Lily's Note:

You see where this is going, don't you?
    They prey on the vulnerable and the lost. The water tribes are the worst because they do more than seduce and ruin. They are savage, the outlaws of the sea. They're the voice that whispers Come into the water so that you drown. They're the light on the ocean that leads you away. They're what hide in the dark pools, waiting to drag you down.
    They come ashore, sometimes, when they are hungry, or when they are exiled by their own people.
    In 1986, Leander Cyrus met the Gorgon and her family of Jacks and Jills.
    How do you think this will end?


Missing Boy Feared Dead

Owen Thyme, a young athlete from the Noe Valley neighborhood, missing since yesterday, is now believed dead. Police authorities have found evidence of his drowning in an abandoned well behind his house, although a body has not yet been found. Rescue teams have discovered that the well was built above an underground water source that may, oddly enough, lead to the ocean and, unfortunately, hamper their ability to locate Owen Thyme. Bloody footprints were discovered leading to the well and a jacket belonging to the victim was found nearby.

                                            San Francisco Chronicle 1971
                                                                           ***

(Illustration: Warwick Goble)

Jack and Jill: Lily's Story

I WON'T USE YOUR NAME, BRAVE, fierce sister, because there is power in a name. (I'm even beginning to sound like them now). You've probably found my journal, so this isn't for you alone, but for others who've stumbled across Their path.
    And you know who you are, don't you?
    It began, for me, with a walk in the woods, on the day our mother died, only I hadn't known she would die. It was winter. I saw the two dead children at an old well. Their velvet clothes looked motheaten and old. They were so white, it was like they hadn't any blood. When they looked at me, their eyes were like polished silver. And they were barefoot, in the snow. They were so serious about the dolls they were playing with. The dolls were just sticks wrapped in gauze, with small, porcelain faces glued on top. I don't know what made me recite the nursery rhyme. It wasn't anything dad had taught us, though you'd think, with him being an expert in folklore, he'd have known about Them and warned us.
    "Jack and Jill went up a hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill--"
    One of the kids stood up and looked at me. He was my age -- I was thirteen -- and he wore a red velvet suit patched with mold. He was holding an old Halloween mask, a plastic rabbit face. His skin wasn't an albino's white...it was like snow. I wanted to run when he said, "You shouldn't talk about them like that."
    I said, rude, because I was scared, "Talk about who?"
    "Jacks and Jills." The girl frowned. She wore green velvet and a necklace of beetles made of tarnished pewter. "Dead people stuffed with flowers."
    The sun faded then, and their eyes glowed. I could see the veins in their skin -- it was like looking at our mom's creepy, ball-jointed dolls come to life. And it suddenly got colder than winter, a chill you find in basements, in stone places. I backed away, whispered, "What are you?"
    "We could have been Jacks and Jills. We're only dead things now."
    And I heard you calling me. And I ran. I ran away from them. I ran out of that dark place.
    And a couple of years later, in a different city, I stumbled back into it.
    Do you remember Leander? The boy I loved? He isn't what we thought he was...

(Illustration: Arthur Rackham)

Lily Rose's Journal: One

I THINK THEY ARE THE DARK FAERIES...

They call us 'things with teeth', because they have no true form, no real biology. They steal our identities. They steal us. I hope there are more good ones than bad. I'm going to tell you about both, because if you've ever encountered the bad, you'll need to know about the good.

I haven't met very many of the good.

My name is Lily Rose. I'm seventeen years old. I was 15 when I found out about the ones who walk between, the spirit people who call themselves Fatas, tribes and courts who mingle with our dead while taking us away from what we love.

Theirs is a world of rot and ruin that sometimes bleeds into ours...and that is something they cannot do -- bleed. They are not flesh and blood.

But we are.

These are the stories I've learned, and these are the secrets of the Fatas.

                       THE BALLAD OF MAUDE CLARE

                             A girl named Maude Clare
                             followed a hare
                             to a black metal house
                             that is no longer there.
                             And what did she find
                             in the dark of that place?
                             A prince with no heart and a beautiful face.