sing.
“Flesh no longer
On your faces
You will find it
In different places
Feast on corpses
Blood and gore
Sky high existence evermore
This fate is tragic
I couldn’t be blunter
For Sap, Ifinite, Looking-Glass
And Hunter!”
The stones the girls had held clattered to the ground, and all that was left of the girls they had been were their frilly pastel dresses, bunched on the shore. Four vultures flew away into the cloudy sky as Chloe laughed and laughed.
The End