The Color of Fear

by Billy Phillips

  Caitlin saw the scepter.

  For what it really is.

  Then a memory.

  Of what it was.

  All dots connected—clean, crisp.

  The scepter was her magic wand!

  Or as Natalie called it, “that dumb lucky charm.” Caitlin had bought it to help her cope with her fears and to avoid the devastating truth she could not face.

  Somehow the magic wand had wound up here. And it had been blown up to life-size. She had just been too afraid earlier to recognize it. Her fear had gotten in the way yet again.

  Since she was a child, she had put all of her hope and faith in a worthless ornament. It became her crutch and an excuse to deny heartrending truth.

  Rapunzel interrupted her thoughts, pointing frantically toward the horizon. “The sun is three-quarters high, Caitlin.”

  Amethyst whispered in her ear. “The sun always shines, Caitlin; even when clouds obscure it. Instead of chasing the light, find the clouds hiding it.”

  The herd of Blood-Eyed zombies began flooding the streets of the village.

  Caitlin drew a deep breath.

  The eyes of Amethyst, Jack, and the zombie princesses suddenly glazed the color of pink as the sun rose higher on the horizon. They were turning.

  Caitlin hadn’t been able to figure out how she had managed to overcome all the frightening obstacles she had encountered in this strange universe. Before this day, she’d always been paralyzed by such daunting fears.

  Now she knew.

  The color spectrum.

  It shined red, constantly urging her to occupy herself with herself, to worry about her own fears and anxiety. But it shimmered violet when she repelled the red and got busy assisting others.

  The clouds weren’t her fears.

  The clouds were her obsessive concern for herself. When she went to the aid of others, and felt their pain, her debilitating fears dissipated.

  Which is exactly what she needed to do now. The time had come to free her new friends and her sister from this cruel affliction.

  With all eyes on her, Caitlin walked gallantly over to a large granite boulder that lay in the center of the town square.

  She gripped the glowing scepter with both hands.

  She lifted her arms high, as if preparing to swing a sledgehammer …

  And then Caitlin Fletcher smashed the top of the scepter down hard on the rock with all her might.

  The glass dome shattered.

  The ground thundered and quaked.

  Swirling sparkles of energetic color twinkled and sparked with electricity. Luminous streaks of swirling light spun up to the sun like a swarm of colorful fireflies.

  The Blood-Eyed zombies stopped in their tracks.

  They looked up. “Oooh.”

  A rainbow surged through the sky. The biggest, widest rainbow that Caitlin, or anyone else for that matter, had ever seen.

  The zombies stared, their drooling mouths agape. “Aaah.”

  This rainbow did not beckon just out of reach, high up in a distant sky, but instead came raining down all over them, like crystal-covered gumdrops of color from the sky.

  The air cooled and filled with luminous mists of yellow, orange, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The colors fell upon the people and creatures and plants and flowers.

  Leaves filled with green and stretched their fresh faces toward the revitalized sun. Flowers stood erect.

  Blades of withered brown grass were immediately renewed with life and waved bright green.

  Black autumn foliage found its true colors of red, pink, yellow, purple, and brown.

  One by one, the gleaming, blood-red eyes of the zombies faded. Eye colors began to transmute to sapphire blues and emerald greens and golden browns and lavender purples. Caitlin had never seen such exotic eye colors before … except in fairy tales.

  And though all the ghouls’ flesh remained pale, they all reclaimed their internal beauty and grace, which shined luminously through their zombified exteriors.

  Natalie was not going to find her light here, though, Caitlin knew. The sisters required direct sunlight from their own world to heal.

  Instinctively, Natalie scrambled like a monkey up the ever-thickening beanstalk that had grown well up past the portal. Caitlin was overjoyed that her sister was on her way home. But Caitlin knew it wasn’t time for her to return just yet. The truth was still waiting for her.

  She smiled warmly at Amethyst. Then Jack. She broke down crying when her eyes found Rapunzel. And Snow. And Beauty. They all wept.

  When Caitlin had finally recognized the scepter, a truth had surfaced. The one that had devastated a vulnerable, inconsolable young girl.

  Was she ready to confront it?

  She wasn’t. But Caitlin had found new courage when she helped others overcome their own pain. Her sibling. Her new friends. And so now she would help one more person …

  “Where is she?” Caitlin asked as she turned to Amethyst.

  He spread his wings. With his left, he pointed behind Caitlin.

  She turned.

  Everything seemed out of focus. Blurred. Caitlin rubbed her eyes. Out of the shapeless blur emerged a razor-sharp … Queen of Hearts!

  She walked toward Caitlin as if in slow motion. Her arms were poised to strike, fingers fixed like claws. “You shattered my scepter!”

  “Yes. But it was always mine.”

  “Who. Are. You?”

  Caitlin laughed and cried at the same time. Her heart pounded as stinging tears fell from her eyes. “Take off your red glasses,” Caitlin said. “And come see who I am.”

  The queen laughed incredulously. “No need, for I can sense you. You are rebellious. And obviously dangerous.”

  She’s sensing me through those enchanted glasses! She’s perceiving the opposite!

  Caitlin suddenly realized what she had to do. She searched deep for a place untouched and raw. As fragile as a dry, crisp leaf. A dim flame of violet-blue suddenly flared in scintillating brilliance inside her.

  And then Caitlin harnessed all of that emotion and yelled.

  “I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you. I don’t ever want to see you again. Ever! You are dead to me!”

  A tear rolled out from under the red glasses of the queen.

  My God! It’s working!

  The queen raised her right arm to her face. With two fingers she removed the cursed red glasses, unmasking her face.

  The queen let out an anguished scream that cut through Caitlin and resounded through the kingdom.

  The queen recoiled.

  She clutched her face and shielded her eyes.

  Caitlin composed herself.

  “Mom … Mommy … It’s me. Look … Please, look!”

  Evelyn Fletcher froze.

  Her hands came away from her face. But her eyes remained tightly closed. She seemed almost frightened to turn toward the voice … but she did.

  Her head tilted to one side. Her eyes opened slowly. She squinted, as though the brightness of truth had touched her eyes and brought with it a great pain. She blinked like a newborn infant seeing the world for the very first time. As if seeing the world right-side up and true.

  Her green eyes found Caitlin. Evelyn Fletcher was a strikingly beautiful woman, despite her current heart-shaped hairdo.

  Wisps of color continued to descend from the rainbow, showering the world with light. Life returned to her mother’s eyes. So did a gleaming spark of awareness and the luminous light of love stolen from her by the enchanted eyeglasses.

  “Oh my goodness … dear God … Caitlin … my precious Caitlin … ”

  Caitlin Rose Fletcher rushed into her mother’s arms. Evelyn Fletcher seized her daughter. They squeezed and hugged one another tightly and deeply as they sobbed and wept uncontrollably. Her mother then leaned back to behold her daughter, tenderly brushing away the wet from her cheeks, caressing her forehead, laughing, crying, and again pulling Caitlin close—so very close. Caitlin prayed that all of this was r
eal.

  Amethyst pulled a hanky from a pouch. He dabbed his misty eyes and said, “Sorry to break up this long-overdue reunion, but the portal is almost closed.”

  Caitlin squeezed her mom. “What happened to you?”

  Evelyn Fletcher spoke through her sobs and laughter. “I remember that you bought the wand. To help you cope with your fears. It hurt me deeply to see you suffer. We were in London. On your birthday. I went to visit the grave of your grandfather—to ask for his help. I brought the wand. I also stopped at the grave of Lewis Carroll.”

  “You mean Charles Dodgson.”

  Evelyn Fletcher laughed through her tears. “Yes, I mean Charles Dodgson. Honey, I read you Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland every night. You couldn’t get enough of it. I asked him for help as well, to give you the strength and creativity and conviction to overcome your challenges without having to rely on a toy wand. A strong wind came and knocked the wand from my hand. It landed on top of his grave.” Evelyn Fletcher shook her head. “And that’s all I can remember. I feel as though I’ve been sleeping for a lifetime.”

  Amethyst landed beside Caitlin. “Your mother was taken by a dark and dangerous being, Caitlin. He came through the portal to your world and brought your mother here. He knew all about the Spectrum. How to manipulate the colors. But he needed the wand, for it had become infused with the power of human imagination. Your imagination. He wasn’t human and could not unleash its power. So he blinded Evelyn Fletcher, erasing her memory by employing the dark arts. Those dreadful glasses made her see the world in reverse. Light became dark—and so did her heart. He used her and the wand to try to destroy the kingdoms of our world. He abducted the real Queen of Hearts and put your mother in her place. Which is why I sent the princesses after you. And they, in turn, sent Jack to find you.”

  Caitlin’s heart skipped. “Jack?”

  “Jack is from our world. You know, Jack Spriggins … and the beanstalk?”

  She turned to Jack. He was wiping off his copper-colored suntan.

  Makeup?

  Jack was unnaturally pale. His eyes were rimmed in shadowy darkness.

  “You’re from here?” she asked, her eyebrows arced like bows.

  “Born and bred.”

  Her fingers grazed her lips as a gleam of awareness dawned in her eyes.

  “Those were your beans on my window ledge. It was you inside my room.”

  He nodded. “I came to find you, after you moved to London. I couldn’t stay in my world during sunrise—or I’d become a Blood-Eyed. I went back and forth each night, using the different portals.”

  “How did you get up that hole? And climb the ten stories to my apartment?”

  “I’m pretty good at scaling great heights,” he said with a smile. “Using beans and soil, of course.”

  Caitlin, near speechlessness, wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. All those sightings in all those graveyards around the world … it had been Jack every time, traveling through the wormholes.

  An ache rose inside of her. She feared the answer to her next question. “Will you be at school tomorrow?”

  He bowed his head. When he shook it, her heart broke.

  “Caitlin, you need to get back home—fast,” Jack warned as he glanced back up and nodded at the eastern sky.

  Caitlin couldn’t even begin to imagine how much she’d miss him.

  Evelyn Fletcher took her daughter by the hand.

  “Caitlin, honey. I cannot come back either.”

  Caitlin’s face reddened. “No!” she shouted. “The scepter is destroyed. The light and courage and the Green Spectrum! Everything’s been restored! You can come home, Mom!”

  Amethyst wrapped a silky wing around her. “Destroying the scepter eradicated the affliction of the Blood-Eyed. For that we are all grateful to you, young lady. But there was great damage done to our atmosphere by the scepter. Some of the Green Spectrum reaches us again, but much is still filtered out. Thus, a lot of work must still be done. Until we figure this all out, we will remain in this condition. Your mother as well. She’s been here, under our sun, for many years. Your sun will no longer heal her.”

  Caitlin crossed her arms. “So that’s it?” she said to her mom. “I lose you again?”

  Evelyn Fletcher knelt before her daughter. She placed her hands firmly upon her shoulders. She held her close and whispered, “You will never lose me, Caity-kins. We will work to fix what’s broken. We will.”

  Jack urgently strode over to Caitlin and took her hand. “You gotta go. The portal is almost closed.”

  She pulled her hand back. “I’m staying!” Caitlin commanded, as though she were a queen.

  Evelyn Fletcher stood back up. “Caitlin Rose Fletcher, you march up that beanstalk this instant. And you help your sister and your father, and you play my records and go to school dances and live your life to the absolute fullest, young lady! This will all work out in the end.”

  Caitlin couldn’t believe how beautiful her mother was.

  Fifteen hundred zombies broke out in applause and soft song. Caitlin choked up. Their sweet-sounding hymn filled her with inexpressible emotion.

  Suddenly, from out of the crowd came someone that brightened Caitlin’s heart. She was blonde, with zombie-pale skin, and she was dressed in a tattered blue-and-pink gown.

  Cinderella!

  She approached Caitlin and smiled warmly.

  “You reshaped an entire universe, Caitlin. Saved countless lives.”

  “But everyone is still zombified.”

  Rapunzel lifted Caitlin’s chin with her finger. “Only on the outside.”

  “You mean, like you?”

  Rapunzel’s face was angelic, with a gleam in her eye that bespoke deep wisdom. She winked. “Like us.”

  Snow White tapped Caitlin on the shoulder. “Because of you, we have an abundance of beauty and compassion in our hearts.”

  “And we managed to remain abundantly beautiful on the exterior as well,” Cindy added, batting her eyelashes.

  Amethyst rolled his eyes. “Evidently we’re not short on self-admiration, either.”

  Jack stepped forward and dragged Caitlin by the arm over to the beanstalk.

  Her mother came to her one more time, holding Caitlin’s face gently and firmly in her delicate hands. She planted a kiss on her forehead. “Make me proud, my darling daughter.”

  And with that, Evelyn Fletcher stood back and waved.

  Rapunzel came forth and kissed Caitlin on the cheek. “I have to say goodbye.” Caitlin wrapped her arms around Rapunzel in a warm embrace. Her face pressed against Rapunzel’s golden hair. It smelled of milky coconut and was soft as feathers. Caitlin wouldn’t let her go. She firmed up her grip with her fingers.

  “You’re the older sister I always dreamed I had. Please look after my mom,” she whispered in Rapunzel’s ear.

  Rapunzel broke away, crying. She offered a final fond wave and disappeared into a lush, green forest nearby.

  “How’s the gluten-free pizza in your neck of the woods?” Cinderella asked as she kissed Caitlin’s cheeks one at a time.

  Caitlin chuckled. “Order one sometime. I’ll deliver it with extra hot peppers.”

  Cindy smiled warmly and winked. “Be sure to give Natalie a hug from moi.” She waved farewell as she danced toward the crowd of zombies. She snuggled up to one particular young man who was most attractive and handsome even through his zombification. He was attired in tattered royal raiment. Cinderella interlocked her arm with his.

  Prince Charming nodded gratefully at Caitlin.

  Snow White came forward with open arms.

  “I am honored to know you, Caitlin.”

  Sleeping Beauty had fallen asleep. Caitlin gave her a good-night kiss on her cheek and affectionately stroked her hair.

  Caitlin’s bottom lip quivered when she turned to Jack, who was now tugging on her arm to hurry her along.

  “I thought you had to stay here?”

  “I said I lived here. Do
esn’t mean I don’t travel to other places. I climb beanstalks and battle giants, remember? And your world is a giant mess. Besides, you literally saved me from living dead forever after. And you saved my world. The least I can do is escort you back to your world. If you’ll permit me.”

  Caitlin felt a ray of sun brighten her heart. “Such a gentleman.”

  Jack winked. “You good to go?”

  “Good to go.”

  She gave one last look around. Lord Amethyst Bartholomew flitted over and wrapped his wings around her.

  She whispered, “Did this really happen?”

  Amethyst’s antennae stiffened.

  “Did it happen?” He waved an antenna and said, “Don’t answer, young lady, it was a rhetorical question. But now that we’re on the subject, what do you think?”

  “Well, you really meant to say do I know it really happened, not do I think it happened.” Caitlin raised a finger and continued. “But don’t answer, Lord Amethyst Bartholomew—that was a statement, not a question!” They both smiled.

  Jack started climbing. Caitlin followed. She turned back and blew a kiss to her mom. She held her gaze a moment longer, smiled, and then continued to climb.

  Amethyst’s voice echoed up the light shaft as she and Jack traveled at the speed of sound, courtesy of the rich, black soil of Zeno’s Forest. “It’s not the people looking at you on the dance floor that frightened you. It’s that you cared what they thought. Repel the red and let go. Then, my dear, you’ll always dance unbothered and free … like a clay-covered, short-haired zombie.”

  She woke as if she had been sleeping with a high fever. Her chest was sweaty, her bones lethargic, and her legs heavy as iron. The fragrant scent of moist grass and fresh dirt filled her nostrils as she blinked her eyes open. Cool night air brushed against her cheeks.

  Caitlin twisted her torso, extended her limbs, and yawned a prodigious yawn. She savored the pleasurable sensation of stretching her body and muscles into wakefulness.

  She was lying next to the headstone of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. A sea of stars winked at her through the dark, purple sky above. The moon hung like a narrow lantern, spilling slivers of light.