I nodded, hoping I looked chastened. I actually was chastened, and I intended to be very careful. As for answering this monster’s questions truthfully… no.
“It was pretty confused at the end,” I said. I was thinking about the mass poisonings at Jonestown. I hoped it had been like that in Ullum. I suppose that sounds gross, but I was pretty sure my life was at stake in this pleasant well-lit room. In fact I knew it.
“I imagine it was. They tried to pray away the gray, and when that didn’t work… what are you smiling about? Did you find that funny?”
I couldn’t very well tell him that there were fundamentalist Christians in my world—which I was betting was a lot farther away than Ullum—who believed they could pray the gay away. “It was stupid. I find stupidity funny.”
He actually grinned at that, and I saw blue fire lurking between his teeth. What big teeth you have, Kellin, I thought. “That’s hard. Hard, are you? We’ll see about that.”
I said nothing.
“So you left before they could pour their nightshade cocktail down your throat.”
It wasn’t cocktail he said… but my mind instantly recognized the sense of what he did say and made the substitution.
“Yes.”
“You and your dog.”
I said, “They would have killed her, too.” And waited for him to say, You’re not from Ullum, there are no dogs there, you’re making everything up as you go.
Instead he nodded. “Yes, they probably would have. I’m told they killed the horses, cows, and sheep.” He looked down into his teacup meditatively, then snapped his head up. His eyes had turned blue and brilliant. They dripped vanishing electric tears down his wrinkled cheeks, and for just a moment I saw bone glimmering beneath his skin. “Why here? Why come here to the Lily? Answer me a true answer or I’ll turn your fucking head around on your fucking neck! You’ll die staring at the door you were unfortunate enough to come in through!”
I hoped the truth would serve to keep my head where it belonged at least a little longer. “She was old, and there were stories about a stone circle that…” I spun one of my fingers in the air. “That could make her young again.”
“And did it work?”
He knew it had. If he hadn’t seen her run before he broke through the posse of night soldiers in his little electric tram, the others had.
“It did.”
“You were lucky. The sundial is dangerous. I thought the slaying of Elsa in her pool might end its power, but the old magic is stubborn.”
Elsa. So that was Ariel’s name in this world.
“I could send some of the grays out to break it up with sledges, but the Flight Killer would have to approve and so far he hasn’t. Petra’s whispering in his ear, I suppose. She likes that old sundial. Do you know what magic does, Charlie?”
I thought it did all sorts of things—allowing hapless pilgrims such as myself to visit other worlds, for instance—but I shook my head.
“It gives people hope, and hope is dangerous. Wouldn’t you say?”
I considered saying hope was the thing with feathers and decided to keep that to myself. “I don’t know, sir.”
He smiled and just for a wink I clearly saw his naked jaw glimmer below his lips. “But I know. Indeed I do. What else was it but hope of some happy afterlife that caused those living in your unfortunate province to poison themselves and their animals, when their prayers did not suffice to turn back the gray? You, however, had earthly hopes, and so you fled. Now you are here, and this is the place where all hope for such as yourself dies. If you don’t believe that now, you will. How did you get past Hana?”
“I waited, then took my chance.”
“Brave as well as hard! My!” He leaned forward and I could smell him: an aroma of old rot. “It wasn’t just the dog that you dared Lilimar for, was it?” He raised one hand, showing that long nail. “Tell me the truth or I’ll cut your throat.”
I blurted out, “Gold.”
Kellin waved a hand in dismissal. “There’s gold everywhere in the Lily. The throne where Hana sits and farts and dozes is made of it.”
“I couldn’t very well carry a throne, though, could I, sir?”
That made him laugh. It was a horrible sound, like dry bones clattering. He stopped as abruptly as he started.
“I heard… the stories may have been wrong… that there were little golden pellets…”
“The treasury, of course. But you’ve never seen it for yourself?”