The Beast Within the Beauty
by Ashalina Ghina
Diterbitkan 2020
Disunting oleh Fairuza H. Razak & Yasmine Mulholland
Novel, 117 halaman
dalam Bahasa Inggris
ISBN: 978-623-90383-2-8
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Princess Eadlyn Novakov thinks she’ll be the only one her parents will love. When the perfect little angel Elide joins the family, she is challenged by her younger sister in terms of love, in spite of Eadlyn’s greater beauty. Years later, a palace maid discovers the king and queen dead, leaving a letter that will determine each of the sisters’ fate. The crown is already claimed. But Eadlyn will do anything to win back her right to power, in this deadly game of love and beauty.
Ashalina Ghina, only twelve when she wrote this, forged a compact, chilling story of emotional trauma and abuse at the hands of even the people we think love us the most. Trust is betrayed. Evil is uprooted.
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Circling around the palace was a forest that many believed was home to demons disguised as woodland creatures.
This made the King believe that if they cut the forest down the demons would leave and it would be a safe place for people to live in.
But he was wrong, for when he sent a small number of his guards into the forest, none returned.
Since the forest was too dangerous for any humans to play in, the King built two empty rooms on the third floor of the palace, with a wide balcony, decorated and opened to a view of the garden: flowers, trees, a little pond and other colorful and beautiful plants.
Worried, still, of the creatures that haunted the forest, the Queen also made Eadlyn take a private archery class and she practiced in the garden every Sunday morning.
Eight years passed and ten-year-old Eadlyn was bored of playing in the garden and on the balcony her father had made for her. So, she took eight-year-old Elide to play with her in the palace halls.
“What should we play, Eadlyn?” asked Elide.
“Let’s play hide and go seek!” Eadlyn answered. “And I will be the one counting!” She rushed to a marble-stone pillar. The palm of her hands pressed against her eyes, and the pillar covering them. “One, two, three, four, five...” Eadlyn counted. Meanwhile, Elide was running around, trying to find a place to hide in, until she settled down behind a set of red curtains. “…six, seven, eight, nine… TEN! Ready or not, here I come!” cried Eadlyn.
Eadlyn walked slowly between the stone pillars, to see whether Elide was hiding behind the big Arabic vases marking each window. Then she peeked behind her parents’ thrones, which were red and blue and made of wood, painted gold. Decorated with colorful flowers pressed into a crescent carved into each backrest: the symbol of Crescentia. Circling around the thrones were the large stone pillars.
Unable to find her sister, Eadlyn got upset and was storming out of the hall, when she heard a sneeze coming from one of the long velvet curtains covering a window. She crept toward it, shadow falling across the red fabric, yanked open one side of the curtain and cried, “BOO!”
“AH!” screamed Elide. A choke, a wheeze and a cough came out of her fragile lips.
The older sister laughed, thinking Elide was pretending to be sick. But Elide wasn’t pretending.
Eadlyn didn’t know that, until Elide coughed so hard that green goo began to pour out of her mouth. Eadlyn panicked and departed from the room to call her parents.
“Mother! Father! Elide is sick!” Eadlyn cried as hard as she could.
The royal couple shared a desperate and terrified look, before the King sent the royal doctor a message to come to their room immediately.
“Doctor, please help us. The princess is unwell,” cried the Queen as soon as the doctor appeared at the doorway.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said the doctor with a respectful bow.
Eadlyn showed them the place where Elide was standing. The King and Queen both saw her coughing harder and harder, and they took Elide to Eadlyn’s room – since her room was the nearest to the throne room.
“Your Highness, would you mind if you lay her on the bed?” the doctor asked Eadlyn politely. He put on his white rubber gloves and picked up two of his instruments in both of his clean hands.
Eadlyn minded laying her sister on her bed, so the King insisted that he should carry Elide to lie on the window nook. There, the doctor checked her temperature, throat, and other parts of her body to make sure she was okay.
The doctor looked relieved, but was also shocked about what he had found. “She looks fine, Your Majesty. She is just easily frightened. Unfortunately she has a muscle weakness in her heart, so I advise you not to cause her heart to jump.”
“Thank you, doctor,” said the King.
Once Elide was healed by a few fresh herbs and several spoons of medicine to help her heart calm down, the doctor then gave her some sleeping pills and helped the King carry her back to her own room. The King and Queen explained to Eadlyn that Elide needed to rest for a few days until she was completely healed.
Eadlyn sat on the edge of her bed and watched as her parents left her room to escort Elide to her own room and the doctor to the gates, but they never returned to tell her any stories or sing her any songs, not even to tell her “goodnight”.
Eadlyn peered from behind the door, her head poking out of her room. She could hear her mother’s voice reading to Elide in her room at the end of the hall, carried by the wind. Eadlyn’s heart sank as she closed the door of her room and walked towards her rocking chair with her head down and a frown on her face.