by Tahereh Mafi
She’d plopped down on the couch next to Oliver and had already begun telling him all about Ancilly and the peculiar case of the seamstress when she noticed he was looking at her in a very odd way.
“What is it?” she asked him. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Oliver said. “It’s just that you look . . . different.”
“Do I?” She looked down at herself. “I think it’s because I’m clean. And because of this staggeringly beautiful gown, obviously.” She laughed and looked admiringly at her skirts. She and Oliver had already marveled together at the gifts they’d received. Oliver had been given ropes and ropes of their finest pearls, which he currently wore draped around his neck and chest, creating the illusion of a collared bib.
Oliver tilted his head. “Perhaps.”
“Well, you look the same,” she said to him, looking him over. “How do you always manage to stay so clean?”
He smiled and ignored her question. “Alright then,” he said. “Tell me more about the seamstress.”
Oliver was wide-eyed by the end of her story. He was so full of thoughts and questions he could hardly sit still. In fact, he was already up and pacing the length of the room. “This is very, very interesting news,” he said. “Very interesting.”
“And the song,” Alice said. “So strange, isn’t it?”
Oliver met her eyes from across the room. “Very strange. It sounds like Ancilly was trying to tell you something without actually telling you anything.”
“Yes, I quite agree,” Alice said. “I wonder what it all means.”
“Me too,” said Oliver, hesitating. “But I have to say, I can’t see how the secrets of the seamstress would lead us to a painter.”
“Well,” Alice said, grasping for a connection. “They’re both artists. Maybe they did know each other?”
Oliver frowned. “Possible. Unlikely, but possible.”
Alice sighed.
“But that song,” said Oliver. “So strange.”
“And so sad,” said Alice. “To think that the seamstress was pushed off the branch! Oh, how I wonder what happened.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow. “Do you think the song is true, then? You think the seamstress has flown away?”
“If by flown away you mean fell to her death, then yes,” said Alice, “I think it’s true.”
“A dead end, then? Pardon the pun,” he said, fighting back a smile, “but I’m assuming a dead seamstress wouldn’t have much to say.”
“Well, it’s all we’ve got for now,” said Alice, defeated. She slumped lower on the couch and kicked up her feet. And then, very, very quietly—so quietly she almost hoped Oliver wouldn’t hear her—she said, “I hope we haven’t made a serious mistake choosing to fix my arm over finding Father.”
Oliver joined her on the couch.
“Alice,” he said gently.
Alice mumbled something.
“Alice,” he said again. “Please look at me.”
She did so, but reluctantly. Oliver’s eyes were such a striking shade of violet. So bright against his skin.
“Finding a way to fix your arm,” he said, “will never be a mistake. Please understand that.”
Alice looked away. “But what if we never find Father because of me?”
“That won’t happen.”
“But—”
“It just won’t,” Oliver said.
“Oh, alright,” Alice said, and sighed. “But I do hope we figure out the next step soon. We can’t afford to stay here much longer.”
“I know,” said Oliver, and he laughed a little. “And it’s too bad, really. Under any other circumstances I think we’d actually have a nice time in the land of Left. I mean—I know better than to believe anything good can come of Furthermore, I really do, but they’re just so terribly nice to us here. I’ll feel bad leaving them, especially as they’ve waited fifty-six years for a visitor.” He shook his head. “I can already picture Paramint’s grief-stricken face.”
“Me too,” Alice said quietly. “I was thinking the same thing earlier. And I don’t think they could ever want to eat us, do you? Don’t you think they’re the good ones?”
Oliver nodded. “I read Paramint’s heart when we first arrived here, and do you know what his greatest secret was? His greatest wish?”
Alice thought she could guess, but she let Oliver tell her anyway.
“He wanted to be able to open that door,” said Oliver. “His greatest, most secret, most ardent wish was to have a visitor come to the village of Left.”
“Oh, now I feel awful,” said Alice. “But what choice do we have?”
“I know. We must forge ahead. After all,” Oliver said, “we belong in Ferenwood, not Furthermore,” and this made Alice smile.
“And while I do love a good adventure,” Oliver went on, “I’m very much looking forward to going home. I think I’ve had enough of Furthermore to last me a good long while.”
“Me too,” Alice said. “Me too.” She dropped her eyes and touched the only bangles she had left. “But I want Father to come home, too. I don’t want to go back without him.”
Oliver nodded, just once, and said, “I know.”
“What about you?” Alice asked him, perking up. “What do you miss the most about home?”
“Me?” Oliver said, surprised. He tilted his head like he’d never considered it before. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the comforts of not nearly dying every day.”
Alice laughed and said, “Really, though—are you close to your parents? Don’t they miss you while you’re gone?”
“I don’t think so.” Oliver shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t really know my parents, and I’m not sure they really know me.”
“What do you mean?”
“My talent”—Oliver sighed—“is both a blessing and a burden. I learned from a very young age how to manipulate my parents into doing exactly what I wanted—into being the kind of parents I wanted them to be.
“I only discovered many years later that a five-year-old’s idea of the perfect parent is far from ideal. But by then it was too late. When I stopped interfering and let them take over, they couldn’t remember how. They barely even knew me—I’d taken away the most critical years of our life together. They could hardly remember how I’d grown up. And the problem wasn’t with just my parents. I’d done it with everyone.
“I never really meant to,” Oliver said quietly. “I was just so little—I couldn’t understand the consequences of my actions. It was when my father got sick with the fluke that I realized how frail he was—and that one day I would lose him. I was sorry I’d never given him a chance to teach me what he knew. To be my father the way he’d wanted to be.” Oliver laughed a sad, humorless laugh. “I’d single-handedly destroyed every important relationship in my life by the time I was ten years old.” He hesitated, then said, “I have no idea what kind of parents I would’ve had if I hadn’t changed them so early on.”
Alice drew in a deep, shaky breath.
“Oh, Oliver,” she said, and took his hand. “That’s just the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”
“Sometimes,” Oliver said, “I feel like my entire life is just a story I tell myself. A lie atop a lie; nipping and tucking at people until they’re exactly what I want.” He sighed. “I hate it.”
“Well,” said Alice. “Why don’t you stop?”
“Stop what?” said Oliver.
“Stop changing everyone,” she said. “Stop manipulating people. I know it won’t change the past, but it’ll certainly change the future. It’s not too late to get to know your parents.”
“I suppose it’s not,” said Oliver, but he was very quiet now.
“But you don’t want to?”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just—I don’t know,” he
said quietly. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?” said Alice.
“Don’t you see?” Oliver closed his eyes. “No one would like me if I didn’t trick them into it.” And then he looked at her, really looked at her. “That’s why I was so terrible to you in middlecare,” he said. “It wasn’t because I thought you were ugly. I didn’t think that at all. It was because I knew you didn’t like me, and I couldn’t convince you not to. I didn’t understand then why my persuasion wouldn’t work on you—I didn’t know about your ever-binding promise—and it scared me. Here was the one person in all of Ferenwood who wasn’t swayed by my lies, and she didn’t like me. It confirmed all my fears: If I let people be themselves, they’d all abandon me. My parents wouldn’t love me.”
“But, Oliver,” she said, squeezing his hand, “I didn’t like you because you were one of the most sincerely rude people I’d ever met. You were arrogant and unkind and a horrible, raging skyhole.”
Oliver groaned and got up to leave.
“Wait!” she said quickly, grabbing his tunic. “There’s more, I promise.”
Oliver shot her a hard look.
“There’s more and it’s nice,” Alice amended.
Oliver relented, sinking back into the couch. “Alright then,” he said. “Go on.”
“Well—look at you now! You’re the nicest person, and so friendly and loyal! Who wouldn’t like you now? Your parents would adore you. And anyway, I think you’re wonderful, and you can trust that to be true. No tricking required.”
Oliver had turned a blotchy sort of red. “You really think I’m wonderful?”
Alice beamed at him, and nodded.
Oliver looked away and mumbled something she couldn’t decipher, but he was smiling now, the silliest look on his face, and Alice was smiling, too, looking even sillier than he did, and they just sat there a moment, neither one of them being skyholes, and Alice realized right then that Oliver was her first best friend.
It was a moment she would never forget.
Finally, Oliver cleared his throat.
“Now I’ve told you all my secrets,” he said. “Will you tell me yours?”
Alice bit her lip and looked into her lap. Her heart had begun to skip in nervous beats. “You already know my secrets, Oliver. I wish I didn’t have to repeat them.”
“Alice,” he said gently, “I don’t understand. Why won’t you accept that you have an incredible talent? Why does it bother you so?”
Here it was.
Her greatest heartbreak of all.
The talent she didn’t want, the one she wished she never had, the one she convinced herself wasn’t really hers, and all because it didn’t work where it mattered most. Alice wanted to tell Oliver the truth, but she was afraid it would make her cry, and she desperately didn’t want to cry. Still, it was high time to talk about it, and Oliver had earned the right to know.
“So,” she said, nodding. “I can change the colors of things.”
A chill coursed through her; her stomach was already doing flips. She hadn’t talked about this since long before Father left.
Oliver took her hand and squeezed.
“I can change the color of anything. The sky,” she said. “The sun. The grass and trees and bugs and leaves. Anything I want,” she said softly. “I could make day into night and night into day. I could change the color of the air we breathe, of the water we drink.”
“But you don’t,” said Oliver. “You don’t. And I don’t know why. So much talent,” he said. “So much talent and—”
Alice shook her head, hard, cutting him off. “So much talent,” she said, “and I can’t even change the color of me.” She looked up, looked at him, her eyes wild and desperate. “I could change you,” she said, and touched a finger to his cheek, his face flipping colors from brown to red to green. “I could turn you ten shades of blue in the time it takes to blink,” she said softly, and dropped her hand. “I can change the colors of everyone else, but I can’t change this skin,” she said, raking her fingers down her face. “Can’t change my eyes. Can’t even make myself look more like my own family,” she said, her voice breaking. “Do you know how hard it is,” she said, “to have the power to change everything but myself?”
“Alice—”
“I have no color, Oliver.” Her voice was a whisper now. “No pigment. I don’t look anything like the people I love.”
“But, Alice,” Oliver said softly. “The people who love you wouldn’t care if you had giraffe skin.”
Alice focused on the rug under her foot, and nearly smiled. “Father probably wouldn’t mind,” she said. “Father would probably love me no matter anything.”
“And your mother,” Oliver said, “she loves you, too,” but Alice shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said, and bit her lip. “Mother was so excited when she first learned of my ability—Father was the one who told her, even though I asked him not to.” She hesitated. “But after Father left, something happened to Mother. Something changed in her, made her mean.” She paused, remembering. “Mother made me practice—every day in the mirror—she made me practice turning myself a different color. But it never worked, and Mother soon tired of me. But then she remembered how much she liked ferenberries—”
Oliver gasped.
“—and made me go hunting for them.” Alice looked away. “Gathering ferenberries is the only thing I’m any good for.”
“But I thought ferenberries were invisible!” Oliver said, eyes wide. And then he whispered, “And I thought they weren’t allowed under the Ferenwood Code of Permissible Food Things.”
“They’re not really invisible,” Alice said, scrunching up her face. “They’re just very good chameleons. They blend almost perfectly into any background, so they’re hard to find.” She shrugged. “But all I had to do was find a single one, and I could change all of them to a color I could see. So I’d pick dozens at a time.”
Oliver was visibly impressed.
“And I didn’t know they weren’t allowed under the Ferenwood Code of Permissible Food Things,” Alice added nervously.
Oliver was so stunned he had to stand. “Well,” he finally said. “Your mother sounds absolutely hideous.” And then, “Forgive me,” he said, clapping a hand over his mouth. “I spoke out of turn. It’s not my place to—”
“That’s alright,” Alice said with a shaky smile. “Mother will be better when Father comes home. He always made her nicer. But I think I’ve disappointed Mother since even before Father left. Perhaps in every way.
“And now,” she said quietly, “the only person who ever really loved me is trapped, hurting somewhere, lost in a world that wants to keep him forever, and I’d do anything to get him back. Anything at all.” Alice touched the silk of her skirts. “You know,” she said quietly, “Father used to tell me I was beautiful.”
Alice’s eyes had filled with tears, so she knew it was time to stop. She stood as elegantly as she could, excused herself, and told Oliver she needed some air.
He let her pass without a word.
When Alice stepped outside, her hardships were easily forgotten. Here, in the land of Left, was more to enchant the eye than possibly anywhere else. The sun had begun its descent, and the sky had turned a dusty, smoky blue; ambers and golds and violets melted along the horizon and kaleidoscoped through the branches, snowflaking spectacular shapes of light across the land. Everything was vivid green and richest brown and the air was so full of freshness; one deep inhale and her tears were zipped away, carefully stored for another day.
Alice closed her eyes and let the breeze wash over her.
She was stronger than Mother.
And if she wasn’t, she would be. She would be strong enough to fight for Father and not fall apart without him. He needed her to be smart, to stay alive, to keep fighting. Her love for Father made her brav
e. It made her better.
It made her ready.
MORE CHAPTERS STRAIGHT AHEAD
“Is there anything you’d like to taste?” Paramint asked them.
He’d popped his head into the egghouse to see how they were doing. She and Oliver had been sitting together on the floor, making a list of all the things they’d do with Father when they finally brought him home. It was Oliver’s idea, to make the list. It was the first thing he’d said to her when she came back inside. He said that Father would want to know what had happened while he was gone, and since an awful lot had happened while he was gone, they should probably make a list.
“He’ll want to see the new ponds and the fishing trees and, oh—we’ll have to show him the boats that fell in Penelope’s garden, we can’t forget that.” Oliver was already reaching for a sheaf of paper. “Or how about the penny bushes near the brook? They’re so big now! Don’t you think he’d like to see that? Alice?”
Alice was so touched she could hardly speak.
So there they sat, he and she, making plans for the day Father would come home, when suddenly Paramint was asking them whether there was anything they wanted to taste.
“Taste?” Alice said, sitting up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Paramint said, still standing at the door. “We have a very generous tasting menu at our disposal. Perhaps not as grand as you’re accustomed,” he said, blushing, “but we do have a divine center-cut filet mignon that I’d humbly recommend for your tasting pleasure.” He bowed just a bit. “It was specially prepared for you by our resident chef, seasoned to perfection with rock salt and tea leaves, set on a bed of spiced couscous and served with a side of truffled risotto. Though of course if that is not to your liking we do have any number of sandwiches and roasts and hams to choose from—”
“Oh my,” she said, glancing at Oliver, “I’m afraid I don’t know what any of that is.”