Chapter 22

I arrive in the grand hall, my red shoes panting on my feet. "Right on time," the woman in silver says when she opens the door. When I'm announced, the applause is deafening. A full-on roar. For me? But this is so unexpected. Thanks so much, merci.

"I'm actually just here because I'm looking for someone. Have you seen—?" But my voice is drowned out in the roar. A raising of red fizzing flutes in their opera-gloved fists. The grand hall is all lit up tonight. The red curtain is drawn and the Depths are exposed. The blue-green water glows gloriously as if lit from beneath. Even the red jellyfish seem to be clapping for me. Their bells pulsate in time to the human applause, tentacles undulating wildly. Except one. A large one, very red. Its strange jelly eyes are fixed on me. Sadly? Can't be. Oh well, never mind. I'm looking for someone, aren't I? Mother, that's right. Is she here? Don't see her. The hall is crowded like never before with shimmering people trailing silks of red and black and white. Their sin looks made of actual diamonds. Skin. Not sin, why sin? All of them are smiling at me. Never too widely, of course. They have their own sins to think of. Skins. They congratulate me as I pass. They've mastered the art of speaking without moving their lips, quite like my sisters.

"Many félicitations on reaching the Precipice," they say through their teeth.

"Thank you," I say. And I think, Precipice? I've reached a Precipice? "I'm actually here because I'm looking for my—"

"What a big fucking night this must be for you," a woman says as I pass. "Reaching the Precipice so quickly." Gripping my shoulder so hard, her red nails nearly sink into my shoulder flesh. "Who did you have to fuck?"

"Excuse me?"

"That's right, they don't fuck. Was it extra money, then? What did you do to move through the treatments so fast? Tell me!"

Another woman won't stop stroking my neck. "Incroyable, astounding really," she whispers, nearly throttling me. "I envy."

But I'm saved at last by the woman in red, who pulls me away.

"Now, friends! Mes amis! Let's not congratulate Daughter of Noelle too much, all right? There'll be plenty of time for more félicitations later. We don't want to exhaust our dear Daughter. Let's just have some bubbly for now, yes?"

I see the twins on the stair, the Lord and Lady, staring at me from behind their black veils. Raising their red fizzing flutes as if to toast me.

"Yes," I say, and feel them smile through their veils. Can nearly feel the cold silk of their hands grazing my skin from here. So happy they are to see me. Music plays, a harpsichord-heavy opera, and a powdered man in a red ruff sings soprano on the stair. I dance with many partners, and my partner keeps changing. My shoes seem to want to dance me very close to the Depths, very close to the glass behind which the medusae drift and pulse.

"I hope you don't mind," I tell my partner, who stares at me, trembling. "I'm actually looking for someone." She's an extremely pale woman with very blond hair. Her features suggest she wasn't always so pale, she was something else once, hard to say what or from where, but don't I always hate when people try to guess a place from my face? Anyway, she's Brightened. Washed away like how at night we wash off the day. She wears a long white dress, spilling diamonds from her throat. She's looking at me with a pained expression. "My plight—pleasure to dance with Daughter on the eve of her third treatment," she says.

"Third treatment? It's tonight?"

"Of course it's tonight," she says, like it's obvious.

"What a happy surmise that I'm here, then."

"Such a happy surmise," she hisses. "Very woeful. Wonderful."

"I actually came here because I'm looking for someone. Funny, I can't remember who just now. Drawing a bit of a blank."

"That is funny," she says, not smiling. "Daughter is very amusing and delightful. And why shouldn't she be when she is on the Cusp of achieving her Most Magnificent Self," she says through gritted teeth. Obviously lying. And yet I'm charmed by her troubled energy, the way she's looking at me like I physically hurt her to look at, but she can't look away. She looks so lonely. Lovely.

"You have so much Glow," I tell her.

I think this compliment will soften her, but it makes her smile sharp. "My Glow is Shadows," she says, "compared with yours, Daughter. A cold rock in the outer orbit of your Impossible Brightness. The literal embodiment of Dull." She's spoken the truth, she knows it. Tears fill her eyes because it stings. "I envy," she whispers. "So much." She looks at me through stinging tears. And I see the dark love there in her eyes. Veritable soul poison. How it loves and looks in spite of itself.

"Thank you," I hear myself say. "I envy too." But mine's a lie. I don't envy. I know I'm the Impossible Brightness. I know she is the cold rock. She sees the lie in my eyes and she runs away, crying. Everyone around us keeps dancing like nothing. Envy, it happens all the time. The harpsichord music keeps playing and the white man in the red ruff keeps singing operatically. I should follow after her. Tell her, I'm very sorry my Glow hurts your eyes. I wish we could all Glow like I do. These would be more lies, of course. I'm not sorry. I don't wish that. But I would be very happy to tell them if only to dance with her again. I enjoyed her wanting eyes on me so much. But wait, wasn't I looking for someone? Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice something funny. One of the jellyfish has moved very close to the glass, right beside me. The large red one that didn't applaud when I entered the hall. I see it has a pattern like petals on its bell, how pretty. Its eyes, slanted and strange and translucent, are fixed on me. It wants to say something.

"What is it?" I hear myself ask.

"Talking to the fish, Daughter?" says an amused voice. I turn away from the tank to see the woman in red beside me now. We seem to be dancing—when did we start dancing?—and she's smiling at me with her sharp white teeth. I look into her very blue eyes, flecked with gold like bits of sun, and I think lie.

"Not talking. Just one of them seemed to be staring at me for a while."

I'm about to point to the jellyfish, but it's drifted away to the opposite side of the tank now.

"Ah, the anthropomorphizing impulse," she sighs. "We are all guilty of such projections. We impose our humanity on creatures of the Deep. Understandable, but rather… childish. Like believing in fairy tales!" She laughs. "Have another drink," she says, taking one from a servant bearing a silver tray full of flutes. "Now tell me, Daughter, did you have any trouble getting here this evening?"

"Trouble?" I say. "No trouble."

But I recall that there was trouble, wasn't there? A dark, handsome face floating over mine, transfixed. The hunger of strong hands all over my body, of lips that tasted of roses. Brushing against my sin like they could never get enough. A breath hot in my ear, whispering god, god, god as my fingers gripped his dark waving hair. But I can't tell the woman in red how I seduced the beautiful detective. So much so that afterward he fell right into sleep like my sister dreams of falling right into the sea. I watched him lie beside me, drifting against his will. You know I understand it, he murmured as he drifted.

What?I said.

You. Rouge. Why you keep going back. We all have our demons, don't we?

I looked at his scar catching the fiery light from the window. Sunset, it must have been then. And what are your demons, Detective?

He smiled. Let's just say I'm not invulnerable to our friends. Tothe Depths. That I've had my moments of temptation. I still do, he said, stroking my face. And as he looked at me then, I felt a pang. Deep in my chest. Of I know, I know. I, too, have been in those shadow places, those basement places. I watched his eyes close, felt his hand fall from my cheek like a cold, dead thing. And then I left him there in my blood-colored bed, his scar shining red in the darkening light of Vespers. Beautiful it was, that slash of pale, raised sin in the crimson evening shade. I leaned down and killed it. Felt a burning on my lips.

I'm sorry, I whispered to it. I have to go. I know you understand.

The only worry I had was whether he might feel the empty space I left behind. I'll happily fill the space for you, Sister, one of my sisters offered from the living room. The one at the coffee table, deranging the flowers. She always liked him. So I put her in the bed with him and left them together. He wouldn't notice the difference, surely. My sin was as smooth and bright as hers was now.

"No trouble at all," I tell the woman in red now. But then I see I'm no longer dancing with her. I'm dancing with a man. Tall. Blond hair, blond beard, and muttonchops that don't quite match his tawny face. Monocle over one gray eye.

"No trouble?" repeats this man. "Belle, I'm hurt."

"I'm sorry, sir, do we know each other?" I ask Monocle Man. He looks very worried that I asked this question. But over the worry, he smiles.

"Your sister was a poor substitute. She couldn't really compare to you." And then he grips me tight and I see the man I just fucked through his disguise. The roses of his lips I killed. The scar I traced in the red light. "Belle, listen. I'm getting you out of here tonight, okay? Now just dance with me, follow me. Trust me, okay?"

Out of here?Why out of here? Why would I trust anyone who would lead me away from the exact place I need to be just now? When I'm looking for someone? Where I'm on a Precipice, no less? A Cusp?

"Now look," Hud says. "The party goes on forever, see? So we'll just make our way down that dark hall. Dancing like we're doing right now. We've gone down that hall before. Where I didn't kiss you because you weren't following me, remember?"

I stare at the dark hall that gapes like a black hole. So unlike the dazzling party all around. "I don't want to go down the dark hall. I want to be here. I'm on the Precipice, you see."

"You're on a precipice, all right." And he sort of sneers. Envy. There's envy in it, I see, which delights me but it also sobers me. I hold it close like saving knowledge. To hold it, I must stand very still. The dancing people around us are dancing more slowly now. The music around us seems to slow too, to quiet as if it has ears and wants to listen.

"See behind me on the stair?" Hud whispers. And then I notice the ones in black veils on the landing. The twins have been joined by a number of others, it seems, all dressed just like them. A small, murmuring cluster staring down. "Do you realize who those people are, Belle?"

I look up at their luminous faces, shining through their veils. How their silks fall like such dark water. How their pale eyes, cold and smiling, seem to know the name and shape of my every dream.

"Important people," I whisper. "Very important to Mother and me."

"Listen to me," he says. "Please. You can't have that third treatment. If you do, you'll be lost, do you understand? Lost to me, lost to yourself. Completely. I won't be able to save you." He looks at me. Envy's gone. His eyes are full of some other tender feeling. It could melt me away if I let it. If I let it, it could destroy me. The veiled ones are descending the stair. The music has quieted even more, pricked up its ears. Even the medusae in the tank seem to hover and wait. The dancing people are watching openly now.

"Who says I want you to save me, sir?" I whisper. I look right at him when I say it, right into his clear gray eyes, where his soul sits open. I feel something in him break. See it breaking on his beautiful, sadly scarred face.

"Excuse me," says a voice right beside me. A woman all in black. Not a woman, a girl, she's a girl-woman, really. Tall like a grown woman, tall as I am in my heels, but with a girl's face. So beautiful, like a doll's. One I might have clutched and loved, even as I envied and hated. Her blond corkscrew curls erupt from her perfect skull like a golden fountain. Her preternaturally pale eyes are full of smiling. Her alabaster face is the True Brightness. She puts my Glow to great shame. It is a Shadow Glow compared with hers. It takes our breath away, mine and Hud Hudson's, though he's still gripping my arms. She knows of her effects. They please her greatly. Yet she's beaming at us both like the most innocent of innocents. "May I cut in," she asks, and it is not a question. We couldn't possibly say no to an innocent child, could we? say her eyes. We're not monsters, after all.

But Hud Hudson is going to say no. "I'm sorry," he says. "We're still in the middle of—"

And just then, another hand takes mine and pulls me away.

"Belle," says a voice.

And it's funny what happens then. I hear no music anymore. I hear only this voice. I hear it at the very bottom of my brain stem. Like a leash, tugging me. And then I'm in the arms of this voice, saying my name, Belle, Belle, Belle. I can't see his face because he's holding me tight to his black-suited body, so that I'm locked in, stuck looking over his shoulder. We're dancing away. I could say, Do I know you, sir? But I say nothing. It's like his arms are a drug, making jelly of me. So familiar these arms are, like the voice. Taking me to a basement place, a shadow place I know so well. I might have known these arms since I was a child—did they hold me then? I think they did. I know their feel, like being plunged into cold water. I know their ocean scent. Did I long for them to hold me in the dark, though I was afraid? Impossible. This man is a stranger, isn't he? No, says my brain stem. Not a stranger, this one. I let him spin me around and around the floor though it makes me dizzy, the drug of him.

A little farther away, I see the girl-woman in black dancing with Hud Hudson. He's looking wildly around the room for me. Where did I go? He can't lose me. He must still try and save me. But I'm already lost, I'd tell him if I had words, if the spinning weren't making me dizzy. So I just watch him look for me. The girl-woman in black takes his hands and presses them to either side of her small, heart-shaped face. He looks down at her. And then his face suddenly changes. Entranced. So taken he is by her skull shape, its exquisite symmetry of bones. By her Smoothness. By her Glow, most of all. He's shuddering. A hairy moth moving toward her light.

She's whispering something to him now, what is she whispering?

Whatever it is, he's taken with it. A man in a dream. Lost himself.

She reaches out and touches his face too. And that's how they're dancing now. Cupping each other's faces like you might cup a flame to keep it lit. Turning the slowest of circles in the middle of the floor. Until they aren't really dancing at all anymore. They're standing still. And she's removing his disguise. His beard, then those blond muttonchops. First one chop, then the other. Then finally, the monocle. She drops it to the ground and crushes it with her little patent leather heel. He lets her. Doesn't move at all. Lets himself be revealed, this tawny-faced man with glossy black hair, shuddering before her now. I watch her fingers float up to his naked face, tracing the deep scar there. She's whispering something to him again. I watch her red bow of a mouth making words I can't hear. There are tears in his eyes. And now he's allowing himself to be led by the hand like a lost child. Down the very dark hall where only a minute ago he wanted to go with me, to save me.

"Belle," says a voice now in my ear. The drug voice that is like the movies, like music. The only music I hear. And then the man I'm dancing with, the one who's been holding me so that I can't see his face, holding me in a way that brings me right back, like a scent that brings you right back, now holds me apart so that we're facing each other at last. Black suit. Black-horned mask over half his face. Familiar. I know the dark hair like a wave. I know the blue-green eyes shining out of the black mask. I remember the cold ocean of them. I remember drowning.

"You haven't changed a bit, Belle. Except that you've grown. So much." Long white teeth. That smile that used to light me up, like wrong stars in my child's body.

"I know you," I whisper, shivering. Very cold suddenly. But happy. So happy. I know him, though my mind's a blank.

"We know each other well, Belle. Definitely. Allow me to escort you to your final treatment. Seems fitting, don't you think, that I should be the one?"

I nod. Of course he should be. We're dancing so slowly. Like time itself has slowed. There are no bodies in the hall anymore. Just us. No harpsichord or opera singer. This man brings his own music, just like he always did, and I hear it inside and outside of me. A synthy, dreamy pop song. It sounds like bodies in blue silhouette. It sounds like all my dreams. I'm jelly like the fish.

"I always knew," he whispers, swaying me, "that you would take your Beauty back, Belle. I knew you would find me here. A long road. A long, lonely road for you, hasn't it been?"

"Yes," I hear my soul say. It's my soul speaking to him through my mouth now. He has a direct line to it.

"But you've followed the footpath to the castle by the sea. To me."

"To you."

"Didn't I always tell you this place was a magic place?"

I look around the dark, empty hall. The arched ceiling, I can finally see it, like a cage of white bone above us. The tank of red jellies has gone black now. All around me feels like a void. Like nothing at all. "You did."

"Well now you see for yourself, don't you?"

And then we're walking down a winding stair to under the Depths. He holds my hand, his own gloved hand cold and slightly sticking. I remember the cold and the sticking of his touch, but I still can't place him. If he would only take off his mask and I could see his face. But my body remembers. My soul remembers. From where, from where?

We stumble at first down the stair. My red shoes won't walk me down. But he just smiles. Kneels at my feet like a prince. He's going to take them off. "I always hated these fucking things," he says. "I never told you, of course. Because you loved them so much."

"I think I wore them for you," I say. Somehow I know this is true.

But the shoes don't come off, won't come off, they're fused to my feet flesh. I think he's going to flip out about this. Instead he just picks me up like a literal feather. Carries me down. I'm in his arms that are like a drug, and we're going down and down. I'm smiling into his neck though I'm afraid. Shouldn't be. Just my final treatment. This man's accompanying me. Who are you? is still a bubble of a question, iridescent and floating around in the dark of my mind. I know the answer to it somewhere. Somewhere deep under everything—all my words and thoughts.

We pass through the red waiting room of mirrors with the white screaming faces on the wall, empty but for a pale, glowing woman reading a red magazine in the dark. I've seen her here before. She doesn't smile at us as we pass. Just watches us, a little afraid-seeming. To her, we're a strange ship in the night.

He carries me into a half-lit room full of fog. Lowers me onto a table in the center. The Treatment Room, of course. My final treatment tonight, that's right. Very exciting. The ceiling of glass is exposed, and I see we're under the Depths, blue-green as the eyes of the man in the black-horned mask. A sky of water shimmers above us like the northern lights. Red jellyfish swim over us like so many strange moons. The man stands over me as I sit on the table. Normally a woman comes in at this point, doesn't she? Tells me to strip and I do. Lie down and I do. Breathe, and she breathes with me. Then a cold white paste on my face while I drift. But no woman comes. Just me and the man in the fog.

He walks over to a small aquarium tank on the other end of the table. Inside floats a single red jellyfish. Mine. My red jellyfish that started off so small and white. That I first pulled out of the black pool, held in my palm, where it glowed like a whisper of a wish. It's grown so much bigger and redder since last time. The man in the mask is staring at it. "Beautiful," he says, "isn't it, Belle?"

"Beautiful," I agree, looking from the man to the creature. Though I don't know that it is anymore. It looks scary to me. Hideous. But the man in the mask doesn't seem to think so. He's lost in looking at it, like it's a dream.

"Is it really so beautiful?" I ask him, jealous maybe. "Just a jellyfish."

"Oh, it's more," he says, still smiling softly like it's telling him a secret. "It's something else now, thanks to the treatments. Can you guess?"

I stare at the creature. Its red bell pulsing like a strange heart. The hairy tentacles undulating. I shake my head. The man smiles his smile of long white teeth. His smile is a constellation. His smile is a movie and I'm in the dark, dreaming. Gently now, he takes my hand. "It's the story of you and me."

Inside the tank, the red thing begins to pulse more quickly.

"You and me," I repeat. There's a shiver in my voice now. The touch of his hand is making me cold. Something black and closed and buried deep in me opens. "What story?"

I look at the jellyfish, a pattern like roses on her back. Her eyes, I see she has eyes, translucent and red like her body, are wide and afraid. What story? But somewhere inside me knows. Knows exactly. I feel the knowledge pulsing just like the red thing in the water.

"What story? Oh Belle, Belle, now you're hurting my feelings. Now you're wounding me." He presses his gloved hand to his chest like I stabbed him there. But he's still smiling like the movies. His eyes in the mask flash from blue-green to red to blue-green. He brushes my hair away from my face, and I shiver.

"It started the day you found me in Mother's closet, remember? Beastly little thing in Mother's lipstick and cheap sex heels. Dreaming of another self, a princess self, in a castle by the sea. Dreaming of me. And I heard you. Dreaming on the other side of the glass."

He squeezes my hand, that cold, slightly sticking touch that dives me in dark water. He's standing over me now as I sit hunched on the table, cold coursing through my body.

"You heard me," I say, and I'm shivering, shivering.

"But the story's not over."

"It isn't?" I say. I'm so very cold. He lifts up my chin with a hand of ice, so I'm looking right into his flashing eyes. Still smiling that smile that burns me.

"Let's finish it together, shall we?"

We're lying together now on the table, he and I, and in the glass, the jellyfish is beating wildly like my own heart, like the black buried thing inside me. He's taken his mask off so I see his face. His face lights up the architecture of me, my cage of bones brightening. Not just his smile, but his whole face is the movies. As beautiful and unreal as a dream, but somehow right here with me. I must have watched those movies a thousand times in the dark, on dusty TV screens. I've seen him on another kind of screen too, a screen of glass. Smiling like he is right now.

"We lay together like this once, remember?" he says. "In your silly pink room with the dolls and spiders. Under those dumb stars. And you made some promises to me. Do you remember?"

"No," I say. My lips find it hard to make the word.

"Let's remember together."

"There's supposed to be a cold white paste on my face," I say with my half-numb lips. "The whisper woman puts it on. And black discs on my temples. There's supposed to be an oil I breathe in and she breathes with me."

He shakes his head. "We don't need her tonight. We don't need the fucking accessories, you and I. The oil, the discs, the paste—those are just flourishes to impress the idiots. The essence is just this. Just you and me."

And he takes my hand again, my first love. Somehow I know that he was my first love. How nice to know that I am holding the hand of my first love and I'm not cold anymore or I'm so cold, I'm burning. It was a troubled love. There was something between us, always between us, what was it? A kind of wall. Shiny but smeared. Made of cracked glass. Hiding in the dark. Turned toward the wall, until I turned it to me.

"I would come through it to be with you, remember?" he says.

His name is nearly on my tongue. And my heart is frantic inside me.

"Yes." It's all so familiar, there are tears in my eyes. He tells me to look up at the glass ceiling exposing the Depths. At the red jellyfish floating by like comets with fiery tails.

"What do you see? Tell me."

The table we're lying on floats up now toward the sky of water. The small tank with my red jellyfish floats up with us. Beating fast and wild as my own heart is now. I am burning with cold and very still. There's a movie playing up there on the ceiling glass like a screen. I see a young girl. Lying in her pink bedroom. Night outside. A low moon lights up the room. She's not alone. There's a man with her in the room. Lying beside her. She's holding him tight. There are tears in her eyes. She's saying, Don't leave me. Please don't leave me.

"Who's that?" he asks me.

"Her first love. She's holding her first love," I say with my mouth that's so very hard to move now.

"What's his name?"

I look up at the little girl on the glass screen. Her eyes shut tight. Tears streaming down her face as there are tears streaming down my face. I feel them tingling on my skin. Her mouth saying his name again and again. And I remember. I start to say the name along with her with my now dead mouth. Together, we're mouthing his name like a refrain in a song. And the man beside me is smiling at the sound.