An intense and harrowing modern tale
Dans les bois vit la princesse au visage de nuit ; ses yeux sont des étoiles et ses cheveux l’obscur.
Hugo, molested by his parents as a child, ran away with his friends in the forest to find the Nightfaced Princess who, as the legend goes, grants the wishes of wretched children, sometimes at the cost of their lives. After a whole night, Hugo came back alone and amnesic.
Twenty years later, Hugo learns of his parents’ death. Once back to his land, strange events are occurring. Mysterious lights shine in the woods and the storms are whispering names in the wind.
Between investigation and legends, Hugo will retrace his child steps in order to understand how his parents died, how his former friends got lost, and finally find what awaits him in the woods of the Nightfaced Princess.
The Nightfaced Princess is the tale of broken childhoods, of adults that had to grow with their wounds. Because we, sometimes, finally succeed to live. And eventually, maybe, to be happy?
Fantastic
Tales
Friendship
Resilience
Childhood
Mistreatment
Memories
Forest
Sortie : September 2020
Format : 14x21cm
David Bry is a fantasy, science-fiction and uchronia writer. As a bookworm, he began to write his first stories very early, then came to writing plays, role-playing games scripts and then returned to his first love: novels. He’s married, father of two, lives in the countryside, in the depths of Seine-et-Marne, soothed by the sound of water and wind.
HUGO PELLETIER
Thirty-year old Parisian, who spent his childhood in a foster family after he came back from the woods of the Nightfaced Princess twenty years ago, alone, the scars inflicted by his parents in plain view. A real party animal, heavy drinker and fond of everything that can make him forget his childhood. Except, this time, he won’t have the choice…
SOPHIE and PIERRE
Hugo’s childhood friends with whom he ran away in the woods of the princess. But, for them, there was no way out.
PHILIPPE et ANNIE PELLETIER
Hugo’s parents, both alcoholics. They lost the custody of their son when it appeared that they were marking him with cigarette burns on his arms and shoulders. Twenty years later, they both die in a strange car accident.
ANNE PIRIER
Sophie’s younger sister, she never got over her disappearance. She became a policewoman in order to understand – without success – what could have happened to her elder sister. The return of Hugo in the hometown will dive her back, same as him, in the horrible memories of their childhood.
CAPTAIN FARON
Police captain, Anne's superior officer. He’s the one that will ask Anne to handle the case of Hugo’s parents. Very down-to-earth, he doesn’t understand how the police force can imagine those legends may have, eventually, a grain of truth
JOSEPH DOUMET
Village’s roadmender and pyrotechnist, he often welcomed Hugo as a child, when he ran away from home for a few hours. The old man has his own burden.
CHRISTIANE LISENNE
A magnetizer, a witch and the healer of the whole region, she is mostly known for being tough and scaring children. Her dark eyes, hooked nose and unpleasant voice have probably something to do with it.
AUGUSTE TRIERE
An antique dealer in Saint-Cyr, that the children call “the ogre”. And he’s built like one, with his fierce appetite and menacing eyes. Know to creepily hang out at schools exits, he is feared for his relationship with his deputy stepbrother.
SEBASTIEN, WILLIAM, CHLOÉ
Hugo’s best friends, just as focused as he is on alcohol, insults and dark humor. Everything that can make life worth it.
LA PRINCESSE AU VISAGE DE NUIT
The ghost of a little girl which, as the legends goes, grants wishes to the miserable children who come to see her in the forest, at the risk of their lives.
Twenty years after getting lost in the forest looking for the Nightfaced Princess and having left his native village, Hugo is called by a childhood friend, Anne, who tells him that his parents are dead. Despite the fact that he was molested by them, the young man decides to come back for the funeral. He has hardly arrived when the verdict is given: his parents' deaths were not accidental.
As he is involved in the investigation beside Anne, Hugo faces very quickly some strange events. A shadow prowls in the undergrowth of his childhood house, it seems to spy on him, and gives him a toy car with which he used to play. Names are called in the wind. Fireflies shine in the forest. The “witch” of the village swears that the nightfaced princess is back, as is Hugo.
But why ?
The investigation revolves around a few villagers, and Hugo is suddenly suspected: his fingerprints would have been found close to the sabotaged brakes of his parents’ car! Hugo will do anything to try to prove his innocence. While leading the investigation with Anne, supported by his Parisian friends that are also taken by their own thirty-year-old difficulties, he starts to realize that the deaths of his parents might be linked to the legend of the Nightfaced Princess. After digging up the personal diary of his friend Sophie who disappeared with him twenty years before – to never be found again –, he discovers that Trière – the ogre from his childhood – abused the little girl. Is that why she was so miserable and got lost in the forest ?
As he tries to understand what happened on that Saint-Jean night from his childhood, going through his memories, he meets the priest of the village, the former pyrotechnist, who both tried – in vain – to help. The old resentments, blackmail letters, tend to prove that Trière might be a pedophile. But how to prove it ? And what is the link with Hugo’s parents' deaths?
One of Hugo’s friends, a journalist, informs him that the Nightfaced Princess could have been a little dead girl back in middle-age in a castle which can be found in the forest. Hugo tries to go there, but is stopped by the viscount, owner of the field and this part of the woods. At the window of the castle, Hugo sees the shape of an old lady looking at him. Why ?
Hugo is tired of dead ends, and resolves to interrogate the village witch. The latter reveals that sixty years before, other children tried to find the Nightfaced Princess, as Hugo did, and that the only one that survived was the viscount sister, an autist. As he can’t make her say anything, Hugo manages to learn that the caretaker of the domain, who is in love with her, followed her to the place where the Princess is supposed to be. With Anne and his Parisian friends, Hugo goes there, and sinks in a hidden cave in the middle of the forest. In the cave, he is devastated by the discovery of his childhood friends’ skeletons, as well as a ghost of his child himself, which still wanders in the forest, hesitant to follow the Nightfaced Princess and die. This meeting upsets him, and Hugo tells this ghostly child that his life is worth living.
The story ends right where it started, in the graveyard. Hugo and Anne bury this time the two children found in the Princess’ cave, for him, his childhood friends, for her, her older sister. The wounds of the past cannot be healed, the scars will remain. But mourning is possible, for Hugo and for Anne, who then could start, eventually, to live.
SAINT-CYR
Small village, close to Paris, lost in a forest valley. A bakery, a school, a police station, a few dramas, legends and strange children disappearances…
LE BOIS DE LA PRINCESSE
The woods outside Saint-Cyr where lives, as the legends goes, the Nightfaced Princess. Since the last children’s disappearance, the woods have been fenced.
LA CHAUMIÈRE DES PELLETIER
The house of the Pelletier family, where Hugo grew up. Decaying, dirty, with a garden full of weeds. Hugo goes back there a few days after his parents’ death.
LE CHÂTEAU DE RIMBERLIEU
An ancient fortified castle, lost in the middle of the woods of the princess, a property of the Aujoy family. A place feared by the children in the valley: there is the fact that the entrance is guarded by the imposing and frightening Cholet, but also that some of them swear that they heard strange screams coming out.
LE LÉZARD
A Parisian bar where Hugo, Sebastien, Chloé and William meet several times a week to chat, drink, laugh and sometimes cry. And to tease each other, a lot.
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