Winter

Colourcaste: Chapter 14 – Life and Death

We didn’t even imagine a baby until I started to get fat. We were too caught up in avoiding death to think about a new life.

My sickness persisted and with no access to healthcare Onyx tried to bring me herbal remedies from the lower castes healers and to piece together a diagnosis from the few books of anatomy and science that we still had access to.

No white was ever fat. Nor a grey for that matter. Hard labour and poor diet kept the rejects of our segregated society gaunt and desperate. But even though I was constantly sick I began to grow round.

In time even our preoccupied minds couldn’t dispute the evidence before us. As my nausea calmed my belly swelled and our forays into forbidden literature and experience of our world told us an inconvenient truth; that whatever infertility was endemic in the white population it didn’t apply to me.

We did not celebrate.

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From the day Onyx laid his hand on my swollen belly and voiced what we had both been thinking but refusing to acknowledge, we knew that our situation was impossibly dangerous. The old cliche that a child is a symbol of the parents’ love held true but in our case that symbol would be one of unrepentant heresy. Not only would our baby be mixed-caste, they would be both black and white. Opposite ends of the spectrum. A blend of society’s outcasts and the most dedicated upholders of its values. Even before it lived we had sentenced our child to a life without a place in our world.

To guard against further scrutiny Onyx had spent the weeks after his return playing the part of a dutiful member of the Black. Preaching the credo of the colours. Distancing himself from the archive and his discovery and publicly distancing himself from me. Our encounters once frequent and protected by the walls of our book sanctuary were now stolen moments in the forest and late night visits where every creak was the sound of our discovery.

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Despite his display of compliance and obedience he was still questioned by the Mayor the week after his return. He came to me that night shaken and haunted. He wouldn’t answer my questions, wouldn’t speak of it at all. All he would say was that we should forget what we had seen, that it was too dangerous. I could see in his expression that he either knew more or suspected more than he was telling me. I believed then that with time our courage would return and we would once again pursue the truth of my origin. But all rebellious thought crumbled in the face of a greater danger.

Since Onyx had officially relinquished his interest in me at the senate I had been assigned a liaison at the police department who was to check on my conditions occasionally. I wasn’t expecting much from them but as my condition progressed an unannounced visit from a state official could prove fatal.

As my stark white flesh expanded each millimetre seemed to count down to catastrophe.

I actually used to go to sleep wishing that I would lose the baby. I knew it could happen, that it’s little life could slip away quietly before it had a chance to be hurt by the cruelty of life. But it clung on. I clung on. And by some miracle we remained undiscovered until Onyx was able to make a plan that held some hope of saving both of us.

We would vanish.

It wasn’t unheard of for members of the lower castes or even occasionally oranges and yellows to just leave town for the wastelands in hope of better. They never came back and became cautionary tales whispered to children to stop them straying too far. Maybe some of those that left went to join other settlements but it was assumed that they were dead, their names expunged from the census and their family once person less than it had been. There was no rule against leaving at coming back, it just never happened.

Some years previously a whole family of Browns had left. Parents, grandparents and three small children. They had tried to persuade others to join them, promising fair treatment and just rewards for the hard work the farming caste did. They might have been successful had the greens not descended to escort them out of town, silencing their radical ideas and intimidating those who had been listening. Their names were erased before they had even faded from view.

Some months later a small delegation of army and black order made an excursion into the badlands to search for medicinal herbs and came upon what was left of the family. Three tiny skulls had been solemnly carried into the town square and later buried in an unmarked plot just outside the cemetery. Since then nobody has tried to leave.

Onyx was on that mission, charged with mapping the path taken and would say only that there was no sign of how the family died, but it looked like starvation or poisoning. To avoid the tragedy of the scene he had wandered into the forest to search for the herbs and had happened upon a small building, rotting but still standing despite the ravages of time and terror. He had sketched it on his rough map but when the time came to draw the official one it fell outside the boundaries of what was included so it remained forgotten.

With the urgency of our danger driving him Onyx retraced the expedition path, supposedly to gather more of the herb we used to fight infections. He took a large bag with him to carry the samples back, supposedly empty in the way out but in reality packed with things to help me survive. Using his original map he found his way back to the little hut, cleaned it as best he could and left there the blankets, food and other small things he had been able to carry.

A sprig of the herb and a folded piece of paper tucked in to my door frame was the only sign he had been successful, it was too dangerous for him to be seen near me before my planned disappearance, and this was my signal to go.

As I pulled the creaky door of my shack closed behind me I felt a pang of loss. Never had I thought I would miss the place which was meant to be my tomb but it had become the first place that had been my own. I had been loved there and now I might never go back.

With my heart as heavy as the dread in my stomach and the pack on my back I slipped into the dark forest. Now I was truly an outcast.

Colourcaste: Chapter 13 – Whisper

Authors note – It has taken me way too long to get to this chapter and for that I’m sorry. A lot has changed in my life the last few months but my love for this story never went away. I have another few chapters ready and hope to be more consistent with posting. Thaks to those of you who stuck around!

My daughter was born in a rotting hut on the edge of a poisoned marsh. I was alone when it happened, screaming at the seeming futility of bringing a life into a dead place between two towns of a dark world.

I’d heard that babies should cry at the beginning. That they announced their life had begun with screwed up eyes and newborn lungs. My daughter was silent and her eyes were open.

Even as I watched her little chest rise and fall I could tell that she already saw the world as it was. As I had tried to pretend it wasn’t.

She arrived with a whisper. And that was what I named her.

6 months earlier.

It had been three weeks since I’d seen Onyx, senate business had arisen and he’d had to go to Sloe Valley. It was the longest we had spent apart since I had sent him away all those months ago and I ached for him, my life was silent and lonely with him gone. It scared me how much I had come to depend on him in the stolen months we had been together, some days the ache of his absence made me feel physically sick and in the dead of night I woke sweating from dreaming that he had never come back.

Even the arrival of the long promised supplies from the senate couldn’t distract from my misery. When the grimy bulb above my table flickered on I barely glanced at it. When two orderlies delivered an ancient and hastily whitewashed iron bed frame and lumpy mattress I stood back listlessly and let them work, not noticing the questioning glances that flickered between the two greys as they brought this apparently ungrateful white nobody something that most of the lower castes would consider a great luxury.

But the bed was big enough for two and all I could see was where Onyx wasn’t, where he never could be even if he returned and I found myself rushing outside to cover the tears that had started to dribble down my cheeks even as I tried to swallow them down.

Even my garden was no comfort. The fruition of the plants I’d planted in the cold earth of spring, praying that they might keep me alive come winter didn’t bring the triumph it should have. A weekly pittance of rough bread and slightly battered tins would stop me from starving and with necessity of my garden removed I soon began to neglect it.

Some mornings I woke up, determined to take myself in hand, to revive my fighting spirit but the resolve never lasted. I even wondered if this was why our world discouraged love, the weakness and emotional turmoil that dominated my day could certainly disrupt our fragile society if it struck more widely.

I was so deep in the grey of my depression that I didn’t even worry when I heard a noise at my window in the dead of night.

In the past I would have jumped, looked for a way to defend myself, my adrenaline would have kicked in. But that night I just lay still, I knew I should be preparing to fight but I just couldn’t move.

The knocking came again. Louder.

And again.

With increasing urgency whoever it was was shaking the glass with every strike. I just lay frozen.

Numb.

But then there was a voice. A desperate, fearful voice that I knew so well.

‘Winter? Oh god. Winter!’

And I flew from my bed, misery forgotten to open the door to the travel worn and terrified face of Onyx.

I didn’t stop to look for danger or to ask questions, instead throwing myself at my love and burying my face in his neck. He smelled of the road and unwashed clothes and I didn’t care because he was there with me. I was vaguely aware of him pushing against me, moving into the house and then kicking the door shut.

I could have stayed there forever.

Would have maybe, but the too familiar fingers of nausea were crawling up my throat and so I tore myself away, dashing for the bathroom and emptying the little I had forced down for dinner into the chipped porcelain.

When the retching subsided I slumped over. Arm to cheek to seat with no energy to think about cleanliness. Onyx’s cool hand on my neck brought some relief and when it was clear that the sickness had passed he lifted me with surprising ease and carried me to my bed.

I wanted to ask him where he had been, how he was, whether he had news for me but exhaustion was overpowering all my intentions. All I had left in me was to hold onto his hand as he turned to leave and ask him not to go.

Exhaustion and the quiet joy of reunion overruled common sense and self preservation and without arguing he lay beside me, gathering me close to his chest and we drifted into a deep sleep where the castes were nothing more than a half-forgotten nightmare.

I woke slowly, feeling rested for the first time in weeks and found Onyx sitting watching me sleep. I smiled at him but his expression remained serious.

‘What’s wrong’ I croaked as adrenaline began to dispel the last tendrils of sleep. ‘What are you looking at me like that?’ My mind filled with bleak possibilities and my stomach began to churn.

He paused for a second and I could tell he was trying to make a decision.

‘Tell me’. My voice was stronger now and he nodded, resolved.

‘I’m not really sure where to begin’ he paused and I fought to keep still and not rush him. ‘You know I told you that I had an idea about the diary, about where you might have come from?’

I nod.

‘Well this trip to Sloe Valley gave me the chance to investigate. It was our first reclaimed town and that means the oldest documents are left there. The ones about the beginning of the castes. The ones about the emergence. And what there is of what came before….’

‘What does that mean?’ I leaned toward him, curiosity mixed with fear at his hesitance.

‘Records of the time underground. According to our archive listing there should be a number of complete accounts. Both diaries from major figures and official records. Supply lists. Birth records. Employment rosters. It’s all in the listings.’

‘Did you find any reference to the whites? To the divisions? What happened down there?!’. The anticipation was forming a hard ball in my gut. I needed answers and I was about to-

‘I didn’t find anything.’ Onyx’s voice was flat. His eyes guarded.

‘Oh’. I couldn’t hide my disappointment. The excitement shattered and was replaced by a roiling emptiness that it took every ounce of determination to choke back.

But Onyx continued. Screenshot-1606

‘I don’t mean that I didn’t find anything about the Reds and the Whites feud. I mean I didn’t find anything. It’s missing. All of it. The room that should house those records is empty.’

‘What does that mean?’ I struggled to make sense of what he was telling me, pushing against my rebellious stomach as my mind tried to connect the pieces.

‘It means that whatever happened in that underground complex has been removed from our history. Covered up. It means that the history we grew up learning isn’t the full picture. It means that our whole society has a past that we don’t know about. It means that something has gone very, very wrong. And they know I’m looking.

After I visited the archive I called called into the Black Order’s headquarters. They asked me about my interest. Then they asked me about you.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I told them that I had been looking for documents to illustrate a paper I was writing about the necessity of castes for survival. I think they bought it. And I told them that you were a good worker but a little slow. They let it go but asked that I not investigate further. And the book room here has been given to another party to finish. They’re covering something up and we are going to have to be very very careful if we don’t want to get caught in the middle of it. We can’t be seen to keep looking. It may already be too late.’

As I listened to his story I cycled through theories of what the truth might be. They became more and more insane, more and more ridiculous as he continued. And just as I had convinced myself that they were hunting us at this very moment I lost my battle with my stomach.

I ran for the bathroom with Onyx close behind me. A repeat of the night before only this time there was nothing to come up.

My whole body shook and I clung to Onyx as if he was the only thing holding me to this wretched earth. In a lot of ways I suppose he was. He had saved my life already and in the months that would follow would save me again and again.

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Read on with Chapter Fourteen – Life & Death

Colourcaste: Chapter 12 – Falling (Safe Version)

This is the PG rated version of the chapter. There is one “suggestive” paragraph and a single picture with a shirtless guy but that’s it. If that’s still too much for you then this probably isn’t your story; I couldn’t rewrite any cleaner without missing a pretty important plot point!

If however you wanted to read the mature version and clicked the wrong option then what you’re looking for is here!

‘Verum in luce lunae sustinuit‘

Could this be it? The reference we had been searching for? It was nothing but a rushed sentence hidden in a journal yet it hinted at a whole world, a whole truth that might change everything. Possibilities rushed through my head, quickly spiralling into ridiculous as I realised that really nothing had changed. Of course the whites weren’t living on the moon! This was just another floating piece in a puzzle with no visible pattern.

As I settled on the side of despair I looked across at Onyx, expecting to see what I was beginning to recognise as his “breaking things to me gently” expression but instead found him staring intently at the wall, eyes open but mind clearly elsewhere.

After a few moments the spell broke and he turned to me, eyes shining.

‘I have an idea’. His voice was soft but hopeful, enough to reignite a flicker of the excitement of the first discovery in my chest.

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‘Tell me!’ I moved around the table and stood beside him, his closeness filling me with certainly that in the end I would find what I needed.

‘I can’t Winter’.

I froze. Onyx had never told me no before and I hadn’t realised how much his complete openness had come to mean to me. Everywhere else was full of secrets but not us. Until now. My skin shivered like a dark cloud had passed over the sun as I tried to mask my disappointment. I moved away.

‘Winter wait!’ Sensing the change Onyx reached for me but I stayed out of his grasp.

‘No it’s okay Onyx. We both know how risky this is, I understand if you need to keep secrets.’ I tried to justify his actions to myself. I fought against the tide of sadness which was choking me as all the old doubt surged up to sweep away the weeks of peace that Onyx had given me.

‘Don’t say that! Win? It’s not like that.’

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I kept backing up until I felt the shelves at my back. I needed to get out. To cry where nobody could see and to remind myself that I could only count on myself. But Onyx stood between me and the door. As I tried to move around him he grabbed my arm, stopping me as he sensed my need to fly, somehow knowing that if he let me go I would probably never come back.

‘Winter, stop. I can see what you’re thinking and you have it all wrong. I can’t tell you what I think because I’m not sure of it. I need to check something. But it’s going to be dangerous, even for me, and I don’t want you to know, or worse yet to try and get there, before I’ve confirmed what I think. I want you to be safe and the only way I can do that right now is to keep you in the dark. I hate it but I know what you’re like. I can’t have you rushing in to danger. I can’t lose you!

Do you understand me?’

I nodded.

His words battled against the deep-rooted self-doubt which had all too readily crept out of the corner I had locked it in. He said he needed me. I wanted to believe him. So, so much. But to truly believe that Onyx needed me even a fraction of how I needed him would require me to throw away every last bit of that doubt, to accept that I was worthy and to open myself up to the devastation which was inevitable if he ever changed his mind.

‘Winter?’ His voice was a soft as his touch. ‘Will you just look at me?’

He brushed my eyelids with his thumbs and brushed my hair away from my temples. I knew that if I opened my eyes he would own me.

But I did it.

And I wasn’t scared any more.

Even before he spoke I knew what he was saying. Black is a colour that people associate with darkness and death but Onyx’s eyes were full of sparks, bright with hope and humour and love. They were the black that makes stars shine brighter, the warm darkness which fills your home as you fall asleep. I felt rather than heard his words and my heart answered before my brain could process.

‘I love you too.’

And it was out there. We had committed the ultimate treason and I was grinning as I pulled Onyx against me and peppered his face with tiny kisses. He loved me! He loved the unlovable, forever alone girl from the edge of nowhere.

As he claimed my mouth as his possession the mood shifted from happiness to heat and suddenly I knew what all the heroines of my books had meant when they spoke of hunger for another person. I wanted to give him all of me and I whimpered as I pulled him tighter against me, my hands inching under his shirt and finally reaching skin. He froze for just a second but when I continued he let himself go, lifting me up and pinning me between him and the wall so his hands were free to explore the uncharted map of my skin.

If anyone had come to the bunker just then we would have been found tangled together, our bodies teaching us what no book could really explain. It was raw and instinctive, pleasure and pain then pleasure again, black, white and then both together. For the first time in my life I felt what it was to be living.

In our oldest books the act of love was often hidden behind closed doors, undertaken in secrecy for the comfort of polite society. I understood now why the “sexual revolution” had changed everything; freedom combined with trust and love was a powerful force for change. I was changed. Because nobody other than me and the man beside me could alter or shake the bond we had just formed. We belonged to one another and nothing the Senate or anyone else could do could change that fact or make us believe differently.

In that moment I believed that we could change everything. We had won the battle and the war was inevitably going to follow. If Onyx and I could love each other then colour was irrelevant. Perhaps it would take time but if others could feel what we were feeling them the castes would soon crumble away, if black and white could coexist then why not red and yellow, purple and green? Perhaps there were already other couples like us who would stand beside us and usher in a new world order.

I spent my time away from the bunker in a bubble of ecstasy, seeing the world with enlightened eyes and projecting my joy and freedom on to everyone I passed. In the bunker we made love and talked about how things would change, how things were already changing. We planned our revolution firmly believing that our love could conquer anything and swore that the little we had was worth sacrificing if it came to it. Because in those moments we and our dreams were all that mattered.

I wish now that we had read more. Understood more.

Because in our blind passion we had missed something crucial. Something dangerous. The one thing that can come between a couple in love who have nothing to lose.

Read Chapter 13 – Whisper

Colourcaste: Chapter 12 – Falling

This is the mature version of Chapter 12 – if you don’t wanna read NSFW stuff please click here for the family friendly version!

‘Verum in luce lunae sustinuit‘

After a few moments the spell broke and he turned to me, eyes shining. Screenshot-1856

‘I have an idea’. His voice was soft but hopeful, enough to reignite a flicker of the excitement of the first discovery in my chest.

‘Tell me!’ I moved around the table and knelt beside him, his closeness filling me with a mixture of hope and certainly that in the end I would find what I needed.

‘I can’t Winter’.

I froze. Onyx had never told me no before and I hadn’t realised how much his complete openness had come to mean to me. Everywhere else was full of secrets but not us. Until now. I shivered like a dark cloud had passed over the sun as I tried to mask my disappointment and moved away from him.

‘Winter wait!’ Sensing the change Onyx reached for me but I stayed out of his grasp.

‘Don’t say that! Win? It’s not like that.’

I kept backing up until I felt the cold wall at my back. I needed to get out. To cry where nobody could see and to remind myself that I could only count on myself. But Onyx stood between me and the door. As I tried to move around him he blocked me, sensing my need to fly and knowing that if he let me go I would probably never come back.

Do you understand me?’

I nodded.

‘Winter?’ His voice was a soft as his touch. ‘Will you just look at me?’

He brushed my eyelids with his thumbs and brushed my hair away from my temples. I knew that if I opened my eyes he would own me.

But I did it.

And I wasn’t scared any more.

Even before he spoke I knew what he was saying. Black is a colour that people associate with darkness and death but Onyx’s eyes were full of sparks, bright with hope and humour and love. I felt rather than heard his words and my heart answered before my brain could process.

‘I love you too.’

I shuddered at his touch as my body responded with goosebumps and soft noises that I didn’t even know I could make. As his hands reached the boundaries of his reach I abandoned my grasp on his ass and ripped my shirt over my head. I didn’t even pause to wonder at my wantonness instead tugging at his clothes, desperate to be caught between the silken firmness of his body and the rough cold wall.

I didn’t have long to wait and it felt every bit as good as I had imagined. I felt tiny and fragile and powerful as Onyx kissed his way down my neck and across my collar bone, a hardness where my legs wrapped around him telling me that he wanted this too.

I wanted it all with him. Pushing him back I watched his eyes try to focus, trying to figure out if I was stopping him or asking him to wait. But I just wanted to see him. To have him see me.

Deliberately I pulled my bra-top over my head before pushing my shorts and underwear down and stepping out of them.

Onyx’s breath hitched as he saw me for the first time, completely free of everything our fucked-up society had ever given me. I was just Winter.

I stepped forward, surprised by my confidence and dropped to my knees, hands fumbling with the knotted string holding Onyx’s trousers up. As it finally released I stood and stepped away. His pants pooled at his ankles Onyx locked my eyes with his before bending and removing the last thing which stood between us.

He was beautiful.

He was mine.

The pause that I had initiated vibrated and then shattered as we crashed together again. I could feel the length of him against my stomach and the downy hairs of his chest pressed against mine. He filled his hands greedily with my ass, then my breasts groaning in to my mouth as I arched against him, my movement teasing his waiting cock with the promise of what would follow.

And as my hand followed through on my body’s movement so too did he drop one hand to the place between my legs that was crying out for him. I stilled as he slowly slid one finger into the velvet folds which would now be forever his. I sighed into his shoulder and emboldened he began to explore, tickling and stroking places that sent pleasure shooting through my belly and into my soul.

I wanted him to feel what I was feeling and shyly I began to stroke him, the timid motion causing his hips to thrust forward, pushing me back little by little until my hips hit the edge of the table.

It was almost as it if had been choreographed to be that way, Onyx lifted me onto the table and stepped between my open legs. Now only air and a hesitation stood between our naked bodies.

‘Winter… oh god Winter. Are you sure?’ Even as he panted for his climax he was putting me first. But I didn’t need reassuring and reaching for him my only answer was,

‘I love you’.

I’d never thought I’d love, so few in our world do as marriage within rules doesn’t often give people the freedom to choose as they might wish. And in that moment I pitied them all. Onyx’s face as he entered me, as I gave him what was rightfully mine to give to the person I loved was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

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I wish now that we had read more. Understood more.

Because in our blind passion we had missed something crucial. Something dangerous. The one thing that can come between a couple in love who have nothing to lose.

Read Chapter 13 – Whisper

Colourcaste: Chapter 11 – Truth and Love

Those first few weeks spent in that grimy underground store room were probably some of the happiest of my life. Four times a week I would wend my way down those stairs and wait to be allowed access to the book room, careful to keep my face neutral and my walk steady though all I really wanted to do was skip laughing through the town.

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In that room the weight of my caste fell off my shoulders and I was just Winter. He was just Onyx. Together we explored the vast worlds of the past, fantasy sometimes indistinguishable from reality. We read about enormous machines which could fly halfway around the world, about a fish called a whale which once swallowed a man whole and about people visiting places far beyond our world. We would spend long hours lost in our separate books but any time I glanced across at Onyx it seemed he was already watching me.

Since my kissing him in that moment of madness something had definitely shifted between us. Where before we had skirted around the spark which cracked between us we were now all too aware of it and circled one another, darting close to remind ourselves of what we wanted and then back again as we lost our nerve. While the little voice in my head told me that whatever we had could never end well in our world, my heart ran with the idea that everything could change. Jane Eyre was joined in my head by Elizabeth Bennett and Cinderella, characters from a dead world whose lives were turned upside down by the strength of their love and their courage.

From the outside I was the same, a sad little white girl who lived in the shadows and trudged into town to work now and then. Inside I was transformed. The second that door sealed I lit up, I felt every book on those shelves calling to me, offering me a vast landscape of knowledge, a landscape I could explore with Onyx at my side, our eyes meeting and each wondering which of us was brave enough to reach across the electric space between us and take the other’s hand. Screenshot-1016

A monthly check up by the council was a deep but passing shadow, they were pleased with our progress but even as I kept my eyes downcast and dully answered their questions I worried that they could detect the change in me. Perhaps if they had really looked they would have but as was usual they didn’t see anything more than they wanted to see.

In the giddy relief following the inspection the space between us finally melted away and I found myself back in Onyx’s arms for the first time since I had kissed him. If that kiss had been a promise then this was a hallelujah, our tiny reality was no longer a dream but a fragile reality and I filled every breath we shared with my hope, my happiness and something I felt but was still afraid to name.

Leaving the book store that day was harder than usual, only made manageable by the promise of returning in two days. I tended to my neglected garden to pass the time but all I saw was Onyx, imagining a world where each of my days could begin and end with him.

It was our next reunion when I knew for sure that I loved him. Maybe it was because he was all I had, my only option, but my heart believed that I would have chosen him in any world, any society. The armour of his arms and the beat of his heart in my ear as he held me close convinced me that this forgotten little room was my true home. Screenshot-1022

From that day forward we abandoned our reading stations at opposite ends of the room and sat as close to one another as we could get. Often I would read the same page over and over as I couldn’t bear to ask Onyx to release my hand to let me turn the page. Instead I would stare at the stark contrast of our interwoven fingers, how my skin looked almost see through next to the velvety black of his hand. How the two things, perfect opposites, somehow made each other more beautiful rather than messy or tainted as we had been taught they would. We made each other more, not less.

As we read we learned more and more about the world that was all-but forgotten. About the warring races and the continents they inhabited. A world that seemed impossibly huge to us. The poisoned waters which held us to the reclaimed shore had once supported creatures as huge as carts and so tiny that they were invisible. Buildings had dwarfed trees and people had travelled hundreds of miles in impossibly short times.

Our world which had always seemed a colourful and appealing now seemed small and narrow-minded in comparison. That pioneering spirit which had driven our ancestors to cross oceans and launch themselves in the sky had withered and been replaced by prejudice, division and a strange pride in our ability to label ourselves survivors and then follow the rules. It felt as if all the people of the berriverse wanted to say on their deathbeds was that they fulfilled their duty, married their own kind and contributed to our fledgling population. We might be survivors but to me it didn’t seem so much of a victory any more.

Now that I recognised this, it was impossible not to see that that was what made Onyx different. His ambition was not to be the best of his colour, to rise to the top of the system he had been born into but rather to change the system at its’ very core. He had taken his isolation and turned it into his strength, he didn’t need to succeed in anyone else’s eyes and if he was afraid of the consequences of his actions then he didn’t show it. These were just some of the reasons I loved him. And God did I love him.

I loved the way his face lit up when I arrived, transforming his dark features just as moonlight transforms the night. I loved how he would read out bits of his book that he thought I might find interesting, how when I didn’t understand something he would find a way to make it all make sense even if it took days. I loved how he looked at our skin side by side and saw art instead of difference. Most of all I loved how he made me a different person. In the hours we spent apart I drifted aimlessly through my regular tasks but in his presence I was alive; fearlessly, recklessly, wonderfully alive.

Together we made steady progress through the wealth of books in our little haven but after a month we still hadn’t found anything about the time immediately before the burning or about the origins of the whites. I was beginning to believe that my skin was no more than an unwarranted punishment and my scar the mark of a childhood accident when we finally found something more than a piece of forgotten history.

Scrawled in a tatty roughly bound book was a journal of the years spent underground. The writer didn’t use their name and it was clear why. The journal was well written but the writing was rushed and the tone panicked. This diary had been a risk and it was soon clear why. Screenshot-2626

The retreat to the bunker had been an orderly one, far from the frenzy of legend and everyone allowed in had a role to fulfil. Some would handle food, some health and others strategy. It was designed to be a microcosm of society as it had existed before the burning, preserving the old ways until the surface was safe to return to. But the devastating destruction of everything they had known wrought its changes in everyone involved and the transplanted society soon became divided and ineffective.

Against this chaos two parties emerged. The reds, reportedly the heirs of an ancient Yorkshire king, proposed a rigid and productive society while the whites advocated democracy even in crisis. This bitter disagreement tainted the tiny colony as reputation, money and threats began to enter the discussion, at first veiled and then increasingly violent, until the last few entries which described meetings between the two where the threats began to become realities.

The entries stop suddenly the day after a final meeting is planned, one which will decide once and for all how the survivors would live. It was promised that the whole colony would vote but our author seemed to believe that something else was afoot.

We scoured the empty book for anything more. Page after empty page told us only that the author had abandoned his book forever, why that might have been we could only guess.

After a third time flicking through for some sort of concealed message or resolution I dropped the book on the table and folded my head into the cradle of my arms, a desperate attempt to make some sense of what I had discovered, this story made sense of that the stigmatisation of the whites but it didn’t make sense of me, nor in fact of why this version of our history wasn’t the taught one, if anything a slanted version of this truth could strengthen the townsfolk’s distrust of the colourless.

For a while it was quiet except for my thoughts until Onyx gasped and my head snapped up to look at him. He was staring wide eyed at the back inside cover of the journal.

‘Winter look at this’, he said, his even tone barely masking his excitement.

I looked. It was a blank page.

‘Theres nothing there?’ It didn’t make sense, Onyx wouldn’t raise my hopes like that for no reason.

In response he just pointed at the bottom corner of the page and raising it to make the best of the dim lighting he tilted the page and I saw it.

Scratched just barely into the back cover was a crescent moon. Beneath it in a script I didn’t understand were a few words. As the cover continued to move and the light left the slight indentation of the message it slipped once again into invisibility.

My voice was hushed, as if this tiny clue could unlock everyone I had always wanted to know.

‘What does it mean?’

Onyx took my hand and ran his thumb over what now seemed so much more than a scar.

‘It’s Latin. Verum in luce lunae sustinuit‘ he said. ‘And I think it means “The truth in moonlight waits”.

Colourcaste: Chapter 10 – What Lies Beneath

The weekend span past, mundane tasks tangled up with my conflicted thoughts. One moment I’d decide that security and a small life lived well would be enough for me. I’d feel relief, look out at my garden and imagine it full of thriving plants and maybe chickens and believe completely that I could be happy that way.

But then Onyx would appear in the treeline and I’d feel my stomach turn. He couldn’t be here, it was forbidden but I was so happy to see him. He would smile as he came closer and I’d glance away and see my garden wilted and dead, my house a burned out wreck. The sight of my tiny home in ruins made me sad but then Onyx would take my hand and I’d feel a new strength, a bravery and hope that came from not being alone.

These imaginings played themselves out in my dreams and throughout my waking hours. I didn’t know what I would do, didn’t know how I could choose between the two parts of myself; the obedient white or the rebellious outsider, both were part of me but soon I would have to embrace one and live with the consequences.

Monday dawned bright and hopeful and I left early for my first day at the library, hoping to avoid the rush of unfriendly people and just enjoy the day. I was mostly successful until the last moment when I surprised a family of yellows who must have been returning books before work or school. The parents and son just ignored me but the little girl regarded me with some interest before very slowly sticking her tongue out at me and then bursting in to a fit of giggles. Her parents shushed her looking embarrassed at this breach of their more “polite” indifference and hurried her away.

As I made my way inside I considered the little scene. Strangely I preferred the little girl’s reaction. I would rather be laughed than ignored. I wound through the coloured stacks to the desk where the library clerk merely pointed at a doorway I’d never really noticed before, avoiding even looking at me.

Through the door was a dingy panelled room containing only cleaning supplies and a staircase I hovered in the room for a few minutes, assuming I would be cleaning but when I heard movement down below my curiosity got the best of me and I headed down the stairs.

The air was noticeably colder down here and I noticed the walls were bare rock. The corridor bent around and the noises I had heard were issuing from that direction. Slightly apprehensive I crept forwards, nobody had told me I couldn’t come down here but that didn’t mean I wasn’t walking into a set-up. I considered turning back but before I could react the rustling stopped.

Footsteps.

And then a familiar figure.

Onyx.

‘Oh! You’re early….’ He seemed nervous, twisting his hands together as he tried to compose himself. ‘I- I mean, I wasn’t expecting you for another hour or I would have met you upstairs.’

Seeing him so anxious somehow made me feel less nervous. I had assumed after my outburst that he would probably want nothing to do with me but apparently I had misjudged him.

‘I left early. I didn’t want people to look at me on my way.’ I tried to keep my voice flat, to disguise both the shame which had informed my decision and the excitement I felt at seeing him.

Onyx looked a little irritated and I wondered what I had done wrong. ‘Winter I’m so sorry. I hadn’t thought of what coming to town would be like for you when I suggested that you assist me in my project. Would you like me to rearrange things with the mayor? I could probably find you a job elsewhere.’

‘No!’ My mouth responded before my mind had a chance to properly understand what he had just said. How was it that even after I had behaved so childishly towards him, throwing his kindness and his generosity in his face as I raged at its’ inconvenience to my sheltered existence, he was still fighting for me?

A tiny smile flickered across his lips at my explosive reaction and I could feel myself blushing.

‘I mean no… I think. You want me to work with you? Why?’ My words tumbled out of my mouth, tangling with the tattered remains of my attempt to seem calm and collected.

It seemed my disarray had the same effect on Onyx as his nerves had on me earlier. He finally appeared relaxed.

‘I thought a lot about what you said Winter and you were right. Well partly anyway. It wasn’t fair of me to offer you a glimpse at another world but not any hope that it was achievable. And the risks we were taking to spend time together and talk were insane. So this was my alternative. The mayor brought up your integration at the Senate meeting last week and I finally thought of a way I could offer you more… If you want it.’

I was speechless so he continued, gesturing that I should follow him as he turned and walked back around the corner. The corridor extended into darkness and I shivered at the thought of following it. I was relieved when Onyx turned again and disappeared a through rusty but heavily reinforced doorway. It was even darker in this new room but as my eyes adjusted to the light what I saw took my breath away.

‘These are all the books that were saved from the old world,’ he gestured around the room at the floor to ceiling shelves, overflowing with books of every imaginable size and colour. ‘It’s my job to find out what they’re about, decide whether or not they are appropriate for the new order and then either destroy them or re-cover them for colour appropriate shelving upstairs. It’s needed doing for generations I’m told.’

As I processed his words I absent-mindedly trailed my finger down the spines on the nearest shelf. Moby Dick, To Kill A Mockingbird, Encyclopaedia Britannica…. It seemed that an eternity of knowledge was stuffed down in this dank prison while upstairs people continued on in their ordered lives, knowing only what they thought they needed. Onyx’s voice broke into my reverie.

‘As you can see it’s a lot of work for one person but the senate didn’t want to risk letting someone else down here who might read something they shouldn’t and cause problems.’

This didn’t add up, ‘Then how did you persuade them to let me down here? Surely of everyone in town they trust me the least?’

Onyx’s smile was broad and his eyes twinkled at the pleasure of his victory.

‘I played on their prejudice Winter. I told them that you couldn’t read!’

With that he began to chuckle, first a quiet snort and then gradually a booming mirth which echoed around the gloomy space. His happiness was infectious, their willingness to believe in my stupidity was truly hilarious and before I knew it we were both howling with laughter, tears streaming down my face at the ridiculousness of the situation.

It felt so good just to just completely let go and laugh and by the time we had finally pulled ourselves together all of the tension between us had drained away leaving just the two people who had painted and talked together.

‘So as your illiterate helper what am I meant to do?’ I asked playfully.

‘Well as far as the Senate know I’m going to read and you are going to recover, clean and organise the collection. In reality I figure we can both do a bit of everything. Nobody ever comes down here and the door has a security seal so we can talk freely.’

The humour faded from his tone and he looked me straight in the eyes.

‘Winter…I can’t offer you freedom from the system. All I can do is offer you knowledge, maybe hope alongside it as we discover how things might be able to change in the future. I can’t offer you complete safety with this knowledge but if we are careful there is no reason the Senate should suspect us, they trust me and my family completely. The only other thing I can offer you is my friendship, I won’t be able to show it outside of this room but you have it constantly whether we can acknowledge it or not.

But all this is only if you choose it. If this is all too much, if you would prefer a simple job at the scrap yard or in a farm I can arrange it. Even though neither option is perfect, I want you to be able to choose, so much of your life has been chosen for you.’

He tailed off and the tension set in. All of my thoughts and worries from the last few days were crystallised in this one moment. Upstairs was a neat and colourful world, with rules I knew and understood, my place in it a small one but a safe one.

Down here was the other side of the coin. A dark and half forgotten room, a messy and dangerous task and an unexpected man. A man who had found a way to break down the walls which confined me to a tiny patch of ground in the middle of a dying forest. A man who might break down more barriers in the future, perhaps setting us free, perhaps burying us both alive. A man who didn’t look at me and see a colour.

‘You say that nobody ever comes down here?’ My voice surprises me by still working.

Onyx nods and without thinking for another second I press my lips to his, terrified and liberated in my recklessness.

My choice is made.

Read on now with Chapter 11 – Truth and Love

Colourcaste: Chapter 9 – Integrate/Interrogate

Integration.

I woke with a shudder as I remembered what today would bring. Dragging my reluctant limbs out of bed as the sun rose I tried to let the repetition of my morning routine drive the worry and the misery from my mind. Yesterday’s confrontation sat heavy in the pit of my stomach, I felt anxious, nauseous and shaky but knew that self-indulgent wallowing was a luxury that I couldn’t afford today.

As I pulled on my thin white jacket and began my walk into town I reasoned that today could be a positive thing, perhaps it would change my life for the better. The cynic in my head laughed in the face of this idea but did concede that it would be good to have a distraction, less time to dwell on the realisations of yesterday, to recall the miserable expression on Onyx’s face as I shouted at him.

I was beginning to regret the heat of my anger but I wasn’t quite ready to examine the reasons for the strength of my reaction, that was a complication for an easier day. Instead I tried to enjoy the walk, noticing the leaves beginning to fall from the richly coloured trees, autumn was nearly over.

Too soon I was in the suburbs and was soon reminded of why I stayed away when I could. The pristine frontages of the green and blue houses were defended by stern fathers and uncomfortable mothers who hid their bright little charges from the colourless intruder who had dared to enter their realm. Some just turned away, others looked though me while a few hissed hateful things, reminding me that I was unwelcome and marking me out as the outsider.

By the time I made the Town Hall I was shaking, partly with nerves at what was to come but mostly because my miserable walk had reminded me of the improbability of my being accepted. How could I have been stupid enough to think that this might be a change for the better.

With this reality clear in my mind I struggled up the stairs and tried to walk tall between the towering green guards who flanked the impressive entrance. All I could do was try to rediscover the defiant girl who had fought through the winter and pretend to be her instead of the hopelessly confused person I was now. I didn’t know whether to fight or submit, whether to accept loneliness or try for more. The past year or so had completely changed the way I saw both myself and my world and I just didn’t know what to make of it any more.

My progress was more of a shuffle than a walk through the scarlet corridors but I finally reached the Mayor’s reception desk and a hopeless sigh escaped me before I had a chance to compose myself.

The smartly dressed pink lady behind the desk almost lookssorry for me before she remembered who I am and the professional mask snaps back into place.

‘Miss Bleach I presume?’ Her tone is as tight as the forced smile she managed.

I nod dumbly.

‘The mayor is expecting you.’

I emerge an hour later no more certain about what will happen to me than I had been going in. It started amicably but I had only managed to make out a few new tidbits of information before observation gave way to self-preservation in the face of the mayor’s thorough interrogation. All I had learned was that I was to be given a part-time grey job in town and that I would be regularly “monitored” a term I assume was meant to imply that I would no longer be left to live or die as I chose. The questioning took up by far the larger portion of the meeting and every time I failed to incriminate myself the Mayor dug a little deeper:

How did I live?

This I answered truthfully, leaving out only my helper and his tools and instruction books.

What did I know about the town? It’s function? It’s history?

I tried to pipe back only what I knew from school, barricading my opinions and Onyx’s information behind what I hoped was a convincing dumb little girl act. He questioned my understanding of the law, the caste system and seemed frustrated when I didn’t offer anything out of the ordinary in my response.

The one which had caught me off guard was his final question, his voice low and almost conspiratorial. If it hadn’t been for the clench of his hands and the steely undercurrent in his voice I might have mistaken it for friendly curiosity. His eyes dropped for a moment from mine to where my hands were clasped on my knees, searching for something, before snapping back to my face and demanding an answer.

‘Where do you think you came from, Miss Bleach?’.

I stared at him blankly. He must know about how I was found, realise that my earliest memory was of the dingy kitchen at Miss Chalice’s home. I told him so and he asked again,

‘But before you were left on the stairs you must have been somewhere else, with someone else. You had parents, who do you think they were?

‘I… I never really thought about it much’, was my honest answer.

As soon as it left my lips I saw disbelief if in his expression and realised how odd that must sound, how odd it actually was that I had never seriously thought about my background. For all that I’d looked at our world and thought about my place in it I had never seen my unknown parentage as more than an inconvenience which had led to my situation. Who had they been? How had I been conceived, where was I born? Now that I thought on it I saw it more as the Mayor clearly did… As a mystery which needed solving.

I realised my pause and confusion must have made it look as if I had more to say on the subject as the mayor was now leaning slightly towards me, his eyes bright.

‘Oh… Sorry! I was just thinking about what you said. I’m sorry Mr Mayor, I don’t have any idea at all, I guess I never had reason to look too much at the past when the future needed working for.’

Disappointment flitted briefly across his features but he soon rallied.

‘It’s probably for the best Miss Bleach, it doesn’t do to ask questions about things we cannot change.’ I heard the dismissal in his voice and was relieved that he thought little enough of me to think this would be enough to put me off any further investigation. It was safer that way. As he stood he half extended a hand towards me before remembering who I was and I opting instead for a half-hearted wave.

‘Good-bye Miss Bleach, workmen will be by soon to plan the upgrade of your home. Your employment will begin Monday and you should report to the Municipal Library for 9am.’

Assuming we were finished I turned to leave and was startled when the mayor spoke again, a flat expressionless sound that was made more threatening for its lack of humanity though the words alone chilled me to my core.

‘We will find out where you came from Miss Bleach. And we will make sure you are the only one. Forever.’

The cold promise of his threat carried me back into the hall where I quickly checked out and rushed home to where the flimsy white walls of my shack for once seeming more inviting and warm than the colourful world I had left behind.

Alone again in the familiar space I had to time to think, to properly sort out the events of the last few days and to try and figure out where I stood. Between the town’s sudden decision to interact with me, Onyx’s return to my life with the book and everything that this had brought to the surface I felt as if I was a completely different person to the girl who had sat here only a week before.

Before I had been content to plan my survival, to dream of a better house, more food and warmer winters. They were the dreams of someone who was content to do only what was expected of them and to be allowed to live. Then Onyx had begun to chip away at the persona, he had shown me a different side of myself and hinted at there being more to the wider world, but I had been distracted by him and the person I was around him and I hadn’t really understood what he was trying to tell me.

I’m not sure even he had understood what he was trying to tell me just as he hadn’t understood why Jane Eyre had upset me so much. That story was just that, a story, and it’s happy resolution depended only on the characters being willing to change and the author being able to bend the rules. It was wonderful but it was impossible because in real life we were not the authors of our destiny and it didn’t matter how brave, compassionate or unimpressed by our positions in society we were. Short of death or revolution there was no way out.

For Onyx what he had given me was knowledge, a peek at what might lie underneath the fabric of our world but he hadn’t seen the harm in that knowledge. As an academic exercise it was fascinating but in real life it was just more things to add to the list of what we couldn’t have, freedom, change and love. He had taken a forgotten and long healed wound and made it new, raw and painful.

Now it wouldn’t matter how hard I worked to finish my bed or make a greenhouse. It didn’t matter that I was allowed to work as if I was a grey and my house got electricity. Because a heated shack would never be a stately home, a grudging camaraderie with colleagues would never be true equality and a secret friendship would never be a loving marriage. Perhaps before I had been ignorant it now I would never be satisfied, for a second I almost wished I was as stupid as the upper castes seemed to assume I would be.

Onyx might have thought he was giving me knowledge but really what he had given me was a choice. An unavoidable choice with two equally life-altering options. That was why I was angry with him, not for opening my eyes but for forcing my hand before I was ready. In a calmer moment I could see that sooner or later I would probably have arrived at the same place on my own but caught up in the schemes of the senate and Onyx’s well-meant exploration of the dark holes in our knowledge I had been catapulted towards a decision I hadn’t yet realised I would have to make.

Whatever I chose my age of innocence would truly be over.

If I accepted my life as it was now then I would do so knowing that I was missing so much. Perhaps things might improve a little but not beyond the parameters of the world and its castes, I would be secure but alone.

Or I could sacrifice that security, disengage the safety of society’s protection and go looking for more. Even if I wasn’t starting a revolution I would be putting myself in danger; it was clear that the Senate would be keeping tabs on me so I would have to live day-to-day in fear of discovery and its consequences.

But with that risk would come the chance that my life could be more than it currently was, perhaps I would find out where I came from or why the castes had to exist. I could find my purpose in this life I had been given. Maybe there would even be a way for Onyx and I to be friends if only I was brave enough to accept the uncertainty that came with his company.

If I could embrace the possibility of escaping my simple, stagnant life, if I could brave the dangers and take the leap of faith he had already made to be closer to me. If I hadn’t already blown that chance by rejecting everything he had risked so much to give to me.

Yes, I would have to choose, safety and solitude or risk and possible reward. Neither was perfect, neither was certain, I just hoped I hadn’t ruined one of my options with my willful blindness before I even realised that it was there and that I might want to choose it.

Read Chapter 10 – What Lies Beneath Now

Colourcaste: Chapter 8 – A World Rewritten

I stirred in the night and could have sworn that alongside the familiar hardness of the floor digging into my hip there was a comforting presence at my side, but when I woke up I was alone.

As the events if the previous afternoon began to replay themselves I felt alternate waves of hope and fear. Were the council serious? Could I really find a place in society and finally feel like I belonged in this world? Or was it an excuse to control me? These warring emotions consumed me and I paced the room, trying to work out what it all meant. I couldn’t decide if all of these changes were a blessing or a curse, it was all so uncertain.

When I remembered Onyx arriving I tried to play down the swell of emotion that overcame me and not dwell on why he might have left before I woke up. It had been foolish of him to come at all I reasoned, I’d asked him to stay away, but as hard as I tried to make myself believe it I couldn’t reason away the security I had found in his arms. Each time he came it felt more like he belonged and each time he left it was harder to be alone.

As I looked back at my life I realised that had I never met Onyx I would never have realised how isolated I truly was. The forced nurturing of Miss Chalice that had seemed so comforting at the time had been as lifeless as the stained grey curtains at the dirty windows of our hut.

In a world where people believed that their caste was their life’s purpose and meaning how many others lived and died knowing only the cold comfort of a necessary companionship. As I dwelt on the few conversations I had shared with Onyx trying to figure out if it added up to a friendship, something caught my eye.

Next to my rumpled sleeping bag was a book. Dog-eared and stained it looked somehow different from the others I had read. And then it hit me. The cover was black and white. Black AND white. It had never been recovered in a colour for a specific caste which meant it was old. Before the burning old.

Pausing only to fasten the latch on the door and check the horizon for unwelcome visitors I picked the book up, handling it with reverence. The cover was a picture of a young woman, her hair dark and her skin light and she was rushing away from a grand building. As I opened the first page I realised it wasn’t an instruction book at all. It was a story.

In our world stories were passed on from person to person, never written down, it would be a waste of paper I suppose. It had never occurred to me that before the burning things had been different. I settled down, planning only to read the first few pages before going and seeing to the garden and working on my bed but before I knew it it was past noon and I was totally captivated.

The story was about an average girl, plain they called her which I guess was their equivalent of colourless. She was sent to be a teacher to a young girl in the care of a mysterious and wealthy man in his remote home. Strange things begin to happen but perhaps the least expected is that this man, for all he expected Jane to be stupid, weak and beneath his notice, finds that she is more than her station and appearance would have him believe. Against all of the odds and everything that society, morality even, is telling them Mr Rochester falls in love with Jane Eyre.

I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard anything which so perfectly describes how I feel sometimes. The impossibility of escaping the limited corner I have been forced into, the heartbreaking magic of moments when you see how things could be different before remembering why they can’t be. But it wasn’t all familiar, some of it changed things I thought I knew about into something else entirely.

Like love. All my life I’ve been told about love, that it is the security and satisfaction of a colour match, the pride of knowing that you will continue to rebuild our world with a partner who is your perfect equal. I believed what they told me, that love is the reward for a life lived within the law. The berriverse schools teach us that love is simple, logical, can be earned and will last from the day of your partnership until the day you die.

I never knew that love could be a disaster. That it could come from all the wrong places, at the worst moment but for all the right reasons. I couldn’t have imagined that love could be blind to differences and difficulties, that a pounding in my chest could be caused anything other than fear or anger.

As Jane’s world is changed, so is mine and I read into the night, straining my eyes by candlelight until the last page is done. As I close the book I feel a drip fall on my hand and realise that I have been crying. At first I wonder why but then I realised that those final chapters, as beautiful as they were, are the point at which my story and Jane’s differ the most.

After all of the hardship and heartbreak Jane and Mr Rochester can start a life together. Perhaps they are changed people, scarred by they experiences but their world isn’t designed to make their marriage impossible, difficult maybe, but not impossible.

And that’s when the wonder I had been feeling began to change to anger, anger at the way things happened in Tayberry, fury at my place in their stupid system but most potently rage at Onyx for opening my eyes to it all.

What had he been thinking?!

Perhaps I had been naive before, my childhood might have been drab and lonely but I hadn’t known any better. My adulthood had been a struggle, a daily fight to survive, but I had never thought to want more than that until Onyx had put the thought into my head, all of the good qualities that I had been piling upon him this morning now seemed tainted by the realisation that my knowing these things wouldn’t change anything. I had never imagined more than survival, never hoped to have a friend and I never ever would have dreamed of wanting something so dangerous as that kind of love.

The first glow of morning had blossomed into a beautiful day before I was calm enough to begin to go on with my dreary life. Perhaps yesterday the goal of building a bed had seemed a stimulating one but today it just felt pointless. Still I continued. I didn’t know how to do anything other than just keep soldiering on.

The morning passed, then the afternoon and I worked harder and harder, the repetitive motion of weeding and then watering sending a burn through my body which couldn’t quite overpower the simmering anger at the back of my mind. My limbs had just begun to remind me that I hadn’t slept the previous night when I felt a shadow fall across me.

His shadow.

I jerked upright and drew back stiffly, his closeness rekindling the hot rage that I had tried to put aside. I heard him begin to speak but couldn’t make out the words around the warring voices in my head, some screaming at him for spoiling everything, others begging for an answer to all the new questions I had while a few whispered something that was more dangerous still, something that I wouldn’t even consider in the safety of my thoughts.

‘Winter, are you listening?’ His tone was uncertain and I realised I had completely missed whatever he had been saying. Not that it mattered.

‘Winter are you okay-‘

‘NO!’ I threw back, cutting across his concern. ‘How could I possibly be okay? Why would you come back here when I told you to stay away and then leave me that stupid stupid book?’

He stumbled back in shock as if I had pushed him, eyes wide and expression equal parts confused and upset.

‘I… I thought you would like it. I thought you and Jane were a little alike and… Well… I just thought… It might help’ ahead finished lamely.

‘You thought it would help? Are you crazy? Sure Jane is a little like me, we’re plain, poor and have no prospects but there is one VERY important difference between her and I. SHE IS NOT REAL!’ I was shouting by now, the unfamiliar sound of my raised voice scaring me a little but also thrilling me with its daring loudness.

‘Because it is a story Jane gets to escape, she gets to find her way and fall in love and have children and live happily ever after. I’m not Jane Eyre, Onyx, if anything I’m the mad wife in the attic! Hidden away, dangerous, alone forever and quite possibly about to get burned to death. But now I have all these stupid ideas, dreams that I didn’t need, didn’t want. I will be unhappy and alone forever, that’s always been my destiny, but now I know it it’s so much worse and it’s all your fault!’

My anger had burned out and as I uttered those last words I struggled to hold back the tears that had come from nowhere to fill the void it left.

Onyx was staring at me as if I had grown an extra head, wringing his hands and opening and shutting his mouth. When it became clear he didn’t have an answer or even an apology in him I turned away and walked back towards my house, legs leaden and heart heavy.

‘Winter?’ A timid whisper from behind me slowed me to a stop but I didn’t turn around.

‘I came to tell you that you need to be at the Town Hall tomorrow morning. 11AM. For integration.’

I nodded almost imperceptibly and continued to my house, closing the door and slumping to the ground.

Integration. On another day I would probably find the idea terrifying but today I was too exhausted to be scared. I pulled my sleeping bag toward me and curled up where I sat, praying for sleep to ease my troubled mind and trying not to feel the tears as they ran down my face.

Read on now – Chapter 9 – Integrate/Interrogate

Colourcaste: Chapter 7 – No Girl Is An Island

The first week after I sent Onyx away passed achingly slowly.

I would wake up indifferent, catch sight of the freshly painted walls of my home and smile at the remembrance of the painting process, reliving those hours we had spent together. Then I would remember that Onyx was gone forever, that it was my fault and the crushing weight of my loneliness would return, colouring my blank days with dark regrets and impossible futures. Some days I laboured under the weight, determined to build a greenhouse and a bed before winter, other days I floated through, imagining different outcomes and wondering what the point of my whole struggle had been now that I was left on my own again.

I tried to stop myself from watching the woodland for his familiar silhouette, scolded my unconscious mind when I jolted awake in the night convinced that some old shadow was him, that he had come back for me. It wasn’t coming true and the price of these moments of hope was too great, the hurt doubled each time the dream was over.

As the weeks wore on my awareness of my loneliness became a less stifling presence in my waking hours fading to a constant hum in the background. I regained some of my old practicality, Onyx might have planned to protect me but I knew I needed to forget that promise and look after myself. I was a survivor, it was all I knew how to do.

With my garden in crop and the weather warm it was fall again before I saw another human. I hadn’t seen the need to risk going to town and in my isolation I’d almost begun to imagine myself the last human on earth. Until one day I wasn’t.

There on the dirt track were a group of people, red, green and yellow mixed together and behind them a flicker of black.

My heart pounded.

But as the figures spread out and approached me I realised the shadow was not Onyx, a heavier set man wore the familiar robes, and my excitement began to turn into fear.

I backed towards my home, gripping the old spade I was carrying tightly though I knew it couldn’t protect me against so many. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

The group paused a few metres away a and from their ranks stepped a single red figure. The mayor, I remembered his speeches at school but couldn’t remember his name.

His voice was as I remembered, as plummy and rich as the fabric of his well cut suit. Screenshot-2627

‘Miss Bleach? I’m Mayor Burgundy’ he extended his hand. I just looked at it, the smooth curve of his clean nails so different from the blunt, grimy finish that my hands usually boasted. He just seemed so alien in this environment away from the neat municipal surroundings that he was normally pictured in.

The group behind me shuffled uncomfortably at my small act of defiance. But I was unshakeable, from somewhere I had gathered a mask of indifference which was shielding the terror in my heart.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, my tone was flat.

I saw a flicker of doubt in the mayors eyes and knew I had surprised him but ever the professional he rallied. Screenshot-2628

‘Miss Bleach, it has been drawn to our attention that you have experienced some…. Misfortunes… recently and so a few members of our public services wish to check you are as you should be.’ Behind him I saw a glance pass between two green police officers, one of whom I recognised from my last “inspection”, and was relieved that the cellar was sealed and the house entirely whitewashed. The mayor continued.

‘While the officers inspect your property I would like you to speak to a couple of members of other town committees, we realise you have become rather separated from the community and we are trying to find a way to remedy that.’

With no further introduction the greens peeled away from the group and made for my door, pushing inside roughly and clattering through my possessions. The absence of smashing sounds was a relief and while still trying to hold my nerve I realised that the sham diplomacy of their mission would prevent the wholesale destruction of my home.

For want of a better seating arrangement the mayor gestured awkwardly to the old foundation which festered nearby and those of us left outside went and sat in an uncomfortable group, faces displaying shades of distrust, nonchalance and in my case, blankness.

The representative if the Black a Order spoke up first, his voice deep and unruffled.

‘Are you happy here Miss Bleach?’ he asked. Screenshot-2631

Of all the questions I was expecting and was prepared to answer this was not one I had considered. It took every ounce of my self control not to react.

‘I’m not unhappy,’ was my answer.

The dark figure nodded, turning slightly to the Mayor who took up the questioning while the yellows watched carefully, one of them making notes in a primrose coloured notebook.

‘Well that’s good. The problem is there are some people in town who are not so happy about your being here and they’re getting a little… Reckless.’

I shrugged.

‘That is a shame sir but I try to keep to myself, I’m not interested in any trouble, I just get on with my life and stay away from town whenever I can.’

My answer seemed to please the assembled group before they were momentarily distracted by the return of the greens whose subtle yet vehement thumbs down I assumed meant they hadn’t found anything to justify my immediate arrest. With that settled the Mayor spoke again with more confidence.

‘Miss Bleach, while we much appreciate your responsible citizenship we at the Town Senate feel that your continued isolation in combination with your… abnormal colour situation, is creating an air of menace and mystery which is detrimental to the peace and harmony of the town.

My green colleagues have confirmed that your dwelling while legal is lacking in the fundamental utilities. In short the Town Senate now has a responsibility to ensure you do not suffer unduly as a result of unfit habitation but you also have a responsibility to work with us towards soothing the unrest in town which relates to you.

We would like to restor- I mean… supply, electricity and plumbing to your home and to work with you to reinforce the by-laws of the town with you as a part of it. What do you say?’

I struggled to discern the true question beneath all the politics in his statement. They were offering to make my home truly habitable, that much I understood, but I couldn’t quite work out what they wanted in return. They wanted me, or rather my colour, to stop stirring up uncertainty in the town and thought the answer was forcing me into the public eye? Had they not witnessed my desperate winter of scavenging, seen the disgust that ran so deeply in most of the town’s inhabitants? How could they possibly think that I could help them? And what were the yellows doing there, neither of them had said a word!

I absent-mindedly rubbed my scar with my thumb, the familiar smoothness of the moon shape helping to calm me down. I saw the man from Black Order follow my motion and for a second it seemed his eyes widened, a reaction I might have missed had I not been familiar with it on Onyx, before my attention was snapped back to the mayor who had taken my silence as an agreement.

‘Excellent. That’s all we need for now Miss Bleach. The Black Order will liaise with my cabinet to manage your integration. We will be in touch.’ And as quickly as they had appeared they were all gone.

I drifted back to my house in a daze, trying to process what had just happened and what was going to happen. How could I fit into their world, white didn’t have a place and the presence of the yellows, whether they were teachers or scientist I did not know, made me fear that they would try to change or manipulate me somehow.

And then there was the thing with my scar, it had been an instant but I could have sworn that the black man knew something about it.

As I made it to my front door the worries and suppressed fear finally overcame the adrenaline and overwhelmed me. My body shook and I crumpled to the ground my vision so blurry with tears that I barely noticed the dark shape until it was upon me. A familiar figure at my door just when I needed him.

Onyx let himself in and wordlessly folded me into his chest, letting me sob out all of my fear and uncertainty without judgement or any need for an explanation. I cried until I was exhausted and as the tears dried, much as I wanted to make the most of this stolen moment, I drifted off to sleep.

Read on – Chapter 8 – A World Rewritten

Colourcaste: Chapter 6 – We Are Less Than We Should Be

I slept through the morning and awoke giddy with anticipation for the coming night. I tried to occupy myself with my garden and with moving things to make the painting easier but late afternoon I was done and with hours to kill my mind drifted, recreating moments from last night and dreaming of what was to come. The sensible part of my head screamed about the risk, arguing for haste and efficiency, there was a job to be done and no more than that, but the lonely child in my heart imagined long hours of laughter and the beginning of a friendship.

Eventually sense prevailed and I went to the basement to retrieve the materials I’d set aside for my door. If Onyx was coming and putting us both in danger then the least I could do was make it hard for anyone to see he was there, to give him a chance to get out of the back while I opened the door.

He arrived just as I started drilling holes for the last hinge, the weight of the door balanced against my shoulder, the precision and concentration needed leaving sweat beaded on my forehead. I half expected him to come and help but instead he just stood and watched me, his head slightly cocked and his expression unreadable.

When I was done I checked to see if the door would close and then gestured for him to go inside. I reflexively glanced along the tree line, looking for any observers but there was nobody. I closed the door behind us and secured it with a makeshift latch, hopefully it would give us time if the worst happened.

When I finally turned my attention to Onyx I found that he was standing much closer than I had expected, his smile was wide and something about the atmosphere had shifted. Inside together for the first time, in my tiny hut with the door shut to the world, whatever our connection was it suddenly felt too intimate.

Awkward as ever I skirted around him and crossed to the sink, letting the copper speckled water carry the sawdust and grit off my hands and into the ground. Onyx’s voice cut through the tense silence,

‘You do realise how amazing what you’ve done is Winter? Doing all of this on your own, not giving up. You’re incredible.’

I shrugged,

‘Incredibly stupid maybe!’

I had to find a way to normalise what he had just said, I needed our last night not to lead me into any more desperate fantasies. His tone was sincere but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave again.

‘I should have moved or just camped, eventually they will come and see that I’m still alive. Then they’ll probably try again, next time maybe they’ll burn me with my house.’

Screenshot-2504

I couldn’t keep the fear out of my tone. For all that I’d planned an escape, for every second I’d spent concealing and equipping the basement to save me, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I didn’t want a life in the ground. I wanted to live in the house I’d built, to see my plants reach maturity, to feel the changes of the seasons without dread and not watch the woodlands for signs of danger and death.

Onyx nodded,

‘I’m working on something that might help’, he began and then tailed off. I was desperate to hear more but bit my tongue, not wanting to rush him, his words had given me hope but his tone was so uncertain…

‘I would tell you more but it isn’t for certain yet and I don’t want you disappointed. I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything’ his eyes searched by face for a reaction, his voice sincere and apologetic.

Screenshot-2507

‘Don’t be sorry!’ My gut reaction was instant and passionate, ‘Please don’t apologise for trying to help me, for trying to understand my life. That you even think of me, let alone speak to me…. Even just for a few hours… It’s more than I ever thought I would get from another person.’

My outburst rekindled the tension in the room that I’d tried to defuse and I realised how desperate I must have sounded. I didn’t look back at Onyx, not wanting to see the pity I was sure marked his face so instead I grabbed a brush and began to work.

We settled back into our pattern and I had begun to relax when Onyx began to talk, he didn’t demand that I respond, he just painted and as he worked he showed me the world as he knew it.

Onyx’s Story

‘I’m an only child though the norm for the Black Order is two. Senate and the yellows grant us both birth control and also gender selection to ensure balance and the continuation of the Order; most of our marriages are arranged and it’s unheard of for a black to marry out of caste. I had a sister but my mother died giving birth to her and Ebony followed when she was a week old.

I don’t think my father was the way he is now before my mother died, I don’t remember much but I do remember him singing and laughing, he doesn’t do either any more. He just studies, works and works more, I think he’s hoping to become the next head of the Order and he might just manage it if I don’t let him down. I still remember him sitting me down, I was about five and thought he was the most marvellous man in the berriverse. He said that, “Because as a family we are less than we should be, as individuals we must be more than anyone could ever ask of us.”

That’s the only way father isn’t perfect you see? He only managed one child and therefore the gender balance is off, he only has one child to teach our ways and to offer as a partner. If that isn’t to hold him back then he needs me to be exceptional, I have to be the model of what the Order can do, of what we ought to be.

I didn’t go to school, father believed I was best kept separate from those I would later guide and so he homeschooled me; there was an emphasis on theology, history, politics and psychology. With these skills he believed I would be able to follow in his footsteps as no other son of the black could, that as a pair we would ensure the continuity of the black way, stand as a symbol of all that the Order could accomplish.

For the longest time I believed him with my whole heart. I strove to prove myself worthy, devouring books and papers and immersing myself in our history and customs so I could properly steer the moral compass of the town when my turn came to do so. Perhaps if I had not been left so much on my own then I would still be that way but loneliness does funny things to a person. You know that as well as I do.

Weeks spent in that silent house, days of seeing nobody but my own reflection made me begin to wonder if people were really supposed to live that way. Did my lack of a sister or mother truly mean I would live forever with my austere father as my sole companion. I began to venture out in search of my would-be schoolmates but found that my presence made most people uncomfortable, they called me creepy when I wasn’t quite out of earshot and shrank from my gaze.

So I retreated back into the house my understanding of the world shaken, I had thought that the Black Order were loved and respected but now I struggled to believe that it was so. In the face of the real world all of our neat little theories seemed less plausible, less comprehensive.

Screenshot-2519

My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered in our attic a trunk full of books with my mothers name on them. When I finally broke the lock open I found histories from before the burning of the world, of great wars and huge nations, of segregation and forgiveness and of separation and reconciliation.

It seemed that the people of the old world, as well as being different shades of beige and brown had mixed freely with others who varied from them in skin colour. At first they had been separated but they had evolved to accept their differing appearances over time. They called it civil rights and it was first bitterly contested but gradually but unstoppable embraced by the world.

In the books there were pictures of light skinned men with dark skinned women and honey coloured babies, they were smiling and happy, a black man ruled a vast nation of many colours from a white house. This equality was hard won but lasted for a hundred years before the world that created it was destroyed.

I know why those who emerged from the bunker implemented the system they did, why senate clings to it today, we are a society still precariously close to non-existence but when I found out that the castes might not always be needed it changed something in me.

I wasn’t happy just to be an exemplary black any more. I wanted understand all of the colours, to see if beneath the personas society had given them the people were more like me than they’d guess; curious, intelligent and perhaps even lonely.

Against my fathers wishes I became involved in the Senate at sixteen, I worked on the rehabilitation of lesser criminals from all castes, trying to understand their reasons for their actions and giving them a way to better handle the factors which had led them to that point. I learned of the resentment that some if the lower castes harbour to the reds and oranges, that brown feel undervalued and that green secretly believe they are worthier than yellow. Beneath the leadership of our ordered society there is a mess of desire and despair which transcends colour caste, it’s a feeling that something isn’t quite right.

Which brings me to you. The whites are both the product of this resentment and the deterrent against acting in it. People fear becoming white above most things and so they blame all their problems upon this tiny and powerless group of unfortunates who exist only in the prison, or I should say existed only in the prison. Because you upset that balance. Now the common enemy is no longer clear cut, you’ve grown up within our laws and other than your colour you have shown yourself to be no different to the rest of us.

To most of the population that’s terrifying, if they can’t blame white then who is at fault? Terror leads people to make bad and dangerous choices, the burning your house for example was not a sanctioned event but the fear-inspired action of a few members of a lower middle class caste who thought that destroying you would set things to rights. The senate is worried at the uncertainty your continued existence creates but after almost eighteen years they still don’t quite know what to do with you. Even I haven’t worked it out yet but you have shown me beyond reasonable doubt that people can be separated from their colours and still thrive.’

Here he paused, meeting my gaze and making me realise that I had long ago stopped painting to listen, a pool of paint on the floor announcing that my brush had long been hanging at my side.

‘What are they going to do with me?’ I asked, my tone neutral as I turned away, resigned to what I was sure would be bad news.

Onyx gave me a wry smile, his tone slightly smug,

‘I am hoping that will soon be my decision’.

I spun to face him.

‘WHAT?!’

‘Oh I don’t mean anything weird Winter!’ He quickly clarified, wringing his hands. I was sure if he could have blushed he would have. ‘What I mean is that with six years of senate work under my belt I have applied to take over your case and find a better way of integrating you with society. I just need a majority to approve it. Specifically, I need my father’s vote.’

Even as my mind struggled to balance all of this new information I was aware of sadness in Onyx’s tone, his fathers approval mattered to him and it seemed that as he tried to defend me he had lost it. My discomfort melted into unhappiness, I hated that I had contributed to that pain, that just by existing I was destabilising not only the town but also the happiness and safety of one of the only people I had ever cared about.

‘Maybe you should just stay away from me Onyx’, my voice came out thickly, emotion creeping in even as I tried to think logically about the safest thing for both of us. ‘You’ve done too much already, I can manage now. It’s safer for us both if this is the last time you come here’ I indicated the mostly painted room and stretched my mouth into an approximation of a relaxed smile.

Onyx put down his brush and closed the gap between us, his voice low

‘Is that really what you want?’

I nodded stiffly, again wishing I could read the expression on his dark skin, his tone sounded brittle and I didn’t know if I had given the answer he wanted.

A loaded second passed with our gazes locked. I looked away. Stepped away.

When I glanced back up I saw Onyx had stepped back, his shoulders were slumped and he looked somehow deflated. When he caught me looking he shook his head as if to clear it and took a deep breath.

‘I’d better go then’, was all he managed as he gathered his things and prepared to walk out of my life, his momentum giving out just as he reached the door. Onyx spun on his heel and turned back to me with his eyes blazing and voice filled with a fire I had only seen before on the night he had saved me.

‘I will respect your wishes Winter, I won’t endanger you by coming here if you’re afraid of consequences but I will not stop fighting now I have begun. Maybe I didn’t realise how flawed our world was until I met you, I had suspected the castes were too limiting but I never really understood until I knew you that your colour is as meaningless as your birthdate or horoscope. It’s just what you’re born with, it says nothing about a person.

So I’m going to try to change things. Maybe it won’t happen in my lifetime, we still have so far to go just to get started but I will try to make the castes begin to look for similarities in others instead of only seeing differences. And that includes you. I will stay away from you but I will also fight to protect you as best as I can.’

With that he turned and rushed away.

His parting words broke apart the fragile shell I’d built to protect myself against what I had believed was his inevitable departure from my life and I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. After fighting back over and over again had I finally allowed fear and cowardice to deprive me of something I needed much more than a roof or indoor plumbing? Perhaps I had just forever closed the door on my only friend.

I rushed to the door but Onyx had already vanished into the darkness. Unable to hold it together any longer I sank to the floor and I cried.

Read Chapter 7 – No Girl Is An Island

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