Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Author:Karen Lord [Lord, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: prose_contemporary
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2011-04-10T12:28:37+00:00

13

one star rises, another star sets

* * * *

Do not think badly of Paama. She had never had any experience of being a heroine, and she was not accustomed to otherworldly beings threatening her loved ones. So it was courage of a sort that made her step in front of Neila, whip out the Stick??nd offer it to the indigo lord.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, but he took another step closer and stretched out his hand. Neila ran from Paama with another shriek of fear and went straight to the arms of Alton, who was not so dazed that he did not react appropriately, holding her protectively and shielding her face from the awful scene playing out before her. Paama had no refuge; she stood her ground and trembled as that unearthly blue hand closed slowly over the Stick.

The Stick would not move. He tugged it fiercely, she opened her palms wide, but it stuck to her like an extension of her own hand. He stopped pulling and became strangely calm, almost analytical, as he held her wrists gently and turned his head to view the phenomenon from all angles.

'Perhaps if I cut her hands off?’ he mused to himself.

Neila gave a low moan and Paama's breath choked off in the middle of her suddenly constricted throat.

Just when it seemed impossible to be any more shocked and terrified, a new thing happened. A bizarrely shaped figure loomed out of the stilled outside world and casually tore open their little bubble of time, holding the edges apart carefully with sharp-tipped, multiple, hairy legs.

'They're coming,’ it said.

It was half Bini, half the trickster spider. The dead human eyes remained as blank as any mere decoration, but the spider eyes glittered avidly with pure mischief. The indigo lord did not quite show surprise, but his eyes narrowed again and his lips pressed together angrily as if he were thinking, I might have known.

'You'd better clear up this mess before you go,’ the spider continued with infuriating superiority.

The indigo lord looked as if he would have liked to snarl at the Trickster, but from the sudden shadow in his eyes, it was clear that another sense was warning him of the truth of the Trickster's words. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked at Neila and Alton, and then he glared at the Trickster.

'You helped start it; you can finish it off,’ he said, punctuating his curt words with an impatient gesture.

The bubble shrank, pulling swiftly away from the Trickster's snatching pincers, drawing smoothly past and through the tightly intertwined forms of Neila and Alton, and centring at last on Paama and the indigo lord. Far too late, she made a movement to dash away, but he looked at her with an expression of deep satisfaction and gently folded the bubble in with one last, lazy curl of his fingers.

It was as if some small piece of the world had silently imploded and extruded itself elsewhere, and the unseen breach had pinched off and healed itself over like a cell budding off from its parent.

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