But it looked less so after she saw what she did, in the distance. A rope of deep blue gauze, it looked like, flickering in and out. But as she got closer, she realized what it really was, with a sharp intake of breath. It was abeing. It was something that lived here. Fen possibly, if the soft loveliness of that shape and color was anything to go by.
But it could have been something else.
A shrey, a wilderun.Like violent dogs they are, Hornbeck had said of the latter. But what did he know? He wasdead. And he’d never understood anyway, if this was anything to go by. It seemed to approach, then darted away again. Seemed to become more solid, then not once more. Sometimes she thought she could see its face and sometimes not. In fact, it was only when she stood completely still and calm that she saw it had anything like a face at all.
It looked formed out of water and moonlight.
Mostly eyes, of some description, all a deep blue, with no center to them. But full of recognizable feelings. They confirmedwhat she had first thought, when she had seen its hesitation in coming to her.
It wastimid.
Almost afraid of her.
And it only stopped when she smiled in welcome.
Then suddenly she could see something resembling a body, some sort of clothes. Like the long coat Harker had worn, only not quite.We don’t have words for what they do and wear and how they present themselves, she thought and ached to write that down. To scribble over everything she had read in a million silly books with just how marvelous that idea was.
And that wasbeforeit spoke.
“Lilibet, it is you. Have you come to dance with us once more?” it said, so clearly and with such obvious joy in its voice that she couldn’t deny the words or what it meant. Despite the fact that this joy and this voice didn’t sound like anything she could ever have imagined. It was one long hum, that resonated at a frequency she could just somehow understand. Impossibly pleasant and completely magical, even with the mildly terrifying implications.
And it was the terrified part it seemed to sense.
It drew back. That strange face creased down the middle.
“Ah, no, no,” it said. “You are not her. I have mistaken your inside face.”
Then it retreated even farther. It shrank down, seemed to flicker in and out again. Ashamed of the assumption and disappointed that it wasn’t the case, she realized, and wanted to reach out a hand immediately, to reassure. But somehow, she knew just feeling the emotion would be heard.
And sure enough, the being seemed to brighten.
“You are kind, like she was. Perhaps this is what I touched? Sofew of the large ones of your sect are, only the small sort. I cannot find their word for it to you. Might you tell me of it? Lilibet does not come, and I forget,” it said, and now the meaning behind everything came thick and fast.
She thought of what it searched for immediately.
“The small ones are called children.”
“Yes, yes. There, children. That is so. The ones who come to us only when lost. The ones she gave thanks to us for, for our kindnesses to them. She thought it very well, indeed, very well, even as we tried to do the explaining. It is only as things must be, we showed her. Yet we could not have shown her rightly, for it only made the sadness from her eyes greater. There is a river that came of it, not far from here. I could take you, if you will it,” the being said. Then it waited patiently for her answer.
She didn’t know how to say that she couldn’t. That he had almost made her sad from her eyes, too. That his words made her think of Lilibet, breaking into pieces over all the ideas of what this place was. And to what extent it was the opposite. “I should probably stay here,” she tried. “But thank you.”
Then watched the being bow. “It is not so strange that you do not wish to. She did not do a visiting to its banks often. And when her Bram came alone, he did not seem to like it so well.”
Hers, she thought.Bram, she thought.
And automatically after it:
The boy in the long grass. The boy on the edge of the building. The boy in the deck chair, with the nervous hands. “So she had someone, then. Someone who would come here with her. Someone good and loving.”
“He was her one above others. As gentle as she.”
“Do you know what happened to him? Did he die, too?” sheasked, too desperate to actually uncover something about that ghostly girl, to even think about her tone or what her question meant.
Though she regretted it immediately.
The being recoiled.
“Oh, she has done the terrible ending.”
