In Lily’s Garden.

Pieces of Lily’s Dream

I spread one of the drawn pages wide, using it as a vehicle to fly through a starry, black universe. The most memorable scene that came to mind was of a child in a yellow cloak facing a black sphere. To resemble that child, I painted my black cloak yellow and folded the page into a yellow hot air balloon. In the center of the balloon, I drew a black lantern and added a black flame to it. As I did, the shining stars disappeared, and a giant black sphere emerged.

As I approached the black sphere, I saw something that I couldn’t have seen from the attic. I wanted to converse with the black sphere, just like the child in the yellow cloak, but I couldn’t hear what they had been discussing. Then, the black sphere recognized me and spoke first.

“Have you finished your homework?”

I froze. Homework? What homework?

In that moment, the book Bella’s Halloween Yellow I had read in the attic came to mind. At the beginning of that book, there was a conversation between the child in the yellow cloak and the black sphere. I tried to recall their conversation, particularly the part where the child in the yellow cloak completed the task.

I quickly wrote down the homework I remembered from the book and handed it over to the black sphere. The page was absorbed into the sphere, disappearing inside.

Ah… this must be the exact moment when the child in the yellow cloak disappeared into the black sphere.

I entered the black sphere. Inside, it was pitch black. As I crossed the threshold, the yellow cloak I had painted lost its color and turned back to black.

In the distance, something was glowing. I hesitated, wondering if I should walk toward it, but I stopped.

There was no need to get any closer.

It was the attic I had shared with Lily.

My resolve to enter the transparent bookshelf seemed to dissolve, like mist.

Had the child in the yellow cloak been hiding in the attic? Or had they gone somewhere else? Even if we entered the same space, was there a set path for both the child in the yellow cloak and myself to follow?

The yellow cloak I had painted returned to black.

I could no longer pretend to be the child in the yellow cloak.

That method was no longer viable.

So what should I do now?

I decided to walk toward the light. And what I found was the same transparent bookshelf.

Something came to mind, and I began to write on the page.

The title was The Story of Ancient Writer A. Lily had said she would come to find me, but the child in the yellow cloak had not reached the attic, so I thought Lily had followed the path the other children were taking. Therefore, there was no need for me to search for or follow her.

In the end, I would not be able to go. This structure was designed that way. I had my doubts, but I had hoped otherwise deep down. How could I not know myself?

This space is one I created.

Now I remember.

I need to fill these pages with stories and write out the dreams Lily would have. I recall how Lily wanted to hear the sounds outside the window and longed to go out. But why did she disappear into the transparent bookshelf instead of going outside? As I was writing, I stopped and looked out the window.

I unlocked the latch and opened it. To my surprise, the beautiful garden that had once stretched out beyond the attic window was now replaced by a vast library. Was the garden there because of Lily’s presence? Now that she was gone, I felt as though I was seeing the true appearance of the attic for the first time. Carefully, I climbed over the windowsill and stepped into the bright library. As I walked through the scent of old books and a myriad of sounds, I realized this was the study from the transparent bookshelf, the one with the man and the old typewriter.

Was the first woman to come here me?

The man surely exists here. But when the woman appeared, the man and the typewriter vanished, leaving me unsure if I would be able to meet him. Even if we were in the same space, it seemed there was a different dimension I could not reach. In the scene I remembered, the woman had placed a book on the desk when the man was writing his unfinished manuscript on the old typewriter. I realized I needed to hand over the manuscript to the man. But I couldn’t remember what the book was. So, I picked a random book from the library, placed it on the desk where the man had been sitting, and gazed at the moon reflected in the window.

Suddenly, a scene from the attic came to mind.

Like the woman in that scene, I reached out toward the reflected moon.

Something miraculous happened.

Just like the woman in the pages, the moon turned into a diamond in my hand. When I placed it around my neck, it became a necklace.

“It’s a contract.”

A voice echoed from somewhere.

It sounded like it was reverberating inside my head.

The man in the study, the old typewriter, the unfinished manuscript, the man and typewriter that had vanished when the woman appeared.

And I was imitating the woman from that scene.

I was that woman.

The person who crossed over to fill the pages of the transparent bookshelf, and the man who wrote on the old typewriter.

If that man symbolizes writers, then I must now recruit writers to create my books. First, I need to find the presence Lily mentioned in the attic. Although Lily couldn’t hear my voice, she was conversing with someone before she disappeared into the transparent bookshelf. This implies that there was another presence in the attic besides Lily and me.

How did I miss that?

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me.

Had I really heard Lily’s voice?

Lily couldn’t hear my voice, and she was talking to someone else. Was the voice I heard Lily’s, or was it from another presence? I needed to find out.

There was no need to worry about where to go. From the moment I transformed the moon into a diamond necklace, I knew exactly where to head. The moon was pulling me strongly. I pushed aside the transparent curtain that couldn’t be seen from the attic, opened the window, and stood on the ledge. Then, I leaped off. I headed in the direction that pulled me.

Beyond the study was a vast, desolate yet beautiful space, and I hurtled toward the Earth at an immense speed. I arrived behind the scene of a woman lounging on a sofa, looking at her phone. I moved the text on her screen to make it easier for her to read, and she copied the text I had moved, bought a related book, and jotted down an outline as she pondered it.

The woman discovered my name and Lily’s name, deducing the existence of another entity in the attic, which she named “Christine.” She then created a character in the story who could move as she did, naming it after me as “Christine Eve.”

After seeing what the woman had written, I decided that I must find the translator “Christine” who had been in the attic with Lily and me. I decided to return to where I had been and repaint the red Torii gate I had seen in Japan black. I held a black string in one hand and a white string in the other, ready to find Christine. The black string held the black sphere, while the white string held my light.

I passed through the black Torii gate and climbed a massive staircase. Then I decorated the temple with elements of ancient Greek temples and Belgian cathedrals. On one side, I made a rooftop pool. A bright, full moon shone down on the pool. The water in the pool flowed down, cascading into the vast space below, and the droplets became stars that poured out from the Aquarius constellation.

I will have the woman inscribe every record onto that moon. As I recalled everything I had regained, I realized that there was once another woman who had been doing the same work.

“       .”

I thought of the pages I had seen in the attic. The ones the child in the blue cloak was holding those were fragments taken from a sea of light energy.

“If there’s light, I can go anywhere.”

I spoke out loud for the first time.

The woman’s voice began to fade.

The Little Mermaid lost her voice but gained legs. So, does that mean I will now lose my legs? When the contract was sealed, I lost my legs, and the woman gained them. I gained a voice, and the woman gradually lost hers.

I told the woman that now that I could no longer move, she was taking me to the place where my light had been. The sole condition of our contract was that Lily had to move for the woman to move. The woman would be able to make Lily do anything. I was happy that the woman had chosen to live on my behalf. Like the clock the child in the green cloak held, I drew my own clock so I could track where Lily had gone. Then I hid the clock inside the one at Antwerp Central Station, waiting for the moment when the two clocks would align once more.