I reached out to her red body and shoved, harder than I had strength for. In the same movement, I tucked and rolled to the side, and lay flat on the bridge’s surface.
The glass lost trajectory when I hit Dune, but several met their mark in my shoulder.
Dammit! Why did it have to be glass?
Dune scrambled to her feet. My blood-loss was taking its toll.
But the anger inside me refused to fade. Since my first Release, I had been fighting against the anger and the passion that red so filled me with, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that anger was as valid an emotion as joy or fear.
It brought clarity to my red-saturated vision and gave me the energy to fight past the fatigue.
All I could see was Dune—her white suit stood out in vivid relief against the pink of the sky and crimson of the bridge.
I shoved against her again. The liquid glass flew up and caught her so she didn’t fall, then placed her upright on her feet.
So much for that trick.
I threw the paint tube up into the air, and the red exploded into a cloud. On one side of the bridge was a guardrail with interlocking metal lacing.
I sent the red to it. But my idea was insane. The guardrail was too heavy, too secure. But the particles of red adhered to the fence, spread as thin as gold leaf.
Around my feet, molten glass swirled and climbed up my legs with a life of its own, trying to lock me in place.
I reached down into the red of my body and pulled my feet free. I shot into the air, and to my astonishment froze there, suspended. I held the red inside of me up, just like any other red, against the pull of gravity and fear of falling.
Was I flying?
“Impossible!” Dune screamed, her molten trap momentarily forgotten.
I jerked on the rail behind her. Chunks of cement skidded forward with an ear-splitting crash. Dune turned just in time to get swept up in the metal. I twisted it into a cage around her. The scream that emanated was of rage instead of pain.
I forced the red to join red into a solid mass around her. She couldn’t have access to the glass. I filled every hole, no matter how small. She couldn’t use her Talent. There was no way out. Nothing could get inside. The glass in the streets flew towards my cage, covering it, trying to find holes in the surface. But there was nothing, no place for the smallest amount to wheedle through.
I’d won.
But the wave of glass picked up the ball, at least ten feet in the air.
What the . . .?
It threw the cage at the cement surface of the bridge, with Dune still inside.
She could have killed herself. Glass flowed in through the newly created fissure. The cage exploded, throwing pieces of metal and red in all directions.
Dune ran at me, looking murderous with a streak of blood trickling down her face and onto her ripped white suit. Hundreds—no—thousands of glass arrows flew up beside her, matching her stride, spinning in a beautiful glittering mass.
One arrow shot forward ahead of the rest and hit me several inches below the last. I gasped at the pain, as the dart ripped a hole in me. I couldn’t breathe. My lung wasn’t as lucky as it had been before.
Had I been on my feet, I would have fallen, but my Talent kept me aloft. In that moment, I mourned many things. My mother’s tears. The loss of Liam, even if he’d never truly been mine. My robbed future, that future where I could also use blue and yellow and was perhaps happy and safe. That life I would never know.
I thought about pushing out the arrow, like I had done the other, but that would do more harm than good, and would just kill me faster. Not to mention it would hurt like hell, and I was so done with pain.
Dune would kill me slowly. I imagined the rest of the arrows piercing my body, one at a time. They would be like the stained glass of the cathedral, sparkling in deep crimson. It would not be a pretty death. With that many arrows, there would be nothing left of me. But the glass tinged with red might be beautiful. The blood might be.
Blood. How many times had I been tempted to use the red swirling in those around me? The idea repulsed and revolted inside me. But this was now or death. Maybe it was death anyway.
I reached out with my Talent and found the red inside her, but I couldn’t . . . kill. It rushed through the veins, the oxygen slipping from red blood cells, through the capillary walls to the tissue around them. The idea of breaking them was sickening. I turned cold.
Or perhaps that was just the life force leaving my body.
From the broken form of the cage, I gathered the red to me. In case. For so long I’d loathed it, hated what it did to me, but now it seemed like an old friend in a world of loneliness and desperation.
Human bodies were strong, could do so much, but at the same time it took the cutting of just one artery for us to bleed to death in five minutes. For all Dune’s disdain of humans, she would die from the same wounds.
But still, I couldn’t kill her.
That would make me just like her.
I found the delicate membranes with red flowing within her arms and legs.
And pulled.
Dune screamed and staggered. Blood gushed through the white of her pants and sleeves and dripped over her shoes.
I was gentle, not bringing more pain or damage than was necessary.
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to see what I inflicted. The anger slipped away for the first time and was replaced by bitter sadness.
Her arrows almost plummeted to the ground, but Dune grabbed them at the last minute. With a flick of her hand, they shot forward.
My cloud of red whooshed in, deflecting the glass away. Dune screamed again when they crashed into the bridge and shattered.
But she still kept coming. I found more veins and tore at them. I only wanted to stop her, but she would not stop. Maybe she couldn’t. She fell to her knees, and crawled toward me, over broken glass. What would it be like to hate with that much passion?
The edges of my red vision blurred. My time had come. Bodies were strong, and yet so delicate, and mine had been through too much.
I fell from the air, and crumpled backwards, hitting my head on the sidewalk with a sharp crack.
Still she came, bleeding revenge and hate. I found more of the red and destroyed, and still she clawed her way toward me.
I pushed her away with my Talent, farther away, so I could have these last moments of life to myself. So I could think of the people I loved without seeing her face.
Glass shimmered in the air, not into any form, she was too weak, but the edges of fractured glass could still pierce me.
I pushed again, with the last of what was in me.
Her body rolled over the now-naked ledge of the bridge and fell with a splash into the river below.
36
How much sadness there is in life . . . . There are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.
—Vincent van Gogh
The day before I left to go to art school, my mom and I went on one last long hike in the mountains. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to hang out with my friends, because I wouldn’t see them for the whole summer, but my mom insisted I spend the morning with her. It was a tough hike, and when we reached our destination we ate chocolate pretzels and threw rocks into the emerald, glacial lake and laughed and talked.
That’s how I remembered her now, sitting on a bank of grass, surrounded by the purple and yellow spring flowers and laughing, with her green eyes lit by the sun.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. I hoped she could feel my words across the world.
Liam was there, and it took me a moment to realize that he was actually there, not just a delusion brought by the longing of my heart.
“Aya…” he couldn’t look away from the arrow sticking out of my chest. “You’re going to be fine. It’s not as bad as it seems. It can’t be. There’s an Aolian doctor. He can save you. I’ll get you there.”
Blood
saturated his clothes and gaped from several visible wounds.
I couldn’t breathe enough to speak but reached up and brushed my fingers along his cheek. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to touch him, not in a moment of panic or just the whisper of fingertips. First and last. I tried unsuccessfully to breathe past the blood in my lungs. Even though Liam had lied to me, I couldn’t help but be glad he was here, so I wouldn’t be alone.
“No! I was going to protect you!” He took my hand in his, mine freezing in his warmth.
The blurry edges of my vision turned black.
I woke to dim florescent light filtering through a curtain that half-surrounded me, lying on a hard bed. It took a moment to focus. There was a warm pressure on my hand, and I found my mother, holding mine in hers. Her head lay on the crook of her elbow. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow.
That last memory of my mother, glowing and laughing, was a far cry from what was before me. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her skin looked too pale. Her hair was pulled into a messy braid, but locks had escaped and dangled limp.
“Mom?” I croaked.
She bolted awake, and stared at me for a long moment, then burst into tears.
I shouldn’t be alive, she said. I should have died. I’d had surgery, and I’d been in a medically induced coma for a week.
I should be dead.
I spent the week in the hospital, sleeping mostly. My mom stayed with me as much as she could, but they made her go to a hotel at night so I could rest.
I asked about Liam, and my mom seemed confused. “Liam? Was that the boy from art school? Why would he be here?”
Did he get what he was sent to find? Did he take the key and the letter from Van Gogh? My backpack was on the top shelf of the closet in my hospital room, and I couldn’t bring myself to look. Liam’s betrayal already hurt too much.
The doctor came to look me over one last time before I was released. I had to be careful and see my doctor as soon as I got back to the States. Around his wrist was the metal glint with the figure of a dragon etched into the surface.
The clothes I came in were unsalvageable, and my mom bought some more for me to wear; a short sleeved, white T-shirt and a pair of black leggings that were gentle on my still-healing flesh. Out of the front pouch of my backpack, my mom pulled out my Van Gogh necklace and handed it to me. I went to put it around my neck but realized something else was there in addition to Starry Night and the disk Liam had made me. An additional charm hung on the chain next to the other two, a perfect miniature of the Eifel tower in silver. The metalwork was much more intricate than you would find from a street vender or even a jeweler. It was as if someone took the tower and shrank it down so each piece of metal was almost indiscernible to the naked eye.
Only one person could have made it. I wondered when he left it here with me. Would I see him again? Did I want to see him again?
We took a cab when it was time to leave the hospital, but instead of going to the hotel, I asked if we could instead go to a park on the other side of Paris. My mom nodded and said nothing.
She hadn’t once asked about what happened. She never commented on my skin or the ever-changing patterns sliding across it, but I knew it was coming. I had to tell her.
We strolled along the river in the park to the place I wanted to see. The scene was forever immortalized in Seurat’s painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He spent two years on that painting and was in Paris at the same time as Van Gogh. Somehow his controlled pointillism seemed so much more grounded than Van Gogh’s passionate brush strokes. So much more stable. I needed something stable.
I sat on the bank with my mother next to me.
I opened my backpack. Everything Liam and I had found waited for me, including the letter from Van Gogh.
I told my mom how dad was an Aolian, and everything that had happened since. She held my hand and listened. She’d always suspected there was something. But she’d tried to ignore it. And when I was done, she wrapped her arms around me, and held me close. We sat there a long time, watching the river slide down the path it could not change, even if it wished to.
Back at the hotel, she asked me if there was anything I wanted to see in Paris before we went home.
I shook my head. “But I do have to find Prism or the Aveum or whatever else Van Gogh left.”
My mom vehemently shook her head. “No, Aya, you just spent three weeks in the hospital. There is no way you are going anywhere else. I don’t care how important this is. It isn’t worth your life.”
She didn’t understand. Maybe she never would.
“You’re right,” I said, “I just want to go home.”
She smiled and held me close.
I went to bed early that night and slept fourteen hours straight. I dreamed again of the black-haired girl for the first time since going to the hospital. I silently dressed without waking my mother and went out, closing the door without so much as a click. I tried not to think about how furious my mom would be when she woke up.
The streets of Paris were quiet in the pale morning light. I didn’t fear Dune finding me, and the thought did not bring the relief it should.
I’d killed her.
I ambled through the Luxemburg Gardens, full of never ending gravel paths and ancient trees. Children floated tiny yellow and green sail boats in the pond, so innocent and happy in a way only children could be. I sat on a bench watching their smiles and cheers. I was tired, but it was such a relief to be out of bed. My wounds pulsed. I ignored them.
I pressed on a few blocks to the Pantheon to find Victor Hugo’s grave. It was the second part of the clue that gave it away, “It is nothing to die.” Maybe Van Gogh believed Hugo’s words, and that was why he ended his own life. But that was a mistake. Imagine what Van Gogh could have become if he’d gone on living. Van Gogh had mentioned Hugo so many times with a reverie; I knew it had to be here.
Massive Corinthian columns surrounded the entrance of the Pantheon. White marble columns also lined the inside, with stunning carved statues and gold-lined frescos adoring the space.
But it was the crypt that I wanted.
The air was cold as I descended into the underground. Dim lights illuminated the path, and it smelled of earth even though the walls were lined with stone. It took me a while to find Hugo.
I pushed open a green door, and there it was. A white marble tomb in a small room. Three bouquets of flowers rested on top of the lid. There was a second tomb in the room, but I ignored it.
I slid my palm along the smooth marble. Hugo was dead and buried, yet his words lived on and would continue, perhaps forever. I kneeled down in front of his tomb and traced the five-pointed star chiseled into the marble with my fingers. It was the perfect decoration and disguise. A tiny arrow was marked on the key, and on the top most point of the one etched on the surface.
I slid the key in and twisted.
An invisible door hidden in the floor popped open, revealing a space the size of a shoebox. I kneeled and peered inside the dark cavern.
A box, made of plain stained wood sat just inside. A hundred years of dust came with it when I pulled it out. I couldn’t believe what I was holding. I lifted the lid, and there, bound in leather with the word Prisme on the front, was the book I’d almost died trying to find.
But I couldn’t look inside it, not yet. I shut the box and shoved it into my backpack. I didn’t go back to the hotel.
I took the metro to the Solférino stop.
I walked the streets of Paris slowly, with a tide of people rushing around me as if I stood still, as though I floated apart from everyone, surrounded while still being absolutely alone.
I paid my admission and stepped into the stunning Musée d’Orsay. It was an old train depot that was set to be demolished, until someone had the brilliant idea to turn the beautiful architecture into a museum. Statues dotted the long nave and led to the gigantic gold clock on the far wall. Huge tiles carved in floral reli
ef covered the ceiling everywhere the massive windows did not touch. But I didn’t stroll through the endless rooms of paintings, but instead took the elevator to the fourth floor to the Van Gogh collection.
I soaked in the beauty created by the man whose soul had been so tortured. I sat on the floor and hugged my knees to me, feeling closer to this long-since-dead man than I had to many of the living people I’d known. His color was breathtaking, and his lines unique—always moving, never at rest. And so much yellow. It saturated his work. He must never have been able to use yellow. Maybe the depression of blue and the anger of red were too much for him without the happiness of yellow.
Being with his paintings made me feel like I wasn’t so alone. I wished I could have done that for him also. But that was a long time ago. I couldn’t change the past.
We left the next day, not back to New York, but home to Montana.
The streets of Bozeman were foreign and familiar at the same time, with the tiny shops and the wildness of the distant mountains still permeating the cement of the streets, unlike the impossibly human surfaces of Paris and New York.
I sighed with relief when we entered our front door—the smell of fresh herbs in the kitchen, light blasting through the huge picture window into the backyard, the stacks of sheet music layering the tables in the living room, the white wainscoting meeting the stairs my mom and I had sanded and re-stained a few years back. My mom didn’t say anything as she carried my bag upstairs to my attic room. She was still upset that I had gone against her wishes to retrieve Prism.
My room was exactly how I’d left it. The stacks of art books looked remarkably similar to the music books teetering on every surface downstairs. My easel still sat with an unfinished canvas. My royal blue, Moroccan motif bedspread was neatly tucked into place, drawings covered every inch of the walls, sometimes stacked three on top of each other, with only slivers of the blue behind peeking out. I opened the slanted skylights above my bed, hoping the sunshine and wind could take away the pain. Not the physical pain, that would heal eventually, but the other.
Alizarin Crimson Page 29