The Color of Fear

by Billy Phillips

  A galaxy of green, twinkling lights reflected in her eyeglasses. They glittered in front of her down the full length of the seemingly unending passage.

  This isn’t scary. This is extraordinary!

  Snow was absolutely right.

  Caitlin stared in awe at the countless speckles of emerald light shining as far as her eyes could see; they were like a glittering ocean of stars from a distant spiral galaxy.

  These green, glowing insects are beautiful and sort of disgusting at the same time.

  Caitlin began to crawl on all fours, following her sister. Lime-colored jewels of light cast irregular shadows onto the dirt beneath her. As she maneuvered deeper into the tunnel, Caitlin’s heartbeat sped up. Her breath grew shallow—though not for lack of oxygen. She simply realized there was no turning back. She was too far into the tunnel.

  “Pick up the pace!” Rapunzel shouted from behind. “We need to get there today.”

  A glowworm suddenly poked through the surface of the tunnel ceiling, startling Caitlin. It squirmed mere inches above her head.

  “I despise worms!”

  “Technically,” Natalie said, “The glowworm is classified as an insect. They’re a species of beetle.”

  The bright-green, segmented body curved and wiggled side to side within its armored exoskeleton.

  Caitlin cringed. “Oh God, please don’t notice me. Pleeease!”

  The slimy beetle must have sensed Caitlin’s approach because, at that very moment, it turned to face her directly. It poked the air with its pointed front tip, searching for a surface to crawl on.

  “Oh God, please don’t crawl on my face,” Caitlin begged.

  The glowworm dropped onto her head.

  She shrieked.

  It scuttled down her forehead and onto her cheek … then onto her neck …

  “Get it off me!”

  Natalie craned her head backward. “Just pick up that freaking incandescent insect and place it back onto the dirt.”

  “You do it!”

  “Just to shut you up, I would, but this tunnel’s too tight to turn my butt around.”

  Caitlin was paralyzed.

  The glowworm crawled in circles on the front of Caitlin’s neck.

  “Agh! Get it off me! Use the friggin zapper or something!”

  The beetle suddenly scurried down her top.

  Don’t you dare!

  It wiggled across her chest and then downward, crawling along the rim of her bra!

  “Aaaahhhh!” Caitlin’s ear-splitting shriek shook the whole tunnel.

  “We have no time for your neurosis!” Rapunzel shouted from behind. “We’ve been spotted by the crows, and the clock is ticking. Now pick up the bloody beetle and move it before I zap you.”

  Caitlin had forgotten how forceful the long-haired dead girl from the cemetery could be. And, somehow, being ordered to move the vile and slimy glowworm made it easier for her to do it. She tugged the neckline of her sweater and stretched it outward. She slid her other hand down her top, fingers probing for the bug. By now it had passed over her belly button and was heading toward her pant waist. The dogged beetle then began nudging its way down her pants.

  She snatched the slippery beetle up by its abdomen, then pulled it out of her sweater and plunked it back on the tunnel wall. The glowworm slithered along the soil, heading happily off into the tunnel.

  Caitlin sighed in relief.

  With that nasty catastrophe resolved, the group continued to shimmy their way through the narrow crawlspace.

  They tunneled on their hands and knees through tangled tree roots and around a banked curve. The crawlspace began to get even narrower.

  A thin wisp of smoke suddenly wafted through the tunnel. Caitlin smelled something peculiar. She coughed.

  “Head toward the smoke,” Rapunzel said.

  Caitlin recalled the old adage: Where there’s smoke …

  The cramped tunnel soon opened out into a wide, cavernous pit. A large entryway with a narrow stained-glass skylight above allowed rays of sunlight into the cave, enlivening the space with blues, violets, and reds. More glowworms lined the walls, providing ample hues of greens. Candles mounted in bronze sconces on the cave wall shone yellow candlelight. All these colors together gave unexpected life to the cave.

  The second surprise was that the cave itself was a luscious underground garden. Unlike the zombified plant life above-ground, the flora here was far from struggling. Vines full with tomatoes and cucumbers climbed the walls. Bean plants with stems chock-full of beans grew in abundance out of the ground. Clusters of grapes in purple, green, and red hung from the ceiling. Passion fruit vines clung to shoots of corn and artichokes and tall sunflowers. Pumpkins and carrot greens carpeted the floor. There were cloves of garlic, wasabi plants, and thick horseradish roots. Lettuces and kale and purple-and-yellow chard sprung from pockets of soil between other plants. Even a lemon tree grew here.

  Caitlin didn’t know much about plants, but she was pretty sure peppermint was growing somewhere too—minty fumes scented the cavern.

  “Wow, this place is like a garden of earthly delights,” Natalie said. She ran her finger along a vine. “So where’s the caterpillar? Looks like the only things here are plants and glowworms.”

  At the far end of the cave, they noticed a long sofa with purple pillows and a large decorative mohair blanket spread out cozily.

  Wisps of the minty smoke wafted from a stick of incense perched on a mushroom near the sofa. The mushroom, Caitlin noticed, was as tall as the bookshelf in her bedroom, and even wider.

  “Ahem,” came a small voice.

  The girls approached the mushroom. Seated on top of its cap, sipping tea from the smallest porcelain teacup Caitlin had ever seen, was a three-inch-long, royal-blue caterpillar.

  “You must excuse me,” the caterpillar said. “I was not expecting you for another minute and thirty-seven seconds.”

  He dug one of his pin-size hands into the mushroom cap and pulled up a chunk of mushroom. He took a bite, chewed, and … began to inflate! He steadily increased in size like a carnival balloon, inflating and growing and expanding.

  “Ah, three feet precisely,” the caterpillar said. “Or 91.44 centimeters. A very good height indeed.”

  He reached under his mushroom and pulled out a new, more appropriately sized teacup and chair. Using one of his spare lower hands, he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Minty steam rose from the cup and filled Caitlin’s nostrils.

  Yup. Teacup. Definitely not a hookah.

  The caterpillar’s face identified him as old, solemn, and wise, though ashen from the zombie affliction. Tiny spectacles were fixed firmly on the far tip of his nose, making him look like a distinguished scholar, and he wore a thick tweed vest and bow tie.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Amethyst Bartholomew, but do please call me Amethyst. No need for formal titles, considering our current state of affairs.”

  His voice was midtone and hoarse, as if he had sand in his throat. He had a wispy beard made of fine threads like spun silk the color of ivory. Age lines graced his forehead and temples, and crow’s feet around his eyes became pronounced when he smiled or spoke, drawing attention to them—they were darkly shadowed around the rims.

  The grand old caterpillar ignored Caitlin and spoke directly to Rapunzel. “I see you’ve brought the girl,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yes. And we’re running out of time.”

  The caterpillar raised his hand pensively. “Ah, look at how we mindlessly react to Father Time, Your Highness, without ever asking, what is the meaning of time?”

  Natalie butted in. “Though time and space are unified as per Einstein’s space-time continuum, time itself might best be defined as the distance—”

  “Silence, child!” he scolded in his raspy voice. “It was an allegorical, metaphorical, rhetorical question.”

  Amethyst turned slowly and peered deeply into Caitlin’s eyes. “Who … Are … You?”


  Caitlin remembered this question from her Wonderland book. She knew the caterpillar would try to engage her in all kinds of nonsensical wordplay.

  Not gonna happen!

  “My name is Caitlin—not Alice—and you know exactly who I am. I suppose you’re now going to show me how to grow and shrink?”

  Natalie raised an eyebrow in response to Caitlin’s unexpected assertiveness.

  Amethyst ran a finger through his silken beard. “So you choose to accept the literal meaning of grow, as opposed to the deeper meaning.”

  “The deeper meaning?”

  “It suggests growing on the inside, not the outside. As for ‘shrinking,’ I suppose you thoroughly understand that word, speaking internally, of course.”

  Did he just insult me?

  Lord Amethyst nodded sublimely toward Rapunzel and the princesses.

  “I suppose you have questions pertaining to the dire state of the kingdoms?” he asked.

  “Ya think?” Cindy quipped.

  Amethyst raised a finger. “First, you must eat. We must fuel the body to fuel the mind.”

  Cinderella’s stomach rumbled. So did Natalie’s.

  Amethyst beckoned with his hand. “By all means, eat until you are satiated. And be sure to take some for the road.”

  Like a band of ravenous soldiers, Natalie and the royals dove into the food supply. They stuffed their cheeks and their pockets with carrots, potatoes, lemons, and as many leaves as could fit. Cinderella smiled at Natalie as she picked a handful of jalapeño peppers from a vine.

  “Pay dirt.” She popped a whole pepper into her mouth and chewed. “Whoo! Spicy!”

  Rapunzel came up behind Caitlin and nudged her in the direction of the caterpillar. “Talk to him.”

  Caitlin plucked an asparagus growing horizontally out of the wall. She was famished. She needed strength. She crunched a bite and then tentatively approached Lord Amethyst. He smelled like a mixture of fresh-cut grass and peppermint tea.

  “Sleeping Beauty had a dream that told her you can help us?” Her tone was timid.

  “Perhaps.” With one finger, the caterpillar slid his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose until they were parallel with his eyes. He gazed at Caitlin as if peering into the depth of her being.

  “You had some difficulty gaining traction in Zeno’s Forest?”

  Caitlin blinked twice, then she cleared her throat.

  “Well, sort of. Ya.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  Caitlin’s back straightened. “Now you’re going to tell me that I lacked certainty. Conviction.”

  “On the contrary,” Amethyst said softly stroking his beard. “You already have perfect certainty and total conviction.”

  Caitlin’s brow crinkled.

  Amethyst pointed a finger. “Your problem is that you have perfect certainty in your doubt. You possess total conviction in your disbelief. So when you choose to not believe, then nothing is what you achieve.”

  He smiled.

  “But let’s save that conversation for another time.”

  Caitlin furrowed her brow.

  Snow White approached and posed a question.

  “My good Lord Amethyst, what about the su—”

  The caterpillar raised his hand.

  “No need to say it, Your Grace. You wish to know the secrets of our sun and the mystery of the affliction that affects our world.”

  Natalie elbowed Caitlin in the ribs. “A psychic caterpillar. Think he can bend spoons?”

  Amethyst then pointed one of his many fingers at Caitlin. “And you wish to know what particles of imagination are made of?”

  Caitlin’s eyebrows popped up, as did Natalie’s. How could he have known what they’d discussed before they entered Zeno’s Forest?

  “Imagination is the building block of our universe,” Amethyst said. “Everything you see, both material and immaterial, is made up of particles of imagination. Except, my child, they are not really particles, but rather waves. Particles are found in your world. Not ours.”

  Natalie’s mouth opened in awe. “That’s one highly intelligent caterpillar, sis. He’s referring to the wave-particle duality.”

  Caitlin wasn’t sure what Natalie and the clever caterpillar were talking about. She shushed her sister because she wanted to hear more.

  Amethyst winked at Natalie, then refocused his attention on Caitlin.

  “In your world, when you probe into the atom you find electrons, protons, and neutrons. Your question is about what happens when we probe into the waves of imagination that erect all the kingdoms of our world, and give form to all of us?”

  Lord Amethyst pointed upward toward the skylight, where rays of sunlight shone through.

  He turned to Sleeping Beauty. “The crystal. The one in your pocket.”

  Beauty slid her fingers into the ruffles of her skirt and pulled it out.

  Amethyst gestured upward again. Beauty angled the crystal toward the skylight so it would catch a ray of sun. The crystal prism split the sunbeams into a bright rainbow.

  All eyes fell back on Lord Amethyst, who studiously removed his reading spectacles with one of his left hands. He gestured with his glasses as he spoke.

  “These are the seven sacred wavelengths that bring forth existence,” Amethyst said. “This light is made from waves of imagination that shine forth from the human kingdom.”

  A twinkle gleamed in Caitlin’s eye. All the dots were starting to connect. Their curious brain-shaped sun. The minds of Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, and all the other writers, who wrote the stories that produced these imaginative worlds.

  Amethyst pointed to the glimmering reds and oranges of the rainbow. “Now pay attention. From the Red Spectrum comes fear, lingering doubt, worry, and intolerable woe.”

  As if on cue, the forbidding caw of a crow echoed through the cavern, raising the hairs on Caitlin’s arm. It came from outside.

  A Blood-Eyed crow?

  Amethyst ignored the caw and dipped his spectacles in the shimmer of blues, indigos, and violets.

  “From the opposite, violet, end of the Spectrum there comes sublime courage, contentment, sheer joy, and splendid calm.”

  Next Amethyst waved his glasses through the middle of the rainbow, in the green and yellow color spectrums.

  “Here lies the great power of the will. Our will decides which fears will be allowed to compel us into action and which will be repelled and banished from our being. But as you can see, the green is fading and losing strength.”

  He placed his spectacles back on the tip of his nose.

  “Why not banish the entire Red Spectrum?” Caitlin asked.

  “You mean all the fears, my child?”

  She shrugged sheepishly.

  “Fear of fire is a healthy fear; would you agree?”

  She nodded.

  “But a fear of a fire-breathing dragon living under your bed is a needless one. Therefore, the will repels the dragon fear. But it allows the fear of a burning house to endure, which serves to remind us to blow out the candles before retiring to bed.”

  Natalie had been listening with rapt attention. “He’s deep,” she whispered.

  The caterpillar stroked his silky beard.

  “Do you understand, my child?”

  “I think so.”

  For some reason, what came to Caitlin’s mind just then was a girl from her old school. Penny Robbins. She was a sweet kid who desperately wanted to be popular. At one point in the school year, she got really, really thin. Anorexic thin. She wound up in a hospital and missed a ton of school before she was well enough to return. Then, another situation popped into Caitlin’s mind: a nasty stomach flu that had been going around back in September. Natalie had been very afraid of catching it. She had even cut out eating sugars and junk food and started eating a ton of vegetables and other “healthy” stuff that made Caitlin wanna gag. So, she reasoned, maybe Penny Robbins’s fear of being unpopular had messed up her eating habits so much th
at she made herself sick. While Natalie’s fear of getting sick had changed her eating habits in a way that kept her from needing a barf bowl at her bedside for a week.

  Crazy. One fear had an awful outcome. The other prevented a puke-fest and a case of the runs.

  That caterpillar is pretty freaking smart.

  Caitlin was intrigued.

  Sleeping Beauty’s beautiful, pale face looked strained. “May I put my arm down now?”

  Amethyst nodded apologetically. Beauty pocketed the crystal prism, and the rainbow of colors vanished.

  Caitlin twisted a few of her long, cinnamon strands of hair around her finger.

  “How do you light up the Violet Spectrum?”

  Amethyst’s demeanor took on a decidedly gladdened turn. Then the antennae on his head stiffened. And as he opened his mouth to answer, a bloodcurdling cawing sound echoed fiendishly into the cavern—this one louder than the previous.

  Rapunzel winced.

  Amethyst’s mood turned on a dime. He nervously turned in circles on his mushroom.

  “The black crows!” Amethyst said with a grim tone. “Blood-Eyed ghouls of prey.” He set his cup down on its saucer with trembling hands. “Where there are crows, the demonic howls of the wolves follow. We must hurry. You need to know what happened here before it’s too late to save the kingdoms.”

  What about saving us?

  Even brave, nothing-fazed-her Natalie began to rock nervously on her feet. “My guess is that a fear of zombie wolves falls under the category of healthy fears,” she whispered to Caitlin.

  Jack—still the size of an inchworm—breezed above a stretch of decaying brown fields, balanced like a surfer on the face of a dry, brown maple leaf that was sailing through the air on a warm wind. Two dabs of sap kept his feet firmly secured to the leaf’s surface.

  Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and called down to Alfonzo, who hopped below him on the ground, keeping pace. “You were right!”

  Alfonzo looked up at him.

  “I can spot the forest from here,” Jack said.

  Jack dipped down on his leaf-board, skimming the tops of blades of withered grass next to Alfonzo.

  “If anything happens to Caitlin, I swear I’ll die. It’s my fault she’s here without me. If only I hadn’t forgotten my blasted phone.”