Dreamwalker

13- Kohl-Lined Eyes

Aysal, naturally, was right-- the palace gardens were exquisite. Bell had never seen most of these plants in her life. She felt like Baudoin Bain, exploring new worlds. Bell counted four gardens so far and she wasn't even done exploring. Each garden was set in a courtyard surrounded by rooms or hallways of the palace. Sometimes there were glass ceilings and sometimes Bell could look straight up into the sky from the ground.

The grass here was never crunchy or frozen, but soft and springy. Bell's feet felt a little bouncy whenever she took a step. All manners of plants grew from the rich soil. Ferns with blue bulbs on the ends of their leaves, a black sweet-smelling kind of shrub growing close to the ground, trees with white twisting limbs and peeling red bark, and, Bell's personal favorite, small blue flowers shaped like five-pointed stars that sprouted in bunches up the walls. She could have sworn she had seen something like it before but she couldn't put her finger on where.

Her mind wandered to Soutine while she strolled through the palace. He would love it here. He would love the sun and the colors. It was such a dramatic change from the browns and greys of Terre Pur, this place was more like a dream.

This gave Bell an idea. She stopped a passing servant and asked for a pencil and a piece of paper. The servant obliged, drawing out a scroll and a pencil from her back pocket and handing them to Bell. "Thanks, I'll give the pencil back tonight," Bell said.

"Don't worry, I don't need it back. Keep it."

"Thank you."

She hurried back outside and sat down against the trunk of a tree growing clusters of red fruit on each branch. Even though her handwriting resembled the footprints of a bird running across a paper, she figured she should try anyway.

"The sun is shining everywhere. There aren't even any clouds to cover it up. I think I'm steaming like a cabbage in my own skin. I should ask for some spices so I can taste better when they eat me."

She paused. This wasn't really the image she was going for. She just continued writing and hoped the rest would sound better.

"There are lots of gardens here with a million kinds of plants. You would probably know the names of all the plants here but for now I'll just have to make names up for you so you know what I'm seeing. For one thing, I know where lemons grow now. Even the trees smell nice. Flowers grow as tall as my head or as low as the grass. My favorites are the flowers growing up the wall. Light blue, shaped like tiny shooting stars. I think I've seen them before but I'm not very sure since I never saw them growing in Terre Pur. Do you know their name?"

Bell stopped again, pencil hovering over the paper. There was a lump in her throat that she hadn't expected. She tried to swallow it down and keep writing.

"The palace alone is the size of Terre Pur and there are hundreds of people inside. Everyone is very kind. Someone gave me a pencil and I don't even know their name. Maybe I'll move here so I can get free pencils all the time. I haven't found any mud yet and even though I'm missing home I think I could live a nice life here. Ever since leaving, I've experienced so many new things, I don't think I'm the same person that I was when I left. It sounds a little silly and yet I'm sure I've changed somehow. By the way, I think there are a lot of things that you should have told me, but I forgive you. You probably have a good reason like you always do."

She blinked, and all of a sudden there was a tear trapped in her eyelashes. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

"Well, now you've made me cry. You aren't even my real father anyway, so why do I care about you? I should hate you. I do hate you. And I lied, I don't forgive you."

Bell crumpled up the paper into a ball and threw it against the opposite wall. The pencil dropped into the grass as she buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She wasn't sure how long she sat there crying. When she ran out of tears, she whimpered and gasped to let her feelings out. Soutine might already be dead and she had nothing to go back to. Perhaps she was all alone from now on. Even if she made it to Solancee, she might just learn of Soutine's death, and what then? Go back to Terre Pur, to the cobblers shop, which she never wanted to own in the first place? Stay in Harenae for the rest of her life and make a living mending shoes?