We all are. All the moonbright ones I walk with. All the lakesmooth faces on which there is not a ripple of sad or happy or mad. All wearing white-and-red dresses patterned with what the Statues of Cold keep telling us are roses but which look like something else to me. All gripping their silver trays close, like Lake and me. Each tray’s surface is covered with a black circle of paper, but nothing else. Because we don’t want you to look until it’s time is what the Statues of Cold told us. Strange to carry a tray. “Almost like we’re the severed ones, isn’t that right, Lake?” Serving ones, I meant to say. But Lake understands.
“It seems so,” Lake says. Ever since we left the Lounge, she’s been sounding faraway. The dark rings around her eyes are getting darker.
“But why would we be severed? Serving? Aren’t we the honored guests? Aren’t we the people who paid for here?”
“I haven’t paid for here yet. Have you?”
“No. Because they have my purse. So it’s a misunderstanding.” And then something in me lifts. “Maybe this is why they’re making us sever now,” I say to Lake. “Because we got our treatments free. And now we must pay in some way. We should explain to them.”
Lake looks down at her tray. “I don’t know. That sounds like a lot to do. Anyway, I think this is right. I’m a Perfect Candidate, they said. You’re perfect too. That’s why we walk together. Maybe perfect means we don’t ever pay.” Then she looks up and smiles so suddenly.
“What?”
“Your jelly. Following you. Look.” And with her chin, she gestures to the glass.
And there it is. Swimming beside us. Floating along. One among many, but I know it’s the one from before by its eyes. Red like its jelly body, and watchful. It makes me smile a little inside. But on the outside, I do not smile. “Oh?” I say.
“Your prince,” Lake presses. “Or your fairy godfish maybe?”
“Hardly either of those,” I say.
“Yes,” Lake says. “How ugly it is,” she says, like she hasn’t already said this. “Maybe you’ll kiss it and it will turn into something beautiful. Like a silly story someone told me once. Every nighttime for so many nighttimes. The same story I asked for, over and over. Over and over they told it. Never tiring. In a voice of love. Love is funny.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Over and over,” Lake repeats in a trance. “The moon in the window. A hand on my hair. How ugly it was.”
“The story or the moon in the window?”
“Me,” Lake says. Not smiling now. Salt water spilling from her eyes of smoke. The silver tray in her hands begins to shake.
“Lake,” I say. “You’re beautiful.” Though I’m no longer so sure about that when I look at Lake. I think of the word that swam up like a gray fish when she asked how she looked. Dead. As I look at her Brightened face, more words come swimming.
Eradicated.
Destroyed.
Used.
A whole school of gray ones. How well they all seem to fit Lake’s new face.
“Look, we’re here,” she says. And she nods at a black hole up ahead of us, like a giant mouth. It reminds me of the mouths of the white faces in the After Place.
The red jelly that swims alongside me seems eager, like it wants to tell me something. Its head is pulsing so very fast behind the glass. Fast as my pounding heart. Its legs are like hands waving.
What? I say out of the corner of my lips.
Nothing. Silence. Or maybe not silence. Maybe it’s speaking but I don’t understand fish. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
And then Lake and I walk through the black hole.
30
A dark dining room on the top floor. The grandest dining room I have ever seen. A high ceiling of glass so I can see the night sky full of stars. A long black table decked out so beautifully. Rose petals scattered everywhere. Black candles, the flames tall and still. There isn’t a wind in this room. There is no air at all. That must be why it feels difficult to breathe. Is the grand table for us to sit at? No, there are already people sitting there. People all in black. Black suits and black dresses, wearing black veils over their faces like curtains. Beside the table is a large glass tank of water, like an open aquarium or an aboveground swimming pool. Seems like the same water we walked beside when we were going up the winding stair two by two. Same blue-green shade. Same red jellies floating and pulsing within. So this must be the very top of that glass tank, where it ends, like our Beauty Journey, where it opens up, like a flower-shaped pool. The way the table is facing the aquarium, it seems like the aquarium is the main event, the show, and the table is the audience, with all the seats taken.
“But where will we sit, if these seats are taken?” I ask Lake. “Aren’t we the honored guests?”
But Lake doesn’t answer. She’s mesmerized by all around her. Especially by the ones in black veils, staring and staring at us. “Who are they, Lake? Do you know them?”
“They?” Lake whispers. “The ones who architect our dreams, of course.”
“Who give them their shapes and names,” says a woman beside Lake, her skin so very dewy. “Their silky textures and wondrous colors and timeless scents. Bottle them in the prettiest of red jars.”
“Make creams and sprays of them,” Lake adds, “which they then sell, and which we are so lucky to buy.”
“There is no price too high,” agrees the dewy woman.
I look at the table of veiled ones. Their faces so shining, their pale eyes staring behind their black veils. “Well how exciting to dine with them, then,” I say, though in my voice I hear fear. “Right, Lake? With the architects of our dreams? Who know their shapes and names?”
I look back at Lake. The empty tray is shaking in her hands. If she wouldn’t grip it so tight, it wouldn’t shake. All of the moonbright ones like us are standing along the walls, holding their empty silver trays like we are. Some moonbright hands are shaking like Lake’s, their faces very still and smiling. Many are looking down into their trays. As we came through the black mouth, a Statue of Cold took the black circles off the trays, revealing their shiny surfaces. Mirrors they are, our trays, the Statues of Cold told us. The moonbright ones are staring down at their reflections now, smiling, many eyes leaking salt water, overcome by what must be joy. So happy with the results. “Beautiful, Brightened, Poreless,” they whisper like a chant. But I don’t dare look down into my mirror tray. It’s something in how they’re all looking down. Like they can never stop. Never look back up again. I feel my gold bracelet tingle on my wrist. I am watchful like its painted eye.
At each of the four corners of the long table stands a Statue of Cold. They are watching over the veiled guests, watching the roses and candles as if it is their job to monitor. They each hold a very big net like for catching butterflies. Or fish. Interesting. Perhaps what we are eating at this Feast will be fresh caught? Live?
“Will they kill it in front of us at the table?” I ask Lake. “Like they do in the finest restaurants and markets? That must be what this is.”
“I hope not,” Lake says. “I hate that.”
“It’s a very fancy way,” I say.
“I don’t want a fancy way. I want to go home now,” Lake says. “My home on the hill. A house with thirteen windows. You’ll help me find it.”
“Yes, of course. It’s just… I’m not sure where we are.” I think of the long winding stair we just walked up. All those twisting corridors. We’re on the top floor, that’s clear by the night sky above, but I don’t know how far down and away the exit is. It’s comforting to look up at the night sky through the ceiling. To see the sky is to know something, however small, of where we are.
“There is sky up there at least,” I say. “Look”—but Lake won’t look. “Lake,” I say. “There’s sky up in the—”
A clearing of a throat. Then the Queen of Snow steps forward from the shadows. Smiles. I stand up straighter in my white-and-red dress. All of us moonbright ones do. It’s like the Queen of Snow’s smile has invisible threads connected to all of our spines. And when her lips curve, we straighten.
“We have a very special guest to welcome for tonight’s Feast,” she says. “One of our very best. Who has given us so much. Contributed so deeply to the Source, the wellspring of our Mission. One who has, over the ages, planted many a seed in many a Vessel and watched the Roses grow.” And she gestures to us moonbright ones along the wall. We are the Roses, apparently. Or are we the Vessels?