Chapter 29

  Jimothy

  Jimothy put Isaac’s phone carefully into his pocket. He would have to return it, eventually. Isaac said he didn’t need it back, but Isaac had probably forgotten about all the notes and pictures and stuff on it. Isaac had made a lot of notes about ideas for stories and music, but Jimothy hadn’t read them, though he was curious. He knew how he would feel about people looking at his rough sketches of paintings! Well, actually he wouldn’t mind that much if it were his friends, but Isaac was shy about that stuff. Like Elizabeth.

  He sat on a shore of white rocks, and he stacked the rocks into little towers while Hazel splashed about in the inky sea. The sea was not black water; it was literally ink. Thick waves of it sloshed up the shore, slowly and at broad intervals. The black waves parted over the glittering white rocks and retreated in intricate veins of darkness that crept back into the silent waters. The ink did not stick to the white rocks at all, any more than it stuck to Hazel’s fur as the dog splashed and paddled awkwardly a dozen yards offshore. Sometimes beads of ink remained behind on the white stones, speckling them like fat, round bugs.

  It was quiet for a rocky seaside. No birds, no people. The waves made little noise; they didn’t break and barely splashed against the rocks. Even Hazel’s frantic paddling sounded muffled in the thick liquid.

  The sky was empty overhead save for a few drifting wisps of blackness staining the white like clouds in negative. A cluster of cutout-style clouds, only their faint outlines visible, marked the horizon over the inky sea. No noise but Hazel and the soft slurping of the ink on the shore. The not-unpleasant but very strong scent of fresh ink permeated the air. Jimothy breathed it deeply.

  He felt good today. Calm. He felt better than he had since Niri had died, which had been two cycles ago. He hadn’t fallen all morning. And he’d found another light crystal. He would add it to the lighthouse, increasing its light.

  Jimothy took up his cane, which he had colored in spiraling shades of green. The black-and-white of everything here bothered him. It wasn’t bad-looking all by itself. It was maybe even stylish, though he would have to ask Elizabeth about that to be sure. But it needed color.

  With the cane, he tapped a nearby rock, making it cherry-red. If he went rock-by-rock down the beach, he would get tired after only a short distance. He had limited light. With the crystal in his pocket…

  He touched the crystal. It’s brilliance flashed through his mind like a rapid sunrise. He imagined all the rocks along the beach to his right in bright colors like a bag of spilled Skittles, all the way until it curved out of view a half-mile away. Then he made it real. He still didn’t know how. It was a bit like using the Line. Like flipping a little switch. And he borrowed light from the crystal he was touching.

  Now the rocks were colored. It was a marvelously different experience watching the black ink rise over the vibrantly colored rocks, then retreat, encasing the colors in a veiny webbing. The sight of it gave him a little thrill.

  It had taken a good chunk of the light in the crystal to do that. But with Niri’s light…with that, he could re-color the whole inky sea, all the way to the gray cliffs that rose across the waves, past scattered rocky isles. But he didn’t want to use Niri’s light, not even in the top of the lighthouse.

  Listen…

  He closed his eyes and listened. A faint breeze tickled his skin. The breeze was too weak to have any effect on the ink.

  The wolf…

  Jimothy sometimes got the sense that someone was talking to him, even when there was obviously no one around. Was it the big wolf, Maugrim? Or was it, like Isaac said, ghosts? Jimothy wondered if it was the ghost of Niri. The thought of an invisible, ghostly Niri, possibly condemning him for leading her to her death on a strange world, just wandering the lighthouse, made Jimothy uneasy.

  Hazel interrupted Jimothy’s thoughts by jumping on him from the side. Hazel’s eager paws smeared black ink all over Jimothy’s left side. That was fine; his right side had gotten the same treatment only a few minutes before. Now he was symmetrical. He didn’t really care about being covered in ink, except for the stickiness. As he laughed and hugged Hazel, Jimothy remembered with a cringe how he had once tried to get Hazel’s help in a painting by painting the dog’s paw for a paw-print. That had not worked out.

  Hazel shook himself off, as dogs do, but it wasn’t necessary. The ink didn’t stick to Hazel. Nothing did, not even color.

  Hazel got down low and crawled into Jimothy’s lap. Once he was there, he wiggled in such excitement that Jimothy could hardly even pet him. “We’re going back to the city, Hazel,” said Jimothy. “But we’re not bringing anyone back this time, okay?” He had already decided this, firmly. If Isaac or Elizabeth or anybody wanted to come with Jimothy to Hyperion, he was going to say no. He had practiced in the mirror that morning.

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  “We should get going,” he told Hazel. “I’m really excited to see everybody. I bet you are too, huh?” Jimothy intended to pat Hazel, but his hand passed through empty air as Hazel was suddenly over the inky sea in front of Jimothy. Then, even before Hazel had fallen into the sea, he was onshore. Then he was back out over the ink but in a different place, then over Jimothy, then up on the steep banks, then back on the white rock, then a dozen other places all so quickly that Jimothy could hardly see. Hazel pranced and barked wherever he went, unable to contain his enthusiasm.

  Jimothy laughed. “Okay,” he said, “but you shouldn’t chase Callie this time, okay?” He thought for a moment, “Or any of their other angels.” Isaac had told them all in the chat who had what angels. Eric had a dragon? Hazel probably wouldn’t be able to chase that. But what was a Bahamut?

  Jimothy hauled himself to his feet, which was easy enough when he could make a momentary handhold in the air wherever he needed one. He took a minute to admire the two halves of the shoreline: monochrome to his left and Skittles to his right. It was better this way, better even than if the whole shore was colored. “Chiaroscuro,” he told Hazel. “It’s all in the contrast.”

  He struck out from the place he had decided to call the Sea of Ink. The ink on him and his clothes dried out as he walked. He paused frequently to appreciate the view or to colorize something. The view consisted of strange rocks and broad horizons of grass and low bushes. The path wound about like a lazy river, and it had a way of suddenly revealing a gorge or a ravine of surprising size. Bits of color speckled the path to the Skywater door, like scales shed from a molting rainbow dragon as it flew past. Jimothy was at least in no danger of getting lost.

  He also was not in danger of night falling, because he had learned to tell when it was getting close. The shadows around him were perfectly calm. He had a long time before night.

  He saw the huge wolf when he approached the forest. This was the first time he had seen the creature since it killed Niri, and Jimothy froze with fear when he perceived its great mass moving beyond a distant hill. It was silvery gray, and the hills were very pale, and both were furry on top, so Jimothy had not noticed until it moved.

  But if Maugrim had even noticed Jimothy, it showed no sign of it. It crested a hill, came fully into view, and trotted off at a deceptively easy pace. Hazel growled softly, but Jimothy kept his eyes fixed on the retreating wolf. He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until his lungs were already burning and he had to gasp for air.

  The wolf had gone from sight. What was it doing? Hunting? Something that big must eat a lot, but Jimothy had seen no animals for it to hunt. Was it looking for him? No, even a stupid creature would have known to just follow the highly visible trail of color that Jimothy left behind him, and Jimothy doubted that Maugrim was stupid.

  He came to the chasm where he’d found the crystal. There was no bridge here, but he made one out of cerulean light and crossed it without stopping. He passed a large column of rocks he had stacked, each of them far too heavy for him to lift normally. He stopped to look at it, and it occurred to him how remarkable it was that he could just lift heavy things now, including himself. The others could probably do things like this too. What would their abilities be?

  He went to look at the stained-glass window before going to Skywater. He had finished its reassembly. Ten figures of varying size stood in a line, facing away, looking up at something bright in the sky above. Most of the foreground was in shadows, including whatever the ten were standing on, while the sky they were looking at was brighter, and the bright object was fogged in such a way that it would be the brightest part of the window if light were shining through it as intended. The figures were just black outlines, but each one had little bits of color on them. If Jimothy had put it together correctly, then it looked like each figure had their own color, except for three.

  Gods…

  Jimothy moved toward the Skywater door, but a flare of light behind him made him turn back. The ground beneath the stained-glass window flared with light. The entire piece shone. Tiny fractures of illumination spiderwebbing the composition ruined the intended experience, but Jimothy at least got the idea. It had more depth of field and gray scale variation than he’d thought, and the tiny bits of color stuck out prominently. They seemed to glow in the darkness of the surrounding glass.

  Yes…

  Yes. It was good.

  Look…

  “We should show the others,” he told Hazel. “I bet Isaac…” Oh, right. He’d decided not to let anyone else on his moon.

  Orange…

  “Well, maybe I could…um, orange?” Jimothy was suddenly very confused. He’d been thinking about maybe taking a picture or something for the others, but…orange? One of the colors in the window was orange. It was on the third figure from the right.

  Jimothy had cleared a path through the rubble, but the ground was still uneven, so he used his cane to carefully step his way back out of the ruined building.

  Me…

  Yes, him. Jimothy thought he almost remembered something–another dream, maybe? How often did he think about other dreams when he was already inside of a dream? He didn’t know. He didn’t remember. Thinking about that stuff was too complicated and gave him a headache. It was like that movie he’d watched with Isaac and Eric a while back, where they’d kept going into dreams inside of dreams until Jimothy was really confused.

  He came to the door, the one all alone with nothing around or behind it, just like the door up at the top of the lighthouse. He took a deep breath and then pushed the hexagon against it. Light moved around the cracks between door and frame, and even before Jimothy opened it, he could tell the difference. Something hummed on the other side of the door now, something bright and warm and loud and crazy and colorful. The city.

  He gripped his cane in one hand, checked the crystal in the pocket of his jacket with the other, and stumbled through.