Chapter 29

We are walking two by two in a dark corridor, up a twisting path to where the Feast will be. In celebration of our Beauty Journey. Held in our very own honor. Are we very excited? We should be, the Statues of Cold tell us. It's a very long walk up a winding stair. Along the wall on one side, my side, is the glass tank again full of blue-green water where the red jellies pulse and swim. Some are very big. Some are the smallest things, like whispers. Lake walks beside me in the line again. We are partners in this Beauty Journey, it seems.

I would like to hold Lake's hand, but she's holding a silver tray.

I'm holding one too.

We all are. All the moonbright ones I walk with. All the lakesmooth faces on which there is not a ripple of sad or happy or mad. All wearing white-and-red dresses patterned with what the Statues of Cold keep telling us are roses but which look like something else to me. All gripping their silver trays close, like Lake and me. Each tray's surface is covered with a black circle of paper, but nothing else. Because we don't want you to look until it's time is what the Statues of Cold told us. Strange to carry a tray. "Almost like we're the severed ones, isn't that right, Lake?" Serving ones, I meant to say. But Lake understands.

"It seems so," Lake says. Ever since we left the Lounge, she's been sounding faraway. The dark rings around her eyes are getting darker.

"But why would we be severed? Serving? Aren't we the honored guests? Aren't we the people who paid for here?"

"I haven't paid for here yet. Have you?"

"No. Because they have my purse. So it's a misunderstanding." And then something in me lifts. "Maybe this is why they're making us sever now," I say to Lake. "Because we got our treatments free. And now we must pay in some way. We should explain to them."

Lake looks down at her tray. "I don't know. That sounds like a lot to do. Anyway, I think this is right. I'm a Perfect Candidate, they said. You're perfect too. That's why we walk together. Maybe perfect means we don't ever pay." Then she looks up and smiles so suddenly.

"What?"

"Your jelly. Following you. Look." And with her chin, she gestures to the glass.

And there it is. Swimming beside us. Floating along. One among many, but I know it's the one from before by its eyes. Red like its jelly body, and watchful. It makes me smile a little inside. But on the outside, I do not smile. "Oh?" I say.

"Your prince," Lake presses. "Or your fairy godfish maybe?"

"Hardly either of those," I say.

"Yes," Lake says. "How ugly it is," she says, like she hasn't already said this. "Maybe you'll kiss it and it will turn into something beautiful. Like a silly story someone told me once. Every nighttime for so many nighttimes. The same story I asked for, over and over. Over and over they told it. Never tiring. In a voice of love. Love is funny."

"Yes, it is."

"Over and over," Lake repeats in a trance. "The moon in the window. A hand on my hair. How ugly it was."

"The story or the moon in the window?"

"Me," Lake says. Not smiling now. Salt water spilling from her eyes of smoke. The silver tray in her hands begins to shake.

"Lake," I say. "You're beautiful." Though I'm no longer so sure about that when I look at Lake. I think of the word that swam up like a gray fish when she asked how she looked. Dead. As I look at her Brightened face, more words come swimming.

Eradicated.

Destroyed.

Used.

A whole school of gray ones. How well they all seem to fit Lake's new face.

"Look, we're here," she says. And she nods at a black hole up ahead of us, like a giant mouth. It reminds me of the mouths of the white faces in the After Place.

The red jelly that swims alongside me seems eager, like it wants to tell me something. Its head is pulsing so very fast behind the glass. Fast as my pounding heart. Its legs are like hands waving.

What?I say out of the corner of my lips.

Nothing. Silence. Or maybe not silence. Maybe it's speaking but I don't understand fish. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

And then Lake and I walk through the black hole.