All That Is Red

by Anna Caltabiano

  We grabbed what little we could bring and packed it all in much the same way as Elspheth had packed her belongings. Our main concern and most of what we actually packed, was food for our journey. Everyone carried his or her share by somehow attaching it to him or herself. I attached mine to my dagger’s sheath and buckled that around my waist. In a short time, we were all ready to go.

  Since we did not intend to be out exploring for long, our goodbyes were quick. I gave the two generals my blessing to act in my stead, as long as they both agreed on the course of action. Of course, the people would think that they were acting in the boy’s name. With that, we started our descent down into the real world away from the Trigons and the humans and away from the Red cause.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was an odd thing, being back on solid ground again. I had forgotten the heavy push of gravity upon my shoulders and the opposite push the ground gave me. The earth was much softer than I had remembered and seemed to welcome us with open arms.

  The boy had brought a smaller version of one of the maps Nalin had drawn. He examined it before pointing in the direction we would walk. “We have to head straight in that direction, until we get past a hilly area. Then we’ll know that we’re there.”

  We walked, until it got too dark to see our own feet. Our footsteps became blind and we lost all attachment to our bodies. We stopped for the night in the middle of our tracks and I was so tired that I don’t even remember falling asleep.

  Morning came on the skirts of a Red mist so thick it seemed that the world around us had melted into Red. The mist was neither hot nor cold; it had no state of being. It was just there.

  We kept walking forward and at around midday, we finally crept free of the mist and reached the hilly area the boy had mentioned the previous day. We must have been close to The Pure One’s city, as the Red grass in the area had dulled to a pale pink.

  “We should start writing down what we see,” I said. At my words, everyone unpacked the notebooks, which Nalin had given each of us specifically for this purpose, and we dispersed.

  I didn’t know exactly what to write. Not having a clue if any one thing would be helpful to Nalin, I wrote a few words on the sparse hills and the pale grass. I just wrote about whatever caught my eye.

  Eventually, we came together again to eat. We each unwrapped a portion of our food and sat in a loose circle. The guards remained silent throughout, so it was only the boy and I supplying the conversation.

  “It’s nice to get away sometimes,” he said.

  “But eventually you’re going to have to go back and face everything you left,” I reminded him.

  “That time will come when it comes, but we might as well enjoy this for now.”

  Looking behind us, we could no longer see the Red tops of the Ever Forest. It was close to a sense of abandonment. We were away from the only home-like place we knew and, even though we carried a map, we were effectively lost.

  Day after day went by in much the same way, with the guards following us mutely, while the boy and I tried to live as we did before we joined the Red cause. We took notes on everything we observed, and we took pleasure in the journey we had grown to miss. It might have been the sense of moving that we enjoyed, of leaving something behind for something else.

  “We should spread out to log different information,” the boy said one morning. We agreed, distributing ourselves among the flat space of the land.

  The mountain range to my right had caught my attention and I was logging it into my notebook when the boy called out to me.

  “Where did Elspheth and Kasia go?” he asked. “I thought we would settle down for some lunch.”

  I responded that I had no idea, but that I would gladly join him for lunch.

  “I’m glad you came,” the boy suddenly said as we ate.

  “I’m glad too.”

  “It’s just like old times, isn’t it?” He grinned when I agreed.

  It seemed like we were picnicking instead of surveying for a war. The thoughts of Red versus White were blown out of our heads by the faint breeze about us. If I could have felt an emotion, I guess I would have felt happy; whatever that is.

  “Well, we should finish up logging here and then keep moving, so we can retire for the night a bit early. I’ll go find Kasia and Elspheth.” The boy dashed off in the opposite direction.

  I took out my notebook and pen, as I tied up the remains of my food in the Red cloth and reattached it to the sheath at my side. Once everything was sorted, I went back to logging.

  There was a ledge nearby and below it was a small brook of trickling Red water. I stepped down below the ledge to look at the water. It was light Red in color, not as dark as the Red river. There didn’t seem to be any life in it. There was something strange about it, but I couldn’t seem to put my finger on what it was at first. Then I realized that the brook had nothing in it at all. It was devoid of life and everything else except for its waters. There were no pebbles or plants. There wasn’t even any dirt on the bottom. It was just a brook filled with water.

  I was writing this down when I looked up to see the brook’s water discoloring before my very eyes. The Red color was fading into White. My first thought was of the last time this happened. I knew the White had to be somewhere close. Pushing myself under the ledge to avoid being seen, I huddled as small as I could physically make myself.

  Like the last time I had a close encounter with the White, I tried to listen closely to whatever was happening above me. For a while, I couldn’t hear a single thing. Then there were voices.

  “What did you do to them?” The boy’s voice broke out of the silence first.

  “We did to them what we’ll soon do to you.” The unfeeling’s voice was unmistakable in its sardonic tone.

  I resisted a shiver.

  A cry pierced the air, I recognized it instantly the boy’s voice. I instinctively sprang up out of hiding to try to wrestle him out of the unfeeling’s grasp, but I was immediately knocked down. Hitting my jaw against the ground, I tasted blood in my mouth, but I felt no pain, not even the slightest sting.

  I was quick to rise to my feet again, but the sight of the boy stopped me in my tracks.

  “Every swing you take, the boy suffers more for it,” the unfeeling next to me sneered.

  I was able to see at least five unfeelings. They wore armor of transparent glass that was soundless even when they moved. What they wore underneath was as formless, shapeless, and colorless as their eyes. They must have come on horseback, as an equal number of White horses stood in the background. The unfeeling before me had the boy’s neck in his grasp. The grip wasn’t tight and the unfeeling wasn’t choking him, but the boy’s coloring visibly drained out of his body and into the unfeeling’s hand, which was wrapped around his neck.

  “What do you want from him?” I asked.

  “We were thinking ... maybe his life?” The unfeeling holding the boy let out a deep chuckle. It sounded forced, and each of its fellow creatures echoed the sound.

  “I’ll give you my life in exchange for his.” I didn’t know where the voice came from, but it seemed to come from my mouth.

  The unfeelings laughed.

  “And who are you to offer your life for his?” one of the unfeelings asked.

  “The leader of the Red cause.” I don’t know what made me say it, but somehow I knew that was the only way they would take me and leave the boy.

  “Well The Pure One would like to see this ...” I heard one of the unfeelings murmur.

  The unfeeling that was gripping the boy flung him to the ground and reached for me. He roughly grabbed me by my shoulders and shoved me on the back of a horse behind another unfeeling.

  “Don’t you dare try any trickery.”

  Just as I managed to gain my balance myself on the horse’s back, we set off at full speed. I assumed we were going to The Pure One’s city, but I had no idea where or how far away it was, so I tried to make the most of my time while the unfeelings we
re occupied. Thinking it would only be a hindrance later on, I tossed away the bag containing my food supply. I figured that even unfeelings had to eat sometime and it wouldn’t do them any good to have me dead now. I also managed to hide my blade under my shirt before the unfeeling in front of me noticed.

  The motion of the horse under me was so smooth it was disconcerting. The horse felt like it was barely moving, but the scenery was a blur of White, an absence of color in the mortal world around us. Everything looked perfect and somehow unreal. Nothing looked transient, as everything was still. I would have called the world around us dead, but it would have had to have been alive first to deserve that title of tranquility. As we continued farther, the color around us turned paler and paler until it was pure White.

  We stopped suddenly and my body pitched forward into the unfeeling before me, who sat as impossibly still as the other unfeelings around me. I looked up to find that we hadn’t stopped just anywhere, as I had previously thought.

  The completely White scenery in front of us was a large wall that went straight up without stopping. There was no way to see around the wall or even the sky above it. It just kept going.

  A set of gates in the wall swung open unexpectedly and a clamor of voices rushed out with the air. We rode into what looked like a kind of market place. Unfeelings were selling and buying strange looking goods at stands. No one paid any heed to us and we rode right past them to the opposite wall, where the unfeelings dismounted and I was helped down from the horse.

  The Pure One’s city was built around an open courtyard, which seemed to serve as the marketplace. Around the open area, doors dotted the walls. The buildings spiraled up many stories with balcony walkways that opened out to the marketplace below.

  The voices that filled the air were all from different people, yet they sounded the same. While they were clearly saying different things, they all seemed to be propelled by one force.

  “Walk,” an unfeeling gruffly demanded, pushing me forward.

  Staggering from the shove, my shoulder crashed into something. When I turned around to see what it was I had slammed into, I gasped. There were crates filled with Red prisoners.

  The large wooden crates had about seven Trigon men crammed into each of them. There had to be more than fifteen crates filled with my people. Their arms all reached out to me from between the bars of their confinements.

  “Help me,” a voice cried out.

  “Get me out of here.”

  “I have a child,” yelled another one.

  Their outstretched arms drew back a memory of the former commander’s funeral. The way she fell with her arms outstretched was exactly how these men looked now.

  I was shoved forward again by the unfeeling behind me.

  “Why are they in crates?” I asked, hesitant of the answer I knew I might receive.

  “They’re awaiting execution.”

  I backed away from the crates of wailing people and backed right into someone else. I turned around apologizing.

  “Ralph?” My voice was only a whisper, but he heard me.

  “I don’t think I know you.” His voice was harsh and dripping with cold. He turned around and walked away from me, melding into the crowd of unfeelings, as I stood there screaming out his name.

  My breath was cut short as the unfeeling behind me thrust me forward yet again.

  “Keep walking.”

  I followed the unfeeling in front of me. Eventually we came to a stop outside one of the many doors that speckled the wall. The unfeeling leading our small party entered the building, while the one behind me waited outside, presumably to guard me.

  The sound of murmuring escaped from the door. Although I didn’t know what they were talking about, I had a suspicion that it was about me. When the unfeeling walked out of the room, I couldn’t begin to guess what had occurred in there, as his face was completely devoid of emotion.

  “The Pure One wants to see you.”

  That was all he said, as he began climbing the stairs next to the door. The staircase wound upwards, as if never ending. We passed floor after floor, only to keep walking up.

  We eventually reached the uppermost floor. Looking down from the balcony walkway, I realized that the city had been planned around the circular marketplace. It was as if the rooms were a fortress around the common congregation area.

  The floor only had one set of doors in the middle of the circular walkway. Upon reaching it, I was surprised by the lack of guards outside the door. However, that was answered when I saw the two sets of guards on either side of the door on the inside.

  The room we entered had one desk in the middle of it. At the desk sat an older unfeeling woman.

  “The Pure One doesn’t take visitors,” she automatically said, without looking up when she heard the sound of the door closing behind us. She seemed to act like a receptionist or secretary to The Pure One.

  “The Pure One asked to see us,” the guard beside me said.

  The receptionist frowned and looked back down at her books. She sighed and exited the room using a door to the side of her desk. She was gone only a few minutes before she came back to admit us.

  “Right this way,” she sighed, holding the door open for us. She let me walk through, but stopped the two unfeeling guards who were following me. “Not you two,” she insisted.

  The door closed behind me, trapping me in a room full of darkness. It took some time for my eyes to adjust, but even when they finally did, all I could make out was a glowing White figure standing at the far end of the room. I approached it. I realized it was the same figure I had seen in my dreams and reflected in the blade. As I got closer, the figure came into focus and I realized it was me, myself.

  The Pure One, if that was really what the image in front of me was, was a mirror image of myself. It wore the same familiar features and the same expression. The only difference was that it was an unfeeling. That alone made all the difference. That difference contorted the expression it wore into one of callous coldness. That difference distorted the same features I wore into something cruel and soulless.

  “You’ve kept me waiting,” The Pure One said, as coolly as if it had been waiting as long as it claimed.

  “I hope it hasn’t been too long.” I tried to match the coldness in its voice.

  “You can now see for yourself that I was telling the truth. You are a part of me. Just look at our similar appearances.”

  A part of me believed The Pure One. We looked identical, surely, that must be evidence enough in itself that we were one and the same. It would explain why I couldn’t feel, I’m not human. I’m a part of The Pure One. However, another part of me disagreed. It found some small contradiction in myself and couldn’t let it go.

  “Give up,” The Pure One said. “Don’t deny who you really are. You are me.”

  I found my body surrendering to the words of The Pure One. Maybe it was right? Maybe I should give up? It would be easier. Besides, what did I have to lose? I had already lost the ability to feel.

  “You can’t lie to yourself,” it continued.

  More than half of me was convinced that The Pure One was right, but there was still that small part that continued to resist. I didn’t know why, but it seemed to see through The Pure One. There was something I wasn’t consciously seeing, something I was missing.

  And then it hit me. Of course, there was one thing I had failed to consider. The Pure One had said that I was a part of it, but what if it was actually the reverse? What if The Pure One was really a part of me?

  “You’re lying,” I said, while walking closer. I tried to feel as confident as I sounded. “I’m not a part of you. I never was. You’re a part of me.”

  The Pure One let out a mocking laugh. It sounded unnatural against the silence that surrounded us.

  “I hope you don’t believe that,” it mocked. “If you do, you’re only hurting yourself.” The Pure One continued, “In this vale of emotion and ephemerality, you don’t have any power
. You are as weak as the rest, while I am in command. Join me while you can. You don’t have to give up a part of yourself, because you already lack emotion.”

  “But you forget one thing I would have to give up and that’s my humanity.”

  “And what is that? You can’t feel how it is to be alive, so what worth is that to you?”

  “Everything,” I said and I knew then what I had to do.

  Every step pushing down on me like a lead weight, I closed the gap between The Pure One and myself. As I did so, my blade was already unsheathed in my hand.

  “You can’t kill me,” The Pure One said. “I’m a part of you. If you do, you risk killing yourself.”

  “I can’t feel my humanity, though I’m sure I still have it. So that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  Before The Pure One could say another word, the force of my hand drove the blade into where The Pure One’s heart would have been, if it had one. The resistance my hand felt was not of flesh though, or air, or of any sort of anything I would or could have imagined. When the blade hit The Pure One, The Pure One’s image cracked into a thousand pieces and crumbled before my eyes.

  The mirage crashing down revealing another room on the other side of where the glass or mirror had been. I looked down at the shards that were once The Pure One. I couldn’t tell whether they were once part of a mirror and The Pure One was in fact myself, or if they really were glass and The Pure One was a separate entity that I had killed.

  I stood there for a while, not from shock, just waiting to feel something. I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel anything.

  Another crashing sound broke my reverie and I woke up to the world around me. I walked out of the room, neither hurrying up nor slowing down. Finding the reception room empty and the noise coming from below even louder, my pace quickened into a run. I burst out of the room onto the balcony walkway and I looked down to see the sight for which I had been waiting.

  The place that had once been an open market was now overrun with members of the Red cause. The stalls, which had been standing just a few hours ago, were now all strewn on the ground like playing cards. The White was fighting back, but the Red cause was clearly winning.