The Color of Fear (18 page)

“My name is Caitlin—not Alice—and you know exactly who I am. I suppose you’re now going to show me how to grow and shrink?”

Natalie raised an eyebrow in response to Caitlin’s unexpected assertiveness.

Amethyst ran a finger through his silken beard. “So you choose to accept the literal meaning of
grow
, as opposed to the deeper meaning.”

“The deeper meaning?”

“It suggests growing on the inside, not the outside. As for ‘shrinking,’ I suppose you thoroughly understand that word, speaking internally, of course.”

Did he just insult me?

Lord Amethyst nodded sublimely toward Rapunzel and the princesses.

“I suppose you have questions pertaining to the dire state of the kingdoms?” he asked.

“Ya think?” Cindy quipped.

Amethyst raised a finger. “First, you must eat. We must fuel the body to fuel the mind.”

Cinderella’s stomach rumbled. So did Natalie’s.

Amethyst beckoned with his hand. “By all means, eat until you are satiated. And be sure to take some for the road.”

Like a band of ravenous soldiers, Natalie and the royals dove into the food supply. They stuffed their cheeks and their pockets with carrots, potatoes, lemons, and as many leaves as could fit. Cinderella smiled at Natalie as she picked a handful of jalapeño peppers from a vine.

“Pay dirt.” She popped a whole pepper into her mouth and chewed. “Whoo! Spicy!”

Rapunzel came up behind Caitlin and nudged her in the direction of the caterpillar. “Talk to him.”

Caitlin plucked an asparagus growing horizontally out of the wall. She was famished. She needed strength. She crunched a bite and then tentatively approached Lord Amethyst. He smelled like a mixture of fresh-cut grass and peppermint tea.

“Sleeping Beauty had a dream that told her you can help us?” Her tone was timid.

“Perhaps.” With one finger, the caterpillar slid his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose until they were parallel with his eyes. He gazed at Caitlin as if peering into the depth of her being.

“You had some difficulty gaining traction in Zeno’s Forest?”

Caitlin blinked twice, then she cleared her throat.

“Well, sort of. Ya.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

Caitlin’s back straightened. “Now you’re going to tell me that I lacked certainty. Conviction.”

“On the contrary,” Amethyst said softly stroking his beard. “You
already
have perfect certainty and total conviction.”

Caitlin’s brow crinkled.

Amethyst pointed a finger. “Your problem is that you have perfect certainty in your doubt. You possess total conviction in your disbelief. So when you choose to not believe, then
nothing
is what you achieve.”

He smiled.

“But let’s save that conversation for another time.”

Caitlin furrowed her brow.

Snow White approached and posed a question.

“My good Lord Amethyst, what about the su—”

The caterpillar raised his hand.

“No need to say it, Your Grace. You wish to know the secrets of our sun and the mystery of the affliction that affects our world.”

Natalie elbowed Caitlin in the ribs. “A psychic caterpillar. Think he can bend spoons?”

Amethyst then pointed one of his many fingers at Caitlin. “And
you
wish to know what particles of imagination are made of?”

Caitlin’s eyebrows popped up, as did Natalie’s. How could he have known what they’d discussed before they entered Zeno’s Forest?

“Imagination is the building block of our universe,” Amethyst said. “Everything you see, both material and immaterial, is made up of particles of imagination. Except, my child, they are not really particles, but rather
waves
. Particles are found in your world. Not ours.”

Natalie’s mouth opened in awe. “That’s one highly intelligent caterpillar, sis. He’s referring to the wave-particle duality.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure what Natalie and the clever caterpillar were talking about. She shushed her sister because she wanted to hear more.

Amethyst winked at Natalie, then refocused his attention on Caitlin.

“In your world, when you probe into the atom you find electrons, protons, and neutrons. Your question is about what happens when we probe into the waves of imagination that erect all the kingdoms of our world, and give form to all of us?”

Lord Amethyst pointed upward toward the skylight, where rays of sunlight shone through.

He turned to Sleeping Beauty. “The crystal. The one in your pocket.”

Beauty slid her fingers into the ruffles of her skirt and pulled it out.

Amethyst gestured upward again. Beauty angled the crystal toward the skylight so it would catch a ray of sun. The crystal prism split the sunbeams into a bright rainbow.

All eyes fell back on Lord Amethyst, who studiously removed his reading spectacles with one of his left hands. He gestured with his glasses as he spoke.

“These are the seven sacred wavelengths that bring forth existence,” Amethyst said. “This light is made from waves of imagination that shine forth from the human kingdom.”

A twinkle gleamed in Caitlin’s eye. All the dots were starting to connect. Their curious brain-shaped sun. The minds of Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, and all the other writers, who wrote the stories that produced these imaginative worlds.

Amethyst pointed to the glimmering reds and oranges of the rainbow. “Now pay attention. From the Red Spectrum comes fear, lingering doubt, worry, and intolerable woe.”

As if on cue, the forbidding caw of a crow echoed through the cavern, raising the hairs on Caitlin’s arm. It came from outside.

A Blood-Eyed crow?

Amethyst ignored the caw and dipped his spectacles in the shimmer of blues, indigos, and violets.

“From the opposite, violet, end of the Spectrum there comes sublime courage, contentment, sheer joy, and splendid calm.”

Next Amethyst waved his glasses through the middle of the rainbow, in the green and yellow color spectrums.

“Here lies the great power of the will. Our will decides which fears will be allowed to compel us into action and which will be repelled and banished from our being. But as you can see, the green is fading and losing strength.”

He placed his spectacles back on the tip of his nose.

“Why not banish the entire Red Spectrum?” Caitlin asked.

“You mean all the fears, my child?”

She shrugged sheepishly.

“Fear of fire is a healthy fear; would you agree?”

She nodded.

“But a fear of a fire-breathing dragon living under your bed is a needless one. Therefore, the will repels the dragon fear. But it allows the fear of a burning house to endure, which serves to remind us to blow out the candles before retiring to bed.”

Natalie had been listening with rapt attention. “He’s deep,” she whispered.

The caterpillar stroked his silky beard.

“Do you understand, my child?”

“I think so.”

For some reason, what came to Caitlin’s mind just then was a girl from her old school. Penny Robbins. She was a sweet kid who desperately wanted to be popular. At one point in the school year, she got really, really thin. Anorexic thin. She wound up in a hospital and missed a ton of school before she was well enough to return. Then, another situation popped into Caitlin’s mind: a nasty stomach flu that had been going around back in September. Natalie had been very afraid of catching it. She had even cut out eating sugars and junk food and started eating a ton of vegetables and other “healthy” stuff that made Caitlin wanna gag. So, she reasoned, maybe Penny Robbins’s fear of being unpopular had messed up her eating habits so much that she made herself sick. While Natalie’s fear of getting sick had changed her eating habits in a way that kept her from needing a barf bowl at her bedside for a week.

Crazy. One fear had an awful outcome. The other prevented a puke-fest and a case of the runs.

That caterpillar is pretty freaking smart.

Caitlin was intrigued.

Sleeping Beauty’s beautiful, pale face looked strained. “May I put my arm down now?”

Amethyst nodded apologetically. Beauty pocketed the crystal prism, and the rainbow of colors vanished.

Caitlin twisted a few of her long, cinnamon strands of hair around her finger.

“How do you light up the Violet Spectrum?”

Amethyst’s demeanor took on a decidedly gladdened turn. Then the antennae on his head stiffened. And as he opened his mouth to answer, a bloodcurdling cawing sound echoed fiendishly into the cavern—this one louder than the previous.

Rapunzel winced.

Amethyst’s mood turned on a dime. He nervously turned in circles on his mushroom.

“The black crows!” Amethyst said with a grim tone. “Blood-Eyed ghouls of prey.” He set his cup down on its saucer with trembling hands. “Where there are crows, the demonic howls of the wolves follow. We must hurry. You need to know what happened here before it’s too late to save the kingdoms.”

What about saving us?

Even brave, nothing-fazed-her Natalie began to rock nervously on her feet. “My guess is that a fear of zombie wolves falls under the category of healthy fears,” she whispered to Caitlin.

Jack—still the size
of an inchworm—breezed above a stretch of decaying brown fields, balanced like a surfer on the face of a dry, brown maple leaf that was sailing through the air on a warm wind. Two dabs of sap kept his feet firmly secured to the leaf’s surface.

Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and called down to Alfonzo, who hopped below him on the ground, keeping pace. “You were right!”

Alfonzo looked up at him.

“I can spot the forest from here,” Jack said.

Jack dipped down on his leaf-board, skimming the tops of blades of withered grass next to Alfonzo.

“If anything happens to Caitlin, I swear I’ll die. It’s my fault she’s here without me. If only I hadn’t forgotten my blasted phone.”

“We have not the time for regrets, amigo. Just lead the way to the forest. I can’t see a thing through this tall grass.”

The wind blew hard at Jack’s back. He pulled the tunic from his knight costume off over his head and stretched it between his arms to create a sail. A gust of wind caught the sail and increased his speed. His arm and chest muscles strained as he held the sail firm against the wind and tried to steer. His golden-brown hair whipped around his head as currents of air carried him along.

He and Prince Alfonzo sailed and hopped toward the forest’s edge until a babbling stream came into view.

The wind abruptly changed direction. Jack wobbled as his leaf-board began to whirl out of control. He crouched, trying to balance, but the wave of air was too strong. Wipeout! Jack spiraled out of control and landed hard on a burger-size rock, which compared to him, was like a small mountain.

Jack was pulling his tunic down over his chest again when Alfonzo hopped up to him.

“Amigo,” Alfonzo whispered, “I would advise a slight detour by way of the stream.”

Jack raised his eyebrows and pointed straight ahead. “But the forest is right there!”

Sure enough, only one thing separated Jack and Alfonzo from Zeno’s Forest: a wooden bridge laden with crows.

“I’m too small to swim in that current,” Jack said. “I’d get swept away. Or eaten by a trout.”

“Shh … ” whispered Alfonzo. “You need to be careful not to wake the troll.”

“Troll?”

The idea of meeting an authentic troll did not delight Jack. Nevertheless, with no other option, he decided to forge ahead on land.

“You take the stream,” Jack said. “I’ll risk the bridge. We’ll meet on the other side.”

Alfonzo bowed with a flourish. “You are braver than I, amigo. Till we meet again on the other side … I hope.”

And with that Alfonzo hopped toward a section of the stream that flowed far from the crows.

Jack proceeded on foot to the narrow bridge leading to Zeno’s Forest.

How scary could this troll be, anyway? The black crows napping on the bridge rails don’t seem the least bit afraid of him.

Jack held his breath. He took a cautious first step onto the edge of the bridge. The crows erupted with caws. Wings flapped. Feathers flew. The blood-eyed birds scattered. They swarmed together under slowly darkening clouds and flapped off in an arrow formation over the tree line of Zeno’s Forest.

A guttural growl suddenly rose up from beneath the bridge’s deck.

“Who woke the birds?” a belligerent voice bellowed.

A giant foot swung out from beneath the bridge. Then another. A colossal, scaly, and callused body followed. Jack hid behind a handrail. He crouched. Then he peered out to see what kind of monumental force he was up against.

The stink of troll body odor blasted his nostrils.

The troll in all his horribleness loomed over him. A hulking wad of muscle and muck and machismo. His gray skin had a reptilian, bumpy texture that reminded Jack of a lizard. It appeared to be covered by a crusty layer of green-and-white bird droppings. Daggerlike tusks protruded from his face. Pointy goat horns grew from the top of his head above his ears. Thorny spikes accented his brow.