“I often think about that night up on the tower,” Lily said much later to Death. They were walking—trudging, almost—together up a wide, steep path that went first straight ahead, then wound so snakelike that Lily couldn’t see what was at the end. “I often wonder what would have happened if I had shouted, or pushed Livia off, or if I had said no to all of her plans. I often wonder that.” Lily bit her lip and thought. Rex walked, as ever, by her side.
Death smiled and continued her walk upward. But she didn’t say a word. Not just then. And it was obvious to Lily why not.
“But I did none of those things,” she said ruefully, “I yearned—that’s right, yearned—to know what would happen next. And I said yes. Oh, I said yes. There is no changing that. But what if it was meant to be all along?”
Thinking hard over this question, Lily, too, fell silent. And she and Death continued their companionable walk.
How do I know all this? You’ll be wondering who told me what they said to each other on that road. Well, of course it was Death. Death herself told me all this, and more, when I met her myself on the Road of the Dead. And then, what I didn’t know from her, I know from the Key. These are the important parts of the story, I think. But not, to me, necessarily the most moving, the most touching. Those parts have always come from the loved ones in my life. Curiously enough, even from my grandmother Livia, who saw, quite rightly, a lot of herself in me. “You’re tall, like me, hmm. And you have my hair, even if your skin is that dirty brown,” she said when we finally met as grandmother and grandchild, many years later. “And you have my energy, which is something I’m not sure I wanted to give you.”
This amused me, I remember. “No, Grandmother,” I said. “I’m quite sure you didn’t.”
“Your father never had it—my energy,” she said in that grim voice that was such a feature of her last years. “He was, at bottom, a very conventional boy.”
About that, I think she was wrong. But she was correct in thinking he wasn’t much her son. For my grandmother, though she knew the world with frightening clarity (and it’s a clarity I am sometimes frightened to own myself), was unable to love. And my father, who never, even in his seasoned old age, could see exactly what was in front of him—he knew how to love. And he did love my mother. I do know that. Strange to say, it’s a great comfort to me, even now, in my sixtieth year.
“It’s been a dream of mine for a long time: going to the Moon.” Conor said this from where he stood behind the crystal window of their temporary quarters, another beautifully decorated room, hung with green silk held up by brocade roses. Outside the window was a view that only the rich could afford, and that only they were allowed—of the Moon Itself. Lily lay behind him, on the bed, in shadows.
“Mmm,” she said, noncommittally. “Doesn’t he know?” her eyes asked Rex. “Doesn’t Conor know that this is the False Moon? He’s looking right at the Moon Itself, doesn’t he see?” But Rex’s eyes told her nothing. They had told her nothing since the night she stood with Livia at the top of the tower. Since that night, when she looked at Rex, all she saw was a dog. He was no longer a guide. He was just a dog.
Lily hadn’t bothered being excited when she, Julian, Livia and Conor had filed solemnly onto the shiny, brand new Megalopolitan rocket ship, the one guaranteed to take its occupants to the Moon in under three hours (“Wake up at Home, Eat Lunch on the Moon,” as the advertisement went). She had known without being told that they would first go to the False Moon, where all the reporters and laborers, and the holidaymakers who could afford the novelty of a trip to the moon, would see them land and, reassured, go on with life as normal.
“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.
