it, right? All kids make it yellow, I said, but I think that’s not quite right.
Ivory? he said.
Sort of burned white, I said. But with a halo?
That’s hard work, he said, folding up his sandwich paper. He had a nice face to him, something chunky in his nose that I could get behind; it made him into the kind of guy you’d want to call on in an emergency.
Yours, too, I said. His hands were rough from pulling at the walls for years.
Want to go to the faire sometime? he asked. The outdoor faire happened on the weekends, in the main square, where everything was sold.
Sure, I said.
Maybe there’s some sun stuff there, he said.
I’d love to, I said.
We began the first round of dying at the end of the week, focusing initially on the pale yellows. Cheryl was very careful not to overly yellow the dye — yellow is always more powerful than it appears in the bin. It is a stealth dominator, and can take days and days to undo. She did that all Saturday, while I went to the faire. It was a clear warm afternoon, and the faire offered all sorts of goodies and a delicious meat pie. Nothing looked helpful for the dress, but Manny and I laughed about the latest tapestry unicorn craze and shared a nice kiss at the end, near the scrubby oaks. Everything was feeling a little more alive than usual. We held another seminar at the studio, and Cheryl did a session on warmth, and seasons, and how we all revolved around the sun. Central, she said. The theme of the sun is central. The center of us, she said. Core. Fire.
Careful with red, said the Color Master, when I went to visit. She was thinner and weaker, but her eyes were still coals. Her brother had gotten up to try to take care of her and had thrown out his back to the worst degree and was now in the medicine arena, strapped to a board. My sister is dying, he told the doctors, but he couldn’t move, so all they did was shake their heads together. The Color Master had refused any help. I want to see Death as clearly as possible, she’d said. No drugs. I made her some toast but she ate only a few bites and then pushed it aside.
It’s tempting, to think of red, for sun, she said. But it has to be just a dash of red, not much. More of a dark orange, and a hint of brown. And then white on yellow on white.
White, I said. No, really?
Not bright white, she said. The kind of white that makes you squint, but in a softer way.
Yeah, I said, sighing. And where does one find that kind of white?
Keep looking, she said.
Last time I used your hair, for silver, I said.
She smiled, feebly. Go look at fire for a while, she said. Go spend some time with fire.
I don’t want you to die, I said.
Yes, well, she said. And?
Looking at fire was interesting, I have to admit. I sat with a candle for a couple hours. It has these stages of color, the white, the yellow, the red, the tiny spot of blue I’d heard mentioned but never experienced. So I decided it made sense to use all of those in the dress: the white, the yellow, the red, a little spot of blue. We hung the dress in the center of the room and we all revolved around it, spinning, imagining we were planets and what did we need. It needs to be hotter, said Hans, who was playing the part of Mercury, and then he put a blowtorch to some silk and made some dust materials out of that and we re-dipped the dress. Cheryl was off in the corner, cross-legged in a sunspot, her eyes closed, trying to soak it up. We need to soak it! she said, standing. So we left it in the dipping longer than usual. I walked by the bins, trying to feel that harmony feeling, what could call me, or not call me. I felt a tug to the dark brown so I brought a bit of it out and tossed it in the mix, and it was too dark but with a little yellow-white from dried lily flowers, and something started to pop a bit. Light, said Cheryl. It’s also daylight — it’s light. It’s our only true light, she said again. Without it, we live in darkness and cold. The dress drip-dried in the middle of the room, and it was getting closer, and just needed that factor of squinting — a dress so bright it couldn’t quite be looked at. How to get that?
Remember, the Color Master said. She sat up, in bed. I keep forgetting, she said, but the King wants to Marry his Daughter, she said. Her voice pointed to each word, hard. That is not right, she said, okay? Got it? Put anger in the dress. Righteous anger. Do you hear me?
I do not, I said, though I nodded. I didn’t say “I do not,” I just thought that part. I played with the wooden knob of her bed frame. I had tried to put some anger in the sun dress, but I was so consumed with trying to factor in the squint that all I really got in there was confusion. I think the confusion was what made an onlooker squint more than the brightness. Confusion does make people squint though, so I ended up fulfilling the request accidentally. We had sent it off in the carriage, after working all night on the light factor that Cheryl had mentioned by adding bits of diamond dust to the mix. Diamonds are light inside darkness! she’d announced, at three A.M., with a bialy in her hand, triumphant. On the whole, it was a weaker product than the moon dress, but not bad — the variance in subtlety is unnoticed by most, and our level of general artistry and craft is high, so we could get away with a lot without anyone running over and asking for his money back.
The sky, the Color Master told me, after I had filled her in on the latest. She had fallen back down into her pillows, and was so weak she spoke with eyes closed. When I held her hand she only rested hers in mine: not limp, not grasping.
Sky is last, she said.
And death?
Soon, she said. She didn’t move, with her hand on mine, and she fell asleep, midway through our conversation. I stayed all night. I slept, too, sitting up, and sometimes I woke and just sat and watched her, sleeping. What a very precious person she was, really. I hadn’t known her very well, but she had picked me, for some reason, and that picking was changing me, I could feel it, and it was like being warmed by the presence of the sun, a little. The way a ray of sun can seem to choose you, as you walk outside from the cold interior. I wanted to put her in that sun dress, to drape her in it, but it wasn’t an option; we had sent it off to the princess and it wasn’t even the right size and wasn’t really her style, either. But I guess I just knew that the sun dress we sent was something of a facsimile, and this person here was the real sun, the real center for us all, and even through the dark night, I felt the light of her, burning, even in the rasping breathing of a dying woman.
In the morning, she woke up, saw I was still there, and smiled a little. I brought her tea. She sat up to drink it.
The anger! she said, as if she had just remembered. Which maybe she had. She raised up on her elbows, face blazing. Don’t forget to put anger in this last dress, she said. Okay?
Drink your tea, I said.
Listen, she said. It’s important, she said. The King wants to marry his own daughter. She shook her head. It was written, in pain, all over her forehead. It is wrong, she said. She sat up higher, on her elbows. She looked beyond me, through me, and I could feel meaning, thick, in her. She picked her words carefully.
You cannot bring it into the world, and then bring it back into you, she said. It is the wrong action, she said.
Her face was clear of emphasis, and she spoke plainly, as plainly as possible, as if there were no taboo about fathers marrying daughters, as if the sex factor were not a biological risk, as if it weren’t just disturbing and upsetting as a given. She held herself steady, on her elbows. This is why she was the Color Master. There was no stigma, or judgment, no societal subscription, no trigger morality, but just a clean and pure anger, fresh, as if she were thinking the possibility over for the first time.
You birth someone, she said. Leaning in. You birth someone, she said. And then you release her. You do not marry her, which is a bringing back in. You let her go.
Put anger in the dress, she said. She gripped my hand, and suddenly all the weakness was gone, and she was right there, an electric pulse of a person, and I knew this was the last time we would talk, I knew it so clearly that everything sharpened into incredible focus. I could see the threads of the weave of her nightgown, the microscopic bright cells in the whites of her eyes.
Her nails bit into my hand. I felt the tears rising up in me. The teacup wobbling on the nightstand.
