Trial by Fire

“What have you done?” Juliet breathed. She looked at Lily, her jaw slack with fear as her eyes skipped over every aspect of Lily’s face and body.

“You’re not going to believe it, Juliet,” answered the girl. She picked up a silken robe and pulled it around her naked body. There was a sickly smell in the air, like flowers that had been left in old water for too long, their stems starting to rot. “I brought another version of me into this world,” she said, and then suddenly swooned.

“Lillian,” Juliet gasped. She crossed the room quickly to catch the girl and half carried her to the wide bed in the giant suite. Lily noticed that under the robe, the girl was covered in soot, as if she had been lying in the dirty fireplace. “This is insane. You are far too weak to go to the pyre. It could kill you.”

“As if I have a choice about that now. Which is why I brought her here.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Juliet asked in a strangled voice.

A tense moment passed between the sisters. The girl in the bed looked at Lily and waved for her to approach.

“Come in, Lily. That’s what you prefer to be called, isn’t it? I prefer Lillian.”

Lily entered the room as if drawn there by invisible hands. A creeping chill raised all the hairs on the back of her neck. Lillian had Lily’s voice, her hair, her body, even her way of moving. The clothes were different, and Lily desperately hoped that the cynical gleam she saw in Lillian’s eye was different as well, but apart from those small variations, there was no mistaking it. Lily was looking at herself. Not her mirror opposite, but her absolute double—right down to the swirl in her left eyebrow that made all the little hairs spike wildly in the wrong direction.

Lillian’s eyes darted down to Lily’s NO NUKES T-shirt, and she gave a wan smile. “I’ve watched you long enough to know that the important things inside of us are exactly the same.”

“You can’t be me,” Lily said, shaking her head as if that would change what her eyes were telling her. “I’m me.”

“You are me and I am you—we are versions of each other,” Lillian said. She raised a hand and held her thumb and forefinger apart by the most miniscule of distances. “In worlds that lie this close together, and yet never touch.”

It was the word “versions” that rang inside Lily’s head. She thought of her mother. “No. I’m crazy. That last seizure did it. I’ve finally gone crazy like my mother.”

“Your Samantha isn’t crazy,” Lillian said sadly. “She’s cursed. She sees and hears an infinite number of universes that she can’t block out. It’s a terrible thing. Our version of mother couldn’t take it. Not even with guidance from what you would call an expert.”

“So it’s true?” Juliet interrupted hoarsely “The shaman wasn’t talking nonsense?”

Lillian looked at her sister, and for a moment, a tender emotion crossed her forbidding face. “Mom wasn’t crazy. Other universes exist, Juliet.” She gestured to Lily. “There’s the proof.”

“Then why did she…?”

“It was too late for Mom,” Lillian said abruptly. “Even with the shaman’s help.”

There weren’t many things that Lily was sure of at the moment, but even in a different universe, she could read her sister’s face. This version of Samantha was dead, and Lily was pretty sure that she had killed herself. Fear shot through Lily as she considered whether or not her version of Samantha would do the same someday. If she were distressed enough, she might. Say, if one of her daughters disappeared into thin air, for instance.

“I have to go back,” Lily whispered. “Please. I don’t belong here.”