Sky of Seven Colors

by Rachelle Nelson

Genres: YA Fantasy

Synopsis

In a strange part of the forest, the divide between worlds grows thin.
 
After the accident, Meg would do anything to wake her best friend from his deadly coma. At least, that’s what she whispered into the woodland shadows. She never imagined her wish would trap her in a gray other-earth, void of any color.
 
Meg's vibrant humanity is a priceless artifact in the gray kingdom, coveted by the royal court. All she wants to do is find a way back home. Until she discovers the other-earth contains healing powers that can save her friend. But only if Meg becomes what the gray people need—a human bride for Kalmus, the powerful king of the capital city.

With her heart torn between earths, Meg’s choices may cost more than she knows.

Release date: August 8, 2023

Publisher: Enclave Escape - a YA imprint of Enclave Publishing

Print pages: 365

Sample

1

On my seventeenth birthday, I hiked into a forest and disappeared. It was Andrew’s idea. The forest, not the disappearance.

Pine trees flashed by my window as we drove along a dirt road. Cloud cover deepened the shade of the woods, promising a summer storm.

“Your dad’s okay with us coming up here?” I sat in the middle seat of Andrew’s pickup, my leg a breath from touching his.

His mouth tilted up at one side. “I always explore when I come for Christmas.”

That wasn’t an answer.

“By the way, you’re invited this year, if you want . . .” His invitation trailed off. He glanced over at me, then back at the road. “My mom would kill to have another girl around.”

Christmas with Andrew Knoll. That would be something. I watched him drive and felt myself smile.

We pulled onto a long driveway, stopping in front of a two-story house. Large window panes glistened beneath gables, reflecting the evergreen forest that surrounded us.

I eyed the structure. “You call this a cabin? I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than my house.”

When I had imagined the place, I always pictured logs and mud.

Andrew laughed. “It’s not as great as it looks. The hot water tank goes out half the time. Besides, we’re not here for the cabin. We’re here for the trees.”

The Knolls owned a hundred acres in the mountains above town. Private, gated property. Andrew’s mom liked to say the woods were haunted. Andrew said they were beautiful. I was just glad to be outside. To be with him.

I slid out of the truck onto the pavement. The air smelled like rain and pine sap, a welcome change from the dry valley below.

“Tree therapy.” Andrew closed the truck door and flashed a smile. “You ready?”

I nodded and followed him to a path on the other side of the driveway. Tree therapy was our thing, an excuse to spend time together over the summer when we weren’t in school. I had learned about it in biology class, how some doctors prescribed walks in the woods to help their patients. So now, that’s what we called our hikes.

But today’s hike was different. Special. It was the Saturday before my seventeenth birthday, and this was our way of celebrating.

Last year, my mom had thrown a party. Balloons and cake and half the town on the guest list. That was before she got really sick. This year, Andrew claimed birthday planning dibs. As if someone was going to fight him for it. I didn’t want a party. Too many questions about how I was doing. Questions I didn’t know how to answer, now that she was gone.

The trees were better than anything I could have asked for.

Ferns and branches brushed our shoes with dew as we made our way along the path.

“Who built this trail?” I asked.

“My great-grandpa cleared it. For good reason.” Andrew quickened his step. “You'll

 see soon enough.”

For a while, we walked in silence. I didn’t mind the quiet. Liked it, even. We always acted like tree therapy was a joke, but I actually thought there was something to it.

A breeze blew my hair over my shoulder, snagging the thin strands on a branch. I stopped, caught. Things were always getting stuck in my hair. Jacket zippers. Door handles. But I refused to cut it. It was the same long chestnut as my mom’s, though hers had been thick and curly, not a curtain of limp snares.

Andrew laughed, reaching to help me detangle.

“Thanks.” I lowered my hands and let him work at the snag.

This close, I could feel his warmth. I was always aware of him. Especially aware of the distance between us. My heart beat faster and heat crept up my neck. Great. A blush would make my skin even patchier than normal. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Andrew wore a linen shirt, snug across his broad shoulders, complementing his olive skin and amber eyes. Those were the kind of eyes a girl could get lost in, if she looked too long. Which is why I never did.

At first, when we started hanging out in my freshman year, I hadn’t noticed him in that way. Since then, things had changed between us. Part of it was him—he had grown into himself. Part of it was me.

Andrew was the one who sat beside me at the funeral. And after the funeral. He was there when I finally let myself cry, his hand in mine. Sometimes, I thought there was more than friendship between us. But he never said anything, so neither did I. Things were good the way they were. I didn’t want to mess that up.

Except things weren’t going to stay the way they were, and I knew it.

In a few weeks, I would start my senior year of high school. Andrew would go to college.

I shook my head, pulling myself free from the branch, creating space between us. I lost

some hair in the process.

Andrew removed my loose strands from the pine needles, holding them out to me. “You’re always leaving your mark.”

I smiled. “Call me Gretel. It’s my trail of breadcrumbs.”

“You won’t need it. We’re almost there.” He put a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

It was barely audible. Beneath the bird calls and the forest noises, a roar droned, the sound of river rapids.

“It’s just a little further.” Andrew quickened his steps as he led the way.

After two more bends in the trail, we came to the top of a ridge, overlooking a ravine.

I took in a breath at the sight. Across the ravine, a waterfall poured over the edge of a high cliff, crashing into a spray of mist below us. Bright green moss grew on the rocks behind the falls. With the dark sky and the vivid color, it looked like another world.

It was beautiful. A place untouched by sadness.

To my surprise, my throat tightened with emotion. This was better than tree therapy.

“What do you think?” Andrew asked over the sound of the falls.

I swallowed back the threat of tears, another thing that made my skin pink. “It looks like it should be in a national park. How does no one know this is here?”

Andrew stepped closer to me. “Knolls know. They just don’t care. My grandpa’s brother fell here as a kid. It was . . . bad. He died. After that, they closed the place to the public. It was way before my dad was even born, but still no one comes out here. My parents like jigsaw puzzles and they hate getting their shoes dirty. You’re the only one I’ve ever shown. Hopefully it’s not a lame surprise.”

He was watching me.

I grinned and took a deep breath, taking in the scent of green things. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s even better up close.” Andrew motioned for me to follow him further down the trail.

He was headed into the ravine. My shoulders tensed. Right now, the

path was wide enough to stay away from the edge. But what if it became narrow or steep? I had never been good with heights. Even the Ferris wheel made me want to puke, and it had safety rails.

I didn’t move to follow Andrew.

“Don’t worry.” He came back up the trail. “The path is only tricky at one spot. This is the easiest way down.”

He took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, then let go. I closed my empty hand, wishing he had held on longer.

“It’s easy for you.” I edged along the path close behind him. “You’re not scared of anything.” Not heights, or people. Or real birthday parties.

“That’s not true.” Andrew didn’t elaborate.

He was probably trying to make me feel better. My list of phobias was too long: spiders, strangers, driving. It hadn’t always been that way. Last year, when everything went wrong, it was like my brain realized bad things can happen. I started worrying about the bad, focusing on it. But good could happen too. Like this hike. Like Andrew.

“Hey,” I said. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“It’s better with you.” Andrew looked back at me. “Now, since this is technically your birthday party, I think it’s time for games.”

“And cake?”

“If you insist.” He pulled a crumpled paper bag out of his backpack and tossed it to me.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

The bag smelled sweet. Inside were two enormous oatmeal cookies. My favorite.

“I was joking about the cake. But this is better.” I took a bite of a cookie. Sugar and butter melted in my mouth.

Andrew took a cookie for himself. He packed the empty bag away. “I wasn’t joking about the games. You ready for truth or dare?”

I laughed. “You sure you can handle it?”

We had played before. Last time, it ended with Andrew having to eat a concoction of

ranch dressing, sandwich cookies, and pickles.

“Well,” he said, “since you’re the birthday girl, you get to go first.”

“Fair enough.”

We kept walking, pausing to climb over a log that had fallen across the trail.

“Truth,” I said.

“Perfect.” Andrew brushed dirt off his jeans. “Do you have any regrets?” He didn’t look at me when he asked the question.

Regrets. I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t ruin the hike. There were things I wished had never happened. Cancer. Death. Things I couldn’t control.

“I regret not eating both cookies,” I said.

“Come on. You picked truth. You owe me a real answer.”

“You’re supposed to ask me something easy. Like, what’s the worst birthday present you ever got.”

“Your mom gave you a pair of red shoes with glitter last year,” Andrew said. “You hated them. But you pretended like you didn’t.”

He was right.

“Okay,” I said. “Real answer. When I was in fourth grade, I took this field trip to the zoo. I waited for everyone else to ride the carousel before me. I was nervous, I guess. But I wanted to ride the horse. By the time I got in line, it was time to leave. I know it’s dumb . . . but it’s a regret.”

“Acceptable answer.” Andrew guided me to the inside of the path, away from a raised tree root. His hand was warm on my back.

“I used to ride that carousel all the time when I was a kid,” he said. “I’m sorry you never got to.”

“You were probably

first in line,” I said.

“I was.”

“You probably cut in line.”

“I did.” Andrew grinned.

That smile made something flutter inside of me. I looked down, concentrating on my steps. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

I rolled my eyes. Andrew always picked dare.

“Before you decide the intensity of the challenge,” he said, “keep in mind that I did bring my first aid kit. So we’re good to go.”

I didn’t have a dare for him. I wanted to keep talking. “What do you regret? I dare you to tell me the truth.”

I expected Andrew to fight me on this. He liked his dares. But he was silent for a moment. He turned to me and held my gaze, his eyes serious.

“The truth.” He paused. “Actually . . . I did want to talk to you about something.”

I could hear in his voice that the game was over. My stomach tightened. “About what?”

He put his hands into his pockets. “Meg, I’m going to be leaving soon—”

I interrupted, panic washing over me. “But you’re not leaving today.”

This was the one subject I didn’t want to talk about. No matter what he was about to say, he was leaving eventually, and nothing could change that. We would be apart for a whole year, except for Christmas. He would probably meet some college girl from the city with silky blond hair and a rock-climbing gym pass. Today, I would avoid heights, parties, and this conversation.

I took off down the path, past Andrew, hugging the safe side.

“Meg—” The sound of his footsteps followed behind me.

I laughed, passing it off as a chase. When I came to a patch of pinecones on the ground, I had to slow down or risk stumbling. Andrew passed me and stopped, blocking the trail. We stood facing each other.

“I need to tell you something

” he said. “Will you listen for a second?”

I nodded, my smile fading. Whatever this was, he wasn’t going to let it go. He took a step closer. My head tilted up to see him.

“I know I’m leaving . . .” he went on. “And I don’t know where that leaves us.”

Us? I tried to stop him with my eyes, to beg him not to tell me that things were going to change between us. End between us. Whatever we were.

Andrew searched my face like he was looking for something.

“What are you trying to say?” I asked.

He ran his hand through his hair, a gesture he only made when he was frustrated. I held my breath.

“What I’m trying to say is—It’s just . . .” He dropped his hand to his side. “It’s just that, after everything this year, I didn’t want to move too fast. And then we never moved at all. And everything’s been the same for years, but it’s not the same for me anymore. I can’t leave without saying something.”

My heart leapt to my throat.

He took a deep breath and spoke in a steady voice. “I’m in love with you, Meg.”

I froze, my eyes locked with his.

He kept going. “I’ve been trying to show you for the past year, maybe longer. I’m sorry if that’s weird for you to hear, but it’s true and I need to say it out loud.”

My breath grew shallow. Raindrops flecked my cheeks.

Neither of us had ever said I love you—not in that way—but I had felt it a hundred times and tried to hide it. I had spent all that time keeping silent. I had trained myself to push aside my feelings. Now, I stood there, trying to wrap my brain around what he had just said.

I waited too long to reply. I felt it in the awful moment when he looked away.

Andrew scuffed a rock with the toe of his shoe, his hair curling in the rain. “So . . . I guess

I wanted you to know that. If you didn’t already.” He turned and kept walking, deeper into the gully, speaking over his shoulder. “We’re about halfway to the bottom of the falls.”

In a minute, when the rush of feelings slowed, when I caught my breath, I would figure out what to say. The right way to say it. I walked behind him, chewing the inside of my lip.

Within a few paces, the ground transitioned from packed earth to slick gravel. A thin stream of water trickled under our feet. I turned up my collar, steadying myself.

Andrew tried to smooth over my silence. “Maybe you’ll want to do a sketch?”

I always had my sketchbook. Leather bound and weather worn, it sat in the bottom of my backpack, which was slung over my shoulder. I made an entry in those pages on every hike we took. Andrew made a big deal out of each drawing. It was another reason I loved him, another reason to tell him so.

I opened my mouth, ready to speak, hoping that the right words would come out.

And that was when Andrew fell.

2

The rock under his feet slid down the damp edge of the ravine, taking him with it, destroying several feet of the trail. Andrew tumbled, too long, too far. His body landed against a boulder with a sickening crack and he rolled through slick underbrush.

“Andrew!” I went cold, sick from the adrenaline flooding my veins.

He didn’t answer. He lay motionless, thirty feet below the path.

I didn’t think about the height, or how I would climb back up, or what would happen if I fell too. My body just moved. I lowered myself onto a landslide of mud and grass. My legs shook and gravel dug into my hands as I scrambled my way to Andrew.

When I reached him, I knelt at his side, slow, afraid of what I would find. His eyes were closed. A deep gash ran along his temple, seeping blood into the dirt and rocks. To my relief, his chest rose and fell, a sure rhythm. He was breathing.

Thank God he was breathing.

“Andrew?” My voice quaked and I swallowed hard. I squeezed his hand, trying to wake him up. “Andrew?”

He didn’t respond.

I knew better than to try to move him. He could have injured his spine, and there was no way I would be able to carry him back to the truck. I smoothed his damp hair out of his eyes, leaving a smudge of mud on his brow.

Tears blurred my vision as I leaned my face close to his and whispered, “Andrew, I’m sorry.” I didn’t know exactly what I was apologizing for, but I felt regret in every rattled bone.

Could he hear me? Blood trickled down his face.

I needed to get help. Now.

I fished Andrew’s keys out of his pocket and pressed my sweatshirt against his wound, trying to stop the flow of blood. His face was already turning purple, a bruise spreading. He didn’t move.

“I’m coming right back. You’re going to be okay.”

I dug my foot into the side of the ravine. There was nothing to hold onto but flimsy plants and loose rocks. As I climbed, my foot slid through the mud, almost back to where I started.

After minutes of desperate crawling and slipping, I had only made it partway to the path. I never liked to take my bag off on our hikes, never set my sketchbook down. What if it got dirty? It was part of me, part of us, full of too many precious memories. But it was slowing my climb. I couldn’t afford to be slow. I threw my backpack into a bush and held onto its branches, trying to catch my breath and hold my position.

My chest tightened and words welled up inside of me. A prayer. Not that my prayers had ever been answered before, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“I’ll do anything,” I said. “Just let him be okay.”

A strange noise came from the trees above, like paper being torn, or a harsh whisper. The air rippled. I blinked. Pines bent beneath a gust of cold wind and damp leaves blew over the edge of the ravine. The storm was

getting worse.

Whatever the noise had been, I didn’t have time to think about it. I kept climbing.

By the time I made it back to the path, my arms and legs were weak. I managed to jog down the trail, but the distance back to the truck seemed twice as long as it had on the way to the waterfall.

Unlocking the truck door, I grabbed my phone off the seat. One bar of service blinked yellow on the screen. I steadied my shaking fingers and dialed the three-digit number no one ever wants to have to dial.

Three days later, Andrew wasn’t okay. Not in the way I had hoped. He was in the hospital, attached to tubes and monitors, eyes still closed. The fall injured his head, not his spine.

The doctor said he suffered from severe neurologic deficits, leading to a minimally conscious state.

A coma.

The longer he took to wake up, the less likely his recovery would be. They didn’t know if he would ever be okay again.

I had spent three days and nights in the plastic-coated hospital chair at the end of Andrew’s bed, watching him sleep, looking for signs of awareness. It was something I knew how to do, something I had practiced in the weeks before I lost my mom. The beeping of monitors, the smell of sanitizer, the hushed jargon of the medical staff. I hated that these things were familiar, that I was learning them all over again for someone else.

I only took breaks from my chair to use the bathroom, or to buy a snack from a vending machine in the hall. Every time I left, I brought back another bag of crinkle-cut chips for Andrew. They were the only kind he liked. If he woke up, would he be hungry?

Andrew’s mom stayed beside his hospital bed, her eyes fixed on something unseen. She kept my chip bags in a neat stack on the bedside table, a useless collection.

I didn’t know what to say to her after the accident. If it hadn’t been for me, Andrew wouldn’t have been distracted when the path crumbled. He wouldn’t have gone out there at all in the summer mud.

“I shouldn’t have gone with him.” This wasn’t my first apology to Ilene. “I should have stopped him.”

She gave me a gentle smile. “All those shoulds will drive you crazy, Meg. We never liked him running around in the woods, even when the ground was frozen solid. But that’s Andrew. The best of him and the worst. You were there to call for help. That’s what matters.”

“He’s always been there for me.” I tried to hold back tears. Ilene didn’t need to deal

with someone else’s feelings right now.

“That’s also Andrew. His dad’s not good at emotional stuff. Andrew’s the opposite. He would have helped me through this, if he weren’t the one . . .”

Andrew’s dad, Dave, paced the halls outside the little hospital room. He frequently left to “get coffee” for Ilene.

I swallowed, wishing I could help, not knowing what to say. How could I reassure her when I didn’t know what would happen? I moved from my chair and rested my hand on her shoulder.

Tears spilled down her cheek and she patted my hand. “He’d be glad you’re here. You know he’s already homesick and he hasn’t even left for school yet. You’re a big part of that.”

“Then he’ll have to come visit next semester.”

Ilene smiled through her tears.

I hoped with everything in me that there would be a next semester.

When Ilene left the room to get lunch, I stole her chair beside the bed and slipped my hand into Andrew’s. His was square, fingers calloused at the ends from playing guitar strings.

“I’m so sorry.” I ran my thumb over Andrew’s knuckles. His hand stayed limp in mine. “If you can hear me, things are going to be different when you wake up. Different between us.”

How active was his mind? There were so many things I wanted to tell him.

“Are you dreaming in there?” I asked. “I’ve been having dreams. It’s—”

Andrew’s mom returned with a paper cup of coffee, Dave in tow. I jumped out of her chair.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Stay.”

I did stay, late into the night. Eventually, I fell into a shallow sleep. The dream came again, the same one that came every time I had dozed off since Andrew fell. Wind whispering through the trees. A voice. What was it saying?

Ilene woke me up. The

clock on the wall read 12:04 AM.

“You’ve been sleeping in that chair for three nights,” she said. “You need to go home and get some rest.”

“I can’t.” My voice sounded bleary. “What if—”

Ilene stopped me. “If anything changes, we’ll call you.” She hesitated, then met my eyes. “Dave and I need some time alone with him. Just mom and dad and son. I know you understand. We would love it if you came back tomorrow afternoon.”

Of course. There would be things they needed to say to him too. Alone. I hadn’t been thinking of that. My cheeks heated as I nodded and grabbed my hoodie.

Ilene settled into the chair, a fuzzy blanket over her lap. Dave took a seat in his own chair, rarely used. They didn’t know it was my actual birthday. No one did.

“Call me,” I said.

Ilene gave me a tight-lipped smile. “He’ll be okay.”

Would he?

I headed home to my uncle Peter’s place, a six-block trek from the hospital. I had moved in with him after the funeral, though I wasn’t convinced he had noticed. It was better than my dad’s place. I didn’t have to switch schools, and there was always food in the fridge. If Peter didn’t notice me, at least he didn’t mind me being there.

When I got back to the house, my uncle’s beagle, Pete, greeted me, his tail wagging ferociously. Who names a dog after themselves? Pete’s food and water bowls were empty, as usual when I wasn’t around. The human Peter was probably at his girlfriend’s place for the night.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” I poured a bowl of kibble.

Pete scarfed it up.

In my room, I sat on my bed and stared at a note Andrew had given to me days earlier. He had folded it into a paper plane.

Dear Meg,

Be ready to leave

 at 10 a.m.

Wear good shoes.

Yours always,

The Surprise Birthday Planner

I imagined Andrew’s fingers around a pen, forming letters into words. He had tried to make his messy handwriting fancy, curling the lines at the ends.

Pete laid his head on my lap with a soft whine.

“Do you know you’re drooling on my jeans?” I scratched him behind his ears.

He stuck out his tongue, increasing the flow of drool into his fur. No wonder he had smelled so bad before I moved in and started giving him regular baths.

“It’s a good thing you have me.”

But who did I have?

For a moment, there had been a glimpse of something in my future. Andrew wasn’t leaving our friendship behind when he left for college. Not after the way he had looked at me, the things he had said. What might have changed between us if I had spoken up? What would we have become if he never fell? ...