The Color Xirish
by Emily McIntyre
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
RED (Unease)
Dex’s Heartmind dispenser is broken. For the third time today she puts the needle in her arm, but nothing comes out of the dispenser, and she is left colorless, shaking. She can feel the ache for it pulsing in her stomach: crimson / sangria / fire orange. It has been three days now.
Is she the only one missing her ration? She presses her finger on the pale switch to open the curtains and peers out the window to look at the street below for the first time since she was given the apartment. That was when she left the noisy shelter of her ChildScape pod, a memory now blurred.
Out the window, the city seems muted. Pastel of itself. Well, that only says that she doesn’t have enough HeartMind in her system to see true, not that everyone else is in crisis, too. The strange clamor in her mind increases when she looks out the window. She flinches and rubs her forehead, but it does not help.
With one last glance at the useless Heartmind apparatus that hangs from the center of her ceiling, Dex attaches her screen to her headgear and re-enters the city. Smells, soft-cotton hush, the push-pull of other humans. All of what she left when she got her apartment, it enfolds her. She forgets what it means to breathe as blush / blood-red / alizarin clutch her throat.
The city looks right to her inexperienced eye, all but the faded hues. The architectural lightplays still illuminate faces with their coruscating interweaving, the buildings still arc sparks from wall to window, the screens above everyone’s heads still flicker in complex designs showing what they feel to any observer.
She must be the only person in this world whose Heartmind dispenser is broken, and she is not doing well. The rumble intensifies in her mind. A rush of something she can’t name. She blinks, looks down, realizes her feet have not stopped moving and that she is far from her home and still among strangers. They will begin to notice her. They will see she is vermillion / eigengrau / rufous, and she is ashamed.
Something touches her hand. It is not another hand. It is actually something else; tentacles? A texture like bedsheets, all slip and give, and a color somewhere between electric violet and orchid. Her eyes track the length of it and notice small feathery extensions edged with the richest tint of black she has ever seen. Against the muted world lacking Heartmind, the colors sing. And then she reaches the tentacle’s beginning, which is some creature unlike herself, nearly twice as tall and half as narrow, an ethereal thing, all shades of violet and hazel eyes. From it comes a hush of scent, something new and fascinating to her senses.
Eyes catch eyes. Dex has two; the creature has three, all lashed in impossible shadings of lavender and charcoal.
A shoulder strikes Dex from the side, as if the person does not see her, and sends her spinning into the wall of a nearby building. The tentacle releases her, floating in her vision before falling down to the creature’s side. The colors of the building form spiraling arcs around her like a basket and light up her vision with electric shock until she pushes away and remembers her own shape again.
Seeking the creature with her eyes, she projects to her screen tangelo / apple green / light cyan. A question. But the creature has no screen and does not seem to read Dex’s. Instead, the thing in Dex’s mind which has held and horrified her now for three days builds, builds, builds and then breaks into something new. Dex. I am glad to know you now.
Is she dying? That would explain the insanity she feels, these words in her mind where none had ever come before. Perhaps going without Heartmind is killing her. Does anyone else feel what she feels? For that matter, does anyone else see this creature who called her name in her head?
Slick tears glaze her cheeks as she seeks the vision of the people who drift around her, their eyes flickering from screen to lightplay to the sky, which shows some landscape of another planet, all green things and blue sky and unknown animals with wings. No one seems to notice the creature, and she herself might as well be part of the wall for how much they observe her. The fear wells up again, familiar shades of self-loathing unique only to her.
She feels the tentacle on her wrist again; this time it tugs her into an alcove in the building. She does not resist. It is time for you to come with me, and I will tell you the truth, comes the thing in her mind again.
Without knowing why, or how, she responds in kind: What is happening to me? I need my Heartmind. Who are you?
The creature knocks against a door and opens it. Shoves her inside, into the darkness there. Gentle tentacles against her shoulders, holding her up when she stumbles. I am Crath. And then the floor rises up from beneath her and there is a horrific sense of vertigo and they are rising up, up, up into gathering light until surely they will pierce the sky.
ORANGE (Expansion)
Her sight flickers with flashes of world: the glass walls of their elevator reveal buildings zipping away below; Crath’s skin a delicate periwinkle now shading into ash grey; her own fingers splayed against the glass floor.
There is a new sensation in her throat. Vibration pushing through her mouth and emerging into something she has never known. A whimper. A whine. A scream, cutting through senses and through Crath, too. With shock, Dex realizes that she is making these sounds.
Crath recoils and projects into Dex’s mind: Please, please, please stop! You are hurting me.The skin of its face darkens and cracks. Its eyes squeeze tight as they wince with every tentacle. Crax folds in on itself like an envelope. Within seconds, it is smaller than Dex and growing still smaller.
Freeing her hand from the floor, Dex presses her fingers over her mouth. The sound stops. That sound came from her mouth, and it hurt Crath. She turns her eyes to Crath, her back to the city falling below. What is happening?
Crath shakes themself in a long, fluid movement; tentacles wave and its skeletal body unfolds. Ease expanding. I had to reach you before the Elders did.
Who are the Elders? And then, with a glance above, Dex swallows the sound that rises in her throat and shares: We will break the sky. Sure enough, the curving dome of the sky soars closer.
Now that they are close to it, Dex can see the places where the great screens join. From the streets below, it always seemed made from one piece. Will it shatter and send shards to hurt the people down below? She glances at her feet and sees the city as she never has before, spread out in a long lazy spiral of streets with buildings articulating a regular pattern, lightshows linking it all in a rainbow kaleidoscope. Her breath catches in her throat. It is immensely sunglow / bittersweet orange / tangerine. Is this happening because I missed my Heartmind ration?
A small door opens in the sky, small enough that to someone from below it would appear part of a pattern of dots, and the glass capsule races toward it. Crath answers, We have limited your Heartmind for some time now. This is happening for other reasons; it is because we need you.
This creature is responsible for her three days without Heartmind? The dispenser isn’t broken, but there’s no red-gold liquid coming to ease her world. She wants to scream again, to make the creature next to her cower into itself, but the sky is too close, and Dex can only gulp air in and hold it as the capsule pushes through the door in the sky and emerges into a waiting area of a kind, a dim room with no one in it.
Crath takes her hand in their tentacles again. We must hurry. The Cleaners will come soon. Come.
Dex pulls back. You must tell me why you need me.
Crath has no screen above its head but it is obvious they are feeling brick red / coquilecot / folly. Its mouthless face ripples, skin glinting in the low light, and it tugs again on her arm. I will tell you, but we must hurry.
The air begins to take on a thickness around them, like jelly; Crath’s tugging turns into actual yanking. Dex allows herself to be pulled or dragged from the room. Colors clog her throat. Her feet make a very faint thudding sound on the padded floor and, each time, Crath winces.
They leave the waiting room and enter a series of hallways without sharp edges, walls that are long washes of color fading into themselves like the skies of Homeworld. They leave behind the thick air and begin to breathe better. Finally, Crath opens a circular door and gestures inside. Please, enter. This is my place and you are welcome in it.
It is a bedroom-dining table-screen, like Dex’s own apartment, only softer, and there is no Heartmind apparatus in the center of it. Dex feels her skin flushing as she enters. There is a sense of strangeness here but also of home, both of which cling to her thoughts and slow her racing heart.
She left her apartment to find how to restore her Heartmind ration, and she has found herself here with another kind of creature in another kind of world. It is a pleasant apartment, she says.
In response, Crath shuts the door and opens a window, revealing a new, strange world full of dark shapes and pale plants, all their fingers waving in an invisible wind.
YELLOW (Hazard)
Dex and Crath stand without moving for a few breaths. Dex can see that the darkish world outside the window has color in it, but she has to look harder for it. A four-winged beast flaps by, at first seeming to be all eerie black, but then she notices that under its wings are ribbons of midnight blue.
Following it is another kind of flying creature shaped like an oval. It seems to be a murky celadon without relief, but then she spots the pattern of amaranth pink, dots interspersed with spirals along its body.
Did you know about our world? asks Crath, beside her.
Dex thinks about the city she is now standing on, about the ChildScape home that was all of her life until she turned seventeen rotations, and then the apartment where she spent the next three, huddled against her fears. I did not know, she answers. Even this style of communication, no colors to be seen, is new to her. So you must tell me. Who are the Elders and why did you take away my Heartmind? And why can I see colors even without it? She adds, curious in spite of herself. And what kind of thing are you? And what is this called, that I am doing right now?
Turning away from the window, Crath picks up a small cup, feathery tentacles wrapping around it with precision. Next to the cup is a beaker full of a clear liquid. Crath pours some liquid into the cup and then extends it toward Dex.
Dex peers into it, picks it up, brings it to her nose. It has a heady fragrance. She has never smelled it before, all apricot / vanilla / cream. When it touches her tongue, it explodes in her mouth; tiny pops and hisses that change the flavor even while she tastes it. A smile wraps over her face, slow, but undeniable.
As if waiting for that expression, Crath begins to explain:
You are human; I am Strum. Your kind have no memory of us; this is what we all agreed many rotations ago when you came to our land and requested shelter. Our species have a symbiotic relationship which, until lately, has been a great success.Heartmind is a chemical compound we created and gave your ancestors with their consent; it amplifies your vision and mutes your hearing. Perhaps you saw how bad sound is for me. We needed a silent city, and we also feed on color. In return for your production of colors through your emotional screens, we feed you and care for you during your short lives.
The drink burns in Dex’s chest. But I never saw you before, or anyone else like you.
The Heartmind makes you unable to see us, Crath admits. Now that it has left your system you can see many things you could not before.
Knowledge weighs on Dex now, crushes her. She has lived twenty cycles without knowing these things. If she had known them, she wonders tentatively to herself, would it have made a difference to her intense, crippling insecurity? Her fear of being noticed, or being different?
But she does not have time to explore this thought or to query Crath because there is a soundless pulse, a SHOUT in her mind, and the door to Crath’s apartment explodes. The small cup, still in her hand, cracks against the far wall as she strikes it. When the door crumbles, there are more creatures of Crath’s kind standing there. The air has taken on a gelatinous edge, as it began to do back at the elevator.
These, then must be the Cleaners of which Crath is so afraid. They look like Crath, obviously Strum, but are much broader and heavier. Three of them, standing in the place where the door had once been. Dex slants her gaze to Crath but cannot see whether Crath is conscious; its body is covered in dusty rubble, and its tentacles do not move.
When the Cleaners reach for her, she scrabbles against the floor to get away from them, but her small human body is no match for their strength and, within seconds, she is wrapped in a silken bond that burns a little against her skin. As they carry her from the room, she hears in her mind Crath say, I am sorry, Dex. And then a Cleaner passes something over her eyes, and she loses consciousness.
Copyright © 2023 by Emily McIntyre
