Rouge(101)

“They must be giving us our purses up there. So we can leave and pay.”

“Yes,” Lake says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. She’s still looking at the jellyflowers in the tank. Pulsing with thoughts and dreams. “There’s just so many of them.”

“They’re pretty,” I offer, but I don’t know. Are they? They scare me.

“I don’t love them at all. Too jelly and hairy. Look, one of them is looking at you.”

“It is? Who?”

And Lake points at the one jellyflower. Red and staring and floating very close to the glass. Pulsating softly. It’s looking at me, Lake is right. I see its red eyes staring into my eyes. And then it moves when Lake and I move forward in the line. Moves with us.

“See how it’s following you?”

“It is not,” I say. But it is.

“It is. Maybe it loves you,” she says, a little longingly. The longing creates a ripple of sadness on her lakesmooth face.

“No,” I say. “How can it love? It’s a creature made of jelly.” And with my mind I tell the jellyflower to go, please go, swim away. But it won’t. It keeps moving forward as we move forward. Head pulsing to the beat of my own heart. Tentacles fluttering like my nerves.

“How ugly it is,” Lake says. She shudders. Draws her white robe tighter around her Brightened body. “And look at it looking at you.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Your fairy godfish.” She laughs. “Maybe it wants to go home in your bag of samples. Will you take it home?”

I look at the jelly. Something fluttering in me as it flutters behind the tank.

“It would be very silly,” I say to Lake.

“Yes. And how ugly it is too.” She says it like she didn’t just say it a second ago. “Though maybe you could kiss it. And it will turn into something less ugly. Like one of those silly stories—”

“And which story might that be?”

We look away from my fish and find we are at the front of the line now. Standing before us is a woman in red. She looks like a Queen of Snow, so white and beautiful, she freezes the breath in our lungs. Makes winter in my heart. She wears a long dress of red silk. I’ve met her before, haven’t I? Looked into her blue eyes flecked with gold like twin suns each in their very pale sky. On either side of her are two Statues of Cold. They are not smiling. Their eyes are ice. The Queen of Snow does not appear to have my purse for me. Neither do the Statues of Cold. Then one of the Statues hands me a clear bag of clothes. My clothes, at last, I think. But these are white-and-red silk. Very pretty. Very pretty, but not my clothes.

“These aren’t mine. There must be a mistake, sorry. I need my clothes to go home in, please.”

The Statues of Cold smile. Then so does the Queen of Snow. “Of course these are your clothes.” Her voice is terribly, eerily beautiful like the chimes. They nearly lull me into saying, Yes, of course these are my clothes, you’re right. But I catch myself.

“No. I mean, they’re very pretty. Thank you,” I say, curtsying to the Statue of Cold who gave them to me. “Just not mine.”

The Queen of Snow is still smiling with her eyes. “These are your clothes. And you are home,” she says in her chime voice.

“Home? I am?”

In the tank beside me, I sense my following jellyflower hovering close by. Pulsing just behind the glass. No, no. No, no.

“Definitely,” says the Queen of Snow, smiling.

“Oh,” and I fill a little with relief. Though I feel my jellyflower flailing its tentacles as if to catch my attention. As if to say, Not home, not home. “I thought home was outside. I thought I’d have to orient myself.”

And now they all smile coldly. “No need for that.”

I look at Lake and she’s smiling too. What a relief.

“So I can pay, then,” I say. “For what you’ve done to me. Making me moonbright.” Making my mind a blue empty pool, I think, more complaining. Will it ever fill back up with fish? I want to ask, but now is not the time for accusing words, I sense this. Even though I am the customer. The customer is always something. Not wrong. The other thing.

The Queen of Snow smiles again with her eyes. “You’ll be paying soon enough. Now off you trot,” she says, looking at me and Lake. “Run along and get dressed and ready for the Feast.”

“There’s a feast?”

“Oh yes, a very big Feast tonight. And you all are the guests of honor.”

“Are we?”

Beside me, the jellyflower pulses more quickly. Like it’s shaking its head.

“Oh yes. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“That is,” I say. “I love a feast. But excuse me, my purse is where?”

“You won’t be needing your purse. In fact, you won’t be needing those, either,” she says, pointing to my feet. I see I’m wearing red shoes. “Or this, what is this?” She holds up my wrist, where I see there is a gold bracelet with an eye in it. How did that get there? The eye looks at me and I look at it. I smile and the eye seems to smile too. I had this eye, I think, in some olden time. I look back up at the Queen of Snow, who’s now very frowning.

“Take them off,” she growls. “Shoes and bracelet.”