Nothing.

  I could see nothing.

  My eyes had been closed for so long that I had begun to doubt that I had ever truly seen anything at all. My children, my boys, I could remember how each of their perfect faces had looked before life had turned them into men, but it had been so long ago that the memories felt akin to a dream.

  Dreams were only real in the darkness of the mind.

  I could not reminisce about how they had once been. I had to remember them as they were, lest they become dreams themselves.

  Nothing.

  There had been sound in the beginning, but once it had faded, nothing had taken its place.

  It had been so long since I had heard anything but my own thoughts, that I could no longer remember what a song sounded like. Before, I had loved music. More nights of my life than not, I had spent dancing or being sung to sleep. After, all that was left was a deafening silence.

  There was no rhythm or melody to take me, no lullaby to bring me peace.

  I could not think about the cold quiet for long, lest my thoughts join with it and the little I had became nothing.

  Nothing.

  I could feel nothing.

  My body had been held frozen for so long, that I was sure I had turned to stone. If I had not, then I had nobody at all. I was nowhere and had no way of knowing if I would ever be somewhere again. Numbness was all there was and I only knew I was numb from the memories of being able to feel.

  Memories of nursing my children, carrying them on my hips, picking them up when they had fallen, all nearing the point of becoming dreams.

  I could not let them fade. I needed to remember them as they were. I needed to let them hurt me the way they should.

  The thought I could feel nothing, was a lie.

  It was a lie I told to shield myself from the pain of what I could feel because feeling nothing was favorable compared to the pain of the mortal wound in my broken soul.

  I let the ache and longing for my long grown boys bring the loneliness I felt to my mind.

  A memory of Caerulus’s song, the sleepy lullaby she had written just for me, rang in my ears and I accepted how terribly I wished to hear it again.

  Alexei, Radomir, Jaka. I thought about each of them as they had been the last time I had been with them. My eldest, so little of the brash child he had been left in his one white eye. My middle child, torn between his brothers and content to hide away in his studies.

  My youngest, my baby boy, the one who would have turned my hair white if it had not already been. . .

  Gone.

  I did not want to see anything. I did not want to hear anything. I did not want to feel anything.

  So, I told myself the nothing lie once again and hoped that I would be stronger the next time I began to dream.

  Nothing. . .

  The pitter-patter of my tears falling onto the final page of Katarina's book was all that let me know I had come back to myself. It took me a long time to remember that I had eyes to open and a body to move. When that knowledge returned to my numbed mind, I carefully placed the book on the floor in front of me and laid down on my side. Nothing had happened in the second memory, but the way she had been hurt.

  I felt her hurt and I hurt for her. Whatever had happened to her, wherever The Mother in Blue truly was, death seemed like a better fate.

  My tears ran out eventually and for a brief moment, I considered trying to leave. I had not yet viewed a third memory, but Anna would be all too excited with what I had seen to care.

  I took a deep breath and reached my hand out to flip to an earlier page in the book.

  "One more." I sighed as I fell into Katarina once again.

  After waiting patiently for my son to do what I had asked him to, he did not.

  If it had been his younger brother, It would have taken me aback. The shock of his unusual disobedience would have forced me off the sun warmed blanket I rested atop and sent me to check his temperature with the back of my hand.

  If it had been his youngest brother, I would have wondered why it had taken until well after noon to defy me.

  “Why do we not have a father?” Alexei asked in the straightforward way that he was incapable of speaking without.

  I turned to him and hid my disappointment that he had still not . “Is your question a distraction from our work or are you truly curious?”

  “I want to know.” He insisted as he looked down at a lone dandelion that had dared to poke its head above the grass.

  He kicked it into a puff of white cotton and the gentle breeze carried the bloomless florets down towards the woods that led back to Lun. The deep scowl on his face was far too serious for his innocence. He was truly troubled by what he had asked me. Fortunately, I was his mother, and I would not leave him to be carried off by the wind like the disturbed dandelion.

  “I am great, my little moon, but not that great. Of course you and your brothers have a father.” I answered him.

  “Then where is he? Ferik and Lom’s father is the captain of the town guards. Heath could not come to the Knight’s ball because he was going to some big market on the coast with his father. Is he evil like Jasna’s? Is that why he is not around?” Alexei said, his voice cracking as his volume rose.

  His white irises gave way to his beautiful blue as he ranted and I found a way to solve both of his issues at once.

  “You are much too young to worry about those things. We will wait until Jaka is old enough to understand and then I will tell all of you.” I said dismissively as I laid back on the blanket and enjoyed the wonderful spring day.

  Terribly fast and totally silent, he loomed over me not a moment later with true anger shining blue in his eyes.

  “I know what you are trying to do,” He growled. “Just tell me. I don’t even know his name.”

  “Let it out, Alexei. Then we will talk.”

  A tear spilled from the corner of his eyes and ran down his cheek. And he spoke with an honesty that most boys lose once they become men. “I’m scared. I don’t want to be sad again. I hate it.”

  I sat up and wiped the tear away gently with my thumb. “Do not hate it, my little moon. It is a part of you. You must not attempt to bury it so.”

  It was not fair that what cursed him was the same power that was a blessing to me, but it could not be helped. My place as his mother was to show him how to cope with what was, not wishing for what could not be.

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  He was close. I could see it on his face. All he needed was for me to give him another little push.

  “If you can cut them all down before I count to one hundred, I will invite Jasna to stay for dinner. You would like that, yes? I see the way you look at her.” I said with a wry smile.

  In my long life, I had never found a better way to embarrass a boy than to mention the name of who he liked and bring attention to the fact that he liked her.

  “I don’t like her!” He huffed as he turned away from me and stomped off towards the small army I had set up for him.

  I stood and followed, but stayed far enough away to give him his space.

  Haymen, little more than sacks stuffed with straw in the shape of a person, littered the hillside and the valley below. It had taken the town guards all night to set them up, and I was glad that they were not there to see how quickly they would be knocked down.

  The aura that jetted back from my eldest son’s right hand was a much darker shade of blue than my own. When I saw it flatten the grass underneath his left foot, I knew my push had been just the right amount.

  I supposed that most parents thought the same of their own children, but all three of my sons were special. Radomir’s mind was as brilliant as he was timid. Jaka was. . . I had never truly found the right words, but there was not a soul in all of chaos that was like him.

  Alexei was many things, but what was most remarkable in matters of his aura, was his speed.

  My little moon had inherited my balance. When he lowered himself into a starting stance, it brought a smile to my face because I doubted that even I could have been so graceful.

  “One!” I called out to him and began my counting.

  Before I could bring my tongue to the roof of my mouth to call out the number two, he was gone.

  All my eyes could see was a blue blur tearing down the grassy hill and the destruction that was left behind it. Clouds of hay, torn fabric, and splinters of wooden stakes were thrown into the air like they were being assaulted with cannon fire. In one deadly sprint, he tore down the hillside before splitting along its bottom and unmaking any of the hayman that crossed his path.

  I never started counting again. There was no doubt in my mind that he would leave the hillside in ruin without needing half the time I had offered.

  Besides, I had already asked Jasna to stay and eat with us. After all she had been through, I did not mind playing the role of her mother while she found her footing.

  I would not tell Alexei that. He would actually deem it worthy to bathe if the girl he liked would be sitting next to him at the dinner table. Thinking that his efforts had made it so, he might even brush his hair.

  The light of his aura began to fade the moment after he had torn apart the last of his straw enemies. Down the grassy hillside, through the scattered remnants of the haymen, and over the banks of his blue dust that glittered in the afternoon sun, I went to him.

  "Did I," His back was turned to me, but I could tell by his stifle that he was weeping. "Do it in time?"

  "You could have defeated twice as many and still had a moment to catch your breath." I said softly as I approached him. The last of his power still circled his wrist and ankle. He would need another push to let go of his sorrow. Once one took on that weight, it became nearly impossible for them to cast it off.

  I knew that better than anyone.

  "How many did I? He asked as he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  "An even three hundred. Twice as many as last time," I lied. It had only been two hundred and fifty, but that difference would mean more to him than the truth would. "What is troubling you, my little moon. You can tell me."

  He sniffled again. "It's just that she spends so much time with Rado and Jaka. What if she likes them more than she likes me?"

  I laughed, but took special care to not make it sound like it was at his expense. "She is their babysitter. She spends time with them so I can spend time with you. There is nothing to worry about. Your brothers are much too young to challenge you in that way."

  I gave him a moment to think before I pushed him again.

  "Your father is a swordsman." I began as I sat down in the tall grass behind him.

  With a final wipe of his nose and one last sniff, the aura around him fell away and he turned around to face me. Gone was the blue in his eyes, and with his irises white once again, he looked all too much like the man who had helped me make him.

  "I am going to marry her. When I get older and become your knight, I am going to marry her and we are going to have three sons like you. Except, I'm going to be around like Heath's father." Alexei said, his voice hard and full of certainty.

  I believed him. Afterglow or not, my eldest son did not have a habit of lying the way my youngest did.

  I believed him, and that was what made what I had to tell him so difficult.

  "Sit, please," I asked him as I patted the grass beside me. He listened and I continued. "You could marry her, if that is what she wants, but you will not be allowed to have children."

  "Why? You are The Mother in Blue. If you say I can, who is going to say no?" He snapped, as if he had spent all of his thirteen years of life thinking about becoming a father.

  I hid the weight that had settled over me with a laugh. "Jasna might."

  "Not if I'm your knight. Not if I can protect her." He insisted.

  Truly, I loved how certain he became during his afterglows. They were a far cry from the pain of my own.

  "So, you do like her then?" I asked.

  He shook his head violently at my words. "Why won't you let me be a father?"

  "It is not I, my little moon," I sighed. "There are some things beyond me. There are some things beyond all of The Mothers. Both of you have power. It is forbidden for a sorcerer, which you are by definition, and a sorceress to conceive a child. That very reason is why I had to travel so far to find your father."

  "Who says?" Alexei asked, staring into my eyes with intense curiosity.

  Before I could find the right words to knit together into a lie he would believe, lost in the long dormant feelings that my son's questions had brought back to life within me, his focused white eyes fell out of my sight.

  The afternoon sun darkened, and all the towering evergreens at the base of the hill vanished. Before I could speak again, darkness took me and I felt myself fall. . .

  The low rumble of my familiar's deep voice met my ears as I came back to myself in full. “What is your name?”

  “Autumn Aubrey!” I shouted as I threw myself out of the once warm bathwater.

  "Who is Autumn Aubrey?"

  All of me was shriveled and shivering. I answered through my chattering teeth as I wrapped myself in every towel that was in the bathroom of Anna and I's quarters.

  "Who was Autumn Aubrey?" Sam asked his final question.

  "Katarina," I began as I threw a towel over my head and rubbed my hair dry. "Kat. Frostdancer. The Mother in Blue. Alexei, Radomir, and Jaka's mother."

  I continued as I dried off, telling my familiar everything I could remember as fast as I could. My body was sore and heavy, I was beyond tired and I knew the memory of the memories would fade much too quickly. As long as I could get it from my lips to his furry ears, it would not be forgotten.

  The sound of the bathroom door opening came just as I finished drying my hair.

  Anna.

  "I am unsure if you are aware how amazing I am," I said and threw the used towel down onto the stone floor. It felt like it had been a long time since I had returned with The Well with anything useful, and I was going to enjoy telling Anna all about it. "but you are about to."

  When I turned around to look at her, she was not there. The door was wide open and she was not there.

  "Anna?" I said aloud, looking all around the bathroom for any sign of her.

  Sam was gone.

  Anna was not there, the door was wide open, and Sam was gone.

  "Sam?" I called for my familiar as I left the bathroom and found the door to our quarters open as well.

  I stuck my head through the door just in time to see the blue fur of his tail disappear around the corner at the end of the hall.

  "Stupid cat." I said through a terrible yawn that brought me onto the tips of my toes. He was probably off to commit some violent act upon whatever creature he could sink his claws into first.

  I shut the door and locked it before turning around and finding where Anna actually was.

  One of her legs dangled off her side of the bed. All of the lights were still on. Three empty bottles of wine sat empty on the floor next to her, her foot resting atop one of them. The bed was still made and a book lay open over her face. So soft that if I had not heard it before, I would have thought I imagined it, the rise and falling sound of her snoring escaped through the pages against her face.

  Anna never fell asleep before I did.

  The rarest of opportunities had fallen right into my lap.

  I got the chance to take care of her.

  As gently as I could, I brought her leg to the top of the bed where it belonged and moved all three empty bottles to where they could not be knocked over. With my breath held, I took the book from her face and carefully placed it face down by the fireplace so she would not lose her place.

  The lights were the last to go and I had nearly completed my quiet caring when I stepped onto the cast off dress I had worn early that day.

  It slipped under my feet and I felt myself falling towards the floor in the darkness.

  By some stroke of sheer luck however, I found my balance before I could crash to the floor and get hurt or make a sound.

  She had not woken. My opportunity had not been squandered.

  I crawled into bed next to her with a smile on my face, knowing that I had done for her what she would have done for me and that her morning would begin with very good news.