Trial by Fire Read online

  “Which way?” she asked in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

  The two soldiers shared a confused look, but quickly collected themselves and led Lily around the side of the Citadel to a path that didn’t exist on her version of this beach. She tried to act as naturally as she could, even though she had no idea what passed for natural here. Her eyes darted down to the odd, vicious-looking sidearms strapped to the soldiers’ belts. She guessed that her best bet at making it through this episode was to play along.

  It was a long walk around. The Citadel was a castle on top of the highest hill, surrounded by a circular wall that was backed up against the ocean. Ballooning out from the seawall that Lily had walked alongside stretched a much larger wall that seemed to go on forever. Lily tried to see around it and decided that this larger wall must encircle the whole city. She scoured the landscape for something familiar but saw no landmarks she knew. The tallest buildings of a strange city poked up above the massive wall. Looking at the soaring spires, Lily had to forcibly calm her breathing so she didn’t start to hyperventilate. A busy metropolis had somehow sprung up to replace her little town.

  From her vantage point on the Citadel hill, Lily could see a section of the city. It was dense and imposing, but the buildings were not the modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers she was used to seeing in her world. There were no rigid pillars of concrete, rising like arrogant middle fingers into the sky. Instead, a congregation of airy hives and nests spiraled and arched into the air in twisting ringlets, dripping green plants off their tiered sides. This city bloomed with vegetation on every available surface. It looked like a latticed bouquet, reaching high into the sky.

  “Lady? Would you care to open the gate?” asked the soldier on her left. They had come to a stop while Lily had been gawking and now waited expectantly. She looked up at the massive portcullis in front of her, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Did they expect her to lift it up with her bare hands?

  “I c-can’t,” she stammered. Her escort gaped at her, perplexed. The soldier on her right glanced down at her neck and drew in a sharp breath.

  “Your willstone. Lady, was it stolen? Were you attacked?” he asked urgently.

  Lily touched her bare throat. She noticed that both of the soldiers wore similar silver stones around their necks, and they were staring at her so intensely that it was clear that not wearing one of those willstones was a big deal. Lily had to think fast. The soldiers’ distress was quickly turning to fear, and she knew from experience that people do strange, even irrational things when they are afraid.

  “I can’t discuss it with you,” she said, pulling rank for the first time in her life. The only thing Lily had in her favor was their deference to the Lady that they had mistaken her for. “I need to go home. Now.”

  The soldiers responded to her imperious tone immediately and yelled for the gates to be opened. The portcullis slid to the side like it was weightless. There was no groaning metal or clanking chains, just a faint whisper of wind as the thirty-foot-high and three-foot-thick wall of latticed metal swept to the side to let them inside. Ignoring that this effortless entry flew in the face of physics, Lily strode forward fearlessly, playing the part of a lady for dear life.

  Holding herself to the calmest pace she could manage while her heart hammered away, Lily passed more staring soldiers and entered a large courtyard. Beyond the courtyard stood the keep of a giant castle. Lily recalled the old soldier calling it her Citadel. Forcing her shaking legs to carry her, she clenched her jaw and strode toward the entrance as if she owned it.

  The keep looked like an ancient structure with a futuristic makeover. It had enlarged windows and outbuildings that were designed in an open style, as if some brilliant minimalist architect had gotten his hands on an old castle and had refitted it from top to bottom.

  The inside was the same blend of old and new. Lily entered and found impossibly large flagstones beneath her and airy skylights above her. There were large, open areas all around, but despite the fact that she found the place beautiful, her throat closed off with disappointed tears. A part of her had been expecting to step inside the keep, fall back through the rabbit hole, and find herself home again. When it occurred to Lily that her Alice in Wonderland moment hadn’t happened and that she had no idea how to get home, she turned to her escort and shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said hopelessly.

  “Lillian?” Juliet’s voice called down from the great staircase. Lily turned to the voice at the top of the stair, sighing with relief.

  “Juliet! You’re here, too?” Lily rushed up the stairs, suddenly feeling like it was all going to be okay. Her sister was with her, and together they would sort this mess out as they had a hundred others. But as Lily neared the top of the stairs, her relief faded and she slowed to a stop.

  The woman waiting with a frightened expression looked exactly like her sister—from her large, dark eyes to her red heart-shaped lips and pale heart-shaped face. But the ornate gown she wore and the yards of hair that snaked over her shoulder and down to her waist in one long braid were not Juliet’s. Lily’s sister never wore fancy dresses and not once in her entire life had she ever grown her hair past her shoulders. Lily stared at this other woman, this other Juliet, and heard her mom’s voice inside her head.

  There isn’t a Juliet who doesn’t love you.

  Lily was so desperate for something to believe in that she wrapped her arms around the startled woman’s shoulders.

  “I’m lost,” Lily whispered in her ear.

  “It’s okay,” the woman whispered back. She wrapped her arms around Lily and held her close. Lily tucked her face into her neck and relaxed. Whoever this other Juliet was, she smelled just right and her hug was full of the same familiar mix of worry and tenderness that Lily recognized as her sister’s. “Let’s get you back to your rooms.”

  Juliet led Lily down the hallway to a spiral stone staircase that seemed to lead up to the top of the keep. Lily clenched Juliet’s hand in hers, urging her along. She wanted to wait for the two of them to be alone before she started to speak about what had happened—if she ever found the words to describe it at all.

  They got halfway down the hallway of the topmost floor before Juliet stopped. She placed her hand lightly on the surface of a huge door. The small, pinkish stone on her neck flashed, its surface coruscating with lights, and the door, which was twelve feet tall and at least a foot thick, swung open effortlessly. Just like the portcullis had. Like magic, Lily thought.

  “How did you do that?” The words flew out of Lily before she could snatch them back. Juliet’s brow furrowed, and she grabbed Lily’s arm with a rough shake.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice low.

  “She is me,” croaked a worn-out but still hauntingly familiar voice.

  “W-what?” Juliet stammered. She didn’t understand what was going on any better than Lily did.

  “It’s alright. I brought her here, with her consent, of course. Couldn’t do it without her consent.…” The voice trailed off with exhaustion, and Lily saw a slender figure stand up from the edge of a giant gaping fireplace, which was easily larger than Lily’s garage back home. The fire had long since gone out, and the room was cold. Lily froze in the doorway, unwilling to enter.

  “What have you done?” Juliet breathed. She looked at Lily, her jaw slack with fear as her eyes skipped over every aspect of Lily’s face and body.

  “You’re not going to believe it, Juliet,” answered the girl. She picked up a silken robe and pulled it around her naked body. There was a sickly smell in the air, like flowers that had been left in old water for too long, their stems starting to rot. “I brought another version of me into this world,” she said, and then suddenly swooned.

  “Lillian,” Juliet gasped. She crossed the room quickly to catch the girl and half carried her to the wide bed in the giant suite. Lily noticed that under the robe, the girl was covered in soot, as if she had been lying in the dirty
fireplace. “This is insane. You are far too weak to go to the pyre. It could kill you.”

  “As if I have a choice about that now. Which is why I brought her here.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Juliet asked in a strangled voice.

  A tense moment passed between the sisters. The girl in the bed looked at Lily and waved for her to approach.

  “Come in, Lily. That’s what you prefer to be called, isn’t it? I prefer Lillian.”

  Lily entered the room as if drawn there by invisible hands. A creeping chill raised all the hairs on the back of her neck. Lillian had Lily’s voice, her hair, her body, even her way of moving. The clothes were different, and Lily desperately hoped that the cynical gleam she saw in Lillian’s eye was different as well, but apart from those small variations, there was no mistaking it. Lily was looking at herself. Not her mirror opposite, but her absolute double—right down to the swirl in her left eyebrow that made all the little hairs spike wildly in the wrong direction.

  Lillian’s eyes darted down to Lily’s NO NUKES T-shirt, and she gave a wan smile. “I’ve watched you long enough to know that the important things inside of us are exactly the same.”

  “You can’t be me,” Lily said, shaking her head as if that would change what her eyes were telling her. “I’m me.”

  “You are me and I am you—we are versions of each other,” Lillian said. She raised a hand and held her thumb and forefinger apart by the most miniscule of distances. “In worlds that lie this close together, and yet never touch.”

  It was the word “versions” that rang inside Lily’s head. She thought of her mother. “No. I’m crazy. That last seizure did it. I’ve finally gone crazy like my mother.”

  “Your Samantha isn’t crazy,” Lillian said sadly. “She’s cursed. She sees and hears an infinite number of universes that she can’t block out. It’s a terrible thing. Our version of mother couldn’t take it. Not even with guidance from what you would call an expert.”

  “So it’s true?” Juliet interrupted hoarsely “The shaman wasn’t talking nonsense?”

  Lillian looked at her sister, and for a moment, a tender emotion crossed her forbidding face. “Mom wasn’t crazy. Other universes exist, Juliet.” She gestured to Lily. “There’s the proof.”

  “Then why did she…?”

  “It was too late for Mom,” Lillian said abruptly. “Even with the shaman’s help.”

  There weren’t many things that Lily was sure of at the moment, but even in a different universe, she could read her sister’s face. This version of Samantha was dead, and Lily was pretty sure that she had killed herself. Fear shot through Lily as she considered whether or not her version of Samantha would do the same someday. If she were distressed enough, she might. Say, if one of her daughters disappeared into thin air, for instance.

  “I have to go back,” Lily whispered. “Please. I don’t belong here.”

  “But you do, Lily. You do. And you will stay,” Lillian answered calmly.

  “We can’t keep her here,” Juliet hissed at her sister disbelievingly. “Enough, Lillian. I don’t know what the shaman taught you in those secret meetings—yes, I know about them,” she said when Lillian shot her a surprised look. “Don’t worry, I’m the only one who does. I assumed you were sneaking around for a reason, so I never mentioned it to anyone. Not even Rowan. But we brought the shaman here to help Mom, not so you could do whatever it is you’re doing.” Juliet threw her hands up, staring at Lily. “This is wrong. You have to send her back to her world.” A half-hysterical laugh escaped Juliet’s lips. “I can’t even believe I just said that.”

  “Juliet. I know this is a shock for you,” Lillian said slowly. “But I brought her here for a reason. And when she gets past her fear, she’ll realize that she wants to stay.” Lillian’s tone was icy and final.

  “But I don’t!” Lily exclaimed. She felt like she was choking. “I want to go home!”

  “To what?” Lillian asked derisively, her sweaty cheeks flushing red with anger. “A world that makes you sick? Armies of reckless doctors and scientists who don’t have a clue what to do with you because they only know how to cut and destroy?” Lillian said the words “doctors” and “scientists” with sneering hatred, but her brief, passionate tirade was curtailed by bone-rattling coughs.

  Juliet tried to soothe her sister, but Lillian pushed her hands away. Lily watched, silent and still, as Lillian fought the paroxysm, and after several painful moments of gasping, she could speak again.

  “Or maybe you want to go back to your Tristan? That fickle prettyboy who doesn’t want you? Or back to the family that would be better off without you?”

  “My mother,” Lily said, her voice catching. “She’ll—”

  “She’ll suffer more with a sickly daughter like you in her life than out of it. Believe me.” Lillian’s eyes drilled into Lily’s, cold and unrelenting. “You’re useless in your world. Worse. You’re a burden. But here, where you belong, you could be the most powerful woman in the world.”

  Lily didn’t have much experience with hate. She didn’t even hate her dad for abandoning her, even though no one would have blamed her if she did. But as she watched Lillian finish her bitter speech and fall back against the pillows, she realized that she hated her. Lillian looked so pathetic, but Lily couldn’t help hating her. In fact, she’d never hated anyone or anything as much as she hated this evil other self in the big white bed.

  “And what are you going to do to keep me here? Tie me up? Put me in a dungeon?” Lily asked, trying her hardest not to think how similar her vicious tone, even the cadence of her sentences, was to Lillian’s. A thought dawned on her. “You said you brought me here for a reason. You need me, don’t you? You need me so much, you can’t even stop me from leaving.”

  “By all means, go,” Lillian said with a calculating smile. “Run along.”

  Lily turned and walked away from the bed, marveling at her own audacity. She had no idea where to go. She felt light and strange, like her blood had filled with cold bubbles and her belly with slippery rope. Her vision shrank in from the sides, collapsing until all she could see was the door. Lily lunged for it, praying that she didn’t faint first.

  “Lillian!” Juliet cried.

  “Let her go,” Lillian said. “She needs to go.”

  “She could get hurt out there. It’s too dangerous,” Juliet said, incredulous.

  “She’ll be back.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you can’t run from yourself forever.”

  * * *

  Half blind and numb with shock, Lily stumbled past the guards, through the gate, and down the steep hill of the Citadel toward the strange city. She heard people calling out to her, telling her to stop, pleading with her to come back to the safety of the keep, but she was too overwhelmed to respond. All she wanted to do was get away—to get as far away from this waking nightmare as possible.

  As she walked, she told herself that what she was experiencing had to be some kind of hallucination. Something happened to her when she’d had that seizure, she decided. Maybe she’d never even woken up this morning.

  The more Lily thought about it, the more convinced she was that none of this was really happening. Tristan hadn’t cheated on her. They’d never had a fight or ended their friendship. She’d never gone down to the water or agreed to come to this strange place. None of this was real.

  Lily paced down a cobbled street and headed into the heart of the strange city. She wasn’t really paying attention to which way she went; she was just following a vague sense inside her that told her when to turn or continue straight ahead. She talked to herself sternly the whole way, convinced that this was all some fever dream she couldn’t wake up from, probably because the doctors had drugged her.

  “That’s it,” Lily said loudly, making several pedestrians stop and stare. She lowered her voice but continued to mumble to herself, trying to keep panic at bay. “When I heard that voice inside my hea
d, the one that said it would be frightening, it was just the doctor warning me before she gave me a shot. She was telling me that the drugs were going to do this to me. That’s all.”

  No matter how real it felt, she knew that she would wake up eventually and the meandering streets that she now wandered through, with their tall, latticed towers of vegetation, and their tinkling sounds of running water, would all disappear.

  Lily’s wild eyes bounced from one strange sight to another. Colonial-style carriage houses and brick townhouses, right out of her version of Salem, were interspersed with modern wood-beam and glass buildings that had a tent-like feel. A few steps down, she saw spiral-shaped domes that had gardens growing on side tiers, interspersed with glass windows. They looked like hives that housed plants instead of honey in their combs. Lily glanced into the glass windows of these hive houses and saw only more greenery inside. They were multifaceted greenhouses that were growing things both inside and out.

  Rotating around, she realized that there was one on every block, and where there wasn’t, there was one of the tall, latticed green towers that went up to find the sun rather than wait for it to hit the ground. Lily wandered closer to one of the towers, trying to look inside the soaring double helix of greenery.

  Something growled. Lily looked down slowly. At her feet, chained to the base of the tower, were three monstrous dogs. Or were they bears? One of them hissed, showing fangs like a tiger’s.

  Lily screamed and threw her body back, away from the unnatural creatures, and didn’t stop until she slammed into something hard. She spun around frantically and saw that she had backed up against a large glass window. It was the front of a café.

  Peering inside at the startled patrons, Lily’s eyes locked with a young man’s. They were dark eyes, such a deep brown they were nearly black. His eyes widened, momentarily, stunning Lily both with their intensity and with the recognition she saw inside of them. She’d never seen him before, but he knew her. The young man stood up from his table abruptly, tipping his heavy chair to the ground behind him. His lean body was tense and his angular face was immobile with fury. She saw his fists clench and his lips mouth a single, unmistakable word. “Lillian.”