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Once upon a time–back when the stars still had all their wishes–there was a well. Inside that well lived voices that belonged to no mouths. No people at all. Everyday these voices would bounce up the sides of the well, and they would find their way into the ears of any who were keen to catch them. While the voices could enjoy a good lie every now and then, what they loved most of all was to tell the truth. Any question thrown down to the voices would be met with an honest answer in turn. While the voices were always cheerful, they were not always kind. The two do not necessarily walk hand-in-hand, after all. Often, the voices would burble up carrying the meanest truth they could find, and they’d shoot it out with the most pleasant tones you could imagine.
“Will I ever find love,” one would ask the voices, and the voices would giggle back, “Only after your love has gone and found their own love somewhere else.”
“When will I be free to follow my dreams,” another would ask, and the voices cheer back, “In a casket! In a casket!”
No, the voices were not kind, but they were not liars, so they never ran out of visitors for long. A hard truth is worth a thousand pretty lies, as the people tell themselves, so aren’t the voices doing what’s right? Aren’t the voices what you need to hear?
Children are not born believing that they are ugly. That is something they must learn. It is something they must be taught.
Primrose had a very pretty name, so she believed that she must be pretty too. Whoever had gone and named all the things in the world decided that it was the kind of name lovely things deserved, gifting it to the flowers. Primrose was not named Toad, or Vulture, or Slime, so she simply could not be ugly. Whoever had named her must have seen her and decided that she had the kind of beauty that earned the name too.
When Primrose had finally come of age, she was permitted to join the couples dancing during the Summer festival. The young adults of the town gathered in the town square and asked one another to join in a dance. By cruel chance, there was an odd number of dancers this Summer, and Primrose was left to watch on the outside of the dancing ring.
“That’s alright,” thought Primrose, “it had to be someone, so why not me? I will await my turn to dance at the Fall Festival.”
The moon changed and changed until Autumn had settled into the town, and Primrose was glad to notice that the dancer count had turned even in the passing months. When the sun finally rose on the morning of the festival, Primrose was already up, too excited to sleep for even a moment. She braided flowers in her hair and decided to break in her new dancing shoes that night. She was the first to arrive at the square, and her anticipation grew as the other dancers arrived behind her.
Primrose was ready to ask someone to dance as soon as the festival started, but everytime she turned to someone their eyes would slip right past her and move on to the next dancer. Primrose was picked last by a partner who excused themselves after the first dance and left her sitting outside the edge of the dancing ring once more.
“I suppose someone had to be picked last,” Primrose told herself as she pulled the flowers from her hair, “so why not me?” The lesson had finally begun in earnest, but Primrose had yet to fully grasp its meaning. She was determined to dance, and that night she promised herself that come the Winter Festival, she would not be left outside the ring again.
In the months leading to the final dance of the year, Primrose had modeled herself on the beautiful people she saw in town. Primrose was already lovely, as her name promised (she had to be), but she realized that she must not have been acting the part. She felt so silly once she realized her mistake. It was so obvious once she paid attention. She simply hadn’t been using her beauty correctly, and now that she had smoothed away her errors, she was ready to dance to her heart’s content.
On the night of the Winter Festival, the dancers moved their celebration to the town hall to escape the cold rampaging outside. Primrose was among them, smiling in anticipation for the revelry awaiting her, but the number of dancers had dropped to odd once more. Despite all her wishes and despite all her effort, Primrose was outside the ring again.
She did not tell herself it had to be someone this time. It did always have to be someone, but she also knew that it did not always have to be her.
No one had ever told Primrose that she was ugly before. She had yet to be taught, and so she had yet to learn.
But luckily for her, the well gives lessons for free.
The night before the Spring festival, Primrose pressed herself against the wall of the well and leaned over the edge. She looked down into that pit and the voices looked back up at her, knowing what she would ask, but waiting for her to speak it down to them.
“Am I pretty?”
“No,” the voices said to her, “No, you are not.”
Primrose did not go to the Spring festival, which was blessed with an even count of dancers in her absence.
Primrose did not go to the Summer festival again.
She did not go to the Fall Festival.
She did not go to the Winter Festival.
Primrose did not go to festivals. Not since she learned that her name was a liar, and that she was a fool for believing it for so long. “How stupid they must have thought me, seeing me prance about with flowers in my hair,” Primrose would whisper to herself at night. “‘What a poor, sorry idiot she is’” she would repeat to herself until sleep took pity on her and stole away her thoughts for a while.
For a year, and then another, Primrose’s dancing shoes sat imprisoned within her closet, tucked away and out of sight. Each festival day the shoes would hear the music drift in from the town square, and they would itch to feel themselves move to the rhythm again. They had been used for but a single dance! Just remembering it brought all the ache of a brief moment of contact before something slips through your fingers. The shoes grew mad at the thought of it, and two years after Primrose had learned her terrible lesson at the well, the shoes had gone quite thoroughly insane.
On the night of the Spring Festival, Primrose resigned herself to a night locked indoors, wishing for the music to end. She closed her shutters and was about to snuff out her reading candle when a loud thump nearly scared her out of her skin. She fell silent. She waited to see if she would hear it again, yet still startled when a second thump joined the first. She spun towards the source of the noise, and came face-to-face with her closet door. A third thump rattled it then and Primrose knew that there was something inside trying to escape.
With each subsequent thump, Primrose took one more step towards the closet until its handles were within reach. Taking in one breath for courage, Primrose flung open the doors and jumped back as her old–but seldom worn–dancing shoes came rushing out. The shoes stomped and raged across her bedroom floor. “They seem to be having a terrible fit,” Primrose thought before the bewilderment wore down and she realized what her shoes were doing.
The shoes were rushing about with hardly any rhythm at all, but she recognized those steps. Left without her help for so long, the shoes had decided to take matters into their own soles. Primrose’s shoes had begun to dance all on her own.
The sight had startled out all the words she had in her, so all Primrose could do was laugh. It started as an exhale, jumped to a giggle, and grew into a full-bellied guffaw that was equal parts disbelief and joy. She kept laughing until she noticed that her shoes had stopped their stomping and now looked at her from across the room.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Primrose said, wiping away the tears that had begun to leak out. “You don’t need to stop. Go on.”
The shoes shifted uncomfortably, now aware of her watching them and thinking how ridiculous they must have seemed.
“It’s alright, really. You can go ahead and dance.”
The shoes moved once more, but not to dance. They made their way over to Primrose, turning around in front of her.
“Is it–Do you want me to dance with you?” she asked the shoes. They didn’t answer, but simply waited. Primrose let out a breath, and then another, and for the first time in two years she stepped into her dancing shoes.
She stood still, waiting for the shoes to start moving on their own once more and whisk her along with them. The shoes did not move.
Tentatively, she took a step to the right.
She took a step forward.
Moving to the window, Primrose opened her shutters to let the music from the town square back into her room. To the faint music she caught on the evening breeze, Primrose began to dance.
Primrose did not go to festivals, but she did dance. Every festival night, Primrose would open her window, put on her dancing shoes, and dance by herself to her stolen music.
She would dance in the secrecy of her room until the day she would be ready to dance by herself in the town square too.
She would dance by herself until the day when someone was ready to join her. Until the day someone would tell her that she was pretty, and it would be the truth to them.
She would dance until the day she could tell herself that she was pretty.
And it would be the truth to her.
THE END