by Tod Davies
“Oh,” Luc said, relaxing into a chair that appeared next to him. “Of course I know that. Who better?” Another chair appeared. He indicated Snotty should sit down.
But Snotty didn’t. “I know you know,” she said, troubled, looking at Luc. “But why didn’t you let on?”
“Honestly, Snotty,” Luc said with an irritable wave of his hand. “It’s old news. You were a girl; you wanted to be a boy. What’s wrong with that? Desires like that power the whole world. If everyone were happy to be who they are, where would we be? Nowhere. Megalopolis? A village. I wouldn’t be interested in it, anyway.” Propping his elbows on his knees and cupping his chin in his hand, Luc looked at Snotty. “You wanted to be a boy. I helped you pretend. Now I can do more.”
“You can do more,” Snotty said. Her dark brown eyes had an odd and distant look. “I know you can do more than that,” she said. And strange as it was, she did know.
“Exactly,” Luc said. “I can make you a real boy.”
Snotty repeated, “You can make me a real boy.”
“I can do so much more than that,” Luc said. In the silence that followed, Snotty knew this was true.
“It’s why you’ve come here,” Luc went on, his voice soft and low. “And how you found me. The force of your desire.”
A troubled Snotty turned away. Was it true? Was that the whole secret of her adventure? Or was there something else?
“There is something else,” she thought. “I know there is. But what? I wish I could remember.” In her pocket, she closed her hand around the Key.
“I can make you a real boy, Snotty,” Luc repeated, watching her. “Then you’ll grow into a man. And what a man! Respected, feared, envied by all. With me beside you, you’ll rule over your fellows. Your word will be law; your anger, death. You’ll be as good as a god.” Luc’s expression softened with pride. “I’ve watched you, Snotty,” he said. “Many’s the time I’ve said to myself, ‘This is my boy, and I must say I am well pleased.’ ” He smiled. “Snotty,” he said softly. “Snotty the Sun God.”
Snotty’s hand gripped the Key.
“Why me?” she said.
“What?” Luc said, startled.
“I mean,” Snotty said, her expression intent as she tried to understand, “there’s got to be some reason. Something in it for you. You offering me all this. Why ME?”
Luc laughed his beautiful laugh. “You always were a shrewd one, Snotty,” he said. He leaned forward, looking Snotty in the eye, his turquoise eyes shining. “Think of what it would mean to you. Wealth. Power. Your dreams come true.”
But Snotty, being shrewd, saw right away that he hadn’t answered her question. This made her think.
“I helped you pretend to be a boy,” Luc said. “Now I have the power to turn you into one for real.” He stood up and came over beside her.
Snotty looked up at Luc. She clutched the Key. She held her breath. And she said, “What if I don’t want to anymore?”
She braced herself, waiting for Luc’s rage. But instead, he laughed again and said, “Oh, Snotty! I understand you better than you understand yourself.” With an ironic half-bow, he said, “Look and see.” And his hand swept out in a gesture out over the plain.
Snotty looked. There was nothing but gold sand.
Luc put an amused finger beside his nose. “Wait,” he said.
The wind rose up. Luc controlled it, Snotty saw, moving his right hand up and down like a conductor bringing his orchestra to order. And the wind blew. The wind blew hard.
The wind blew harder and harder and harder. Snotty tried, but found that she couldn’t stand up against it. She fell down into the sand, choking and sputtering, the same as she had done the night before, the night she had now forgotten.
The night before. Its hidden memory just showed itself, as if, buried under the sand, the wind now uncovered it. Just as the wind now uncovered what was buried under the desert floor.
“Look,” Luc said in a soft voice, as the wind died away. He helped Snotty to her feet. Brushing herself off, she looked.
The wind had blown the loose sand off the desert, revealing the site of the Teddy Bear massacre beneath.
“Wha...wha...wha...,” Snotty gasped. She backed up, her breath coming hard. Then she wheeled about and shrieked at Luc. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” And screaming, “Big Teddy! Snowflake! Melia! Tuxton!” she ran out into the midst of the ghastly remains.
Snotty ran on, squeaking, sounds fighting to come out of her little body. These choked and disappeared as soon as they got to the air. She ran, recognizing in the torn, burnt bits of porcelain and plush the companions of her days in the Mountains of Resistance, of the days when she remembered who she really was, of the days when she remembered she was a girl after all.
Those jagged, shattered bits of china—who were they?
And that garroted plush bag?
The mutilated Tuxton, the white stuffing where his muzzle had been now a corrupt gray.
The half-burnt corpse of the Dog.
Snotty ran among these horrors, back and forth, forth and back, squeaking like a bat, waving her arms in an ungainly way that made Luc laugh out loud.
“Very amusing, my dear,” he called out. “Though not exactly worthy of a Sun God.”
Shudders wracked Snotty’s frame. The only thing alive in that desert was her own small self. And Luc.
Then she saw, sticking up from a bit of burnt cloth and sand, one half of a mangled head.
Snotty gave a frightened choke and sank down beside it. What she had feared was true. This—this torn and distorted bit of toy—was all that was left of Big Teddy.
She picked at the bit of dirty plush, as if afraid of what it might do. Then she pulled it close to her narrow little chest, cradling it there. As she did, her biggest fear, the fear that had followed her from as far back as she could remember, got bigger and bigger and bigger until she couldn’t hold it anymore. But she refused to give in. She wouldn’t cry.
“Quite right,” Luc said, approving. Walking over to Snotty, he crouched down beside her and looked at her with a sympathetic eye. “You’re right not to cry.” He looked around the battlefield now with the eye of a connoisseur. “This won’t be the last battle you’ll see. And it will always be the same. The Strong will always beat the Weak. Always. You’ve done the right thing, choosing the side of the Strong.”
Snotty, mouth gaping, looked at him, then looked away. She knew what he was saying. “Choose me, Snotty, or be like THEM.” Like them—the torn bits of fluff, blown by the wind, unburied, forgotten.
“I can bury Big Teddy,” she thought, even though she couldn’t, not really—the noble Bear was too thoroughly torn apart. “I can do that.” I don’t know where she learnt to do this, because in Megalopolis the dead were taken away in vans and never seen again. But somehow she knew. Without answering Luc, she dug there in front of her in the desert sand.
As she scrabbled there, tearing at the ground with her fingernails, some liquid bubbled up from the sand. As she dug deeper and deeper, the small bubbling became a small pool. And then a small spring.
Snotty, without knowing it, had uncovered one of the many springs of the Stream of the Mountains, which ran hidden under the Plains on its way to the Sea.
She was thirsty. So she scooped up some of the spring’s water, and drank it down.
And then she did something she had never done in her short life. She began to cry.
Snotty cried. She cried and cried. Sobs poured out of her. Her face twisted and quivered, and her nose ran with snot. She choked. She gagged.
And still Lily cried.65
Chapter XXI
LILY AND LUC
Days and weeks passed, then months and years. As Lily cried, every kind of weather pummeled the Plains: sun, rain, wind, snow. From hot to windy to cold to wet and back to hot again. But no matter how many seasons passed overhead, Lily stayed the age she was, which was twelve going on thirteen.66
Her skin kept peelin
g. The top layer rubbed right off and left behind skin that was pink and raw. Twenty years passed, then thirty. Lily’s new skin smoothed out, losing its rough look. It turned a rosy olive gold under a sheen of smooth brown. Her black hair grew and curled around her ears. Her face changed.
Fifty years passed. Sixty years. Seventy. Then, after a hundred years, another change.
After a hundred years of crying, Lily had shed so many tears in one spot—the spot where the Stream bubbled up through the dead sand—that rivulets of water from the spring mixed with her tears, cutting tiny streams in the desert. Here and there the streams dammed up against some obstacle, making first puddles, and then ponds. Lily found herself beside one of these. It was in its reflection that she saw for the first time the change in her own looks.
Surprised, she felt her tears cool. Now they came in steady warm droplets that made a firm plop as they fell onto the sand.
After awhile—maybe twenty or thirty years—a green sprout appeared in the spot where her tears fell. This grew fast (maybe another twentyfive years) into a sturdy tree with a wide crown of pale and dark green leaves.
Lily’s tears slowed now.
Then there came among the leaves of the tree many white and pink buds. Blossoming, they scented the air. Lily’s nose twitched with pleasure. As she smiled (the first time in two centuries that she had), she watched the blossoms become apples: first tiny and gold, then larger and red and pink and green. These ripened in the sun that crept up over the Plains.
Time slowed. The sun paused. Grateful for this, Lily tilted her head to feel its warmth on her face. Tired after her hundred years of grief, she closed her eyes.
Now she heard a tap, tap, tap coming toward her, as two pairs of dainty hooves picked their way across the rivulets of water. Lily opened her eyes and saw Snowflake.
His eyes were clear. His coat was white. His hooves were silver. And in between his emerald eyes was a white and silver horn.
“Snowflake,” Lily said. But the minute she said it, she knew it was wrong. Snowflake was no more this horse’s true name than Snotty was hers. It was the name of some part of the little horse that extended into this time and place. He had many names. Lily saw that now. She realized that this must be true of her, as well.67
“I don’t know what to call you,” Lily said. Snowflake just smiled at this, and, kneeling in front of her, lowered himself to the ground. Careful of his white and silver horn, he laid his head in Lily’s lap.
“Snowflake,” she said again, not meaning to be insulting in reminding him of a name that wasn’t all he was, and that meant all sorts of pains and humiliations, perhaps the worst of which she had been responsible for. But she used that name because it was the name that meant the connection between them in that web she saw at the top of the trees. As she petted the unicorn on his velvet muzzle, she saw, in the desert in front of her, that same web. It had been there all along without her being able to see. She could see it now. And she could see each thread between each point in the web. At each point was one of her dead friends. All the corpses that had long since decayed into the sand over her hundreds of years of tears had come back to life. She could see them all: Tuxton, and Melia, and the Dog. There they were, all the Bears, gathered around the apple tree, peering at her with a benevolence that she had seen many times before, but never, before now, recognized for what it was. The Bears smiled and nodded, and even Tuxton’s restored muzzle was so real she was sure she could reach out and touch it. This impression was so strong that she did lift one hand—the hand with the maimed finger—and saw that it held the Key. And the Bears and the Dog in front of her were real, as real as she. They shook themselves off, laughing and talking among themselves as if sharing what had gone on with them all those hundreds of years they had lain, in defeat and death, decaying under the desert floor.
And in between his emerald eyes was a single white and silver horn.
“Tuxton!” Lily whispered. “Melia! Dog! Is this really you?” The creatures smiled at her in silence. They hadn’t come close enough to her to be heard yet, although she could hear faint snatches of their conversations among themselves. Somehow she knew, though, that they had returned. Somehow they had returned to her from defeat and death.
The Dog nuzzled Lily under her arm, tossing her elbow up and away from her face. Lily looped her arm around the Dog’s neck as he licked her cheek.
Lily closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw her friends were now completely real. They rushed up to greet her, all the Bears, and Creatures, and Pleasures, and there was a clamor of excited reunions. Hundreds of paws wrung Lily’s hand.
“But where’s Big Teddy?” she asked as Fion and Mion thumped her on the back, and Tia turned a cartwheel.
At this, the clamor died, and the Toys hung their heads. The Dog gave a low growl, looking at Tuxton Ted. The silly-looking Bear stepped forward. Lily rejoiced to see his face miraculously restored. He hesitated before he spoke.
“They tore her into too many pieces, Snotty,” he said in his worried voice. “She can never come back.”
All were silent now. A mournful wind whistled past. After awhile, Lily said, “I’m not Snotty, Tuxton. My name is Lily.”
Tuxton smiled. “Why, Lily,” he said. “We all knew that.” As the silly-looking Bear spoke, Lily saw the shape of his face flicker and shift. For a second, she thought she saw something that wasn’t silly—something that wasn’t even a Teddy Bear at all. Then it was gone.68
“Tuxton,” Lily said, meaning to ask him about this. Was Tuxton even his real name? Or was it, like Snowflake’s, only part of a much larger whole?
She never got to ask him, though. She had forgotten Luc. And, of course, if there were more to Tuxton than met the eye, and more to Snowflake, and more to Lily herself, how much more would there be to him?
Chapter XXII
SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY
Suddenly there was a white rush of sound, a roar. The Bears, and the Dog, and the Unicorn, and all the other Creatures leapt up as one. They were frightened. But they were together, and they held their ground.
A colossus stood astride the horizon: a fire-breathing giant. Its head, on monstrous shoulders, was lost in the clouds. Its hands, big as mountains, grabbed two of the clouds floating across its neck and banged them hard, one into the other.
“CCCRRRAAAACCCCKKKK!!!” thundered the clouds, and a lightning bolt shot out from between them, dashing to the ground at Snowflake’s feet. The unicorn whinnied and rose up on his hind legs.
“I AM SERIOUSLY DISPLEASED!” bellowed the Monster, his breath shooting out smoke and brimstone, and the booming timbre of his voice forcing them all to clap paws and hands over ears. “WE WILL MASSACRE YOU ALL OVER AGAIN!”
At this, the Gnome Army loomed again, massive and powerful as before, on all sides. Lily and the Teddy Bear Army were surrounded.
Lily looked at her companions. The Teddy Bears were afraid—how could they help it?—but they showed a determination to do what they had always done through Time. They would do what they had to. The Toys drew themselves up, ready.
The clouds around the Monstrous Giant’s head cleared away. Lily saw the Monster was Luc.
This made her mad.
“FIGHT ME, SNOTTY!” the huge, fire-breathing Monster called out from above. “IF YOU DARE!”
At this, something dark and painful stirred in Lily. She was angry. And it seemed to her she was no longer Lily. She was Snotty. Snotty the Sun God.
“If I DARE?” Snotty said, in a fury. She didn’t pay attention when Tuxton placed a warning paw on her arm. She shook him off instead.
“I am SNOTTY!” Snotty bellowed. “Snotty the SUN GOD! I will fight and fight and go on fighting until there’s nothing left of me and my friends!”
Lily would have asked her friends what they thought of this plan. But Snotty, in his fury, forgot. A Sun God, as we all know, never asks a mere mortal for advice.69
Also Snotty was in a rage. All this made him fo
rget everything he had learned up till that moment. Now he rushed at Luc’s legs, which had grown bigger than tree stumps, and pounded at them with his tiny fists.
“HAH!” breathed Luc above him. There was a note of triumph in the echo of his voice.
Tuxton bowed his head. Snowflake gave a distressed whinny. And Lily, hidden somewhere in the angry Snotty, heard.
So Snotty stopped. And the moment he stopped, everything else stopped, too.
It was as if everything—the Gnomes, the Teddy Bear Army, even the landscape and the weather—waited for him to decide.
But decide what?
Snotty turned, restless and angry, back to Tuxton. “What’s the GOOD of it?” he said. But Tuxton didn’t speak.
Snotty turned to Snowflake. “What’s the point to being small and weak, and on the losing side?” But Snowflake didn’t answer. He pawed the ground, his emerald eyes hidden behind their long silver lashes.
Snotty turned to Tia, Fia, Fion, Mion, Melia and Lui. “What’s the use of having friends, or of being happy, if these things make you weak? What’s the use if it’s always the same fight, and always a fight against forces so Strong that you can never, ever hope to win? What’s the use of it?”70
But Tia, Fia, Fion, Mion, Melia and Lui didn’t answer. They looked down at the ground, their paws folded in front of them.
“The Weak always lose,” a suave voice said in Snotty’s ear. It was Luc. He stood there, elegant as before, his old self, Snotty’s friend. “The Strong always Win.”
Snotty knew this was true. His past life in Megalopolis had shown exactly that. Nothing in Snotty’s life had ever shown him that the Weak, or the Unimportant (which came to the same thing), were worth anything at all.
All his life he, Snotty, had worked to be Strong. He had worked hard. He had proved himself stronger and more important than the other boys and than all the villains of his world. He, Snotty, was stronger than them all! He was Snotty the Sun God! He would never be weak again! To be Weak was to be Small, and to be Small in Megalopolis was the lowest thing of all.
