Chapter 12 ~ Lavender’s Blue

When Liseli reached her room she noticed that her old clothes had been returned, neatly folded up and placed on the end of the bed.  They’d been washed, and smelled like floral soap.

She put on a nightgown and crawled into bed, tired again despite the afternoon nap.  She felt light and hollow on the inside but heavy and slow on the outside, like an empty ceramic jar.  She needed sleep to clear her mind.  The day had been a disaster.  The whole week was a disaster.  The month.  The year.  Her life.  Her head was spinning and she buried it in the soft respite of the pillow.

Her feet were cold, and she drew her legs up, tucking her knees as close to her chin as possible and wrapping her arms around her chest.

Do you want to know how my parents died?  The thought played itself over in her head.

As she drifted to sleep, slowly relaxing her limbs and falling away from reality, her mind swirled with pictures, sounds, smells, and feelings.  The feeling of Russ’s cheek giving way to her hand as his head snapped to the side.  His stubble tickling her face as they kissed.  Eliasha’s laughing eyes.  A bird flying from tree to tree.  Smoke from the fire.  Arlic walking down the stairs.  Halla’s hands; red, but soft.  The water rushing by, cold and sharp.  Russ falling to the ground, unconscious.  Martilia stirring the oatmeal.  Her feet on the ground, one hill after another.  The Child standing on the opposite bank.  Its eyes were on her.  She could feel them.  Even now.

---

Standing.  She had been walking, over the hills, through the knee high grass; the sun beat down.  She had been all alone, nothing but fields all around.  Green and blue.  But it all became darker, and now she is standing, still alone, in the dusk.  In a hall.  Stone all around.  The walls are hung with shifting lights, quiet yellow.  She stands with hands folded, and head down.  The breeze and the grass have come to a stop.  “I cannot move, I will be stone.  My eyes are shut.”  But no one hears her speak, she is alone.

She only thinks she is alone.  The halls are turning.  There is a voice, a soft high voice, singing.  A child’s voice, singing.  “I know that song.”  She listens; it moves her feet, down the halls, shifting yellow.  Green and blue, all around.  She knows who is singing, though she has never heard the voice before.

Lavender’s blue . . . dilly dilly

Lavender’s green

When I am King . . . dilly dilly

You shall be . . . Queen.

Who told you so?  dilly dilly

Who told you so?

“I know that song.  I know how it goes.  How does it end?”  Her feet are carrying her down the hall.  Her head is down.  Her arms are crossed over her heart.  Her eyes are shut.  It sings the song, over and over.  Never answering the question.

Who told you so?  Who told you so?  She cannot remember.  She knows the song.  “I know that song.  Dilly dilly.”  The halls are turning.  She turns with them.

Lavender’s blue . . . dilly dilly

Lavender’s green

When I am dead . . . dilly dilly

How shall you . . . dream?

Who told you so? dilly dilly

Who told you so?

“Where are you?  Come out.”  The halls lead out, the voice is nearer.  She steps out, no ceiling, no walls.  Pillars line the open way, and there is something at the end.  The voice is still singing.  She walks closer to the end; it is a bed of stone.  Someone is lying on it. White skin, white dress, long black hair falling down.  Thin white face.  Sleeping.  She is sleeping.  Always sleeping.  It is singing around her, but the song becomes broken and confused.

I don’t know . . . dilly dilly

I don’t . . . dilly

I don’t know

I do not . . . 

The voice stops, trickling away into the dark.  She stands looking down at the woman on the bier.  “I don’t understand.  What do you want?  Who are you?  Why have you brought me here?  Hello?  I know that song . . . .”

You have to leave.

“Why?  Where should I go?”

No answer.  The voice is gone; it has left her all alone, with the sleeping.

She turns around.

Everything is different, now.  She knows where she is, though she cannot name it.  It’s barely light, and she is standing on a road, at the bottom of a hill.  The world is bare, it is a gray desert as far as she can see.  But there is something on the road, several things lying along the path as it stretches up toward the horizon.  She walks forward, looking down.  She passes a hand, and the rest of the arm a few feet away.  Other limbs lie all around, mangled and cut, staining the road with blood.  Some look fresh, others are rotting in the gray sun.  She can smell the rot.  But there aren’t any flies or maggots, there is nothing alive.  Only her.

She follows the road up the hill, walking between the body parts, some naked, some clothed in torn and tattered remnants, all lying on the ground as if they were thrown there.  By someone.  Something.

She pays attention to the clothes.  One arm goes with another because both sleeves were once the same blue cloth, this pant leg goes with that one . . . those feet, yards apart, are wearing the same boots . . . .  Who were they?  Why are they dead?  She wonders what she will find over the hill.  She doesn’t want to find out, but her feet carry her toward the summit, as if there is no other place to go.  And there isn’t.  There is nowhere to go but up, the road disappears behind her, there is nothing but gray and the road falls away from her feet.

She is at the top.  She looks around, and it does not look like she thought it would.  She looks down at her feet and sees that the road and the gray are gone, and she is standing on a mound of heads.  Some faces look newly dead, almost just sleeping.  Others are like old Jack O’ Lanterns, rotting and crumpled, features lost together.

She picks up one head and cradles it in her arms.  “I’m sorry.  So sorry.  Don’t cry, sleep now.  I’m sorry.”  The hill at her feet is green.  All around are the fields, rolling fields, dotted with flowers.  Green and blue.  She has a bouquet in her arms, dilly dilly.  “I’m sorry.  Sleep now.”

---

Liseli’s eyes snapped open and her arms jerked around her pillow.  Her heart pounded and she couldn’t breathe.  It took a moment of staring all around into the dark to realize where she was.  In bed.  In Arlic’s house.  In Elharan.  In Alisiya.  She began to breathe again, in shallow gasps.  A dream.  What a . . . stupid dream.  She pushed aside her blankets and sat up, rubbing her face.  Her hands were cold.

Scattered images from the dream replayed themselves in her head.  Nothing made sense, though the ending left her with a dry, sick feeling she couldn’t shake or rub away.  She felt she should have guessed sooner that it was a dream, not real.

Though it wasn’t really unreal . . . not strictly false, no, not at all.

She didn’t know why she thought that, but the words lodged there.  Not false at all.  She shook her head, and blinked again in the darkness.  I must not be all the way awake, I still feel weird.  What she needed was some light, just to look around the room and be sure it was solid and real.

Liseli scooted over to the edge of bed and reached out into the dark, knowing her hands were shaking.  She waved them around, looking for the table and the candle.  It should be . . . .

A cold hand seized her arm, digging hard fingers into her wrist.

Liseli gasped and tried to yank her hand back, but the fingers tightened and held fast to her wrist.  She flailed her other hand at it, striking an arm—long and clammy and cold, but unyielding.  A pale light formed in front of her, slowly glowing white from the hand that held her.  A white face looked down at her.  Eye sockets, black holes, saw her.  Liseli opened her mouth to scream, but there was sand inside.  Nothing came out.

A woman stood before her, visible now in the pale light that gleamed from her skin.  She wore a white dress, flowing in folds down to the floor.  Painfully white.  Long black hair hung down close to the face, framing the thin cheekbones and empty eyes.

The woman did nothing but stand, and clench her, as Liseli thrashed and struck at the hard frame.  She was like a stone statue, looking down.  Liseli tried to get up, but her legs were tangled in the blankets.  She couldn’t get out.  She stopped hitting with her free hand and reached down to fling the blankets away.  At first they held her like arms, but she wrenched the covering away from her legs, and saw in the pale light hundreds, thousands of white maggots swarming over and around and between her legs.  She couldn’t scream.  She was all sand inside.  They crawled and writhed, and bit her.  She could feel their sharp teeth.  Bleeding.  And the woman held her fast, saying nothing, watching her struggle.

Liseli kicked wildly and fell out of the bed.  Her shoulder wrenched in pain as she hung from the woman’s unmoving grip.

Help me, the woman spoke without moving her lips.

Liseli didn’t reply; instead she beat at the hard legs.  They were like pillars.

Leave here.  Go to the river.  The River.  It is the only way.

Then Liseli dropped to the floor, her wrist suddenly released.  She fell forward, where the legs like pillars should have been, and lie prone on the cold stone bricks.  Her arm throbbed in pain, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the grip or from hitting the stones.  She stayed still, barely breathing.  The room was dark again.