A few shall perceive the signs, but even they will know doubt.
-Genesifin
Colette’s feet plodded forward. She permitted her weary body little rest, eventually even abandoning attempts to cleanse the unending crimson seeping through her layers. Her only respite was the pause to position the infant to nurse and the sorry attempt to keep the babe clean and dry. She feared that if she halted long, she would not be capable of beginning again.
Her mind was in disorder from the blue world of ice, and as if seeking solace, it retreated back to the last memories leading up to her solitary trek. She played them over and over—ever with a bizarre clarity—but despite the relentless churning, she failed to perceive their full significance. And so Pearl’s face hovered before her with a mocking vividness.
She’s never coming back, Colette thought morosely.
“There’s greater woe here than that fact,” Colette scolded herself softly with a puff of breath. She hugged her sleeping bundle and dipped her cracking lips to kiss the layers of blue fabric. “Greater than me, greater than Mari, greater than Bren.” Without energy to argue, she merely dragged her body forward.
It was but a moment before the monotony of the perideta had coaxed the memory of the frawnite’s face forward again. She did not have the spirit to even grant it a sigh.
“Is Bren all right?” Colette asked Pearl. The two had barely set out, and warmth still lingered upon her skin.
“He destroyed it—the malitas.”
Colette’s eyes flashed; Pearl had not answered her question. “How?”
“Heart Render.”
“What’s making your wings twitch?”
Pearl smiled sheepishly. “I may be dead, but my gestures are as part of me as ever… There were some complications with the deed.”
Colette nearly throttled the frawnite for answers, but she forced herself to wait. The alate woman still did not continue, so she gritted her teeth and asked with shaking control, “What complications?”
“The spirit entered Selet.”
The fury in her soul deflated as sudden comprehension flooded her. “Bren’s connections,” Colette said softly.
The way he could communicate with the land, the unity of stride and soil, the respect and relationship between terrisdan and man—the once intriguing gift now repulsed her. If she could have, she would have sliced through his terrisdan ties with Heart Render itself.
“Did he die?” the lunitata asked hollowly.
Pearl’s owl eyes penetrated her own. “Not before I left. Arman has him now.”
“Then—”
“He slew the spirit in the terrisdan. The blade sliced into the land.”
Colette bit her lip, pondering the many implications. “But if it had entered Selet, wasn’t Selet already dead? Why would it kill Bren to destroy it?”
The frawnite pressed her hands together in an unintelligible gesture. “Perhaps it’s just shock, then.”
Colette heard the unspoken; whatever Pearl knew, she believed Brenol to be in danger. She took a deep breath and shook her head. She would choose hope. “Arman will help him,” she said confidently.
Pearl strode on wordlessly.
“He always does,” Colette added, jutting out her chin in irritation and defiance.
Somewhere within, the lunitata felt a flicker, as though her soul were attesting to the statement. Yes, she would choose hope. She nodded to herself.
Silence wrapped them for a time.
Colette’s stomach suddenly wrenched as a new thought emerged. “What does this mean for Massada?”
Pearl did not even hesitate to answer. “You know yourself that the terrisdans are more connected to each other than it would appear.”
Do I? she asked herself. She felt a chill circling her insides. “What’re you saying?”
Pearl turned and gripped Colette’s arms with her small hands. It was a tight hold—her arms would still carry black bruising nearly a septspan later. Her voice was firm and terrible. “Massada’s more dead than alive. It was failing before. The icing shows as much. But now…? Now it will unravel faster than a lifing day ribbon.”
The image of children dancing around the teralic sprang before Colette’s mind. The colors dipped and bowed as the ribbons rippled from the pole in a splash of movement. Young faces flushed in laughter as they tumbled to the ground in song.
“How long?” Colette asked.
“The lands—”
“How long?” she insisted.
Pearl sighed, her chest sinking. “An orbit? Two? Possibly more if the damage isn’t as great as I fear.”
Colette’s feet ceased to move under her. “We’re all doomed, then. There’s no hope.” The babe within squirmed, but nothing could undo the stinging reality.
“Not entirely,” Pearl replied. “Massada is only a piece of this world, although the people of the terrisdans have spoken as though they were the entire. No, the green is just a piece—the heart. And the Tindel… Long ago they left Massada over a disagreement and eked out a life in the ice worlds. They’ve found a way to survive. They could teach the remnant of people living in Massada, if so compelled… Their help is the only way now.” Pearl’s eyes flashed with power. She repeated the words with an emphatic jut of her chin, “The only way.”
“And if they will not?” Colette asked, despite herself.
“They shall be alone on this world in but a short while.”
~
Colette blinked but knew she was not hallucinating. Her eyes were sound, and her mind was at least clear enough to be trusted. Four—no, five—figures wrapped in sapphire cloaks blended into the scenery before her with a strange blur, but yes, they were there.
The figures appeared thick, yet she could see from the thin, almost gaunt, features that this was a result of apparel and not true physical form. Their faces—what parts were visible—peeked out from blue hoods, with skin the starkly white hue of a lily and covered in lines that twisted strangely in streaks like burns. Their mouths, foreheads, and necks remained covered, protected from the elements with a strip of cleverly secured blue fabric. Their eyes varied in color, although they too were faded and without luster. She guessed their locks—as was the case of their eyebrows—were as blanched as an article left in the sun for several seasons.
Instinctively, Colette wrapped her arms across her chest to protect the babe, although Mari was not visible. The gesture was met with inquisitive glances, and a single pair of pale brown eyes regarded her curiously. The facial coverings concealed any other emotion.
“You seek us?” The voice was masculine and low, rumbling along with the smoothness of a stream. It did not harbor aggression or contempt, yet it was a voice of power.
Colette nodded, wrestling through her memory to recall all that Pearl had spoken, yet no words would come. Her cheeks flushed red, and exhaustion fell upon her like a sack of stones. There was so much that needed to be said, but her lips would not comply.
“Help me,” she finally whispered, and the world turned black.
~
Colette woke, and her hands immediately clutched toward the sling, except it was not there. Foreign clothing hugged her body, and her babe was missing. Panic filled her.
She stood in a rush, and a small child sprang to life from the room’s corner. He was a white and lanky creature, likely around ten orbits old, with a bed of ashy blond curls sitting atop his heart-shaped face. He regarded her with eyes that were a light gray, like that of dawn’s mist before it meets the breeze. He was the palest person Colette had ever beheld.
Colette swallowed, surging with the power of adrenaline rushing through every muscle. She felt she could climb up walls and hang from the ceiling if it meant finding Mari again.
“You’re awake,” he said. “I’m to tell you the nanias have your baby. She’ll be back.” His voice was still a boyish soprano, and he spoke with the tone of issuing out a list. He beamed in pride, but his face was still no pinker than cream.
“I want her now.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but something in her eyes startled his resolve, and he closed it cautiously. He slid from the room without turning his back to her, his face locked and serious.
A scream sang silently inside her, throttling her ability to think. Desperation strained every muscle, and her eyes were alert and wild. She swung her head around in a frenzy, hoping to gain her bearings. There were no windows, and the rich scent of earth clung to the air, yet without feeling stifling. The ground underfoot was a smooth red-brown akin to dried clay, and the ceiling above was low and flowed roundly with the same material. The room was small and lit by lanterns in sconces. The lone exit was an arched doorway that reached the height of her shoulders. Only a child could pass under without requiring a duck of the head.
Trapped.
Colette forced her excited breathing to slow. She consciously drew her attention to the freshness of the air, however odd, and the kindness of the urchin who had bounded off to find assistance.
No. This is different, she intoned. Different than Jerem. Yet even in the thought, she keenly felt the futility of convincing herself she was safe from peril.
Her belongings lay piecemeal upon the floor, rifled through. She did not have to look twice to see what was missing: Heart Render. A cold dread crept over her. She had been entrusted with it. It was her treaty, or at least her starting point of conversation. She had not been strong enough to make it through the ice desert on her own, and now it was missing.
My Mari is missing.
Colette’s fingers quivered, and she pressed them against her body as if this futile effort would rectify things. The material meeting her palms was soft and warm and served as an awakening to the care received. She was clean, dry, and no longer rank with humanness. Despite her histrionics, it was unlikely she was encountering her end when they had taken pains to tend to and dress her so well.
Be calm. Be calm. They are helping. They have rescued me, left a child to ensure I wasn’t scared…
Colette ran her hands up to her face and winced at the sensation. Her face was no longer smooth. Sharp, worn creases teased across her features in rough lines like ropes.
What’s happened to me? What?
After a moment, several women entered the small room, dipping their frames as they passed through the arch. They were all strikingly pale, with hair as white and faded as the aged.
Colette had eyes for only one: a short slip of a woman with a square jaw and almond eyes carrying a slumbering babe. She did not speak but merely passed the infant securely to Colette and waited.
Colette cradled Mari with hungry arms, nearly weeping as the child’s fragrance met her nostrils. She fought the impulse to back away from the others with a snarl, although her eyes roved upon them with a savage and uncontrollable maternal flash.
Their faces unsettled her. She had been too focused upon Mari to initially notice, but their features were as gnarled and weathered as ancient trees. The skin flowed up in lines like moving current, and while each was unique in design, a harsh swirl surrounding the eyes was strangely characteristic in them all. Colette repressed a gasp and hugged her hand tightly around Mari. It was all she could manage to not cup her own face and wonder if she were now the same.
Careful, Colette, an interior voice said. What happens now is not just about you or Mari. This is about Massada. Remember your cartess.
While the voice reminded her irritatingly of Arman, she could not deny its wisdom. She inhaled with purpose and thought of Brenol, of Mari. She clutched at the chilling words of Pearl regarding the failing of the terrisdans. And breathed again.
The lunitata, now steadied as much as the moment would allow, bobbed her head briefly in greeting. When she raised it, a faint smile painted her features, and she spoke gently, “Thank you for bringing her back to me. I apologize for my surprise at finding her absent. It’s the first time we’ve been apart.” She marveled at the calm in her voice, for her hands itched to claw the walls and dig her way to the sky.
Two of the clanswomen eased their spines back into the peace that Colette had provided, granting understanding nods for the first-time mother. They were adults but still youthful—how young Colette could not begin to guess—and regarded her curiously. The third, a middle-aged creature with a haggard face, perceived Colette’s effort and wordlessly contemplated the foreigner with mingled regard and suspicion.
“I’m Colette. I’m of the terrisdan Veronia.” Her voice held strong, and she found her interior purpose strengthened. She dipped her head slightly in respect and watched with hawk-like eyes to pick up any social cues. She discerned none. The response of silence reverberated in the tiny space, but there was no room to cower. Too much was at stake.
“I came to return Heart Render.”
“It has been secured,” the older woman replied without inflection.
Colette sighed in relief at the words—the sword is safe—and turned her attention to the woman. The serious face was veiled in indifference, yet the pale gray eyes were hard and penetrating. The clanswoman could have been hundreds of orbits old for all the potency that reigned there.
“Thank you for guarding it for these many orbits,” Colette added.
The women moved in synchronization, each placing fingertips upon contorted cheeks with somber expressions. Then the hands dropped to their sides, and again three pairs of eyes regarded her silently.
Colette feared angst was plain upon her features, but there was little she could do. “Please thank the group on the desert for helping me… I…I would have died without their—your—help. Mari, too.”
The fingertips raised again, but this time, as they fell, the elder spoke, “Why do you really seek us? Arman could have returned the sword himself in time.”
Colette pricked her ears at his name, surprised they knew him. Her ignorance of the situation was much too vast. Enough social games. I’ll fail if I continue this charade.
“I was sent to ask the help of your people. Massada is failing.” As soon as the truth left her lips, a peace enveloped her. This was the territory she knew: honesty, bluntness. The coquetry between peoples had always struck her as an awkward dance, even as a Veronian princess.
The three exchanged glances, with the eldest sliding her pale gray eyes to meet the others’ with purpose. She followed by clicking a sharp rhythm-message with the tip of her tongue upon the front roof of her mouth. The others did not reply, but the message was evidently received.
The older one spoke, “We will bring you to eat. Then you shall talk with the others.”
The thought of food nearly made Colette cry. Her stomach had been gnawing with an unendurable harshness, and it was no wonder; she could not recall with certainty the last time food had passed her lips. The brutal cold had ripped out most other concerns, and the lifing of Mari had depleted any sustenance already in her body. Her eyes must have attested to this fact, for the youngest of the women motioned her to follow and set off at a brisk pace.
Colette secured Mari in the sling before shuffling after weakly. She trailed the slender figure through brick-brown tunnels as smooth and earthy as the room from which she had just emerged. It was dizzying to wind through the maze, and the lunitata had to will each foot forward in a feverish haze.
The walk could not have been longer than four minutes, but Colette was faint before the end. Her guide did not ask, or even note anything aloud, but gently circled back and ushered in the lunitata with a hand placed under her elbow. It steadied Colette enough that she was able to shuffle her feet forward in a sliding motion. Her head swam as the woman lowered her to a brushed metal table, and she sat obediently upon the sturdy, cool bench.
“I’ll have something brought to you quickly.” Her fingertips graced Colette’s forearm before she dashed from the room in a blur of fox-brown. The physical touch pressed emotion upon Colette’s already sensitive heart, and it required all the control she had to curb her tears. She lit her lips upon the slumbering babe and waited meekly for whatever fare was available in this faraway ice world.
A child of about twelve orbits with wide, light hazel eyes set a metallic dish before Colette. Her face was snow-white and as smooth as polished marble. Colette barely passed a nod of thanks as she hunched over the meal intently. The girl toed back a few strides and regarded the foreigner with interest, but a tension held her stringy figure taut and reined in her tongue.
Colette tore ravenously through the rations, tucking into a light blue fish in a creamy pale sauce and soaking the thin liquid up with a dense gray bread. Some pale blue vegetables slid down, bland and rubbery. The food was different—odd somehow—but her stomach cared little, and her mind refused to dissect the basic details, save that her portion disappeared much too quickly. The tea provided was the only element of the meal that boasted sapidity, and was startling in its bitterly robust flavor. The dark liquid seared as it slid down her throat. Before the faded otherness of the meal, it was like a sharp smack across each cheek, and heartily appreciated as such.
After setting down her cup, Colette became aware that the Tindellan urchin was not the only one who observed her. Across the hall, erect and as tall as a juile but girded with greater meat and stature, stood a woman wearing a red sash. The braided fabric was snug against her body and knotted at the hip, from which issued strands of fringe. The splash of scarlet was the first vibrant color Colette had witnessed among the clan, and it would have been shocking on any creature, but upon this woman it was paralyzing. She was powerful, and the color punched at the eyes with every turn.
The clanswoman strode the length of the simple hall, with ribbons flowing at her side. It was not far, and her long legs cut the distance swiftly. Colette was glad to have food in her gut; otherwise, she surely would have fainted.
The Tindellan was as white as cold milk except for a pinch of color around her eyes where her face had met sunlight. Her hair was like pale gold braided with white ash, and her skin was roped with the peculiar lines, though its pocks and crevices were deeper than any Colette had yet seen. She was thick, her cheeks puffed slightly from indulgence, but her density still boasted of muscle and strength. One only had to glance at her to know there was a lethal quality behind her pale blue eyes. She was wild and utterly unpredictable.
“I see you here, and the child too, but I don’t know if I believe all that’s whispered,” she said with a raspy contralto. “You’re but a babe yourself, and greener than the easy life I see in your soft features.”
Colette clenched down hard with her back molars and gripped the cool table with pink fingers. Mari slept on, content against her warm chest, and somehow the gentle breathing cooled the biting anger. Colette drew her mind back to her purpose and willfully relaxed her hold, thankful for the babe grounding her.
“You do little to hide your disgust for my people,” she said finally.
“Hmmmmm,” the clanswoman replied.
Colette inhaled deliberately, willing peace.
“You don’t deny it…” the woman said as her chin slid back in surprise. “You did then birth the child out in the peri? Out on the blue?”
Colette nodded, bending her face down reflexively to kiss the sleeping child. Mari stirred and opened her lush green eyes with interest, smacking her lips purposefully. Colette maneuvered the infant under the shirt. The snug material gave way to allow the babe to locate the breast, where she happily suckled out her own meal.
The child was concealed, but Colette raised her eyes to the woman, suddenly self-conscious. “I did not ask. May I feed the babe here?”
“Yes,” she replied flatly.
An additional cup was delivered and set beside Colette’s, and a small boy arrived with pitcher in hand to pour a steaming brew into both cups. Colette sighed, thankful. They drank in silence, with the older woman never turning her gaze from her.
“How did you survive the cold?” she asked. The clanswoman looked sheepish for a moment, as though she could not resist her curiosity.
“The cold?”
“You met a gertali out on the peri. They said you wore little and that the temperatures were steady. How did you birth in it?” Her washed out eyes stared interestedly.
Colette lifted a hand, palm up, gesturing ignorance. “I…” she paused, considering. “I don’t know. I merely knew I had to do it. I would not let my child die… And if she outlived me, it would be her death soon after. I just…refused to be beaten.” Colette sipped the pungent tea and felt her limbs tingle in its flowing heat.
The woman did not raise her own glass but sat in stillness, chewing Colette’s words. Her face was stoic, yet her eyes betrayed a new esteem. “There are few who’d even attempt such a task, let alone survive it,” she finally said. Her voice was so hushed it could have been intended only for herself.
Colette thought back to the biting cold. Every breadth of her had screamed in pain, but there had always been something: a will for life. She had driven her body as her temperature fell, spurring herself on with words, “Work harder. Make more heat. You will not give up. Keep working.” And then the hours and hours of travel after the exertion of birth…soaked in milk and urine and blood… It was unthinkable, but love for Mari had pushed her past all limits.
“May I ask you?” Colette asked after settling Mari back into her sling. “Where are we?”
“Under the ice crust. The land has not frozen through yet, so the soil can still sustain us.”
Yet. The word sent shivers along her spine.
Regardless, Colette peered around her with a new appreciation. Somehow, these clans survived out here. They made a way. “Your people dug these tunnels?”
The woman nodded, pleased by Colette’s evident awe. The movement revealed long lines teasing their way down her pale neck. “Long ago. But they’ve been improved every orbit. Now we coat them with clay deep from the earth. It helps to maintain heat in the passages.”
“Is…is the peri the reason my face is scored now?” Colette asked hesitantly.
The woman nodded nonchalantly. “Yours are barely there. You have less than most on their first encounter.” She clicked her tongue softly. “It’s a sign of strength to carry the wind’s kiss.”
Wind’s kiss. Colette’s soft fingertips felt their way across her previously clean face. “But Mari is still smooth,” she said finally.
“She was protected from much in your coats, but children are more resilient anyway,” the clanswoman replied. “Most do not show the effects of the desert until they are past ten.”
Children. Yes, even children live out in this blue abyss.
“How many people are here?”
“Four hundred and forty three reside in this bethaida.”
“This?”
She nodded. “You’re in one of the larger clans. Iret.”
“But how do you eat with no resources?” Colette asked, wonderingly. “Where’d my meal come from?” The ice land is far too harsh to allow them to survive on little food, she mused.
The clanswoman’s white face flinched slightly—a light puckering of the lips with a narrowing of the eyebrows—which gave her robust and already somber expression the flavor of a dissonant school child. “You assume much, Massadan.”
The term held more disdain than Colette would have preferred, and the esteem she had beheld in the light-lake eyes dissipated into nothing. Colette’s face drooped in desperation; she was unfit for this task of diplomacy between peoples.
“Teach me,” she appealed with a whisper. “Please.”
The sudden plea straightened the woman’s expression away. Either the clansmen were unaccustomed to acknowledging weakness, or they were reluctant to believe the greenlanders could ever abandon their arrogances.
A tiny sigh left the woman’s full lips, and the pale blue eyes lifted to lock into Colette’s. The gaze held for a moment, and Colette saw more than she had expected. Here was a woman of strength, full of an uncompromising and prideful disdain toward inadequacies and boldness…yet there was a hint of something more. Yes, hidden, but perceptible now before Colette’s stare lay a vulnerability of sorts. Colette met it with a sense of relief.
In a manner of ritual, the clanswoman dipped a middle finger into her cup, licked the drop from her finger, and pushed the cup away. Colette looked on without understanding.
“I will show you,” the woman said, slowly.
She rose, and her vast body flowed in a swiftness and ease. Colette stood and followed, but the Tindellan abruptly pivoted to face the lunitata. Her face was fierce and defiant, yet a piece of mercy was braided into the hardness.
“I am Harta,” she said.
A sigh of relief escaped the lunitata’s lips. “Colette,” she replied. “And this is Mari.” Colette unwrapped her sling enough for the small, shining head to be visible, before tenderly securing the folds and checking the soundness of the knots.
Harta hesitated for a moment, but then held up her hand, thick fingers extended as if plucking an imaginary fruit. Colette stared stupidly and finally raised her own hand in unsure mimicry. The clanswoman separated the distance between the two with a simple step and joined their fingertips together for a brief touch.
“Here, the Tindel show honor and union by marking. Our fingers meet, and we have shared heat—and in a place most vulnerable to cold.” Her lips twitched out into a pucker.
Colette nodded, drawing back her hand as the clanswoman did. She sensed that the ritual carried more weight than she could perceive, as though she had just been privy to an intimacy only granted between lovers. Colette had no time to fully absorb the moment, for Harta swept the room with her broad, long-limbed body. The lunitata scampered after.
The tunnels linked and wound in a monochrome maze, but the food within Colette’s gut helped to steel her from their dizzying effect. She was able to gather bits of images as they swished by rooms and corridors. They were only glances—a father stooping to a seated babe, a group of women washing before a large basin, a man walking with scroll in arm, an older child dashing by with anxious face and hands full of cups and tea, toddlers laughing on the floor with milky white faces—but they served her well; the people here were human. They were real and like any other creature in this world.
Surely they can see we’re the same? Surely they will help us?
Her heart burned in a silent prayer for help.
Finally, the soft padding of the moccasin-shod feet slowed before her, and Harta gave a half-turn and spoke with a low voice, “Colette, there are few from your side who’ve seen this. Do not lead me to regret my choice.”
Harta pushed a heavy black tapestry aside from an entryway and held it open with effort. A soft heat flowed from the blind corridor, and a faint humidity caressed her cheek. Colette sighed involuntarily. It was as if summer had dipped down in a kiss and her eyes would open to light, far away from these holes in the earth. Colette passed through the doorway, brushing the portiere with her hand as she passed. It was coarse, at least the width of a finger in depth, dense, and secured the passage from any lantern light that burned outside while it insulated the heat of the chamber. As Harta released the fabric, it swooped down with a heavy whomp, and the three were left blind.
The clanswoman swept past Colette without a word and grunted in effort as she stretched another portiere back to allow passage. “Go through,” she urged hastily.
Colette groped forward with hands as eyes, blinking for some fraction of light. There was none.
They passed through two more doorways like this, and the warmth swelled to that of a mild summer day. Harta spoke through the darkness. “We now enter into the gardens. Your eyes might find it difficult to adjust to the spherisol. It takes the growers much time to acclimate, and they’re raised to their labors from childhood. It is…upending.” Her voice was laced with a smug delight, as though yet again the Tindel would illustrate their superiority to the greenlanders.
Harta tugged back the last heavy cloth and paused for Colette to pass. The warmth was encompassing and as pressing as a steam bath. It was not unpleasant but could become so if Colette remained for any great length of time dressed as she was. A strange blue light shimmered out from the room, and the lunitata bent her head curiously toward it before gracefully ducking past the entryway.
The space itself was vast, easily one hundred strides forward and across, and extended out more like a square field than a cave, with the ceilings rising about thirty gartere in the air. The brick-brown clay, now effulgent as sandstone in the queer light, clothed both ceilings and walls—at least of what she saw of them.
In what seemed to be the center rested an enormous metallic sphere very similar to the one she had encountered on the barren blue, except this one emanated light. It shone with a strange aqua glow that caused her eyes to cower back, but only for a time. She adjusted after a few moments and walked the rows of pale blue crops with feet that barely seemed to know they were moving. It was all so fascinating. And surreal.
How is this accomplished?
The soil beneath her was black and soft, like loam in the deep forest. Colette felt overcome by an urge to strip off her shoes and wiggle her toes in the rich clots but abandoned the impulse with a frown. She would never elicit respect from this hard people if she danced around in the dirt like a school girl.
The plants rubbed against her and Mari as she pushed past. All were blue and—compared to the thriving life of Massada—shriveled, sickly things. She stretched her hands out, allowing the vegetation to glide across her fingers. It all had the same strange rubbery texture as the vegetables she had recently consumed. Rows and rows and rows. She did not recognize any of them; the worlds of ice and green seemed more different with every glance of the eye.
Yet despite her disquiet, the intrigue of the metallic sun drew her. Colette maneuvered around the various plants and crops until she stood within arm’s reach of the sphere. Heat surged forth from it with power and regularity, though it remained silent as a shadow. The ball was secured by a dais identical to that of the one on the ice crust, but instead of seeing her strange reflection in its surface, she felt her eyes fighting against the eerie glow. To stare at it was dissimilar to staring at the sun, but it still burned—as if the moons could pain the eyes in their luminescence.
“You might not want to do that,” Harta said softly.
Colette retracted her hand that had been nearing the sphere. She had not even intended to touch it, but apparently her fingers desired otherwise. She stepped back with rouged cheeks and dipped her head in apology. “What is it?” she finally asked.
“A spherisol. One of several hundred we have.”
Colette’s eyes widened in surprise. “You must have matroles and matroles of gardens.”
The woman flicked her head in a brief nod. “Yes, but they aren’t all used for gardens. The spherisol on the peri are designed to collect light and energy. This one emits it. It is like a miniature sun, or rather a reflection or capture of it.”
“Why blue light, though?”
Harta stiffened. “It admits the reflection of the peri too. It absorbs all energy it finds, whether good or bad.”
Something about the statement alerted Colette, but the flash of irritation she witnessed upon Harta’s face cooled her questioning; it seemed momentarily unwise to probe.
“And the fish?”
A thick finger indicated a dark tapestry upon a glittering wall. “There are several ponds where we harvest them.”
Colette spun the process around in her mind, pondering the spheres passing the seasons, taking in heat and light above ground, then pouring it out in the secret world beneath the crust. “How do you bring the sun power from the spherisols above to the ones below?”
“Each is opened twice a season, and the pods are removed and switched.”
“And the heat? Is that a natural result that comes with the spheres?”
Harta laughed. Her face gentled slightly, and the fierceness took on a look of maturity instead of perilous fury. “You may be soft, but you certainly aren’t dimwitted.” She held out a hand to indicate the spherisol. “The first designs didn’t heat. The Tindel created separate ones that conducted heat, and for a long time there were two in every garden: light and heat. The constructions have evolved with each season, and we are continually seeking to develop new energy techniques. We still use the heat globes—sphericali—for the clans. Each colony usually has three or four, although the largest clan has nine.”
Colette gazed around at the variety of life, appreciating the orbits of work and sacrifice that had made it possible. It was incredible. Life had found a path. The ice had not stopped them. “I’m impressed,” she said finally.
Harta stood tall at the statement. She again lifted her hand with fingers extended. Colette responded; their finger pads kissed and eyes locked.
“You surprise me, Colette of the green,” Harta said, allowing her fingers to fall.
Colette remained silent, staring out into the pale blue field. It was not the upper world of sun and flower and breeze, but maybe it did not need to be. Perhaps this was enough…
Her lips parted, and she inhaled a soft breath, finding somewhere within a new acceptance of the awful downfall of Massada. Perhaps the icing would not be the end. Perhaps she could change. Perhaps this people would help.
Perhaps.