by Tod Davies
“After the ball,” Livia had said, “we will go to the Council.”
For there was to be a ball. There were many balls given for the rich in Megalopolis, and the rich continued the tradition in the sky. This one was to welcome Conor Barr and his new concubine—and her dog (everybody loved the dog)—to his diplomatic mission on the Moon.
That Conor wasn’t aware that his mission was on the False Moon made Lily feel uncomfortable in a way she had never known before. As she observed him covertly from the bed, his elegant shoulders squared, his jaw thrust out, she felt desire and protectiveness mingled. But threaded through these was a single razor-sharp line of contempt. Lily felt contempt that Conor was so easily fooled. And to feel contempt for the one you love is not just painful—it’s dangerous as well.
Only vaguely aware of her danger, and the danger to her love, Lily got out of the bed and began to dress for the ball.
The Grand Hall of the diplomatic Mission of Megalopolis to the Moon was lit with a thousand candelabra made of thick and twisted gold. The lights darted and flickered in the mirrors lining the walls. Brocade and velvet and fur were everywhere. Everyone wore the heaviest, most lavish outfits they could, for it was cold here on the False Moon.
Conor was noble and handsome in a white velvet suit with a waistcoat of gold brocade. He danced and charmed all the senior women there. They were delighted with him.
But it was Lily who was the great success. And Conor, because of his great, bewildering love for her, was proud of this success—not angry and envious, as would have been normal with a Megalopolitan male, and which just proved the rarity of his ability to love. Livia noted the telltale softening of his expression as he watched Lily dance, in her thin gold silks edged with silver ermine, and her tiny soft red leather shoes. Lily, charming Lily, was observed with obvious approval by all. Even the Ambassador was heard to say, as he bent down to pat an obediently sitting Rex, that Lily was the most graceful child he had ever had the happiness to see. Julian beamed at the praise from someone so high in the Council of Four’s esteem. He was pleased, not only for the honor it did his house, but also for Lily and Conor. For Julian also, for all his silliness and vanity, was able to love, much to his wife’s contempt, and Lily had already won his heart with her pretty ways—hers and her dog’s. Livia watched this with sardonic amusement. How soft were both her husband and her son, she thought with indulgent scorn. “How given to fatal affections of the heart!” And, “how ridiculously obvious that they both like dogs!”
But she didn’t have time for these sentimental reflections now. She checked her glittering diamond watch and saw that it was almost the hour. Catching Lily’s eye, she nodded. And went out, her green and red velvet train snaking behind.
BUT IT WAS LILY WHO WAS THE GREAT SUCCESS
“Please, Mr. Ambassador,” Lily was saying just then as she gracefully looped her frail golden dress’s train over one arm. “I think you are the kindest man in…well, if not in the world, then on the moon!”
This made the Ambassador, and, a split second later, all around him, laugh heartily, praising among themselves Lily’s delicacy and her wit. Conor waited respectfully at the edge of the group until the great man invited him to his side. “Charming little girl, just charming,” the Ambassador congratulated him. And Lily, as was right and proper, modestly backed away, Rex at her side. As she did, the heel of her red shoe caught—it must have been by accident, why else?—in the edge of her train. This was held to be understandable; she must have been overcome with confusion by the greatness of the Ambassador. There was a small ripping sound, and a charming exclamation of annoyance as she examined the tear with a pretty little pout on her rose-colored lips. Bowing to the plume-laden women around her, bowing respectfully as a young girl would be expected to do, she held out the damaged train and mimed that she would find herself a little corner in which to fix it.
No one was at all surprised when she and Rex disappeared after Livia, out the same side door.
“It was cold on the False Moon,” Lily said, later, in a dreamy nostalgic voice to Death, as they took a turn on the path and entered a green and gold alpine valley. “But it was even colder on the Silver Bridge to the Moon Itself.”
“Yes,” Death said reflectively. “I remember.”
“Were you there, then?” Lily said in a comfortable voice, slipping her hand through Death’s crooked arm. Rex, trotting along beside them, grinned.
“Oh, yes,” Death sighed. “I was often by you, in those days. Leading you on, you might say.”
“And later,” Lily said teasingly.
“Oh, yes,” Death agreed. “And later, too, of course.”
A thousand flowers bloomed in that meadow, that day that Lily and Death walked through it. And the air was heavy with the smell of strawberries.
On the Silver Bridge to the Moon Itself, Lily regretted leaving behind her fur-lined velvet cloak. The chill of space penetrated right through the crystal walls of the bridge, and through the fluttering fabric of her ball dress. The Megalopolitan engineers had known how to string a walkway between a false place and a real, but they had not known how to make it as comfortable as their clients would have liked.
“Hurry,” Livia hissed, speeding her pace. The bridge beneath them glittered and swayed. Through the crystal slats between the silver, Lily could see all of space spread out at her feet. And in a corner, Megalopolis sprawled across the Earth, gray and brown and flat.
Lily hurried. At the end of the gently swinging bridge was a dark blue door, slightly ajar, from which poured a wedge of brilliant white light.
As they neared it, a shadow crossed the light, and Lily could just make out the figure of someone she assumed was a servant holding a torch to light their way.
“Lady Livia?” a voice said. The voice was neither deep nor sweet, but there was still something oddly compelling about it. Lily revised her first impression. This was no servant.
Livia nodded, and she crossed the door’s threshold, followed hard by Lily and Rex. Lily, stood still, momentarily dazzled by the light, which she saw now came from the surface of the Moon. She blinked.
“I’ve come to take you to the Council. They’re waiting eagerly for your arrival,” the figure said. Something about it (gentle? forceful? both at the same time?) reminded Lily of someone, of something, of somewhere…but where? She couldn’t remember.
She blinked again, and followed the figure’s straight, slim back. Looking about, she couldn’t help but exclaim. “It’s so beautiful!” she said impulsively. Livia turned and gave her a warning look. But the slim figure turned back with approval.
“This is your first time on the Moon Itself?” the figure said politely. And Lily saw, to her delight, that the figure was a girl. A girl very like herself, but with a strength that Lily knew she herself did not yet have. But it was a strength, she realized, that she wanted.
The girl smiled reassurance.
“Yes,” Lily answered the girl shyly, and looked down.
Below them, under the crystal of the corridor continuing past the Silver Bridge, the Moon Itself shone, white, silver, transparent.
“It IS beautiful,” the girl said, smiling. Her smile glowed, reflecting the light of the Moon. Then she turned back to continue to lead them down the hall. At its end stood another door, also ajar, and from this one poured not light, but the heavy sound of official murmur. The girl stood at this door, indicating that they should go through before her. Livia took a deep breath and swept past. But Lily paused at the girl’s side, and looked into her friendly dark brown eyes.
“Please…may I know…your name?” she asked timidly, hoping the question was not discourteous.
But the girl’s frank expression did away with any worry. “Phoebe,” she said. “My name is Phoebe. And yours is Lily. I know.”
Phoebe bent to ruffle Rex behind the ears in a way that Lily knew he liked.
Lily heard a wave of welcoming voices in the next room. Still, she hesitated.
She was shy with this girl for some reason, but she felt she had to persist. “And somehow I feel I know you, too.” She gave a small laugh at herself, but then her brow narrowed. “Is it possible?” she said abruptly. “Do I know you? From…I don’t when. From before?”
“Lily!” Livia’s voice came sharply from inside, and Lily, startled, gathered up the folds of her gown and started forward.
As she did, she heard a quiet voice sound firmly in her ear. “Yes,” it said. “You do know me. And I know you.”
Startled, Lily looked up, again into Phoebe’s honest eyes. For another moment, she paused. She almost had it. A memory, some vague snatches of sound, of shouting, of battle, then of a stream tumbling over stones and a quiet voice telling a story beside it. Of lemon-yellow plush and comfort and bravery, too.
Then it was gone.
Livia’s voice called out again, more sharply still, and Phoebe’s brown eyes urged her to have courage and go on.
Fifteen
“Oh, let’s get on with it, for pity’s sake. How much longer are we going to wait? Everything depends on how quickly we move, how quickly we find it and use it. Surely we all can see that.”
Lily froze as she entered the close, wood-paneled room. There were no windows, and the room itself had a curious quality, as if it were alive, as if the walls themselves heaved in and out with a ragged breath. As if she was in the belly of some large animal.
Rex sniffed the air. He whined.
“Everyone loves a dog, do they?” an amused voice—not the same as the first that spoke—said from the center of the reddish-brown gloom.
Lily blinked. Her eyes began their adjustment to the light. This was difficult after the brilliance of the stars and the Silver Bridge outside, let alone the light of the Moon Itself. But she managed. A person always manages in these circumstances. What is more difficult is to see the stars and the Silver Bridge and the Moon Itself after getting used to the dark.
This was not a difficulty that Lily would escape.
For now, though, she concentrated on the scene in front of her. Four figures, aside from the arrogant one of Livia, sprawled in wide chairs at the room’s heart.
Lily blinked again. Rex growled low in his throat. In an instant, Phoebe was beside them, her hand resting warningly on the dog’s head. He was suddenly quiet.
“I’ve never seen him do that before,” Lily said to Phoebe, startled. Then, remembering where she was, she turned, with a gasp, back to the men.
It didn’t matter though. They hadn’t heard what she’d said.
“I found out later,” she would say to Death on that last long climb of theirs, “that they never heard anything they didn’t expect to. Never. And that this was true all over Megalopolis.”
“It’s true many places in the many worlds,” Death would say.
“But not where we’re heading?” Lily would say tentatively.
“Not where we’re heading,” Death would reassure her, and taking her hand, would pull her along in a race up the next little steep bit of the road. When they got to the tree at the top, they would fall, laughing together, onto the grass beneath it, where they would eat a small lunch that Death had brought, give Rex some water, and look out over the deep valley to the opposite side.
That day, Lily would see that valley with so much gladness that her heart would swell in her chest. Somehow she would know that once they had started down, she would begin to forget everything that had gone before.
But except for Conor—always except for Conor—there was no reason any longer to remember.
As she walked down the road past the willow trees, she said, “No, not Conor. Sophia. That’s why I want to remember. I have to remember Sophia.”
And Death smiled.
So she told me later.
“You know where you are, Lily,” Livia said, smirking with pride through the red-brown gloom. The walls breathed in. The walls breathed out. It was a labored breath. If this room was alive, it was holding on to that life…just.
Lily stood, waiting.
“This is the Council of Four,” Livia said. “The rulers of all there is to be ruled in all the lands. The Ministers of Truth. The Highest. The—”
“All right, Livia, all right,” said the second voice that had spoken, still in its amused way. Lily saw now it came from a man seated a little behind the others. He was stocky, with black eyebrows that cut a straight line across his forehead, and he looked like a large garden gnome. “We don’t need all our titles here, do we? Among—as it were—friends.”
Lily felt Rex tense. But Phoebe’s hand was on his head, and he fell still again.
“Can we get on with it, Alastair?” the first voice complained again. Lily could see that it came from the man closest to her, a round, flabby figure, looking older than his fellow, though he was probably younger. He had a peevish face, and Lily disliked him on sight.
“Sorry, Anthony,” Alastair said, but so mockingly that you knew it was meant as a joke.
“Well, that’s enough of that,” said a third man briskly. This one was blond and slim and freckled, with a translucent skin. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons, and his name was Auberon. “The question is, shall we waste time telling her why she’s here?”
“Or shall we just show her? I agree,” said the fourth man, off to the side in the shadows so that Lily couldn’t make out his face. This man now laboriously lifted himself from his chair. Livia rushed to help him, and Phoebe moved quickly to support his other side. Lily could see that he was enormously fat, with a tiny queer-looking head, bald except for three long lank strands of greasy hair that lay across a mottled scalp.
“The Book first?” Anthony said in his whiny voice. Lily caught herself wondering how such a wheedling, nervous specimen could have become one of the rulers of the great empire that was Megalopolis.
“It certainly never could have happened that way in Arcadia,” she thought. And this was a sign that Megalopolis had infected her with its poisons. For not only was the spiteful malice of that thought alien there, but if she had been closer in spirit to the land of her birth, she never could have had the thought at all. In Arcadia, it would be impossible to imagine the fates of all people being controlled by just four men.
“Or the prisoner?” Auberon said briskly.
“Oh, the prisoner, I think, don’t you?” said the enormously fat man from the depths of his deep yellow-gray wattles as he waddled between Livia and Phoebe toward a door at the rear of the pulsating room.
“Dramatic illustration, of course, why not?” Alastair murmured urbanely, as he indicated with an elegant gesture that Lily and Rex should follow.
Lily hesitated, then stepped forward. The tiny door at the rear of the room opened, as if from the other side. For a moment, the fat man wheezed in its frame, huffing, as Phoebe and Livia pushed at him from behind. He was almost too big to fit through, but by various judicious pushings and proddings the thing was done. He popped out the door with a faint whoosh.
With that, a blue and gold light streamed in from the room beyond, as if in protest at the mean color of the windowless chamber where Lily stood. The light trembled as if it were in pain. There was something awful about it. Awful and strange.
Lily walked toward it. The light grew brighter, and softer, too, at the same time. A rose color lay underneath it, like the early part of dawn. “It’s beautiful,” Lily thought. Rex silently agreed. “Beautiful and frightening at the same time.” But even though she was frightened, she found she yearned to see the source of the light. So she walked on through the door and saw what was on the other side.
It was an angel. A real angel. There was no mistaking it, though Lily—so far as she could remember—had never seen an angel before. It would be many years before angels reappeared in Arcadia. Still, she recognized it immediately.
And it was trapped.
It was hanging upside down from a silver hook, in the middle of a round crystal room through whose walls all of space could
be seen, including the False Moon. The Angel stretched, breathing painfully. In…out…in…out…in…out… With labored breath it moved its enormous wings (these wings reached out, silver-white, to touch the crystal enclosure on either side, brushing it, bruising their tips painfully on its hard unyielding surface), and those wings went slowly up and down, up and down, up and down.
“The Angel’s breath is what made the room move,” Lily thought. “An angel’s breath must be powerful, then. Even the breath of an angel as weak and trapped as this one is.”
(And how do I know this part of the story? The Angel told me. Much later, when we worked to have her made a counselor of the Arcadian state, a premature move that caused many problems for my reign.)
“Go closer, Lily,” Livia’s voice said in an unfamiliar, coaxing tone that Lily had up till now never heard her use.
Lily obeyed. She could hear a faint rattle from the Angel’s chest as her breath—Lily could see the Angel was a she, now—rose harshly and then fell. She could see the Angel’s face, contorted with a kind of suffering Lily had never known. It was serene; there was endurance in it. But with that, almost, not quite, despair.
IT WAS AN ANGEL. A REAL ANGEL. THERE WAS NO MISTAKING IT.
“Do angels despair, then?” Lily wondered. This was not what she had been taught in Arcadia. In Arcadia, it was thought that angels passed through, from time to time, benevolent and strong, drawn to the villages by the strength of their happiness, joining in their joys, invisibly supporting their revelries, their celebrations, and their feasts. You could never see an angel, Lily had been taught. But you could feel them.
Lily had often felt the angels. She was sure of it. She was sure, in fact, that she had often felt one angel in particular. How this was, she didn’t know. Neither had she ever, before now, cared. It was just the way it was, in Arcadia.
