Page 21

Lily Baker and the Present Days that Followed

The soft smell of sweet metal filled Lily’s nose as she was gently shaken awake. Her mouth was dry, her ears rang, and her head throbbed in pulses. She moaned as she opened her eyes, but the sound drifted away when she fixed her gaze on a set of blue eyes and a shock of white hair.

She thought it was Shayne. She almost said his name.

But her vision sharpened as the being’s face spread into a twisted smile. And she realized this person leaning over her was the furthest thing from Shayne that existed.

“Hello, Human.” The greeting had a musical pitch.

Lily inhaled shallow breaths as she looked around, finding herself in a room with dragons carved out of dark wood in the bedposts and dressers, and rich crimson curtains at the window. She couldn’t remember how she got here.

Where were the baristas? Why wasn’t she home with Kate?

A fuzzy memory flooded in of looking for her sweater in the forest. Of coming face-to-face with…

This fairy who sat at the foot of the bed.

“Where am I?” she demanded. Her voice cracked.

“Get up, Human, and I’ll show you.” The fairy’s cold gaze narrowed. Then, when Lily didn’t rise, he said, “Lily Baker, I said get up .”

A gasp slipped out as Lily found herself sitting, tossing the covers off, and jumping out of the bed. She looked down at herself in horror, not sure how she even did it. It was like someone had tied puppet strings to her limbs and was jerking her around.

The fairy reached for the pillow she’d been lying on and carefully lifted a pinecone. He turned it over in his fingers. “You’re quite a mess, Human. You brought half the forest in with you. We’ll have to get you cleaned up.” He tossed the pinecone back to the comforter. “I hope you enjoyed your beauty sleep in my brother’s bed.”

Brother.

Lily glanced back at the pillow. Was this Shayne’s bed?

“There are just my brothers waiting for you at the other end of that song,” Shayne had said.

The white hair, wide smiles, and deep blue eyes made it clear where she was.

“If you ever go see my brothers by choice, I won’t go after you. I won’t help you. I’ll leave, and you’ll never see me again.” Shayne had also said that; like his brothers were so awful, he couldn’t imagine facing them. Like he’d decided once and for all he would stay far away from them, regardless of what happened.

Lily’s neck grew hot, her nerves standing on end. She hadn’t come to see his brothers by choice—had she? She hadn’t actually followed the music through the woods to them.

She studied the room, eyeing the window spoked with iron bars in particular. There wasn’t much in the space, just a few books in a corner, an empty mannequin meant to hold a robe or coat, and…

A gilded crossbow hanging on the wall.

“Follow me,” the fairy said as he headed for the door, and Lily’s feet jolted after him. She tried to stop walking—she slapped her hands over her knees, but her legs kept moving forward. She tailed the fairy through a series of halls that all looked the same. She examined the walls, the floors, the mirrors, trying to mark her path so she could find her way back to escape, but after seven turns, she realized there was no way out of this labyrinth without a map.

Before she knew it, Lily stood in a wide room with bamboo-framed windows and a hot, steaming bath in the middle. Opposite the bath, a long red dress was fitted to a mannequin. Lily stared at the bath. The dress. Then she shook her head. “I’m not getting into that glorified water trough, and I’m definitely not wearing that ,” she stated, nodding to the dress.

“You’ll do what I tell you,” the fairy assured. “Now get clean and get dressed. And don’t try to run. You have exactly ten minutes.” He winked .

“Seriously?” Lily objected as she grabbed her own shirt. She whirled around to hide herself as she pulled it off, but when she glanced back at the door, she realized the fairy was already gone. She lifted her hands in front of her, cursing them for moving against her will. Then she proceeded to undress and sink into the bath. It was warm, and she should have been relieved after not being able to shower for days on end. But there was nothing natural about how she scrubbed herself clean and used the nearby soap on her hair, then dried with a towel and put on the dress.

What must have been exactly ten minutes later, the fairy returned. He found his twisted smile as he looked her over. Then he said, “Time for your commencement. Come, Human.”

Commencement .

Lily hopped after him in bare feet since he hadn’t provided shoes, and she followed him back through the network of halls to a great, wide room sprawling with crystal windows, enormous statues, and stunning murals across the walls. The carpet below her feet was rimmed with gold, and she stared at it all in amazement as she was led toward a platform where several throne-like chairs rested in a half circle. The one in the middle was the biggest.

A handsome, middle-aged fairy sat in it.

The man was the spitting image of Shayne, only older. He wore a wreath of twisted silver twigs with lively emerald leaves around his white-haired head.

All the fairies were here—the ones Lily had wanted to look in the eyes. Shayne’s brothers, his childhood friends, his father. The despicable people who’d disowned him, then forced him back and tormented him. She found herself locking gazes with the man on the chair who had to be Shayne’s father. Then she took in a younger white-haired fairy in another seat, and last, she eyed the fairy standing beside her. He held a flute in his left hand that Lily hadn’t noticed until now.

“Shayne, what did these people do to you?” she wanted to ask. “How can I make them pay for their crimes?” She felt naked without her gun.

“She’s perfect,” the middle-aged fairy said from his seat. “I can almost taste her defiance. What an interesting flavour! The stubborn ones are the most fun to break, aren’t they?” he asked the other fairies in the room. “She’ll make a perfect peace offering once we’re done with her.”

Lily’s arms went slack at her sides. She tried to gather information: a fruit bowl rested on an end table nearby, several fairies in rough-looking brown gowns were on a knee below the platform as if waiting for orders, and there was a leer on the face of the fairy with the flute at her side.

Still, Lily couldn’t deduce what “once we’re done with her” meant. There weren’t enough clues.

The fairies in brown began moving. One brought the bowl of fruit and held it before Shayne’s brother with the flute. The brother reached in and lifted a plump purple fruitlet. He turned toward Lily, but her hand flew up and she grasped his wrist before he could place it against her lips.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You think I can eat right now?”

The fairy laughed, and it started a chain reaction that sent all the other fairies laughing through the room until the sound of it was deafening.

“We’re all a little crazy here,” he admitted. “And yes, I think you’ll eat every one of these right now.” His eyes glittered as he took the whole bowl into his hands instead and extended it to her. “Eat up, Human,” he said, passing it over. He pressed the flute beneath her chin and tilted her face upward. Then he gazed into her eyes and said, “I want to see you dance.”

Lily found her hand clasping around a fruit. She brought it to her lips while the fairy held eye contact, and she took a large bite, sweet and sour juices spearing into her mouth. She couldn’t look away from his gaze, like a tether was holding her to him and her eyelids were stuck open.

“Didn’t my brother ever teach you not to look a fairy in the eyes?” he asked with a chuckle.

Lily couldn’t respond as she ate. As she ate and ate and continued to take new fruits from the bowl the moment she finished the one before. Warmth burned behind her eyes as they went dry from staring for so long. And then the threat of tears arose, but she swallowed her croak harder than she swallowed her food. She would not cry in front of these devils for anything.

However, she did beg. Not at first, but ten fruits in.

“Make it stop,” she breathed. “Make me stop doing this, you psycho! … Please .”

The fairies laughed again in a chorus. And then, when the bowl was finally empty and Lily collapsed, holding tight to her stomach and fighting a rush of nausea, her toes began to curl and flex as she got the sudden urge to dance. It was the last clear thought that was still her own.

It went on for hours.

Then it went on for days.

She lost track of how long it all went on for; the eating, the dancing, the wavering songs, the teetering room, the voices, the laughs. But at some point amidst the blurs of music and feasting and twirling, she noticed the daily pattern of a golden sun rising, followed by a burning sunset casting light across the floor—her only indication of passing time.

But eventually, Lily was hardly able to see anything. The room spun even when she stood still. She teetered when she tried to stand straight and could never find her footing. She wanted to sleep more than anything. There were points where she was sure she was in and out of dreams, not fully awake but not actually sleeping either.

“Tie her with ribbons, put a wreath on her head, and sprinkle her with glitter!” The voice slipped through the haze and planted itself upon Lily’s consciousness. “Let’s prepare our peace offering.”

Cold hands took Lily’s arms and legs. There was a time when she might have kicked or screamed in a situation like this. But she hardly recalled her own name anymore, let alone how to fight. The only things that reminded her of who she was were the pictures depicted on her arms in ink. Sometimes she would look at those tattoos or read the names hidden within them, and she would manage to catch a thought through the haze, recalling a part of a story she was pretty sure was hers. But most days, she only knew food and dancing.

There was one exception. Somehow, she remembered Shayne’s name. Every time she saw white hair and blue eyes in her blurry vision, she hoped it was him.

It was never him.