The Color of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

strong smell of coconuts burst into the air, and a flash of bright yellow shot up her finger. Zadoc jerked away. Barshin in her arms gave a convulsive start and scrabbled against her chest with blind paws.
    â€œAh,” said Zadoc when he had moved so she was an arm’s length away from anything. “Now, you see, I wouldn’t normally be an advocate of doing what one is told. But in certain circumstances…”
    Cath looked at her right hand. The first and second fingers bore a faint patterning of dark green leaves, spines, and yellow flowers.
    â€œWell, you’ll have something to remember us by,” said Zadoc, a touch glumly. “Trouble is, remembering isn’t always a force for peace.”
    Cath spat on her fingers and tried to rub the pattern off. It didn’t budge.
    Away to their left a castle stood on the horizon, mute and dark. To the right, hills and mountains. No tracks or roads ran through the land: Zadoc walked on the grass and flowers, and he walked in whichever direction she wanted him to go.
    â€œWhere’s the town gone?” asked Cath.
    â€œWho knows?” said Zadoc. “In Chromos, you make what you see. This is your country.”
    â€œBut I live in town. I’ve lived there all my life. That’s my country, ain’t it?”
    â€œPerhaps not,” said the horse.
    Cath let her hands relax around the clump of his mane. She felt sure she’d manage to stay on his back.
    â€œBut there ain’t nothin’ here. It’s just empty.”
    As soon as she said this, she caught herself thinking, Does that mean I’m empty too?
    â€œEmpty? This?” said Zadoc. “This is … this is fuller than anything has a right to be. Look what you’ve made. You’ve made space in this plain and in this sky. You’ve made freedom, without any roads to lead you. You’ve made adventure, in the castle and the mountains—who knows what could be inside and over them? You’ve made an infinity of color and taste and smell in these plants. You’ve made life in the animals. And you say it’s empty?”
    Cath gazed at the sky and the plain, and heat burned through her chest. Could Zadoc be right? Had she really made all this? She’d never been anywhere at all like it in the real world. Everything stretched wide and bright before her, and the air was quiet. Even when a breeze picked up and she turned around, thinking that it must be the breathing of creatures lurking in shadows behind her back, there were only more plains and mountains and a flock of geese winging their way across the sky.
    She couldn’t have made this. She’d never imagined such a place could exist. She’d never seen enough to think that it was possible.
    But all the things she dreamed of were there: a world to explore, entirely hers, with nobody to answer to and nobody to hate.
    â€œCan we go anywhere?” she asked. Her shoulders were warm with sunlight, so warm that for a second she thought they might crack open and hatch a great pair of spreading wings. But she didn’t want wings. She wanted to feel the power of Zadoc beneath her, beating his hooves against the earth. Real life had vanished: there was no need to look over her shoulder anymore. She could run for the joy of it.
    â€œAnywhere—everywhere—or nowhere!” said Zadoc, throwing up his head.
    Cath looked down at Barshin, who untucked his head from her chest and stared back up in silence. She thought hard. Anywhere? And the words poured themselves out in a jumbled, excited stream.
    â€œWhen I’m at home—”
    â€œDon’t talk about home,” said Zadoc. “Not here.”
    â€œWell, I just think about this place—a house, not big, just maybe two or three rooms, that’s only mine. And then there’s some fields around it, and then a massive dark forest with deer and pigs and horses in it, and the forest goes up the sides of