Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 40 Open the Door

At the chalet, there was a portrait of Jean-Baptist that Fanchon had painted. In it, he was a middle-aged man made of solid squares and proud lines. He was wide-shouldered and had clear blue eyes and no hint of a smile on his lips.

The thing standing between Cocot and the fountain was a monster. Deep creases lined his face and around his eyes. Where his mouth and nose should have been were only wrinkles of loose skin.

The absurd thought that he couldn't breathe since he didn't have a mouth or nose passed through her head, and Cocot shuddered.

There was a rope tied around his waist. As Cocot stared, an emaciated arm and hand came out of the wooden chest on the ground and plucked at the rope. The arm was impossibly long and thin. A head came up to the hole in the top of the box, exposing part of face.

Jean-Baptist again, but this one had no eyes, only flaps of skin. The thing in the box seemed to search for Cocot, nose sniffing and mouth wide open. It stretched its hand outward.

There were two of them. The ghost body split in two—one that walked and dragged the chest, the other that was always folded into it.

"Open the...door," he pleaded. A tiny scratching sound came from the chest, like fingernails.

"I need the moonlight," she answered mechanically. Grasping the brambles tighter, she said, "All of it!" The light swirled faster around her into the branches.

The world went black.

Cocot leapt forward, ducking away from where she had last seen the two Jean-Baptists. Reaching the fountain, she thrust the bramble-blade in the water, cutting downward.

"Let the light return!"

Beams of white and silver flooded the basin. They escaped the fountain and filled the space under the roof. They curled out and upwards until they began climbing for the sky, back towards the stars and blackened moon.

"You cannot destroy it," the witch said. Cocot faced the haggard creature who tried to grab her.

"I will make you a promise," Cocot said. She had to circle the basin backwards, away from Jean-Baptist. "I promise you this, Hélène. I will do to you exactly what you did to me. I promise to destroy everyone and everything you love, but no living creature will harm a hair on your head and you will be free to walk away."

"No," she moaned. "No, you cannot destroy it, no fairy has that power, you don't have that power. I will be free to come for it again."

"Maybe I don't have the power," Cocot said. She grabbed the ends of the brambles with both hands. "Or maybe I do. To the surface, to me, to the stars."

A thin white band of light brighter than the moonlight streamed up from the crack to join the rays returning to the heavens.

"Not all of it, you can't!" the witch said.

Cocot turned to tell her she could. Jean-Baptist caught her by the neck. She choked and clawed at his vaporous hand, dropping the brambles in the water. The light began to fade.

"Are you the man they call Jean-Baptist?" a sweet voice asked.

The hand released Cocot's neck. She gasped for air. "Mother?"

A figure in a red dress with a white underdress and thick braid over one shoulder was standing in the pale light at the fountain's edge.

"Mother!"

"No, not you, not now," hissed the witch. "I did not give you leave to speak. I summoned you and now I banish you!" She spat on the ground.

Fanchon did not glance at her. She stared at Jean-Baptist, the ghost with no nose or mouth. She couldn't see the one in the chest. "Are you the cabinet maker and wood worker? The one they call Jean-Baptist?"