by Aimee Bender
So we sent over the goat, and when the Color Master came into the studio, we’d just finished the fourth dyeing of the rock shoes. They were drying on a mat, and they looked pretty good. I told Cheryl that her visualization of the mountain had definitely helped. She blushed. I said, too, that Edwin’s contribution of the ground rock particles had added a useful kind of rough texture. He kicked a stool leg, pleased. I hadn’t done much; I’m not very skilled, but I like to commend good work when I see it.
The Color Master approached, wearing a linen sheath woven with blue threadings. Her face hinting at gaunt. She greeted us all, and stood at the counter where the shoes were drip-drying.
Nice work, she said. Esther, who had fronted the dyeing process, curtsied.
We sprinkled rocks into the dye, she said.
A fine choice, said the Color Master.
Edwin did a little dance in place by his table. The goat settled on a pillow in the corner and began to eat the stuffing.
The Color Master rolled her shoulders a few times, and when the shoes were dry, she laid her hands upon them. She lifted them to the sunlight. She picked up a rock and looked at it next to the shoes. She circled both inside different light rays. Then she went to the palette area and took out a handful of blue dust. We have about one hundred and fifty metal bins of this dust in a range of colors. The bins stand side by side, running the perimeter of the studio. They are narrow, so we can fit a whole lot of colors, and if someone brings in a new color, we hammer down a new bin and slide it into the spectrum, wherever it fits. One tailor found an amazing rich burgundy off in the driest part of the forest, on a series of leaves; I located, once, over by the reddish iron deposits near the lake, a type of dirt that was a deeper brown than soil. Someone else found a new blue in a desiccated pansy, and another in the feathers of a dead bird. We have instructions to hunt for color everywhere, at all times.
The Color Master toured the room, and then took that handful of blue dust (and always, when I watch, I am thrilled—blue? how does she know, blue?), and she rubbed the dust into the shoe. Back to the bins, where she got a black, a dusty black, and then some sage green. While she worked, everyone stood around, quiet. We dropped our usual drudgery and chitchat.
The Color Master worked swiftly, but she added, usually, something on the level of forty colors, so the process generally took over two hours. She added a color here, a color there, sometimes at the size of salt particles, and the gray in the shoe shifted and shaded under her hands. She would reach a level and ask for sealant, and Esther would step forward, and the Color Master would coat the shoe to fasten the colors and then return to the sunlight, holding a shoe up, with the rock in her other hand. This went on for about four rounds. I swear, I could start to feel the original mountain’s presence in the room, hear the great heavy lumbering voice of it.
When she was done, the pair was so gray, so rocklike, you could hardly believe they were made of leather at all. They looked as if they had been sheared straight from the craggy mountainside.
Done, she said.
We circled her, bowing our heads.
Another triumph, murmured Sandy, who cannot color-mix to save her life.
The Color Master swept her gaze around the room, and her eyes rested on each of us, searching, slowly, until they finally settled on me. Me?
Will you walk me home? she said in a deep voice, while Esther tied an invoice to the foot of a pigeon and then threw it out the window in the direction of the dukedom.
I would be honored, I mumbled. I took her arm. The goat, full of pillow, tripped along behind us.
I am a quiet sort, except for the paying of compliments, and I didn’t know if I should ask her anything on the walk. As far as I knew, she didn’t usually request an escort home at all. Mainly I just looked at all the stones and rocks on the path, and for the first time saw that blue hint, and the blackness, and the shades of green, and that faint edge of purple if the light hit just so. She seemed relieved that I wasn’t asking questions, so much so that it occurred to me that that was probably why she’d asked me in the first place.
At her door, she fixed her eyes on me: steady, aging at the corners. She was almost twice my age, but had always had an allure I’d admired. A way of holding her body that let you know that there was a body there, but that it was private, that stuff happened on it, in it, to it, but it was stuff I would never see. It made me sad, seeing that, knowing how her husband had gone off to the war years ago and never returned, and how it was difficult for her to have people over because of her brother with the bad back, and how, long ago, she had fled her own town for reasons she never mentioned. Plus, she had a thick cough and her own money questions, all of which seemed so unfair when she should’ve been living in the palace, as far as I was concerned.
Listen, she said. She held me in her gaze.
Yes?
There’s a big request coming in, she said. I’ve heard rumors. Big. Huge.
What is it? I said.
I don’t know yet, but start preparing. You’ll have to take over. I will die soon, she said.
Excuse me?
Soon, she said. I can feel it, brewing. Death. It’s not dark, nor is it white. It’s almost a blue-purple. Her eyes went past me, to the sky.
Are you confusing me with someone else? I asked.
She laughed.
Do you mean it? I said. Are you ill?
No, she said. Yes. I mean it. I’m asking for your help. And when I die, it will be your job to finish.
But I’m not very good, I said, twisting. Like at all. You can’t die. You should ask Esther, or Sven—
You, she said, and with a little curt nod, she went into her house and shut the door.
The duke loved his shoes so much he sent us a drawing, by the court illustrator, of him floating, it appeared, on a pile of rocks. I love them, he wrote, in swirly handwriting; I love them, I love them! In addition to a small cash bonus, he offered us horse rides and a feast at the dukedom. We all attended, in all our finery, and it was a great time. It was the last time I saw the Color Master dancing, in her pearl-gray gown, and I knew it was the last even as I watched it, her silver hair swirling out as she glided through the group. The duke kept tapping his toe on the side, holding the duchess’s hand, her free one grasping a handbag the perfect pink of a rose, so vivid and fresh the color seemed to carry a sweet scent even across the ballroom.
Two weeks later, almost everyone was away when the king’s courtier came riding over with the request: a dress the color of the moon. The Color Master was not feeling well, and had asked not to be disturbed; Esther’s father was ill, so she was off taking care of him; Sven’s wife was giving birth to twins, so he was off with her; the two others ahead of me had caught whooping cough; and someone else was on a travel trip to find a new orange. So the request went to me, the apprentice. Just as the Color Master had hoped.
I unrolled the scroll and read it quietly by the window.
A dress the color of the moon?
It was impossible.
First of all, the moon is not a color. It is a reflection of a color. Second, it is not even the reflection of a color. It is the reflection of what appears to be a color, but is really in fact a bunch of bursting hydrogen atoms, far, far away. Third, the moon shines. A dress cannot shine like the moon unless the dress is also reflecting something, and reflective materials are generally tacky-looking, or too industrial. Our only options were silk and cotton and leather. The moon? It is white, it is silver, it is silver-white, it is not an easy color to dye. A dress the color of the moon? The whole thing made me irritable.
But this was not a small order. This was, in fact, for the king’s daughter. The princess. And since the queen had died of pneumonia a few months before, this was a dress for the most important woman in the kingdom.
I paced several times around the studio, and then I went against policy and tried knocking on the door of the Color Master’s cabin, but she called out in a strong voice, Just
make it!
Are you okay? I asked, and she said, Come back once you’ve started!
I walked back, kicking twigs and acorns.
I ate oranges off the tree out back until I felt a little better.
Since I was in charge, due to the pecking order, I called together everyone that was left in the studio and asked for a seminar on reflection, to reflect upon reflection. In particular for Cheryl, who really used the seminars well. We gathered in a circle in the side room and talked about mirrors, and still water, and wells, and feeling understood, and opals, and then we did a creative-writing exercise about our first memory of the moon, and how it affected us, and the moment when we realized it followed us (Sandy had a charming story about going on a walk as a child and trying to lose it but not being able to), and then we wrote haiku. Mine was this: Moon, you silver thing / Floating in the sky like that / Make me a dress. Please.
After a few tears over Edwin’s story of realizing his father in the army was seeing the same moon he saw, we drifted out of the seminar room and began dyeing the silk. It had to be silk, of course, and we selected from the loom studio a very fine weave, a really elegant one that had a touch of shimmer in the fabric already. I let Cheryl start the dyeing with shades of white, because I could see a kind of shining light in her eyes from the seminar and even a luminosity to her skin. She is so receptive that way.
While she began that first layer, I went to see the Color Master again. I let myself in this time. She was in bed. It was shocking how quickly she was going downhill. I got her brother a glass of water and an apple-cheese snack—Angel, he called me, from the sofa—and then I settled next to the bed where she lay resting, her hair spread over the pillows in rays of silver. She was not very old, the Color Master, but she had gone silver early. Wait, can we use your hair? I said.
Sure. She pulled out a few strands and handed them over.
This’ll help, I said, looking at the glint. If we try to make this into particles?
Good, she said. Good thinking.
How are you doing? I asked.
I heard word, she said. Moon today, sun soon.
What?
Sun soon. How goes moon?
It’s hard, I said. I mean, hard. And, with your hair, that’ll help, but to reflect?
Use blue, she said.
What kind?
Several kinds. Her voice was weaker, but I could hear the steel behind it as she walked through the bins in her mind. Don’t be afraid of the darker shades, she said.
I’m an awful color-mixer, I said. Are you in pain?
No, she said. Just weak. Blue, she said. And black. She pulled out a few more strands of hair. Here, she said. And shavings of opal, do we have those?
Too expensive, I said.
Go to the mine, she said. Get opals, shave ’em, add a new bin. Do you know the king wants to marry his daughter? Her eyes flashed, for a second, with anger.
What?
Put that in the dress too, she said. She dropped her voice to a whisper, every word sharp and clear. Anger, she said. Put anger in the dress. The moon as our guide. A daughter should not be ordered to marry her father.
Put anger in the dress?
When you mix, she said. Got it? When you’re putting the opal shavings in. The dress is supposed to be a dowry gift, but give the daughter the strength to leave instead. All right?
Her eyes were shining at me, so bright I wanted to put them in the dress, too.
Okay, I said, faltering. I’m not sure—
You have it in you, she said. I see it. Truly. Or I would never have given you the job.
Then she fell back on her pillows and was asleep in seconds.
On the walk back, through the scrub-oak grove, I felt as I usually felt, both moved and shitty. Because what she saw in me could just as easily have been the result of some kind of fever. Was she hallucinating? Didn’t she realize I had only gotten the job because I’d complimented Esther on her tassel scarf at the faire, plus I did decent work with the rotating time schedule? Who’s to say that there was anything to it? To me, really?
Anger in the dress?
I didn’t feel angry, just defeated and bad about myself, but I didn’t put that in the dress; it didn’t seem right. Instead, I went to the mine and befriended the foreman, Manny, and he gave me a handful of opals that were too small for any jewelry and would work well as shavings. I spent the afternoon with the sharpest picks and awls I could find, breaking open opals and making a new bin for the dust. Cheryl had done wonders with the white, and the dress glowed like a gleaming pearl—almost moonlike but not enough, yet. I added the opals and we redyed, and then you could see a hint of rainbow hovering below the surface. Like the sun was shimmering in there, too, and that was addressing the reflective issue. When it came time to color-mix, I felt like I was going to throw up, but I did what the Color Master had asked, and went for blue, then black, and I was incredibly slow, like incredibly slow, but for one moment I felt something as I hovered over the bins of blue. Just a tug of guidance from the white of the dress that led my hand to the middle blue. It felt, for a second, like harmonizing in a choir, the moment when the voice sinks into the chord structure and the sound grows, becomes more layered and full than before. So that was the right choice. I wasn’t so on the mark for the black, which was slightly too light, more like the moon when it’s just setting, when the light of day has already started to rise and encroach, which isn’t what they wanted—they wanted black-of-night moon, of course. But when we held it up in the middle of the room, there it was—not as good as anything the Color Master had done, maybe one one-hundredth as good, but there was something in it that would pass the test of the assignment. Like, the king and princess wouldn’t collapse in awe, but they would be pleased, maybe even a little stirred. Color is nothing unless next to other colors, the Color Master told us all the time. Color does not exist alone. And I got it, for a second with that blue, I did.
Cheryl and I packed the dress carefully in a box, and sent off the pigeon with the invoice, and waited for the king’s courtiers to come by, and they did, with a carriage for the dress only. After we laid the box carefully on the velvet backseat, they gave us a hunk of chocolate as a bonus, which Cheryl and I ate together in the side room, exhausted. Relieved. I went home and slept for twenty hours. I had put no anger in the dress; I remembered that when I woke up. Who can do that while so focused on just making an acceptable moon-feeling for the assignment? They didn’t ask for anger, I said, eating a few apples for breakfast. They asked for the moon, and I gave them something vaguely moonlike, I said, spitting tooth cleanser into the basin.
That afternoon, I went to see the Color Master to tell her all about it. I left out the absence of the anger and told her I’d messed up on the black, and she laughed and laughed from her bed. I told her about the moon being more of a morning moon. I told her what I’d felt at the blue, the feeling of the chord, and she picked up my hand. Pressed it lightly.
Death is glowing, she said. I can see it.
I felt a heaviness rustle in my chest. How long? I said.
A few weeks, I think, she said. The sun will come in soon. The princess still has not left the castle.
But we need you, I said, and with effort, she squeezed my hand again. It is dark and glowing, she said, her eyes sliding over to lock onto mine. It is like loam, she said.
The sun? I said.
Tomorrow, she said. She closed her eyes.
When I got to work the next day, there was an elaborate thank-you note from the castle with a lot of praise for the moon dress, in this over-the-top calligraphy, and a bonus bolt of fuchsia silk. The absentees were returning, slowly, from their various tangents, when we received the king’s new assignment: a dress the color of the sun. Because everyone felt a little jittery about the Color Master’s absence and wanted to go with whatever—or whoever—seemed to work, I was assigned to the order. Esther told me congratulations. Sandy took over my rotating schedule duties. I did a f
ew deep knee bends and got to work.
I liked that guy at the mine a little bit, the Manny guy, so I went back to ask about citrine quartz. He didn’t have any, but we had a nice roast-turkey lunch together in the spot of sun outside the rocky opening of the cave, and I told him about the latest dress I was making for the princess.
Whew, he said, shaking his head. What color is the sun?
Beats me, I said. We’re not supposed to look at it, right? Kids make it yellow, I said, but I think that’s not quite right.
Ivory? he said.
Sort of burnt white, I said. But with a halo?
That’s hard work, he said, folding up the cloth he used to hold his sandwich. He had a good face to him, something chunky in his nose that I could get behind.
Want to go to the faire sometime? he asked, looking up.
The outdoor faire happened on the weekends in the main square, where everything was sold.
Sure, I said.
Maybe there’s some sun stuff there, he said.
I’d love to, I said.
