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Abandoning courtly duties to steal a taste of Nell's cooking and simple kindness. Traipsing around the woods in her silly royal frippery without a care in the world for the delightfully wretched state she'd be in upon her return to the palace. Meeting in secret with the forest-child Jack.
It's always been in Lily’s nature to test boundaries. Jack never quite understood before as he’s never lived with any. She snatches kisses, moments, tarts. Precious bits of freedom. She never meant to take anything that would cause anyone harm. She never meant to take the light from the world.
The first time she met Jack she’d lost her way in the woods and stumbled upon him by a waterfall. They’d stared at each other as if catching a glimpse of rare and strange creatures. She thought this wild boy-creature beautiful, with his mud-streaked face and shaggy, tangled hair full of crushed leaves. His clothes that were barely more than rags that allowed him to move as freely as an acrobat.
When she looked at Jack's lovely face, she understood in that moment that beauty needed to leap and run and be touched by someone that recognized it for its true self.
Jack had stared wide-eyed and gape-mouthed as she’d kept her dubious balance on the stepping stones -- in a ludicrous brocade, no less, made heavier still by water weight. When she kissed him it was her very first kiss. He’d smelt of rain and earth and the touch of his lips on hers made something wild gallop in her chest. She never wanted to kiss another.
Lily met Jack and she never wanted to be confined in a palace or a dress that one couldn't run or leap in, ever again.
*
She realizes now that she is not a creature of light made dark. Her soul resides in the in-between, careening from one extreme to the other with the unpredictable swiftness of a dragonfly.
*
The Shadow spins round and round in ways Lily's never seen another dance, in a daring dress she’s never seen the like of. There is a terror that grips her that she cannot articulate. The dancing Shadow invokes in her more terror than goblins or glowing green eyes in the dark. Lily cannot deny she is moved by the way the decadent black shine of it is nearly split down the middle. She cannot deny that the madness in the speed of its whirling calls out to her. Join me, it whispers in her mind. Be me, it says.
The scents of black roses and black orchids fill her nose when she can see none. The taste of black wine floods her tongue when there is no goblet in her hand. The rush of blood in her veins feels as if it too, has gone black.
The Shadow spins her round and round until she’s not sure which is which. Are they really two separate creatures? Is the Shadow Lily? Or is Lily the Shadow? Somehow, between one sudden turn, and the next, Lily is slicked-back hair and black-lacquered lips. Each time she passes it, the king's ransom in silver and gold and crystal shines so brightly, brighter than any found in her father’s coffers. A part of her belongs now in this underworld, a black jeweled thing that catches the light in unexpected ways.
The Dress -- the Shadow -- the Black Lily -- slips delicate black satin fingers round Lily and in Lily in ways she’s never known simple touch to be. One moment she’s gasping for breath as if choking and the next flicker of firelight the Dress has clung to her flesh like a second skin of black satin.
Lily is the Dancing Shadow. It is her hair, her lips, her nails that are a black shine. Her ghostly skin that exposes itself nearly all the way down her torso. The Dress is not afraid of being split in two, and now, neither is Lily.
Lily dances to Darkness’s delight and her heart beats so hard and loud that it fills her ears with a thunder.
*
“You were always unworthy of him. Fairies have the fiercest hearts!”
Oona is unbearable when she is jealous and thwarted. She likes to torture Lily’s eyes with a bouncing blast of light that she is no longer accustomed to. Lily refuses to flinch away even as the burn of fairy glow pulls tears from her eyes.
“You are a creature of light, Oona, but your light is that of broken mirrors and glass shards. You are lovely, but the sight of you brings no joy. Your light is made of sharp, selfish things that are careless of others. That is why you will never have Jack's heart."
Lily watches Oona’s glittering golden face sparkle even more with the spill of diamond-bright tears. "If I hear tell of you using your glamour on Jack once more, I will have you baked into a pie! The last glow anyone will see from you is the fire baking your flesh!"
There is an explosion of fairie dust as Oona shrinks down to a spark and tears off in a wailing golden trail into the orange light of the horizon that breaks through the gaps of black clouds.
*
Jack still makes love to her on moonlit nights in the forest. He can’t stay away, despite all her warnings, and neither can she. Darkness knows, of course, thinks it amusing. Oona knows as well, thinks it less amusing.
It enrages Oona, that it is not her own embrace Jack finds comfort in, but that of the elf’s.
*
Jack’s purity burns like winter air, a blinding white fire that makes her lungs gasp for each excruciating breath each time she sees him again after a long absence. Lily is not trying to corrupt with the nights she steals with him, from him. She just wants to burn herself clean and soak up some of his warmth. There is plenty of heat in the lair of the dark Lord, but there is never any warmth.
After everything, Jack still gives her all the warmth he has to give.
*
She runs the sword through the goblin. A deep dark rush of satisfaction grips her at the sight of his heart exploding. Her black leather jerkin is an unavoidable mess. The sword is the lovely forbidden elvish one that had been gifted to her in the same manner as one would humor a favored pet with a treat. It is a symbol of mockery. Her Lord does not believe she can affect any change that matters as long as she is Black Lily.
A sword is still a sword, no matter the spirit in which it was given. She cleans it of blood and the revolting general wetness of goblin on a patch of grass.
She pauses when she realizes what she’s done. It is not true Winter anymore, though it is a far cry from Spring.
Lily is surprised and more than a little grateful, that Gump does not shake her off when she grabs his hand and jerks him to his feet. He shakes his head at her, but the corner of his mouth twitches. Of course. She is silly. Elves never need help getting to their feet. She pauses for a moment to acknowledge the wave of envy that crashes over her and then lets it go. She doesn’t want to turn into Oona.
Gump favors Lily with a gaze full of a great pity that she doesn’t think she deserves but accepts it for the offering that it is. “You are a thing caught between,” he tells her in his solemn, eerie way. “Elves know a thing or two about existing in the In-Between.”
She catches his eye, and thinks maybe, just maybe, there is more to the world than innocence and the loss of it. Than evil and the rejection of it. She thinks of the life of an elf and wonders if he tires of such woeful dualities.
“Watch over Jack for me,” she says. Time is short and even in this dark world, elves still posess the lion’s share of it.
“Of course.” He gifts her with a courtly nod of his head.
She grabs at his shoulder. He startles, not affronted but caught by surprise. “No! Not just his health. His happiness. Do what you can to make him know happiness again. Please!”
“Then come back to him, if you want to bring him this strange, human notion of happiness.”
“It is not possible. He changed me.” She needn’t clarify who He is. “I can never again be the White Lily he knew. Though the Black Lily loves him just as much.” She swallows back a sob.
When she looks up again, Gump is already disappearing over the horizon, but she finds her hand folded over a tiny acorn top filled with elderberry wine.
Seconds later, the sound of goblin shrieks rip the air. The thundering of hooves accompanies it, but it’s not the kind her heart is always listening for.
Lily downs the precious bit of courage-strengthening spirits and hefts her stolen Champion's sword. She spins the hilt in her grip until she has the knack of the weight and can bear it comfortably. There are still things out in the world that need defending.
*
Her tears now are black as the wine in the silver goblets Darkness plies her with. Black liquid pearls that gleam in the firelight no less than they had when they were still clear as crystal. Darkness still marvels at them, carefully gathering each one on a long curved claw and holding it up to the light, noting its clarity with a jeweler’s eye.
When He first saw her shed tears dark as His wine, He rubbed one between the pads of His fingertips -- as if making her sorrow more real by solidifying it, alchemizing it -- and then strode back towards her with that heavy satyr’s gait to press it to her darkened lips. He rolled it down her chin. Down her neck to the hollow of her throat.
Down, down, down the unending line of skin bisecting her shadowdancer’s gown. Down, down, down. Even further until He had the black pearl still delicately balanced on the underside divot of a claw, and pressed it inside of her. Delighted by the idea of feeding her own perversity back to her.
*
Afterwards, much later in the day that was really night, was the first time the Night Mares came to her. They’re not all mares, some are stallions, but it’s a figure of speech made real. Solidified. A dark innocence, full of unbearable familiarity with the world’s darkness, and yet --
and yet.
Uncorrupted by it.
Before she does so, she is aware of the irony of repeating the same cataclysmic action. But this time it is darkness, and by extension Darkness, she is affecting, not light. This one will not hesitate to let her touch it. It will not spook so easily. It will not be unmade at her touch. It is made of fiercer things.
She gasps awake from the vision with the feel of velvet tingling her fingertips. She recalls the point of the unicorn’s horn just as she is made aware of the precise pinpricks of the open wounds Darkness’s fangs have left on her sunlight-starved thighs. There are thin trails of blood smeared down to her knees.
His laughter reverberates with its cavernous echo deep inside, deeper even than where His fingers reach. The sound is a physical presence, the force of a gale wind that slams her head back in agony or pleasure that cannot be distinguished anymore. Already, He has forgotten that she does nothing for His pleasure.
If she had any presence of mind she would roll herself on top of Him and impale herself to elicit some relief, but instead He pulls the shadows from the firelight and toys with her, makes them dance in appalling shapes. He has made a children’s game into a horror of lust that never quite quenches the dark ache inside. Over and over, until the beads of darkness trail down her face like dark wine, like black pearls waiting to be made solid.
*
Darkness can be merciful when it pleases it, and so can He.
He is not kind, never that. But He can be a hideous sort of pleasant, if the mood strikes Him, and it does more often than one would think. He bestows her with a kind of humoring benevolence. Darkness is the original seducer, after all. That is one of His greatest magic tricks. To make one desire that which should be undesirable.
He has stolen her dreams, so she has had to make new ones. Strange ones.
He gloats over all the things He has taught her, but He doesn't realize just how many.
Lily has always been something of a thief.
*
Lily is deliberate with her wording as she pulls him down on top of her. "Will you come closer for a spell, Jack?” She wonders if Darkness is listening.
She meets his eyes and all she sees is love and trust. It makes her fearful and brave all at once. It quickens her heart.
*
Lily is deliberate with her wording as she pulls Him down on top of her. “Will you come closer for a spell, my darkness?” She wonders if they are listening.
Charmed, seduced, hypnotized, He obliges.
Darkness follows the split of the dress's design with a poison green claw that glows in the dark, makes her see afterimages when she stares at it. He drags it all the way down her marble colored skin with just enough pressure to break it. He follows the blood with His tongue. He bites into the flesh between her thighs with a firm grasp of fangs. Thoughtlessly she grabs hold of those enormous curved black horns, the touch of which sends another shockwave through her and he laughs hugely, richly. It is like being fed the most ghastly dessert.
Lily wonders why He bothers with goblins, when He could have the world on its knees with just this, the feel of his mouth. She dares wonder -- just for a moment, before sense returns to her -- how Jack would react to touches such as these.
*
Lily makes terrible, exquisite love with shadows. When she is with Darkness He is not gentle, but strategic, so that even when she is sure she will be ripped apart like a scrap of the poorest linen, her eyes still roll back in her skull in agony, in excruciating ecstasy. And with this feeling as of late, there is another. Her skull feels as if it will crack apart, as if battered through by hundreds of galloping dark horses. Some of them have dark spiraling horns that point towards the dark sky. Surely they can't be unicorns, can they? These are not creatures of innocence and light.
Her heart pounds as if those very same horses are stampeding on her chest. It is a strange pleasure, as all pleasure is in this dark kingdom. One learns to be grateful that there is any pleasure to be found.
She has visions of them more frequently now. Her nights blur with the flurry of the sight of their hooves. Not even Jack knows about the visions she’s always had long before the world frosted over. She's always been far too fearful of their meaning. This time, instead of the world frosting over to a blanket of empty white where time stands still, it is a churning black mass of clouds where time speeds by in a rush of wind and hours pass in the blink of an eye.
*
Lily is made up of two sides, split between moonlight and firelight. One is pure and good, and the other is fierce and strong. The Dancing Black Dress is something else. One night, without meaning to, she lets the Shadow spin free from her grasp in Jack’s presence.
“Come here, Lily’s Shadow,” he whispers, as if beckoning to a bird or a fox. Lily can detect no fear in his voice. It spins slowly in place, as if hesitating. “I love all the Lilys,” he says, the complete trust in his voice makes her ache. Gump has been talking.
And it does come here. Not even Lily’s Shadow can resist Jack. If there is any creature that can resist him, she has yet to witness it.
*
The Dark Ones still visit her every time she closes her eyes and spins off from the rest of the world. She's standing in a glade and her deathly pallor is lit with a sunset's orange glow. Or perhaps it is a sunrise. It is hard to tell in this in-between world that Lord Darkness hasn't been able to fully claim as His own.
He is distracted with finding the White Mare and the incompetence of greedy goblins. He does not care if she makes sad love to her long-lost forest-boy to amuse herself in His absence. All that matters is that she still belong to Him when He returns.
“I have something to show you. Someones, actually.” The thunder of hooves is deafening in her ears and this is the right spot, though Jack can’t hear it yet. It is not a sound best accompanied by the delicate piping of flutes. No, a ferocious drumbeat would serve this meeting best.
She holds Jack’s gaze and he meets it, returns it without flinching. "I trust you, Lily."
Even now, though she still reeks of that horned Beast. Even now, as they stand in the eye of the storm.
“You can touch them!” she shouts over the thunder of hooves and storm, which in that moment seems like the most important thing in the world. Jack gasps at the sight of the Night Mare and Stallion and the whole rest of the herd crashing through the trees not far behind. These Dark Ones have the same spiraling horns that have become so familiar through despair, however ebony they may be. But these unicorns do not hold still and warily wait to be touched. Instead they race towards their Creator, and they do so on magnificent pairs of wings.
Lily grabs Jack’s hand and pulls with all her strength and will until they're both running faster than they ever have before to meet them. Cries of rage ring throughout the land and echo in her head as He realizes what She's done.
And yet, She still dares to touch all the beauty the world has left to give.