The truth, however painful it may be, will set you free. Think of it, the unthinkable. That which is, this everything about us. Under us.
Marylou felt it, in her blood like a lightening river, pulsing out painfully to one inexorable conclusion. Her father was alive, and in captivity. The pain of imagining. What must he have felt? The cold reality of a sword, held to his throat, or worse. Marylou couldn't think of it. Her father, Hans Sneebum, was a pacifist, through and through. She remembered him in her thirteenth year. They stood together on the banks of the Vertigo, away from the family at the edge of the swiftly moving waters.
"Father, tell me what it is that makes humans the way they are." She stood, tall for her age and not yet grown into her natural grace. Beside her, her father, a man of forty two years with beard and homemade overalls, felt a deep satisfaction. What wondrous spirits, what divine grace, had bestowed upon him this daughter, this jewel of innocent wisdom?
He gave himself time before answering, staring into the shifting reflections. What, indeed? The moon caught each small wave and graced it with a fleeting light. He strove, internally, to reflect a knowingness, an answer to her question.
"We are born into this world in grace, Marylou. On the night you were born, your mother labored so hard. To bring another human into this world, think of it! How amazing. And the instant you were born, your eyes shone like dark stones, and you did not cry. She and I looked into your face, so small and real, out of seeming nothingness." He paused and looked to Marylou, her silhouette silver in the moonlight. She stood still, listening with her every fiber.
"And every day since that day, you have been human." They stood quietly together, each striving to understand this humanness, this corporeal slant.
"I don't know what it is to be human, except to say that it is falling hard away from God, and yet falling towards God at every moment. It is divine folly."
That is how Marylou remembered her father. Standing on the shore, shifting patiently from one barefoot to the other on the worn river stones. He was kind and gentle, and he fell into the Vertigo and the river took him here, to this cruel place in the future, the lair of Lady Angela.

"Are you saying that you have my father?" Marylou's heart pounded, and her words came out wet like blood drops.
"He is safe, and waiting for your arrival." Lady Angela demurred. Her lips twitched almost imperceptibly, and she looked cooly over at George, and then back at Marylou. "He is in our finest facility"
Anger, drumming with every heart beat at her temples and in her throat, caused Marylou to shout with uncontrolled fury. "He has nothing for you! He is a seed peddler!" Marylou's hair sprang out like black fire from beneath the golden circlet. George witnessed, he saw the truth of the moment. The golden circlets! The two women stood face to face. Identical crowns upon such different heads.
"He has you, Marylou. And now I too have you, and we will continue on this journey and you will see your father. But first, you must give me the golden circlet."