The moonbright ones no longer look at their mirror trays. All shining eyes are on me. They cannot believe that I won’t take this last crucial step in my Beauty Journey. When I have been Selected. When I am on the Cusp. They shake their heads. Whisper to one another. “She has been Selected and yet she will not take this last step, why? She is a fool. She is stupid. We would never be so stupid.”
The Queen of Snow looks at me, and now her smile is ice. “You have been Selected.” Another step forward.
“I don’t want to be Selected.” Another step back. Me and my red shoes take it together. “I did not ask to be Selected.”
“You are on the Cusp.” Another step forward.
“I don’t want to be.” Another step back, and I’m back up against the tank now. I feel the glass wall behind me, the railing digging into my low back. Behind me, I feel my red jelly float. The mother Rose who absorbed the daughter Rose into her body in an embrace of tentacles. She has not gone back down to the Depths. She’s staying here with me even though I tried to catch her. Even though I tried to kill her, to feed her live to the veiled ones. She’s not leaving me. She’s still here. Trying to say something. What is she saying? Come with me.
“Well that is perfectly fine,” the Queen of Snow says.
“It is?”
“Bien s?r. You are a free agent, after all. And the customer is always right, n’est-ce pas?”
Now the veiled ones really laugh.
And then the Queen of Snow nods at the Statues of Cold. They come toward me from both sides. How could I have ever thought they were beautiful? How could I have ever thought they were angels? They’re smiling like they are going to kill me.
The black mouth of the door is behind them. The black mouth into which they dragged Lake, who was once beautiful, who is now no more. Along the wall, the moonbright ones regard me darkly. Not so moonbright-looking now. They’re holding their mirror trays up like shields. At the table, Seth sits looking at me. No expression. His eyes are black holes.
Come with me, I hear from behind me in the pool.
I try to take one more step back, away from the Queen of Snow, away from the table of veiled ones. And there isn’t a step to take, turns out. There is only falling. Backward falling.
And I’m in the tank.
I’m deep in the blue-green water.
* * *
Cold, very cold water.
Can’t breathe, sinking.
Through the water and the glass I see the veiled ones silently screaming.
I see the moonbright ones drop their shields and wring their hands.
I see the Queen of Snow tear out her red hair.
I scream and water fills my mouth.
And then the mother is on me, its beating heart-head pressed against my chest, its tentacles wrapping around my neck like it’s holding me fast. And we’re sinking, down through a grand tunnel of water. Sinking or swimming? Don’t know, but down we go. And I’m dying, I feel myself dying, my heart and lungs frozen in mid-spasm. And as we sink down through water, more and more red jellies wrap themselves around my body, legs, arms, chest, all of me covered in red jelly, all but my eyes wrapped entirely in jelly bodies as I sink or swim down. Then suddenly my lungs open, underwater they open, and I’m breathing underwater, covered in jellyfish; these are jellyfish. The jellyfish are breathing for me, or I am breathing through jellyfish? And we’re not sinking, we’re swimming, they’re swimming me down the endless tunnel of water, through the many floors of this house. I can breathe and open my eyes and watch us swimming down. Through the water and warped glass, I see the grand hall where I danced and drank of the red stars, where people are dancing still. In horror, they watch us turning and swimming down. They bang their fists on the glass. I feel things being thrown at us. Champagne flutes. The sound of shattered glass like rain against the tank walls. We swim down faster, down to the very bottom of the tank. They know where they’re going, these jellyfish. I hear what I think are voices all around me. Saying, Hurry. Saying, This way. We’ve reached the bottom of the Depths, which is a floor of glass. Through the floor, I see a dark room with a white massage table. The Treatment Room. Where I lay with Seth, I remember now. Where I grew my little jellyfish from a ghostly white wisp into a red creature like the ones wrapped all over me. The water down here feels so much colder, why? Where is the cold coming from?
The jellyfish swim my body toward a dark grate in the tank glass. The cold rushes in from the grate like a cool breeze from an open window. Except instead of a breeze, it’s water. Darker, colder like the water of night. I feel the jellyfish sighing.