All That Is Red Read online

  The little girl beckoned me, motioning me to the river. Compelled to follow, I found myself in the river. We waited. We all did. I held my breath and watched the water where it grabbed at my ankles. I waited for the iciness of the White to disperse and for the White to wash off me as well. I waited to feel, but nothing happened.

  Suddenly, I ran out of the river, as if its waters had burnt me, and for all I knew they could have and I wouldn’t have even felt it. I wanted to cry; to feel my eyes burn with tears, but I couldn’t. Instead, I was forced to stand there numb and cold, as the White gripped at me. I couldn’t escape it.

  I felt the girl’s hand on my shoulder. Her graceful feet made no noise against the colorless sands of the riverbank and it came as a surprise when I felt her fingers touch my shoulder. In her eyes, a mixture of fear and worry swam about, as she wordlessly took my hands in her own small, childlike ones.

  I touched cold metal in a sheath of the softest leather and I tasted bitter irony in the fact that such an innocent girl could be holding such a horror; a weapon that had the potential to destroy life. When I looked down upon the blade, its beauty astonished me.

  “It’s beautiful.” The girl softly placed her fingers on lips, silencing me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the blade. With perfect symmetry and alignment, its edge was a flawless creation of mankind.

  A jolt ran through me, as I saw an image on the surface of the blade. I looked past the silvery gray to a pale figure with a blanched face. Its thin straggly hair grabbed at the face it held drowning in the White air around it. The whites of its eyes were large and bloodshot. Suspended in them were two pinpoints of black, seemingly captured and trapped amongst all the White. I snatched my hands away from the blade and if it hadn’t been for the little girl’s hands beneath my own, I would have dropped it in fright. Bubbling and fighting fruitlessly against what I did not know, a scream was trapped in my throat.

  “You saw something.” The girl’s words weren’t a question.

  “Take it away from me,” I said, my words coming out strangled. Though I begged, she only pushed it further into my hands.

  “Take it.” She closed my fingers over the sheath and I felt my joints protest in earnest.

  “Take it. The choice is yours and will always be yours. It has always been yours,” she said. “Only you can help yourself. You know that. But, right now, they need your help more than you know.”

  I stared back at her, expecting her to elaborate. I silently wondered who ‘they’ were.

  “You are the one,” she stated, as the corners of her mouth quirked upwards. “A small one needs your assistance. We all do.” The little girl looked up at the boy and he gazed back with understanding eyes, clearly comprehending something that I did not. They seemed to communicate with that one gaze and, eventually, the boy simply nodded, as if an agreement had been reached.

  “Are you sure?” The boy asked her.

  “Yes.”

  Relieved at the escape, my eyes darted from the blade. I knew the girl was right. The choice to cut or not to cut was mine and always had been; but that did not mean that I knew which choice to make or even what her final words meant.

  The choice to harm myself was mine, but it was the only way I knew how to feel, and I had to feel whatever the cost to me.

  “You must do whatever you can-” the girl said, breaking me from my thoughts, but the boy interrupted her.

  “I understand.”

  “Even if that means-”

  “I do understand.” The boy reaffirmed.

  “Then you know where you must immediately take her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” I asked, but my voice sounded on deaf ears. Both the boy and the little girl refused to answer.

  As the boy and I bid her farewell, the girl helped me fasten the sheath, so that it fell against my side. With every step, I was reminded of my decisions; the decisions in the past and my future decisions, of which I had yet to imagine.

  “Remember to lead with your heart. All the best decisions come from there.” Those were the last words the little girl said to me.

  With the Red river on one side of me and the boy on the other, my legs carried me on forever. He and I seldom talked, but the silence seemed meaningful. It didn’t stifle us; but rather, it was a voiceless conversation between him and me. Nonetheless, when we did talk, it was more substantial than those empty dialogues that usually pass for conversations. Our conversation was weightless and flowed from our mouths into the air between us.

  “What are you trying to find here?” I asked the boy.

  “What do you mean?” he replied, though he knew well enough what I meant.

  “You know what I mean.” When I voiced this, he just stared at me blankly. I met his gaze as evenly as I could and refused to let it go.

  “You asked me what I wanted and I answered you in all honesty, but you didn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t need anything,” he answered steadily.

  “I didn’t ask you what you need. I asked you what you want.”

  He shook his head with a small boyish grin. “I have no need; therefore, I have no want.”

  “You may say that to everyone else, but I don’t believe it.”

  “Maybe you should.” The boy’s wry grin grew into a brilliant smile that brought light to his sober expression and smoothed the harsh lines on his face.

  I exhaled at the sight of his unexpected smile. To say he was beautiful was an understatement. His form was flawless. Every angle of his anatomy seemed to be measured out in perfect proportion and every shadow of his body seemed precisely calculated.

  “And if I can’t?”

  I saw another side to the boy, one that was more child than it was adult. He loved to banter back and forth and took evident pleasure in it. And just when I thought the smile on his face couldn’t get any wider, it did.

  “Then maybe you know me a bit better.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, but I couldn’t leave the subject. I knew there was something that he wanted more than anything else, something he wanted as much as I wanted to feel.

  “I know you well enough that I can tell you want something desperately. You want it so much you actually feel like you need it.”

  The boy went mute and refused to look at me. I knew I had hit on something.

  “You’re searching for it, but you don’t quite know what it looks like.” Surprised, the boy looked up. His boyish smile was gone and he had Red tears welling in his eyes.

  “That’s why you helped me,” I whispered softly. I wondered before why he had stood by me, but I had never really connected it with his wants.

  “I don’t know who I am ... That’s what I want. I want my identity, my name.”

  And that was how we came to begin our journey together. One wanted to feel and the other wanted a name. Together we were alone no longer, yet we both still felt desperately separated from humanity.

  CHAPTER 4

  I don’t remember how long we walked. It could have been for days or just minutes, but what I do remember is that I felt uncommonly at ease with the nameless boy. Even though I had no idea what we were walking toward, walking with him seemed to be the most natural thing to do. Neither of us followed the other. We just let the river direct us.

  I was the first to spot the strange man. He seemed to be in his late thirties and had Red stubble spanning his face. The stubble matched his Red hair, which gave him an appearance not unlike the boy’s. None of this struck me as much as how we found him: he sat in the middle of the river, its Red waters at his chest, and all he did was laugh.

  Even as we walked closer, the man didn’t appear to notice the boy and me. We stood at the edge of the riverbank and I wondered if we should approach him. Thankfully, the boy made that decision for me and I followed him, as he started wading into the blood Red water.

  “Sir,” the boy started. His voice was filled with hesitance, but he continued wading tow
ard the peculiar man.

  The man grunted an incomprehensible reply and proceeded to break into hysterical laughter. With every guffaw, his body heaved backwards, closer to the water, until a final laugh completely toppled him over. In that instant, his head went in after his body and he disappeared through the film of Red.

  Panicked, the boy and I scrambled through the dark water trying to grope for the man’s form. We were both thoroughly drenched with Red when at last we heaved the man out onto the shore. I turned the man’s face toward me to check his breath and an uncontrollable gasp escaped me.

  The man had a face on each side of his head: three in total. They were all identical and they were all unconscious.

  I glanced up at the boy, who had been drawn to my side by my gasp. He hovered at my shoulder, looking at the three-faced man in the same way that I had.

  “We can’t leave him,” he said, echoing my thoughts.

  “We’ll just have to wait until he comes to.”

  Luckily, it wasn’t long until the man regained consciousness and soon he was sitting upright with support from the boy.

  “Are you ... all okay?” the boy asked, changing his original question when he saw the man’s two other faces.

  “Don’t know about the other two, but I’m fine,” the middle face replied with a smile.

  “Of course you are!” the face to the left growled. “It’s not the first time you pulled something like this. Now don’t associate with the humans.”

  “That’s not nice, Ralph. It’s also not nice to point fingers at people,” the middle face chided with a chuckle. “Besides, they just saved our life.”

  “It’s not nice to almost drown us all either, Ralph.”

  Before the left and middle faces could argue further, the right intervened. “I’m so sorry my brothers are like this.” He sniffed, as if holding back tears. “We’re Ralph,” the right face said, holding out one of the brother’s two hands.

  The boy and I both shook his hand in turn. When it was my turn, I didn’t know which face to look at, so I tried to smile at all of Ralph’s faces.

  “We’re all very much obliged for your help. If you hadn’t been there ...” The right face broke down crying.

  “You’re always too sentimental,” the one on the left snarled.

  “Oh, I think it’s adorable,” the middle face happily added.

  “So, why are you here?” the boy interrupted, cleverly changing the subject and avoiding another disagreement. He sat down in the tall Red grass and his head was the only part of him I could see.

  “The same reason you’re here, I suppose,” the center face cryptically answered, a smile playing on his lips.

  “My brothers and I are hunted by the unfeelings. The Pure One saw something, a vision you can call it, and in it, a man with many sides helps the human who’ll champion the cause.”

  “The Pure One?” I asked. All three of Ralph’s faces rotated in my direction with a turn of his neck. I looked over at the boy and his face was blank.

  “The Utmost One?” The left face tried. “The Innocent One? The leader of the White?” I shook my head, confusedly.

  “You should know The Pure One,” The right face said. “Look around you. You’re in its domain.” My eyes followed Ralph’s outstretched hands.

  “It’s just blank. White.”

  “Exactly. It’s the absence of everything. Even nothing.”

  I tried to object, or to ask how something could be nothing, and not even nothing itself, but Ralph’s left face interrupted.

  “As I was saying, that’s why The Pure One ordered the White guards, the unfeelings, to execute any man who fits the description of many sided,” the sad face added. “Trigons seem to be at the top of the list.” He seemed beyond nervous, as his voice cracked. I wanted to ask who the unfeelings were, but I didn’t want to upset Ralph further, so made a mental note to ask the boy later.

  “I wish we were the ones to bring an end to The Pure One’s rule, but we’re not. Not that that’ll keep them from killing us,” the left face said. “There were more of us before the killings started. We Trigons didn’t join the Red cause when The Pure One took over. We thought if we didn’t choose sides, we could stay out of all of this entirely and live peacefully.”

  “And we did ... live peacefully that is ... until The Pure One’s vision. Since then, its guards have hunted every one of us. The killings drove hoards of Trigons to seek protection from the Red cause. We might be one of the last Trigons left. We don’t know.” The right face sniffled. “We just had to run away when our family was taken. Since then, we’ve been wandering from place to place.”

  “Oh, don’t be a crybaby. We’ll hide from the unfeelings until a Red rebellion starts and then we’ll die with honor.” At these words, there was an audible gulp from the crying face.

  “There’s bound to be a rebellion soon,” the enthusiastic center face said. “We can’t stand for this.”

  “And yet we do,” the boy replied softly. Those were his first words in a long time. The tall Red grass in front of his lips bowed and swayed with his breath.

  I had forgotten that the boy belonged to this world. He had more in common with the three-faced man than he did with me. I had gotten used to his presence, but his words reminded me of the truth.

  As I walked toward the riverbank, I thought over the things I had just heard from Ralph. I decided that whatever or whomever The Pure One was, it or they, had to be stopped in some way; it was wrong to kill people like the Trigons; like Ralph. If they were at all like Ralph, they were harmless. I put my feet into the crimson waters of the river and drew shapes on the water’s surface with the tips of my fingers. I tried to imagine what The Pure One was like and how it could mindlessly issue orders to end lives, but as I reached the edge of my imagination, I realized I just couldn’t.

  I heard the three-faced man and the boy’s voices murmuring behind me. It was the same sort of conversation that the boy had with the girl who had given me the blade. Mysterious and undecipherable. I felt like an outsider, which, I had to remind myself, I was in this place. I knew nothing of this world or what Ralph was talking about. I didn’t mind it much though. I didn’t feel the need to be a part of what they were talking about. It sounded important and I was sure it was, but I didn’t think it concerned me, so I was happy to stay out. Rather, I wanted someone to find a way into my thoughts. I wanted so desperately to have a person I could trust and tell everything to without having to worry what they would think of me, but in the end everyone has their own opinions of me. That’s how I learned to keep to myself.

  As I dipped my fingers into the river and pulled out ruby drops, I noticed something strange starting to happen. The river water was becoming milky.

  “Th ... the water!” I managed to choke out. “It’s turning White!”

  Just as those words left my lips, I felt something knocking the air out of my lungs. It rammed into me and smothered me to the ground.

  My body lay aching and I felt something heavy on top of it. I gulped in air to yell for help, but a hand was firmly clasped over my mouth. From my position, all I could see was the Red earth and the base of the tall Red grass. I could smell the Red all around me, but it was of little comfort. I could only keep still and listen to the voices around me.

  “Another Trigon ... How many of your kind are there?” a voice as chilled as December mockingly sneered. The voice was flat and low, but it was as piercing as hard metal.

  “Not as many now, due to your kind,” I heard the left face growl at what I assumed was one of the unfeelings. The unfeeling let out an icy chuckle.

  “Then you should thank us.”

  This was met with a chorus of laughs, equally chilling as the first. They blended together eerily, both echoing each other and simultaneously appearing to form one unified body. I guessed there must have been around five or six of the unfeelings, but there could have easily been more.

  “We’ve chatted enough,” one of t
he unfeelings said. “I think it’s time to take our guest to see his most gracious host.”

  I heard snickers along with the clink of metal, and I shuddered to think what might become of the poor Trigon.

  As quickly as they arrived, the unfeelings were gone, taking the three-faced man with them. Moments after that, the hand on my mouth loosened and the weight on my back rolled away. I sat up to see the boy had been the one to knock me to the ground. Again, he had stayed with me; protected me, though I had not helped him when he had suffered. The guilt in the pit of my stomach felt heavier than the blade at my side.

  “Why did you do that?” I had intended it to be a simple question, but it left my mouth sounding harsh and judgmental.

  “I tried but ... it was too late,” the boy said glancing in the direction the unfeelings might have gone.

  Although that hadn’t been my original question, it left me with more feelings of guilt. The fact that the boy had thought of saving a stranger, when he was in danger himself, amazed me.

  “Where did they go?” I asked.

  “The Pure One’s city.” He pointed forward, toward where the White sky met the White earth.

  With no plan, but a determination to do something, I started walking toward it; anything to stop the White and The Pure One. The boy ran after me surprised.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The Pure One’s city.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The boy was gasping when he caught up to me. I doggedly continued to stride forwards, refusing to look at him, but he took my arm and spun me around to face him.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.” The words angrily flew past my lips. I regretted them immediately, but it was too late to call them back.

  “But I have something to say to you,” he said, taken aback by the tone in my voice. “You’re crazy to just march into The Pure One’s city alone. They have hundreds, if not thousands, of unfeelings guarding The Pure One. What makes you think they won’t kill you?”