The splintered light, p.24
The Splintered Light, page 24
It was, at first, simply an irritation. Grooves from the wheels showed in the soft, dark foundation, so at least he could follow it, but tracking it down wasted time, and time was something they just didn’t have.
He pursued the wheel ruts for a short distance before they took an odd turn. Instead of going toward the unfinished trees, they turned toward a section Ishmael knew had already been finished. What’s more, everyone else knew it had been finished, too.
It was then that he heard the voices, and one of them knocked him sideways.
Luc.
“Give it to me,” he said.
“No!” Thomas said.
Then came Matthew’s voice, soothing and calm. “Let’s talk about this before we do anything rash.”
Luc would never allow them to finish the work of coloring here—not if it meant a full spectrum of color. Ishmael berated himself for not realizing this sooner. He took off running, suddenly fearful for his friends and for the posticum.
Ishmael burst through the trees into a clearing. Luc stood by the cart, with one hand outstretched. Thomas held Michael’s machine behind his back. Matthew stood to the side, his feet planted in a firm stance. Gabriel, arms crossed, stood next to Thomas.
In the split second after Ishmael registered what was happening, Luc opened a vial of orange and threw it at Thomas. He recoiled, but not fast enough. The color caught Thomas full in the face. Orange covered every speck of his skin. He tried to wipe it out of his eyes, but there was too much and the orange just transferred to his hands.
Ishmael ran to Thomas’s side, using his tunic to wipe the orange from Thomas’s face, but the color had already soaked into his hair, his skin, his mouth, and his nose.
Gabriel stood, his bitter feet rooted at Thomas’s side. “Thomas wouldn’t give Luc the machine.”
“No, and I’m still waiting for it,” Luc said. “So glad you could join us, little brother.”
Ishmael studied Luc, trying to find any evidence of the older brother he had once been. The brother who had helped Jerusha untangle her yarn, patiently weaving the end over and under and through the mess. The brother who had seized Mam’s hand as she stumbled on a stone. The brother who had crept out of bed to show Ishmael the night sky and tell him stories about the stars. The brother who had taught him color. He saw no evidence of that person, and the loss overcame his anger.
“Why are you here?” Ishmael finally asked. “Why didn’t you go home?”
“My posticum was supposed to be my home. Now this is my home. If you are not happy with how things have turned out, you have only yourself to blame, little brother.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Why? Don’t you want to be associated with me?” He laughed. “Have I fallen in your estimation? No longer the hero?”
Truer words were never spoken. “No hero of mine would do something like this.”
“You ruined my posticum, so I wanted revenge. But then that Sound novice missed the stores of green almost entirely and botched everything else. The little disaster forced Color Master to choose your entry for the posticum instead.” Luc practically spit the words out.
Ishmael met Luc’s eyes. They were hard as glass, and again he was struck by how different Luc was now from the person he had known back home.
“You didn’t used to be like this,” Ishmael whispered.
Luc reached into his pocket and pulled out his prism. He held it to his face and studied its flat surfaces. “No? Perhaps not. But you didn’t used to be like this, either.”
Ishmael touched the prism in his pocket, unsure of Luc’s next move. “Like what?”
Luc turned away, facing the trees behind him. “So self-righteous.”
“There’s a difference between being self-righteous and being right.”
Luc whipped around, pointing his prism at Ishmael’s face. He flinched. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Perhaps not,” Ishmael said, “but I do know the spectrum. I know the rules of color. I know how color works. I know the joy that color brings.”
Luc laughed, then rubbed his hand over the tree trunk he leaned against. “You’re very sincere, but you’re wrong. What brings me joy is knowing that I am the best color keeper. That’s why I made my posticum golden. Everywhere you looked, you would see me. My color, my world.”
“The mouth that eats pride at breakfast speaks tolerance at lunch. I think you forgot about lunch,” Thomas said.
Luc took two steps toward him.
Gabriel stood taller, blocking his way, even though Luc was much larger. “Leave him alone.”
“Now might not be the best time for proverbs, Thomas,” Matthew said.
“No, now would be the best time to hand over that machine of yours.” Luc stretched out his hand again. “I had hoped this world would have only one color—even if it wasn’t my color, at least it wouldn’t be yours. I underestimated you, little brother. But enough is enough. Hand over the machine.”
“No.” Ishmael’s thin shoulders shook under the full weight of responsibility for this posticum, for the color, for Thomas and all the other artisans who had helped him. He reached for the prism in his pocket.
“Ah, ah,” Luc clucked. “If you fling your prism about in anger, you never know what might happen.” He twirled his prism and caught a ray of light, which grew into a glorious spectrum.
Ishmael didn’t know what to do. Clearly Thomas was in pain, and he needed to get him to the infirmary. But he couldn’t leave Luc here. He couldn’t leave the color here. He couldn’t leave the posticum unfinished.
Luc laughed. “See? Even with something as simple as a spectrum, I’m the better color keeper, and you? You’ll always be the little brother.” He laughed again.
Matthew cleared his throat. “I think Ishmael just wants to do his work. I think he wants to stop fighting.”
“It’s too late for that,” Luc said, brandishing the spectrum. He spun it, twirling it so the colors flashed until yellow showed. It grew, forming a sphere, just like when Ishmael first saw Luc in his posticum, only this massive sphere of yellow dazzled in a way that the other never did.
Ishmael looked at Thomas, staring blindly, a look of pain on his face. Gabriel stood by him, his jaw locked, his hands clenched. For their sakes, he couldn’t give up. For Color Master’s sake, and Head Master’s sake. For Hannah, who had sacrificed so much. For Phoebe, who was a victim of Luc’s ambition. The ground underneath him, strong from Ethan’s work, bolstered his courage. He thought of all the Halls, and the apprentices who had worked so hard to make this posticum beautiful—Michael, Thaddeus, Dora, Gabriel, Aaron, Keturah. For their sake, he couldn’t give up. The edges of the prism cut into Ishmael’s hand.
Luc laughed again, the yellow globe resting on his prism. “This is my world now.”
Ishmael just noticed Michael, who stood off to the side. He was nearly twitching trying to signal something to Ishmael. He looked at him, then looked deliberately at the light condensing machine in Ishmael’s right hand, then looked up in the air, and his eyebrows rose.
Ishmael’s eyes widened. Of course! He wasn’t sure if this would work, but he was willing to try. He opened the hatch at the top of the machine to allow light in, and immediately began turning the crank.
“Oh, please,” Luc said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to …” But he stopped, because he had no idea what Ishmael was going to do.
Ishmael wiped the prism on the edge of his tunic.
“If you make a spectrum, it will be no different from mine. Light is light.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Some light is stronger, especially when it’s bolstered by the light from others.” Ishmael nodded at Michael and Gabriel, then slid the compartment open, and a flash of blinding light flew out. He lifted his prism to the sky, remembering Gabriel’s admonition to aim high. He caught the light, and he held still, allowing the light to burst forth into the most glorious spectrum of color imaginable, arcing into the sky. Streams of color shot upward, higher than the tops of the trees above them, with a brilliance that made his eyes ache. It dwarfed Luc’s sphere of yellow, which slunk away to join Ishmael’s spectrum.
Second law of color, of course. In the presence of the complete spectrum, a color will always take its place among like kind.
Ishmael held his arm steady. “It’s over, Luc. You need to return home.”
Luc lowered his head and charged, knocking Ishmael to the ground. The prism flew from his hand, landing with a loud crack behind him, shattering into pieces.
Gabriel cried out just before Ishmael’s head knocked against the root of a tree. He pointed up at the sky. “I see something!” he gasped. The spectrum arced gracefully over their heads.
Luc’s clenched fist had pulled back to punch Ishmael, but at Gabriel’s words, he turned around to see.
The spectrum was still there, glowing with luster over their heads, the colors distinct and beautiful.
Luc sat there, stupefied.
Ishmael himself was shocked. He had expected the spectrum to dissolve when his prism lost contact with the beam of light. But he hadn’t counted on the strength of the light.
What’s more, Gabriel and Michael saw it, too.
The spectrum remained high above their heads. The longer they watched it, the more impossible it seemed, and the more glorious it was as it blazed across the sky. Luc’s hope for a one-color posticum would never be realized. Ishmael’s hope for a reconciliation would never be realized, either.
The future seemed crystal clear at that moment. Ishmael pushed Luc away. “You’re not the master here. And we are no longer brothers.”
Luc looked hard at Ishmael, then shoved the cart of vials as he stalked past it through the trees deep into the heart of the posticum.
PART V
CLOSE
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”
CHAPTER
50
Gabriel, Michael, Matthew, Lilith, Jacob, and Rebekah met Ishmael outside of the infirmary, looking battle-scarred and weary. Gabriel’s face was streaked and mottled with orange. Even Lilith had lost her usual polish.
Phoebe dashed across the courtyard to join them, twisting the pitch pipe that she once more wore around her wrist. “If only I had been there! I could have kept the color away from you and Thomas.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. You were in a completely different section.”
“How is Thomas?” Phoebe asked.
Before Ishmael could answer, he saw another person hurrying toward them. “Is that …?”
The others turned around. Matthew squinted, then his eyes widened at the sight of the sleek figure dressed in white.
“Hannah!” Lilith cried out. They flew into a hug, joined by Ishmael and the other novices. Phoebe, Gabriel, and Michael hung back, not wanting to intrude, but Lilith pulled them into the circle.
“Color Master sent a message to the House of Light. I came as soon as I heard. How is Thomas?”
“Color Master thinks that the quantity of orange that got into his eyes overcame his color receptors, and they simply shut down,” Ishmael said.
Tears sprang to Lilith’s eyes, and her hand rose to her mouth. Hannah wrapped her arm around Lilith’s slight frame.
Phoebe patted their shoulders, but it gave little comfort to any of them.
Ishmael continued, “She’s hoping that, with enough time, all the color receptors in Thomas’s eyes will revive, but she’s uncertain about the orange receptors. They might have been permanently damaged.”
With visible effort, Lilith swallowed her emotions and stood taller, ready for action. “What are we going to do now?”
Ishmael suspected that his plans would not be received well. “We will not be returning to the posticum.”
“What?” The word flew out of Lilith’s mouth.
“It’s too dangerous,” Ishmael said. “Thomas—”
“Thomas is the reason we should do something!”
“But, Lilith,” Jacob broke in. “Nothing we do in the posticum would help him. Besides, Luc could do the same thing to any of us. How can we be color keepers if we can’t see the colors?”
“He’s right, Lil,” Hannah said. “If not for yourself, then for the sake of the Hall.”
Lilith flung her hands down in frustration. “How can you just give up like this? We can fight him. We’re ready now.”
“No. This is supposed to be a Jubilee celebration, not a battle.”
“How are we going to color the animals, then?”
“We’ll color them at the entrance and release them there.”
“But—”
“No.” Ishmael’s word was final.
Lilith turned away from them. Matthew put his arm around her. Rebekah joined them to offer what comfort she could.
Phoebe cleared her throat. “Can we at least be there at the entrance to help color the animals?”
“You can come if you want to, but I’m just going to make some rolls of color wrap. You don’t have to be there to sing.”
“I think if I sang even a single note, Sound Master would execute me.” She smiled wryly, but Ishmael knew that she was in deep trouble.
“Sing?” Hannah said, looking from one to the other.
“Oh, Hannah, you’ve missed a lot,” Ishmael said.
Her eyebrows crinkled, and she looked like she was about to cry. “I’m so sorry.”
“Did you see the blue before you left?”
Hannah shook her head.
“Then you must come, too.” Ishmael wished there was some way he could tell her that he was grateful for what she had done, and how he had missed her, and how sorry he was for what he said before she left, but he couldn’t find the words. Nothing sounded quite right. No words captured the importance of what he wanted to express. “How long will you stay?”
Hannah tried to smile through a frown. “I think I made a mistake.”
Lilith grabbed her arm. “Are you back for good?”
Hannah nodded, and Lilith and Rebekah squealed.
“So you’ll all help?” Ishmael asked. He looked specifically at Jacob, grateful that he had understood why Ishmael didn’t want to risk sending them into the posticum again.
They nodded.
“All right. I’ll let you know as soon as I get word from the Hall of Motion that the animals are ready.”
Lilith looked at him slyly. “Why don’t you let us prepare the color? I’d like to do this to take my mind off Thomas.”
“All right,” Ishmael said.
Hannah, Rebekah, and Lilith walked off, arm in arm. Ishmael watched them, glad that their spectrum was a little bit more whole.
As soon as Ishmael heard they had two days before the Hall of Motion would finish the animals, he went to see Ethan. He asked for one last thing.
Ethan agreed to the plan. “It’s a bit unusual,” he said, “but I’ll ask Michael to help.”
Ishmael knew Michael would be willing.
“Would it be all right if we tinker with the original prototype a bit? If we can adjust the size and scale of each piece, it might make it easier since we’re a bit rushed. In fact, maybe Dora wouldn’t mind if each apprentice built his or her own design off the general shape. Each piece could be individually formed. That way, we wouldn’t have to cast a true prototype, which would save us time.”
Ishmael nodded his head, envisioning it in his mind. “I think that will be fine.”
“The pieces won’t be permanent, though. You did know this, right?”
“Yes, but once something is in the posticum, its shadow is there forever, right?”
“That’s what I’ve been told.” Ethan checked his clipboard. “I’ll ask Thaddeus to release them late tonight.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Ethan.”
“Don’t mention it. We’re in this together, right?”
Ishmael smiled, the truest smile he had in days.
Next, he went to find Gabriel. Something had been bothering him. Ishmael found Gabriel in his Hall and without preamble said, “I want to know something. I guess the answer doesn’t really matter, but it’s something I’ve been wondering about. Did you really see the spectrum in the posticum sky?”
“I don’t know what I saw, but I saw something—and it was so perfectly beautiful that I wanted to hold on to it forever.”
“I wish you could,” Ishmael said.
Ishmael turned toward the Cairns. Since he had no other pressing work to do, he spent the morning cleaning up the scattered stones, sorting them into piles according to size. When he could do no more, he placed one stone on top of another, beginning a pile.
Memories flooded his mind—memories of home and color and family and friends and texture and pattern and line and circle. The flash of brightness and darkness as he rolled down Commons Hill with Luc. The smell of the sheep in the barn. The sound of the wind whipping the laundry on the clothesline. The taste of Mam’s porridge. The sight of the broken latch on the springhouse door. The shape of Simon’s toy blocks. The motion of the sheep grazing in the field. His green-stained boot as he walked to the Commons. All these things came together here. Scent, sound, gustation, manufactory, shape, motion. He had lived in absolute ignorance before, all these gifts only wisps of smoke, just out of his grasp.
He let the memories drain out until his mind lingered on one particular memory. It was a memory of Mam sharpening the blade shears before shearing season. She was so careful, so exact, that Ishmael had marveled at her skill. “I didn’t know you could sharpen the shears,” he had said.
“There are many things I can do that you don’t know about,” Mam had replied.
Ishmael had been so worried about Mam when he came here, but with this memory came the feeling that she was stronger than he realized. In that moment, he knew Mam would be fine on her own, just as he would be fine here—but perhaps he could visit sometime soon, just to make sure.
