Betwixt

Chapter Four

Everything was blindingly bright. That was all Kate could register. Sunlight coating her body in it's golden rays like sheets being pulled over her body, sheets made of glitter and warmth and sunshine. She was next aware of the smell of flowers- wildflowers, like the ones that grew along the path from her house to the load during the summer. The air tasted sweet, like honey and cinnamon.

Kate opened her eyes. She was laying in a field of flowers- golden yellow black-eyed susans, Sarah's favorite flower, and buttercups, sunny daisies, and bold tiger lilies- flowers Kate recognized from the bouquets Alex and Caroline would pluck from the black dirt of the yard and place in a vase or glass or coffee cup on the kitchen table until they began to turn brown and were thrown into the back garden to decompose. The sounds of rustling leaves and stems and somewhere, off in the distance, flowing water, filled her ears. This must be a dream, Kate thought, even if somehow I'm not lying on the stone bottom of a cellar, the only flowing water in Marion County comes out of the pump over the sink in the kitchen.

Then Kate noticed a girl, out of the corner of her eye, crouched on her hands and knees in this dream-field and sorting flusteredly through her pockets. Her skin was pastel blue like the sky, and for some reason this feature did not take Kate by surprise- if this was a dream, then why couldn't this girl's skin be blue? Her hair was also blue, a darker shade of cobalt or ultramarine, maybe, Kate had never had a way with colors, that was Caroline's cup of tea. It was pulled up in two buns that gave the girl a sort of wild-animal look, and the blue strands dripped water, like maybe she had just gotten out of the shower or pool. Her eyes, which were wide and lined in black, were silver, and quite nervous-looking as well, and they flitted back and forth between the trinkets that she continued to pull from the pockets of her purple cargo pants. Other than the pants, she wore a tank top that was turquoise and iridescently shiny, reminding Kate of the scales of Alex's short-lived goldfish she had won at the fair last year.

What struck Kate as the most unusual about this mysterious figure was her tattoos: her limbs were covered with them, as well as the parts of her chest not covered by the neckline of her shirt, hinting that perhaps the inked designs covered her whole body. The girl's arms were covered with designs resembling waves, with other mystical images woven amongst them- from her awkward position lying on her back in the grasses, Kate could pick out figures such as a tree, stars and a moon, birds, constellations, and flowers not unlike the ones growing in the field around her.

Speaking of the flowers, there seemed to be quite a bit of pollen floating around in the air, and Kate's nose had began to tickle. Ahchoo! She sneezed, her eyes watering. The mysterious, blue-skinned, tattooed girl looked up, startled, then she smiled in relief as she saw Kate's green eyes meeting her own silvery ones. "Oh! You're awake! That's good, I suppose, since I can't seem to find my potion salts in any of these pockets- I thought for sure I'd put them in..."

Kate absorbed the girl's personality. Her voice reminded Kate of a brook or stream, bubbling along quickly from rock to rock, and her large metallic eyes gave her face lots of expression as she spoke. Kate's analysis was interrupted by the girl's voice. "Anyway, my name is Oceana. I was just on my way home from the pond when I saw you lying on the ground. You must have tripped over a rock or something and hit your head! Are you feeling alright? I was going to try and wake you up with some salts from the seabed, that's what my mother always taught me to use, but I couldn't find them!"

It took Kate a moment to comprehend the girl's string of thoughts. "No, I think I'm alright," she said. This was true, she thought, surprised, although she didn't remember ever being able to feel pain in a dream before, so perhaps it was to be expected. "This is a nice dream," she mused out loud. "At least if I am hurt I won't know about it until I wake up."

The girl, Oceana, looked confused. "This isn't a dream, and I thought you said you were alright? Maybe you should stay here and I could go and get my mother, she's the apothecary, you know, perhaps you've heard of her, her name is Sapphire?"

Kate shook her head. "No, I don't know anyone named Sapphire." This was seeming less and less like a dream every passing second. She reached over and pinched her other arm. "Ouch!" Nope, definitely not a dream. Wow. Okay, this was a new turn of events. What had happened? "Could you tell me, please, where exactly I am? I think I'm lost, and if I'm not lost then I'm very confused, at least."

Oceana nodded. "It's okay! I'm confused a lot of the time too, and I get lost all the time, when I go exploring! Oh! Is that what you were doing? Were you going exploring?"

Kate thought for a moment. Yes, she supposed, she had been going exploring. She nodded at the other girl.

"Oh! Okay! Well, this is the Meadow, it's where we hold our meetings and all of our communities are built around it. We have Aquas here, like me and my mother, and we also have Forests, like my sister, Terra. This is Order Two, of course, although I'm sure you know that." Oceana paused, noticing Kate's bewildered expression. "What Order are you from? Are you from the City? You have skin and hair like the Creators, although I suppose that means that you could be from anywhere- City people live in all five of the orders, now."

"Wait." Kate said. "I think you've misunderstood- I'm not from here at all. My name is Kaitlyn Jane Ellis, and I'm from Marion County, in Michigan, in the United States. The last thing I remember before I woke up here was slipping off a ladder I was climbing down into a cellar that I found under a trapdoor in a shed on our yard. I don't have any idea where I am, or what an Order is, or what City you're talking about, or who this Creator is!" Kate exclaimed. She felt more disoriented and confused than she did in math class at school.

Oceana's eyes grew even wider, and she sat silently across from Kate on the grass. Kate took this opportunity to sit up and brush the loose flower petals and blades of grass off of her yellow tee shirt and jean shorts. "Did you say that you got here through a trapdoor?" asked Oceana quietly after a moment. Kate nodded. "Then you really, really aren't from here," Oceana mused, sounding amazed. "Come with me. I know just the person to help us figure out what might have happened." She bounced to her feet, and offered a blue hand to Kate, who took the offering and was helped to her feet, then pulled along across the field by the mysterious Oceana.