A/N: the first scene in the marketplace, from Clara's POV. Please let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: Not mine. Clara and Margarethe's dialogue come straight from the book.
I open the heavy wooden shutters and lean out the open window, breathing in the scent of sea breezes and rotting fish that prevails over Haarlem's marketplace. Haarlem is a town devoted to trade; its merchants worship gold the way a pious churchgoer worships Our Lord. The center of Haarlem's economy is the bulb, specifically the tulip bulb. One of my earliest memories is of my father placing a tulip bulb in my plump, tiny hand.
"Isn't it pretty, Clara?" he asked and I had stared at the ugly misshapen lump with an avid fascination that only toddlers possess. On the surface, it resembled a rotting onion, something that I would have tossed into the scrap heap without a second thought. But underneath the ugly brown skin, there was a strange alien beauty that seemed to cast a spell on merchants and farmers alike. It radiated a power, a power that captured people's attention.
This power was something I craved, but when I managed to grasp the elusive beauty, it became a crippling burden. I was in awe of beauty. Beauty demands attention in a direct, unfussy way, as if to say, "Admire me. Worship me. Love me." It was beauty that caused me to become a prisoner in my home; I wished to be beautiful but with such a transformation came a great price. As a changeling child I could not venture beyond the four walls surrounding the edges of the garden for fear of death. I was expressly forbidden to even peer out the window at the street adjacent; a rule that I took pleasure in bending as often as possible.
A commotion in the Marketplace nearby interrupts my thoughts and I turn towards the noise. A mother and her two daughters stand in the middle of the bustling marketplace. The eldest daughter has knocked over a table groaning under the weight of dozens of pears. The mother's face is hard; her skin ashy and a small scattering of gray hairs dot her the edge of her forehead, where scalp and hair meet. Her face shows a sort of weariness, as if she made through life's challenges, but barely. The younger of the two daughters observes the scene with an intense curiosity; her dull grey eyes soaking up every detail.
The elder daughter begins to wail, a beastly sound that seems primitive and animal like. The mother slaps her in an attempt to discipline. The girl shrieks even louder but stops suddenly; her watery brown eyes have fixed themselves on a new target: the toy windmill in my hands. There is something odd about her, her lumbering gait and her face; all the features are lined up correctly, but there is something distinctly off kilter about them.
My heart pounds in anticipation; is it possible that she is a changeling child like me? She was not beautiful at all, but I had never seen another changeling before, perhaps they were all different?
"Clara?" my mother's voice calls from inside the house, but I ignore her, gazing at the changeling-child with utmost scrutiny.
"Are you a lost one?" I ask. Getting no response, I turn to her pinched face mother, "Is she a changeling? Let her go if she is; let her go, and let's see what she'll do! Will she fly like a crow?"
The mother snaps back in harsh Dutch, "What kind of town is this, that the young address their elders with such nonsense?"
The words sting like a slap and I flinch but stay where I am; determined to figure out who, or what this girl is. Suddenly she yanks the windmill out of my grasp and sticks the rounded end in her mouth.
I scrunch up my button nose in disgust, "Thing, oh thing, get away from here!"
"Clara!" my mother scolds from behind, pulling me away and slamming the window shut. Once again, I am sent to do some meaningless schoolwork or chore to pass the time, in a futile effort to prevent me from seeing the world beyond.