Mal was ugly.
This was not a matter of subjective opinion, nor was it the passing cruelty of a childhood taunt. It was a fact. It was a fact as solid, cold, and unforgiving as the polished marble floor of the Great Hall, which he was currently scrubbing on his hands and knees. The reflection that stared back at him from the stone's mirror-like surface was a daily sermon on his own worthlessness.
Where the other inhabitants of the Gilded Garden were "Blessed," Mal was a "Smudge."
His eyes, small and set too close together, were the color of muddy water. They were nested above a nose that spread too wide across his face, and below a forehead that sloped back at an unfortunate angle. His jaw was crooked, his lips thin and pale. But these were mere aesthetic failures. His true crime, the sin etched onto his very being, was his hair.
Or, rather, his lack of it.
In the Gilded Garden, hair was magic. Hair was divinity. Hair was a physical manifestation of the Great Weaving, a sign of one's connection to the holy, protective force that sustained their utopian life.
The "Blooms"—the holy women—were the pinnacle of this truth. They drifted through the halls like living artworks, their skin like flawless porcelain and their hair... their hair was a living miracle. It fell in glossy, shimmering rivers of impossible color: midnight black, fiery crimson, sun-stolen gold. Each strand was thick and potent, thrumming with a visible, latent power. They were beautiful, and their beauty was their strength.
Even the "Drones"—the male caste to which Mal belonged—were expected to be... presentable. They, too, were part of the Weaving. Their hair was thick, strong, and workable. It was their sacred offering. Their hair was their Tithe.
Mal had... patches.
His scalp was a mottled, pinkish-grey map of sparse, stringy tufts. The strands that did manage to grow were the color of dishwater, thin and brittle. He was a walking blasphemy, a living insult to the very principles of their faith. In a world where beauty was proof of piety, Mal's ugliness was a neon sign of his inherent spiritual failure.
He kept his head down, his gaze fixed on the grey, soapy water in his wooden bucket. His brush, worn down to bristles, scrubbed at a particularly stubborn scuff mark. Scrub, scrub, scrub. The motion was automatic, a rhythm he had perfected over years of servitude. Keep his head down. Stay invisible. A smudge was best seen when it was not seen at all.
Above him, echoing through the cavernous expanse of the Great Hall, the voice of Matron Flora rose in the morning hymn. Her voice was like her hair—a magnificent, floor-length cascade of flawless silver, so potent it was said she had not used a single strand of her own magic in a century. It was smooth, resonant, and hypnotic, wrapping around the Drones and Blooms assembled for the morning attunement.
"From the head, the heart, the soul," she chimed, her voice a silken thread weaving through the air. "The Great Weft provides. We give of ourselves, our holy Tithe, and in our giving, we are made beautiful."
A choir of Blooms answered, their voices a harmony of angels. "In our beauty, we are made strong."
"The Shorn waste away in the world outside," Matron Flora continued, her voice dropping to a sympathetic, mournful tone. "Bald and broken, they live in filth, for they have no connection to the Weft. They have no magic. They have no worth."
"The Weaving protects us," the choir sang. "The Weaving provides."
Mal mouthed the words, his lips barely moving. He believed them. He had to. To doubt was to be cast out, to be made a Shorn. The thought sent a jolt of pure, cold terror through him. The Shorn were the boogeymen of the Garden, the bald, magicless vagrants he'd been taught to pity and fear. They were creatures who lived in the "Shorn" world, the chaotic, diseased, and dying lands outside the Garden's living walls. To be cast out was a fate worse than death. It was an erasure of self.
So he scrubbed. He scrubbed the floor, the walls, the baseboards, the privies. He scrubbed, and he prayed for forgiveness for the sin of his own face.
The Great Hall itself was a testament to the Weaving. It was not built of dead stone and wood alone. The support columns were massive, living burls of a pale, pearlescent wood, their surfaces swirling with natural, intricate patterns. The high, vaulted ceiling was a lattice of woven branches that, despite being indoors, sprouted fragrant, pink-and-white blossoms that fell like fragrant snow during the seasonal equinoxes. The stained-glass windows, which cast pools of colored light onto the floor Mal was scrubbing, did not depict saints or gods. They depicted the "First Blooms," legendary women with hair that trailed for miles, weaving the very foundations of the Garden.
The air smelled of floral incense, ozone (a by-product of the minor "Spark" spells used to light the high candelabras), and the sharp, alkaline scent of Mal's lye soap. It was the scent of purity.
A shadow fell over his bucket.
"Look at that. He's missed a spot."
Mal flinched, his shoulders hunching up to his ears. He didn't look up. He knew the voice. Kael. Another Drone, but one who was everything Mal was not. Kael's hair was a thick, lustrous brown, already growing back neatly from his last Tithe. He was broad-shouldered, and the Blooms sometimes smiled at him.
"It's... it's a stain, Kael," Mal whispered, his voice hoarse from disuse. "It won't come out."
"It's a stain, or it's a failure of effort," Kael said, his voice laced with the casual cruelty of the righteous. He nudged Mal's bucket with a sandaled-foot. "Just like your scalp. A failure of piety. Matron Flora says the Weaving grants gifts to those who are open to it. Your head is... very closed, Mal."
Mal's knuckles turned white on the handle of his brush. He said nothing. Kael was right. The doctrine was clear. We give of ourselves, and in our giving, we are made beautiful. Mal had nothing to give, and thus, he was not beautiful. His ugliness was his own fault.
"He's just jealous, Kael," another voice, this one thinner, snickered. Jev. "Jealous that your Tithe last month was strong enough to merit a nod from the Matron. All he can do is light a candle. Barely."
"I can too," Mal muttered, so low he wasn't sure he'd said it.
"What was that, Smudge?" Kael leaned down, his clean-smelling brown hair almost brushing Mal's patchy scalp.
Mal's terror of being Shorn was eclipsed, for one brief, terrible second, by a flash of white-hot anger. He looked up, meeting Kael's eyes. "I said, I can too. I tithed. I did the Spark."
Kael's smile was one of pity. "Oh, yes. The Spark. You ripped out one of your three precious hairs and lit a single candle. For two seconds. A triumph."
Kael was referring to the nature of their magic. The Drones, as males, had lesser, but reliable, magic. Their hair, when sacrificed for a spell, would grow back. It was slow, agonizingly slow, but it returned. A Drone could sacrifice a single lock of hair—a good, thick one—to cast a "Flash" (a blinding light) or a "Lift" (a minor telekinesis to move heavy supplies). It was magic born of utility, of labor.
The Blooms were different. Their hair was a reservoir of immense power. A single, long, luxurious strand, when sacrificed by a Bloom, could weave a shield against an army, heal a mortal wound, or conjure a localized storm to water the crops. But the price was absolute: once a woman's hair was used for magic, that follicle never grew back. It was a scar, an honorable and terrible sacrifice.
This was the core of their doctrine. The Blooms were precious, their power held in reserve for only the most dire of needs. The Drones were the expendable protectors, the laborers, using their "lesser, replaceable" magic.
Mal, with his pathetic, patchy scalp, could barely manage the "Spark," the weakest form of magic in existence. It was, as Kael said, used to light candles. And when Mal did it, the sacrifice of one of his stringy hairs would make his scalp bleed, and the resulting spark was more like a guttering ember. He was often called upon for this task, as it was the only "holy" duty he was fit for, and the Blooms considered it a... lesson in humility. For them.
Kael's smile faded. He was bored. Mal wasn't even fun to bully; he was just... sad. "Get back to work, Smudge. And do try to scrub that stain. It offends the Weaving."
Kael and Jev walked away, their laughter echoing. Mal let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He lowered his head, his forehead almost touching the cold, wet stone. The flare of anger was gone, replaced by the familiar, cold ocean of shame.
He resumed scrubbing. Scrub, scrub, scrub.
He tried to empty his mind, to find the "still point" the Matron spoke of, where one could feel the thrum of the Great Weaving. He had tried for seventeen years. He had never felt it. He just felt the ache in his knees, the cold of the water, and the hollow pit in his stomach.
There was one... one single, dangerous thought he allowed himself. A memory, really. Lilia.
Her name was a secret prayer he said to himself. Lilia. She was a Bloom, assigned to the archives and the library, a place of dust and scrolls that Mal was sometimes sent to clean. She had hair the color of a moonless midnight, so dark it seemed to drink the light. And she... she didn't look at him with pity or disgust. She looked at him... or rather, she just looked. As if he were another person.
Last week, he had been dusting a high shelf, his ugly, disproportionate body a blessing for once, his gangly, long limbs allowing him to reach where others could not. He had knocked over a small, carved wooden box. It had clattered to the floor. He had frozen, expecting a reprimand, expecting the cold silence of a Bloom's disappointment.
Lilia had simply knelt, picked up the box, and looked up at him. And she had smiled.
It was a small, simple, and devastating gesture. It had shattered his defenses. He'd nearly fallen off the ladder.
He held that memory in his mind like a stolen jewel, a single point of warmth in his cold, grey existence. He was thinking of that smile, of the way the light from the library window had caught the blue-black sheen of her hair, when a new shadow fell over him.
This one was different. It was not the casual shadow of another Drone. This one was absolute, a void of light.
Mal didn't even have to look up. He could smell the scent of polished leather and the sharp, sterile tang of nothingness.
A heavy boot, polished to a mirror shine, nudged his side. It was not a playful nudge. It was a prod, the kind one gives a dead animal to see if it will move.
"Done, Smudge?"
The voice was a low, rumbling grate. Mal scrambled to his feet, his bucket sloshing, his body bowing low, his forehead practically to his knees. "Honored Reaper. Yes. Almost."
He was addressing one of the Garden's enforcers. The Reapers. They were the third caste, and the most terrifying. They were tall, muscle-bound, and utterly bald. Theirs was a holy baldness, a "Chosen" sacrifice. They had, the doctrine said, "given all their hair to the Weft at once," and in return, were granted physical strength and the authority to enforce the Matron's will. They were the shears to the Garden's flock.
This one, Reaper Theron, was known for his quiet, efficient cruelty. He stared down at Mal, his own bald, scarred scalp a bizarre contrast to Mal's patchy one. In the Reaper, the baldness was a threat, a sign of power. On Mal, it was a weakness, a sign of failure.
Theron's lip curled, just slightly, revealing a hint of disgust as he looked at Mal's mottled scalp. "The Blooms are preparing for the Monthly Tithe. The kitchens require runners. Get to the kitchens."
It was not a request. Mal bowed again, so low his stringy hair brushed the floor. "Yes, Honored Reaper. At once."
He didn't look the Reaper in the eye. He just gathered his bucket and his brush, his movements quick and servile, a frantic scrambling of limbs. He fled the Great Hall, his heart hammering in his chest, the Reaper's cold, dead eyes following him until he was out of sight.
He ran, his worn-out sandals slapping on the pristine stones. The Tithe. The sacred Monthly Tithe. He was running toward the kitchens, but his mind was running toward Lilia. He just wanted, for one moment, to see her smile again.