Alizarin Crimson

by Erica Millard

  “So what did happen with Andy last night?” Kendra asked. “They told us this morning there was an accident but everyone was fine.”

  How could I explain I lost control? It was super embarrassing the way Andy and I just went at it. I told her what happened. She sat with her mouth wide open for a full minute.

  “So, let me get this straight. Smoking hot Andy was all over you, and you sent him to the hospital.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Yeah, but still.”

  “First of all, I don’t even know him. Secondly, it wasn’t real. None of it . . . well maybe a little, but really. It was the red. Not only did it influence my emotions, but also it influenced his. You should’ve seen him. He knew it was all wrong, and so did I.”

  Kendra wrinkled her nose and didn’t look convinced. “I guess. Remind me to never let my boyfriend touch you.”

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “No, but when I do.”

  “So, it was just one gigantic accident, and then Cate attacked me.”

  “I thought we should go out to eat because Cate has been threatening you all day. No one knew what really happened, and Cate acted like you assaulted Andy for no reason.”

  “Really?” I rubbed my face in my hand and suddenly felt very tired. “No wonder everyone was gawking at me. Why didn’t she come up to my room to confront me?”

  “I think she wanted everyone else to see. She was probably hoping to provoke you into hurting her so you’d get thrown out.”

  “If this place wasn’t the ticket to me learning how to control my Talent, I’d be out of here in a heartbeat. Everyone’s terrified of me”

  “You do seem to have worse luck than others I’ve seen,” Kendra said.

  “I’m even madder because Leslie said if there were no more incidents, I could consider going back to art school. And she doesn’t even know about what happened in Grand Central.”

  “I wouldn’t tell her if I were you,” Kendra said.

  “Not in a million years. I wish there were a way to turn this Talent thing off,” I said. “I’ve only been an Aolian a few days, and I’ve already almost killed myself and others.”

  “If there were a way, I’d have found it by now.” Kendra stared out into the trees, her expression sad. We were silent a moment, and the breeze trickled through the leaves, making them dance with light then dark green in the fading light.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “How does your Talent work? What’s it like?” I picked at the paint on the table, and it wedged under my fingernail. Kendra didn’t say anything for so long I said, “You don’t have to tell me.”

  She took a deep breath. “My Talent includes ninety percent self-loathing.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “In the intro class did they tell you, ‘You’re so lucky. You’ve found the thing you were meant to be’?”

  “Yeah, he did say that.”

  “They say it all the time. But look at my Talent. I hurt people. Really? That’s what I’m supposed to do? That’s what I’m supposed to be? Make people pass out because they’re in so much pain?”

  “I can see what you mean,” I said.

  “Why can’t I turn invisible or be strong or forecast the weather?”

  “That totally sucks.” I could relate to the self-loathing. But at least I had painting to keep centered. Maybe fashion helped her do that. “So why are you here? I thought it was a place to help develop Talent.”

  “My mom makes me come here every summer. She says I need to become the best at ‘what I’m supposed to be.’” Kendra made a face. “But it does help me to learn to control it. Control makes it so I don’t hurt anyone. I think you understand a thing or two about losing control.”

  I stuck out my tongue at her. “If it makes you feel any better, when you hurt me it was actually a good thing.”

  “That was the first and probably last time.”

  “So, I really want to go back to art school, but with what happened at Grand Central . . . who was that? Why would someone attack me?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it since we talked at the mall.” Kendra shook her head ever so slightly. “It just seems so strange, and it freaked me out, so I called my grandma.”

  “You did what?” I said, horrified.

  “Relax. I didn’t mention you or what happened. I just asked her if she had ever heard of a new Aolian getting attacked. She’s always been easier to talk to than my mom.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “It was really weird, instead of answering she just told me that there was another group of Aolians, something outside the counsel.”

  “Really? Did she say anything else?”

  “No, my mother came in the room and she started talking about something else.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah. It’s strange. My whole life, I’ve been surrounded by Aolians, but this is the first time I’ve heard of another group.”

  The Councilor said that Aolians were a worldwide organization, but I never stopped to think there might be more than one. “I’ll have to ask around.”

  I threw all our trash in the garbage before we walked back to the car.

  “Thanks for sticking with me today,” I said.

  “No problem. It was worth it to see Cate tied up in a rug.” Kendra smirked. “I guess technically I couldn’t see her.”

  “Well, let’s hope I don’t get expelled.” I thought about Kendra’s Talent and how much she hated it. Maybe I could help her keep her mind off of it. “Hey, can you teach me how to dress better? Not quite like you, but help me find my own style? For cheap, of course.”

  A slow smile lit up her face. “My first apprentice,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  13

  I conclude with the same thing that you said at the end of your letter, that we share a liking for peering behind the scenes, or, in other words, we have a tendency to analyze things.

  —Vincent van Gogh

  In the morning, Leslie called me back to her office for a “chat.” Thank goodness she listened when I told her I’d acted in self-defense. I didn’t get expelled, and she assured me it wouldn’t affect my ability to go back to art school. Since Cate was the instigator, she didn’t get the same reprieve. Poor Leslie. Did she always have to deal with so much drama or was it only me?

  After lunch I headed to yoga, and then Kendra and I spent the rest of the day hanging out in her room. She listened to music and sketched out fashion designs, while I flipped through Aolians and Another World.

  It was pretty much the most interesting textbook I’d ever seen, but how could it not be?

  The first section titled Why We Stay Hidden was pretty self-explanatory and cited everything from witch-hunts to misguided holy wars as reasons the rest of the world didn’t need to know about us. Regular humans were much happier thinking we didn’t exist.

  I read through each of the Talent descriptions. They were amazing and at times terrifying.

  Kendra’s Talent, Agonie, could cause such terrible pain that historically it was used as a torture device. I glanced at where Kendra lay on her bed and couldn’t see it. I understood why she hated her Talent. Her Talent should have been fashion design, if there were such a thing, or at least taking care of fluffy, pink bunnies. My Talent fit so perfectly with painting, and was the only career I ever imagined I would do, but how did Kendra’s Talent fit in with her passions?

  I read over the list of Talents and their descriptions. What would mine say if it were there? No one was going to define my Talent for me or tell me exactly what it was I could do. I took a pen out of my bag and tried to place my Talent in the right classification.

  But I was already stuck. Leslie said that Talents seldom cross the line between living and non-living, but my Talent did. It didn’t fit into the neat boxes these lists implied.

  I wrote—

>   Lifian/Corticum

  Colorist: Intrapersonal/Extra-Hominum/Elemental

  I wanted to write all sorts of snide things under the description section like ability to blow things up and force the Aolian to make out with the first guy who touches her, but then I decided to keep it as professional as possible, like it really could be written in this book.

  (Corticum/Elemental) The ability to move objects of a certain color.

  (Lifian/Intrapersonal) The ability to draw color into the body to store for later use.

  In the other descriptions there was nothing about the Talents taking over the Aolian. But red did. It changed me, leaving me out of control.

  (Lifian/Intrapersonal) Color alters emotions of the Talent.

  (Lifian/Extra-Hominum) Ability to enhance and magnify the emotions of an external person through touch.

  Defining my Talent made me realize how powerful it could be.

  Leslie said the more categories a Talent could influence, the more valuable he or she became. As far as I could tell the only categories that I couldn’t influence were animals, not that I’d tried, and Terraforming. Maybe I could change what was beneath the earth if it was red.

  I turned to the last section in the book labeled, The Aolian Council.

  The Aolian Council exists to ensure the continued safety, security, and secrecy of the Aolian Civilization. Facilities exist all over the United States as well as throughout the world to provide an optimal learning environment for Aolians to learn to use and control their powers.

  It listed five places around the country, including Scarborough Mansion. Fifty other facilities were named around the world.

  A tiny paragraph tucked in at the very end after the details and resources of the Aolian safe houses forced everything else from my mind.

  Aolians who are unable or unwilling to behave in accordance to such laws that ensure Aolian continued secrecy can face incarceration and rehabilitation. If such Aolian continues to jeopardize the anonymity of the whole, the council can elect to have the Aolian terminated.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa—

  Terminated? As in killed? Did they have some Aolian version of the guillotine?

  With what I’d done at Grand Central I put all Aolians at risk, and that was just one Release. It made sense. I had caused a national crisis by one accident. Were there Aolians out there doing stuff like that on purpose?

  “Hey, Kendra?”

  “Yeah?” She didn’t look up.

  “What’s the deal with this whole Aolian Council thing?”

  She glanced at the book in my hand before turning back to her design. “Oh, you know, they make sure Aolians are keeping on the down low.”

  “Uhh, it says here they can decide if an Aolian should be terminated.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kendra said. “It doesn’t happen much . . . anymore. In the last fifty years they have decided that imprisonment is much more humane.”

  Just thinking about losing control made the anger bubble inside me. What if it wasn’t the Aolian’s fault? The words unable or unwilling stuck out at me. It didn’t matter if it was on purpose or not.

  This Aolian thing really sucked.

  That night I went to bed early, hoping that sleep would give me some respite from what my life had morphed into.

  It didn’t.

  I was in a town square with dirt roads and wooden shacks with tiled roofs and the light of candles flickering in a few windows. The last sliver of sun slipped behind the horizon, leaving the sky cold and empty. I wore a long, deep-red linen gown that scratched and rubbed against my skin. My wrists were wedged behind my back making my fingers numb, and I found they were tied to a thick pole. I tried to jerk them free, but the binding held me fast.

  Floods of people circled around me with torches dotting the crowd. They screamed words I couldn’t understand and spat at my bare feet. Fear and anger contorted their dirt-smudged faces into expressions I never could’ve imagined. Some held crude weapons of knives or spiked metal.

  “Please,” begged a voice at my elbow.

  I turned and a girl stood next to me, her hands tied to the pole as well. She appeared to be fifteen or sixteen and had charcoal black hair and irises so dark they seemed all black. Her silk dress shimmered orange against pale blue in the torchlight.

  “Please,” she repeated. “Only you can save me.”

  I twisted my wrists and the bonds cut into my skin.

  “See if you can wiggle your arms free,” I said, but she didn’t move. “Come on, if we are going to get out of this alive, I need your help.”

  Too late.

  The crowd in front of us split, and a man strode forward holding a bright, flaming torch aloft. “For all your evil powers,” his voice booming over the din, “you will burn like any man.”

  “You can do this,” said the girl to me in an unwavering voice. “You are strong enough to save us both.”

  “What can I do?” I shouted, frantically trying to break free.

  The fire leapt from the torch to the mess of straw and sticks at my feet. My dress caught fire and the smoke burned my throat.

  Flames licked up the cloth and pain ripped through my legs and spread all around my body. I reached for the red that had so recently saved me, but there was no anger or color. Instead, I was empty and terrified.

  “Find me,” the girl said. Behind both our backs, her hand wrapped around mine, cool and comforting. “And you can save us both.”

  I woke gasping in my bed in Scarborough Mansion. Sweat saturated my pillow and sheets. The red in my blood swirled and spun, making me dizzy, hot, and angry. Weak moonlight slanted through the massive window, and laid out in squares on my bedspread. I still smelled the smoke that’d just burned my eyes and lungs.

  Later that morning, I went to find the room where I was supposed to meet Danny.

  “You’re late,” he said as I entered.

  “No, I’m not.”

  The room was huge and was probably used as a ballroom back when the house was built. Now it had long, industrial tables with matching chairs. Against one side of the room was a row of cabinets stretching from floor to ceiling. The opposite wall was full of windows, the light diffused by sheer white curtains.

  “We have a big day, so let’s go ahead and get started. As a Colorist, we thought you could start by moving tiny flecks of paint.” He went to a table where little piles of broken, dried paint of different colors lay in rows.

  “I’m sorry to break it to you,” I said looking at the piles, “but I won’t be able to move any of those.”

  “Sure you can,” he said. “Let’s start with this one here.” The bright green pile contained no fleck wider than a blueberry.

  “Really.” Did this guy ever listen to anything anyone else said? “I can’t move it.”

  “Yes, you can.” He motioned to the stool in front of the table. “Sit here. Concentrate on the color.”

  I did, not because he asked it but because I really wanted to see if I could do it. I closed my eyes and reached with that part of my mind that could move red. I projected out to the green, fought to find it, but I couldn’t feel it. To my sixth sense, the color was non-existent.

  I opened my eyes. “I can’t move it,” I said, “because—”

  “Hmmm, maybe you aren’t a Colorist,” Danny interrupted. He wrote on a clipboard, making me feel like a lab experiment. “You paint, right?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “I don’t know. There just isn’t enough information about Colorists. Our historical record about them is quite poor. It’s written they can do miraculous things, including moving anything using color and influencing emotions, but I always thought their abilities were probably exaggerated. We really only know of a few, and the last one was Vincent van Gogh.”

  “What?” I coughed as my throat constricted. “Van Gogh?”

  “Yeah. I’d say you’d be better off not being a Colorist, though. Some Talent scholars believe the overwhelming na
ture of color is what finally drove him mad.”

  I couldn’t breathe. The color drove him mad? The world already had too much red trying to claw its way into my skin. But what if I could move every color? I couldn’t even imagine all the different colors trying to get inside me. Would the power eventually crush me?

  “You said you didn’t know anything about Colorists,” I said.

  “No, I said we didn’t know much about them. Aolians have been around for thousands of years, and we do have ancient records. But the information we have about Colorists is fuzzy at best. That’s why I think their Talents have probably been exaggerated.”

  “Van Gogh was a Colorist?”

  “Some Talent scholars think so. Personally, I’m not so sure.”

  Van Gogh: the artist I loved. The one that haunted me with his use of color and shadow and light and humanity. But he’d taken his own life. He’d struggled for so long, perhaps against the color, and in the end he died and no one won. Not the color Van Gogh gave life, not Van Gogh, and certainly not the rest of us who only had his stunning paintings as relics.

  Red controlled me. I thought here at the mansion there would be someone, some other Colorist to help me so I wouldn’t lose myself. But the last known Colorist couldn’t control himself or the color. What would it do to me?

  “Hello, are you there?” Danny said in that infuriating, condescending voice. “Maybe color isn’t your Talent.”

  “I said I couldn’t move these colors, because I can only move one.”

  “Really?” Danny raised his eyebrows. “Which one?”

  “Red.”

  I couldn’t care less about what he thought at this point. All I could think about was Van Gogh and red. Even though color had driven him mad, could he have the answers I needed? The image of Starry Night flashed behind my eyes. I had to see it. But why? What could it do for me? Was I grasping at anything?

  Danny went to the cupboard on the far end of the room and rummaged through the contents. “Red, red, red,” he mumbled. From the back he grabbed a clear, red capped container of glitter, and laid it on the table in front of me.