Believing in Blue

by Maggie Morton

“Villains? That’s one word for them, but I can think of a lot of more fun words you could use. I’ve been trying to cut down on my swearing, though. Don’t want to scare off any girls with delicate sensitivities!”

  Wren laughed. “You don’t have to worry about that with me. By the time I was fourteen and a half I’d probably heard far worse than anything you can come up with.”

  “Then to fucking hell with it, I won’t hold back!” It wasn’t just her looks Wren found attractive by that moment—Sia could also clearly make her laugh. It almost seemed like she believed in Wren, too, and Wren’s importance. Wren realized then that it almost felt, for the first time in longer than she could remember, as if she mattered. A heck of a lot, if she was to believe she was going to save an entire world…or two of them, as Sia had actually told her.

  “Anyway, I should also tell you that you need to learn how to fly by the time we’re supposed to take off,” and Sia wiggled her eyebrows with these words, “because the portal you’ll travel through kind of ends up on a platform. A high one. A very, very high one. And you’ll need to fly down from there, because I won’t be able to catch you if you fall from that far up above our home. I may be strong enough, but my wings can pretty much carry only me and something around half your size. They can’t even come close to keeping me in the air along with you! I mean, not that you look all that heavy, or at all bad at your weight…whatever it is,” Sia added quickly, looking slightly embarrassed at her words. Wren knew she wasn’t the thinnest girl in the world, as her stepdad had made clear to her on many occasions, so it was wonderful to have her somewhat-crush reassure her about her looks.

  “So, let’s see, what else…” Sia fell silent, tapping her leg a few times before she spoke up again. “I need to meet with you here at least three more times. Are you free tomorrow afternoon and night, sometime around now?”

  “I come out pretty much every night to this spot, and tomorrow afternoon will be fine.” Wren was going to get out from her last day of school about noon, and that night was her graduation, where she would walk with Nicole and be handed a diploma. The diploma meant a lot to her, but she knew it couldn’t lead her toward a bright future the way it might for her other classmates. At least Nicole was heading off to college the way Wren wanted to, so that was something to be happy about.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then? At, say, two thirty, let’s meet here. Bring your wings, and don’t be late, ’kay?” Sia got off the rock and started heading out of the clearing. “You did great tonight, even if you didn’t learn right away like some of us thought you might. But I’m sure you’ll have it down by the end of tomorrow night. And one more thing…the Winged Red may not have a portal into your world the way we Blue do, but still, be careful who you trust over the next few days. Just because they can’t come to your planet, your world, they have at least some power here, or so Torien believes. Be careful, will ya?”

  “Sure, Sia, of course. I…I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” Wren told her, hoping her honesty wouldn’t draw scorn from Sia.

  “I am, too. Bye!” Sia waved once and then disappeared in the opposite direction of Wren’s path.

  She tried to fly one last time but had no luck. Not that it was at all likely that she’d be able to without Sia’s help. So, struggling a bit more than usual, Wren pulled her tired wings back into her shoulders and left the clearing. Then, with a familiar feeling of disappointment, she went back to her yard, back inside her house, and back upstairs and into her room.

  Before she changed into her pajamas, she thought about her crush on Sia. It didn’t seem like a good idea, even if Sia sounded like she might be gay, too. No, she needed to concentrate on more important things, like learning how to fly and saving not one, but two entire worlds.

  As she lay in bed, trying to sleep, Wren ran the entire night over and over in her head. She finally let go of these thoughts and worries around two and drifted into a shallow slumber to the beginning sounds of rain.

  *

  Sia headed back down the path she’d taken from her cabin ever since the first time she’d gone to watch Wren. She’d wanted to reach out to her sooner, but Sia knew patience was best, and the Seer had told her to wait, that Wren would surely learn in time, and to let her get used to having her wings before she tried to use them. It might have not gone very well that night, Sia thought to herself as she pushed through the thick brush, but they still had the next afternoon and three more nights. It would have to be enough.

  She reached her cabin after about ten minutes of walking. Torien had discovered it on one of his long, solo hikes through the woods, and he’d decided it would be a good base of operations for the somewhat-distant future. It was decidedly cozy, with its thick, lace-trimmed curtains and a rather comfortable bed. She’d brought flowers to the cabin every afternoon while she was waiting for the time when she’d first make contact with Wren, and today’s bouquet included Stargazer lilies and bright-orange roses. As she entered, she inhaled the fragrant perfume they filled the cabin with, then shut the front door and sat down in front of the magic mirror propped against the room’s table. Torien had left it there on his last day in this world, having been someone who liked to plan rather far ahead.

  Now that she was seated, Sia put a pen to paper and began to write her latest letter to Torien. She would have to lie to him, because she’d contacted Wren beyond the woods, going against the rules he’d given her. She just hadn’t been able to resist approaching her student while she sat outside the café. Even though Sia was aware that showing her face in public might be a bad idea, she couldn’t think of any reasons for it to be so. Besides, she’d found Wren almost irresistibly cute, sitting there and staring off into space while she drank her mocha, a charming whipped-cream mustache only adding to her appeal.

  That memory made her sigh. You aren’t allowed to like her, silly Sia. She’s far too important for that.

  To distract herself from all these thoughts, Sia returned her attention to the letter she was composing. It was time to write the person who had sent her here and tell him all the latest developments. All of them except how much she liked Wren’s smile.

  Dear Torien,

  I’ve made contact with your daughter, now. She seems very smart, a chip off the old (not that old, of course) block. She looks a bit like the way you’ve described her mother, and a bit like you, not that her resemblance to you and her mother is strange. Or important.

  Never mind that. Anyway, we tried to get her flying, and it seems that my brother will win his bet with me after all, because although I wanted her to be able to learn in one night, it just didn’t happen. After my years of helping our young Blues, I guess I found it unlikely that someone learning how to fly for the first time at such an advanced age would learn super-fast, to be honest. She seems willing to try as hard as her wings will allow her to, and we still have many more hours for me to teach her. So, nothing to worry about.

  I haven’t seen any sign of the Winged Red here, although that doesn’t mean I don’t have my eyes and ears constantly open for the possibility. It still doesn’t seem likely to me that they would be able to see into this world without a portal, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.

  I’ll be meeting with your daughter tomorrow afternoon and night. It’s obvious that it won’t take very much longer for her to take wing and leave the ground. She is your daughter, after all, isn’t she?

  Sia signed off and placed the letter against the blue-surfaced mirror. It started to disappear through the mirror after a moment, and then it was gone. Now, thankfully, she could get some shut-eye. Sia went into the bathroom and washed her face, then brushed her teeth.

  Once in bed, she ran over what she might try that afternoon with Wren, to help get her off the ground. And even though both this world and her own were depending on her, this fact didn’t keep her awake for much longer than it took her to place her head on the pillow and close her eyes. She’d let herself sleep in late, she dec
ided right before she drifted off. And then, maybe brunch at that café where Wren worked. The food there had looked so good…

  *

  A few hours after Sia had fallen asleep, her mirror’s surface began to ripple, with subtle, flowing circles emanating from its center. The ripples started out blue, but slowly, little by little, they changed hue, until the mirror was blue no more. Two sets of eyes, eyes the same shade as the mirror, now stared out of it. Shortly after they had become visible, two ravens’ heads appeared in the midst of the mirror’s now-murky glass. Each raven tilted its head in one direction and then another, as if they were taking in the room and the sleeping girl.

  The raven on the right was the first to speak, and its voice was that of a younger woman. “Do you think she’s learned how to fly yet?”

  “Only time will tell, of course. The prophecy just stated that she’ll learn in time. But I’m sure she’ll be here in our world soon enough, and then we can set the rest of my plan in motion.”

  “Your plan?” If a raven could be said to glare, that’s what the younger-sounding raven seemed to be doing as its head turned toward the larger raven.

  “It is mostly mine, you should remember. You know I’ve been shaping its parts since quite a while before you were born. The prophecy said that would be necessary, and who am I to disagree with such important words?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” The raven sounded slightly annoyed, almost as if she’d heard that line a few times too many. “By the way, you should know that I’ve finally succeeded—I can send the power to the female human I found and guide Wren to her.”

  “I still don’t want you to enact your idea. It wasn’t in the book. I want us to just wait till she’s here and follow what our prophecy says. Otherwise, we might startle her, stop her from even wanting to travel to the Winged Blue’s land in the first place.”

  “I may be young, but you should know by now that I’m smart enough to see that it can’t hurt to get a head start on things.”

  “Can’t hurt? You would be wise to remember that we don’t want to push her too hard, or things won’t fall into place like we want them to. Like they’re supposed to…like they must.”

  “I’m…sure you’re right.”

  With those words, the mirror began to ripple again, and its surface became blue and calm once more.

  Sia had slept through her uninvited visitors’ entire conversation, although a slight frown and a furrowed brow showed she wasn’t completely unaware that all was not right.

  Chapter Five

  Wren had never been much of a morning person, and after her lengthy late-night excursion, that didn’t seem like it would change on this particular day. She mumbled a curse and, after a bit of a struggle, found the snooze button, giving her a decidedly useless extra ten minutes of sleep. The second time her alarm went off she shoved herself upright and stretched. Then she stumbled off to splash some cold water in her face and see whether she had any especially noticeable dark circles under her eyes. Once the splashing and checking had been taken care of, she trundled downstairs in search of strong coffee and cereal. She was grateful that her mirror-aided assessment showed her looking far more awake than she usually did after a midnight trip to her spot in the woods.

  Maybe it was the excitement the last night had contained. This was her guess as she ground some dark-roast coffee beans in her stepfather’s top-of-the-line grinder. Lost in thought, she ground the beans a little too fine, but they would have to do—no way was she wasting any of her special coffee stash, which she’d bought at Nancy’s Fancies along with the fennel. It seemed more like an investment than a purchase, she’d told herself. Even if it had been an unwise impulse buy, her first cup—splash of cream, no sugar—made the price of the coffee seem more than merely fair in her opinion.

  Her taste buds and body now much happier, she poured a bowl of granola and sat down next to the messy pile of newspapers her stepdad always left near her favorite spot at the table. Instead of going for the paper, she returned to the book she’d been reading the night before. The girl in it had just found out exactly how important her powers were going to be in her fictional world. In Wren’s much-less fictional world, her own powers were supposedly also very important. Perhaps somewhat more so, considering the girl was living in a book and Wren was not.

  Before she’d learned of them, it would have seemed like her wings and her supposed importance could have been right out of a novel. And there were parts of her life she still wished only existed in between some book’s covers, that much was for sure. But change was on its way into her life, clearly, change and then some.

  “Change” would have to wait, though, because despite her strong urge to skip school, she put on some jeans and a black tank, and brushed her hair and teeth. All of these things, all of these normal everyday habits, had suddenly become exceptionally ordinary actions in comparison to her no-longer-ordinary life. She almost wanted to let her wings out right now, but she’d have the chance soon enough, and she’d much rather take them out in the presence of a certain new acquaintance.

  But instead of Sia, her father Torien was the main occupant of her thoughts during her walk to school. There were traces of Sia in them, of course, but she was thinking of her father as she walked through the school’s double doors and started down the hallway. Halfway down it, a woman’s voice from behind her called her name, and Wren stopped walking, and stopped thinking about her dad and Sia as well.

  “Wren?” the voice said again.

  She turned around and saw the school counselor beckoning to her. The woman had been trying to get her in to her office for a long time, but Wren had dodged her every request. Wren didn’t want to talk about her home life to anyone, not even her friends, so why would she spill it all to a complete stranger?

  “Wren, do you have a minute? I thought I’d give it one last try, just for the heck of it.” The counselor, Jamie, gestured toward her office, but Wren shook her head.

  “Sorry, Jamie, I have somewhere to be.”

  “I just wanted to hear about your plans for after you graduate. I try to meet with all the future graduates before the year’s up, and you haven’t made it into my office yet.”

  There’s obviously a reason for that, Wren thought, but after a glance over her shoulder at the freedom beyond the doors she’d just walked through, she sighed and started in Jamie’s direction. “Why not?” she told the counselor, following the short woman through the door to what was presumably her office. Presumably because she might also be planning on cooking and eating Wren, and instead of a couch and an armchair, the room might contain a human-sized roasting pan.

  But the room didn’t contain anything that scary, even if it seemed like it should have. Instead, two ugly brown armchairs and a cheap-looking love seat sat opposite each other, and enough large, potted plants to fill a small greenhouse were barely contained within the small room’s four walls. “Are you a gardener?” Wren asked her.

  The petite, graying counselor settled into one of the armchairs, looking far more at home than Wren felt at the moment. How had this seemingly unassuming woman managed to get her in here? Jamie smiled, gesturing at the plants. “These are my babies. Just like your fellow students, I help them find their way into the healthy form they’re meant to be in.”

  “So, am I a ficus or a bonsai? Maybe a fern?”

  “Oh, I don’t know yet. I’m pretty sure you’re not a plant, actually, but a high-school senior who’s about to graduate and is probably looking forward to moving into the future.”

  “You’re right, I am excited,” Wren told her, the words slipping out before she had a chance to stop them. They actually seemed to be the truth, too, another regrettable fact. But considering Jamie’s gray hairs, she’d probably had at least a few years’ practice ferreting out high schoolers’ secrets.

  Wren braced herself for whatever the counselor’s next question happened to be, but Jamie just smiled at her and said, “That’s exactly what I like to
hear. Do you have any special plans for your future? Anything you’d like to discuss?”

  “N-no, nothing special,” Wren stuttered out. She broke eye contact with Jamie and started scanning the pots of greenery on the wall to her right, trying to decide exactly what lie to tell the counselor. “I’m, um, I’m going to work at the café I’ve been working at all year for the summer, and then I think I’m going to…I’m going to…I just remembered, I have somewhere to be.” With those words, Wren moved away from her spot across from Jamie, and with the calmest steps she could manage, she went over to the door and turned the knob.

  “See you later,” she told the counselor, although that was a lie, too. She wouldn’t be seeing her later, Wren thought as she quickly made her way back down the hallway. She heard the counselor calling after her as she got closer to the double doors, but Jamie’s voice grew quieter and quieter as Wren began to speed up, breaking into a run as she slammed open the left front door.

  There was no way she could have told Jamie the truth, she thought as she ran. She couldn’t tell anyone, but that didn’t mean it was a bad secret, not at all. It was a secret that lent a bright, precious light to each pounding step she took across the sidewalk. It was a secret no one on Earth would understand, but that didn’t make it any less special. Because Wren also felt special, for the very first time since her father had disappeared from her life. Now her future shone as radiantly as the secret that would lead her there, the secret that would lead her to her true home.

  Chapter Six

  In a different part of the region, deep in the woods beyond the town, Sia was sitting in front of her mirror. She was equally deep in thought, using her newest journal to try to remove one topic in particular from her head. It didn’t seem to want to be removed, because all she’d been able to write about for the last hour was that she liked Wren, and not just in a friendly way, not just in the way she was allowed to. She hadn’t expected Wren to be so attractive, and she hadn’t expected her to be gay, either. And now the combination of these two facts, fluttering around in her brain like a pair of lovesick birds, had made for an annoyingly distracted beginning to her day.