Lily

by Michael Thomas Ford

  “They left them in here to rot,” the witch’s daughter said. “To punish me.”

  “I’ll get them out,” Lily said.

  The girl shook her head. “That will just bring more trouble. “

  “Then I’ll get you out,” Lily insisted. “There has to be a way.”

  Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she began to fumble with the key again. The witch’s daughter, reaching through the bars, grabbed her hands. “Don’t,” she said.

  But Lily heard nothing. As soon as their fingers touched, she was enveloped in a vision. What she saw was the witch’s daughter as a very old woman. Her hair was white. Her skin was wrinkled. Her eyes were dim and clouded. She was tucked into a bed, looking out of a window towards the sea. There was a storm, but this was all right because the witch’s daughter loved storms. And although the old woman could see very little, she was smiling because she was holding the hand of the person she most loved in all the world, and she knew that even though one of them was leaving before the other, one day not so very far off, they would travel through the stars together.

  “Don’t forget,” the witch’s daughter said, her voice creaky with age. “No red cord for me.”

  “No. No red cord. I want to see your ghost at my window.”

  They laughed together. Then her beloved kissed her. The witch’s daughter smiled and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll rest for just a minute,” she said. She squeezed her beloved’s hand. And then she died.

  Lily choked back a sob. The room the two women were in was her bedroom in the little house on the cliff. The bed they lay in was hers. And the hand of the witch’s daughter’s beloved was her hand.

  She felt the beloved’s heart break, and because it was her own heart, the ache rocked her like a seventh wave. She wanted to let go of the witch’s daughter’s hand, to stop the pain, but at the same time she wanted to hold it forever. Her fingers tightened on the girl’s, and her voice caught in her throat.

  “What?” said the witch’s daughter, who could not see the future.

  Lily could only shake her head. Was what she saw true? She had no reason to believe it wasn’t. At the same time, it seemed impossible. She looked into the witch’s daughter’s face. For the first time, she saw that the girl’s skin was bruised and torn.

  “What did they do?” she whispered.

  “You can’t get me out,” the girl said, extricating her hand from Lily’s. With the connection broken, Lily felt her heartbeat stumble, then resume its normal pattern. “You need to leave.”

  Lily wanted to tell her what she’d seen. Perhaps it would give her hope. But how could she tell the girl that they were destined to have a long life together? It seemed ridiculous to even think such a thing, given their circumstances.

  “It’s going to be all right.”

  The witch’s daughter said nothing. She was trying to breathe the fresh air through the window, but couldn’t reach it, even though she stood on her toes.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Lily said again. “I’ll be back.”

  She turned and left the truck. Although it pained her to do it, she fastened the padlock, so that the clowns would not discover her visit. Then she went in search of Ash. Surely once he heard her story, he would help her by making the key so that it would work again.

  She found him in the field behind the wagons. He was sitting in the grass, holding a bat to whose leg he was tying something with a piece of string. When he was done, he tossed the creature into the air. It flittered in careless circles about his head, then careened off, zig-zagging across the sky.

  “I find them the best way to send messages between worlds,” he said to Lily. “Did the key work?”

  Lily held out the now-useless key. “Can you magic it again?”

  Ash shook his head. “I told you, it works only once. And it wasn’t I who magicked it in the first place. Did you waste it?”

  “No,” Lily said. “But there was a second lock.”

  “I see. You’ll have to open that one on your own.”

  Lily slipped the key into her pocket. “I saw her death,” she said. “The witch’s daughter’s.”

  Ash said nothing. He was looking at the moon.

  “She grows to be very old.” Lily didn’t know how to speak about the rest of what she’d seen, as she didn’t quite understand it herself.

  “That’s good, then.” Ash lowered his voice. “Assuming she wishes to become old.”

  “I think she does,” said Lily. “She was happy.” She paused before adding, “She was loved.”

  “It’s a terrible thing, to be loved.” Ash sounded mournful. He turned his head and looked at her. “The clown who holds the keys is drunk and sleeping in the cook tent, behind the sacks of onions.”

  Lily ran as quickly as she could to the tent, where she found the clown passed out exactly where Ash had said he would be. He was lying on his stomach in the dirt, his head resting on a bag of spilled potatoes, one of which he had apparently tried to eat. His mouth was open, and his snores sounded like water trying to pass through a clogged culvert.

  The ring of keys was underneath him, and Lily had to roll him over, ignoring as best she could the vision of his death when she put her hands on him. (He would be killed when another man pushed him out the door of a moving train during a fight over a card game.) She had no idea which key she needed, and so she took the entire ring. It jangled as she hurried back to the truck where the witch’s daughter was kept.

  She tried several keys before finding the right one, but soon the door to the cage was open. The witch’s daughter began to protest, but Lily said, “We can put you back before they even know you’re gone.”

  The girl still hesitated.

  “We can look for your sister,” Lily said.

  A moment later, they were outside the truck. The witch’s daughter looked around her uncertainly. “I haven’t been outside without one of them guarding me in . . . a long time. I don’t even know where to go.”

  Lily didn’t know either. She realized too that they couldn’t just walk around the carnival. The witch’s daughter would be recognized instantly by anyone connected with the Caravan. It was just a matter of time before they were discovered. Then, she was certain, things would be worse for them both.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  She took the witch’s daughter to her wagon. When they got there, the girl looked at it, confused. “My sister is here?”

  “No,” Lily told her. “But you’ll be safe here.”

  “I don’t want to be safe,” the witch’s daughter cried. “I want my sister!”

  “We don’t know where she is,” Lily said. “And if they catch you, I think you’ll never find her.”

  The witch’s daughter looked all around her, as if she might flee.

  “Please,” Lily said. “You’re tired. And hungry.”

  The girl nodded. “All right,” she said. “But just for a short time. Then I have to look for her.”

  Lily nodded, and opened the door to the wagon. As was usual now, her mother was not inside. Lily stepped inside, then motioned for the witch’s daughter to follow her. She lit a lamp, which filled the wagon with a golden glow.

  “Sit there,” she told the girl, indicating her bed.

  The witch’s daughter sat, running her fingers over the soft blankets. Lily went to the washstand and poured some water into a bowl. She added some soap and stirred it with a cloth until it formed a lather. Then she carried it over to the bed and set it on the floor. She wet the cloth and touched it to the girl’s face. The girl pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “It’s easier if I do it,” Lily said. “I can see where the dirt is.”

  The girl looked ashamed, but nodded. Lily resumed washing her face, careful not to let her fingers touch the skin. It was difficult to tell where the bruises ended and the marks began, and several times the witch’s daughter jerked away when Lily scrubbed too hard. When
she was done with the girl’s face, she changed the water, throwing the old out the door and refilling the bowl.

  “Stand up,” she told the girl. “Take off your shift.”

  The girl stood in the center of the room. She let her dress fall. Lily began washing her, starting at her neck and working down. Neither of them spoke. Thrice Lily emptied and refilled the bowl of water. Each time, it was less dirty than the time before. The fourth time, Lily added no soap.

  As she knelt and rinsed the witch’s daughter’s feet, gently wiping her skin, she realized that the girl had begun to tremble. Looking up, she saw that she was also crying. Her body shook as tears slipped down her face.

  Lily stood and, bracing herself for what would come, enfolded the witch’s daughter in her arms. The vision of her death came, but to Lily’s surprise, it did not sadden her. Instead, she felt only the love that filled the little room at the top of the house on the cliff. It grew and expanded, spilling out of the vision and into the wagon, surrounding both the living and the dead with its warmth.

  The witch’s daughter held her back, her head resting on Lily’s shoulder as her arms wrapped around her and drew her close. The world became a blur, swirling around them in a storm of light and color. Lily felt the other girl’s heart beating with her own, and the twin throbbing of them felt like the quaking of the earth. She feared that she might not be able to stand it, and then that it would end.

  The witch’s daughter lifted her head and looked into Lily’s face. Lily saw her both as she was and as she would be, the years racing forward and then retreating, over and over. But whatever her age, the girl radiated beauty.

  “My name is Star,” she said.

  T W E N T Y - S I X

  “YOU STOLE MY DEAD-man’s key.”

  Baba Yaga glared at the changeling. He was sitting on the branch of a spreading oak tree, eating sugared peanuts from a paper bag and swinging his legs.

  “Also, your feet are filthy.”

  “You weren’t going to use it anyway,” Ash said.

  “I was,” Baba Yaga objected. “There’s this door in a mountain I’ve had my eye on for several centuries.”

  Ash sighed. “It probably just leads to a chamber with a princess sleeping inside a crystal coffin. Or a copper egg with a silver egg inside of it and a golden egg inside of that, and finally an enchanted thimble for all your trouble. Something of that sort.”

  Baba Yaga snorted. “Well, we’ll never know now,” she said. “And I could use a good thimble. Anyway, how did you get it? Stealing from me isn’t easily managed.”

  “You were asleep,” Ash told her.

  “I never sleep that soundly—”

  “Well, you were drunk,” Ash said. “I didn’t want to mention it.”

  “That’s more likely.” Baba Yaga sighed. “The beer in this world does go to my head.”

  “The girl needed it more than you did.”

  “Did she?” said Baba Yaga. “And just what kind of door did she open with it?”

  “The most important kind,” Ash answered. “One inside herself.”

  “Pfft,” said Baba Yaga. “Now you’re just being sentimental.”

  “Perhaps.” The bag of treats crinkled as he dug around for another shell. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”

  “And what did she find?” asked Baba Yaga.

  “You don’t want to know,” said Ash. “You’ll say I’m being sentimental again.”

  “Well, we’ve already agreed on that point,” said Baba Yaga. “Might as well come out with the rest. I’d like to know my key wasn’t squandered.”

  “All right, then,” said Ash. “She found love.”

  Baba Yaga said, “Pfft” again, but more forcefully. “Now you’re trying to provoke me.”

  “Just because you’ve forgotten what it’s like doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Ash.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything,” said Baba Yaga crossly. “I simply refuse to believe in things that don’t exist.”

  “Surely you’ve loved something,” Ash said.

  Baba Yaga thought about it. “There was a cat I was fond of once. It used to bring me mouse heads.”

  Ash smirked. “There you are, then.”

  “So the girl opened this door inside herself and found mouse heads,” said Baba Yaga. “That’s much better than a magic thimble, I agree.” She spit on the ground.

  Ash ate some more peanuts. “It’s the witch’s daughter…” Shells drifted to the ground. “The one she loves.”

  “Oh? Is that right? Hmm.”

  “You don’t approve?” asked Ash.

  “Of course I don’t approve,” Baba Yaga said. “You know as well as I do what happens when they think they’ve fallen in love. Pain. Misery. Quests through swamps and briar forests.”

  “Happiness,” said Ash. “Joy.”

  “You’re being contrary,” Baba Yaga said. “You know I’m right.”

  “I don’t think either of us is really an expert on the subject,” said Ash.

  “Well, we don’t have human hearts,” Baba Yaga conceded. “They’re constructed differently. Still, I predict difficulties for them if they insist on persisting with this foolishness.”

  “How perceptive of you,” said Ash.

  “Ass,” Baba Yaga muttered. “And you owe me something for the key.”

  “What would you like?” asked Ash.

  “I don’t know,” said Baba Yaga as she walked away. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Perhaps I’ll make you a love charm,” Ash suggested.

  Baba Yaga spat, and where her spittle landed, the ground blistered. “Absolutely not. I’d rather have a mouse head.”

  T W E N T Y - S E V E N

  BECAUSE SHE DID not want to bring any more trouble to the witch’s daughter, Lily returned Star to her cage. She hated to leave her there, but now that they had found one another, they had hope. And so Lily reluctantly locked the locks and replaced the ring of keys on the still-sleeping clown’s belt. She then went back to her wagon and lay awake for the rest of the night, her mind filled with new thoughts and her body tingling with the warmth of love.

  The next night, she again found the clown who held the keys passed out, this time behind the truck that carried the prizes for the midway games — the stuffed bears and bottles of Eau de Vie toilet water and collections of edifying verse (He Walks With Me in the Garden, penned by the Reverend’s maiden aunt, Miss Purity Shorthope) — that the visitors to the carnival could win by tossing balls into milk tins or throwing little hoops around the necks of empty soda pop bottles. Once more she let Star out of her prison, and they spent the remainder of the night together, lying in the grass beneath Lily’s wagon and talking until the first faint glow of dawn appeared in the sky and it was time for Star to creep back to the green truck.

  Each night Lily waited until the Caravan was mostly asleep, then went in search of the clown. On nights when she couldn’t find him, or when he wasn’t asleep, she would drag an apple crate to the window of the green truck and talk to Star through the barred window.

  In this way, they learned much about one another, but it wasn’t until the seventh night that Lily asked again about Star’s mother. She had been afraid to, remembering Star’s anger the first time Lily had mentioned her, and fearful that it might be something about which she still didn’t want to speak. On this night, their first in yet another new town, she had been unable to get the keys, as the clown was engaged in a game of cards with three other men. And so they were talking through the window.

  “How did you come to be here?” Lily asked.

  Star did not answer right away, and so Lily waited, listening to the new monkeys. To replace the dead ones, the Caravan had acquired a ragtag group of nine ancient, flea-bitten creatures who had spent their entire lives working for a roadside attraction where customers paid a dime to watch the monkeys climb into peach trees and pick fruit, which they then tossed into the bushel baskets held out by the laughing spe
ctators. But the peach trees had recently succumbed to blight, and the now-useless monkeys had been sold to the Reverend for not much more than the cost of a bottle of rye. They were confused by their new circumstances, missed the trees, were afraid of the clowns, and spent all of their time in the cage sadly murmuring to one another.

  “My mother had a gift,” Star said, making Lily forget the monkeys. Her voice was soft, and Lily could barely hear her. “She told fortunes. Sometimes by looking at palms, sometimes with leaves left in a teacup. But mostly with cards. When our father was alive, she did it in our kitchen, and only as a way to help those who needed their questions answered. She asked for no money, although sometimes when people were grateful they would press her to accept some coins, and she did so that they wouldn’t feel they’d gotten something for nothing. But she always gave this money to someone less fortunate than we were. Then our father died, and we became the ones who were less fortunate. My mother had to provide for us. So she began telling fortunes at fairs. Word of her gift spread, and one day the preacher came to see her. He asked her to tell his fortune, and she did.”

  “What did she see?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Star. “But whatever it was, it impressed him. He asked her to join the Caravan. He told her that she could bring us with her. She didn’t want to, but he said he would give her more money than she had ever seen before. She told us that she would do it until she had enough for us to live on, then leave. Moth told her not to do it.”

  “Moth?” Lily said.

  “My sister,” Star explained. “She has the gift, like my mother. If anything, hers is even stronger. She told my mother not to trust the preacher. She said it would end badly for us. All of us.”

  “And your mother didn’t listen?”

  “My mother was very good at seeing the future for other people, but not for herself,” said Star. “She thought she could take care of us, and that Moth was worrying too much. But Moth was right.”