The Colorless Land

Chapter 40: Rock Bottom

Fog. Pale, glowing white fog.

Nellary gasped, then she held her breath. Her eyes darted frantically about the room for an escape. There was none. She was trapped. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the fog that emerged everywhere from invisible cracks.

Her shawl. Maybe that would help, at least a little. With fumbling fingers Nellary pulled it up, pressed it over her nose and mouth. Her hands were freezing cold. Her very breath was cold. It was stuffy under the thick fabric of the shawl, but she was still shivering.

The fog thickened.

Closing her eyes, Nellary tried to keep her breaths flat, stubbornly ignoring the freezing white mass that threatened to wrap around her. She had seen what it did to others. She wouldn't fall victim to it. She refused to become a shadow of who she had been.

The fog thickened.

Even through the shawl the air became thick and humid and too cold to breathe. It was like breathing in steam and ice crystals at the same time, freezing up her mouth and nose, creeping deeper into her lungs. Nellary pressed a hand over her face. She refused to let it in. Even if she suffocated, she refused to let it in.

But what if Maithea doesn't?

The thought shot through her like a flash of ice. She had no way of knowing, she realized. And even if Maithea wanted to fight back like she did, could she? Nellary had only recently regained her consciousness. What if Maithea hadn't? What if she was still out?

What am I fighting for?

It's hopeless, isn't it?

Nellary didn't know. She didn't know. She refused to understand. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she didn't want to lose to this fog here. For Maithea. For Jolette. For the faint, fragile hope that she might see them both again, safe and sound.

So she tried to picture them. Against the creeping white of the fog she forced up the image of her wife and daughter, smiling, in vivid colors, picturing their brown hair and eyes and all the hues of their skin and clothes, the reddish brown of their house and the orange of their fireplace. She tried to imagine being there with them, the warmth, the joy, the laughter. All these feelings that were stronger than the white, soulless apathy of the fog.

But her lungs continued freezing, the pallor flooded her mind, and the image faded faster the more she struggled to keep it.

~ ~ ~

Jolette pulled herself up the last few inches and stood, catching her breath.

She had come to a small platform above the rooftops of the city. Above her was a tall, pointed roof, but the sides were open, held up only by a circle of pillars. In the middle hung the greatest bell she had ever seen. It was made of cast bronze and stained with old age, suspended from the roof by a heavy wooden block attached through a complicated mechanism to a rope that descended into the depths of the tower through a trap-door.

Jolette yanked at the rope. Nothing happened. She needed to try it again from below. Damn it, she was in a hurry. At least there was a ladder here, she thought. Otherwise she would have needed to use the rope.

Scrambling down, she made her way into the belly of the tower, groping along in the darkness until her feet hit solid ground. She felt around, feeling her hands clasp around the rope again. Then she pulled with all the strength she had.

At first nothing happened. Then a gong shook through the thick walls of stone, reverberating in the ground. Another one. Then another one.

First slowly, then ever faster, the old bell began to ring. Jolette yanked it from side to side, running around the tower with the rope in her hand until it continued on her own, then she searched for the door. It was locked. With a curse she scrambled back up, unable to cover her ears on the ladder, gritting her teeth against the mind-numbing noise.