Liliana Blossom's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Liliana Blossom had asked one plain question at the river three days ago, and now she could not walk ten steps alone. She wanted to find the silverback king, the one the forest whispered about, the one who had sworn off love and lived where no petitioner reached him. She was a pink ape whose fur grew in the shape of lilies. People stared. Animals, it turned out, stared too. Behind her this morning trailed four rabbits, a fox kit, and a chipmunk who would not stop chittering. A jay flew ahead and announced her at every bend. She had learned young to listen and to hold what people told her. She had not learned how to shake a parade. She stopped at a clearing where a purple treehouse sat crooked in an old oak, a jungle gym bolted to its side. A girl her age leaned on the low rail, chin in hand, watching the crowd behind Liliana with open interest. "You're the pink one," the girl said. "Word travels. He won't see you if you come with an audience." Liliana felt the old heat rise, the same heat from the woman two years gone who had said she needed someone who did not make people stare. Needed. She pushed the word down. "Then tell me how to lose them." The girl climbed down. She picked up a painted stone from the garden, a boulder-face ringed with neon ladybugs, and set it in the center of the path. "Gifts," she said. "They follow you because no one's ever asked after the king before. Give them something to guard instead." She pressed a small carved chipmunk into Liliana's palm, cherry wood, a lotus cupped in its paws. "Leave pieces. They'll stay with what you leave." Liliana walked the long path alone for the first time in three days. At each fork she set something down. The painted stone by the roots. A mossy fawnprint rock at the bend. The carved chipmunk on a flat log. The animals stopped one by one, circling each offering, murmuring over it like a shrine. By the time she reached the crystal spring, its water glowing pale blue under drifting butterflies, no creature followed her. She could hear her own breath. She knelt at the water's edge and drew a wooden pendant from her chest fur, a hummingbird ringed with peace lilies, the last thing she had to give. She set it on a smooth stone at the spring's lip, where anyone crossing to the deeper forest would have to see it. Then she sat back on her heels and waited. The path beyond the spring ran into shadow, into the part of the forest where the king was said to keep his silence. She was alone now, and visible, and no one stood between her and the door she meant to knock on. The audience was gone. The harder walk began.