by Tod Davies
When I knew her, years later, she was, as she must have been then, vain, trivial, and fearfully strong-willed. You could still see both the beauty and the money of her youth, though the first had become petulant rather than wise, and the second borderline vulgar. She was not a happy woman.
She was not destined to make others happy, either. Which I think must be one of the most awful fates in this world.
She was, however, destined from childhood to marry my father. Destined from childhood by both families, and it was a destiny heartily endorsed by the mass media of the day. My father would be allowed his dalliances along the way (how vulgar that is, too), even encouraged to have them for the tension they would add to the eventual story of triumphant nuptials for the two Great Fortunes of Megalopolis. But the end of that story was never in doubt. For anyone, that is, but my mother.
“She was always in pain, from that day forward,” Devindra told me flatly. “Because all she wanted was to love your father and have your father love her back. Oh, she wanted to have you, she wanted to have a happy family. That was what your mother wanted, Sophy. She wanted a happy everyday life. And instead she became a queen.”
If it hadn’t been for Rowena, she would never have been a queen. She would have lived, instead, in some corner of Megalopolis, content with Conor, and with me. I never would have been a queen. But as a family, we might have been happy, at least until the disaster that was inevitable for the Great Empire actually touched that happiness. We would have ignored it as long as we could. As I see so many families, so touchingly, try to do even now that Arcadia faces its own great disaster.
But none of this was meant to be. If you had seen my mother in the days of her queenship, you would have found it impossible to imagine her as the concubine, even the wife, of some spoiled but handsome rich boy. Of course, she wasn’t happy in that role. She was, as I’ve said, in constant pain, torn between what she’d hoped for and what was her duty in life. The queenly calm and serenity, I learned much later, were not in spite of that pain. They were because of it. For the cause of the pain (though I’m not sure at all how much of this Devindra actually knows) was that when the Angel entered into Lily, she brought my mother’s destiny with her. And the pain came when Lily tried to master it, or at least find a way to accept it with all her soul.
ROWENA POMFRET WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
IN ALL OF MEGALOPOLIS
But some destinies are too large for even the greatest soul to master. Or, not master, that’s not the word I want. To manage. Some destinies cause permanent suffering in the constant, fruitless attempt to bring them into harmony with an ideal of happiness. And it’s the loving, painful quarrel that results that brings its own treasures, unsuspected by the ignorant onlooker.
That I do know.
For aren’t I my mother’s daughter? I’ve had my own reason to quarrel, many times, with my own fate (and Rowena Pomfret played a role in that quarrel, too, poor woman). Although mine never had the…well, grandeur is one of the only words I can find to describe it… grandeur and melancholy…of Lily’s destiny. She had been fated to be wounded to the heart early on, earlier, even, than the beginnings of the land where she ruled as its first queen. From that wound it proved impossible to recover. But it’s from that impossibility that I owe all the warm gifts she heaped on me in my own life, all the material she gave me, that she wove, for me to get and cut and shape and tailor, into the festal garment that suits a happy country best. She was a good queen. She was a good mother. If I could only say the same about myself, how happy I would be!
But this is Lily’s story, not mine, not yet (though mine has its cautious beginning here). And Lily would have given it all up to be the simple lover of Conor Barr. If it had been allowed without giving up herself.
Eighteen
When she woke that night, she was back in the green silk-tented room, with the mild, silver light of the Moon Itself shining in over the balcony, with Conor sitting anxiously by her side, holding her hand, and Phoebe standing gravely in the shadow of the carved wooden door. And next to Phoebe, Rex.
“They told me you fainted,” Conor said timidly, twining his fingers through hers. “They didn’t tell me where. They said…” And then he was abruptly quiet, because Livia, my grandmother, had glided silently in the door.
“Conor,” she said, “Rowena is here.”
Did Lily know then what was bound to happen next? I think she did. She did truly love my father, which meant that she loved even his weakness and felt tenderly toward it. I know that my mother must have known my father for what he was: “a handsome, charming weakling,” as my grandmother later told me dismissively. And I myself have reason to know that the love that goes deepest doesn’t necessarily make sense to an outside observer. My father was meant to be a playful, happy lover. That much you could trace on his later, age-ravaged features. You could still see the hopeful, openhearted boy who had never found anything in the world to oppose him, but who had a chance to stay unspoiled through an essential goodness that escaped his mother’s eye.
He didn’t turn his head now. He didn’t answer Livia.
“Conor,” she repeated impatiently, “I said, Rowena’s here. She’s expecting you. Everyone’s expecting you.”
Did he waver there for a moment? Did some vision of a real future happiness, one he would have to fight for and that would then be all the more really his, did that come into his mind? What he told me later made me sure it did. That he loved Lily with all his open boy’s heart is undeniable. He told me of it much later, and the strength of that feeling resonated still, there between us.
But while Conor had love—affection, and passion, and, at the bottom, a kind heart—he did not have wisdom, or even strength. Well, where would he have gotten them? Wisdom wasn’t exactly taught in the prep schools of Megalopolis, and as for strength… strength, I’m afraid, comes in suffering, and he hadn’t suffered. Not yet.
I’m sure he told himself he could have it all. He could marry Rowena, the way everyone expected him to, and he could have Lily, too. I’m sure that’s what he thought. It’s how most young men would (though not all, I’m glad to say). How could he have known what that one misstep would mean for his future? He who never looked past the next spurious accolade, the next trivial prize?
“Conor,” Livia said a third time, and I myself have heard a version of the voice she must have used. Even I had difficulty not obeying that voice, and I have a character carefully built by many loving hands to withstand it.
My father did not. His character was to come later. That night, he was just a spoiled, affectionate boy, and he was used to letting tomorrow take care of itself.
He gave Lily, the one and only love of his life, one last pleading look. I can see him do it now. “Save me,” that look said. “Make me do what’s right. Make me stand up to her, make me stay with you.” And Lily, in that moment, loved him with all of her heart, when the Angel’s presence had shown her heart to her…at exactly the same moment the Angel showed her what she had to do. What she had to do was opposed to that love, made it impossible in this world, the way this world is presently made, and that was the pain that wracked her from that moment on. To go against your own desire is to swim upstream against an icy current, and that was what my mother did.
She started now. Everything in her yearned to grapple with Livia’s will for Conor. But she loved him, and she knew what she had to do. And she had to start by giving him the choice herself, as a gift.
He looked at her again. “Conor,” Livia said a fourth time, and he knew there wouldn’t be a fifth. “There is bound to be a huge crowd outside with Rowena, and there will be another when we go back down to the Great City. Try to present yourself the way we would like to be seen.” At this, Conor pulled himself together, as if slipping on a costume of some kind. He tried a light-hearted shrug, and turned and went out the door.
Livia looked at Lily and gave a wry smile. She lifted her eyebrows and followed her son out.<
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And Lily, pain shooting through every part of her, her joints, her hands and feet (but mainly through her heart), pulled herself, bewildered, from the green silk-hung bed, and, going to the balcony, yanked painfully at the door.
Phoebe came to help her, but the door was locked. Still, through the crystal glass, the girls could see the crystal-enclosed courtyard below, where Conor greeted a fur-swathed Rowena with a kiss. A million flashes from a million cameras went off, blinding Lily’s eyes.
Her hand reached down blindly as she pushed the rising pain back down her throat, to rest there on her heart. Rex was there. She knelt down next to him, and buried her face in his coat. And wept. Because she wanted Conor. She knew she couldn’t have him, without using the power of her will. In other words, it was a choice for Lily of using Love or using Power.
It was a fatal choice for her love. It would become a fatal choice for her as queen, too.
Nineteen
Now it’s time to talk of Rex. He was just a dog, someone like Aspern Grayling would say. But animals have their choices, and their quests too. Rex had his. And that was no small job—nor was it a safe job, either.
When Rex saw Lily fall on the Moon Itself, he was unworried. He was a dog, and so he could see things that the others in the room could not. He could see, for instance, that Lily had fainted because of the future, and this was something that made him glad. He knew something about Lily’s future that she still did not. He knew that I would be born.
He could see the Angel, too, as she really was, not as the others had been able to see her, tortured and bound, in the crystal cell. He could see her standing, grave and watchful, next to Lily. (An angel can be in many places at once, something very few have ever understood. Certainly not Aspern Grayling.) Lily could only feel the Angel inside of her, but Rex could see her. This was the difference between a human and a dog.
“Rex,” the Angel said now, coming over to where he sat, unnoticed, at the edge of the room.
“Star,” Rex answered. He knew the Angel, knew her well, from other worlds and other times that he knew as well as this one (and this ability to remember, and to see, realities other than the one right in front of our noses, this is another difference between the dog and us). He knew that she had commands to give him; a dog can always feel a command before it comes. “Yes. Tell me and I’ll do the best I can.”
The others clustered around Lily, lifting her up, chafing her wrists, talking among themselves. While they were busy with this, Star told Rex what he had to do.
“This is what they will do,” Star told Rex. “They will take you both back down to the earth, as quickly as they can. For they have discovered the hiding place of the Key. They won’t stop until they’ve found it.” A troubled expression passed over Star’s golden brown face. “These are a restless people,” she said. “Their restlessness keeps them from knowing who they are. From knowing the Key.”
Rex knew about the Key. All creatures who keep faith with the Light know about the Key. It is the secret connection of everything that lives—which is the same as everything that is.
“Yes, Star,” he said, “I understand.” Only Phoebe noticed their talk. No one else would have believed a dog could talk, and so this was yet another thing they, not believing, couldn’t see.
“This book has told them that the Key is greater than they,” Star said, and she cast a faintly pitying glance at the Great Tome that glowed in the middle of the room. “And they have so little wisdom that they don’t understand. They think that to have it in their hand will make them greater still.”
At this, Rex and Star exchanged a sad smile. There was not much to be done, they both knew, when men and women were bent on some mindlessly stupid course. There was nothing to do but leave them to it, and hope for better times.
“This book has told them that there is only one who can find the Key.”
At this, Rex felt his breath catch painfully against the barrel of his ribs. It stuck as he breathed in and tore as he breathed out. He knew who that one was, of course. It was why he was with her, guarding her, watching her, comforting her. He had always known this day would come. Only…only…only…
Rex looked over to where Lily lay, watching as the men argued over what was to be done, as Alastair picked her up and, carrying her in his arms, followed Phoebe and Livia from the room. He padded along behind, Star at his side.
How could this be? I mean that Star was inside Lily and beside Rex, both at the same time. Well, of course, it’s an easy trick, for an Angel.
“I’ll make sure she comes to no harm,” Rex promised the Angel.
He felt rather than saw her hesitate at this. This hesitation filled him with dread.
“Star?” he said, as he followed the others down the long corridor toward the door to the Silver Bridge that led back to the False Moon. “I’m to go with Lily, of course. She’s my person. I’m meant to be at her side.” But there was no answer. “Star?” he said again, but this time so gently that only an angel could have heard it. He knew his fate by now. And he would live it, the same as Lily would live hers. This is another difference between a dog and a man. A dog will always do what he is meant to do. Only a man thinks it worthwhile to try to escape his own Fate.
But it wasn’t easy for him. Who would it be easy for? He followed them all back to Lily and Conor’s room, and he felt very alone.
That was when he caught sight of Phoebe. He had almost forgotten her. But there she was, a girl standing straight as an arrow by the door. She looked at Rex and gave a big, slow, deliberate wink.
And when Lily in her sadness reached down to hug him, he was comforted to know that even when he had left her, gone on his quest, Phoebe would be there to take his place. He knew Phoebe from before, too. And Phoebe had known Lily, though Lily didn’t remember. Not yet. Remembering things like that takes such an effort of will, and I think Lily needed all her will to deal with what was in front of her now.
Livia had been right about the crowds. The next few days were a nightmare of crowds. First on the False Moon. An engagement party for Conor and Rowena, which Lily was expected to attend with the best grace she could muster. The rooms where she had danced in triumph were now meant to show off Rowena’s clothes, Rowena’s jewels, the power Rowena had over her fiancé, which included her calling him to her side, in public, whenever Lily was forced by Livia to show herself. Rowena had to be seen to win; that was the story now. And Rowena, without loving Conor, hated Lily. In fact, I have sometimes thought, after my talks with the spoiled aging beauty much later, in the expensive retirement villa she so petulantly ruled, abandoned by her husband and loathed by her son, that her hatred of my mother was the mainspring of her mostly useless life. What did she hate? Her beauty? No, for Rowena, like so many Megalopolitans, only admired one type, a blonde, bland sort, and of that kind Rowena was the most spectacular exemplar. Her brain? No, Rowena would never envy a brain, quite the opposite in fact. The fact that Conor loved Lily and not Rowena? I don’t think she cared much about such matters of the heart. For Rowena, what mattered was the public record. And if the media said Conor preferred Rowena to Lily, then that was good enough for her. Better, in fact.
No, the reason Rowena hated Lily was because of Lily’s pain. Rowena was not clever, but she was shrewd, and she knew that something large was lacking in her life. Somehow she grasped that what was missing was a Task. And somehow she further grasped that Lily had her own Task, and Lily’s pain was a sign of that Task. This filled Rowena with furious envy. In fact, having listened to several extraordinarily irritating and trivial-minded monologues from Rowena later in life, of the type that passed with her for conversation, I think I can say that Envy was the mainspring of her existence. Envy and the desire to be rid of the Envied. All her life was focused on this one useless goal, and oh, the misery that it caused! Not least to herself. Even the public humiliations she made Lily suffer were not the greatest of the misery she caused, though they were certainly miserable eno
ugh. If Lily wore a pretty dress, Rowena demanded it be taken away and given to her. If Conor smiled at Lily, Rowena insisted he come to her side, where she would whisper to him and look maliciously at Lily, making them both laugh, as if at Lily. She would have harmed Rex, too, I think, though only if she had been able to do it without being caught. Megalopolitans are so sentimental about animals; the brutality that their sentimentality inevitably gave rise to was hidden, and this was what they considered civilized behavior. As long as Rex stayed away from Rowena, he was safe, though whether he wanted to be saved was another matter. He knew what he had to do now, and he was both looking for the way to begin, and dreading his task’s start.
It wasn’t long before they left to go back to the world below. The whole party descended, only to be met by huge crowds jostling and waving on the other side of the massive security gate. There were reporters and cameras, and celebrities and politicians, and many of the common people, bored, looking for the stimulation of any kind of festivity—this one as good as any other.
“HOORAY!” the crowds shouted now. “HOORAY!”
The crowds didn’t know what they shouted for, but the reporters said it was to celebrate the union of Rowena and Conor, and the crowds did not disagree.
Lily walked silently behind the happy couple, accompanied by Phoebe and Rex. No one paid them any attention now. The story was somewhere else.
No one, that is, but Livia. Rex was very aware of Livia. She watched them all sharply; she had her plan, and she had no intention of letting Lily get away.
But she didn’t care about Rex. Rex was only a dog. And that gave Rex his chance.
The crowd parted, opening a way for Conor Barr, Rowena Pomfret, Lily, Livia, Phoebe, and a beaming Julian to walk to a cavalcade of open cars covered with garlands of scentless carnations. Rex followed behind, forgotten. And as the others stepped toward the bright red and silver machines, he deliberately stopped, as if to suck a thorn out of his paw.