Furthermore(5)

Alice hadn’t seen Oliver Newbanks since he told the entire class that she was the ugliest girl in all of Ferenwood. He went on and on about how she had a very big nose and very small eyes and very thin lips and hair the color of old milk and she thought she might cry when he said it. He was wrong, she’d insisted. Her nose was a nice nose and her eyes were quite lovely and her lips were perfectly full and her hair looked more like cotton flowers but he wouldn’t listen.

No one would.

It was bad enough that Father had left, bad enough that Mother had become a prune of a person, bad enough that their life savings consisted of only twenty-five stoppicks and ten tintons. Alice had been having a rough year and she couldn’t take much more. Everyone had laughed and laughed as she stomped a bangled ankle, furious and blinking back tears. She’d decided that perhaps she’d leave more of an impression on Oliver if she spent all her finks pulling off his ear and making him eat it in front of everyone. That will teach him to listen to me, she thought. But then Alice was kicked out of school because apparently what she did was worse than what he said, which seemed awful-cruel because mean words tasted so much worse than his stupid ears and anyway, Mother has had to hometeach her ever since.

Alice was starting to understand why Mother might not like her very much.

Alice sighed and gave up on her skirts, untying the ties and letting them fall to the grass. Clothes exhausted her. She hated pants even more than she hated skirts, so on they stayed, as long as Mother was around. It was indecent, Mother had said to her, to walk around in her underthings, so Alice decided right then that one day she would grow a pair of wings and fly away. Were it up to Alice, she would’ve walked around in her underthings forever, barefoot and bangled, vanilla hair braided down to her knees.

She pulled off her blouse and tossed that to the ground, too, closing her eyes as she lifted her head toward the sun. Rainlight drenched the air, bathing everything in an unearthly glow. She opened her mouth to taste it, but no matter how desperately she’d tried, she never could. Rainlight did not touch the people, because it was made only for the land. Rainlight was what put the magic in their world; it filtered through the air and into the soil; it grew their plants and trees and added dimension and vibrance to the explosion of colors they lived in. Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything.

Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic.



The people of Ferenwood were all born with their own small spark of magic, and the food of the land nurtured that gentle flame of their being. They each had one gift. One great magical talent. And they would perform this magical talent—a Surrender, it was called—in exchange for the ultimate task. It was tradition.



Alice opened her eyes. Today the clouds seemed puffed into existence, exhalations from the mouth of a greater being. Soon the clouds, too, would rain, and Alice’s life would thunder into something new.

Purpose.

She would be twelve years old. This was the year.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow.

She let herself breathe, casting off the Oliver Newbankses of the world, casting off the pain Mother had caused her, casting off the pain Father had caused them, casting off the uselessness of three entire brothers who were far too small to be of any help when help was needed most. So what if she wasn’t as colorful as everyone else in Ferenwood? Alice was just as magical, and she’d finally have the chance to prove it.

She picked up a fallen twig and tied its bendy body around her neck, pinching it together with her thumb and index finger as she hummed a familiar song. Eyes closed, feet dancing their way toward the pond, she was her own music, her body her favorite thing she’d ever owned.

Oh, life had been a lonely one, but she knew how to pass the time.



The warm pond was the color of green amethyst. It smelled of sweet nectar but tasted like nothing at all. Alice untied her underthings and left them in the grass, pausing only to unweave her braid before jumping in.

She sank right to the bottom. She sat there awhile, letting her limbs relax. Soon, she felt the familiar tickles of kissingfish and opened her eyes long enough to see them nibbling at her skin. She smiled and swam up, the fish following her every move. They wriggled alongside her, nudging her elbows and knees in an attempt to get closer.

Alice swam until she was so clean she practically shined, and then the warm air dried her hair and skin so quickly she had time left to wander before her ferenberry picking for the day.

Alice was always trying to find her own adventures while the other kids were in school. Mother was supposed to be hometeaching her, but she rarely did. Two years ago, when Mother was still freshly angry with Alice for getting kicked out of school (and for what she’d done to Oliver Newbanks), she’d left a stack of books on the kitchen table and told Alice to study them, warning her that if she didn’t, she’d grow up to be the silliest girl in all of Ferenwood, never mind the ugliest.

Sometimes Alice wanted to say unkind things to Mother.

Still, Alice loved her mother. Really, she did. Alice had made peace with her parental lot in life long ago. But let us put this plainly: Alice had always preferred Father and she had no trouble saying so. Father was more than a parent to Alice; he was her friend and confidant. Life with Father had made all hard things bearable; he’d seen to it that his daughter was so thoroughly loved that she’d never known the depth of her own insecurities. In fact, he took up so much room in her heart that she’d seldom noticed she had no other friends to name.