The Color Master: Stories (19 page)

Two weeks later, almost everyone was away when the king’s courtier came riding over with the request: a dress the color of the moon. The Color Master was not feeling well, and had asked not to be disturbed; Esther’s father was ill, so she was off taking care of him; Sven’s wife was giving birth to twins, so he was off with her; the two others ahead of me had caught whooping cough; and someone else was on a travel trip to find a new orange. So the request went to me, the apprentice. Just as the Color Master had hoped.

I unrolled the scroll and read it quietly by the window.

A dress the color of the moon?

It was impossible.

First of all, the moon is not a color. It is a reflection of a color. Second, it is not even the reflection of a color. It is the reflection of what appears to be a color, but is really in fact a bunch of bursting hydrogen atoms, far, far away. Third, the moon shines. A dress cannot shine like the moon unless the dress is also reflecting something, and reflective materials are generally tacky-looking, or too industrial. Our only options were silk and cotton and leather. The moon? It is white, it is silver, it is silver-white, it is not an easy color to dye. A dress the color of the moon? The whole thing made me irritable.

But this was not a small order. This was, in fact, for the king’s daughter. The princess. And since the queen had died of pneumonia a few months before, this was a dress for the most important woman in the kingdom.

I paced several times around the studio, and then I went against policy and tried knocking on the door of the Color Master’s cabin, but she called out in a strong voice, Just make it!

Are you okay? I asked, and she said, Come back once you’ve started!

I walked back, kicking twigs and acorns.

I ate oranges off the tree out back until I felt a little better.

Since I was in charge, due to the pecking order, I called together everyone that was left in the studio and asked for a seminar on reflection, to reflect upon reflection. In particular for Cheryl, who really used the seminars well. We gathered in a circle in the side room and talked about mirrors, and still water, and wells, and feeling understood, and opals, and then we did a creative-writing exercise about our first memory of the moon, and how it affected us, and the moment when we realized it followed us (Sandy had a charming story about going on a walk as a child and trying to lose it but not being able to), and then we wrote haiku. Mine was this: Moon, you silver thing / Floating in the sky like that / Make me a dress. Please.

After a few tears over Edwin’s story of realizing his father in the army was seeing the same moon he saw, we drifted out of the seminar room and began dyeing the silk. It had to be silk, of course, and we selected from the loom studio a very fine weave, a really elegant one that had a touch of shimmer in the fabric already. I let Cheryl start the dyeing with shades of white, because I could see a kind of shining light in her eyes from the seminar and even a luminosity to her skin. She is so receptive that way.

While she began that first layer, I went to see the Color Master again. I let myself in this time. She was in bed. It was shocking how quickly she was going downhill. I got her brother a glass of water and an apple-cheese snack—Angel, he called me, from the sofa—and then I settled next to the bed where she lay resting, her hair spread over the pillows in rays
of silver. She was not very old, the Color Master, but she had gone silver early. Wait, can we use your hair? I said.

Sure. She pulled out a few strands and handed them over.

This’ll help, I said, looking at the glint. If we try to make this into particles?

Good, she said. Good thinking.

How are you doing? I asked.

I heard word, she said. Moon today, sun soon.

What?

Sun soon. How goes moon?

It’s hard, I said. I mean,
hard
. And, with your hair, that’ll help, but to reflect?

Use blue, she said.

What kind?

Several kinds. Her voice was weaker, but I could hear the steel behind it as she walked through the bins in her mind. Don’t be afraid of the darker shades, she said.

I’m an awful color-mixer, I said. Are you in pain?

No, she said. Just weak. Blue, she said. And black. She pulled out a few more strands of hair. Here, she said. And shavings of opal, do we have those?

Too expensive, I said.

Go to the mine, she said. Get opals, shave ’em, add a new bin. Do you know the king wants to marry his daughter? Her eyes flashed, for a second, with anger.

What?

Put that in the dress too, she said. She dropped her voice to a whisper, every word sharp and clear. Anger, she said. Put anger in the dress. The moon as our guide. A daughter should not be ordered to marry her father.

Put anger in the dress?

When you mix, she said. Got it? When you’re putting the
opal shavings in. The dress is supposed to be a dowry gift, but give the daughter the strength to leave instead. All right?

Her eyes were shining at me, so bright I wanted to put them in the dress, too.

Okay, I said, faltering. I’m not sure—

You have it in you, she said. I see it. Truly. Or I would never have given you the job.

Then she fell back on her pillows and was asleep in seconds.

On the walk back, through the scrub-oak grove, I felt as I usually felt, both moved and shitty. Because what she saw in me could just as easily have been the result of some kind of fever. Was she hallucinating? Didn’t she realize I had only gotten the job because I’d complimented Esther on her tassel scarf at the faire, plus I did decent work with the rotating time schedule? Who’s to say that there was anything to it? To me, really?

Anger in the dress?

I didn’t feel angry, just defeated and bad about myself, but I didn’t put that in the dress; it didn’t seem right. Instead, I went to the mine and befriended the foreman, Manny, and he gave me a handful of opals that were too small for any jewelry and would work well as shavings. I spent the afternoon with the sharpest picks and awls I could find, breaking open opals and making a new bin for the dust. Cheryl had done wonders with the white, and the dress glowed like a gleaming pearl—almost moonlike but not enough, yet. I added the opals and we redyed, and then you could see a hint of rainbow hovering below the surface. Like the sun was shimmering in there, too, and that was addressing the reflective issue. When it came time
to color-mix, I felt like I was going to throw up, but I did what the Color Master had asked, and went for blue, then black, and I was incredibly slow, like incredibly slow, but for one moment I felt something as I hovered over the bins of blue. Just a tug of guidance from the white of the dress that led my hand to the middle blue. It felt, for a second, like harmonizing in a choir, the moment when the voice sinks into the chord structure and the sound grows, becomes more layered and full than before. So that was the right choice. I wasn’t so on the mark for the black, which was slightly too light, more like the moon when it’s just setting, when the light of day has already started to rise and encroach, which isn’t what they wanted—they wanted black-of-night moon, of course. But when we held it up in the middle of the room, there it was—not as good as anything the Color Master had done, maybe one one-hundredth as good, but there was something in it that would pass the test of the assignment. Like, the king and princess wouldn’t collapse in awe, but they would be pleased, maybe even a little stirred. Color is nothing unless next to other colors, the Color Master told us all the time. Color does not exist alone. And I got it, for a second with that blue, I did.

Cheryl and I packed the dress carefully in a box, and sent off the pigeon with the invoice, and waited for the king’s courtiers to come by, and they did, with a carriage for the dress only. After we laid the box carefully on the velvet backseat, they gave us a hunk of chocolate as a bonus, which Cheryl and I ate together in the side room, exhausted. Relieved. I went home and slept for twenty hours. I had put no anger in the dress; I remembered that when I woke up. Who can do that while so focused on just making an acceptable moon-feeling for the assignment? They didn’t ask for anger, I said, eating a few apples for breakfast. They asked for the moon, and I
gave them something vaguely moonlike, I said, spitting tooth cleanser into the basin.

That afternoon, I went to see the Color Master to tell her all about it. I left out the absence of the anger and told her I’d messed up on the black, and she laughed and laughed from her bed. I told her about the moon being more of a morning moon. I told her what I’d felt at the blue, the feeling of the chord, and she picked up my hand. Pressed it lightly.

Death is glowing, she said. I can see it.

I felt a heaviness rustle in my chest. How long? I said.

A few weeks, I think, she said. The sun will come in soon. The princess still has not left the castle.

But we need you, I said, and with effort, she squeezed my hand again. It is dark and glowing, she said, her eyes sliding over to lock onto mine. It is like loam, she said.

The sun? I said.

Tomorrow, she said. She closed her eyes.

When I got to work the next day, there was an elaborate thank-you note from the castle with a lot of praise for the moon dress, in this over-the-top calligraphy, and a bonus bolt of fuchsia silk. The absentees were returning, slowly, from their various tangents, when we received the king’s new assignment: a dress the color of the sun. Because everyone felt a little jittery about the Color Master’s absence and wanted to go with whatever—or whoever—seemed to work, I was assigned to the order. Esther told me congratulations. Sandy took over my rotating schedule duties. I did a few deep knee bends and got to work.

I liked that guy at the mine a little bit, the Manny guy, so I went back to ask about citrine quartz. He didn’t have any, but
we had a nice roast-turkey lunch together in the spot of sun outside the rocky opening of the cave, and I told him about the latest dress I was making for the princess.

Whew, he said, shaking his head. What color
is
the sun?

Beats me, I said. We’re not supposed to look at it, right? Kids make it yellow, I said, but I think that’s not quite right.

Ivory? he said.

Sort of burnt white, I said. But with a halo?

That’s hard work, he said, folding up the cloth he used to hold his sandwich. He had a good face to him, something chunky in his nose that I could get behind.

Want to go to the faire sometime? he asked, looking up.

The outdoor faire happened on the weekends in the main square, where everything was sold.

Sure, I said.

Maybe there’s some sun stuff there, he said.

I’d love to, I said.

We began the first round of dyeing at the end of the week, focusing initially on the pale yellows. Cheryl was very careful not to oversaturate the dye—yellow is always more powerful than it appears in the bin. It is a stealth dominator, and can take days and days to undo. She did that all Saturday, while I went to the faire. It was a clear, warm afternoon, with stands offering all sorts of goodies and delicious meat pies. Nothing looked helpful for the dress, but Manny and I laughed about the latest tapestry unicorn craze and shared a nice kiss at the end, near the scrub oaks. Everything was feeling a little more alive than usual. We held another seminar at the studio, and Cheryl did a session on warmth, and seasons, and how we all revolve around the sun, whether or not we are willing to admit
it. Central, she said. The theme of the sun is central. The center of us, she said. Core. Fire.

Careful with red, said the Color Master, when I went to visit. She was thinner and weaker, but her eyes were still coals. Her brother had gotten up to try to take care of her and had thrown out his back to the worst degree and was now in the medicine arena, strapped to a board. My sister is dying, he told the doctors, but he couldn’t move, so all they did was shake their heads. The Color Master had refused any help. I want to see Death as clearly as possible, she’d said. No drugs.

I made her some toast, but she only ate a few bites and then pushed it aside.

It’s tempting to think of red for sun, she said. But it has to be just a dash, not much. More of a dark orange, and a hint of brown. And then white on yellow on white.

Not bright white, she said. The kind of white that makes you squint, but in a softer way.

Yeah, I said, sighing. And where does one find that kind of white?

Keep looking, she said.

Last time I used your hair? I said.

She smiled, feebly. Go look at fire for a while, she said. Go spend some time with fire.

I don’t want you to die, I said.

Yes, well, she said. And?

Looking at fire was interesting, I have to admit. I sat with a candle for a couple hours. It has these stages of color: the white, the yellow, the red, the tiny spot of blue I’d heard mentioned but never noticed. So I decided it made sense to use all of them. We hung the dress in the center of the room and
all revolved around it, spinning, imagining we were planets. It needs to be hotter, said Sven, who was playing the part of Mercury, and then he put a blowtorch to some silk and made some dust materials out of that, and we redipped the dress. Cheryl was off in the corner, cross-legged in a sunbeam, her eyes closed, trying to soak it up. We need to soak it! she said, after an hour, standing. So we left it in the dipping longer than usual. I walked by the bins, trying to feel that harmony feeling, waiting for a color to call me. I felt a tug to the dark brown, so I brought a bit of it out and tossed it into the mix; it was too dark, but after a little yellow-white from dried lily flowers, something started to pop a bit. Light, said Cheryl. It’s also daylight—it’s light. It’s our only true light, she said again. Without it, we live in darkness and cold. The dress drip-dried in the middle of the room. It was getting closer, and just needed that factor of squinting—a dress so bright it couldn’t quite be looked at. How to get that?