Lily Read online

  Table of Contents

  LILY Michael Thomas Ford

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author & Illustrator

  Published by Lethe Press

  118 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade, NJ 08052

  lethepressbooks.com

  Copyright © 2016 Michael Thomas Ford

  ISBN:

  Paperback 9781590212684

  Hardcover Deluxe: 9781590210888

  No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Art and Interior Illustration:

  Staven Andersen

  Interior Design: Inkspiral Design

  For Tove Jansson,

  who answered my letters.

  O N E

  ON THE MORNING OF HER thirteenth birthday, Lily kissed her father and knew he would be dead by nightfall. The image of his death dropped into her mind without warning. As her lips touched his she saw behind the thin skin of her closed eyes his face, pale and wet, rising up from the waves surroudned by caressing fingers of sea grass, and she screamed.

  Her mother started, and the pitcher of milk she held in her hands crashed to the kitchen floor, where it exploded in a fury of glass and spread over the boards. Her father grabbed Lily and put his arms around her, but she beat her hands against his back, sobbing and trying to push away the lifeless body that slumped on her breast.

  “Lily, what’s happened?” he asked.

  Lily looked into her father’s anxious face, at the blue eyes clouded over with worry for her. She opened her mouth to speak, and found that she couldn’t. Her voice seemed to have been drained away, and as hard as she tried, she could coax no sound from her empty throat.

  “What’s the matter, my darling?” her father pleaded. “Are you all right?”

  Lily nodded. She knew that she was in no way all right, that nothing was all right, yet she sensed that to indicate otherwise would somehow throw everything even further out of balance. Her father clutched her to his chest, and again she saw his body hovering in the blue-green water, the eyes wide and staring, the mouth filled with the sea. She struggled to keep from retching, putting her arms around her father’s neck, relieved to find that his shirt was crisp and dry under her fingertips.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down,” her father said, stroking her hair softly. “Then this afternoon we can open your presents.”

  Lily nodded and turned away quickly before his skin could once more become wet and his lips swollen. She ran up the stairs to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. Lying on her bed, she put her hands over her face and waited for the vision of her father’s death to come again. When it didn’t, she fell into a troubled sleep and began to dream.

  THE BRANCHES WERE DEAD, THIN and pale as bird bones and iced with frost. As she made her way through the trees, her bare feet left small hollows in the snow, which the edge of her night dress filled in behind her, leaving no trace of her passing.

  She was unaware of the cold that kissed and nipped at her bare skin. She moved across the snowy ground as if it were summer grass, pushing her way through the empty arms of the trees until the forest opened up before her and she was standing in a clearing. The trees formed a perfect circle around her, their branches closely knotted together. Above the circle in the wood the moon hung low in the winter sky.

  Sitting in the clearing was a cottage. It looked like many of the cottages in the village, with a pointed roof and small, square windows whose glass glimmered silvery in the moonlight. Tendrils of smoke crept from the top of the stone chimney, and through one of the windows Lily could see the pale yellow light of what she was sure must be a fire. She felt the cold of the snow for the first time. She shivered, and drew her arms around herself. Beneath her bare feet, the cold crunched and bit at her toes.

  She walked to the door of the cottage and knocked. When there was no answer, she put her hand on the latch and lifted. The door opened, and she went inside, shutting it behind her. The warmth of a fire greeted her, and she felt the cold slipping from her skin.

  Standing near the hearth was an old woman, stirring a cauldron that hung over the fire. Her long hair fell about her face in knotted tangles, and she was humming to herself a song that sounded to Lily both wild and soothing at the same time.

  “I’m sorry to intrude, grandmother,” Lily said. “I knocked, but no one came.”

  “I heard you,” the woman said, turning her face to Lily. Her eyes were black as the new moon, and her nose so long that it nearly touched her chin. Her mouth held a row of crooked teeth, and around her throat was a necklace of bones. Lily was startled by her appearance, but said nothing.

  “You have come to Baba Yaga’s house for something,” the old woman said. “What is it?”

  “I — I don’t know,” said Lily. “I found myself here.”

  “No one finds herself at Baba’s house.” The old woman tsked. “The path is too well hidden. You come here only when you are ready to be tested. Are you ready, child?”

  Baba stopped stirring the pot and came toward Lily. Lily backed away. She did not like the look of the old woman’s gnarled hands, each finger ending in a broken nail.

  “Are you ready?” Baba Yaga asked again. This time, her voice was cold.

  Lily could only shake her head. She didn’t know what Baba Yaga meant. Ready for what? How had she come to be there?

  “This is just a dream.” Lily held up her hands in front of her face.

  Baba Yaga laughed, filling the small house with her shrieks. Her voice rattled the window glass. On the hearth the fire died down to a frightened glow. “No one dreams in Baba’s house. Answer me, girl.”

  Baba Yaga appeared right in front of Lily. Lightless eyes stared into Lily’s face. She could smell the old woman’s stale breath, ripe with the scent of mouldering leaves. She trembled, trying to still the racing of her heart.

  “Ready for what?” she whispered.

  “For the riddles,” Baba Yaga said, turning her head to the side and grinning. “Baba asks, and you answer. If you answer correctly, I give you a gift.”

  “What kind of gift?”

  “A birthday gift,” answered the old woman. “It is your birthday, is it not?”

  Lily nodded. “How did you know?”

  Baba Yaga cackled, spinning around in circles until she was twirling so quickly that she became a blur. When she came to a stop, she was near the hearth once more, stirring the cauldron. “Baba knows much,” she said.

  “And if I guess wrong?” Lily asked. Now that Baba Yaga was some distance from her, she felt a little more brave.

  Baba turned and grinned. One long finger r
eached into her maw of a mouth and stroked a jagged tooth. ”Then I eat you,” she said.

  Lily looked at the necklace of bones around Baba Yaga’s neck. Now she understood their meaning. Her heart turned cold, and her breath swept out of her throat in a gasp. Baba saw her fear, and smiled. She laid aside the long spoon she stirred with and came back to where Lily stood, frozen in terror.

  “A fair game, I think,” she said as she waited for Lily to speak. “Now, are you ready, girl?” She reached out one bony hand and took Lily’s fingers in it. As her claws curled around Lily’s soft hand, the girl gasped.

  “Are you death or life?” she asked.

  Baba Yaga frowned. Her eyes hardened, but she said nothing.

  “I see nothing,” Lily said. She looked at Baba Yaga’s hand in her own. “I see no ending for you. Why is that so?”

  Baba Yaga dropped Lily’s hand and backed away. “It is Baba who asks the questions,” she said, her voice like grinding millstones.

  “Tell me,” Lily pleaded. “Why is it that I see no death for you?”

  “Silence!” Baba roared. She grew larger, filling the house until her head was crooked beneath the rafters. Her black eyes blazed with cold starfire, and Lily trembled.

  “You are not ready for Baba’s game,” the old woman snarled through teeth the size of axes. “Now leave this house before I decide to eat you anyway.”

  “Please,” said Lily. “I need to know what I am. I know you can tell me.”

  “I will tell you nothing. Go before I lose my temper.”

  Her hand swept through the air, the force of it blowing Lily toward the door, which opened by itself. Lily shielded her eyes from the wind, and felt herself being pushed through the doorway and into the night. She tumbled into the snow and lay there, the cold soaking into her skin.

  When she looked up, she saw that the clearing had changed. Now it was surrounded by a fence of pointed sticks. Atop each stick sat an empty skull with pale light shining from its eyes. Lily gazed at them in horror, then looked into the gaping door of Baba Yaga’s cottage, which now stood on two huge chicken feet. Through the blackness she saw one of Baba’s gigantic unblinking eyes watching her.

  “Go,” said Baba, her voice pouring from the windows and the chimney. “And do not come back until you are ready. The next time I will not be so kind.”

  Lily staggered to her feet and ran. She pushed open the gate in the fence of skulls and fled into the forest. Her hands pushed at the branches, and her feet slipped on the frozen ground. The snow fell fast, grew thick, and the wind whipped it about her in gusts that stung her eyes with cold. There was no path for her to follow back to where she had come from, and she groped wildly in the blizzard for something that would lead her to safety.

  She looked up at the moon, and saw to her horror that it was the dark, cold eye of Baba Yaga looking down at her. The winter night broke open in a terrible smile, and the stars sank into the hungry mouth of teeth.

  “Are you ready?” came the haunting cry. “Are you ready, girl?”

  Lily collapsed into the snow and cried. As the blizzard swept over her shaking body, she wept, and the tears froze on her cheeks.

  She awoke with a start, looking up into the white expanse of her bedroom ceiling. The quilt was pulled up around her neck, and the room was filled with an oppressive heat. There was a sharp crack of light, and then came the sound of thunder rolling across the sea. Lily looked to the window and saw that outside the sky had turned the ugly yellow color of fear.

  She glanced at the clock and saw that its hands held the time at late afternoon. She had slept all day. She remembered little of her dream, but she recalled clearly her vision from the morning. Her father would be out at sea in his boat. As she realized this, the rain swept in from the swells and began to pound on the roof.

  The sound drove her out of bed and sent her stumbling for the door. As the terror of the morning rushed back and filled her mind once more, she was overcome by the need to find her father, to hold him in her arms and feel the life flowing in him again. She fumbled with the latch on her door, struggling to remember what his face looked like. When she couldn’t, her heart jumped crazily.

  Her nightgown grabbed at her feet, tripping her up as she raced down the set of twisting stairs to the kitchen. The storm outside rocked the world as she reached the bottom and ran into the kitchen calling out, “Father? Where is father?” Her voice was unfamiliar to her, as though she were calling into the wind and was hearing her words echoed back in tatters.

  Once in the kitchen, she stopped. Her mother stood near the stove, her arms wrapped protectively about her chest as she rocked silently against the wall. “Where is he?”

  “He’s dead,” her mother said into the silence, the words slipping out cold as well water. She looked up at Lily, and Lily saw that her eyes were empty. Lily didn’t know why, but she understood that anger had settled into her mother’s heart.

  “He’s dead,” she said again. “Drowned.”

  “Where is he?” Lily demanded, and when no one answered her, she screamed the question again, her voice shredding the quiet. “Where is he?”

  “The body is on the beach,” her mother said.

  Lily ran to the door. Her mother made no move to stop her, turning her face away. Outside, the wind and rain swarmed about Lily like bees, stinging her skin and blinding her eyes as she made her way through the clouds of sea lavender and down the path to the beach. From the crest of the hill she could see the small crowd gathered at the water’s edge, and she made her way toward it, the sand rough against her bare feet.

  Reaching the beach, she pushed through the crowd of onlookers, the women, men, and children of the village who had come as soon as they’d heard that the sea had taken one of their own back into her arms. Lily knew them all, but at that moment she recognized no one as she looked past them to the body lying on the sand. Her father lay there, still, as if for some unexplained reason he had fallen asleep in his clothes, while around him three men stood helplessly.

  Seeing Lily, the crowd stepped back as Lily fell to her knees beside her father. They watched as she reached out and ran her hands over his face, the skin mottled in bursts of plum and rose where the sea had kissed the life from his lungs. Lily brushed the seaweed from his dark hair, and her fingers danced over his closed eyes. Her long black hair fell in curls over his chest as she bent her head and wept into her hands.

  “It’s time to take him back now, child,” said a kind voice close to her ear. She looked up into the face of Alex Henry. The closest thing the village had to a doctor, Alex Henry knew the ways of life and death not because he’d studied them, but because he’d lived them many times over. He had delivered Lily, and her father before her, and his father before him. There were some who believed he was as old as the land itself, and even the oldest among them could not recall a time when he had not inhabited the small cottage at the very end of the point that stretched furthest into the sea of any piece of land along the coast.

  Of all the village, only Lily’s mother had not entered the world cradled in Alex Henry’s hands. She had not been born into their midst, but brought to it by Lily’s father, who fell in love with her during his one venture outside the familiar walls of his life and returned with a thin gold ring around his finger and a woman who feared the sound of waves against the rocks.

  Slowly, Lily rose to her feet. Although she hated to leave her father, she knew that Alex Henry and the others would do what was needed. She left her father there with them and returned to the house. Her mother said nothing when she entered the kitchen, and Lily did not speak to her.

  She went upstairs and into the small bath. Its windows opened out over the rolling seas, and because the house was built on a cliff, she could see no land below her. She often shut the door and stood looking out at the endless plain of water. Caught up there between sky and water, she sometimes played that she was a maiden who peered through castle windows day and night, watching for her
lover to return from a voyage across the seas, his arms laden with strangely-scented flowers.

  But now things had changed. She was no longer a maiden. She was just a girl, a girl imprisoned in a single thin tower that rose up from the sea like a great needle piercing the world, and from which there was neither entrance nor escape. She was a girl who held death in her hands, gazing out her window onto the lifeless bodies of those who, driven mad with desire, had tried to reach her by throwing themselves into the sea. She saw love bruised on the faces that looked up to her window, and she cried.

  She cried for a long time, thinking of her father and how she had killed him. She looked at her hands, twisted into balls in her lap, and she felt evil in them. She felt it running through her veins, and she hated it. She wanted nothing more than to reach inside her chest and pull out her heart, beating wildly, and throw it into the sea as an offering in exchange for her father’s life.

  She stepped out of her nightgown, moving to stand in front of the long mirror her father had hung on the wall nearest the sink. Her body was thin, the skin slipping lightly over bones. Her dark hair fell loosely about her shoulders, and she saw for the first time that her breasts were becoming those of a woman, that the small patch of hair between her legs had thickened. She saw reflected in the clear face of the glass the shade of a beautiful girl who was not her.

  It was this girl, she told herself, who had killed her father. In crossing over the line of her thirteenth year, which brought with it the swelling of her breasts and the unfolding of her body, she had unknowingly awakened some deep magic that needed for its working the sacrifice of love. It had reached out and taken greedily the thing she loved best, feeding itself on his soul.

  Lily hated this girl, and as she looked at her image in the mirror, she determined to stop her entrance into the world. She turned to the bath and drew the water. It tumbled hotly into her hands, and she welcomed the heat as it drew itself into her skin and banished the chill that had invaded her bones. She lowered herself into the comforting curve of the tub and let herself sink into the water as it rose to surround her. She closed her eyes, imagining herself floating in the sea. The water rose over her hips, then surged around her breasts, and still she kept her eyes shut. It licked at her throat, and then she felt it close over her mouth and nose.