Chapter 64. A Lullaby Opened the Door, and Millie Finally Remembered Who Sang It First

Chapter 64: 64. A Lullaby Opened the Door, and Millie Finally Remembered Who Sang It First

The warmother led us down a long spiral stair, deeper and deeper into the rock.

I can feel the air grew colder. The torches thinned out, and the walls changed from rough gray stone to something smoother and paler.

After a while, I realized they weren’t stone at all... They were glass, a dull, milky white, faintly luminous.

At the very bottom of the stairs, there was a door.

It was huge. It was easily twenty feet high, a single slab of pale stone with no handle, no hinge, and no lock.

It was carved across its face in intricate relief, a great crescent moon, with a small rabbit sitting in the curve of it, gazing upward.

The carving was so delicate that I could see the whiskers.

"For twenty years," said the Warmother, "the clan has sworn to guard this door and never open it."

"We are the Shield-sworn... It was entrusted to us by the queen herself."

"We were told that only one could open it... and that she would come when the moon was ready."

She turned to Millie.

I felt Millie stiffen beside me. She stood very small in front of that enormous door, her white hair loose over her shoulders, and her hands clasped in front of her.

"You do not have to do this," Bonette whispered, kneeling beside her. "Highness, you owe no one..."

"If you are not ready, we can wait."

"I know..." Millie said softly.

She looked at the door. Then she looked at me, and I held out my hand.

She took it and held it for a moment, and I felt her fingers tremble.

Then she let go.

"I’m ready... for the future of our kind."

She stepped forward and laid her palm flat against the carved rabbit, and she began to sing.

I’d heard that tune before... I’d heard it in the camp, over the sleeping Oathglass, and in the tent, whispered through tears.

But this was different... It filled the stairwell.

It rose from her chest in a clear, high, trembling voice that bounced off the glass walls and came back doubled, and the words were no longer just sounds.

They were real words... strange and soft and even beautiful, in a language I didn’t know.

I don’t know how long it went on. It felt like a minute.

It felt like an hour... I only know that when I looked at Bonette, she was kneeling with both hands clapped over her mouth, tears pouring down her face, and not a sound coming out.

Elsbeth had lowered her head. Velora, standing a little apart, had gone motionless, and even the Warmother had closed her eyes.

The carving of the moon began to glow.

First... a faint silver shimmer, then a bright, steady radiance that spilled across the stone like water.

The rabbit seemed to turn its head.

A long, low tremor ran through the floor, and the great slab shuddered, groaned, and began to open, two halves sliding apart like a pair of hands.

Millie swayed.

Her song stopped. Her eyes had gone wide and glassy, and she stared at nothing with her lips that parted.

A ripple of silver light ran through her hair and down her ears, and her knees began to buckle.

I caught her before she hit the floor.

"Millie? Millie, hey...! Are you alright?!" I asked with a worried tone.

"I remember," she whispered. "I remember her..."

"She had a blue ribbon, and she... smelled like honey." Her fingers dug into my sleeve. "And there was a man..."

"He gave me a sweet... He had a nice laugh, and he was always so nice to me... to us..."

My blood went cold. It’s the same thing that I heard back then.

"Who was he...?" I asked, as gently as I could.

"I can’t... see his face." She shook her head. "It’s like a smudge..."

"I can almost, almost see..."

She winced and pressed a hand to her temple.

The silver glow flickered along the edge of her ear, once, twice, and then gradually faded, and she sagged into my arms... trembling.

Behind me, Bonette said, very quietly, "Highness... Do not push yourself."

I looked around at her. She was standing a few feet away, perfectly still... and I swear her face had gone gray.

But when I blinked, it was just Bonette again... looking all small and plain and anxious, wringing her hands.

The chamber behind the door was a perfect circle.

It was a great, domed hall with walls of white glass that glowed from within, like the inside of a pearl.

A shallow, round pool filled the center, its water so still and clear that it looked like a mirror. And above the pool, standing upright on a pedestal of silver stone, was a huge, round looking glass in a frame of carved moonstone.

Millie walked toward it, hardly seeming to notice she was moving.

As she stepped into the pool, the water around her ankles glowed... The mirror brightened.

A shape appeared inside it.

She was a tall, slender woman with long white hair and a small, tired smile. She wore a blue ribbon at her throat.

Her ears were long and soft, like Millie’s, and her eyes were the same pale, reddish pink. She looked at us from the glass with a love so naked that I had to look away.

"My daughter..." she said. "Oh, my sweet daughter...’

Millie made a sound like a hurt animal.

"I am Ilvaine Lunhare, Queen of the Moon," said the woman in the mirror. "If you are hearing this... then twenty years have passed, and the seals have begun to break..."

"I am so... sorry that I could not be with you... especially seeing how much you’ve grown as my sweet daughter..."

I’d never seen so many people trying not to cry at once. Even Velora was staring fixedly at the ceiling.

"Milunaria," the queen said, softly. "My little moon..."

Millie began to sob. But there was something different in it, something that wasn’t pain.

When Maldric had said that name in the canyon, it had hit her like a blow.

But now... spoken in her mother’s voice, it just sounded like her name.

The queen explained, in a gentle, steady voice, what she had done. She had laid three seals upon her daughter, and each was bound to a key.

The first, the Seal of Shadow, would fall when the princess felt truly safe.

The second, the Seal of Memory, would open when she heard her mother’s song.

And the third, the Seal of Moon, the one that held her true power... would break only when she chose something to protect with her whole life.

"Not a duty," the queen said. "Not a vow made out of fear, but a choice..."

’Freely made, and wholly yours."

I heard Bonette make a small, choked sound.

"I must tell you one more thing," the queen went on.

She looked tired now, and a faint shadow crossed her face. "I have looked into this mirror many times... my love... and I have seen a stranger..."

"A man from a world where the moon is only a lump of rock..."

"He will come to you with an open hand..."

I stopped breathing. And that gave me a goosebump... a bigger one at that.

She... knows me...?

"Do not fear him," said the queen. "The moon did not choose him..."

"The moon was asked..."

The words hung in the air like a bell tone. And that... just makes me even more fearful.

And so... I had to lower the tension, not just me but the whole room.

"Guest...?" I said, in a faint voice. "I haven’t even been offered tea..."

There was a very long silence. Then Elsbeth made a noise that might have been a cough.

Velora’s mouth twitched. And someone, I think it was Sylvara, let out a small, startled laugh, and the spell of that terrible solemn moment broke.

Even Millie, with tears running down her face, huffed a damp little giggle.

"I am sorry, my darling..." the queen said, with a gentle smile, as if she had heard it. "I could not stay..."

"But you always have to know this... that I... have always loved you." The queen’s eyes start to get tearful. "Always... even if your mother’s not there with you anymore."

She lifted her hands and began to sing.

It was the lullaby... And Millie, standing knee-deep in the glowing water, with her head thrown back and tears streaming down her face... sang with her.

I watched from the doorway, and I could not have said a word if my life depended on it.

Afterward... when the glass had gone dark and the pool had stilled, Bonette went down on one knee in front of Millie and bowed her head.

"Princess Milunaria," she whispered.

Millie looked at her for a long time. Then she shook her head, very slightly.

"I’ll take it," she said. "That name... It’s mine, and I want it."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "But I want to keep Millie, too..."

"Millie was the girl who held the man from a world where the moon is only a lump of rock..." Millie giggled. "I like her... and I don’t want to lose her."

I turned away... I had to.

I stared very hard at a wall of white glass until my eyes stopped stinging.