Ravine wandered through the Spectrum, where every tree sported a new and magnificent variation of color. She scrutinized with smarting eyes the shade of every leaf and petal; it was the order she'd been given, and she couldn't disappoint. Her head hurt from the strain of seeing —but she could see even more than that.
The woman also saw what was before her, what was yet to come.
She could see down underground again, where roots laced together like the gloves of fine ladies. The white creatures fiddled with their skin in a scarlet dance, pinching, pinching. Then she saw the ruler, exalted as it should be in its garments of obsidian and oil. In the brilliant light from the river, running below the earth there, the ruler glinted as if it were the loveliest treasure in the world.
Ravine hugged her arms to her chest and felt the blood that had dried there. Tears brimmed in her eyes but didn't fall. She smiled to herself.
She was traveling alongside the winding rainbow river. Little gray birds on strings jerked through the air, in and out of the canopy. Their eyes were hard, like the buttons on her dress—the white one she'd had on in waking. She wasn't in that dress any longer. Now she wore a pale pink cloth that went right down to her ankles, and there was a single pearl on a thread around her neck.
She ran her finger along the fine thread and admired her pale pink fashion. Pale pink. That was a color she liked; it was important. She must find the pale pink trees. One of them would lead her to the ruler and its palace in the earth, where she'd be given every kind of gift.
After a time, a bird with rusted feet and feathers of steel shuddered by her. Its beak opened and closed in a rhythm familiar to the woman—vastly too familiar. It gave her a puzzling sense of urgency and doubt—but doubt in what, she didn't know. It scared her.
The woman leapt forward and caught the bird. It struggled against her grasp, and its beak kept the rhythm of open, snap, open, snap, but no sound ever escaped. Ravine strengthened her grip, denting the fragile aluminum body. The bird's perfectly round eyes rolled in place, and its wings beat frantically.
"Tell me," the woman said.
Its beak continued to open and shut, as if gasping for air. Ravine threw the bird to the ground and crushed it under her foot.
She kicked it aside and walked on, heading northeast now.
Behind her laid the tiny bird, its springs bobbing and its eyes still turning to an unheard beat. Its strings were haphazard on the forest floor, and its feet flexed in and out, as if attempting to hold onto something it could not. But its beak no longer moved.
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Aeolia
General FictionA woman runs from everything. A songbird joins her from nowhere, singing colors and images. A whisperer finds the pair among a field of poplars and graves. A dark and vicious viper stalks them from deep in the earth. They must flee from the Viper...
