Alizarin Crimson

by Erica Millard

  I took my time in the shower, trying to decide what to do next, but failing miserably because all I wanted to do was think about Liam’s arms around me. He finally understood why I’d been so distant, but he never questioned, never touched me when I asked him not to.

  I never realized how intimate it was to sleep next to someone, to give him or her all the trust of unconsciousness. I was glad he was here, with me when I had no one else. Did he really whisper that to me in the darkness last night? Or had it been some dream-wish I’d imagined?

  I extricated myself from the shower with difficulty and started to dress in my typical uniform of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, but as I went to pull on the top I stopped. Liam knew what I was, and the ability to be who I really was with him was joy and relief.

  Screw it. I dug in my bag and put on an emerald-green tank top instead. I was an Aolian and my skin showed the world what I could do.

  I moved all the red around me. Could I do the same with the red inside?

  I brought my palm against my forearm. My skin tingled as I forced the color to conform. A henna-like round medallion bloomed and stayed. Red nearby floated toward the design and filtered through it, but it remained, like a river set on a path that had fresh water always flowing through it, staying between its banks.

  It was my choice to have this red inside me, and I would control it.

  I drew with the red, using my skin as an ever-changing canvas. The red of my arms became oscillating vines, dancing flowers, and intricate tribal patterns. And for the first time I loved this red. I still feared it and the power it represented, but I could not now wish it away. It was a part of me, I could not change that, and I didn’t want to.

  Liam glanced up from the sketchbook in his hand when I stepped into the room, and his gaze instantly flicked to the new patterns now there.

  “Wow,” he said. “You look . . . amazing.”

  “Thanks.” At first I thought the book he held was my Van Gogh notes, but it wasn’t. He held one of my regular sketchbooks, with all the drawings that came from my every day, the way to empty my thoughts before I fell asleep at night.

  My cheeks flamed as I realized in that book where many drawings of him.

  “I hope you don’t mind.” He gestured to the page.

  “No, I don’t mind.” I sat next to him. The deep-black, charcoal drawing was of him, arms outstretched, staff in hand. He wore no shirt, and the muscles of his back were taut with exertion.

  He flipped the page, and the heat rose from my face all the way to my ears. It was a self-portrait. I looked almost as I had when I glanced in the mirror after putting on my tank top, with one important exception: my skin was clear. Clean. No waves of red swept across my arms and chest, no etched lines emanated from the surface. It was my skin from before, perhaps when I’d been happy. Perhaps I’d never be happy again. Maybe that was the real reason Van Gogh was driven mad. Was he ever able to be happy after the color started to control him?

  Liam looked from the drawing and back up at me. He studied the crisscrossing lines on my pale skin. “You don’t need to be ashamed by them, the marks,” he said gently, not quite caressing my bare shoulder, but stayed just far enough away that I felt the heat of his almost-touch. “They’re a part of who you are now, and they are beautiful. You are beautiful.”

  His words send a tingle across the red. “Thank you.” I smiled, but joy had a hard time fighting past the red emotions. “For everything.”

  I reached up, slowly, and brushed one finger, just the tip, along his cheekbone. The reaction was instantaneous. I knew what was coming, and I fought the gravitational pull that drew me towards him. Liam jerked his head back, breaking our contact, gasping and wide-eyed.

  He touched his cheek where my finger had just been.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, instantly regretting the touch. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  He sat, wide-eyed and panting.

  “Is it bad?” I asked.

  “No . . . wow, that was opposite of bad. It was just . . . a lot stronger than I imagined. When you told me earlier, I wasn’t a bit sorry you sent Andy to the hospital, I was even happy when I remembered the bruises you’d given him.” He frowned at the memory. “But now I’ll have to give the guy more credit that he fought it as much as he did and didn’t come back for more.”

  “He said it felt like some kind of drug, but asked me never to touch him again . . . unless that was what I wanted.”

  “Credit lost,” Liam said through gritted teeth.

  I laughed.

  “Although, I can’t blame the guy for trying,” he said.

  “Oh, brother.” I pushed his shoulder. “Well, on to the matter at hand.” I leaped up to grab my bag, and fished out the Dirus, then laid down on my stomach.

  Liam opened the curtain and brought the lamp close, so we could study it with full light. “What does it do?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “It seems to be a plain, solid cylinder, but look, here! If you look in just the right light…” An almost invisible line ran the circumference of the white glass, directly in the middle, cutting the letter R in half. I traced it with my fingernail. “Can you see it?”

  “Yes, there has to be something inside.” Liam picked it up and brought it close to his eye. “But how do we open it?”

  I shrugged, grabbed the Dirus, and stepped into the bathroom. With all my strength, I flung it at the floor. It hit with a loud snap! Instead of damaging the Dirus, it left a wide crack on the tile before skidding loudly across the floor only to get wedged behind the sink.

  “Oops,” I said.

  Liam laughed. “Either we can try dropping it out of our window to the cement below… or maybe you can use your Talent to open it. I think Vinny would’ve made it hard to open, but you will have an easier time than the rest of us, I think.”

  “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said in a cheery voice.

  I took the Dirus in both my hands, each end cradled in my palms, with my elbows beneath. I probed it with my Talent, but I suddenly felt self-conscious with Liam sitting there staring at me. I cleared my throat.

  He noticed. “Did you want me to step outside?”

  “No. No, you’re fine. It’s just the only other person who has ever seen me work my Talent on purpose is Danny, well, and those unlucky ones who have attacked me.” I pulled a face.

  “Remind me never to do that,” Liam said.

  “And I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Van Gogh left this for me to find—he would’ve made it so I could open it.

  I pushed my Talent forward to encompass the white glass, but it was like trying to see through a fog, it was so dense. I was used to sensing red through the thin membrane of skin or out in the open, but here it was buried deep inside. It took several minutes to figure out what was going on. There was red. I pushed harder. Six separate tracks of red, solid, and what was that on the end of each?

  “Maybe we should just drop it out the window,” I said.

  “You can do it, Aya, I know you can.”

  “There are rods inside. At the ends there are hooks, no, not hooks, more like ledges that I need to press forward before I can move the rod down to unlock it. I don’t know what this thing is made of, but it’s almost impossible to see through.”

  “Maybe it’s lined with lead,” Liam said.

  “Lead? Weird. That makes sense.”

  “They put that lead suit over your body when you get x-rays at the dentist, because it deflects the waves. It could be something like that.”

  I sat up and crossed my legs, trying to get as comfortable as I could. “This may take a while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I closed my eyes and pushed inside the fog once again.

  Three clips were hooked at each end. It was probably made of some kind of tension-bound metal. I tested their strength. I wouldn’t have been a
ble to move them with my fingers, they were so strong.

  It would’ve been easier without the fog, but I chose the first clip and concentrated. With my Talent, I dragged the tension clip forward, and tried to push the rod down but snap! It sprang back into place. I flinched like I had felt the pull of the metal, and in a way I had. The Dirus slipped from my fingers.

  I didn’t realize until I lost contact that I was shaking. Sweat trickled down my back as though I’d just run a mile outside. Van Gogh must have had one hell of a sense of humor to make this thing so hard to get into. Or he didn’t actually want anyone to find the Aveum. But I didn’t have a choice; it was Dune or me.

  “There is some kind of material, metal I think, coated in red on the inside, but working through the surface is difficult. I wasn’t even able to move the one, and there are six clasps!” I took a deep breath and ran a finger over the letters carved into the surface. Dirus: what did that mean? “I’m not sure I can do it.”

  Liam gazed at me with a look that almost let me forget how hard this was. “You can do it, Aya. You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I can’t see anything being able to stand in your way.”

  “I wish I had your confidence,” I said, but again I took the Dirus between my palms.

  I pushed through to the inside. I couldn’t see like I could with my natural eyes, but within the darkness of the cavity, ribbons of red pierced the emptiness and ran along the edges.

  I plunged forward.

  This time I grabbed the spring with power and strength, not the delicate touches of last time. If I was using my fingers, they would have been stiff with exhaustion, but I wasn’t using flesh, I was using my mind and in a way my soul.

  Slowly, painfully, the first metal lock bent back and inched down the inside of the Dirus. With a tiny click, it slid into the unlocked position at the bottom of the space.

  I opened my eyes, breathing hard, dizzy. “Only five more to go.”

  “Nice!”

  I could have fallen asleep right then and there, but the success pulled me forward, and I moved on to the next. Throwing in the same energy and strength as the last, I popped the pressure clasp forward and slid it down in the same motion. It clicked into place and I moved on to the next and the next. Was it getting easier, or did I just now know what to expect?

  I’m not sure how long it took, but at last the final tension clasp slid into the unlocked position. My eyes flew open as the Dirus broke in half in my hands.

  I stared at the two parts.

  29

  I no longer have doubts, I no longer hesitate to tackle things, and this feeling could well grow.

  —Vincent van Gogh

  “You did it!” Liam said. “I knew you could!”

  I couldn’t help but smile, probably like a fool. Wedged into one side of the glass stood a single, rolled-up sheet of paper. It smelled of forgotten volumes in an ancient library. My hand shook as I unrolled the page, brittle, stiff, and yellowed around the edges.

  “What does it say?” Liam leaned across the bed to look over my shoulder.

  I tipped the page toward him. “French of course.” Ink letters in the scrawl I knew well from Van Gogh’s letters danced across the page. At the bottom was a pen and ink sketch of a gargoyle, standing on a rooftop. His tongue curled maliciously into the air and seemed alive, even though the original must have been made of stone. His wings were not ready for flight, but instead he stood ruffled in an attack position. Behind him, shorter buildings sprawled into the skyline.

  But then in occurred to me, I was holding ink belonging to Van Gogh! This was no reproduction in a book or behind an inch of glass in a museum: this was actual paper he’d held and sketched and left for me to find. Me. And I was the only one who should find it. Not Dune, not even Leslie.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  Liam read the French out loud and then said, “It says, ‘You should find some breakfast before going on any more adventures.’”

  “Breakfast is overrated,” I said, but then my stomach rumbled, and I glared at it. “Traitor.”

  “Come-on, we can figure out the translation while we eat.”

  I grabbed my long-sleeved T-shirt to throw over my tank top, but then stopped, remembering what Liam had said. Why did I insist on covering the red? At first I’d been ashamed of how I was different. What was I now?

  I stuffed the shirt into my backpack.

  I picked up the two pieces of the Dirus. Inside was what I expected: three metal tension rods ringing each end. The Dirus would be difficult to open or close in Van Gogh’s time, without using a Talent of some sort, if the contents were to be left undamaged.

  “Oh,” I said as I studied the tension clasps.

  “What?” Liam asked.

  “The metal clips—they not only have stripes of red, but of blue and yellow as well. I never thought about it before, but what if the first color I learned to control was blue or yellow instead of red? Van Gogh must have realized that was a possibility and put all three just in case.”

  “How would you learn to use yellow and blue?” He took one of the pieces and peered inside. “It seems like the red wouldn’t take over as much if you could control the others.”

  “I’ve thought of that, but I have no idea how to access them. I’ve tried drawing on my skin with blue, but it doesn’t work. It was just out of my reach. That’s why I first looked for Prism. I was hoping it would tell me how to control the other colors.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  The air outside was warm even with the sun still low enough to hide behind the Parisian buildings, plunging the street into the soft light of shadows.

  “Where did you want to go for breakfast?” I adjusted my backpack. Even though Liam had reserved another night back at the hotel, we decided to bring everything, just in case.

  “I have the perfect place in mind.” His eyes glinted mischievously.

  “You’re not going to make me eat snails or something for breakfast, are you?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Something about how you mumbled in your sleep, ‘I wonder how many nasty things I can get Aya to eat under the guise of sophistication in Paris.’ That pretty much gave it away.”

  “Wow, I was able to use the phrase, ‘guise of sophistication’ while in my sleep? That’s pretty impressive.”

  “Maybe you didn’t say those exact words, but that was the gist of things.”

  “I can guarantee you the last thing I am thinking about while you are lying next to me is the nasty things I can get you to eat.”

  My face grew hot, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to lose control with Liam.

  We wound through the narrow streets of Paris, none of which seemed straight for long. Sleepy cafés woke and stretched after the late night. Customers speckled the outside tables, drinking tiny cups of espresso and taking long drags on cigarettes. I covered the red on my skin with my hands, self-conscious, but besides a glance or two in my direction, no one seemed to notice. Perhaps they were just too polite to stare.

  Or maybe it just really wasn’t a big deal.

  “So where are we going, really?” I asked.

  “Just a minute, we’re almost there.” Liam slowed his pace as we turned a corner.

  I gasped.

  The Eiffel Tower.

  Somehow Liam had led us on a path that kept the thousand-foot structure hidden until we were close enough for its real height and beauty to be shocking.

  “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to see this.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to soak it in. From behind, Liam wrapped his arms around my waist. I hadn’t worn a long-sleeved shirt, but he had. He laid his cheek on my hair, and I loved to hear him breathe. I held onto his forearms, taking care not to touch his skin. The inescapable passion of red didn’t matter with him anymore. I wanted to be with him, I wanted to lose myself in his touch, and forget time i
n his arms.

  But not right now. We had other things to worry about.

  We strolled through a park and the tower slid in and out of view between the towering trees.

  Soon we were under the breathtaking, metal structure. “How did I not know the Eiffel Tower was brown?” I spun in a circle with my arms outstretched, like a child.

  “I’d call it more a tan, but you’re the painter.”

  I reveled in the marvel that was the Eiffel Tower. “I can’t believe this was built a hundred years ago. They weren’t even planning on keeping the structure. It was going to be temporary. Can you imagine, they were planning on tearing down the most recognizable building in the entire world?”

  “Sometimes people don’t realize the value of the thing right in front of their faces until it’s too late.” Liam looked not at the tower, but at me.

  “It’s a good thing they realized their mistake.”

  “That would have sucked.”

  It was early still, with knots of tourists in their ugly, but practical, shoes clashing with Parisians in high heels passing by as though they were on a catwalk. I could imagine this place, later in the day, crawling with throngs of people, staring in wide-eyed wonderment, just as I did now. The line to take the elevator to the top was already crowded, although the plaza had few others milling about.

  “Come here.” Liam lay on the ground several feet outside the invisible square created by the Eiffel tower’s legs and he motioned for me to lie next to him.

  The cement was cool and rough against the back of my arms as I settled next to him on the ground, our heads close together. The arch lead from one foot of the tower to the other and stretched before us as the arrowpoint shot into the blue of the sky. The interlocking twists of metal crisscrossed and stood out in shadowed relief in the sleek Art Nouveau style, pristine while maintaining the tenuous balance between art and architecture.