Chapter 01
On the morning of her thirteenth birthday, Lily kissed her father and knew that he would be dead by nightfall. The image of his death dropped into her mind suddenly and 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 surrounded by caressing fingers of sea grass, and she screamed.
Her mother started, and the pitcher of cold milk she held in her hands crashed to the kitchen floor, where it exploded in a fury of glass and spread over the wood. Her father grabbed her 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,” he said. “What on earth happened?”
She 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 not coax any sound from her empty throat.
"What’s the matter, honey?” 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 vomiting, putting her arms around her father’s neck, relieved to find that his shirt was crisp and dry under her fingers.
"Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down,” he said, stroking her hair softly. “Then this afternoon we can open your presents.”
Lily nodded and turned away quickly before his skin could 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 covered in the coldest frost. As she made her way through the trees, her fingers touched them lightly, sending showers of ice tumbling silently down through the blue of the moonlight like fine nets cast out over the sea. Her bare feet left small hollows in the snow as she walked, 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 licked at her bare flesh. She moved across the snowy ground as if it were summer grass, pushing her way through the empty arms of the trees until suddenly 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 to keep safe whatever awaited her inside. 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 that shone blackly 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.
Suddenly, 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 quickly 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.
Looking up, she saw that there was indeed someone else in the cottage. Standing near the hearth was an old woman, stirring a cauldron that hung over the fire. Her long hair fell about her face in wild 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 night, 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 just found myself here.”
"No one finds herself at Baba’s house,” said the old woman, laughing. “The path is too well hidden. You come here only when you are ready. Are you ready, child?”
Baba stopped stirring the pot and came toward Lily. Lily backed away, looking fearfully at the old woman’s gnarled hands, the fingers ending in broken nails.
“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 said, holding up her hands in front of her face.
Baba Yaga laughed again, filling the small house with her shrieks. Her voice rattled the windows, and on the hearth the fire died down to a frightened glow.
"No one dreams in Baba’s house,” the old woman cried. “Now answer me, girl. Are you ready?”
Baba Yaga was standing right in front of Lily, her dead black eyes looking into Lily’s face. Lily could smell her stale breath ripe with the scent of rotting leaves. She stood there, trying to stop the racing of her heart.
"Ready for what?” she whispered.
"For the riddles,” Baba Yaga replied, turning her head to the side and smiling. “Baba asks, and you answer. If you answer correctly, I give you a gift.”
"What kind of gift?” Lily asked.
"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 spinning so quickly she was a blur. When she came to a stop, she was near the hearth once more, stirring the cauldron.
"Baba knows much,” she said simply.
"And if I guess incorrectly?” Lily asked. Now that Baba Yaga was some distance from her, she felt a little more brave.
Baba turned and grinned. “Then I eat you,” she said.
Lily looked at the necklace of bones, which Baba Yaga was fingering slowly as she spoke. 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?”
Baba Yaga reached out one bony hand and took Lily’s fingers in it. As her claws curled around Lily’s soft hand, Lily started.
"Are you death or life?” she said suddenly.
Baba Yaga frowned. Her eyes hardened, but she said nothing.
Lily looked startled. “I see nothing,” she said, looking 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 angrily.
"Tell me,” Lily pleaded. “Why is it that I see no death for you?”
"Silence!” Baba roared. Suddenly she seemed to grow larger, filling the house until her head was bent beneath the rafters. Her black eyes blazed with cold fire, and Lily trembled.
"You are not ready for Baba’s game,” the old woman hissed through teeth the size of platters. “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,” Baba Yaga said. “Now go. 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. 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 was falling thickly now, and the wind whipped it about her in gusts that filled her eyes with stinging 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 sank 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 sun. 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 how his face looked. 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 finally 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. Sitting at the table was the village’s lone policeman. His hat rested on the tabletop, and in his hands was an untouched cup of coffee, the steam rising up and trailing away somewhere just below his face. When he saw Lily, he paused, his mouth open as though he’d bitten in two the word waiting unspoken on his tongue.
"Where’s father?” Lily demanded of her mother, who stood near the stove, her arms wrapped protectively about her chest as she rocked silently against the wall. “Where is he?”
"Lily,” the policeman began, then stopped. She looked into his eyes and saw nothing in them. She turned to her mother, who was looking at the floor.
"Lily,” the policeman said again. “Your father… The storm...” He stopped, staring down into the hot pool of his coffee as though searching for an answer.
"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, too, were empty. Lily didn’t know why, but she understood that the 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 still on the beach,” the policeman said. “We found him a short time ago.”
"I want to see him,” Lily said quietly. She moved toward the door.
"That’s not a good idea,” the policeman said, reaching out to grab her arm.
Lily twisted away, looking up into his face. “It’s not a good idea,” he said again. “He drowned.”
"I know,” Lily answered. “It was because of me.”
The policeman looked at her, puzzled.
"Don’t you understand?” she said. “I did it. I have to see him. I have to know.”
While the policeman stared, she slid from his grasp and out the door. Her mother made no move to stop her, watching her with an empty face. Outside, the wind and rain swarmed about her 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 still 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, forming a wall 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.
After some time, she felt a hand on her back. “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.
Lily surrendered herself to Alex Henry’s touch, thankful that he could take from her for a moment the searing pain that crackled throughout her body and replace it with a cool shade that surrounded her heart and settled it. She felt herself lifted in his arms and led through the crowd. The storm still rattled overhead, but she heard nothing as Alex Henry walked with her back up the path to her house.
When Alex Henry entered the kitchen with Lily, her mother ceased speaking. The policeman jumped to his feet and put his hands nervously behind his back.
"Alex,” he said. “I was just...”
"The girl needs rest,” the old man interrupted. “I will see her upstairs.”
He helped Lily up to her room, where she sat on her bed and looked into Alex Henry’s face. “I killed him, you know,” she said.
Alex Henry laughed. “You did no such thing, child,” he said. “Your father was simply given back to the sea. She chose him long ago, before you were born. Before he was born.”
"But I saw him,” Lily whispered, fearful even of speaking such words. “I touched him and saw him dead.” She held up her hands for Alex Henry, as though he might be able to see through the flesh and bone to the darkness she felt coursing in her veins.
He took her hands in his and held them tightly for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “You have some of the magic in you.”
"What is it?” she asked, pleading.
Alex Henry looked into her eyes. “It is that which runs beneath the surface of the sea,” he said. “It is what calls the rose to bloom and the stars to dance in formation season after season. It is wild with danger and mad with delight. It is what our hearts beat for.”
"Why has it come to me?” Lily asked.
"It has not come to you,” Alex Henry said quietly. “It is you who have gone to it. It’s breath beats in everything, waiting only for those brave enough or foolish enough to reach out and take hold of it.”
"But I didn’t reach out,” Lily said. “I did nothing.”
"Sometimes we call out without knowing,” said Alex Henry, “and it answers.”
Lily thought of her dream of the night before. Pieces of it were coming back to her now, and she was afraid. She thought about telling Alex Henry, but she didn’t. “Will it happen again?” she asked.
"I don’t know that answer,” he said. “It will stay as long as it is needed. For some the moment is so brief that it’s presence is never even felt. For others it remains for a lifetime.”
"How is it with you?” Lily asked, looking into his face.
Alex Henry smiled. “It is time to dress now,” he said. “There is much to do in the next hours.” He turned and left the room.
Lily sat on her bed, listening to the rain outside calling sweetly and singing of death. Slowly, she rose and went 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 sometimes shut the door and stood looking out at the endless plain of water, on the surface of which she saw reflected the changing colors of the year. 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, for even though she had heard Alex Henry’s words, she had not believed them. She looked at her hands, twisted into balls in her lap, and she felt evil in them. Call it magic, she thought. Call it truth. It was pure pain she felt running through her heart, and she hated it. She wanted nothing more than to reach inside her chest and pull it out, 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 woman.
It was this woman, 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 and taken greedily the thing she loved best, feeding itself on his soul.
Lily hated this woman, and as she looked at her image in the mirror, she determined to stop her entrance into the world. She had been made stronger by the death of Lily’s father, but she had not fully crossed over. Lily knew she could be pushed back, hidden so deeply that she could not take away anything else.
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.
Only then did she open her eyes, gazing up through the thin skin of water that covered her body. She could see the familiar shapes of the bathroom around her, thrown out of focus by the distortion of the water’s motion. She wondered if this was what it was like to drown, if just before death the drowning person looked up and saw through the waves the shapes of a familiar world stretched into fantastical lines. She wondered what her father saw just before the water filled his lungs and his heart had stopped beating.
The water became deeper, filling up the big tub until she was lying at the bottom with a foot of ever-shifting golden light between her and life. There, caught between the worlds of water and air, she floated, listening. Her ears were filled with the sounds of the storm coming from far away, as though somewhere far above her a giant blacksmith was beating his hammer against a forge and the echo was rolling down and around her head, becoming less powerful as it pushed its way through the water until, reaching her, it had become a soothing pulse.
Without wanting to, she found herself thinking about the ability of water to shut out the harshness of the upper world. She recalled once when she was very small being on the deck of a boat during a sudden and furious storm, and looking down into the black waves. The shrieking of the wind and the startled cries of the other passengers had upset her. Then the boat had shifted violently as a wave lifted it up, and she had been dumped into the ocean. The blackness closed over her head, and as she sank into it, in the moments before someone dove in to bring her back, her one thought had been not how frightened she was, but how quiet and calm it had been under the water.
It was like that now. Outside the storm raged, while in the tiny bathroom at the top of the house on the cliff, a girl who was not yet a woman was rocked in a warm cocoon. The shifting light threw patterns against the porcelain so delicate that the slightest movement of a finger or toe caused them to fall apart like breaking glass, only to reform moments later in entirely new ways as they played across her skin. She felt as though she was a creature waiting for its time to be born, knowing that while it remained in its shell of light it would be forever protected.
After a minute had passed, her chest began to ache, as the oxygen she had drawn into her lungs at the last moment before she submerged ran out. Her body cried out for her to leave the water and return to the realm of air. At the same time, she felt a peculiar desire to stay where she was, to let the water drag her even further down into itself, where she would not have to hear the sounds of storms. She wondered how many people, when they drowned, faced an instant when they had to choose to keep reaching for air and life or to simply sink. How many of them, thinking they wanted nothing more than to draw breath once more, stopped only inches away from the surface and, bewitched by the quiet, turned back. She imagined her father trying to push his way up through the blue as the remaining oxygen within him evaporated into his blood. She pictured him frozen, knowing that another pull of his arms would bring him through the barrier between life and death. She wondered if he’d had to choose.
Then came the moment when she herself had to make that decision. She could lift her head and rise up, or she could remain still. Despite the burning of her lungs as they called to her for air, she felt something comforting about the idea of taking the water into herself, of filling up every empty space inside with warmth. She closed her eyes, surrounding herself with the feeling of it. And as she did, she saw again her father’s face, the dead eyes staring into her own, and she chose.
She screamed, the sound emerging as bubbles that rolled out of her mouth and went speeding up to the light. Her body followed, her head rushing up behind the scream until suddenly she was through and air was filling her lungs in great gasping sobs.
Go to Chapter 02
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