As Ishmael walked with Michael and Phoebe out of Wright Hall, he swam in loss. When Papa had gone, the loss had seemed like a hole, an empty well. But with Luc, the loss felt large, like it overflowed from his very center and threatened to flood the whole Hall of Hue, the entire Commons, every single last posticum. Luc was gone, and though Ishmael had wanted Luc to return home, he never wanted it to be like this. He could only hope that some good could come of this. Perhaps Luc might provide some help to Mam. Perhaps he would see some remnant of Ishmael’s color left in the barn. Perhaps he would make color again with the glass pane. Perhaps Luc could find contentment, if not happiness.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Phoebe said. “I don’t understand why he used me to sabotage your light, though.”
“Maybe his anger made him want to destroy something,” Michael said. “I saw firsthand what he did to the Cairns. Maybe that just wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t think any of us can understand what Luc thought at the time,” Ishmael said. “I don’t think we’ll ever find out now, either.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Phoebe said. After a few moments, she said, “When someone from the Hall of Sound leaves, we sing a special melody—an elegy—for that person. I will sing one as I work today. Maybe it’ll help.”
Ishmael nodded, grateful for her kindness. “I can’t go back yet. Will you tell the others?”
Phoebe touched Ishmael’s arm, then followed Michael to the posticum.
Ishmael needed the solitude of the Cairns. He still wasn’t used to the sight of it, defaced and messy. The elegant towers of rock were mostly gone, and the land was littered with the remains of dozens of them. He walked through the hillside picking his way around the demolished cairns. Luc really had ruined everything—their color, the posticum, the cairns. Worst of all, though, was the ruin of Ishmael’s trust.
Ishmael pushed thoughts of Luc away and turned around to see how far he had come. The hillside rose up before him, and the alley to the Hall of Manufactory lay far in the distance.
This would do.
He found the largest stone he could move, and rolled it end over end to an even bigger stone. Using another stone as a wedge, he lifted it up onto the base stone. He sat down nearby to catch his breath, trying to think what else he could do to save the color in the posticum. He was afraid it was hopeless. He had done all that he could.
His mind wandered to Head Master’s words. What good had he done? As he thought about his actions of the past weeks, he realized that his only fault was that he cared too much. He cared too much about his family, which led him to seek out Luc. He cared too much about Luc, which led him to choose the wrong bag. He cared too much about the Jubilee posticum, which led him to want to make it better. He cared too much for color. He cared too much about everything. The thoughts moved through his mind, one metamorphosing into another. Caring too much had turned into too much care. Too many cares and a whole lot of uncertainty about what he should do.
Had he really done all he could?
He thought of Michael’s plan for the posticum and how he had wanted to collaborate.
Then he thought of how Thaddeus used the wind to move the color, and how Michael built the device to condense light, then built another device to move the color. He thought of how Phoebe sang color onto so many trees. How they all had helped. That was what Michael had wanted to do, wasn’t it? He wanted all of the artisans to work together. Was that possible?
Could the other Hall artisans help—in ways that Ishmael couldn’t even begin to understand? Shape? Scent? Gustation?
The thought of asking Dora for help made him wince. He hadn’t meant to be unkind when he said she wouldn’t understand—he had merely been frustrated by the situation he found himself in—but it was clear she had left their workroom on the verge of tears. Now the tables were turned, and he was the one who didn’t understand. He wasn’t sure how Dora could help, but perhaps she would have something to add to the process.
He wasn’t sure how any of the other artisans could help, but this—all of this—was bigger than he was, far bigger than his capacity to think or do or understand. He needed to ask them all for help.
As he looked out over the hillside, a ray of light streamed down on a single tuft of green.
Feeling more at peace than he had in a long time, he left the Cairns with only the merest suggestion of a plan in his mind. Ask for help, and expect help to come.
Since Thaddeus had already helped once, Ishmael went to see him first.
“Most of my work is finished or on hold,” Thaddeus said. “I’d be glad to help.”
Together, they went to the Hall of Shape.
Dora stood at the entrance, blocking the door. “Yes?” she said. Her mouth formed a straight line. Line after line after line, she could sense her face breaking into linear shapes: straight eyebrows, flat eyes, a perpendicular nose, a mouth like a trench. She still felt slighted from being boxed up the day before yesterday by Ishmael. Then she saw Thaddeus, and the lines of her face softened.
“I thought that you might be able to help us,” Ishmael said.
“Me?” Dora nearly squeaked in surprise. Her eyebrows rose into a lovely curve, as if they were desperate to pull away from the unnatural line in which they had been stretched.
“Yes, you,” Ishmael said.
“Oh,” Dora said, her mouth in a circle, the shape she liked best. She looked at him, at his young neck and his young face and remembered how she had thought they could be allies, just out of sheer goodness. She realized they still could.
If she let them.
Sheer goodness.
The lines she carried on her face curved, bending upward and around. “Of course,” she said, and with those two words she became allied to the Hall of Hue.
Ishmael explained the situation to her: the trees, the time, the contraption that Michael had made, the phenomenon of Phoebe’s song, the past help and the hope of future help from Motion. “I thought that since some of the other Halls have been involved, that you, too, might have something to contribute,” he finished.
A bubble of joy rose in Dora, a complete circle. It grew until it enclosed all three of them. She was asked to help. She was asked to help the Hall of Hue.
“I find that the answer to most problems is that you need more circles and fewer lines,” she said.
“More circles?”
Dora laughed, a high, round sound. “Yes. And though I could say that it’s complicated and you wouldn’t understand, I won’t.”
Ishmael flushed.
Dora linked arms with Ishmael and Thaddeus, and Ishmael led them toward the Hall of Gustation. “Another stop.”
Thaddeus blew a wind that preceded them, sneaking through the cracks in search of Gabriel. It found him in the garden, bent over a row of fledgling plants, and swirled around him, head to toe.
Gabriel had never been called quite this way, but the flush of heat that the wind ignited in the sweetness at the top of his head to the shiver it left behind at the bitter soles of his feet told him he was needed. He met the others as they came. “You wished to see me?”
Ishmael smiled, a deluge of gratitude and friendship and hope washing over him. “We need your help.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Now for Aaron,” Ishmael said.
When Ishmael found Aaron and explained the situation to him, the Sound artisan said, “Phoebe did what?” and then he gladly came along to lend his voice to hers, forging more connections between the Hall of Sound and the Hall of Hue.
Keturah rounded the corner of the Hall of Scent and smiled when she saw the artisans gathered. “I expect you’ll want me, too?”
As they walked the short distance to the posticum, Ishmael told them about the help from Michael and Phoebe.
When he finished, Dora nodded. “Too much line and not enough circle.”
Bemused, Thaddeus turned to her. “But you haven’t even seen the process.”
“It doesn’t matter. Like I said, when there’s a problem, the solution is usually in the balance between line and circle. It’s easy to think that the line is the answer to all questions. It’s direct. It’s uncomplicated. It’s distinct. But the line is flat. The line is simple. The line is at its best when it works as a foundation, not as a single entity. Most things need a circle to be complete.”
“But what can we do? I don’t see how this will help us color the trees,” Ishmael said.
“I would guess that the color is being spread in a line when it should be spread in a circle.”
Thaddeus’s eyes lit up. Even her mind had a rolling grace. “I think I understand. If the color were spread in a circle, it would have a farther reach and the work would go faster.”
Gabriel knew that color was not flavor, but what if it acted the same way? What if it overlapped his elevation map? “Maybe you need to aim the color higher to find the sweetness.”
“The higher the projection, the greater the dispersion,” Thaddeus said, almost to himself.
Aaron’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means if we can send the color up higher, it will come down on a larger area.”
Aaron pictured waves of sound stretching out, connecting. If he connected his voice to Phoebe’s, how much farther could the color go? “I need to find Phoebe,” he said.
Keturah, for her part, wasn’t sure how she could help, but she carried with her a vial of the scent she had created for this posticum: the scent of possibility. She uncorked it and let it waft over the group.
Ishmael was the first to smell it, and it bolstered his confidence. “Let’s find the others.” He paused, observing each of them. He had never felt so loved, so much a part of something. The large blueness of the sky beckoned, and he wished Hannah were there to feel a part of this, too. “Thank you—all of you.”
Thaddeus and the other artisans nodded and waved off his gratitude. A spray of green was clearly visible in the distance. “They must be this way.” Ishmael pointed. The artisans moved through the trees toward Michael and Thomas, discussing the shape of the nozzle, the boost from the wind, the connection of the patterns, and the height of the launch.
When they reached Michael, he listened to their plans and his eyes lit up at the joy of cooperating with all the Halls. He got to work immediately adjusting his machine.
Phoebe went off to sing with Aaron, and as Ishmael watched them, he knew she sensed the glory of the colors around her. He could see how Aaron felt the motion cradling his sound.
Ishmael watched Gabriel as he melded flavor with color next to Keturah, and he saw recognition on Gabriel’s face—the recognition that taste and scent were part of one great whole.
Beyond them, Thaddeus released a gentle breeze that swirled Dora’s straight lines into curves, and she laughed chasing after them.
There was joy in this place, even if Ishmael couldn’t quite reach it from the chasm of loss he was in. He knew he would eventually. For now, there were trees. Many, many trees—each one an opportunity to proclaim the glory of color. He grabbed the condensed light from Michael and headed out of the reach of Phoebe’s song and far from the range of Michael’s second machine. Though he hadn’t intended on using the condensed light again, the need for color surpassed the need for pure light. The trees might not be as intensely colored, but at least they would be colored.
When he found himself in the midst of a grove of pallid trees, he set down the machine, ready to fill the chasm of loss with work.