Translated from Romanian.

Before Cecilia's body learned what terror was, no one suspected that the girl who walked through the village with her cold, careless beauty would discover, in a single day, how fragile the border is between the one who looks and the one who is looked at.
She had just turned nineteen, and hardly anyone called her Cecilia. Only her mother still used the full name, in those rare moments when she tried to remember the little girl of long ago, the one who fell asleep in her arms and hid her face in her father's shirt whenever a storm broke outside. To everyone else she was Cici – a short, almost childish name that seemed to have no roots, like a leaf torn from its tree and carried off by the wind.
She had grown up quickly. She had the slender, supple body of a girl not yet entirely out of adolescence, yet she already had the confident walk of a woman who had learned that beauty can be a weapon. Her hair was long, black and heavy, falling over her shoulders in glossy strands that sometimes took on bluish glints in the sunlight, like the feathers of a night bird. Her white skin contrasted with her dark eyebrows and with her green eyes, unusually large, whose colour changed with the light: sometimes they looked like emeralds, sometimes like the sea, and on gloomy days they turned grey.
Cici had grown used to people looking at her. Boys turned their heads after her, and women sized her up. But beauty, when it is fed without being accompanied by kindness, can become a flower grown in a dark room.
Something in the girl had changed. No one knew when. Perhaps on some ordinary morning, when a child took her toy and she learned that crying could make adults take her side. Or perhaps later, when her parents began to confuse love with indulgence. Or perhaps there had been no precise moment at all, no wound anyone could point a finger at. Sometimes people do not grow cold in a single day. The cold settles into them slowly, layer by layer, until the soul no longer remembers what it was like to be warm.
Cici did not love her parents. She held them responsible for the fact that she existed. Often her mother waited for her in the morning with breakfast ready and the same question, asked with a gentleness that had begun to resemble weariness:
- Did you sleep well?
The girl would raise her eyes from her phone and answer without looking at her:
- Mm-hm.
Her father left money for her on the table, paid her bills, bought her everything without asking further questions. In return, he received only reproaches.
"Why don't we have a bigger house, or a better car?"
"Why won't you buy me that thing I saw in the shop window?"
The girl never asked what that something cost. In her eyes, her parents' love had become a debt, and their sacrifice – an obligation.
People who receive everything without learning what gratitude is sometimes come to believe that they are owed even what cannot be bought: other people's time, forgiveness, life itself.
That afternoon, something was going to show the girl that there are things no one is owed.
It was an oppressive day at the end of summer, when the heat had stayed trapped between houses, fences and fields as if in a giant oven, and the sky had slowly filled with heavy grey clouds. The air smelled of scorched earth and of dust mixed with rain. Above the village the light had grown so thin that everything seemed to come from an old dream: the houses had soft outlines, the trees had become tall shadows, and the fields stretched to the horizon in a yellowish colour. Every now and then the wind swept over the cornfields and the plants bent all at once. First one way, then the other. Like a green sea, breathing.
Cici was walking alone along the edge of the road, her phone in one hand, not caring that the music drowned out the sounds of the village. She glanced at the screen from time to time, without noticing how the light was slowly fading around her. The nearby forest murmured to her with soft sounds and discreet rustling. She saw nothing of what was happening: the crows that had come down from the trees earlier, or the crickets that had fallen silent. Even the dogs in the yards had withdrawn into their shelters and were watching the road with an inexplicable unease. When she passed the old wooden cross that marked the edge of the village – caught between two branches of acacia and adorned with dried flowers – there was a brief flicker that Cici did not notice. Something white moved in the ditch. At first it looked like nothing more than a piece of paper carried by the wind, then the scrap rose and shook itself. In reality it was a small, thin puppy, its fur dirty with earth, the hairs stuck to its back, with one ear drooping over its left eye. It had thin little paws and a narrow chest, and when it breathed its ribs moved visibly under the skin. It looked abandoned and hungry, tired of the world.
When it saw Cici, its eyes lit up. It had no way of knowing what kind of person she was. Animals do not judge people by their past, but by their present. It took one step, then another, and its tail began to tremble slightly. The girl watched it sniff her shoe and circle around her ankle. She stopped the music, slipped her phone into the pocket of her skirt and put a hand on her hip.
- Go away! she said in a commanding tone.
The puppy raised its eyes but did not move. After a few moments, it pressed its muzzle against the young lady's skin. Cici looked at her shoes, then at the animal.
- I told you to go away!
The puppy did not understand. It pressed even closer to the girl.
Cici raised her foot and kicked. The small body rose from the ground, flew a few metres and disappeared into the grass at the edge of the ditch.
The girl went down after it, visibly annoyed by the marks the puppy had left. She clenched her jaw and asked spitefully:
- Why won't you leave?
The animal looked at her with clouded eyes. It no longer had the strength to wag its tail.
Cici raised her foot again. This time the puppy's body remained motionless. A bloodstain spread slowly through the grass.
The young woman looked at her skirt. A few red drops had stained the hem. She wiped them with her fingers and walked away without caring. Behind her remained an empty road, a puppy that was almost dead, and a silence that no longer resembled the one before.
At the edge of the forest, an old woman stopped. Until then she had been moving slowly, with the steps of someone who has walked the same path hundreds of times and knows every root, stone and bend. In the wicker basket she carried on her arm were mixed plants gathered from the clearings: bitter wormwood, St John's wort flowers, plantain leaves, yarrow stems and a few black roots she had carefully pulled from the earth, whispering words that no one in the village would have understood. An unease took hold of her the moment she reached the edge of the trees. Behind her, the forest seemed to have forgotten to breathe. The poplar leaves were moving far away, but here at the roadside the air had become heavy. She stood still, looking down the road. Her face was furrowed with deep lines, yet it was not age that made it look so old. There was something in her eyes, a heavy weariness, as if she had seen too many things she should not have seen and had learned that the world has doors it is better not to open. Then she heard it. A sound so faint it might have been imagined. She waited. The same whimper came again, and this time she heard it clearly. The basket slipped gently from her arm and touched the ground without a sound.
- Dear God!
It was not a prayer, but the recognition of a misfortune. She set off towards the ditch the cry had come from. The weeds had grown tall there, knee-high, mixed with dry stalks, nettles and wild flowers that had already bowed their heads under the weight of their seeds. She began to push the plants aside with her bare hands. When she took one more step, she saw it. It was so small that the earth seemed to be slowly swallowing it. Its white fur was covered in dust and blood.
She took it in her arms, and the puppy opened its eyes.
- It's me, the old woman said gently.
For a moment a faint light kindled between them, then the woman looked at the wound. Near the spot where she had found it, the grass was flattened in an unnatural way. Among the green blades there were red stains, and a few metres further on, the print of a shoe. She raised her eyes and looked down the road.
Cici was walking away.
She walked carelessly, her black hair spread over her back, and her steps left prints in the dust of the road that were wiped away almost at once by the gentle afternoon wind. She was in no hurry and did not look back. What had happened a few seconds earlier did not affect her at all. It seemed the episode had not been part of her life, but of some insignificant corner of the world that she could abandon without the slightest regret.
The old woman held the puppy close. She felt its breathing broken by spasms. She shouted as loudly as she could.
- Cecilia!
The girl stopped and turned her head with obvious irritation. She did not recognise the woman, though there was something familiar in her features. True, she had heard of a witch who lived in the abandoned railway hut beside the disused tracks, but she had never seen her. Could this be her? In the village they said she looked after animals and spent much of her time in the forest, gathering healing herbs.
- How do you know my name?
- I know it, the woman answered with a frown. Because a person's name is the first thing forgotten by those who believe they will never have to answer for their deeds.
Cici gave a short laugh.
- What do you want from me?
- I would have wanted you to walk past the puppy without seeing it.
The girl shrugged.
- It's just a dog, woman. It was an accident. Don't make a drama out of it.
- Perhaps. But I have seen enough people to know that evil does not disappear when you ignore it. It settles into the earth, into the things they have touched, or into the eyes of those they have hurt. And one day, it comes back.
Cici took a step back.
- Are you threatening me?
The old woman raised her eyes to the sky.
- Fear will come looking for you, Cecilia. And because you made this creature's helplessness a reason to strike it, you will come to know weakness. You looked at a life and saw in it only something worthless, but you will find out what it is like to be so insignificant.
The girl was no longer smiling.
- What does that mean?
- It means that for three days you will no longer be Cecilia.
The wind rose suddenly and the girl's hair blew across her face.
- Every morning, when you open your eyes, you will have another body. A small and insignificant one, the kind you now walk past without seeing. You will feel what these creatures feel: terror, hunger, cold and loneliness. You will not speak and you will not be able to ask for help. You will scream without being heard, in a world that will no longer make room for you.
Cici frowned and took a few steps towards the old woman.
- And if I refuse?
The woman smiled sadly.
- You won't be able to. On the first day you will be an insect, and you will discover a sky full of eyes looking for you.
Cici felt a cold shiver run down her spine.
- And then?
- You will die, but before that you will feel every moment of your fear. You will hear your body being devoured and you will be aware until the very last moment. Then you will wake the next day in another body, just as helpless. On the third day, if the mercy you refused this creature has not awakened in you, you will remain in the body you are wearing.
- Do not forget, Cecilia! The curse is not my punishment. It is the mirror that life holds up to you.

*

The bed seemed enormous. The sheet had become an endless expanse of white fabric, its folds rising around Cecilia like soft hills.
The girl raised her hand to her face, but something thin and dark moved beneath her eyes. That thing had joints. She tried to scream, but nothing came out of her mouth except a shrill sound, then an almost electric trembling. She looked down. She no longer had hands or feet. In place of the limbs she had always known there were now six thin, segmented legs, covered with fine hairs.
A ray of sunlight came through the curtain and the light struck her like a blade. She drew back instinctively, into the shelter of an imposing fold. Everything was too strong, too bright and too alive. Even the specks of dust had become distinct objects, suspended in an enormous space.
Then came the noise.
The wall clock had become a monster. Every second struck the air with deafening force. She pressed herself against the fabric of the sheet and then realised that fear had a taste. It was sour and metallic, like an old coin held too long under the tongue. She began to move her legs. Chaotically at first, then, using them in pairs, she managed to reach the edge of the bed. She stopped for a moment and surveyed her surroundings.
At that moment a shadow passed over her. Huge and terrifying. She remembered that the night before she had left the window open. For an instant she saw her own silhouette stretched across the white sheet, like a hand coming to snuff out a candle. She began to run. Her legs slipped among the fibres of the fabric, which now seemed like a vast forest of fallen trees. She had to jump over them, then regain her balance and ignore the blows she took every time she forgot she had six legs. She searched desperately for somewhere to hide, but the world had become an expanse without shelter.
A bird had taken advantage of a gust of wind that lifted the curtain and had come into the room.
Cici felt the wind of its wings and threw herself to one side. For a moment she escaped, then came the second dive, faster and much more precise. A claw touched her and flipped her onto her back. She saw the black, glossy beak coming closer to her body. Then she understood that there is no judgement in this world. It did not matter what she had owned, or how beautiful she had been. To the bird she was nothing but a trembling little creature, caught in the game in which life feeds on life.
Everything went dark. Cici no longer felt the sheet, the light, or the room. Only that terrible movement by which she was snatched up and thrown into a living tunnel, narrow and dark. In a last flicker of consciousness, she thought she saw something. She no longer knew whether her eyes still existed, or whether it was only an image born of terror. She watched the outside world disappear into a narrow, trembling light. Then her chitin body was pushed further on, sliding down a tunnel that had no end. Four fragments of what had been her body had come away and disappeared, one by one, into those alien depths.
Cici tried to remember her home. Her mother, who had told her hundreds of times to be careful, her father, who left money for her on the table. And for the first time, the memories no longer seemed annoying. Then the darkness closed in. The last thing she felt was the deep, inevitable movement carrying her towards the bird's stomach.

*

When Cici woke the next day, she needed no further proof that the curse was real. The memory of the previous day had come back over her with the force of a dark wave, bringing back in a single instant that blinding light, the sheet turned into an endless plain, and the terrible feeling that death was no longer a distant idea, but a being that had carried her into its darkness.
She realised that her body was once again a different one. It was small and grey, defenceless, with six fragile legs and two transparent wings that vibrated at the slightest movement of the air. Her eyes – if they could still be called that – no longer saw the world as a human does, but as an explosion of shapes, lights and movements that made her feel lost in a universe built without any regard for her existence.
She remained in the grip of a helplessness she had already begun to recognise. A single thought gave her no peace. Somewhere in her tiny mind there was the absurd hope that if she got outside, she would be free of her troubles. She headed for the window. What had been for her only a piece of wood and glass had now become a huge frontier between two worlds. When she managed to get past it, the sunlight struck her with such intensity that she almost fell.
Outside, the world was alive. The air was a dizzying mixture of smells, heat and invisible currents that pushed her this way and that. The earth smelled of damp, and the leaves gave off a green, raw scent. The flowers had aromas so strong that Cici felt she was choking. She moved her wings faster, merely thinking that it would be good to climb. Suddenly the ground began to fall away, and for a moment a childlike joy filled her. Then the current of air twisted her and flung her towards a bush, where she struck a leaf. She stayed there for a few moments, dazed. A brown ant passed nearby. An armoured creature, powerful and terrifying. She waited for it to pass, then launched herself into flight again. She did not know where she was going. She saw the web with one of her eyes as soon as she came near the wooden fence. It was stretched between two stems, almost invisible, and the drops of dew caught in its threads had turned the whole structure into silver lace suspended between sky and earth.
For a few seconds she looked at it, fascinated. She did not understand that some of the most beautiful things in nature are built to kill. She came closer and a thread stuck to her leg. She started and tried to pull free. Then a second thread caught her wing. Then a third. Panic broke out like a storm. The white threads wrapped around her body with a cold patience, winding her slowly until her wings were stuck to her body and her legs had become useless. The web began to vibrate beneath her, and somewhere beyond the trembling threads, something began to move.
At first she saw only a shadow, then two long legs.
The spider came out from among the leaves with an almost solemn slowness, and its dark body swayed gently at the centre of the web – like a black ship floating on a silver sea.
Cici tried to free herself once more and, at that moment, she had a revelation that terrified her more than the spider itself.
The day before, she had been hunted by a bird. Now by an insect, and the world had not changed for her. Only her place in it.
The spider reached her and touched her. Then the threads began to settle over her. The creature wrapped her with the same patience with which someone might wrap a fragile object they intended to keep. Soon Cici was left hanging in the web, and the sky above her could be seen as if through the bars of a prison.
The sun climbed, the world went on, and no one knew she was there. She thought again of her parents and of home. She no longer thought of them with anger. All the things she had taken for granted had now become treasures.
The spider came back without warning, a few minutes later. Cici felt its approach like a shadow covering the last scraps of her hope. A silence settled around her that terrified her more than anything. At first it touched her again with its front legs, feeling her through the silver cocoon. Then it began to work with an almost mechanical precision, and the sting came, followed by a terrible burning. A sharp sensation, accompanied by numbness, began to spread through her body. The venom acted almost immediately. The predator did not need to tear her apart. Nature had given it a far more efficient method. It prepared its food before consuming it, injecting digestive enzymes that broke down the victim's tissues.
Cici was seized by a succession of strange sensations: pressure, weakness, cold, then an ever deeper numbness. She remembered the puppy, its eyes. Before the darkness took her, she felt true regret for the first time. She had learned how priceless her own life had become at the moment she was losing it.
When the sun went down over the garden, almost nothing was left among the silver threads of the creature that had once been a girl.

*

On the third morning, Cici did not wake with the terror of the others. After two deaths, fear no longer had the same power over her. She was tired, but she no longer cared what body she had, where she was or what was going to happen. The darkness around her kept a sweet silence, as if the world were allowing her to forget. She opened her eyes and looked at the body she had ended up in. It was frail and covered in fine scales – greyish-green – and its long tail dragged behind her through the warm dust. This time she had not woken in her room, but on the path that separated the vegetable garden from the wooden fence. She had four strong legs, small claws and clear sight. She came out from among the stones and looked towards the spider's web stretched between the two stems. Then she raised her body onto a mound of earth and gazed at the crown of the walnut tree at the end of the garden. She watched the swallow feeding its chicks, still undecided whether or not to leave the nest. A few moments later she darted into the grass and began to run nimbly. She found herself in a place she did not recognise at once. She reached a patch of ground warmed by the sun and bare of vegetation. She felt the warmth of a stone under her belly and used it to raise herself on her hind legs. She was close to the old man who did not care about his own garden, in the only spot where the fence leaned and the weeds rose in every direction. She remembered that patch of earth. It was exactly where the neighbour had emptied a can of diesel, though he had never admitted to it.
Then she heard a rustle. She turned sharply and saw a huge lizard, with a massive body and a broad head, rising slowly from among the leaves. Its long forked tongue began to flicker. The animal looked at her for a few seconds, then lunged. Cici began to run instinctively. The stones slid under her paws and the grass whipped her body. She slipped between two roots and found herself in a narrow place where she was forced to turn back again. In front of her, her adversary reared up and opened its mouth threateningly. Cici twisted round in a flash and the bite caught her tail. She felt a violent jerk, and the pain shot through her body like lightning in the middle of a storm. In an instant her tail came away and was left behind. She began to run wildly and finally stopped, much later, in the shelter of a clod of earth, where she pressed herself against the dry roots. Behind her remained a thin trail of blood that slowly darkened on the pale ground. She no longer knew how long she had run, nor where she was. Fear had filled all her senses, turning every rustle into a warning. She squeezed deeper under the clod and discovered a narrow hollow where the earth had caved in. She stayed motionless, breathing fast, listening to the noises around her.
Beyond her shelter, the big lizard kept searching for her. Soon Cici heard the rustle of its scales through the grass. Small dry noises, almost imperceptible, that became thunder in her mind. She curled up tighter and closed her eyes. For the first time, she thought of nothing but how to stay alive. She felt a lump in her throat that made her open her mouth. Fear pushed her tongue out among the dry roots around her, and the smell of the lizard searching so insistently for her enveloped her.
Then something touched her hind leg. She turned her head and saw, in the pale light that seeped under the clod, a spider. It was much smaller than the one that had caught her in its web the day before. It had stopped beside her and seemed just as frightened. Cici remembered the threads that had held her captive and that existence in which she had been nothing but a helpless insect before a predator.
But the spider did not attack her. It passed by her, inspecting the ground with its front legs. The next moment, a loud noise made the earth tremble. The spider started, then began to run. Cici followed it with her eyes and saw it come out from under the clod, then cross the tuft of dry grass. The shadow of the big lizard swooped down on it. The spider stopped and reared up on its hind legs. It was trapped.
Before Cici was the image she had come to know twice in the three days of the curse: a small, defenceless being facing a power that could end its life without hesitation. And this time, she was hidden. She could stay there and keep quiet. Let nature take its course. But now she understood that she had to choose.
She came out from under the clod, and the big lizard turned its head.
Everything happened so fast that Cici had no time to be afraid. She dodged the first attack, slipping past the huge body, and stopped in front of the spider. She was no longer fighting for her own survival, but for a creature that, only a few days before, she would have crushed without caring. And it was precisely this that made her fight with a strength she did not know she still had.
The big lizard attacked again. Cici tried to dodge, but her body was very weak. She was thrown into the dust and for a few moments lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes, she saw the spider disappearing into the bush beside the overturned clod. Now it no longer mattered what would follow. For the first time, she had saved a life that could give her nothing in return.
The big lizard lunged for the last time. Cici got up and threw herself at the monster with its open mouth. For an instant, the two bodies met in the blinding light of the sun. Then Cici fell and the ground grew cold. The sky drew away, and the sounds faded one by one.
As life slowly slipped from her body, she finally understood the meaning of the three days. She had not been sent into the bodies of those creatures to suffer. But to understand. Her last thought was of the chance to go back. Then her world went out once more.

*

When Cici opened her eyes, the sky was clear and bluer than ever. She looked at her hands, then felt her face, her hair, her eyes. She was Cecilia again. The world had become calm and safe. She heard that faint, almost extinguished whimper that pierced her memory with a force greater than any pain she had known in those three days. Before she looked towards the ditch, she knew who was there.
She looked all around. The road was the same, the forest with its edge towards the west. In her pocket, the mobile phone had stuck to her leg. She understood at once. She had not simply gone back in time. She had been given back her choice.
She went down into the ditch and approached the puppy with steps so slow that the animal did not try to retreat. After a few moments of hesitation, it raised its muzzle and touched her fingers. Cici began to cry. She truly understood what that small body she had kicked so carelessly had meant.
She lifted it into her arms. It was so light that the girl held it closer to her chest, afraid it might vanish.
- I won't leave you here, she whispered, and her voice broke with emotion. I don't know if you can understand me, but I promise I will take care of you. I'm sorry, she said, pressing her cheek against its head.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the road, and Cici looked up. The old woman was coming slowly towards her. The woman's face was no longer threatening now. It only seemed very sad, as if she carried in the wrinkles of her face a story she had kept hidden for too long.
- Some people have to lose the world they know in order to discover what was always around them, said the old woman, looking into the girl's eyes.
- Who are you? the girl asked.
- You will find out.
Cici watched her walk past, almost brushing against her. Something in her walk, in the way she held her shoulders, and above all that inexplicable sadness she carried in her eyes, awoke in the young woman a memory she did not know where she had come by.
She called out to her.
- Wait, please!
The old woman stopped.
- What is your name?
The woman kept her back turned.
- Everyone calls me Cici, but my name is Cecilia. Don't be afraid. I am not here to change your past. I want to make sure that you will change it yourself.
The old woman set off again. Cici watched her, unable to get over the astonishment that had seized her, until her silhouette was lost in the light of day.
Only then did she understand.
The woman had not come from the future, but from a life she had not yet lived.