The Forbidding Blue

by Monica Lee Kennedy

  “The weather in the deserts was not as harsh then, although it certainly was no paradise, and they found a beauty in its ferocity. They decided as a people to explore the peri, and moved entirely from the terrisdans. They dwindled down to but a few of the hardiest, yet soon they flourished up again. They discovered methods of survival in the climate, so even as the deserts grew colder, they adapted. Strength and endurance were their line, and hardship seemed to hone greater stamina and power. They became their own kind, living out in the blue ice, and over time even their skin and hair showed the wear of the darkness and land.”

  Brenol’s face sagged. “And they’ll never help us if the portals remain?”

  “It is a guess, but a likely one.” Arman dipped his chin into a slight nod. “They think of themselves as separate now. Almost above human… I cannot know for certain what they wish, but perhaps such a step by us would bend their hearts. And they could show us their ways.”

  “If the world really is turning to ice, why would living in an endless winter be better than escaping out the portals?” Brenol asked insistently.

  “There is still hope here, Bren. I don’t think that abandoning our home for something unknown is the right answer. What would we do if we tumbled into an immaterial world? What would stop us from becoming as ruthless as Chaul?”

  “But I still don’t understand why the Tindel would only help if the portals are destroyed.”

  Arman’s face tightened. “They are hard, Bren.”

  “Hard?”

  Arman met Brenol’s gaze with an unforgiving directness. “Hard. I tried to hope beyond what I knew of them and still seek Colette out in the blue, but truly I was blinded by my grief… Bren, even had Colette escaped Chaul as you had once hoped, I don’t think she would have survived the peri.”

  Brenol’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Bren, the deserts are brutal. The land would likely have done the work, but I don’t even know what would have happened if she had managed the trek. A woman whose life was bound to the portals? Whose very babe within was from a foreigner’s line?”

  Brenol tensed at the mention of the child. He again saw Colette whispering to him in the trees. “I have a secret,” she said. The joy of her revelation seemed an entire lifetime ago, as if it had never have occurred.

  My Colette, my baby… Our miracle…

  “And these are the people we want to help us?” Brenol asked with abrupt disgust. “That is more madness than anything.”

  “Perhaps you are right. But do not forget their service already to Massada. They protected the sword for orbits. Their diligence meant we were able to rid ourselves of malitas.”

  Brenol’s mind clouded with images of the wretched blade, of Chaul-Darse, and of how he had failed to strike when he could likely have saved Colette.

  “But look around you, Bren.” Arman raised his arms about them to indicate the woods clothed in their white shroud of winter. “This is not a passing phase. And it is happening swiftly, too swiftly to learn and adapt… So while I cannot know, I choose to hope that, underneath their rigidity, there is mercy in them somewhere. Somewhere. If we know how to unlock it.”

  The sharp scent of snow powered through Brenol’s nostrils as if to affirm Arman’s words about the sweeping tide of cold. He closed his eyes, but the pain of seeing his soumme behind his lids was too great.

  “Give me some time…” Brenol said absently. He resumed his steps for lack of anything else to do, and they headed the remaining strides to their lodgings. He tapped his boots against the building’s side and shouldered the door open. Even inside the inn, they could both hear the winds howl across the iced terrisdan.

  “I know it cannot be long… I… I just need a little space to think.”

  Arman’s hand went to his friend’s shoulder. The other remained buried in his robes, and the juile fingers clicked out a message: You shall always have a home here.

  Brenol gave a brief dip of the head as acknowledgment and waited for the swish of his footsteps to leave him.

  CHAPTER 20

  Strength is the ability to bend for the other.

  -Genesifin

  The dense crust of blue wore hard on Colette’s heels, and her feet felt as new and weak as an infant’s. She stared out across the landscape and fought the growing impulse to scream. The blue went on and on and on, and the cold worked down into her flesh with a jarring slice that she had fought to forget. She had donned the thick fabrics and boots of the ice people, and they certainly helped protect from hypothermia and death, but the Tindel were right: the perideta was a lethal place, and there was no true acclimation. It was a wonder she had crossed with so little before and survived.

  It was so long ago that it seems like a dream.

  Mari wiggled in her sling. She was unused to being secured now and seemed more annoyed at the hindrance than the cold. She tugged at the cloth protecting her face, and it fell flapping like a ribbon. Colette sighed and tightened it up again despite the wriggling protests.

  “I’m sorry Mar, but you need this. And we have to go. I know you want to crawl and stand and move. But I have to hold you close and keep you warm.”

  The child gazed up through the blankets with her stunningly green eyes. The color was a drink of water in the midst of the monochrome dullness. Mari quieted, as if in understanding, but continued to peer at her mother with interest. Moments such as these, Colette felt her daughter was older than a mere orbit.

  “It’s time to go find Bren,” she said, more to herself than Mari. Any sound was a welcome one, for the crunch of her footfalls grated upon her senses.

  Colette had crept from the bethaida before the break of morning. The bulk of the lanterns had hung darkly in their sconces, and her pupils had strained forward to lap up any trace of light the dim corridors could offer. She had not expected any to stop her, but she feared their questions and probing eyes. You’re leaving? You’re giving up? Why now? they would ask.

  Why now, indeed.

  Indeed.

  After Gere’s offer, Colette had hidden herself in her room, taking her meals alone, hoping to find clarity and peace in the silence. Days had passed into moons, time becoming sand dropping into the hourglass of her shame.

  While Colette had donned solitude like a cape, it had not stopped her thoughts. Or emotions.

  Or his letters.

  Gere wrote daily, sometimes twice a day, and his words were sweeter than any draught from Ziel, any honey, any cane. His scrawl was as gentle and persuasive as his arms had been. His love was powerful, expressive. Soon he walked in her dreams, and she experienced his caresses there with relish. She felt the guilt hot upon her cheeks when her heart thrilled at the arrival of a new letter, always delivered by the same pale child with light amber eyes. He regarded her reaction with interest but never uttered a word as he shuffled from the room after positing the papers in her hand.

  This child sees. He sees I’m crumbling, she had thought. Even this child knows how weak I am.

  Whether he really perceived or not, Colette did.

  And the bethaida was rife with gossip. They assumed there could only be one reason for such an extravagant waste of paper.

  One particularly difficult night, as she had lain in the pool of her tears and wallowed in homesickness, she rose. She clutched one of Gere’s letters and found a clean section on the page. She wrote carefully, concisely: Gere- I still choose Bren. Leave me be.

  A rush of peace had enveloped her—the first breath in moons—and she had set the letter aside and slept with a lonely tranquility. When the urchin arrived to deliver her a note in the morning, she pressed the paper into his palm and watched the wide-eyed child disappear into the tunnels.

  She had wept, realizing she had sealed her miserable fate, but in the end the letter had made little difference. Gere redoubled his efforts, now including small tokens and gifts—a sweet candy, a garden blossom, a comb for her long locks—and she knew it would only be a matter of time befor
e her heart could not endure another moment. It was not the hardness of the Tindel that had finally broken her, it was the love of one.

  Unable—or at least fearing her ability—to resist any longer, she had turned to her last weapon: flight.

  “I choose Bren,” Colette said to herself. “Until I know with certainty he’s no more.” The cold air bit into her lungs with ferocious teeth, but it was still satisfying to voice her thoughts aloud. Somehow, the speech was freeing and helped her not fear the treacherous journey before her.

  And what if Massada’s no more? What then?

  Colette nodded at the familiar plaguing thoughts. They came with every awful step, every pained breath. Yet still she gasped out, hoping to silence them finally, “Then I’ll return, if I can. But I must find Bren. This has gone on too long.” Her breath was all cloud.

  And your cartess?

  “I don’t believe in my cartess,” she said stiffly. “I’m done having my imagination destroy those I love… The Tindel will never agree to help. Never.”

  Mari’s wide eyes stared up with wondering innocence at the strange words and tone of her mother. Little red curls poked out from the hood protecting her small head.

  “I’m sorry, Mari. I’m going crazy between the Tindel and this blue. Let’s go home.”

  Mari smiled in return, revealing several small white teeth, and snuggled into the warm chest of her mother. Colette breathed in the consoling moment before steeling her limbs to continue. She needed her strength; many days of demanding travel lay ahead.

  “We can do it,” she whispered, touching her cool lips to Mari’s warm cheek. “We will do it.”

  The wind howled through the open perideta with a screech that could have been human. She flung her eyes around with a wild defiance, but no one was there.

  It was only the frozen blue.

  ~

  The next day, she pressed forward with force. Mari was far less content to remain plastered against her chest, so although the girl was exposed to more chill, Colette turned the sling fabric into a backpack and secured her within. It reddened the child’s cheeks and widened her pasture-green orbs but at least eased the squirms and protests.

  The perideta was as brutal as ever. The wind keened across the barren land and sliced through her thick coats and yesterday’s resolve. The cold coaxed out fears and worked upon her mind like a snake: creeping and sliding around, soon to take a crushing and squeezing hold. Her feet trudged, losing their initial defiant alacrity.

  Remember, it’s not just for you. It’s for Mari too.

  She peered around and reached back to re-secure the face covering upon the girl. Mari uttered no cry of complaint, but her eyes were as wide as silver freg as she examined the unending blue. Her little face contained a faraway look, and Colette followed the child’s glance with her own eyes. It was a terrible world of monochrome ice. Utterly terrible.

  Can one live without color?

  The question seemed to have more than one meaning, but she refused to delve further and shook her head and willed her heels to continue. The ice was as firm as rock beneath her boots, occasionally crunching when she came across patches of snow. She avoided the drifts, for they towered in rises the height of a man and a half and ominously confronted her with their foreign cerulean. Hours waved by as her chest heaved and her legs quivered in exertion.

  Tiny lips smacking at her ear level awakened Colette to the present. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mari.”

  She tugged the sling down with an awkward movement, cradling the girl close. Her cheeks were icy, but the child’s core was more than warm enough. Colette loosed her pack and lowered herself to a seat upon it, swiftly maneuvering the hungry child to breast. The lovely eyes closed as her little mouth went to work. Colette draped the sling over as additional blanketing, and her heavy coat wrapped Mari snugly against her skin and protected from the coldest drafts.

  “Mari. What’ll we do if he doesn’t love me anymore? What’ll we do?” she whispered. Colette’s free hand instinctively rose to caress the corded lines that scored her once-lovely face. She could not feel anything beneath the layers of protective fabric, but it was no matter. They were there.

  The child did not open an eye, giving only the soft sound of contended suckling as answer.

  “Yes, yes, I imagine we’ll have to keep going anyway… I love you,” she whispered.

  ~

  That night, the two slept snuggled together against a large snow drift. It had been packed down so heavily that it now resembled a hunched down giant and was harder than granite, but she had still managed to pitch and anchor her Tindellan tent securely beside it. The wind mercifully abated for a few hours, and Colette found herself dreaming the moment she closed her eyes. Her slumber was interrupted by Mari’s cries of hunger. The child’s face was red and puckered in anger as she squirmed in the wrappings imprisoning her against her mother’s chest. Colette released her and set her upon the blanket while fumbling through her pack for a cracker. She extended one out to the child with a shaking hand. Mari crunched happily, despite the awkward grip through her mittens.

  How does she endure the cold so well? It’s never-ending pain for me.

  Colette pulled out a dark, hard cake for herself. It was flavorless and dense but hopefully would supply enough energy for a few hours. She peered briefly into the pack and frowned. Her supplies were low, and she realized she had been consuming food too quickly. Reluctantly, she put half of the cake back and ignored her growling stomach.

  The lunitata raised her water sack to briefly touch her lips. She was not thirsty, but it mattered not. She had learned enough in the bethaida, having seen the Tindel bodies brought in stiff and cold. They had died from thirst without even a blink of awareness. She sipped again to quench her fear, and Mari nestled in to nurse. Colette exhaled with a soft relief as her milk dropped. She prayed that her milk supply would hold until the terrisdans. The perideta was treacherous on all fronts.

  Following the thought, she lifted a side of the tent’s fabric up to survey the blue, prepared to scowl at its ever deepening flaws. It was the dead of night, but the perideta shone alight with an eerie cobalt glow. The dark sky above was dusted with luminous white stars, and the ground coruscated all about her like a sea of blue diamonds. For just a moment, the beauty made the land palatable.

  Colette’s breath escaped her in a cloudy huff. “There is something here, isn’t there?”

  The cold burned her mouth and lungs, even stung her teeth, and returned her to the reality of her surroundings.

  For every beauty, there are fifty hardships here.

  She released the fabric, huddled closer to Mari, and both fell back asleep.

  ~

  Around midday four days later, Colette reached a spherisol. She hoped it was the same one she had encountered on the trek to the Tindel, but the world had become a wash of unidentifiable blue to her. The black metal orb was nearly a relief to her eyes and mind, even though it set her insides trembling.

  The lunitata steered around the forbidding globe, but in her exhaustion, she tripped and found herself face down in blue. Mari screamed in fright, and Colette’s ankle awoke with an explosion of pain. Dots lined her vision, and the cold from the ground snuck through her layers as swiftly as water through cotton. Colette gingerly maneuvered herself to unpack Mari and settled the child upon a blanket before groping with both hands toward her injured foot.

  She winced as her fingers probed the site. She did not know much anatomy but fingered the bones and tendons tenderly while releasing sharp clouds of breath. She had not heard any snapping, but the pain was almost unbearable. Her hands shook as dots of light flickered across her vision. Crossing the perideta would be excruciating—if even possible now.

  Colette closed her eyes and breathed. I did more difficult things on the way here. I can manage this. Take a rest, she told herself reasonably, then get back to walking.

  “Or shuffling,” she mumbled, but felt her optimism stronger tha
n she expected.

  I can do this.

  She smiled wryly and answered, “Or at least will do it.”

  The cold bit at her hands, and she re-gloved them and ushered them swiftly into her pockets for warmth. She was met with a crackle, and her fingers closed in upon a cracker. “Hey, Mari. Sweetie, I have a—”

  Colette’s face blanched as her eyes darted around in panic. The girl’s face wrap lay beside the abandoned sling, and her pack belongings were scattered around it. Colette frantically swept her vision across the cornflower-blue expanse. Finally, she spotted her. Mari had crawled with alarming speed and was within arm’s length of the spherisol. The dark globe glared down with a harsh foreignness, and Colette felt her lips tingle with a silent scream.

  “Mari, Mari! Wait. Come here, sweetie,” she called coaxingly.

  The girl turned her head slightly, smiled to her mother, and proceeded to steady herself with the dais. Though awkward in her layers of clothing, she determinedly set to cruising around the orb.

  Colette watched in intrigued horror. The globes in the bethaidas were dangerous, but they were no match for the ones upon the perideta. It would be the girl’s death if she touched the sphere. The Tindel had only needed to tell her once: the absorbing spherisols took in all energy and life. They were the end to any creature who touched their black skin.

  Colette threw her body forward, but the injured ankle buckled beneath the attempt like a collapsing bridge. She lunged in a pained and desperate crawl, feeling as though she was barely eking out digits. Her eyes remained focused on her daughter; her heart, lodged in her throat.

  The girl was but a breath from death. Her little fingers waved and clapped happily against the dais. It only would take a slight motion…

  “Mari!” she screamed hysterically, but the toddler ignored her. The girl had spent too long in the confines of her mother’s grip without movement. Even the cold was no deterrent to her determined little mind. She raised her tiny hand to touch the dark metal but found that it was barely out of reach. Colette sighed but felt the terror grip again as the child adjusted her footing, bobbing up and down in a little dance as she flexed and stood.