Summer 2026 Contest Winner

Elias’ voice echoed through the garden, swept high to the towers of château Narraune as he belted through the most heart-wrenching part of the aria. Several listeners, men and women alike, lifted their masks, delicately dabbing the corners of their eyes.

For the orchestra, the pressure was on. We were usually hidden away in the pit at the opera, but up here, we were on full display. I’d have found this unnerving if it weren’t for my mask putting up a wall between me and the guests’ attention. Its small eye holes muted the obnoxious colors of their gowns and suits. The familiar weight of the violin resting on my shoulder and the messy notes on the stand in front of me calmed me as well. For all my faults, I was a decent musician.

We continued playing. Elias poured his heart and soul into words I barely understood, hitting impossibly high notes over and over. Sadness and longing filled the garden, all guests frozen in place until the final chord had died down.

Under thunderous applause, Elias bowed and left, quickly reducing the rest of us to background music. With the magic broken, the regular festive noise resumed. Chatters, laughing, the clinging of crystal glasses, the click-clack-clicking of heels on the winding paths in the garden. Some pressure left my chest still as the guests paid me even less heed.

One of the listeners moved to tears was a young woman going by Aurélie Narraune, the baron’s heiress and the belle of the party. We looked somewhat alike, similar heights, ages and hair colors, but only in the way a work-in-progress marble statue resembled its finished version. One was polished, delicate, beautiful, something to show off in your salon. The other stood in the corner of an artist’s atelier, covered with an old sheet until enough of it had been chipped away and sanded off to be shown to the world.

I felt a strange combination of pity and jealousy as I observed her, surrounded by similarly pretty girls giggling behind their fans and the occasional nobleman twice her age trying to woo her. She underwent it all with a detached, benevolent grace. Never entertaining their advances but somehow never offending them either.

In short, she was perfect. And I needed to speak to her more than anything.

◆

My earliest years were fairly uneventful. I saw only flashes of my father as a wet nurse raised me.

I was fussy, crying often, loudly and for seemingly no reason. I walked late and learned to speak even later. I never smiled. Growing into a toddler and later a small child, the three words I heard most were: “Aurélie, calm yourself”. I never could.

People started to talk. “Demonic, possessed, imbecile”. Whispers and stares followed me wherever I went, even during the rare times I did manage to behave. The most superstitious among the servants went so far as to compare me to a changeling, after an old wives’ tale where the little folk would replace a child with something else. Something not quite human….

◆

Eventually, it got too dark for us musicians to see our parts, despite the frankly unnecessary amount of oil lamps the servants had placed everywhere, and we were excused. The lamps shone like stars all through the garden as we all descended from the small wooden stage.

Free to roam, we enjoyed the venue, the food and the networking opportunities during the party’s final hours. It was part of the deal baron Narraune had struck with us, since we were being severely underpaid otherwise. Elias especially made use of the opportunity, smiling and charming guests wherever he went.

I caught him taking a break from the crowd, having a drink under the canopy of an abandoned pavilion and steeled myself. To us musicians, he was insufferable, but everyone buttered up to him regardless since he basically kept our opera afloat all by himself, which in turn just made him even more insufferable. And I needed his help.

I approached, trying to contort my face into something resembling an appreciative smile.

“You outdid yourself tonight”, I complimented him: “The guests were all enraptured.”

“Why, Louise”, Elias smirked: “Tell me something that isn’t nakedly obvious for once.”

My face immediately fell back into its perpetual scowl. He laughed and turned away from me, already done with this conversation. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

“I need a favor”, I bluntly told him. He looked aghast: “I need to speak to Lady Aurélie. Please go talk to her and introduce me.”

“Social climbing, are we?” He raised an eyebrow: “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“It’s personal” I said: “I’ll play for free at your next benefit concert if you do this for me.”

Elias sipped his wine and considered it for quite some time. I fidgeted while I waited. There wasn’t much I could offer him besides this. Perhaps I could do it two or three times…

“You know, Louise”, he eventually said: “I’m continuously surrounded by people who need favors. All of them try to bribe me, or flatter me, or even seduce me. But you know what makes you stand out?”

There was something in his voice, the way his eyes narrowed in the eyeholes of his mask. I just knew he was going to say something horrible.

Reluctantly, I answered: “... No?”

“How embarrassingly, pathetically bad you are at it.”

Something stabbed in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, furrowed my brows and said the only thing I could think of:

“Is that a yes or no?”

He laughed even harder and walked away. I didn’t stop him this time.

◆

The real problems only started when I was taken out of the nursery and into my father’s world.

I refused, all of it. To wear the dresses, the corsets. To put an ungodly thick layer of powder on my face and leave it there, to have people pull at my hair for hours, to sit still during meals when the uncomfortable clothes itched and prodded my everywhere, to smile demurely at strangers. I screamed until I turned blue. I cried and kicked and punched and bit.

As I grew older, my father’s patience grew thinner. Nothing helped to keep me in line. Bribing me with candy, long lectures about civility and propriety, hitting me, locking me up in a dark room. It didn’t help. I simply couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even understand how other people did.

The whispers changed tone, started to involve me directly. I learned to read, right? So it wasn’t like I was intellectually challenged. Why couldn’t I understand I was hurting my family? What was wrong with me?

The changeling rumours persisted, too. At some point, I think I started to believe them.

◆

After Elias had humiliated me, I wandered the garden alone. I tried to get close to the heiress without his help, but it proved difficult. She was constantly beset by more important people, and I let myself get stared, intimidated and simply pushed away.

Eventually, when baron Narraune excused himself early and the festivities were starting to fade, I took it as a sign from God that it wasn’t meant to be. I shoved aside my disappointment and changed tack.

Despite the servants’ best efforts, a garden party this extravagant left quite the mess. I scoured the garden until I’d found three half-empty wine bottles and headed towards a pavilion I knew had a small wine cellar.

As I descended into the dark, a petite, elegant, familiar figure was there rummaging through the cabinets, glass in hand and an oil lamp standing on the ground beside her. God knows how she’d managed to escape her entourage. How, after such a disaster of a night, had I gotten this lucky?

Lady Aurélie noticed my presence without me saying a word. She turned around.

“Oh? Weren’t you with the orchestra?”

I nodded, too gobsmacked to speak.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. There was no accusation in her voice, just curiosity.

“I… uhm…I’m not very good at… talking to people” I confessed, I heard from someone that, when lying, it was always better to include at least a grain of the truth: “I thought I could make myself useful… put these bottles away, so that maybe someone could still…”

I trailed off. She wasn’t listening. Her eyes had already glazed over, reflecting the struggling flame of the oil lamp. She stared mournfully into her glass, unable to hold it steady and to prevent the liquids from spilling. She seemed… quite overcome

“Useful… That’s it, isn’t it?” Lady Aurélie chuckled humourlessly. “All any of us are ever expected to be. Useful.”

“I… suppose?” I hedged: “Better than being useless…”

She ignored my unhelpful commentary: “The aria your friend performed, do you know what it’s from?”

“No, I don’t even know what it’s about. I don’t speak Italian”, I admitted: “And Elias is not my friend.”

“Forbidden love”, she whispered.

I blinked.

“He was singing about forbidden love”, Her shoulders slumped as if telling me this was some terrible burden. She put her glass down on one of the shelves and sat down on a crate: “I once thought this life was everything I wanted, but now… I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend.”

“I’m sure everything will turn out better than my lady thinks”, I said. I hesitated, then put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her: “Forbidden or not, everyone seems to love you.”

Suddenly, she was in my face. Her breath was on my lips, our masks almost touching and her eyes boring into mine.

“You’re very beautiful.”

I immediately stumbled backwards and fell on my backside, almost crashing into a cabinet.

Lady Aurélie pulled back as well, just as distraught as I was, if not more. She curled into herself and mumbled variations of “I’m so sorry” and “I shouldn’t have” over and over again, not even caring that apologizing to someone like me should be beneath her. She kept making those awful, choking sounds people made when they were trying not to cry.

For once in my life, I was the first to recover. I stood up, dusted myself off and grabbed the lady’s glass. I firmly pushed it back into her hands, grabbed her shoulders and worked her out the door.

“You should return to the party”, I ordered: “Your friends must be worried.”

“Yes… “ she said dazedly, taken aback by my sudden assertiveness: “Yes, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me”, I said: “This never happened.”

I stared at her as she tentatively made her up the stairs, stumbling ever so slightly. I waited until she was fully out of sight. Then, when I was sure I was alone, I left my half-empty bottles for what they were and grabbed the harshest liquor I could find.

Forbidden love, I thought with bitter amusement as I left the cellar: Not so perfect after all.

◆

One fateful night, my father had the nurse maid dress me up in commoner’s clothes. They were uncomfortable too, just in different ways. Looser, but somehow more itchy. My caretaker pressed her lips together the entire time, saying nothing. Not even chiding me when I wriggled and fussed in my chair.

My father then took me riding, alone, in someone else’s dingy coach. I’d never seen him drive a carriage himself before. I didn’t even know he could do that.

The nightly ride, quiet, with no one bothering me, might’ve been calming if the silence weren’t so oppressive. We rode out of the château, through the rolling hills of surrounding farmland, and into the woods covering the more rugged landscape further away. I’d never been there before, but father seemed to know where he was going.

I thought of the little folk. Maybe there was something to it. Maybe I truly was a changeling, and he was bringing me home.

The coach stopped seemingly in the middle of the forest. My father jumped off the driver’s seat, opened the door and picked me up under my armpits as if I was still a toddler.

He put me down and I looked up at him, frowning expectantly,

“I tried”, my father sighed: “God knows I tried.”

He wrung his hands, my unease growing with his every twitchy movement.

“Aurélie, you must understand that we all have to make sacrifices for the good of our family. And you…Well…”

My father returned to the drivers’ seat and jumped on. I followed with the intention to join him, but he gave me a look that made me freeze in place.

“My house needs an heir, but this life… It wasn’t meant for you“, He grabbed the reins and looked up at the night sky: “They said not to leave any loose ends… However, I will make you deal.”

He finally faced me again. I felt a sickening stir in my stomach: “Father?”

“You get to keep your life. You renounce your name and birthright. And you never return to château Narraune again.”

“Father, please!”

I jolted forward, desperately trying to climb onto the driver’s seat only for my father to shove me off and urge the horse forward. I hit the ground, scrambled upright and sprinted after them, continuously screaming until I could no longer keep up and fell to my knees.

My soul-splitting wails echoed through the forest long after my father had disappeared over the horizon.

◆

It’s remarkable how deep one could infiltrate into someone’s château just by pretending they belonged there.

I clutched the bottle, smiled or nodded at everyone who crossed my path, and strode forward relentlessly. It also helped that I’d familiarized myself with the servants’ corridors back when I was a child.

After a while, I reached the baron’s chamber. He’d be alone, not having remarried and never the type to take on any mistresses.

I slipped into the room. The old man awoke to cold liquid splashing all over his face and sheets.

“What is the meaning of this?” He demanded.

The peasant girl that carried my old name would die a kind death. The herbs I slipped in her glass should end her swiftly. My father, though… I looked at the liquor covering his beard and seeping into his bedlinen. Even if he survived, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Apologies, father”, I took a match from one of my pockets and struck it: “The deal’s off.”

I dropped the match and set him ablaze. He screamed just as loudly as I’d done, all those years ago.