Anna pushed me against the stone wall of the dark hallway and covered my mouth with her hand.
“Shhh,” She whispered, flattening her body against mine. “We have to be quiet.”
I spoke into her hand, my voice muffled. “Why? We are not doing anything wrong, are we? My mother knows what your plan is, she is just pretending she doesn’t.”
“Shhh,” Anna shushed me again. “She knows I have a plan, that’s it. You have to be quiet though, It’ll hear us.”
“It?” I whispered into her hand.
She nodded insistently. “It’s big and ugly. It never sleeps and is too stupid to do anything but eat and break things.”
I bit her hand just hard enough to make her snatch it away. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
One of the double doors at the front of the house swung open. A sweeping column of orange firelight passed through the kitchen and leaked into the hallway. It cast away the darkness that concealed us and we stood deadly still within the glow.
Arthur and one of the guards, I couldn’t tell which came through the door.
“You can win these little bouts all you want, Ugi. It’s not gonna matter when I beat you tomorrow night and drink away all your coin.” The guard laughed.
Both men were shirtless and glistening with sweat. Neither of them noticed us and a moment later they headed back out of the door with their hands full of my mother’s wine.
“Just because it’s a tournament doesn’t mean you're gonna suddenly be able to beat me.” Arthur said, closing the door behind himself and leaving us in the dark.
Big, never sleeps. . .I didn’t know about the other stuff but I suddenly understood who the it Anna had been referring to was.
“Why do you not wish for him to see us?” I asked her as we started for the back door again.
“You already spent all day with him. And besides, he would want to know what we are doing.” Anna answered me.
“Would that be so bad?” Arthur was a large part of why I wasn’t still laying in bed. Maybe he could help, if he knew.
“Yes. Then he would want to come. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of him sitting around and watching you float naked in the pool.” She said, a little heat in her voice.
We took the side path to the well house and I realized how long it had been since I had been in the dim room. The time that had passed since I had been taken for my first punishment had been the longest I had ever been without choosing to enter The Well.
“Why do you get to do that?” I asked Anna, wanting to hear her answer more than actually needing an explanation.
The dark shape of a bird took flight from the overgrown vines that covered the top of the stone outbuilding in a sudden flurry of fluttering wings and shrill chirps.
Anna pushed open the pink marble door and stepped inside. “I think that’s the first bird I’ve seen since we moved here. There aren’t any bugs either. Have you noticed that?”
In the small moment between the end of her question and my first step through the door, Anna screamed.
I pulled her back and stepped in front of her, my body tensing to defend her from whatever evil had made her scream.
“Quiet, mortal. It is I.” Sam rumbled, his no longer little skeleton sitting still on the stone bench next to the pool.
I took three quick steps and moved to grab my familiar by the scruff of his neck. Due to him not having flesh, my angered attempt at clutching him managed to gain me nothing but one of his boney paws slapping my hand away.
“Where the fuck have you been? Aren’t you supposed to help me? I’ve been in agony for fucking weeks and you have been nowhere to be seen!” I shouted, not realizing I was angry at the skeleton of a cat until I had seen him.
“No thank you is necessary. You are welcome.” He said simply, seemingly unbothered.
“Thank you? For what? You haven’t done anything!” I shouted.
Sam looked past me and leveled his yellow gaze on Anna. “Mortal, has her mind been slowed,” He asked her. He looked back at me. “Think about it, child. When have I ever been a comfort to you? ‘Considering the frail state you were returned in, the most beneficial way I could serve you was to remove myself. In your mind, you will find this to be true if you still have the ability to think.”
“Fuck, you’re such an asshole,” I turned away from him and snatched the shorts down off my waist. By the time I managed to defeat the big shirt and finally pull it over my head, Anna had walked over and placed her notebook on the bench next to my familiar. The worst part of it, the part that made me want to separate him into each individual bone, was that I knew his words were true. I had barely been able to handle being awake for weeks. If my ever so loving familiar had given me a small portion of his usual respect and reverence, I would have fallen to pieces. The bandages my mother had wrapped not an hour before unraveled from me, I slipped into the pool and gave the yellow eyed skeleton a mean glare. “Thank you.”
“The two of you are about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Anna said, sitting down. “Do you know which one you are going for?”
“Watch your tongue, mortal. I am nothing of the sort.” Sam rumbled.
I tipped myself back and floated to the top of the salted water for the first time in what felt like forever. “Nami, I would rather not see the other one again so soon. Before I go, you never answered my question. Why do you get to sit up there and stare down at me? It is not fair.”
“If you want Arthur to do it, I’ll go get him for you, I’m sure he won’t mind.” Anna teased.
I shook my head, sending countless ripples across the surface of the water wherever the ends of my hair drug across it. “No, It’s not fair to me.”
“Well, let’s get some work done and we will see if we can make it even.” Anna said with a wicked smile that made my heart thump in my chest despite the dim light.
If she said anything else, I did not hear it. The only way I could keep myself from doing something foolish was to let my ears sink below the surface and close my eyes.
Nami. The Mother in Blue, I thought, repeating her names in my mind without pause. Nami, with the hair that faded from a blue so dark it was almost black to one one that was so light it was almost white. The Mother in Blue, she who had drowned a newborn sun and healed a sorceress from ash with nothing but her will. Nami, whose heart had been wounded by who I thought to be The Mother in Orange.
Somewhere in my recollection, I felt myself slip inward and sink into The Well.
I stepped through the black gate. My bare feet left the cold stone of Chromagora and when they fell again, warm wood greeted them.
The Mother in Yellow, as un-motherly as she seemed, had crossed right before me, but she was nowhere to be seen.
The gate had lead me to a tree so large that a full table and chairs sat comfortable in the middle of its trunk. Branches that were thicker than my body spread out in a sprawling canopy. Leaves of every shade of yellow shone in the gentle sun. The air was crisp and just cold enough to sting in my nose. It was like when the beaches would fog during winter back home. It would be as sunny as could be but the sea breeze would never grow warm.
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A woman, wearing nothing but a small slip that was the color of the setting sun, sat silently to my right. She was long, feline, and every inch of her was wound with muscle that looked like braided cord. Her hair was short, with wild tails running down past her shoulders on each side. She had either not noticed me or had not found my arrival notable enough to greet me.
I had been told about her enough that I knew who she was just by looking at her.
“Hello,” I said and bowed fully, suddenly aware that I had left most of my clothes on the floor in Ola’s room. “You must be The Mother in Orange. I am Nami, The Lady in Blue, but I’m sure you know that.”
Silently, I wondered if Ola had mentioned me to her Mother. Even with what she had told me about her, she was not what I had expected. If it had not been for Mother Katarina’s encouragement, I would have never gained the courage to tell The Lady in Orange of my feelings for her.
The slender woman did not move her eyes from the clouds above. Her hands continued the intricate turns and shifting of the black knife, locked in some idle practice that I did not understand.
I should not have respected her silence and left her to her knife turning, but I could not help myself. “Can you help her? Ola, I mean. Can you help her with her hands?”
The damage that had been done in the afterglow of her first soulstage had not healed properly. If she used her aura at all, they would become numb and useless. The amount of nights I had spent massaging them with my own was no small amount. I did not mind it, being able to help her brought me much joy, but she had been crippled in more ways than one.
It seemed my question fell on deaf ears.
The Mother in Orange continued her knife turning with the same blank stare on her face.
“She isn’t being rude, I promise. I talk to her all the time and she hasn’t said a word to me in a couple hundred years,” The Mother in Yellow giggled as she reappeared from behind a massive branch. Every step she took came off her toes, with her heels only touching the ground when she stopped. She seemed light, like she was made of air, and the sight of her was enough alone to bring a genuine smile to my face. “Would you like some coffee? I know it is the middle of the night, but who couldn’t use a pick me up?”
“Yes please, Mother.” I said. I still did not know why I had been pulled from a restful sleep, but The Mothers did nothing without reason. If they had deemed it necessary for me to be wherever I had been taken, I should at least try and be alert.
“Stop it, you shouldn’t call me that now that we are sisters. My name is Glim and your name is Nami, okay?”
At Glim’s words, The black knife The Mother in Orange had been holding sunk blade first into the massive branch opposite her. The blank stare remained on her face but her eyes had shifted to Glim.
“Don’t be mean,” Glim balled her fist and stomped her feet. She stuck her tongue out and made an ugly face at The Mother in Orange. “She is going to find out in a few minutes anyways, so what if I tell her before everyone else gets here?”
Sisters? What had she meant by that?
“Glim,” I said, making sure she heard me intentionally call her what she had asked me to. “Is Mother Katarina coming?”
I hoped so, she would be pleased to hear the Blue had visited me twice since last I saw her.
Glim’s playful smile and the light in her eyes turned down and dimmed into something sad. I had only known what the woman looked like for ten minutes, but sadness did not belong anywhere near her face. It was wrong and changed the air of the treetop overlook instantly.
“Mother Glim?” I asked, not content to stand in the strange air.
“What have you told her? Is it truly impossible for you to keep your lips sealed for any length of time,” A voice came from my left before its speaker was revealed. A swirling cloud of golden dust had appeared in the sprawling canopy out of nowhere. “Do you not understand the weight of this situation?”
When I had been small, long before I knew of The Mothers or Zenithcidel, back when I thought the blue light I could make meant I was a cast off child of a mermaid, an old fisherman named Rip would tell me one of his sea tales if I could bring him a clam bigger than my hand.
The shape of a woman appeared in the golden cloud, looking like one of the ocean goddesses in any number of Rip’s stories. She was built like Ola, long and slender, but the similarities ended there. Her skin looked like it was made from sculpted bronze and her movements were perfect and graceful.
Mother Azza, I thought. It must be.
Each of The Ladies were beautiful, undeniably. The Mothers were a step beyond that. The Mother in Orange with her blank stare would overshadow any number of great beauties on her worst day, even if it was their best.
It was no doubt due to my personal preferences, but The Mother in Brown was so perfect that I immediately crossed my arms over myself in a futile attempt to hide my inadequacy.
“What would happen if you were captured by a Sorcerer? All they would need to do is smile at you and you would tell them anything they wanted to know,” The dust drifted down and disappeared amongst the branches below and The Mother in Brown stepped into the canopy. “As old as I know you to be, how can you be so childish?”
Glim made the same ugly face at Mother Azza as she had The Mother in Orange. “You don’t be mean either!”
Mother Azza ignored Glim and turned to me. “So, you are The Lady in Blue. Katarina chose well it seems.”
Her eyes, like molten gold, met mine and I dropped to my knees.
Everything fell away. The branches that reached up to the sky spun above me and I felt myself fall. . .
A torrent of bubbles streamed out of my mouth as I screamed silently underwater. A weight that I was powerless against pushed me down. My arms and legs would not move. All I could do was watch as the dim light above the surface grew smaller.
Something grabbed me under my arms and dragged me up.
“Hey, you're okay, I’m here.”
Anna. I realized. She had pulled me up. I was in the well house.
“What is your name?” My familiar’s deep voice echoed off the stone walls.
“Fuck,” I coughed, taking several deep breaths before I could answer him. “Autumn Aubrey.”
By the time I finished his questions, Anna had leaned us back against the wall of the pool and collected my long hair into a single wet cord.
“I’m sorry,” She sighed sadly. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this yet. Let's go to bed, I should have known better than to push you like this.”
I cleared my throat and wiped the stinging salt from my eyes. “Shut up, don’t you want to know what I learned?”
My hand found its way to the golden choker around my neck. Even though I had met them through the eyes of another, the sight of Mother Azza’s had been enough to push me out of Nami’s memory. It had felt like the unseen pressure she had compressed me with in the glass pyramid had tried to drown me. It had hurt, inside more than outside, and I could not lie and say that it did not make me want to curl up in a ball and cry.
Still, I had found what I went into The Well to find regardless of her molten stare.
“You can tell me when you are ready, it doesn’t have to be tonight,” She squeezed me a little tighter. “I’m sorry.”
I pushed myself away from her and told her what I had seen before it could slip from my mind. “Glim. The Mother in Yellow’s name is Glim. Nami-”
“Oh shit, hold on,” Anna interrupted me. I heard her pull herself out of the pool in a hurry and splatter water over the floor as she went for a towel and then the notebook. A moment later, she was sitting on the bench with Sam’s haunting shape right next to her. She held her pen above the page and nodded. “Alright, go.”
I repeated what I had already told her about The Mother in Yellow before continuing. “Nami is not a Mother, or she was not then, at least. She is or was The Lady in Blue. The Mother in blue is someone named Katarina.”
“Someone can become a Mother? I thought they were just The Mothers, like the way the sky is the sky or Arthur is Arthur.” Anna said, looking up at me. I could not look at her long, the dim light and the brightness in her eyes proved to be a very dangerous distraction.
I shrugged. “I did too, but the way Mother Glim was talking makes me think that is not true.”
“Hmmm. What else?” Anna said.
“The Mother in Orange was there, but I did not learn her name. I think something is wrong with her. It did not seem like all of her was there,” I told her, thinking of the fierce looking woman staring up at the sky with nothing in her eyes. “Then, Mother-Then, The Mother in Brown,” I corrected myself, still unable to say her name. “arrived. When she looked at Nami. . .When she looked at me, I fell out of the memory.”
Anna clapped and gave me a genuine smile. “I’ve got to say, as your coach, I’m impressed.”
“You did well, my lady.” Sam rumbled from his place next to Anna.
“Oh, so you ignored me for weeks and now you are suddenly on my side? Would it kill you to compliment me more?” I glared at the feline skeleton right in his stupid yellow eyelights.
“I am bound to your will. I am always on your side. You usually do not accomplish things worthy of my praise.” Sam said simply.
Anna stood from the bench and closed the notebook. She extended the towel she had barely used towards me. “I am sorry, I didn’t think about what it would feel like for you to see her again. We can stop.”
I did not take the towel. Instead, I tipped my weight back and let myself float back to the top of the pool. “If you apologize to me, I’m going to make you sleep in your room tonight.”
“Oh really? What are you doing?” She raised an eyebrow and put her hand on her hip. Her black nightgown was still wet from when she had jumped into the pool and it clung to her hips and thighs so tightly that I did not have to imagine much.
“I’m going back. We still have work to do.” I said, closing my eyes before I could no longer keep myself from her.