We used to do this color exercise in painting class in college. I had some leftover paint one evening, so I decided to play with the colors… 

I started painting as soon as I got home from work and kept it up until I could barely see what I was doing. I sat in my front yard near some browning purple flowers, and invented the background landscape. I started with a layer of quinacridone violet – one of my favorite shades – and then layered yellows, browns, and greens on top of this bright color.

Once I thought of a great idea for a website. You take pictures of clouds — all kinds of clouds — big stormy dark ones, small puffy ones, weird-shaped ones that you’d never believe were real unless you saw them. Then you let people draw what they see in the clouds. Like, if they see a dragon, they draw in where the wings and teeth are. If they see a creep with a knife, they draw that. But you don’t get to see what other people drew until you draw something.

My mistake was I told Dad the idea.

“It’s a great idea, Rae. Try it!” Dad said. He always wants me to act on things. “Do it. Try it.” Right.

So I tried it. I didn’t know how to make the drawing and sharing part work on a website, but I found a free program and my friends came over. They drew on top of my cloud photos while I waited, picking at my blue fingernail polish.

Rhianna thought of some cool things. She’s not exactly an artist, but I could figure out she’d drawn a pirate ship and an alligator. Troy drew a penis. And wrote “SEX” in huge letters on another picture. He thought it was hilarious. I wanted to kill him.

“Are you 16 or 10?” Rhianna asked, and deleted his pictures.

I smiled. Rhianna and I were like twins separated at birth. We looked so much alike that people got our names mixed up all the time.

“Hey!” He lunged for the laptop, but the whole thing was already over.

“You’re such an idiot, Troy.” I rolled my eyes, but he knew I’d forgiven him.

There would never be a cloud website. It was just a stupid thing from when I was a kid, wondering what other people saw in the clouds. If it was the same thing I saw.

That’s what I used to focus on when Mom and Dad were fighting — there were almost always clouds rolling over our house in the flat part of Colorado. And then my house divided into a Boston apartment with Mom during the summer plus a condo with Dad during the school year.

At least when I was with Dad, I still had my old friends around. On July 1st, I’d have to pack up my stuff and get on a plane. Seeing Mom was the only good part about Boston. How can people breathe in a place where you can’t see farther than the next block? The next fenced-in tree?

“I’ll be right back.” I left Rhianna and Troy in my room and opened the bathroom door as I walked past. But I didn’t really have to go. I tiptoed out to the porch. Tonight, there was a mackerel sky. Mom taught me that — it means the sky is mottled with tiny baby clouds so close together that it looks like a maze you have to solve.

My maze was how to reach my baby brother. Aidan. The boy who couldn’t talk, couldn’t play. He stayed with Mom all year and she moved mostly because of an autism specialist in Boston who thought he could learn to speak. I missed him more than anything. Did he miss me?

The dome looked homey enough. Plenty of floor space, furniture that looked brand new and but not too nice to use. “Do you think the other couples are here yet?” Sehna asked her husband. Will shrugged. “The directors should stop by soon. How do I look?”

“Fine.” He’d spent two months talking her into this. They’d never actually make it on the show, it was just a try out! But if they did make it, this could jump-start his career – something beyond voice acting for car commercials.

Sehna was happy for him, she really was. But the idea of a million people watching them every waking moment made her hands shake. What if they were the first couple voted off? What if people laughed at her voice, her clothes, her one chipped tooth?

“Shouldn’t someone else be here by now?” The dome was silent, the road outside empty. Were they the only two people on this lonely asteroid far from Earth?

Will switched on a screen in a little one-person viewing area. Sehna expected to see a friendly face welcoming them, or perhaps a car commercial. Maybe one with her husband’s voice-over. He really was doing quite well with that. His voice was what she fell in love with first, after all.

But no… it was the news. The volume was turned down and Will’s shoulders were blocking most of the screen, but Sehna knew something was wrong when her husband started cough. It was just a small one at first, but then racking coughs that wouldn’t stop. He always coughed when he was trying not to get emotional.

“What? What is it?” She hit buttons on the dome wall until one finally adjusted the volume. “–expected to hit in an hour. Not sure the effect such an impact might have. Citizens of Earth, pray to whatever Gods you believe in.”

And the news anchor started to cry.

—

Will wouldn’t let her watch out the window. Sehna wasn’t even sure their dome had windows you could look out to see the Earth, but she wanted to see it one more time before… before it was gone. She hadn’t even seen it from the rocket on their way here. And now she might never see it again. Might live and die on this asteroid, a reluctant reality TV star without an audience left to laugh.

Oh, she would give anything for an audience now. Even for another contestant. “They must not have made it up before the impact,” Will said in such a matter-of-fact tone that Sehna almost hit him. She’d never hit anyone before.

—

A few days later, after she’d done not much more than sleep, cry, and miss terribly her mother, sister, friends, and even favorite trees and rivers she’d never see again, Sehna finally got up and found Will tending to a tray of dirt.

They’d have to survive, and that meant food. The dome didn’t seem to be well-equipped with things to eat, but there were seeds for a garden.

“The asteroid impact shifted our asteroid’s path,” he told her while she helped water the seeds. “We’re flying out into space now, away from the Sun. Whatever heat we have in this dome now is all we’re going to have.”

Will had already covered all the windows with dark cloth. Sehna didn’t know where he’d found it. She didn’t ask.

—

Cold and hunger filled Sehna’s mind. Dizzy with visions of hot dinner rolls and lasagna and warm sun beating down on a summer lawn, she screamed and pounded her hands against the black, black screen that had showed her the last vision of home.

“Why not me? Why am I here? Why wasn’t I home?” She sobbed while Will stooped over the garden. The things that had grown were so small, so little nourishment. His ribs poked out under his shirt. He didn’t dare go out of the dome.

But she did. He wasn’t watching. What could be worse out there? No air? No gravity? Maybe she’d float away forever, lost in the stars.

Sehna ran for the door, fumbled with the lock.

Will noticed too late – he stood up, “Wait!”

But Sehna wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not anymore.

“Aughh!” she stumbled out into… bright. Blinking, she turned around. A parking lot? Lights?

A hippopotamus blinked at her from a river. It was real, menacing. So she ran, zig-zagged from that river monster and away, sure now that she was hallucinating.

But the parking lot didn’t stop, and she slipped and fell in a muddy puddle, then she saw the faces, heard laughter.

“What a great ending for the season! CUT!”

Will stepped out of the dome, shook the director’s hand. “She believed it all,” he whispered.

Sehna picked herself up, soaked her hand in the cool, real, earth-mud. Then she walked over to her husband and hit him as hard as she could.

The hippopotamus opened its mouth in a wide grin. Sehna smiled back. “It’s good to be home.”

Photo by Tommy Wong, Wikimedia Commons

It was a sunny day speckled with clouds and caressed with gentle breezes; the perfect day for swimming and diving and chasing seagulls. One big gray one tried to eat Anu’s egg salad and pickle sandwich, but she shouted at him with her biggest voice, holding her sand shovel out like a magic wand, “I will turn you into a pickle!”

Two little boys wearing identical swim trunks laughed and held up their own shovels. “You’re a pickle!” “No, you’re a refrigerator!” “Well you’re a pickle-head!”

Anu smiled and ate two more bites of her sandwich, eating around the outside in a circle like she always did. There wasn’t much time for eating–she had castles to build. And then she would find a mermaid. And then find every spotted stone on the beach and pile them all together.

“I’m building a castle,” she told the boys, and walked back toward the tower. She knew they’d follow.

“I’m going to dig a moat so deep that you’ll fall in and no one will ever find you again!” The boy with darker hair teased his brother.

They worked on the castle while clouds drifted overhead and waves sparkled and something small and beady-eyed watched them from the waves.

“She is perfect,” said the largest water-pixie, who wasn’t much bigger than a seagull’s beak. “She has a weapon already.”

“Not the boys? They show more aggression,” said the second pixie, swishing her silver tail. The dark-haired boy had pushed his brother into the moat, splashing Anu’s tower.

Anu stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Swimming in the moat is not allowed! It’s full of angry alligators and sand-snakes that bite!”

The boys backed off, looking around for snakes.

“You’re right. She’s the one.”

Image courtesy of Daniel Schwen and Wikimedia Commons.

The world is coming unwrapped. Blue sneaks in through the cracks, bringing wisps of wind and tick-tocks of rain. Sometimes it seems I am the only one who loves the edges. The rest ignore the bars, and some wish they always stayed closed, locking out the unknown brightness.

I wonder. What if the world wasn’t always wrapped up? What if the bars used to be so far apart you could step right through?

“Hey, Ezzy.” Flin’s standing behind me with a group of walkers. He’s so tall I have to twist my head around and up to look into his eyes.

“Hello,” I greet him politely, but inside I’m wishing he would take his friends and walk somewhere else. They’re supposed to watch the edges for things trying to get in, not kids looking out.

“Get out of here.” He’s not meeting my eyes. I’m just a minor annoyance. An anomaly of a kid who won’t leave a mystery alone.

“You get out.” I grumble.

“Oh-oh-oh!” Flin shakes his head slowly. “Hey, Gina, what happens if Ezzy won’t go?”

Gina shrugs. “Toilet duty for three weeks if we’re nice. Otherwise…”

“You ever put your hand through?” I ask before she can name an even stupider punishment for me doing nothing wrong.

“That’s crazy! She’s crazy.” Flin laughs and looks around at his group, but they’re not laughing. Gina and a little skinny boy I don’t know look worried.

“Go ahead, dare me!” I hold a hand near a gap in the bars, a gap just big enough.

“What if they close suddenly?” The skinny boy’s voice shakes. “They’re always closing, SNAP, and your hand falls right off! Like happened to that crazy guy.”

I know what happened. He wasn’t paying attention – he didn’t know the patterns. I do. The bars won’t close for another ten minutes at least.

“I’ll do it,” I say, expecting them to walk on, walk away.

“Ok. Go ahead.” Flin smirks. He doesn’t think I will.

“No – don’t. Come on, let’s go.” Gina and the skinny boy start to leave, but Flin stares into my eyes.

I wonder what it feels like out there. It is warmer or colder? Does the air sting? Is there food? Other people? Or just what we can see through the bars – parched earth and sky stretching on and on?

I’m not afraid. I lift my arm and hold my fingers out toward an open space. Gina shrieks and hides her face, but I can tell she’s still peeking out between her fingers. She can’t help it – she wants to know. We all want to know, deep down, even if we pretend not to.

I move my hand out, pushing through the emptiness into the unknown.

CREAK! The bars shift.

“AAHHH!” The skinny boy screams, and for a second I’m afraid I misjudged it, the bars are closing, I’ll lose my hand…

But my hand is still there, still hovering outside, and the bars are opening, not closing. The space is big enough now for another hand, maybe a foot.

My heartbeat speeds up. I forget I have an audience.

Please, open all the way! I beg. I pull my hand back and move my face towards the opening.

“No!” Gina lunges forwards to pull me back, but Flin stops her.

“Shhh. I wanna see what happens!”

The air outside is cool on my face. Fresh and free. The bars open wider.

I wonder if they’ll come with me, but I doubt it. This is my adventure.

Tee-hee. I love to see mischief afoot… it sends quivers to my wingtips and tingles to my twelve toes. All pixies love trouble, and we especially love trouble when it happens to our people.

My people are Mr. Weintrub and his roly-poly wife Corine, two of the plain-est, boring-est, trouble-free-est people in the entire world. And I’m stuck living in the back of their kitchen cupboard, grudgingly accepting the bowl of milk they leave for me every evening, unable to play even the slightest little baby trick because of the stupid pixie code. Milk means no trouble.

But look! See the teeny-tiny fish? Just an hour ago there were two four pound trout in that basket: one for the supper table and one to sell. Usually Mr. Weintrub catches five or six, but the weather’s cooling and the fish are sluggish. He was happy with the two and so was Corine.

Their backs were turned when the change happened, but I saw everything. I saw it all through the crack in the cupboard, and it was all I could do not to shower the whole room in sparkles of pixie laughter.

“Mr. Weintrub?” a voice inquired from the doorway. A high-pitched, hungry, pleading voice.

“Yes?” Corine went to the door, her huge hands balanced on her even huger hips.

It was a girl-child, all ragged and shivering. She looked normal enough, but I’m a pixie. I know trouble when I see it. It’s in the eyes. Hers seemed to be unassuming blue, but I could see the sparks of red and orange sneaking out around the edges.

“No. I need to talk to Mr. Weintrub.”

“You can speak to me, sweetie. What is it?”

The red orange grew brighter, and I wondered where Mr. Weintrub had gone fishing today. He hadn’t crossed the sound to the forbidden islands, had he? He couldn’t have been that stupid?

Then I saw the drops of water trailing off behind the child, the way the water reflected all sorts of lights and flame that weren’t really there.

Oh, yes, he’d been fishing in the wrong place… tee hee!

“It’s important.” The child frowned in the way normal children do, with her lip stuck out and quivering, but really she was fuming. Small plumes of smoke–the kind only other magical creatures can see–rose from her ears.

Corine called for her husband, and he left the fish unattended on the table. He even stopped by my cupboard to grab a crust of bread for the girl. He wasn’t planning to give her one of those prize fish, oh no.

When the girl saw the bread, I knew exactly what was coming!

“Oh. Thank you sir,” she said. “Your boat has a leak. That’s all I meant to say.”

A leak? I thought. More like a gaping hole, I’m sure. Then…

POOF – those two big, beautiful fish are no longer in the basket. Instead, two tiny minnows.

I leapt and jumped and did somersaults in the air, and yes, a few pixie laughter-sparks escaped and showered the inside of the cupboard.

Ah, it was beautiful!

Unsuspecting Mr. Weintrub returned to the kitchen, concerned about his boat, but thinking he’d done a poor child a good turn. Corine was all proud, too. “Did you see her face, dear? I bet no one’s been so kind to that child in weeks. Perhaps we should set aside a basket of… oh!”

Corine lifted one of the tiny minnows by the tail and stared. She may be fat but she’s not stupid.

“Where did you get these fish?”

Mr. Weintrub sputtered and spouted, he grumbled and grumped. He didn’t want to admit where he’d gone.

Oh, I couldn’t bear it any longer!

I flew from the cupboard and hovered just behind Mr. Weintrub’s head, where I could steal his voice and say what he was trying not to.

“The forbidden islands,” we said together. Ah, the troubled look on both their faces washed over me like a cloudy-rainy day!

Finally, a bit of trouble in the lives of my too-normal people. And from the look of it, there will be more to come. It’s high time for my dish of milk, and the Weintrub’s seem to have completely forgotten…

No milk means… trouble time!

“You really think there’s gold behind a wall of ice?” whispered one voice.

“There’s something.” The second voice was less cautious. A deep breath, and the owner struck the ice again with an axe. A green light flashed from his belt, his GPS charting their location.

“Something…” The first voice said no more, but he was thinking hard. Trying to remember the stories told by his grandmother that she learned from her grandmother all the way back to a time before history.

He remembered tales of fairies and gods, of times of the year good for adventure, and times of year to stay home. And a niggling memory in the back of his mind whispered something about a cave of ice, and a warning.

You shall not disturb her slumber. The ice cave is alive, and breathing with a throat full of flame. To enter there is to unlock hell itself.

That was the memory trying to break through, but like the dragon it was buried, sleeping in the back of the man’s mind, unaware of his dogged search.

He had been prospecting for years, seeking coal strains and diamonds and much stranger ores for anyone who would pay him. He seemed to have a knack for finding things hidden beneath the Earth. It was as if the stones spoke to him, so they called him the Cave Whisperer.

And for every cache he revealed for pay, there were two more he let rest. For he understood that his gift came from the Earth, and to steal too much of her bounty was to destroy Her, and betray the old gods.

His grandmother hadn’t taught him that, but the law had persisted unspoked through the generations anyway, as if it were an expression of his genetics.

This job was the strangest by far. The Cave Whisperer looked hard at his companion, his employer. He had a thick white beard and a shaved head. The muscles in his back and arms bulged under writhing tattoos of mythical beasts–three-headed snakes, gryphons, dragons, and others the Cave Whisperer couldn’t name. Mr. Delphus had asked for gold at first, but he refused to look in the regular places.

“I know the spot,” he insisted. “I just need to know where to dig.”

So they came to this place, this beautiful, pristine womb of the mother Earth, and the Cave Whisperer knew at once there was no gold. He said as much to Mr. Delphus, who only shrugged.

“Just tell me where it is.”

“Where what is?”

“The power. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it.” Then his cell phone chirped and he spoke in a foreign language for ten minutes.

Yes, the Cave Whisperer felt it. He’d felt it the minute they stepped into this alien world, and had known, deep down, that they should leave. It wasn’t gold or diamonds, it was older than that. It was some treasure of the Earth man had yet to uncover.

His grandmother had known what it was, and if she were still alive, she would have warned him, “Best to leave this one to the Earth.”

But Mr. Delphus went on ahead and the Cave Whisperer followed. When he felt the pull the strongest, he kept walking, hoping Mr. Delphus wouldn’t notice. They were quite a distance away when he said it was a good spot to dig.

A long distance, but only as long as two or three city blocks, not a whole city.

Tap, tap, TAP, TAP!

Inside the ice, a single golden eye snapped open. Intet was waking, and she was hungry.

The images that inspired this story can be found here.