Colorless

by Rita Stradling

  The moment I delivered a further forkful of hay, it spilled off the side of the wheelbarrow. That slide sent more hay tumbling off the top of the wheelbarrow until there was a good-sized pile beside it. Damn it. I’d been paying my task too small amount of my mind, and Samantha was making it worse.

  Directly against my thoughts and wishes, Samantha crossed the distance to stand too close beside me. She smelled soapy and clean, like the laundry she worked in. Her scent was small consolation for how unwanted her presence was.

  She leaned in, her calloused fingers brushing over my arm. “Having the monks circle you does make it quite difficult for a clandestine meeting,” she whispered.

  My temper flared. “You presume I’d want a clandestine meeting with you?” I growled.

  “I–I—” Her eyelids went wide, and she shook her head.

  “Has there been anything in my manner of address to you that has hinted that I’d be interested in such a meeting?”

  She spluttered, “Your reputation—”

  “My reputation?” The word made my temper flare all the hotter. “Would you appreciate it if I made that assumption about you—that you’d lift your skirts at a whispered word from any man on the estate?”

  She gasped.

  Tears formed in the girl’s eyes, and a sudden wash of shame poured over me. “I apologize, my—my tone and words were uncalled for.” When she only cried harder, I added, “The sun’s heat has loosed my hold on my temper. You didn’t deserve what I said.” I nodded up to the blazing sun.

  “I was not the one presuming!” Tears splashed onto her now-flushed cheeks. “I was not speaking of myself, but of the many others you roll around in the dirt with. You pig! I would never touch you, never!” She leapt away as if I might lunge for her.

  “I apologize further for my mistaking your meaning, then,” I grumbled, turning to lay down my pitchfork.

  Clutching her hands around her waist, she stepped away once more. “I hope the monks arrest you, you lecherous wretch!” She spun away, running up the horse road toward the manor. Dust flew up in her wake.

  “Damn it,” I swore, watching the dust settle behind her. “My damned temper.”

  My grandmother always told my brothers and me that if we ever wanted to be respected in this world, we’d need to control our tempers and not the other way around. Compared to my brother Joseph, I was passive.

  But true though the words were, I should not have said them to Samantha or anyone else. Having a reputation as being ornery as well as wretched would not work to keep unwanted female attention away. My older brother proved that point again and again.

  My nose itched as the sharp smell of rotting citrus fruit wafted toward me.

  I grabbed the handholds of the wheelbarrow and heaved up the heavy load. My arms shook as I balanced the weight and took a step.

  “Drop it, boy.”

  My hands gripped the wooden handholds, and I hesitated one moment further and then set down the load. I turned, knowing the monk stood too close, hearing his breathing and smelling his reek.

  Leaning away, I gazed into the monk’s gaunt face. This one was cloaked in a deep black. He was a monk of the god Sun, I remembered from my pilgrimage, a Southern monk. While, of course, most of the monks at the manor were of Weire, several of each sect had traveled to the manor in the past days. It was strange, I’d never in my life seen more than one monk sect together, and now they were traveling in droves.

  “Good day,” I said. “Can I help you with something, sir?”

  In the monk’s eyes, every detail of my own face reflected at me. It was as if each of the eyes were rounded mirrors.

  “I wonder…” the monk mused, and like every time one spoke, I swore several voices spoke at once.

  I waited, but the monk didn’t say what he wondered, just leaned over me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I stepped back and into the wheelbarrow, finding myself trapped. “Would it be all right if I continued my work, sir?”

  “Is this lady important to you?” the monk asked.

  In the past days, I had more than enough practice in keeping my expression impassive. “I can’t give you an answer I do not know, sir.”

  “Is she a friend of yours—or more than that? Is that the motivation behind your loyalty?” he asked, leaning down even closer.

  “For days now, you and the other monks have been asking me about this lady, but as far as I know, the lord and lady of this manor died childless. I can’t give you any other answer than that.”

  “And we know that you are lying, Dylan Miller.”

  I felt my temper once again rise to the surface. The monk’s proximity felt like a physical invasion. The smell of him was painful to my senses. His mirrored eyes disconcerted my vision, distorting the world around me. There was one thing that I just couldn’t fathom—if they knew I was lying, why wasn’t I being punished?

  I’d once seen a man flogged before the Templum of Weire for tripping and falling into a passing monk.

  I was lying to the monks, which was a capital offense. They knew I was lying. They could take me on no evidence at all, and yet they hadn’t. They hadn’t so much as threatened me. All they did was remind me once a day that they knew I was lying and ask me vague questions about a lady they didn’t seem to know much about.

  “I’m not lying.”

  The monk leaned in, still closer. “Do you believe these aristocrats care for you, Dylan?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It is an easy enough mistake to make. But they do not care for you; they care only for themselves.” He paused, perhaps to maximize the sting of his words. Nodding, he continued, “The magicians care for you, Dylan Miller. You are most precious to them.”

  “I know that, sir. I live only to serve,” I mumbled.

  “Yes, you do live to serve. And you will serve us soon enough. You will serve us well.” He hovered over me for one more moment. Turning abruptly, the monk’s robe just missed hitting my face before he strode away, his black robe rippling behind him.

  Daily Devotion to the God Sun

  As the sun shines directly above, I give thanks to the Maker of Worlds. Let me not seek his creativity, for it is the providence of him alone. In its stead, I will ask that he bless me with diligence, so that I can better serve him.

  I will fear the gods, worship the magicians, and forsake the iconoclasts forevermore. Let it be so.

  5

  The Letter

  Annabelle

  Dearest Fauve,

  I apologize for the disingenuous way I sealed this letter. This is not a lost letter from Lord Klein, and I apologize if this falsehood has brought you pain.

  You will not remember me, but I have known and loved you all my life. Please, believe this if nothing else. My father, Lord Klein, was your patron and dearest friend at the time of my birth and for many anni after. Your name was the third word I ever spoke. You only left us because my father could no longer afford to patronize you and insisted on you leaving so that your artwork could continue to flourish. I overheard you in the many times you bickered about it, and then when you finally relented.

  You will not remember that I was there, but I ran behind your carriage for so long that you hopped out and held me until I stopped weeping. I do not cry easily.

  I know you well enough to know that you will not reveal this letter to anyone, however strange you find it. Nonetheless, I must impart to you that I likely have put you in grave danger just by sending it.

  I know you to be someone who is open to the possibility of the uncanny, and my story has turned quite that way.

  I lifted my pen from the parchment to dip it in the ink. Wiping off the excess, I hesitated, and then moved the pen to etch into the paper.

  All my life, you told me that you loved me as your own, though you will not remember that now. Please come. I fear I may have done something to anger the gods. I am afraid, and I know you can remedy this situation somehow. You have such a mind for ideas. You wil
l not see me at first, but I will find a way to communicate with you.

  Your dear one,

  Annabelle Klein

  Staring down at the letter, I considered rewriting it again. But, like my clothing, my parchment and ink materials were growing thin.

  As I inspected the words ‘I am afraid,’ my stomach churned. They sounded at the same time desperate, pathetic, and egregiously inadequate for the emotions that had been wrapping around me in the past week.

  But the truth of it was, whether anyone remembered or not, I was the Lady of Hope Manor. I was the daughter of a legacy, and I could no longer cower in the east wing, only leaving to collect Samson’s scraps once a day. I had become a rat, hiding in my own home. It was beneath me and my position.

  Fauve would know what to do. As much as it would destroy me that he would not remember me, he would solve this puzzle that I found myself trapped in. His mind was always quick to jump to the abstract, and that was what I needed.

  Until my parents died, my heart had only broken once, and that was when necessity took Fauve from Hope Manor.

  I also had to believe that the desperation in my letter would convince him to make the journey in haste. He would not write it off as fantasy or trickery; I had to believe that.

  After folding the letter, I took up a long stick of wax. A red dot splashed onto the page, the only color in sight. Pressing down, I sealed the letter with my father’s private seal.

  I had scavenged everything of use from the east wing, and upon finding the seal five days ago, this idea was born.

  I lifted the lid to my mother’s letterbox. Even colorless, it felt hard and cold like the metal it had been. It had been a travesty to ruin it, one of the few heirlooms that had not been sold. I had to close my eyes rather than watch the gold filigree drip onto the floor. But the letter needed to be carried invisible until the right moment.

  Standing from my writing desk, I glared down at the ripped lace and tattered ashen silk I had left as a dress. It would have to do. With two dresses still intact in my closet, it would not do to be too picky about the state of my clothing.

  After setting the small coin purse in with the letter, I gathered the box in my gloved hands. Unease filled me as I turned to the door of my sitting room, but unease was often my companion since that day in the stables.

  Steadying myself, I walked out into the featureless hallway.

  This morning, I didn’t linger in the kitchens, simply grabbed the coolest roll off the rack, broke it into pieces, and stuffed it into the letterbox. Samson kneaded a large quantity of dough, though there must have been fifty rolls piling on the cooling rack. As I passed the counter, I grabbed some dried meats he left out as well before rushing out of the open kitchen doors. As quickly as I could, I hurried to the space between the horse road and cobbled road, and then walked between them.

  Dust rose around me, tasting like the air during a summer ride on Marc, but it was not a good sign that I was raising dust even on the dry grass.

  As I reached the spot where the horse road turned toward the stables, my gaze turned. For perhaps the hundredth time, I considered asking the stable boy to deliver the letter. But again, I dismissed the idea as all the reasons not to do that flooded my mind.

  A lady never put her servants in unnecessary danger or coerced them to commit a crime. It was a rule that my father had reiterated more than once. Adversity was no time to bend one’s ethics. Furthermore, every time I had seen him across the yard since that day, several monks had watched him from close by. If he were discovered with the letter, I would be revealed and he taken by the Congregation.

  That the monks were after me, I had no doubt now. Somehow, I had angered the gods, and they took everything from me but still had not seen justice done. Just as Hester said, I was cursed.

  The cobbles ended where a scored and scarred road stretched on through the forest. I cut over and into the woods just along the side of the road. Underbrush crunched under my feet as I crossed dry patches of clover.

  It had been anni since Tony and I had played in the old log. Well, since the former Tony and I had played in the log. He was Lord Klein now.

  The log sat nestled in a circle of trees that had been carved straight out of my memories of this place. I hated to destroy it, to overwrite it with my cursed touch, but the two innocent friends who played here were long since grown, and each in our own way, poisoned.

  Old wood crumbled at my touch as I grasped onto its edge. That was good. I was taking the gamble that because the log was long dead, it would be susceptible to my touch. When I pulled my hands away, little black splinters clung to my gloves. I ducked into the fallen log’s hollowed inside. It was a much tighter squeeze now that I was ten anni older and larger.

  I’d planned to take off a glove and touch the log directly, but as I lumbered my way into the inside of the log, some part of my bare skin must have touched the outside, because globs of reds, browns, and greens rained down upon me. Nestling into the hollow, I raised my head as color dripped over my face and down my body. I laughed as great globs of dried-moss green and bark brown tickled down my arms and over my gown. They slid down my dress and pooled under me. Within seconds, it drained away.

  I had known it would not stay.

  In my more desperate moments, I had tried to leech color off my parents’ curtains. The pigments rolled over me as if my skin was canvas covered in wax.

  One of the predicaments that had stopped me from leaving the manor for so many days was that it was too risky to leave while the monks were there patrolling the grounds. I had heard whispers from the servants that hundreds of monks patrolled the Hopesworth streets in the mornings and evening. The only solution I saw was to hide out in the woods as they passed to the manor. My gaze moved over my hiding place; it seemed like a clever idea, and I hoped it was.

  Usually, people avoided those objects I stripped of color. It was as if even though they forgot its existence, something in them told them it was there. They avoided me as well. I had a niggling doubt in the theory I based this plan on. That one monk had almost walked into me. Also, from the window in my hallway, I’d seen more than one monk pause just beyond the wall of the east wing as if they were waiting for something to change in their midst, though they’d always continued after a time. My only hope was that they avoided the woods and stuck to the road.

  Placing the letter box on my lap, I opened it and ate quickly and carefully, leaving half. I snapped closed the lid just as I heard the movement outside.

  Gripping hard onto my box, I looked to the hole in the log. At first, it was a soft hiss, but then the volume rose to the sound of millions of snakes slithering over dry leaves. The slithering grew so loud I covered my ears, but I still heard them. Framed by the small window out of the log, they came. In uniform lines and synchronized steps, the towering cloaked figures passed in rows. One breath, crimson lines filled the space. The next breath, they were gone. And on and on they went, crimson, gold, ivory. There must have been hundreds of them, more than I’d ever seen before.

  A fluttering black robe filled the window of my log entirely.

  A scream left me before I had the sense to cover my mouth. My heartbeat thundered in my chest. When I kicked further into the log, pale bark splintered around me. A sharp point dug into my back. When I checked, I had scooted all the way to the jagged wood shards that walled in the log’s end.

  When I chanced a furtive glance to the hole, the cloak was gone. Through my window, the precession of monks and loud crunch and hiss of their passing continued for what felt like forever. Their noise continued long past when I could see them, quieting to silence.

  How many monks were there in Domengrad to have so many descend on Hope Manor? Could they have more coming? Soon, they would take up every inch of space. I could picture it in my mind, a sea of elongated robed bodies, thousands of blinking black eyes, with gaunt hands reaching for me from all directions.

  Grabbing my box, I stumbled out of the pall
id log, and down to the dusty road.

  I ran.

  Heedless of the divots and scars in my path, I tripped and stumbled. The moment I was on my feet, I started sprinting again. My dress ripped, tearing long strips of silk to flutter behind me, but I did not slow until I saw the first sign of houses.

  At the final tree in the forest, I halted and grabbed onto the bark with my gloved hand. My chest heaved with my breaths.

  Through my hazy vision, the town spread out down the hillside and into the valley before me. Central in Hopesworth, the Templum of Weire cast a shadow over the uneven ridgelines of the village houses. Its great twisting spires pierced the sky, crimson as the skin of the death god the templum was named for. A hundred flying buttresses held up its decorative, windowless walls.

  Yet another image flitted through my mind; the buttresses arched down in a hundred spindly legs. The templum of the gods within quivered like an engorged spider’s body. Around the great crimson arachnid, the town lay under the filigree of its web.

  These were terrible images, blasphemous thoughts. It was as if the curse of my body had spread to my mind. Or, perhaps I had those thoughts all along and that was why I was cursed.

  My father and mother were not pious people. I had known that when their meaningful looks and hard-fought composure meant they found Congregation fanatics like Hester dramatic to the point of silliness. I’d known in my heart that they were discontent. The whispers had reached my ears that my parents gave what was required to the Congregation and nothing more.

  In the night, I thought I might have even remembered a whispered word between my father and Fauve when I’d been dozing in a chair.

  Advantageous.

  “I find their teachings suspiciously advantageous to the Congregation itself,” my father had said in a low voice. I hadn’t understood what it meant at the time, but here and now while being hunted by the monks, with two dead parents and cursed skin, I knew what it had been.