Rainbow Brite's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Rainbow Brite stood at the last bright ridge before the eastern edge and counted the missing thrones. Four now. Four royals gone in twelve days, starting with the one she had loved best and fought with hardest — the one who called the outer realms a waste of her. Below the ridge, the grass stopped being green. It did not fade. It ended in a clean line, as if a blade had drawn it. Beyond that line the world lay flat and colorless, and somewhere inside it, she believed, the other royals were still alive. She could restore a faded place by walking into it. She had done it since she was a child. Each restoration cost her breath, weight, hours of standing. She had already tried, at dawn, to cover the northern waste on foot. She made it two miles before her knees gave and the color behind her guttered like a wet candle. Rainbow Land was vast. The realm had four compass edges and a hundred hollows between them. Alone, on foot, she would reach the last royal weeks after the last royal stopped breathing. She sat down in the grass and admitted it out loud. "I can't do this alone." The sound of it opened something. She heard hooves before she saw the animal — slow, deliberate, coming up the bright side of the ridge. The unicorn stopped an arm's length from her. Its coat ran in bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Its mane fell straight and even down its neck. Its eyes held the same colors as its body and watched her without blinking. She did not know where it had come from. She knew, looking at it, that it had been waiting. She stood. Her legs shook. She put one hand on its shoulder and felt the heat of a body built to run. "East first," she said. "The one I argued with." The unicorn knelt. She climbed on. When it rose and turned toward the cut line in the grass, the ground under its hooves brightened for three steps before going flat again — not restored, but marked. A trail she could follow back. She had not told any of the other royals she had been avoiding the edges. She was about to cross one at a gallop, and someone, somewhere, was going to see the light move.