The city centre was heaving with people when Caleb and I reached it. Everyone was in high spirits, decorating the streets with dazzling silver banners and sprinkling confetti over the floor so that it glimmered. The vibrant atmosphere was echoed by the music pulsing out of the loud speakers, a shocking contrast to the slow, calm melodies that usually drifted through the city.
"Hey, Jazz, how's Brae?" Devon danced over to me holding an armful of shimmering streamers. She was always the first one to get into the party spirit.
"He seems great, happy to be home though."
"He'll be even happier once he sees what a sparkling party we've put together for him!"
"He's going to love it!"
"How could he not? I'm organising it after all," she laughed happily. "Hey! You can't put that down there! The tables are on the other side of the fountain - are you blind? This is where everyone's going to dance!" She quickly hurried off to pester a flustered looking boy with bright green eyes.
"Sorry, Devon. It was getting kind of full up over there, so I thought..."
"Don't think! Just do!"
"Hey, Brody," I called over to him, waving. He nodded in response then went back to trying to pacify Devon, before she got too annoyed with him. Laughing, I carried on weaving my way through the crowds of people, hurrying to catch up with Caleb, who had gone ahead without me when I stopped to talk to Devon. It didn't take me long to find him again; he had barely made it out of the crowd and onto 5th street, where our house was.
I had lived with Caleb for as long as I could remember. No one knew exactly where I came from originally. One of the members of Caleb's congregation had gone down to his boat one morning to find me tucked up in a basket inside of it. More than a little confused, he brought me to Caleb, who decided to take me in until a "more suitable home" could be found. One never had been and, after I started sleeping through the nights, he decided that he didn't mind having me around. So with him I had stayed. Caleb had been best friends with King Zephyrus since they were children and I had ended spending a lot of time at the palace growing up, which is how I had become close friends with Brae.
When we got to the front door, I rang the bell and waited for Noni to come open it. I had a key, but Noni didn't like it when we let ourselves in. Her hearing wasn't brilliant and it made her jump if she suddenly heard someone walk into the kitchen. A few seconds later and the door opened to reveal her round, beaming face.
"You look cold! Come in quick, into the warm." She ushered us both inside and made us sit down in the living room while she went to get hot drinks. She didn't really need to fuss: I always felt cold when I went outside, even in the middle of summer. According to Brae, my olive toned skin made me look more as though I should always be warm, but this was never the case. I don't think that Caleb was cold at all, but he enjoyed being fussed over. He spent the rest of his life having to worry about everyone else, so it was nice for him to come home and have someone worry about him.
"Brae seemed pleased to be back," Caleb said once we were alone.
"He did, didn't he and he'll be even happier tonight, once he's seen Devon's party. It really is sparkling."
"That girl is a law unto herself. She'd paint the whole town with glitter if we let her," Caleb said, grumbling slightly as usual and I laughed.
"She's not that bad! She just likes to make sure everyone has as much fun as possible. Where's the harm in that?"
Caleb pulled a face but didn't answer as Noni re-entered carrying a tray of steaming drinks. She handed ours to us and then sat down in her chair, smiling. Noni was always happy. She saw the good in everything and kept us all in high spirits, no matter what was happening. Caleb and I were very lucky to have her around.
When she first came, it had been to be a housekeeper and nanny; Caleb had needed a hand once I'd started walking. But as I'd grown older, she had stayed anyway and looked after Caleb and I, almost as if we were both her children.
Usually, I really liked it when we all sat down together to talk, but tonight I could have groaned when Noni took her seat. It had been a difficult few hours and I needed a little time alone to think about what I was going to do. "Thanks, Noni," I said, standing up, "I'll be up in my room if anyone needs me."
"Something wrong, Jasmine?" Noni looked up at me, worried, which wasn't surprising since until a few weeks ago I'd never really spent any time upstairs by myself. She couldn't understand why I now seemed so keen on isolation. I couldn't help it though. The more time I spent with them, the more chance there was that they would find out.
I climbed the spiralled staircase up to my room on the top floor. Once inside I closed the door behind me and locked it with an antique golden key. I wasn't taking any chances. Certain I was safe, I sat down at my tiny dressing table and carefully took my dark chocolate hair out of its ribbon, letting it fall in ringlets down to my shoulders. I screwed my eyes up instinctively, trying to hide from the thing in front of me.
I forced myself to breathe deeply; perhaps they would have vanished. Perhaps I'd been imagining them because Brae was gone and I was scared without him, and now that he was back I'd feel safe enough again that they would go away. Perhaps it was just paint or something and would have been washed out by the sea spray earlier. I breathed again, feeling much calmer and then, slowly, opened my eyes.
My heart plummeted, free falling, as I realised that the three vibrant, violet streaks were still running through my hair. My eyes snapped shut again, hot tears welled up, threatening to flood my cheeks. Why violet? Nobody had violet hair; silver, red, green or blue maybe, but never violet. It wasn't right. It wasn't natural. I couldn't understand it. My hair had been perfectly normal a few weeks ago, but then, when brushing my hair one morning, the sun had glinted off of something purple in my reflection. Since then, I'd noticed a few more strands change every couple of days.
I'd been wearing my hair up ever since to hide them. Who knew what people would say if they found out? What if they thought that I was some sort of monster. There were rumours of all sorts of strange things living on some of the remote, unpopulated islands in the Brizan Realm; what if I was the child of one of them? What if my parents were some kind of hideous creature?
I wiped my eyes and opened them again, forcing myself to look properly at my reflection in the mirror. Aside from my hair, I didn't look like a monster... yet. In fact, ignoring the violet, I looked exactly as I had done before Brae left. Except from where my eyes were red from crying.
For now, at least, I could hide the streaks and no one would be any the wiser. But if my hair continued to change colour it would get harder and harder to conceal and I didn't know what I would do if any powers began to manifest. Would they be useful, like Brae's? Or... it didn't bear thinking about. What if I couldn't control them and ended up hurting somebody I loved? I couldn't live with myself if I let that happen.
Hot tears poured down my cheeks before I could stop them. The thought of anything bad happening to Caleb and Noni, or Brae and his family, after everything they had done to help me, after they had taken me in and accepted me, was unbearable. What a fine way to repay them it would be if I killed them all by accident when some bizarre, uncontrollable power appeared.
I threw my wrap across the mirror, hiding the monster that looked back at me, and got up and went to the window. What was I going to do? Brae already thought that I had been lying to him, how long would it take him to figure out why? I couldn't tell him the truth; he'd never want to speak to me again. Perhaps it would be best to avoid him, to offer to help Caleb out more often, so that I was always too busy to see him.
It would be hard, not seeing Brae all the time, but it would be better than having him hate me and besides, I had managed to survive without him for the last month, the Realm wasn't going to come crashing down around me if I kept away from him for a little while longer, would it? I sighed and gazed down into the street below.
The people beneath me were all busy carrying things to the city centre for the party. I could see a group of them, presumably a family as they had two identical girls wearing matching white jumpers and skirts, all heading that way, chatting as they went, relaxed in each other's company. One of the little girls skipped on ahead of the others, then twirled around in the street and began to dance. Her parents stopped, smiling and the other little girl ran up to join her twin, eager to share the attention. They started dancing together, spinning each other round and round until one toppled backwards on to the floor. I breathed in sharply, but she stood up laughing and her sister and parents laughed to. They linked arms and carried on walking towards the party, still laughing.
I stared after them longingly. I'd give anything for that, a family, people who loved me because I was theirs; and a sister - I had always wanted a sister. An older sister, like Imogen had, who I could share secrets with and who would get ready to go out with me. Imogen always said that her sister wasn't like that at all, that she was incredibly annoying and that they took great pains to avoid each other, but I think that she was just lying to make me feel better.
If I had a sister, I would be able to tell her what was going on and she would understand. She would reassure me and tell me what to do to make everything better. Although, if I had a sister, she'd probably have the same problem, having been born from the same monster parents, and would already be blasting people into billions of tiny pieces with her sonic rays, or killing them with a single word, or maybe a song or a lullaby.
I turned away from the window, shaking my head to try and get rid of the sudden image I had of my unreal monster sister bending over Brae, his eyes closed, his chest unmoving. To distract myself, I went over to sit on my bed and picked up a book from my bedside table. Reading always calmed me down: filling my head with other - made-up - people's problems and conflicts made my own seem less terrible, less real.
I read a few pages. It was about an Arcan girl kidnapped by Helians and made to work as a servant in the royal palace. She remained, trapped, in the Helian Realm for six months, all the while praying that her fiancé, whom she had been cruelly snatched from on the night before her wedding, would discover her fate and rescue her. I hadn't reached the end yet, but I was pretty certain that he was going to save her; the helpless heroine always gets saved in the end.
Despite its predictable, overused storyline (Arcan novels were always sugary), the book was good - the hero was the sort of character you could feel yourself falling in love with, no matter how much you tried to convince yourself that he wasn't real. And it was exactly the sort of thing I needed to be reading that afternoon: a story where, no matter how bad things got, you knew everything was going to turn out fine in the end.
However, I hadn't even got through an entire chapter when I caught sight of the time on the antique clock on my wall. If I was going to get to the party on time, I needed to get ready straight away. No matter how much I wanted to avoid Brae, I knew that I couldn't skip tonight entirely; Devon would murder me.
I had a bath, running the water until it was almost scolding hot. Then I filled it with the jasmine bath salts Noni always insisted on buying me, since they matched my name. I took my book into the bathroom with me and read a bit more in the water, feeling my muscles relax as I lost myself in the story and the strong, heady scent of the jasmine. I took time to make sure that the puffiness around my eyes was decreased by the steam rising from the water.
Once out of the bath I put a new dress on. This one was a halter-neck made from a sheer, flowing fabric, which was a striking ebony at the bust but had a white skirt. Small, glimmering, faux crystals had been sewn along the bottom, making me shine when the light hit my dress. Ordinarily, I would have worn it with my hair down, it looked better that way. But since that was no longer an option, I was going to have to put it in a bun. That, however, meant taking my shawl off of the mirror, so that I could see my reflection.
I did my hair as quickly as I could; taking care to hide every strand of violet, while trying not to think about them too much. Once that was done, I moved on to my accessories. I opened the small jewellery holder on my dressing table and looked at the collection of crystals I had been given by Grace over seventeen years of birthdays and festival celebrations. I decided on the simple, heart shaped crystals which hung from silver chains for my ears; Devon would love them as they changed colour depending on how the light hit them.
I didn't have to worry about make-up since I never wore any; unless Devon and Imogen were helping me get ready, anyway. I checked my reflection once more, very briefly, in the mirror, to be certain that all signs of violet were once again hidden, and then went downstairs.
Caleb was still sitting in his chair, where I had left him, but Noni had gone to get ready, so I went back up to her room. I knocked softly on the door and waited for her to respond.
"Jasmine? It's open, you can come straight in." I opened the door to find Noni standing at her mirror, surrounded by clothes. She was holding a tasteful beige dress in front of her, looking thoughtfully at her reflection. When she caught sight of me in the mirror she turned around at once, dropping the dress to the floor and came over to the doorway to usher me further into the room.
"Let me look at you properly!" She turned me slowly on the spot, admiring the dress. "Ah, very pretty; you look like a princess. I wish I still had your figure." She laid her hands against her hips and sighed. "But why have you put your hair up? It looks so much prettier down."
I shrugged. "I fancied trying something different; I always wear it down."
"Hmm," she said, believing the lie but not the logic behind the statement. "Well, you look stunning, that boy's never going to want to go away again, that's for sure."
"Noni!" I moaned, exasperated. Noni, like Grace, entertained the fairy-tale delusion that Brae and I were meant to be together.
"Don't you 'Noni' me." She shook her head, but winked to show she was joking.
I smiled back as it wasn't worth protesting. "I'd better get going," I said, changing the subject instead. "Devon might need a hand with the finishing touches. It's going to be sparkling!"
She waved goodbye to me and I left the room and went down to the front door, calling out a brief goodbye to Caleb before going out onto the street.