The Gift of Imperfection

Two sisters were born in a land far away.  Even as infants they were as beautiful as the sun and moon.  But their hearts were cold.  The suitors that came to seek their hands were spurned, and even those rough peasants who knelt to them were scorned.  As they realized what they could do to men's hearts, the two sisters began to torture their prey before they killed it.  They would court one man's favour, then the other, until none of them knew where to turn.  Once they tired of this game they would dispatch their hapless victims with a cruel word or two, and, brokenhearted, the suitors would ride away. 



It came to pass that a young peasant girl learned off their exploits.  She wished for beauty more than anything, for she was not beautiful, though she was strong and wise.  She allowed the thought of them to conquer her mind, until she grew bitter and full of hatred for the cold, beautiful sisters who had had everything she longed for in their hands and had thrown it away like worthless garbage.  To satisfy her tortured soul, she turned to witchcraft. 



She went to the village apothecary, knowing that he would have a curse.  To enter the small, dark building one must be either very brave, very stupid, or very desperate.  No one knew much about the apothecary, where he had come from, where he learned his trade.  They knew only that his potions, his charms worked to perfection—and his curses.  Few people came to him for curses, the village was a peaceful place, the villagers kind and forgiving.  But the simple peasant girl was bitter beyond the imagining of her peers, and it was for a curse that she had come.



She was greeted by the gentle hooting of an owl, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the gleam of golden eyes and cruel talons, the noble curve of a sharp beak.  Shaken—for everyone knew owls were servants of evil—she continued.  The apothecary stepped into view.



Scotia—for that was her name—gasped.  The old man’s face was covered in a intricate tattoo, sharp hooks and graceful spirals in crimson and black and gold winging their away over his skin.  Looking closer, she saw that one side of his face was broken, scarred, crumpled in and folded upon itself as to have lost any semblance of humanity.  A match flared, was held to a candle and the light it gave showed row upon row of herbs and powders.  The man’s gnarled hands were covered also with the strange tattoo, the beautiful patterns began to move and shift as if alive as the hands fluttered lightly as butterflies over the shelves.  Under the curves and angles, Scotia could just make out many small thin scars crisscrossing the back of the old man’s hands. 



“Why have you come here?”



“I need a curse.”



“Ah,” said the apothecary, “A curse.  And for one so young…it is a sad world we live in, dear Charna, a sad world indeed.”



“Charna is not my name.”



“Well of course it isn’t!” snapped the apothecary, “You didn’t think I was talking to you, did you?  Her name is Charna, and a good one it is too!”  He stretched out his hand, and the owl flew out of the darkness and alighted on it, something small and grey and dead hanging from the wickedly curved beak.  The owl turned her head, and examined Scotia with one beady eye.



“Charna—dark, it means.  Very like to your own, it is.  Scotia—dark one.  And dark you are in truth, for there must be very little light in the heart of one so young—one so young who comes to me for a curse!  The other little girls—they come for love charms, and for spells to make them beautiful.  Why do you come for a curse and not a gentler magic?”



“What good would a love charm do me?” Scotia asked, bitter, “Could even your magic make this face beautiful?”



“My dear girl, you do not need a fair face to be loved!  Look at me, would you call me fair?”



Mutely, Scotia shook her head.



“And my Charna loves me, and not out of pity for my tortured body.  She is not repulsed by my scars, my shattered face, my twisted bones.  You see?  You need not have beauty to be loved.  This sisters you wish to curse, they are beautiful.  Do you think they are loved?”



“But of course they are!  Their suitors are more numerous than the stars!”



“Ah, yes,” said the old man, “But they do not love the sisters.  For something so perfect, so radiant there can be no love, only reverence.  It is smaller, humbler things, the small imperfections of humanity that can be loved.  The sisters already bear a curse greater than any you can impose upon them—perfection.”



“These are but the ravings of the mad, old man.  I came for a curse, and a curse I will have, if I must tear it from you with the blade of a knife!”



“Peace, child,” the old man raised one withered, tattooed hand, “You will have your curse.”



The apothecary seized an ancient, tattered, and rather moth-eaten quill pen, a piece of parchment, and a bottle of scarlet ink.  He began to write, the quill scratching insistently against the paper, forming illegible columns and spirals of strange symbols, full of sharp angles and broken lines. 



“Here is your curse, dark one.”  The apothecary quickly rolled the parchment into a scroll, tied it with a crimson ribbon, sealed with a bit of blood red wax. 



“What shall I do with it?”



“All it needs to work is a drop of your own blood,” the apothecary smiled benignly at her, behind the tattoo he suddenly looked very weary.  “Take this, it will remove the curse if you wish it.”



Rummaging through the contents of a drawer, the apothecary produced a stoppered vial, containing a clear liquid.  He pressed it into her hand, closing her fingers tightly around the little glass bottle.

She turned on her heel and left without thanking him, the hem of her cloak sweeping a cookie jar off the table.  As if falling through molasses it descended, and was caught just before it hit the floor.  Scotia returned the jar to its proper place, and left the shop, blinking in the bright light of day.



“Look, Charna,” the apothecary said, pointing to the cookie jar, “Look!  There is hope for her yet!”

 

The next day, when the sisters awoke, they found that their beauty had gone.  Their skin had turned to gray green, their features were drawn and hard.  And inside of smooth, warm skin, they were covered with a hard, metallic shell.  Their once beautiful faces were as hard and cold as their black hearts.  They attempted to continue as always, but young men were disgusted instead of entranced, and turned their faces away, closing their hearts to the sisters.



The mask of beauty that had covered the sister’s cold hearts had been torn away, the ice within slowly began to melt in exposure to the sun of discontent. 



The two locked themselves in the highest tower, and were seldom seen by living eyes.



But, confined thus, the two sisters grew thoughtful, repentant.  Slowly they thawed, and emerged from the tower kinder souls than they had been upon entering,



Seeing them, so happy in spite of their affliction, Scotia realized that the old apothecary had been correct.  The sisters had deserved her pity, not her hatred, for perfection was more of a curse than imperfection every could be.  Unstoppering the vial the old man had given her, she poured it over the parchment, letting the pure water wash away the red ink, blur and soften the sharp lines of hate.



Slowly, the sister’s cold, hard skin melted away, leaving in its wake the two perfect beings that Scotia had hated so.  However, they were not as completely flawless as they had been.  Their perfection was not absolute.  Their eyes remained inhuman, metallic, but not hard iron as they had once been, but pools of molten copper and brass, warm and kind and imperfect.



Their suitors still were rejected, but they were sent home with regrets and kind words, and often with generous gifts.  And when the sisters did find men they loved, they welcomed them ungrudgingly into their hearts.



And Scotia soon found a man who could look past her homely face and see her soul shining bright through the eyes that had always been like pools of molten gold.