Riverlilly

by William Young

  Chapter the Third,

  The Third to Last Day,

  In which one question sparks three.

  I. The Face of Nature

  Jai awoke parched more severely than he had ever felt. He flung his head and hands over the side of the boat and drank as though he would never have the opportunity again. When he had his fill he sat back and his attention settled on their boat, which in no way resembled the hopeless wreck he had examined the previous night in the devious moonlight.

  Where are the leaks? What happened to the water in the bottom? This is not the same boat at all. “And why is it pink?” he asked aloud, for a question such as this would not fit quietly inside his head.

  The boat was pink as a blush, but not painted. The wood was imbued with the rosy hue. He could not see any individual planks—the vessel was made out of one solid piece. Jai tried to tear a clump out from the side of the boat, as he had done the night before, but now his hand met only perfect craftsmanship. He scratched his head, befuddled.

  When he knelt beside Ceder, Jai thought at first that he must be dreaming, for there was a small, dark animal—a cub of some sort—sleeping on Ceder’s stomach. Jai rubbed his eyes. He could not seem to focus directly on the sleeping cub without his sight going fuzzy and his thoughts drifting away like leaves floating down a river, under a bridge and gone. All he could clearly see of the strange animal was that it wore a flower necklace.

  Jai had never learned to count, but he guessed there might be as many petals on the necklace as all of his fingers and toes put together. They came in all colors of the rainbow, though the most were bright pink. Same as the boat, he deduced with a flutter of pride, although he could not see how the two clues fit together.

  Finally he brushed the hair away from Ceder’s forehead in order to inspect her cut. He ran a finger over the scar—what had been a life-threatening gash last night was somehow fully healed. He thought about the unicorns. Did they fix her? He felt his own forehead, where he had been touched by the black dolphin’s horn, and wondered what it all meant: he had escaped the tunnels alone, without a plan, and in the course of a single night had met Ceder on the mountainside, then Seaweed at the shore—who happened to be bringing them a boat, even though Jai and Ceder had only just met!—and been approached by a pair of the rarest animals in myth, who had stayed no longer than to deliver to the children a nearly-drowned lump of an animal that Jai could not tend his mind to for more than a moment before his eyes felt like spinning in opposite directions.

  Stranded in confusion, Jai sipped another cupped handful of sugary seawater from beside the boat, but his thirst did not relent. The more he drank, the more he feared no amount of water would satisfy him. He closed his eyes and could see only the burning ring of the sun in his mind as though his forehead was branded by an iron circle. He drank again and this time tasted only ash.

  The sun rises slowly in the Land of Lin. Jai watched the sky change colors in reticent solitude, humming a tuneless song to himself, enraptured by the beauty of the morning and he did not hear Ceder rise and sit beside him.

  She put her hand on his. He turned to her. She froze. “Your face…” she said, drawing back.

  “What?” Jai asked, sensing instantly that something was wrong.

  Ceder walked her eyes across every detail of his face but avoided meeting his gaze.

  “What are you looking at?” Jai asked more urgently. Then he saw his reflection in her sparkling blue eyes: his forehead was covered in black runes and jagged glyphs. He ripped himself free of Ceder’s hand and slung himself over the edge of the boat, his dark eyes a fin away from the mirror-like surface of the sea. Instantly he was absorbed, seeing his own face for the first time in his life. He studied every pore of his skin, every hair, every tooth, every scar, even as the waves rolled underneath and distorted his image so that he never saw one true picture of himself. Ceder came and knelt beside him, looking plaintively at the myriad distortions of her own visage.

  To another pair of children their appearance may have been unsettling: a girl as thin as an apple core, her skin sun-browned and her eyes like bright ice; a boy with skin nearly as white as a ghost, hair like a dirty mop, eyes darker than coal, and a tattoo of arcane symbols inked upon his brow. But to Jai and Ceder, who had never met another boy or girl, their mismatched appearance was the face of nature, no different than the pale sky and the golden sun.

  “But what does it mean?” Jai asked. “Have I always had these markings?”

  “You don’t know what those are?” Ceder asked him, biting her lip.

  “I never knew what I would look like in the light. I never knew there could be this much light.” Jai squinted as he turned his gaze up again, but he did not use a hand to cover his brow, as if the thought had never occurred to him and staring at the sun directly was the best you could hope for. “I always thought I looked darker, smaller… like a shadow.”

  “Sorid told me about you,” Ceder cut in matter-of-factly. “He said he put a curse on you that was stronger than iron locks. Those are the marks of his magic. I’ve seen him make others like them using ashes from the stove.”

  “We’re free, Ceder,” Jai retorted loudly, “we’re not locked up anymore. I’m not cursed. I don’t know what these marks are, but they didn’t keep me from getting away, did they? Everything Sorid said is a lie. You’d be stupid if you believed any of it.” He regretted what he said as soon as it left his mouth, but his pride was hurt, so he crossed his arms and glared into the water.

  “Sorid told me he marked the tunnel-minnows to keep them in sight of the sun. Those are his marks. He can probably see where we are right now.” Ceder spoke anxiously, struggling to choose her words in her haste to tell Jai all she knew. “He said he marked you at birth, and if any of you ever escaped, then the farther you fled from the Circle of the Sun, the more… well, the more—”

  “The more what?”

  “The more dried up you’d get, until you dried up all the way—” she looked at him to see what he would do, “—and died.”

  Jai was unmoved. “The farther away I get from the Circle of the Sun? What is that?”

  “It’s the room where I was kept inside the mountain, the room with the great stone stove. The whole place is a big circle—a huge circle—with a hole in the ceiling that the sun passes over.”

  “The Circle of the Sun,” Jai echoed to himself. He thrust his hand into the reflection of his face, scattering his image, and then lifted a cupped handful of water to his lips. He spat it out as soon as it hit his tongue. His whole mouth was dry.

  Ceder sat down in the bottom of the boat next to the shadowy cub. It roused itself and jumped into her lap. When she ran her hands through the silken shadows of its fur the cub looked up at her adoringly. Ceder gasped and turned its face for Jai to see.

  II. A Handsome Bow

  Jai had difficulty focusing on the black body of the little cub, but its eyes were vivid green emeralds. It held his gaze and then roared sadly and sickly with a smell of seawater still in its lungs.

  “Come pet him,” Ceder told Jai. “You can feel his heartbeat. It’s strong.”

  Jai sat down next to her and ran a finger down the cub’s spine. “Is he fuzzy to your eyes, too? Like you can’t quite see what he’s made of?”

  Ceder nodded but offered no insight.

  “What about his necklace?” Jai asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Should we take it?”

  “Jai!” she scolded him. “Why would we take it?”

  “There’s something funny about it,” Jai said softly, “I think it’s magic. Last night it was glowing.”

  Ceder looked up. “Last night?”

  Jai could not restrain a ruminating smile as it dawned on him that Ceder would have no memory of their near-drowning, the treachery of Seaweed, or the dolphins’ unannounced visit; here was a golden opportunity. “Yes,” he began with a dramatic sigh, “it was truly a night to remember.”


  Ceder was enthralled as Jai recounted every detail of their escape, from his daring walk into the sea, she in his arms, to his fearless battle for the boat, culminating with his unfloundering command of the entire unicorn situation. As Jai spun his narrative web ever more grandly, the cub climbed out of Ceder’s lap and sashayed to the front of the boat.

  The cub looked into the sky at the comet that blazed above them, small and pink, and tore a pale purple petal from his necklace. He released it to the wind, which took it up and away like a fish caught on a line of thin air cast from the clouds. The cub curled down to bask in a patch of sunlight while Jai and Ceder continued talking.

  Spray from the sea pelted the children like hail as the wind picked up suddenly, whipping their untidy hair into whirling tangles. Ceder ripped a piece of her tunic off at the knee and used it to tie a tight ribbon in her long locks. Delighted with the idea, Jai ripped the sleeves off his own tunic and wrapped them around his head like a bandana, pretending to be a pirate, and with a tattoo covering his forehead, the notion was not too far a stretch.

  “Ceder,” said Jai, absent-mindedly excavating one ear with his finger, “when we cross the sea, do you have a… a home to go back to?” He read her long silence to mean no. “Neither do I. So I’ve been wondering, what will we do once we get to land?”

  “We’ll have to find help,” Ceder answered thoughtfully.

  “Who would help us?”

  “We’ll find people. Good people. Enemies of Sorid.”

  Jai thought it over, but there was something about the idea of meeting a bunch of strangers and no longer being Ceder’s one and only confidante that was distinctly unpleasant. “Sorid once told me about a place where the sea is pure silver and magic flows through the air like smoke over a fire. Maybe we could go there… together.”

  Ceder stared at him like he had pinched her.

  Jai picked his nose nervously, unsure what to say. His eyes fell on the cub, curled in the prow of the boat. “Hey, look at that. You can see him more clearly when he’s lying in the sun.”

  “You’re right,” said Ceder, turning on her seat, “but I don’t think it’s the sun—all the light seems to sink into his fur.”

  “At least I can tell which end is his head now and which end is his butt,” said Jai. Ceder snorted with laughter.

  “LOOK OUT BELOW!” boomed a bell-clear voice from above.

  Jai and Ceder sat bolt upright.

  “INCOMING! COVER YOUR HEADS! DUCK AND ROLL!”

  “Ceder, do you see anything?” asked Jai, scanning the sky, squinting helplessly. She shook her head.

  “BRACE FOR IMPACT!” the voice cried hysterically.

  Ceder grabbed Jai, pointing high behind them to a purple spark in the air. “There!”

  Descending at breakneck speed like a rock hurled down by the West Wind itself, a violet butterfly with wings too thin and flimsy to rear in his flight was plummeting toward the boat and bellowing with exhilaration, “HERE WE GO AGAIN!”

  The cub stood up in the prow and batted the butterfly into the sea with one quick paw.

  Jai and Ceder shared a look of surprise.

  The cub sat at the side of the boat and watched the sea patiently. The butterfly popped out of the water a moment later, although he had no easy time dragging his wet wings free of the sea. He flew a dizzy loop to the boat, but he saw the cub waiting in the prow and thought better of that approach. He flew instead to Jai and Ceder, head-high at arm’s reach. Now the children could see that he had a wispy, white beard no longer than an eyelash, and that he held a crooked twig like a walking-stick in his hands.

  Ceder smiled and gave the butterfly a friendly wave, which was enough of a force to send the frail flier somersaulting backward several scales. “Why, hello,” she said when he had steadied himself.

  The butterfly gaped at her. His wings stopped flapping and he fell disconcertedly onto the bench in the back of the boat. Righting himself at once, he thrust out his walking stick like a sword, afraid of being pounced on by a shadowy predator.

  From the prow, the cub watched the newcomer’s theatrics with complete indifference.

  The butterfly cleared his throat and put his miniature cane back to its proper purpose. He looked up at the children and gave them a handsome bow, during which he fluttered his wings in an elegant arpeggio of tiny waves. “My fair lady, I must inquire: How is it that you know my name?”

  “What?” said Ceder.

  “Why not?” asked the butterfly happily.

  “Why not what?” asked Ceder.

  “Why not Why,” said the butterfly.

  “What’s your name, you annoying little bug?” demanded Jai.

  “Why,” the butterfly said as if that was the question.

  Jai and Ceder kept quiet this time.

  “My name, my fair lady, is Why. Or is it not?”

  “Is it?” asked Ceder.

  “That is precisely the quandary,” said the butterfly, far more interested in the articulate delivery of his words than in the sense, or lack thereof, which he was making.

  “We don’t know,” said Ceder. “Is Why your name or isn’t it?”

  “Why, I haven’t a clue!” said the butterfly, brandishing his twig like a sword again, parrying from and thrusting at imaginary foes.

  “Are you serious?” Jai asked with sorely tested patience.

  “Ask the girl,” said the butterfly, still absorbed in his fencing, “she acts like she knows everything.”

  The cub sprang out of nowhere for the butterfly, who leapt into the air at the last moment to save himself. He quickly flew up to Ceder’s head and landed on the tattered ribbon in her hair, giving the makeshift bow a splash of color.

  “Almost got me that time,” Why chuckled to himself atop his new perch. “And what do you call this uncivilized menace?” he asked the children, indicating the cub.

  “He’s just a stray,” Jai said offhandedly.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Astray,” said the butterfly to the shadowy cub, though he did not fly any closer for his introduction. “I am Why, and these are two strange children I have just discovered—” Why tapped each on their head with his cane as he said so, “—but I don’t yet know their purpose, assuming they have any, which children rarely do, of course,” he added with a wink, to which the cub rolled his forest-green eyes and yawned.

  “Let’s each grab one of his wings and pull,” Jai whispered to Ceder. “Whoever gets the bit with his beard on it gets to make a wish.”

  “Jai!” she hissed. “Don’t scare him off. He might be able to help us.”

  “Help us? How? He’s daft as driftwood.”

  Why flew off of Ceder’s head so that he could address the children face to face. He seemed not to have overheard any of their insensitive words, for he politely declared, “Now then, please allow me to say that I am altogether delighted in every windy, weathered way to meet you three. Most pleased, indeed. But might I ask what you are doing in a boat so pink in the wide blue sea?”

  “This is Jai and my name is Ceder.” She looked down at the cub, who sat on the rear bench in a pool of sun. “Astray,” she said tentatively, testing the name. The cub looked up at her affectionately. “We’re making our way to the East,” she said, turning back to Why.

  “The East? The East! Ah, yes, the East.” He spiraled around three or four times, zipping every which way. “And where exactly is that, my lady?”

  “East is… just that way,” said Ceder, pointing to the thousands of tails of empty sea ahead of them.

  “That way, is it?” Why besieged her. “To The East, you say? That way? You mean you don’t know where you’re going!”

  “We’re trying to find help,” Ceder told him.

  “And we need to eat soon,” said Jai.

  “Have you seen any islands?” asked Ceder. “Do you know how far it is to the nearest place with people?”

  “People with food,” added Jai.

  Why was working himself into a
frenzy flying in random patterns. “I’ve seen People before, haven’t I? I can’t remember anymore.”

  “Please, the sea is supposed to be full of islands,” pleaded Ceder, “didn’t you see any before you fell to our boat?”

  “I couldn’t say,” replied Why. “Islands? I really don’t know.” He landed in the prow and leaned on his walking stick, stroking his miniscule beard. “Come to think of it, I don’t know anything. How did I get here? Who am I? I couldn’t tell you a single thing.” As he looked at the children his doughty smile deflated. “Well, this is rather depressing—I’m an idiot!”

  “That’s the first smart thing he’s said so far,” Jai whispered to Ceder.

  “What an odd day this is turning out to be,” said Why. “I woke up and here I am, a butterfly, when I was just dreaming I was the wind. Now I do not know if I am a butterfly who dreamt he was the wind, or if I am the wind, now dreaming I am here with you.”

  “You poor thing, you’ve lost your mind,” said Ceder. “Perhaps you bumped your head with your little stick when you were zooming around. I’m sure it will all come back soon.”

  Why clung to her words. “Where do you come from, my lady?”

  “Jai and I both come from the West, where a wicked old magician had us imprisoned our whole lives. We’ve just escaped last night. We have to get as far from him as the wind will take us, farther still. If he ever finds Jai and I, Why, he will do terrible things to us.”

  Why sat in silence, greatly troubled. He asked, “Where is this place, this The West?”

  Jai stifled a laugh. “It’s the opposite way from east.” He pointed at the vast horizon behind their boat.

  “Why, that looks like the same place as The East!” said the butterfly. “I knew you were lost!” This seemed to cheer him up considerably.

  Ceder knelt forward and looked directly into Why’s eyes. “Will you do me an act of kindness?”

  “You need but ask, my lady. I am at your service.”

  “Splendid. Thank you. I was hoping you could fly up as high as you can go and see if you spy anything—any islands or sailing ships or anything nearby.”

  The butterfly flew away and was gone within seconds, then returned just as fast. “I saw The West! There is a mountain there, larger than all the rest; atop the mountain, a tower; atop the tower, a beam of red light is sweeping over the sea like a lighthouse beacon. The searchlight turns the water to steam wherever it looks. Very unwelcoming place, The West. A good thing you are going the other way—the farther from The West you get, the better. Don’t stop until you’re all the way around the world, I say. That’ll be for the best.”

  Ceder gave Jai a fretful look. He knew she was thinking about the marks on his forehead and whether they might attract the red beam, which was surely an instrument of Sorid’s far sight.

  “Is it anywhere near us, this red light?” Ceder asked the butterfly.

  “It jumps from one place to another like an angry horsefly, my lady. It might land on us at any moment. And woe betide us when it does.”

  “Tell us what you saw to the East,” said Jai.

  “Good news!” said Why. “There is a dark road under the sea, as wide as a thousand ships, leading us ahead like a ribbon of dead shadow. We are on the road! We are no longer lost!”

  “A dark road of dead shadow?” echoed Jai, unblinking. “Gee, Why, that’s great news.”

  “What’s at the end of the road?” Ceder asked quietly.

  “Excellent question,” said Why, “but we are yet too far away to tell.”

  The Year One,

  When they arrived at Coral Wing the two young unicorns were crowned King and Queen of the open sea. The very next day they led an expedition of soldiers to the western reaches of their realm to see what could be set right. The coast had always been a place that fish feared to go—the tower of the magician had long cast a dark shadow over the shoals. The only inhabitants among the shipwrecks that lined the rocky seafloor were criminals and outcasts, fish who had nowhere else to go and nothing to lose.

  The outcasts fled or hid from the unicorns, for a guilty heart cannot abide true beauty. One haggard creature alone remained to see the King and Queen, his eyes bloodshot, his face hollow and emaciated. The soldiers offered him an apple but the outcast withdrew from the gift as though it was a poisonous serpent.

  The creature ranted incoherently about visions of winged carnivores dragging him from the water to tear his body limb from limb, and of the magician and his endless apple orchards, and of two children in a boat. In one breath he accused the King and Queen themselves of dooming him to his madness; in the next breath he begged that they put him out of his misery.

  The creature was escorted back to Coral Wing. The King and Queen ordered that he be sequestered in a secure room—he was too deranged to set free, yet too sick of mind to mercilessly confine to a prison cell. He was given all the apples a fish could have hoped for, but he never ate a single one. Day and night the creature lay awake, wide-eyed, and cried to those outside his locked door that flying demons had broken into his room and were devouring him even as he spoke.

  When the King and Queen entered his room for the last time they found the outcast starved to death, skinny as a strand of seaweed. He had an apple clutched in his lifeless hand, but had been too afraid to take a bite, even to his last breath.