“Don’t cry, Lily,” Conor whispered as they walked toward the car. “I’ll get you another dog. I’ll get you anything you want. I’ll make all this…” he gestured around them at the crowd, at Rowena, but with a gesture that made it look as if he was waving in a lordly way to the cheering Megalopolitans that surrounded them. “Make all this up to you,” he muttered, knowing very well that none of it could be made up to Lily, none of it could be made up to anyone. He knew very well, my father, that the world he lived in was bad, crumbling at the bottom, and rotting at the top; he knew that the only true thing he had ever had in his luxurious and pampered life was his love for Lily. And he knew that he was going to betray that love now. He was ashamed of it. But he knew he would do it anyway.
Livia looked at him ironically, and he looked away, not meeting her eyes or Lily’s gaze. What else could he do? He was Conor Barr, the idol of millions. There wasn’t enough left to him from that Conor Barr to strengthen just plain Conor. There certainly wasn’t enough to strengthen him to stand up for Conor and Lily. That would only come later. Too late, my father said. But about that I’m not sure. It may be that it’s never too late to be true to Love.
But now was not the time for Conor Barr to stand up for himself, let alone for Love.
“Get in the car with Rowena. Now,” Livia hissed. And Conor, obedient, gave Lily one last look, and hurried ahead with his father to join his fragile, fairy princess fiancée, leaving his true love behind. Behind with Livia.
And with Phoebe. Who was she, and what was she doing there? No one had said anything to Lily, but in that dark moment, she felt a hand squeeze hers. Surprised, she looked down and saw it was Phoebe’s. “Rex knows what he’s doing,” Phoebe murmured. “It will be all right in the end.” Lily listened to this carefully, puzzling over it. There was much for her to puzzle over just then, my poor, dear mother. But it was painfully working out the possible answers to the puzzle that made her emerge, finally, as queen.
Conor was wrong. Lily had not been crying. She knew that Phoebe must be right, that Rex was not lost. (And who was Phoebe? And why did Livia seem not to see her? Seem to pretend, or not know at all, that she wasn’t even there?) Lily knew that Rex would never have let himself be separated from her without a good reason. She trusted him to know a good reason from a bad. Only it had frightened her badly, his leaving so suddenly like that, leaving her to fend for herself among these dangerous strangers. Still, there was Phoebe, whose dark brown eyes saw so much, and who held onto Lily’s hand. And up ahead, in the car, next to Conor’s servant in the driver’s seat, was Kim, who bounced with excitement when she saw Lily, her sharp little nose bobbing in the air. Just the sight of Kim comforted Lily. There was always something about Kim, even much later in her life, that made those around her cling to a little bit of hope, no matter how dark the surrounding world became. She was that for me, oh, many times when I was growing up. Some people are like that, I thankfully observe. And it was lucky for Lily that Kim was one of them, now.
“Friends,” Lily thought to herself, looking at Phoebe and Kim—or was it the Angel inside of her speaking? She couldn’t tell. But the voice went on. “Friends. Allies.” And Lily heard.
She let herself be led to the car, settled in it between Phoebe and a watchful Livia, covered with fur rugs, and driven away. She was quiet when they turned off from the main road, leaving the cavalcade of red and silver cars, and headed down a narrow, badly kept road.
They drove quickly and were soon past the crowds, speeding through open countryside. This was not the kind of landscape Lily was used to. It was blasted and stunted and brownish red, and every so often a murky pond oozed up from its clay. It was the Marsh Land, where the Marsh People lived. The Marsh had once been a clear river, and the land around it a prosperous one. But since the damming of the river, things had changed.
“Isn’t this lovely!” Kim exclaimed from the front seat, craning her neck around. “I do like a bit of Nature.” And she gave a contented sigh.
Lily saw Phoebe laugh soundlessly to herself. But Kim was oblivious to any absurdity. Livia gave a sour smile.
“Yes,” she said in an acid-tinged voice. “The Council of Four has worked long and hard to preserve our natural heritage. This is a park that will be here for generations to come.”
“Isn’t it beautiful, Lily?” Kim said with her usual ebullience. But Lily, who this time pressed Phoebe’s hand under their shared fur rug, didn’t answer. Instead she schooled her face as well as she could into a look of blank admiration. Phoebe looked disapproving at this, which also comforted Lily. Lily was already missing Rex very much.
Barbed wire fences flashed by them, and bleached bones lying half stuck in the clay. And then there was the smell of something fetid, something brackish and sour.
“What is it?” Lily cried in spite of herself. “Where are we going?” At this, Phoebe looked more approving, and gave her hand, under the fur rugs, another comforting press.
“To the sea,” Livia said, and she inhaled deeply as if the horrid smell was something fine.
Kim clapped her hands and bounced up and down in her seat. “The sea!” she said. “I was born near the sea!”
“But,” Lily thought, “I’m sure the real sea doesn’t smell like this.” Looking at Phoebe’s blank expression beside her, she was sure of it.
The sea did not look the way Lily had always imagined. For one thing, the strand in front of the murky, lapping water was covered with soldiers, all silent, holding guns and wooden staffs. There seemed to be hundreds of them, stretching out in both directions, on either side of a straight path down to the sea. There were so many that Lily couldn’t see the end of them.
The car pulled up before a smartly dressed officer, who saluted them crisply.
“Lady Livia?” he inquired, and then, seeing it was, he waved them down the path through the troops, the path that crossed the strand toward the flat black sea.
“Hey!” the driver protested, putting on the brakes of the car. “I can’t drive there. We’ll sink into the sand!”
“Go on!” Livia hissed. “Idiot! Just do what I say! Drive on!” And Conor’s servant, shaking his head and muttering, did what she said.
“Horrible old bitch,” he thought to himself. But he did what she said. Everyone in Megalopolis always did. A redoubtable woman, my grandmother!
Now even Kim shivered. As they drove slowly through the silent ranks of soldiers, whose eyes glittered from behind their black wool masks, the Angel spoke inside of Lily.
Lily listened carefully. At first she hesitated. But then Phoebe pressed her hand again, and Lily knew it meant Phoebe could hear the Angel’s voice as well. It was a comfort, she told me when I was very small (for this part of the story was my favorite, I made her retell it over and over), to know that the voice she heard so plainly was not only her imagination.
“Though to say ‘only my imagination,’ Snow, is to put it the wrong way. Try to remember that. It’s only in your imagination where the answers to the really hard questions can be found.”
She had reason to know that was true. So she listened. And she obeyed.
“Stop the car,” she said. It surprised even her, the clear sound of her voice. The driver, startled, craned his head around.
“Yes,” Livia said nodding. “Do what she says.”
It was quiet there, on the strand, even with the hundreds of men and women standing there. The car juddered to a halt, and all you could hear was the halfhearted movement of the sea.
Lily scrambled over Phoebe to get out of the car. “Lily!” Kim hissed. “Lily, where are you going?” But one look from Livia, and she was still.
Lily got out of the car, and walked the now short distance down to the sea. When she got there, she just stood, looking out over its dark expanse.
“What’s she doing then?” Kim asked fretfully, but the driver, now scared as well by the look in Livia’s eye, shushed her.
Then Phoebe got out of the car.
“No,” Livia said vigorously, and made a move to stop her. But the girl was too quick for Livia, and before she could be stopped she was striding to Lily’s side.
“Well, then,” Kim said, and before anyone could stop her, either, she was out and off. “I’m going, too.” She ran lightly on her long, coltish legs until she was almost upon the other two girls, at which point she stopped, shy. But they turned and seemed to welcome her, and then the three of them stood there, between the soldiers, looking out to the sea. As the rest of them watched, Lily turned first to Phoebe, then Kim, and said a few words. The other two girls paused, then nodded, first one, then the other. And at this, Lily turned and came back alone.
“I know what you want me to do,” she said, looking at Livia. “I can see it all. You want me to go into the sea.” And when Livia was silent, she said, in a scornful voice, “That’s what THEY are for…” her arm swept around the soldiers standing, watchful, there. “They’re to drive me into the sea.”
Livia still did not answer.
“You don’t need them, you know,” Lily said gently. “I saw what it was in the Book, what I have to do. And I’ll do it all right. But on one condition.”
At this, Livia’s eyebrow raised inquiringly.
“If I can find what you want and bring it to you, you’ll give me safe passage back over the mountains to my home. To Arcadia.”
Lily missed Rex badly, but she knew where he had gone. It was where she longed to go, too.
Livia nodded, seemingly amused. I would have been warned, if I were Lily, by that look of amusement in my grandmother’s eye. But I think I know her better than Lily ever did. I am so much like her, you see.
And then, Lily was bracing herself to give voice to the other part of her condition. She held up her hand. “Wait. Safe passage for Conor, too. For Conor and me to go across the mountains to Arcadia.”
At this, I know, my grandmother’s face became grave. This happens to her expression, sometimes, when she feels a particular triumph, some particular glee at a turn in events. It’s her way of hiding the fact that she has won. She knew she had won now. So she said, sounding aggrieved, “You would take my son from me?” Her face, I am willing to swear, was that of an old defeated woman, who was losing everything she loved.
This would have amused my grandmother no end. She would have been doubly amused to see Lily’s struggle go across her face. Lily, who felt the justice of a claim Livia did not really feel, was incapable of feeling. It would have cost Lily much to hold out in silence.
“And if I’d known you were in the offing, granddaughter,” Livia said to me much later with a nasty look in her eye, “I would have denied safe passage to you.” In fact, she tried then to claim my mother had tricked her, all those years ago, and that by right, she could keep me with her as long as she liked. But I am not Livia’s grandchild for nothing, and like, in that case, won out over like.
My mother, while just as strong a spirit as either of us, was a more loving one. She hated to interfere with love of any kind, even power that masquerades as love, only meaning to win more for itself. So it must have cost her much to hold her ground. But hold her ground she did. Until Livia, histrionically, pathetically, gave one broken sob and nodded her head, hiding the gleam in her eye.
Lily turned back and returned to her friends. Livia and her soldiers watched as the girls conferred. Phoebe stood with her arms folded, serene. Kim bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, nodding furiously. Then the three girls linked arms—there was just enough space on the path for the three of them, standing abreast, to pass—and walked toward the sea.
Livia jumped up, alarmed. “No!” she shouted, scrambling from her seat onto the strand. “Stop them! That’s not the way it’s written! It’s written that she goes alone! Stop them! Stop those girls!”
But the soldiers had no orders to stop Lily, only to force her into the sea. So they watched in silence as she walked, arms linked with those of her friends, into the dank cold water. Of the three girls, Lily was the smallest, and after her disappeared Kim’s yellow-brown ponytail, and Phoebe’s white-gold hair.
“NO!” Livia yelled, and she stomped her foot on the strand. But she was too late. All three girls had gone into the sea.
