WHEN PRUE LISS AWOKE, THE LIGHT WAS SO gray that it seemed as if all the color had been drained from the world. She blinked uncertainly as she emerged from a deep sleep that had left her lethargic and weak. She was lying on a grassy patch of ground somewhere in a forest where the trees canopied overhead and the air smelled of damp and rot. She could not tell the time or even if it was day or night. Everything had a twilight cast to it, as if the sun were down and night coming on.
She lay where she was for a time, waiting for her strength to return. Her meeting with the King of the Silver River was still fresh in her mind, although it seemed more a dream than real. She could see his face and hear his voice, but she lacked any sense of time and place. How long had she been with him, and where had their meeting occurred? None of it was clear, and there was no way of finding out now.
What she did know was that he had done something to her, just as she had asked him to, just as he had promised. To regain use of her instincts in a way that would allow her to trust them again, she had been irrevocably changed.
She took some deep, slow breaths—inhaling, exhaling—the simple act of breathing a reassurance that she was still alive and functioning. She looked down at herself to see if she was still all there, and she found to her relief that she was. Arms, legs, feet, and hands—all of her was of a piece and recognizable.
Yet something was different. She could feel the change, even without being able to discern its source.
When she felt strong enough to do so, she sat up and looked around. She was sitting in woods, the trees alive and well, their canopy thick and leafy and their limbs dark arms linked in the gray light. She could see birds darting here and there, as gray and colorless as the landscape itself. She caught glimpses of tiny creatures moving through the foliage and flitting through the trees. Sounds rose in tiny bursts, calls and cries that signaled hidden presences. In the distance, just barely visible through the screen of the forest, a wall of dark and craggy mountain peaks rose.
Where was she?
There was only one way to find out. She climbed to her feet, waited a few moments to see if there was any dizziness or weakness, and found none. She brushed pine needles and bits of grass and dirt from her pants, and looked around some more, trying to decide which way she should go. She was a skilled Tracker, and she could find her way even in darkness. But she could not do so now. Everything looked strange to her.
Different. The shadings of shadows and light didn’t look right; the casting of light and dark was skewed in some way.
Then suddenly a flash of bright scarlet appeared through the branches of the trees, skimming close to the ground, soaring to gain the open spaces between the dark trunks.
It was the first bit of color she had seen, and it was so unexpected that for a moment she just stood there and watched it as it flew.
It was a bird of some sort.
It was a scarlet dove.
But there were no scarlet doves in her world, only in the world of the King of the Silver River. Why was she seeing one here? Unless she was still in the Faerie creature’s world and hadn’t returned to her own after all. But how could that be, when the whole reason for her agreeing to chance an infusion of deep magic was to come back and help Pan?
Then she realized something else, something so astonishing that it froze her in place.
Forgetting for a moment the question of which world she was in or what she was supposed to be doing—why could she see the bright scarlet of the dove but not see colors anywhere else?
She blinked rapidly, closed her eyes tightly, and opened them again. The world around her was still washed of any color but gray and black, light and dark. Nothing else. She searched the landscape, trying to find something that would yield even a small dab of color.
Nothing. Anywhere.
The dove reappeared, streaking past, its sleek form revealed in bright scarlet hues, its feathers lustrous, its color so unimaginably vivid, so incomprehensibly intense, that it left her breathless. She peered around wildly, searching anew for something that would explain what was happening. But no matter where she looked or how long she spent searching, there was no other color to be found.