Frantic now, suddenly frightened of what was happening, she bolted away into the trees, running hard in the direction the dove had taken. It wasn’t difficult to find, its scarlet body standing out clearly, and it did not seem to be trying to escape her. Rather, it flew away and then came back to her, repeating this act over and over until finally she realized it was beckoning her to follow. Why it was doing this and where it was leading her, she couldn’t say. But the dove was a lifeline to the explanation she desperately needed, and so she followed it.
Finally it swooped down and perched on a low-hanging branch above a tiny pool of water, a pond that was little more than a depression in the earth through which a small stream meandered like a lost child. She walked over to the pool and knelt, looking down into its clear depths. There she was, Prue Liss, looking back, her image rippling slightly with the sluggish movement of the stream as it passed through, her features bending …
She peered closer. Something was wrong. She tightened her focus, trying to make certain.
Her eyes. There was something wrong with her eyes!
She bent closer still, almost to a point where she was touching the water with her face, almost to where she was kissing it with her lips, and she saw that her eyes no longer had definition. They didn’t look like her eyes—or the eyes of anyone who could see. They looked like the eyes of a blind person.
Clouded and empty.
She jerked back in shock. What was going on? Her eyes made her look as if she were blind, but she could see! She looked around quickly, making sure. Yes, she could see.
There was no mistaking it. What did it mean that her eyes were those of a blind person, but she could still see the world around her, even if it was all gray and colorless …?
Oh, no! Oh, no! She screamed the words in the silence of her mind, unable to trust herself to speak them.
She could see the bright scarlet of the dove, but no other color anywhere. She could see a bird that didn’t exist in her world, but was flying about in it anyway. She was in her world, she decided. Her instincts and her senses told her so. This wasn’t the world of the King of the Silver River. The two were different enough that she would have known if that wasn’t so. She was in her own world, and there was no color.
Except there was. She just couldn’t see it. That was the point of the dove—a sign from the King of the Silver River to tell her what the use of his magic had cost, an indicator of what had been extracted from her in payment. She could still see, but only in black and white, in gray tones and shadows. All of the colors were gone.
She rocked back on her heels and tried not to cry. Her red hair—she would never see its brightness again. The green of the trees, the sky’s assorted blues, Pan’s hazel eyes, his sun-browned face—nothing, nothing, nothing of their color anywhere! She was crying now, realizing what that meant, grasping right away how much she would miss it, how terrible it would be to live in a world where all the colors were gone.
Forever.
But it was to help Pan that she had sacrificed herself, and she refused to regret it. The cost was clearly defined. She had given up seeing the world’s brightness so that she could see what was hiding in its darkness—all the dangers that threatened the unwary, all the predators that would steal something infinitely more precious than color.
Panterra needed her to save him so that he could do what the King of the Silver River had said he was fated to do—to save their people, to lead them out of the valley and into a new world.
Oh, but to a world in which there would be no color! Not for her. Not ever again! She could hardly bear it, and she started crying all over again, weeping into her sleeve, her small body shaking, her sobs audible in the stillness of the forest. She was only fifteen, she told herself, and she would never see color again!
It took her a long time to regain control of herself, much longer than she had expected. But when she had cried herself out and silently voiced all her bitter thoughts, she climbed back to her feet and stood staring off into the grayness that was now the measure of her future. She had to let go of what had been and embrace what would be.
She had to accept the consequences of her decision to help Panterra Qu and remember that something good would come of this.
If she could manage to protect him. If she could stand with him for as long as he needed her.
When the scarlet dove reappeared, slipping like quicksilver through the branches of the trees, she took a deep, steadying breath and began to track its flight.
NOW SHE STOOD in the doorway of Pan’s home, watching as he took in the damage she had suffered, gave an audible gasp, and moved quickly to embrace her.
“Your eyes!” he whispered into her hair, rocking her gently.
It seemed that he was the one who needed steadying, and so she managed to not give way to the tears that threatened to come. Instead, she breathed in his scent and hugged herself against his solid warmth.
“It’s all right, Pan. It isn’t as bad as it seems.”