The Color of Darkness

by Ruth Hatfield

  Around her, the sky flared into a mass of color. Red—orange—scarlet—turquoise—black—emerald green. For the first few moments she couldn’t see anything except streaks and swirls hurtling about the air. But the horse started to move slowly, and the colors became paler.

  They were crossing the park. The same park that she’d crossed only minutes before, except now the colors were all mixed up: the bright green of grass was splashed across the normally dark bushes; the yellow of buttercups was growing up the once-white goalposts, and the gritty gray of pavement was clinging to trees that only moments ago had been green and brown.

  Where were they? What had just happened?

  As if in answer, the horse began to move faster, lurching from side to side. Cath unloosed a hand long enough to reach behind and pull Barshin around to her front, where she could cling to him. He sank into the crook of her elbow gratefully enough.

  “Hold on,” he whispered, his head tucked against her chest. “Don’t fall. You mustn’t fall.”

  Like I’d want to, Cath was going to say, but the horse was off, bounding through town. Her butt bounced hard against his back, rattling her teeth. She concentrated on not biting her tongue.

  As the last of the buildings slipped away and they broke into open country, the trees were purple and the roads red, and the yellow sky flashed with bursts of silver that stung Cath’s eyes. The air seemed thin, but when she gasped, breath drew down into her lungs and tingled, as warm as sunlight.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We’re in Chromos,” said Barshin. “On Zadoc’s back. Zadoc is the guide for travelers through here. Just open your eyes and look around, if you want to know where you are.”

  It was no kind of answer and Cath’s eyes were already open, but as she gazed around, the roads seemed to fade away and vanish, until they were walking across a wide plain, the sky spreading vast and cloudless overhead. The sun was warm and the ground was covered in bright grass. Through the grass, a wild herb was growing that kicked up a strong, dusty scent as they brushed past it—a bit like curry, but with the green smell of bashed-up leaves. Small herds of sheep, cows, and horses grazed in the distance, along with a few hairier animals whose name Cath didn’t know.

  Nothing was moving fast. But there was so much space—she felt she could take off in any direction, wandering slowly or urging Zadoc forward at top speed, and she would see any threats coming from miles away. Not that this place seemed to hold any threats. She was warm and her belly felt full. The land shone before her, grinning, calling her into it.

  This is your realm, it said. Here, you can do anything.

  In between the grasses there were patches of delicate blue petals, clusters of purple pompons, and great banks of thorny bushes with tiny yellow flowers. As they walked past the bushes, Cath longed to take one of the small flowers, just so she could tuck it away and bring it out when she wanted to remember the sky and the plain, and the feeling of being so powerful yet entirely at peace under a warm sun.

  She reached out and touched a flower. A strong smell of coconuts burst into the air, and a flash of bright yellow shot up her finger. Zadoc jerked away. Barshin in her arms gave a convulsive start and scrabbled against her chest with blind paws.

  “Ah,” said Zadoc when he had moved so she was an arm’s length away from anything. “Now, you see, I wouldn’t normally be an advocate of doing what one is told. But in certain circumstances…”

  Cath looked at her right hand. The first and second fingers bore a faint patterning of dark green leaves, spines, and yellow flowers.

  “Well, you’ll have something to remember us by,” said Zadoc, a touch glumly. “Trouble is, remembering isn’t always a force for peace.”

  Cath spat on her fingers and tried to rub the pattern off. It didn’t budge.

  Away to their left a castle stood on the horizon, mute and dark. To the right, hills and mountains. No tracks or roads ran through the land: Zadoc walked on the grass and flowers, and he walked in whichever direction she wanted him to go.

  “Where’s the town gone?” asked Cath.

  “Who knows?” said Zadoc. “In Chromos, you make what you see. This is your country.”

  “But I live in town. I’ve lived there all my life. That’s my country, ain’t it?”

  “Perhaps not,” said the horse.

  Cath let her hands relax around the clump of his mane. She felt sure she’d manage to stay on his back.

  “But there ain’t nothin’ here. It’s just empty.”

  As soon as she said this, she caught herself thinking, Does that mean I’m empty too?

  “Empty? This?” said Zadoc. “This is … this is fuller than anything has a right to be. Look what you’ve made. You’ve made space in this plain and in this sky. You’ve made freedom, without any roads to lead you. You’ve made adventure, in the castle and the mountains—who knows what could be inside and over them? You’ve made an infinity of color and taste and smell in these plants. You’ve made life in the animals. And you say it’s empty?”

  Cath gazed at the sky and the plain, and heat burned through her chest. Could Zadoc be right? Had she really made all this? She’d never been anywhere at all like it in the real world. Everything stretched wide and bright before her, and the air was quiet. Even when a breeze picked up and she turned around, thinking that it must be the breathing of creatures lurking in shadows behind her back, there were only more plains and mountains and a flock of geese winging their way across the sky.

  She couldn’t have made this. She’d never imagined such a place could exist. She’d never seen enough to think that it was possible.

  But all the things she dreamed of were there: a world to explore, entirely hers, with nobody to answer to and nobody to hate.

  “Can we go anywhere?” she asked. Her shoulders were warm with sunlight, so warm that for a second she thought they might crack open and hatch a great pair of spreading wings. But she didn’t want wings. She wanted to feel the power of Zadoc beneath her, beating his hooves against the earth. Real life had vanished: there was no need to look over her shoulder anymore. She could run for the joy of it.

  “Anywhere—everywhere—or nowhere!” said Zadoc, throwing up his head.

  Cath looked down at Barshin, who untucked his head from her chest and stared back up in silence. She thought hard. Anywhere? And the words poured themselves out in a jumbled, excited stream.

  “When I’m at home—”

  “Don’t talk about home,” said Zadoc. “Not here.”

  “Well, I just think about this place—a house, not big, just maybe two or three rooms, that’s only mine. And then there’s some fields around it, and then a massive dark forest with deer and pigs and horses in it, and the forest goes up the sides of these mountains, where bears and tigers live, and the mountains go so high that no one ever bothers to come over them. Then on the other side there’s the sea, which is full of whales and sharks and giant squid and stuff, but the sharks know me so they don’t kill me if I go in there, but they’d kill anyone else who tried. Sometimes I go and find all the animals and fish and stuff, and sometimes I build things in the forest, and sometimes I just go around the fields and lie in the grass and look at the clouds. And nobody else ever comes there, unless I want them to. And when I want them to go, they have to go.”

  She’d never said that to anyone at home. It was the stupid sort of dream that little kids had, until they grew out of it. But neither Barshin nor Zadoc commented on her words. Zadoc just began to move, gathering his great legs into a smooth leap, and then they were bucketing over the plain, so fast that the horizon ahead was shaken up into the waves of a choppy green sea.

  Cath closed her eyes and missed, for a long while, what they were galloping over, because it was so good just to listen to the strength of her own powerful blood, beating warmth and courage through her veins. She’d never felt so strong. She knew that if anything came leaping across the plain toward them—armies, monsters, wolv
es, even Dad—she’d grow claws from her fingers and fangs from her teeth and a sword from each hand, and defeat them all, without fear.

  When Zadoc slowed, she opened her eyes again. The plain had gone. They were on a beach, wide and white, with the sea to their left and some sand dunes crouching to their right. Beyond the dunes, at a little distance, the forest-covered slopes of mountains rose steeply into the pale sky, and seabirds screamed overhead.

  Zadoc pointed his nose inland, and Cath saw a roof and chimney peering over the top of the dunes, with a narrow path leading toward them.

  “Is it there?” she dared to ask.

  “Of course,” said Zadoc. “Or here. It’s always either there or here. Shall we go up?”

  Cath heard the distant call of a wolf. Her nose picked up traces of pine in the air.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  They turned up the sandy path. Beyond the dunes crouched a low house with whitewashed walls and a thick thatched roof, and in front of it a garden bright with thousands of small flowers. The house was as much a part of the land as the trees and garden that surrounded it: the walls seemed to have grown out of fallen rocks, the roof from the tough sea grasses that fringed the dunes, and the window frames from sapling trees, planted in the corners of each window. It was almost breathing.

  It was her house.

  Zadoc was right! She’d made it up! She’d made everything—the land, the sky, this house, the animals, the freedom—these were her wildest dreams. And she’d thought they were unthinkable.

  Cath’s heart soared for a moment, out into the blue sky, swooping alongside the seabirds in their clean, free flight. Their feathers brushed against it, and it stretched toward them, purring with pleasure.

  “Put me down,” she said, trying to swing her leg over Zadoc’s back. “I’m stopping here.”

  “No!” said Barshin. “You can’t! This is Chromos, the land of colors! It’s full of everything that could ever happen—all the things that never will, and all that might, and all the things that no one has even thought about yet. If you fall into Chromos, it’ll swallow you down into a hole full of all the people you might have been and might one day be, and the person you are now will get lost among them. You must stay on Zadoc’s back!”

  “Says who?” said Cath, letting herself start to slide down toward the white path.

  But Zadoc swung his huge head around and knocked at her roughly with his nose, barring her way.

  “The hare is right,” he said. “You can’t walk the ground in Chromos. No earthly creature can. Your mind would eat itself up. Content yourself with your eyes, for now.”

  Beside the house there was a brick well with a metal bucket hanging on a chain. As they drew closer, Cath saw a dark patch of shadow spread over the ground next to the well, a thin layer of powdery gray fog clinging like mist to its surface.

  The longer she looked at the patch, the heavier her stomach grew, until she felt as if she’d eaten a bagful of cold fries. Wisps of smeary smoke drifted up and collected in small whirlwinds above it.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a path,” said Zadoc. “It links Chromos to the current owners of this house, wherever they are on earth.”

  “What? But you said this is just my dream, didn’t you? I made it up.”

  “Oh no,” Zadoc assured her. “What you see in Chromos is no mere dream. Many things here do indeed exist on earth. There is even a creature that makes a trade of mixing Chromos and earth, and it is he who is responsible for that path. Sammael, they call him, the Master of the Air. His business is none of ours, but thanks to his work, if you jumped down into that patch, you’d land on earth right next to this house. Or your mangled corpse would, anyway. Probably your brains would have exploded out of your ears on the way down, but most of you would get there.”

  “What if you take me?” asked Cath, letting herself feel hopeful for a second.

  “Oh no,” said Zadoc. “My colors would get all jumbled up and I’d die. Not immediately, but soon enough.”

  Cath didn’t see how the house could possibly be real if she couldn’t go to it. Zadoc was lying to her—this was something she was imagining, and very soon she would have to stop it and go back to the Sawtry, which did exist, and was where she really belonged.

  At once the plain lost its greenness and darkened into khaki, and then dusty violet. The sky became streaked with yellow, and black clouds swam up from the horizon.

  “Don’t,” said Zadoc. “Don’t compare it to what you’re used to seeing. Don’t call that reality. This is reality, right now…”

  But suddenly Zadoc’s hooves were clattering against pavement. He stumbled on a sharp stone and began to run away in pain, tripping and falling over his own feet, galloping faster and faster.

  “No…” Cath tried to say. “Barshin, don’t let him … Make him stop … I want to stay…”

  Barshin had his eyes closed and his head pushed into Cath’s armpit, and she had to cling to Zadoc again to keep on his back, his wide, lumpy ribs rolling from side to side, bouncing her painfully on his spine. Her head snapped up and down so hard she thought her neck would break, and then they were falling through endless space.

  * * *

  Zadoc came to a sudden halt, and Cath pitched over his shoulders, and then she was standing on the old railway line in a clearer part of the thicket, holding a hot, struggling Barshin in her arms. The hare’s legs kicked against her until she dropped him, then he leapt high into the air and jackknifed twice before settling back onto the ground. His entire body was shaking.

  “Oh—oh dear,” he stammered. “Oh dear, I’d forgotten—I’d forgotten—quite how blinding that place can be.”

  “Where’s Dad?” said Cath. “Is he still here?”

  Now that her feet were on the ground, her legs felt as if they’d been drained of their blood. She scanned the edge of the bank, but Dad wasn’t standing there, and neither was Elvis the dog. How much time had passed in that place? Was it really long enough for Dad to have given up and gone home?

  “I’ve got to go there again,” said Cath. “I’ve got to go back. What was that place?”

  “Chromos,” said Barshin. “It’s the land of colors. A world made of our minds—of our imaginations, if you like. But not an imaginary world. It is another land that sits on top of our world, in exactly the same place. Everyone sees a world unique to themselves in there, though. And apart from you, only Zadoc knows what you see. Because what you see in Chromos is the color at the core of your very being: what you imagine most deeply—your desires, and your fear.”

  “How does it know?” Cath shrank for a second at the thought that something had seen inside her, looked deep into the thoughts she always kept well hidden away.

  Barshin shook his head. “It just knows. That’s what Chromos is made of—the longings and the dreams of every creature that has ever lived, and much more besides. It just knows.”

  Dreams. Did that mean she could do things there? Make things? Become things?

  “I want to go back,” she said.

  Barshin nodded. “Of course. You can escape into Chromos whenever you like, if you know how. You can’t always control it, mind—you might spend seconds in there, or hours, or days. You might travel only a few yards, or hundreds of miles. You might see just as you see on earth, or you might see another world entirely. Anything is possible in Chromos. You just have to know how to call Zadoc, and then you can come and go as you please.”

  “Can’t I go by myself?”

  Barshin twitched his whiskers and said, “Oh no! As I warned you—you must always be on Zadoc’s back, or touching him, at least. He ensures that you only see the strongest possibility in your mind. Imagine if you were to see all of them! You’d go crazy on the spot. But I could call Zadoc again for you, if you wanted. I can always call him.”

  “Yeah,” said Cath. “Call him now. Maybe Dad’s coming back. I should go now.”

  The colors still danced before her
eyes. That wide plain, the animals, the house—was that really out there, somewhere? Could she really find it again?

  “Well, you see, the thing is, I need a favor. Perhaps you could do something for me? And then I’ll call Zadoc for you, whenever you want.”

  “Do what?” Cath didn’t take her eyes off the hare, even though she knew she should be looking out for Dad.

  “I need to get a message to someone. I was told he might be a tela, too, but I’ve tried talking to him and I don’t think he can hear me. Do you think you could give him the message?”

  There was bound to be a hidden bit. There always was, if anyone ever asked you to pass on a message. That was the sort of thing that happened all the time on the Sawtry.

  “I can’t,” said Cath. “The minute I get out of here, Dad’ll find me.”

  “He won’t,” the hare assured her. “I promise you. Didn’t I say that time passes strangely in Chromos? Look—the sun’s higher, and the morning dews have gone—we must have been away for a while this time. They’ll have searched and not been able to find you, nor to follow your scent out of here—how could they, when you didn’t leave? I’m certain they won’t still be waiting. If they are, I promise to take you straight back into Chromos. And I’m not asking you to go alone, I’ll come too. I just need you to speak for me, so that this message is heard and understood.”

  Cath considered Barshin for a moment. He might be lying. But what reason could he possibly have to lie?

  “Okay,” she said grudgingly. “Who is he, this guy you want?”

  She half expected the hare to say Dad, or one of the guys on the estate, although there wasn’t any reason to think a hare would want to say anything to them. He didn’t look like a gangster hare.

  Barshin said, in a curious, tight voice, “A boy. He’s called Danny O’Neill.”

  The name rang a bell. It wasn’t a bell of alarm, though: Danny O’Neill was just a boy in her year at school, a small, pale boy who never had much to say to anyone. Cath hadn’t looked at him more than twice in the two years she’d been there. Not that she’d looked at any of the boys much. They weren’t as vicious as the girls, but they were still stupid idiots who hated her just because she was Cath Carrera and dared to exist.