Colour Kid's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Colour Kid ran. Elder Bright kept pace beside him with the staff tucked under one arm. The copper thread at Colour Kid's wrist still pulsed warm. His followers were four blocks from the wall. The vans were closer. "They will reach the wall first," Elder Bright said. He did not sound sorry. He sounded like a clock. "Two minutes. Maybe less." Mara's voice came through the copper. "Three vans now. They split off the hill route. Kid, your people are running toward a fence, not cover." Hexa Vire cut in, flat. "You have no barrier. You have paint. Paint does not stop steel." A hitch. "Correction — darling." Colour Kid did not slow. He knew the wall. He knew his own signature on it. He knew the strip of grass and trees behind it, the little park with the crooked path. He had painted a squirrel there once. "I'm not stopping the vans," he said. "I'm moving the wall." Elder Bright's staff clipped the pavement. "Explain." "Not the wall. What's behind it." He pressed his palm to the copper and closed his eyes. He pictured the park. Green over gray. Flowers up through cracked concrete. Trees where the sidewalk had been. He pushed color down every thread at once — not a signal this time, a place. The copper burned. His teeth ached. Ahead of them, the air changed. A block from the wall, gray asphalt buckled soft. Grass came up through it in a slow green wave. Trees pushed out of the sidewalk and stretched. Flowers opened along the curb in red and orange. Birds he had not made started up anyway, confused, from somewhere. His followers reached the edge and stopped. Then they walked into the trees. The path took them. It closed behind them in leaves. The first van rounded the corner at speed. Its tires hit grass and spun. The driver braked. The second van clipped a tree that had not been there thirty seconds ago. The third stopped in the middle of a flower bed and would not start. Mara was laughing. "Kid. Kid, they're stuck. They're all stuck." Hexa Vire said, "Signal loss on all three vehicles. Their radios read forest." Colour Kid sat down on the curb. His nose bled onto his hoodie. The copper cooled. Elder Bright looked at the new trees. He looked at the vans sunk in soft ground. He looked at Colour Kid. "You did not shield them," he said. "You grew them a country." "They're safe," Colour Kid said. "They are inside something you made," Elder Bright said. "Which means they are inside you." He tapped the staff once. "Every faction just watched a city block turn into a forest. They will not send vans next. They will send an axe." Colour Kid wiped his nose. The trees behind him kept growing.