Page 15 of A Little Red
“OK,” said Azure, numbly. She had done this. She had put her family in danger.
Probably Kurt was radioing for the medic as Jimmy and Bobby walked over, half-supporting Ochre.
“These trees are so fantastic,” said Bobby, looking up at the foliage. “I can’t believe someone would ever want to cut them down. We have to stop that.”
“We really do,” said Jimmy fervently.
Ochre looked at Azure and Azure found she was having a hard time meeting his eye. Victory had never tasted so ashen.
Scarlet
Scarlet came to face down in a pile of pine needles. Someone was standing over her and then that person walked away. Sometime later, although she couldn’t have said how long, she felt hands on her. She was lifted in the air and then everything went black again.
The next time she woke up, Ochre and Azure were arguing. She tried to roll her eyes and then decided her eyeballs hurt too badly. She gave it a moment and decided that sitting up wasn’t going to happen on its own. Her stomach muscles protested all the way up, but she managed to get there. Although, she suspected she looked full zombie as she did it.
“No!” snapped Ochre. “No, if you knew there was a risk, you were obligated to share it.”
“I wasn’t even sure that she’d be here,” said Azure. “She is always in flux. She’s never focused in the here and now.”
“But you knew that if she did there was risk,” said Ochre. “And you said nothing.”
“I told you both there was risk.”
“Yeah, from jack-booted thugs. You didn’t say anything about this.”
“I didn’t know about this!”
They were in Ochre’s camp. Nothing appeared to be changed, except the outline of every leaf was like a neon sign. The world pulsed with energy and she could feel the heartbeat of the earth beneath her like an enormous drum. Azure and Ochre sounded like yipping poodles in screeching counterpoint to the music around her.
“Can both of you shut up?” asked Scarlet. “Or argue further away. You’re making my head hurt.”
“Pretty sure that’s probably from working a massive amount of magic that you’re not qualified for doing that,” said Azure.
“Fuck off,” said Scarlet and Azure looked shocked. Scarlet tried to remember if this was the first time she’d sworn at her sister. It couldn’t possibly be. She was pretty sure the lip gloss incident in high school must have involved swearing.
“If you had just listened to me, then maybe—” began Azure again, her tone aiming for lofty know-it-all woman of the world. Azure was five whole years older than Scarlet. That was an eye-blink in the greater scope of life and Scarlet wasn’t in the mood to be condescended to by someone who hadn’t known how to make hashtags until Scarlet had shown her.
“Seriously,” interrupted Scarlet, “Fuck off. You weren’t getting the job done.”
“You don’t know that,” protested Azure. “You didn’t give it a chance.”
“I looked. It wasn’t going to work. I tried to talk to you, but as usual, you ignored me. So I fixed it.”
“You fixed it!” yelped Azure, outraged. “How dare you! You walked away from everything! You live in a city! You don’t know anything about anything! You took ahugerisk and you have no idea what you’re doing.”
Scarlet staggered to her feet and channeled her inner stone-cold bastard. She didn’t like to think that her inner stone-cold bastard was named Liam, but that didn’t make it less true. “I know what works. Your spell wasn’t working. As usual, you were too closed off and your ego was getting in the way.”
“And your ego wasn’t?” demanded Azure. “Did you even stop to think about what could have happened if you’d gotten it wrong?”
“I have to go home now,” said Scarlet, ignoring Azure. “Ochre, will you give me a ride to the train station?”
“Sure,” said Ochre. He was giving her a strange look, but at least he was quiet.
They were parking the truck in the train station lot before Ochre spoke again. “I’m not looking to start a fight, but Azure is right, that wasreallydangerous.”
“Yes,” agreed Scarlet. “But you know what they say: be the change you want to see in the world.”
“Not funny, Scarlet.”
