Lake sees it in my eyes and smiles. “I am sorry, Moonbright,” Lake says to me, “that you weren’t also Selected.” But she isn’t sorry, I can tell this. She’s too happy to have been Selected herself.
“I am sorry too,” I say. “But it seems like only one of us can be.” I look at the Statues of Cold. They’re smiling at each other. They reach out their hands to Lake. Not for her to take, her hands are full, holding her mirror tray. But for her to come away from me, away from the wall of moonbright ones. To follow them, please.
Lake follows them toward the open tank full of red jellies. This is her Final Destination, apparently. When she arrives there, one of the Statues of Cold takes her tray and hands her a net.
It seems like Lake will catch her own dinner. A fresh-caught dinner. Of jelly?
“This is a very intense buffet,” I whisper to the woman beside me, a very white woman. She has the eyes of someone old, yet her sin is like a child’s. It is strange to behold the old eyes in the child’s face. “Perhaps the most intense seafood buffet I have ever witnessed, wouldn’t you say?” But the woman is just staring at herself in her mirror tray like all the moonbright ones along the wall seem to be. All but me. The bracelet tingles on my wrist. I stare down at the painted eye glowing there in the dark. Watch, it seems to say.
I look back at Lake with her net. Another Statue of Cold gives Lake a handful of red petals. They whisper instructions to her. Lake listens, smiling. I have been Selected, her face says. I, among all the moonbright ones. Didn’t she want to go home just a moment ago? But Lake seems to have forgotten all about home. I watch her drop the red petals into the water where the red jellies swim. Immediately one floats up to the surface, like a moth to a light. And the Statues of Cold smile, the veiled ones in black clap lightly. Lake squeals in delight like she did something so extraordinary. She coos at the creature. Is it my prince she’s cooing at? My fairy godfish? If it’s mine, I’ll scream. Lake wouldn’t catch what’s mine, would she? A moment ago, I would have thought not, but her I have been Selected face is a different face, makes her a different Lake. Maybe this new Lake would steal what’s mine. But no, it’s another jelly that swims up to nibble Lake’s flowers with a mouth I didn’t know it had. It makes Lake smile and clap her hands. Water drips from her eyes. The look in them is strange. Don’t know what it’s made of, joy or sad or afraid. Maybe it’s knowing. I know you, little one. I know this shape. It is the shape of something inside of me. Something essential.
Now the Statues of Cold point to the net Lake is already holding in her hands. She lowers it into the water and her jelly swims into it easily. Her jelly wants to be caught, to be with Lake. How can she eat it now? She lifts up the net, heavy with her creature, and all the veiled ones in black clap. All but Seth, who just watches as Lake lowers her wriggling catch onto her waiting silver tray. So this is what the tray was for. And then the tray is hers to carry, quite heavy, full of her very own red jelly. Thumping on the tray like a wildly beating heart, and Lake so happy as she brings it to the middle of the table where the veiled ones sit waiting. Their hunger is palpable. A panting breath. A shudder. Lake sets it down between the black candles and the rose petals. Sets it right down where the Queen of Snow waits with a carving knife and fork and such a smile on her face. But the Queen of Snow never gets to carve the jumping, wriggling thing. Because one of the veiled ones reaches a hand out and there is a ripping sound and then a scream. And all the black silk arms are reaching, descending upon Lake’s creature, still wriggling as it is ripped apart by their tearing hands. I see it torn and thrashing between their bodies. I see mouths full of red between the black veils. Chewing and slurping up the many red tentacles of Lake’s jelly. Dangling from their mouths like a bloody, alive spaghetti. Every mouth at the table and every gloved hand covered in blood and fish bits. And the Queen of Snow is smiling. Even as her white-as-snow face gets splattered with the reddest blood of Lake’s jelly that they eat so violently. But the Queen of Snow doesn’t seem to mind. She licks whatever blood splatter comes to her face with the tip of her long, pink, hunting tongue. Whatever bits she licks make her shudder with pleasure. Her eyes roll back into her head with the pleasure. Meanwhile someone is screaming and screaming. The wildest, loudest screams I have ever heard. Like they are being physically torn apart. Ripped wide open, and they are alive and seeing it at the same time. The screams deafen my ears, where are they coming from? Every mouth is too full of jelly to scream. Lake. Lake at the end of the table, standing between the two smiling Statues of Cold. Lake barely standing, the Statues of Cold are holding her up by her arms. Lake screaming as her jelly is eaten before her eyes. Screaming as if she is the one being eaten, even though she is not, it is only her jelly. But Lake’s eyes are wide open and her screams bloom from the wide-open throat of her soul. The bloody thing on her dress looks like a stomach slashed open now more than ever before. The Statues of Cold keep holding her in place, each with a gloved hand. And the veiled ones keep eating and eating, making gasping, shuddering sounds of such pleasure, and will no one stop this? But the moonbright ones along the wall are all still looking into their mirror trays and smiling. “Beautiful, Brightened, Poreless,” they chant over and over at their own reflected faces. I try to move to stop this. Lake is so upset, I must calm her down, but I find I cannot move. Something is holding me in place. I look down and see two thorny roses have come out of the wall behind me, oh my. They have slithered around my middle. They have made a tight knot at my waist with their blooms. When I try to move away from the wall again, I am stabbed by their thorns. “Lake,” I say, “please. It’s only your jelly they’re eating.” A jelly that won’t seem to stop wriggling even as only pieces of it are still left on the table. Pieces that the veiled ones are fighting for, black silk hands wrenching it from other black silk hands. Everyone eats but the man who I thought was a man called Tom Cruise, but whom they call Seth. Seth sits at the head of his table on his throne. Watching it all. Watching the Feasting. And then he turns to me. He puts his gloved fingers to his lips. He looks at me, his eyes red now. And he kisses his fingers so tenderly. Blows this kiss to me. I feel it as the coolest breeze on my forehead. An ocean. Welling up behind my eyes, falling drop by drop. For what is being done to Lake that I can’t stop. For the tenderness of Seth’s kiss that cools me like a breeze in spite of myself. That soothes me in spite of myself. In spite. In spite.
He smiles. How he loves my ocean of drops. There is no food in the world that tastes as sweet as this ocean looks to his eyes.
The screaming has stopped. Lake has fallen between the two Statues of Cold, who carry her away now. Back through the black mouth of the door. I want to call after her, but the breeze of Seth’s kiss has silenced me, has emptied me of all words. And the thorns hold me fast against the wall.
At the table where the veiled ones sit, Lake’s creature is no more. Only sputtering black candles, scattered red petals. An empty silver tray smeared with blood. The ones in black murmur behind their veils. Dab at their mouths. Through their veils I see their sins shimmering like pearls. So radiant they are now. It’s Lake’s jelly, I realize, that’s made their faces shimmer so wondrously as they do now. So lakesmooth and moonbright. They pick at their teeth.
“That was… fine,” they murmur. “That was just fine. But. We are still quite… peckish. Yes, this peckishness. It is a most unfortunate thing. Malheureusement.”
I feel dissatisfaction rising from them like a cloud of ink. Lake’s creature has only whetted an appetite that is fathoms deep.