Beneath Ceaseless Skies #95

by Margaret Ronald

  This was heartbreak, Amm realized. She recognized the blurred patterns mottling his body. She’d felt that way once, twice before. The day he’d been born, when her parents began their slow dismissal of her. The day Cerrune had moved in with the Black Veil. Both times she’d died a little, thinking the ones she’d loved no longer wanted to be around her.

  But this was greater by far than what she’d ever felt. Stronger. More violent. Cerrune and Ferr had been together for over a year, long enough to form a bond that now gave Cerrune such pain it made even his vibrant body seem muddied.

  “You should have known better,” shaded Amm again, this time letting compassion leak in. Then she hugged him, closing her eyes so he could sob in peace.

  * * *

  But Ferr never left.

  She spoke with the Black Veil and announced her decision to move southeast, away from the tribe, promising to do her best. To learn to haggle and send back treats for her favorite nephews.

  Cerrune spoke of it with bitterness, and Amm watched his eyes follow Ferr’s every move in public. She tried to speak of it with Ferr once, only to be rebuffed soundly. Not just rebuffed. Mocked. In front of half of Ferr’s family and many friends, all of whom could boast a wider spectrum than Amm.

  “Thank you,” shaded Amm, when the swirling laughter had died somewhat.

  “For?” asked Ferr, amused.

  Amm merely shook her head and turned around, caught between seething in anger and wanting to cry. But there was no one to hold her. No one to care how twisted and faded her colors churned inside of her.

  Cerrune refused to even shade of it, not wanting to see another word about Ferr as hurt as he was. So Amm left it. Spent a week in relative solitude, eyes unfocused whenever she passed another so she couldn’t see what they might be shading to her.

  * * *

  When she finally tried to visit Cerrune again, no longer blocked by the Black Veil’s assistants since she’d proven she wasn’t putting thoughts of running off into his head, he seemed a shade darker than normal. No one else seemed to notice, but Amm did. Amm had held him tightly in her arms when he was a squalling, swirling river-blue babe.

  “She once shaded I’d get to visit a city or two as well,” shaded Cerrune.

  “What?” asked Amm, before realizing he meant the Black Veil and not Ferr. Then she brightened amber-like. “Perhaps you’ll get to visit Ferr then.”

  He laughed, reminding her of the laughter of others throughout her life, mocking her limited scope. But she pushed it aside. She could forgive the boy she’d tossed into the air just to see how many ways he could color ‘I love you’ unconsciously in his excitement.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Amm shaded confusion.

  “When I first moved here, away from you and Mother and Father, I would talk all the time about climbing mountains and wading in oceans and seeing all the different types of people coloring our world. She promised to give me hope. To keep me here. Not because she truly would send me out in the world.”

  “But—” started Amm.

  “It’s useless. Those who leave never come back. That’s the truth of the matter, Amm.”

  There was something more to his shading. Something that spoke of more than simple bitterness over a false promise from the Black Veil. But Amm couldn’t read it.

  * * *

  Ferr became sick, her skin losing colors it had always used before. She was limited, streaking uncontrollably. She shook and shaded things to people, angry words full of hate. Especially for Cerrune.

  “This is your fault!” she shaded as brightly as she could one day. The day she’d been supposed to leave. “You’ve cursed me with your anger!”

  Most in the crowd averted their gaze, respectful of the pain swirling within Ferr. Amm didn’t, so she saw the snippets of thought, unchecked and confused, blowing across Ferr’s body without a hint of privacy. Blaming Cerrune over and over again. Hating him as if his love had been the sickness she suffered from.

  As for Cerrune, he stood stoically beyond her, watching as if he felt he must, never once letting his gaze leave the incredibly low range of color that Ferr now used to send him her anger.

  In his shading, Amm saw shame and horror and sorrow.

  And when she looked beside him, the Black Veil sat behind her long drapery of dark cloth with even her hands tucked in so that not a single person gathered could tell what she thought about the proceedings.

  * * *

  No one ever found Ferr’s body. They determined she’d wandered off, unstable and uncontrolled, and had attracted the attention of a beast. Without the range of color she’d had before, she’d not be able to strike fear in the beast’s heart and cause it to race away.

  She’d have been the same as Amm. Unable to brighten effectively enough to save herself.

  Some in the tribe shaded in low spectrum colors that Ferr’s mind couldn’t remain stable after losing so much from her sickness. Amm asked them if they thought her unstable as well, given that even with Ferr’s loss, she’d still had a wider range than Amm. They averted their gaze as she shaded, pretending to have never seen the question.

  Cerrune stopped seeing Amm at all the day after Ferr disappeared. And when Amm passed him, she swore his body had darkened. She shaded to him, told him she was here if he needed to let out his pain, to let the healing begin.

  He shook his head, colors barely moving, and kept walking.

  She clenched her fists and thought long about Ferr. Wondered how painful it might be to lose huge sections of her voice. Feel as if she were going mute. Ferr hadn’t the experience that Amm had with limitations. She had reacted strongly, lashing out in anger and hurt, instead of pulling all of those feelings inward and bottling them, hiding them.

  No, Ferr wasn’t like Amm at all. Ferr wouldn’t settle.

  * * *

  Amm took a machete, stolen from Father, and a reflective coin, stolen from Mother, and started into the forest. She kept her body as bright as possible, still a deep amber, in an attempt to keep the beasts at bay. The coin, she tucked into her hair, wedging it under a tie where it could shine and still be reachable were she to be attacked.

  Never before had she gone out alone. With Father. With large groups of field workers. With Cerrune, always so bright no animal would dare come near but the blind bats of the night who’d not bother them anyway. Never alone.

  Now she clutched at the machete and jumped at noises as the trees thickened and the fields and homes of her tribe faded quickly behind her. She traveled south, southeast, towards the city Ferr had been assigned to before she’d become sick.

  She walked for half a day. Rather, she took tiny steps, barely making any progress as the sun rose high in the sky and pierced though the leaves to heat her back. Amm felt her control over her body slipping, colors dropping murkily. Partly from the heat, partly from the ever-present worry.

  The bright cry of the carrion birds’ wings and a reflected snarling echoing off bark led Amm to Ferr’s body. More east than south, towards the lower lands that eventually led to the ocean and the blue-voiced tribes that lived there.

  The carrion birds were settled in the trees, eyeing the body below with greed and annoyance at having been interrupted. The bear shaded a growling, then it dipped his head, mouth crunching, making Amm shiver in disgust and want to tear her eyes away from rippling brown fur so she wouldn’t have to see the delight shining from its skin. She saw Ferr’s dress, now bloodied and torn, and ceased to think, knowing that if she paused for even the slightest moment her body would likely freeze in place.

  She gripped her machete and ran at the beast, catching it in its side before it’d realized she was there. Then she felt her body fly through the air, her shoulder pounding where the bear had instinctively raked at her.

  Amm rolled and looked up in time to see the bear turn towards her. Her machete dropped to the earth as the bear shaded in pain. Pieces of Ferr hung from its jaw. Then it came at her again.<
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  As she pulled herself to her feet, she summoned delight, thinking of warm long ago days wading with Cerrune, and spun her limited range to as bright an amber as she could muster. Her fingers closed over the coin in her hair and she pulled it to her chest, ripping her dress down so her body could scream and shout rather than simply shade gently.

  The bear reared back as the coin expanded the color and warning of Amm’s body, reflecting it sharply with help from the sun straight into the bear’s eyes. The bear surged forward again and Amm threw herself to the side, landing heavily on her injured shoulder, flinching at the pain as debris rubbed against her wounds.

  The bear kept going, then turned once more, nose sniffing as it searched for her without the help of its eyes. Amm remained still, praying that the stench of death would overpower her own scent.

  Slowly, the bear twisted around, casting for Ferr’s body again, mouth scraping the ground. Amm looked behind her, at the relative safety of the rest of the woods, and almost started to crawl away, thinking that she could inform others who could come back and retrieve Ferr’s body in order to send her colors back out into the world.

  Two things stopped her. One was shame. Having to tell the tribe once again she had less ability than them. Less range to frighten a beast off. Unable to even walk a day towards a city before having to turn around and run home.

  The second was that the bear suddenly shook its head violently, shifting Ferr’s body so Amm could see the naked line of her back clearly.

  White. Pure White.

  The color had already fled from Ferr’s body.

  That was impossible. Amm had seen death before, and always the people of her tribe had their color linger in their cold bodies until the ritual to pull it out and let it be free to color another.

  It meant Ferr had been devoid of color before she’d died. A mute. Unable to protect herself. Unable to shade, to communicate. No sickness Amm had ever known of could accomplish such a feat.

  Amm grabbed at her shoulder and squeezed the claw scrapes until her eyes watered. Then, in a fit of fury, she raced at the bear, sweeping up the dropped machete and swinging it into its throat as it started to turn.

  It staggered as it died, trying to reach her.

  Amm ignored it and knelt by Ferr’s body, trying not to retch at the sight. Of either the blood or the pale, colorless skin.

  * * *

  “This is grave, indeed,” shaded the Black Veil when Amm finished giving her report.

  Her shoulder still ached and her blood had dried her dress sleeve to the wounds, making motions, however slight, pull at the scrapes. She tried her best to ignore it. Tried her best to hold her amber color steady so that she would not dissolve into a muddy, blurry mess in front of the Black Veil and Cerrune.

  Cerrune had changed as Amm spoke, his body growing stiller, his colors stopping their swirling. This close, Amm could see how he seemed to have darkened a tiny smidgeon. Not enough anyone else would notice, but she’d known him since he’d been born and could see even the slightest changes in his vibrancy.

  She’d been jealous of his spectrum, after all, more so than any other. She had covered it with becoming the most loving sister she could, but that didn’t mean she didn’t dream of her own body swirling in colors such that Cerrune could control.

  “A beast that can steal our color away, if it were to attack...” shaded Amm, priding herself that her colors remained as steady and clear as they possibly could.

  “It could still have been the sickness,” shaded the Black Veil, voice cracking so Amm had to squint to double check the broken lines of dark color on the older woman’s hand. She wondered if this was what Cerrune had to look forward to. His color slowly becoming so dark that he could barely shade, his voice little better than a mute’s.

  That thought led to another, more dangerous. But before Amm could clearly string out the shades in her mind to make sense of it, Cerrune finally shaded.

  “You shouldn’t have gone out by yourself,” he admonished her. “You could have died out there without the proper ability to send the beasts away.” She saw real worry behind his front shades and it made her heart warm.

  “But I didn’t,” she shaded.

  She hadn’t. She had survived an attack by a beast of the woods without having a range even a fraction as great as Cerrune’s. She hadn’t just survived, she’d killed it. Why then were the rest of the tribe so worried when even the lowest of them had twice as much range as she?

  The thought she’d had earlier came crashing back as the Black Veil lifted her dark hand. Amm shuddered unconsciously, wondering how much of her thoughts had been streaking across her skin.

  “This can’t get out,” shaded the Black Veil. “It is too dangerous out there already without people worrying about a beast who can steal our spectrums.” Her fingers beckoned Amm closer. “Come, I need to whisper in your eyes.”

  For one crazy moment, Amm thought about running, then she looked at Cerrune. He wouldn’t be so calm if something were about to happen to her. She took a breath and stepped closer to the Black Veil until the woman reached out and laid dark fingers upon Amm’s arm.

  She watched as the color on her arm pulsed and began to leak upwards into the Black Veil’s fingers, turning her an even darker shade of black. Amm felt her body shriek, all the range she had streaking upwards, downwards, spotting and swirling, but though she tried to pull away, she found her body had ceased responding.

  Vaguely, she was aware of bright flashes to her right, and somewhere she translated Cerrune’s horror and weak demands. Then arms wrapped about her torso and pulled her backwards.

  But it was far, far too late. She lifted her hands in front of her face.

  White. Perfectly white.

  Mute.

  She tried to scream. She tried to sob.

  In front of her a loud conversation brightened the room. Cerrune lit the dullness like a fire in the dark of night, but he made no motion to advance upon the Black Veil.

  Amm barely saw the words he shouted. Couldn’t see the Black Veil’s response at all for the blurring in her eyes. She gave one last push, trying to glow a deep amber once more. Nothing. She dug fingernails into her skin and saw red drops form. At last some color. Mother would have known how to use it with her reddish range. Amm stood staring at it numbly.

  Finally, she looked up. Cerrune was losing the battle. His anger was dying, full of shame. Because he agreed with the stealing? Because this was part of what the Black Veil had been teaching him? To bolster his own range, an addiction to be fed?

  Amm cringed inside. Had any of the people with the brightest colors ever truly seen the cities? Had their ranges been too attractive, too desirable? The small packages of spices and reflective coin and medicines... all brought by the Black Veil’s assistants.

  She almost sank into the ground in a numb pile. Then she thought of all the berry-streaked messages that loved ones treasured in trunks. Messages from the mute and dead. As dead as Ferr, left to be carried off by the beasts of the wood. As dead as Amm would be.

  Fiery shades of orange and red lit in her mind and swirled tighter and tighter. She could not shade, but just as she’d proven out in the woods, that didn’t mean she couldn’t act.

  She spared one glance at the assistant staring at Cerrune, then calmly took one step forward, pulled Cerrune’s knife from his belt and swept it across the veil. It fell to the ground, revealing the crisp, black body of the Black Veil. Kept alive through stolen ranges to supplement her own until the colors blurred so fiercely together, so heavy she could barely shade.

  Cerrune was shading—questions for her, by the tone she caught out of the corner of her eye—but Amm refused to look. Instead, she took another step forward, slipping beyond his reach. The assistant didn’t try to stop her, searching for intentions upon her body despite her inability to shade.

  The Black Veil started to lift a hand in self-defense, but she had long ago lost most mobility, and Cerrune’s knife s
lashed once in Amm’s hand across her throat. Color spewed forth, rising into the air, separating and twisting apart, voices shading but so jumbled Amm couldn’t see them clearly.

  She stepped away from the whirlwind of color, barely able to discern the bright shadings of shock and horror emanating from both Cerrune and the assistant.

  Then her eyes caught on the muddy amber of her own spectrum, mixed within the others of so many that had been taken before hers. Her amber range danced and swirled with the rest, enjoying the freedom. She reached for it, and it shied away at first. She didn’t blame it. She’d always been wishing for more, not appreciating what she’d had.

  Her fingers closed over the end of the range. The dark end. The deep amber shades flexed in her hand and as she pulled it back, more came with it. A larger spectrum than hers had ever been, from sun to dancing flames to the deep reds Mother had always shaded.

  Had Amm once been this vibrant? As vibrant as even Cerrune, but with the hues of the falling leaves instead of the skies and lakes? Could this have been her original spectrum—bled from her by the Black Veil when she was no more than an infant?

  Amm felt tears threaten as the ambers seeped into her palm and spread up her arm. She grabbed for the remainder of what might have been hers, bits of sunlight and the darkest reds allowing themselves to be caught and pulled back into her. But she’d been too long unattached to such a spectrum, and most of it slipped through her fingers and fled with the rest of the voices sweeping out of the windows, lifting away and dispersing into the air.

  Amm stood, mind intoxicated as the tiny bit she’d taken swelled within her. The colors swirled up and exploded onto her skin, her voice shrieking in amazement. She put a hand to her chest as if it could slow the beating of her heart, dim the brightness of her color.

  Then her range sank to its natural range, the moment gone, her spectrum barely larger than it’d been before the Black Veil had drained it from her.

  A horrible sadness entered her and a desire to repeat that glorious feeling swept over her. For the briefest of moments.

  What was left of the Black Veil was shades of lush algae and grass reflecting the sunlight on a bright cloudless day. She would have been beautiful. Instead, she’d become horrifyingly dark on account of her incessant need for more.