Blue

by Lou Aronica

  The memory of those storytelling days gave him a sudden inspiration. “Maybe we can fix it.”

  Becky sniffled again and wiped at her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Becky, you created this world. Everything in Tama-risk is something you invented.”

  “Not everything, not anymore. I told you; it’s evolved.”

  “Okay, not everything. A huge amount of it, though. And everything you created is still there, right?”

  “I guess. I mean, I haven’t taken inventory or anything.”

  “Which means that if you created something new, that would be there, too, right?”

  He could see the light coming on in Becky’s eyes. “Like what?”

  “Like a cure for the blight.”

  Her expression brightened. “You mean tell a new story?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  She jumped up from her seat and hugged him, rubbing a tear across his cheek. “You’re a genius, Dad. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Only because your own genius isn’t fully developed yet.”

  She smirked at him. It was great to see that smirk replace the other expression on her face. “Right, that must be it. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  Becky started walking out of the living room. “To my room. We have to do it the same way we always did, don’t we?”

  Chris would never forget the last Tamarisk story he’d told with Becky. It was the night before he moved out, the night before Polly and he finally revealed to Becky what was happening to their family. Chris had been so intent on keeping everything as normal as possible that he didn’t want to suggest in any way that this night’s story was going to be different from any other night’s. Still, it was impossible to keep the tension that had been building in the household from creeping into their fantasy world.

  The Thorns were Chris’s invention. Before he suggested them to Becky, he thought a long time about whether introducing a “cold war” enemy was a good idea. Before then, Tamarisk had been relatively free of antagonists. There was the occasional thief or ne’er-dowell, and sometimes one of the nonhuman creatures acted aggressively, but there was nothing approaching a vast villainous force. The Thorns would create more conflict for their stories, but it would also steal some of the innocence from Tamarisk. Ultimately, Chris decided that it would give Becky a useful way of addressing—and even “controlling”—evil, and that this would be healthy for her.

  In the days leading up to the last Tamarisk story, Becky had started a plot about the threat of war. The Thorns had started some border skirmishes and imprisoned a number of innocent Tamariskians as spies. In the final story, the king and queen of Tamarisk and some of their closest advisors debated the possibility of military action. They decided to embark on a diplomatic mission instead in the hope of saving lives. As the story ended, the royal entourage left the palace, doubtful they could strengthen relations with the Thorns, but feeling the need to make the effort anyway.

  Chris never could have guessed then that the Tamarisk days would end this way. Even a few weeks after Becky’s announcement that she was no longer willing to tell stories with him, he still believed they would pick up again. He even continued to think about new diplomatic forays that would create a sturdier peace with the Thorns. He had never gotten the chance to share them with his daughter.

  Now, though, it turned out that the tense story of the king and queen’s trip to Gunnthorn would not be the last one Chris told with Becky. There would be at least one more, though the circumstances were about as unlikely as Chris could imagine.

  For full effect, they positioned themselves just as they had those thousands of times before. Becky lay under the covers, her head against her propped-up pillow. Chris leaned back on the wall next to her bed.

  When my life passes before my eyes, Chris thought, I’ll see this image.

  “This is the continuing saga of the land of Tama-risk,” Becky said, using the words that always prefaced a new story.

  “A creation of Rebecca and Christopher Astor,” Chris said, contributing his part of the introduction.

  Becky smiled at him and then looked up at the ceiling. Chris knew from experience that she was gathering her thoughts for the story. He hoped the ceiling in the apartment had as many good ideas as the one in Moorewood had.

  “These were dark days for all of Tamarisk,” she said in a voice a half octave lower than her speaking voice. It made Chris laugh inside that Becky still did this, a product of her younger (and unsuccessful, though he never mentioned it) attempts to sound like a voice-over narrator. “A disease had descended upon the land, withering the vegetation, robbing delicate creatures of food and shelter. The azure/indigo fields had become tinged with gray. What had at first appeared to be a simple infestation had turned out to be something much, much worse. It was . . . a blight!

  “More horrifying still, no one could discover its cause. The scientists delivered reports. Military leaders searched for signs of treachery outside the borders. The palace considered every option. This was the first time in the four years of the queen’s rule where she felt entirely helpless.”

  Chris watched Becky tell the story, her brow furrowed and her voice somber. In spite of how seriously she was taking all of this, though, he couldn’t help notice that there was also more drama and wonder in her words. Maybe it was because her language skills were so much greater now than they had been four years ago, but the Tamarisk Becky spoke about seemed realer than ever before.

  It took him a moment to notice that Becky had stopped speaking. It took him another moment to realize—even though he’d been looking directly at her— that she was looking at him.

  “Was that my cue?” he said.

  “The helpless part is kind of a hang-up for me.” Chris leaned back and wrapped his right arm over the top of his head. It was his favorite thinking position.

  You didn’t leave me a lot to work with here, Beck. You already took out all the scientists and the military. Do I go with something spiritual? Something supernatural? Hey, maybe a teenager from another planet comes along and saves the day.

  “It’s a creature,” he said brightly.

  “Huh?”

  “Something in the ecosystem they haven’t considered. Maybe a migration pattern changed and one thing led to another.”

  “And suddenly the entire kingdom has a disease? That doesn’t seem right.”

  Chris shook his head. “You’re right, it doesn’t.” He resumed his thinking position. He stared off at the far wall.

  “No, it’s not a migration pattern. Or actually, it is a migration pattern, but not from one land mass to another. It’s from one level to another.”

  “I’m completely lost.”

  “Some subterranean species of insect or something that has always lived deep below the surface starts moving up for some reason that I haven’t figured out yet, and when it does, it starts feeding off of nutrients the plants on the surface need to survive. This species doesn’t realize what it’s doing, but it’s starving everything else.”

  Becky’s eyebrows arched. “That’s pretty good. I mean, it could even be what’s happening.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it? If we say it’s happening, then it is what’s happening, right?”

  Becky smiled. “I guess so. Tell it, Dad.”

  Chris remembered that it was never enough to talk about the story. They always had to tell the story in order for it to be an official part of the Tamarisk record. Chris sometimes found himself composing sentences for the next night’s story while he worked in the lab.

  “For weeks, as the populace despaired and the queen and her advisors puzzled, the blight went un-checked and its source went unidentified. Finally, the queen decided to take matters into her own hands. ‘Take me to the fields of—’” Chris looked at Becky. “Where did they first find the blight?”

  “Jonrae.”

  “‘Take me to the fields of Jonrae,’ s
he said to her advisors. Once in the fields, the queen looked out on the devastated landscape and dropped to her knees. Her beloved Tamarisk was shriveling in front of her. She ran her hands along the black earth and felt a sudden spark of inspiration. Quickly requesting a shovel, she began to dig. She had no idea what she was digging for, but she did so with all of her energy.

  “‘Your Majesty, let some of the field hands do this work,’ one of the advisors said.”

  “‘No,’ said the queen,” Becky said, immediately adopting the queen’s role. “‘I need to do this myself. There’s something here. I know it.’”

  For a moment, neither Chris nor Becky said anything. Chris figured Becky wanted to take over the storytelling, but she looked at him as though she were waiting for him to continue. “Back to me?”

  “You know what’s going to happen next; I don’t.”

  Chris wasn’t entirely sure that he did know what was going to happen next, but he hoped it would come to him if he just kept talking. “For nearly a quarter of an hour, the queen dug. Something told her she would find something here if she just kept digging. After a few minutes, others joined her. Now, nearly a dozen people were digging at once and the hole grew quickly.

  “The queen set her shovel in the dirt for a moment. Her arms burned with exhaustion, but she had no intention of stopping. She would rest for a minute. Only one minute. That’s when she noticed the movement.” Chris hesitated. Noticed the movement of what? He looked over at Becky and saw her watching him with anticipation. Come up with something now.

  “The insect was tiny,” he said slowly, still reaching for inspiration, “almost too small to see. It was black as well, blending almost completely into the color of the soil. When the queen stooped to examine it, she saw that the insect was not alone. It had five or six partners marching behind it, and when the queen moved some loosened dirt, at least a dozen more emerged.

  “The queen, who had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the species of Tamarisk, had never seen this tiny insect before. She picked one up, and the little creature stopped moving entirely, seemingly stunned. The little thing was the deepest black with a hard shell. It had four back legs and two minuscule pincers in the front. The queen was certain she was looking at something that no one in the kingdom had ever seen before.”

  Chris smiled awkwardly at Becky, hoping she would be prompted enough to continue because he had nothing. Becky looked upward for a moment and then picked up the story.

  “Miea held the insect out for the chief scientist at the site to examine. ‘Have you ever seen this before?’ The scientist leaned forward and looked at the creature carefully. ‘No, Your Majesty, never,’ he said. Miea held the bug closer to her again. ‘There’s an answer here,’ she said, ‘I just know it.’”

  Becky’s eyes locked with Chris’s eyes. “What’s the answer?”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d be wondering about that.” Chris felt a little like he’d painted himself into a corner. As a scientist—even one who spent all of his time as an administrator now—he wanted his solution to the problem in Tamarisk to make sense. At the same time, though, many of the things they’d created in Tamarisk were scientifically suspect. Scientific accuracy, after all, wasn’t the point. They’d taken some huge leaps in inventing the world. What was one more?

  “Over the next few hours, the scientist’s staff analyzed the soil around the insect colony and compared it to the soil closer to the surface. They came to a remarkable conclusion: the soil where the creatures settled was devoid of all the nutrients necessary to maintain plant life.”

  Chris looked over to see Becky smiling. “What?” he said.

  “Now what are you going to do about it?”

  He smiled back. She looked so much better than she had when she’d come into the living room less than an hour ago. “I’m going to turn it over to you.”

  “No chance!”

  “Beck, you’re about to save Tamarisk,” he said with mock sweetness in his voice. “It would be selfish of me to take that from you.”

  “Nope, you’re on a roll, Dad. I’m sure you have something brilliant in mind.”

  “No, really, it’s all yours.”

  Becky’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think I can handle it, do you?”

  “Of course I think you can handle it. So handle it.”

  “Okay, I will.” Becky leaned back against the pillow and didn’t say anything for several minutes. Chris scrambled for a way to pick her up just in case she decided she didn’t know where to go with the story.

  She sat up and began. “With remarkable swiftness—” Chris laughed to himself. “With remarkable swiftness” was code for “I’m about to take a huge leap here.” “—the scientists analyzed the insects and their environment. Miea contributed the expertise she had gained from working in the fields and studying at the university, and she and the large staff of scientists called to work on the project determined that the insects rose up from deep below the surface of the earth because they were starving. The solution was complicated, but with the best minds in Tamarisk working day and night, within a week they’d built machines to feed new nutrients to the insects’ original homes. The insects ended their migration and quickly burrowed back where they came from, leaving the surface to the vegetation of Tamarisk.

  “Almost immediately, the plants started showing signs of new life. No more than a month later, the entire kingdom was as blue and vibrant as it had ever been. A horrible crisis had been averted because of the intuition of the brilliant young queen.”

  Becky threw Chris a sidelong glance. She knows how preposterous that solution sounds, but she also knows I’ll let it ride. “That Miea is one amazing person,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, isn’t she?”

  “Are we all set?”

  “I think so.”

  “Time for the closing words?”

  “Right. So ends today’s saga of the land of Tama-risk.” She smiled shyly at him.

  Those aren’t all the closing words, Beck. You’re supposed to say, “Our story returns again tomorrow night.”

  “So, how does it feel to save an entire kingdom?” Chris said.

  Becky sighed deeply. “Pretty good. Do you think we really did it?”

  “I think there’s a decent chance. Are you going to go back now to find out?”

  “I can’t. Whenever I get pulled out, I can’t go back for a while afterward. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  She’s absolutely convinced this happens. I think she’s got me convinced at this point, too. Geez.

  “That was a great idea you had,” Becky said.

  “You mean the thing about the insects?”

  “That was pretty good. Not your best ever, but definitely okay. I meant the thing about telling the story to make things better over there. I only hope it worked.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Becky looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Then she got out from under the covers, reached over, and hugged Chris. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Glad I could help, babe.”

  Since Becky couldn’t go back to Tamarisk, she decided that going to the movies with her father was an acceptable alternative. Chris took her to a film by a director who, less than a year ago, he’d dubbed “too dark” for her. The movie, which dealt with the themes of teen drug abuse, alienation, and active rejection of authority, received great reviews, and several of Becky’s friends had seen it already. Chris wasn’t entirely sure why he’d decided Becky was ready to handle this. He was even less sure why she deemed it okay to watch it with him.

  “I am so glad you are not like Pauline,” he said to Becky in a coffee bar afterward, referring to the heroine of the movie.

  “How do you know, Dad,” Becky said with a sly smile. “Maybe I have a secret life.”

  Chris tipped a biscotti in her direction. “I already know about your secret life. I’m guessing Pauline never once petted a hoffler.”

  Becky considered this for a moment. “Mayb
e if she had, things would have turned out differently for her.”

  Chris took a sip of his café au lait and admired his daughter’s gleaming eyes. “Yeah, maybe.”

  They filled the rest of the day with window-shopping, browsing, and a walk through the park. Just passing the time. Chris didn’t even mind the traffic going over the bridge, which was inevitable, even on a Sunday night.

  The mood shifted instantly when he got to Polly’s, though. Polly had been out when he’d picked Becky up yesterday, and he hadn’t seen her since their curt phone conversation. It was immediately apparent, however, that Polly hadn’t forgotten their last exchange. Chris could swear that Polly’s eye sockets actually shifted closer together when she was peeved.

  Polly kissed Becky on the forehead before she even got into the house. Chris thought it might be a good idea to say good-bye to Becky on the front stoop, but before he could do so, Polly said, “Did you have a nice weekend, Becky?”

  “Yeah, it was great,” Becky said casually.

  Chris reached out to give his daughter a hug, but Polly spoke again, this time to him. “Are the two of you still playing fantasy games?”

  Chris immediately felt anger bubbling. He didn’t want to tangle with Polly in front of Becky, but he wasn’t going to have her ridicule them, either. “We went to the movies.”

  Polly scowled. It dawned on him that she’d probably been working herself up for this showdown since Wednesday night. “Was that before or after you took your trip to La-La Land?”

  “Mom, stop already, okay?”

  Polly flicked a glance at Becky and then stared back at Chris. “Really, I want to know. How elaborate was the fantasy this time. Did you get to shake hands with a dragon, maybe?”

  Chris relived the hug Becky had given him when they’d finished their Tamarisk story that morning. The contrast between that moment and this one nearly brought tears to his eyes. “Polly, don’t be ridiculous.”

  Polly threw her eyes skyward. “Ridiculous,” she said sharply.