Blue Lily, Lily Blue

The three of them came to a stop.

“Oh, God,” Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn’t that bad, really. “God, God. I can feel my teeth.”

Ronan lay on his back a few feet away. A box of toothpaste rested on his chest and the cart keeled beside him. He looked profoundly happy.

“You should tell me what you’ve found out about Greenmantle,” Ronan said, “so that I can get started on my dreaming.”

Adam picked himself up before he got driven over. “When?”

Ronan grinned.

30

This house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls,” Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later. The cushions of the couch ate him gratefully. The Dog lay stiffly on the floor beside the couch, crossing his paws and looking generally judgmental.

Behind the closed door of the reading room, the murmur of Gansey’s voice rose briefly before being buried by Calla’s. They were fighting with Persephone, or talking while she was in the same room with them. It was hard to tell the difference.

“Thanks,” said Blue.

“Where is that insane woman?”

Blue had just finished hauling all Neeve’s things off the mattress in the attic so that Gwenllian could stay up there. Her hands still smelled like the herbs Neeve had used for her divination and the herbs Jimi had used to try to vanquish the herbs Neeve had used for divination. “She’s up in the attic, I guess. Do you really think she’s Glendower’s daughter?”

“I see no reason to disbelieve,” Malory said. “She does seem to be outfitted in a period dress. It’s rather a lot to take in. It’s a pity one can’t publish it in a journal. Well, I suppose one could, if one wanted his career to be over in a conclusive way.”

“I wish she would just talk straight,” Blue said. “She says my father was the one who tied her up and put her to sleep, only she told us that she never slept. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? How can you just be alive and awake for six hundred years?”

The Dog gave Blue a thin, wry look that indicated he believed that was how Gwenllian had come to be the way that she was.

“It seems likely that this Artemus was also the individual who sent Glendower to sleep,” Malory observed. “I don’t mean to be rude, but the idea that he also fathered you strains the credulity rather.”

“Rather,” Blue echoed. She didn’t have an emotional stake in it either way: Her father had always been a stranger to her, and whether or not he also turned out to be a six-hundred-year-old crazy person didn’t change that. It was interesting that Gwenllian had been tied up and sent to sleep by someone named Artemus, and interesting that this Artemus person apparently looked a lot like Blue, and interesting that Maura had also said that Blue’s father was named Artemus, but interesting wouldn’t find Maura.

“Although one considers that tapestry,” Malory said.

The old tapestry from the flooded barn. Blue saw it again — her three faces, her red hands. “What does one consider about it?”

“One doesn’t know. Is she staying here?” Malory asked.

“I guess. For now? Probably she’ll kill us all in our beds, no matter what Persephone says.”

“I think it’s wise that she stays here,” Malory said. “She belongs here.”

Blue blinked at him. Although the crotchety professor had grown on her since she’d first met him, she certainly wouldn’t have pegged him for the sort to consider other people enough to be able to offer interpersonal insight.

“Would you like to know what service the Dog provides?” he asked.

This didn’t seem to have any bearing on his previous statement, but Blue’s curiosity devoured her. With restraint, she replied, “Oh, well. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I feel uncomfortable all the time, Jane,” Malory said. “That’s what the Dog is for. The Dog is a psychiatric dog. The Dog is trained so that if the Dog senses I am having anxiety, he does something to improve the situation. Such as sit beside me, or lie on my chest, or place my hand in his mouth.”

“Are you anxious a lot?”

“It’s a terrible word, anxious. It makes one think of wringing hands and hysteria and bodices. Rather I simply don’t care for people because people — my, they are going at it, aren’t they?”

This was because Calla had just shouted in the other room, “DON’T GIVE ME THAT VACUOUS PREP BOY STARE.”

Blue had previously been pleased to not be looped into the serious discussion in the reading room, but now she was reconsidering.

Malory continued, “I was paired with the Dog directly before this trip, and I must say I did not imagine it would be so challenging to travel with a canine. Not only was it quite a thing to find a place for the Dog to relieve himself, the Dog was constantly trying to lie on my chest while I was standing in that dreadful security line.”

The Dog did not look sorry.

Malory continued, “It is not the outside of people that bothers me, but the inside. Ever since I was a child, I have been able to see auras, or what-have-you. Personhood. And if the person —”

“Wait, did you say you could see auras?”

“Jane, I didn’t expect you to be judgmental, of all people.”

Blue was well familiar with the idea of auras — energy fields that surrounded all living objects. Orla had gone through a period in her teens of telling everyone what their auras said about them. She had told Blue that her aura had meant she was short. She had been a pretty awful teenager.

“I wasn’t judging!” she assured Malory. “I was clarifying. This relates to the Dog because …?”

“Because when people are too close to me, their auras touch me, and if too many auras touch me, it confuses me and makes me what doctors have foolishly called anxious. Doctors! Fools. I don’t know if Gansey ever told you how my mother was murdered by the British healthcare system —”

“Oh, yes,” Blue lied swiftly. She was very interested in hearing about how Malory saw auras, which was firmly in her circle of interests, and less interested in hearing about deaths of mothers, which was decidedly outside of her circle of interests.

“It’s a shocking story,” Malory said, with some relish. Then, because of Blue’s face or stature, he told her the story. He finished with, “And I could see her aura slowly vanish. So you see, this is how I know that Gwenllian belongs in a place like this.”