It happened slowly. The entity in the woods had said as much, but Franca’s heart was so impatient. For the first few weeks she even feared she had been betrayed and the promise she had taken and sealed with her blood amounted to little more than a dream.

Even when she woke up with a clear wound running across her right hand, where she had opened her palm against a thorn sprouted from the closest tree, her covenant with the thing that whispered from under dreams and shadows.

It had been easy to explain her scar: she had an accident with a paper cutter, nothing to worry about. The line was thin and clear enough to be a good excuse, and her parents and friends quickly forgot about her misfortune, just as they forgot everything about her.

But on the first day of winter, she woke up to find something changed. Her heart beating so fast it reached her ears like a rumbling river, Franca walked on uneasy steps towards the bathroom, where she had the last remaining mirror in her quarters. It was a small thing but enough to notice her jaw sat differently. Her nose was slightly straighter, her eyes… were they not a little larger and more even?

Panting heavily, she held the mirror against her face for the better part of one hour, checking her reflection from all angles. She had changed, indeed. Subtly so. Someone half as obsessed as she was with her appearance would not have noticed.

She put down the mirror, shivers shaking her body. It was all true.

All true.

She put her hands over her belly, over her womb.

All of it.

Which meant…

She shook off the thought, like an old raven that had sat on a flowered branch. It scattered from her mind. What did it mean? There would be time to think of the payment, and by then, she probably would not care. She was too busy taking note of the changes.

As the voice had assured her, they would be subtle enough to be ascribed to puberty finally giving out its due, and more.

By Christmas, her face had transformed: she proudly displayed the harmonious profile of a Greek goddess, with her straight nose, her full lips, her large and deep eyes. Her smile lighted up the room instead of carrying clouds with it. People began to look at her, keep their eyes on her instead of shying away their gaze towards something less hideous.

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As winter proceeded, she also grew, like she used to a couple years before. In the course of a season her legs had lengthened two palms, and she was now taller than her mother, taller than most her friends. She stopped before her height became cause for concern, but she was slender and elegant like a nymph.

By the time Easter rolled by, she began to get noticed. At parties, during Mass, simply when she strolled by on the back of a horse together with her family. Voices spread, of course. There were those who said she had made a pact with the devil, no girl could become that beautiful in a matter of months. But most thought them jealous and paid them no mind. She had experience with it after all: people cared little for the ugly ones.

And now, at last, she was not one of them anymore.

With spring she shone: a jewel of beauty in every occasion, she would turn gazes towards herself like a whirlpool gathering all water to itself. She stepped into a room and everyone would look at her: desire – from men, no matter how old, no matter how young – and jealousy – from women.

Her so-called friends dropped any charade that their faith or common sense made them hold up and began to whisper behind her back. They called her a wench, a witch, a slut. Franca loved those words. They burned of the same flame that had consumed her for so long.

She was now an apparition: tall, shapely, her dark eyes shining with unseen light, her hair long and thick and lustrous, silence would walk with her, muted conversation upon her coming.

Most amusing, the men and handsome boys that had insofar forsaken her still did not care about her poetry, about her French, about her piano lessons. Their greedy eyes only saw what they could squeeze pleasure out which, and that made her dizzy. If they could squeeze pleasure out of her, she would be the one to say how, and when, and at what price.

Her first was the son of a Duke from Palermo, a beautiful blonde man with deep brown eyes and a mouth that tasted of cigars and peaches. His cologne dug deeper into her than his fingers and she had to take a shower afterwards to mask the scent. She had burned. He had shaken her, made her feel desired. She had of course not conceded fully – it would have been foolish! – but it had been a first morsel of an apple so tantalizing she never wanted to run out of it.

And so summer came and with it joys that seemed to know no end. The number of her suitors grew and grew like the mounting tide. People came from the continent to know her. Franca’s mind began to swim in ghosts and phantasms of places until then only imagined as far-off fantasies: London, Paris, Vienna!

Under the heat of summer, she pirouetted in her room, covered now with mirrors and flowers, trying one pretty dress after the next. Where would she dine tonight? Would a gentleman take her for a sip of the finest wine upon a terrace looking down into the sea?

And as she danced and the days passed, she managed to keep at way the gnawing awareness of the words whispered by that thing in the wood. Words about the time that had been given to her.

And when Franca put on her new dress and massaged her taut stomach, she did not think about the price that had been asked of her.

She did not think about it for a long time.

Until it would be too late.