Page 24 of Colour My World
But the truth pressed against her like an unwelcome shadow. She was not the same. Not anymore. “Am I?”
Her reflection stared back at her: her right eye, deep and brown, tethered her to the life she had known. Her left eye, no longer its twin, gleamed like spring’s first leaf: green. Irrevocably green.
Chapter 7
Longbourn, October 1806
The familiarity of the drawing room—the quiet murmur of conversation, the clink of teacups, her father’s low cough—should have been a comfort, but Elizabeth felt unmoored. She sat in her usual chair, Wollstonecraft’sLetters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,in her lap.
Her father had handed her the volume last week with a wry smile. “Too bold for your mother’s shelf, I think. But not for yours.”
She had not yet turned a page. Across from her, her family carried on as they always had. And yet, she no longer saw the world as it was, only as it flared around her in a manner that defied reason.
At first, she thought it a remnant of her fevered dreams. But now, as her family sat before her, she could not deny what she saw. There was no ignoring Kitty’s swirling hues or Lydia’s flickering golds. Her father sat across from her, wrapped in rich brown. Steady, like well-worn leather. Her mother waved a handkerchief. Flickers of orange and yellow, low embers in the fireplace.
“Mr Bennet, did I tell you of Mrs Long’s niece? I have not, have I?”
Her father pressed his lips together. The brown about his shoulders darkened, a slow shift towards a dull red.
“May I defer your raptures until later? I have not the patience to do them justice.”
He returned to his broadsheet. The dull red receded. The brown returned.
Her mother frowned. A flare of orange, sharp and quick, andthen silver seeped in at the edges, washing it thin.
Elizabeth returned to her reading—an exercise in futility. The words floated. None held. She closed her eyes and counted to ten.
“Lizzy? Are you well?” Beside her, Jane sat draped in white, like a freshly scrubbed sheet.
“I am,” she replied.
“I am relieved.” Jane returned to her embroidery. Her white had faltered for a moment, then resumed its original colour.
Elizabeth peered at Mary, who was surrounded by a cool, unwavering silver, polished and smooth like moonlight on water. She searched for variations but saw no imperfections.
“Lizzy?” Mary looked left and then right. “Do you require something?” The silver surrounding her did not change.
“Thank you, Mary.”
“You are the most insufferable creature alive!” Kitty’s voice rang sharp with irritation.
Elizabeth turned towards the younger girls. Kitty’s colours flared red, blue, and green, like ribbons caught in a storm, never still. Lydia, by contrast, shimmered, gilded, and flickering bright one moment, transparent the next.
“What have I done now?” Lydia huffed. She threw herself back against the settee.
“You took my blue ribbon.”
“I did not!” Lydia’s gold sharpened.
Did she smile?Elizabeth blinked. Something about it felt different.
Kitty crossed her arms. “Then where is it?”
Lydia sighed dramatically, then smirked. “I suppose it has vanished into thin air.”
Kitty’s hues twisted and darkened. Lydia’s gold flickered bright and then dulled. A shift. A change. Was it truly a lie? Or simply mischief?If I asked, if I pressed, would it change again?
Elizabeth closed her book. There would be no reading today. The teapot’s silver caught her reflection and warped, uncertain. Still, she saw a shimmer of something green.
