Part 1

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Until Again.

Lou Aronica.

For Danny and Heather Baror, who were there at the beginning and continue to be there today.

Acknowledgments.

I'd like to thank all the readers of Blue who graciously wrote me with their good wishes and their interpretations. I loved hearing that the novel spoke to you in some way and I found the various perspectives on what it meant fascinating and illuminating.

Thanks to my children, Molly David, Abigail, and Tigist for their acceptance of the time I spend away from them trying to make books happen.

Special thanks to my wife for looking me in the eye and saying, "You know that you're going to have to write more about Tamarisk, right?"

Thanks to Shaina Amienyi at National Book Network for navigating me through the endlessly changing digital waters and for her continued good spirits.

Thanks to Barbara Aronica-Buck for her beautiful cover design and for absolutely not being Polly.

Thanks to Monica O'Rourke for her copyediting help.

And thanks to Ben Folds for being the first singer that came to mind.

A Note from the Author.

In January 2011, more than six years after I began writing it, Blue was published. The experience of letting this work out into the world was unlike anything I'd ever been through before. By the time that book went out, I'd witnessed the publication of more than a dozen of my own books, and as someone who had been in the publishing industry for a very long time, I'd facilitated the publication of thousands. Still, Blue felt different from all those other books. Blue was different. I'd lived with these characters for so long that they'd taken up permanent residence in my heart. I wanted this book to do well a" not only for me, but in some completely irrational way for them as well.

Thankfully, the response to Blue was largely positive. One blogger commented in response to a laudatory review that it was a good thing people were liking the novel, as I was so emotionally invested in Blue I probably would have hurt myself if readers had uniformly panned it. There was never the risk of my hurting myself, but she was right that I'd been metaphorically holding my breath from the moment I let the novel leave my desk.

One unexpected byproduct of the nice reaction Blue received was that people started asking about a follow-up. This took me entirely by surprise. It shouldn't have, of course. For decades I've been helping writers build their careers, and the first thing you always ask authors when you're putting together a publishing plan is, "What's coming after this?" Somehow, though, it didn't dawn on me that anyone might want to read more in this case.

Faced with the question of how I would write another story about Becky, Miea, Chris, and the world of Tamarisk, I realized I wasn't quite ready to approach a sequel. However, there was a matter in the past a" a Moment When Everything Changed a" that I wanted to explore. When Blue begins, two enormous events have marked the characters indelibly. However, in that novel, I didn't let readers see how those events had unfolded.

That's what I'm offering you now in this prequel novella. In most works of fiction, stories come together in the end. This work of fiction, though, is about a story coming apart. For those who have already read Blue, I hope this gives you greater insight into how the stage was set for the events that took place there. For those who are coming to the world for the first time, I hope it leaves you wondering where things can go from here.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and as always, I'm very interested in your thoughts and interpretations (so many of you were so kind to write after reading Blue). You can reach me at

Thank you for getting this far.

Lou Aronica.

July 2011.

1.

Chris had been reading the same page in his book for several minutes now. He'd always been able to drop into the world he was reading about so easily, but this had become a futile exercise over the past couple of weeks. He could only remember being this preoccupied once before in his life, and at the end of the day, that had turned out okay. Was it even remotely possible that he was going to be able to say the same about this at some point in the future? And if so, why couldn't he feel even a hint of that optimism in his heart?

The clock on the family room wall read a couple of minutes after nine. Polly and he had bought that clock in a craft store in upstate Connecticut while she was pregnant with Becky. She'd scoffed at his wanting to buy something so rustic when all of their furnishings were so refined, but she didn't protest his decision, and when he put it up in the family room she admitted that the clock had a certain "off-kilter charm." They hadn't discussed his taking the clock with him to his new apartment, but he a.s.sumed that if he left it behind, it wouldn't stay on the wall for more than an hour after he was gone. Polly would certainly feel that the clock, like Chris, needed to be tossed out as part of her housecleaning.

"Hey, Beck, it's bedtime," he said, glancing over at his ten-year-old daughter who was in the middle of reading her first Ray Bradbury book. A few months ago, Chris had given her his signed hardcover copies of The Martian Chronicle and Dandelion Wine, telling her how thrilled he'd been to meet the writer at an autographing back in the nineties. The books had sat on a shelf in Becky's room since then, but surprisingly she'd brought Dandelion Wine down for reading hour a couple of nights ago. The sight of his little girl enjoying one of his most precious possessions nearly brought him to tears, but that was hardly an uncommon experience right now. He'd practically misted up over the rice pilaf they'd had with dinner tonight.

Becky looked up at him and then over at the clock. "Yeah," she said, bookmarking the page and rising from the couch she was sharing with her mother. Chris stood up from his chair as Becky leaned over to hug Polly goodnight.

Polly squeezed her daughter, closing her eyes as she did so. "Have a good night's sleep, honey. I'll drive you to school tomorrow so your project doesn't get smashed."

"That would be great, thanks. Love you."

"Love you."

As Chris crossed Polly's path on his way up the stairs with Becky, their eyes caught for an instant, and his instinctively narrowed. Then he looked away and followed Becky to the second floor.

As Becky entered her bathroom to brush her teeth, Chris continued on to her room and sat on the bed. He patted the white bedspread. They'd bought it just after Becky's eighth birthday, when she decided that the b.u.t.terfly spread that had been on her bed since she was four was now too young for her. She'd surprised Chris by choosing a white-on-white geometrical pattern. Considering the level of imagination expressed nightly on this bed, he would have expected the covering to be more ornate. It certainly was more grown-up. She could probably take the thing to college with her someday and no one would think it was out-of-place. The thought of college made Chris shudder. Another separation he'd rather not think about.

During one of their stiff - but at least in this case not contemptuous a" conversations about their split, Polly had suggested Chris not rush to furnish Becky's room in his new apartment. He'd instantly begun to prepare for war, since nearly all of Polly's "suggestions" seemed designed to diminish his role in Becky's life, but he stood down when Polly continued by telling him that she was thinking about getting Becky new bedroom furniture and that this set would be available if that were the case. This was perhaps the most generous thing Polly had said to him in the seventeen days since she'd informed him she wanted a divorce, and he found the gesture momentarily disarming a" until he realized its true implication.

"Remember to floss, babe," he said when he heard her stop brushing. She intoned something back that Chris understood to be, "Doing so now," spoken with floss between her teeth.

He leaned against the wall ab.u.t.ting Becky's bed. They'd been enacting some version of this process since she'd been three years old, when Chris had taken sole responsibility for putting Becky to bed. Two years later, the process had taken on the aspect of ritual and had shifted from something Chris did to give Polly a break after a long day to something he looked forward to from the time he got up in the morning.

Now they would have this experience together exactly one night a week. Polly had insisted that Becky spend all school nights in this house, so the only bedtime he would have with his daughter after this weekend would be a Friday or Sat.u.r.day night. Chris hated the arrangement, but his lawyer and his best friend Lisa had counseled him against contesting it. He'd never been more dubious about taking advice, even though he'd agreed to follow it. If he wasn't completely certain there would be the emotional equivalent of rocket-propelled grenades involved, Chris would have fought for a fairer joint-custody agreement. That wouldn't have benefited Becky in any way, though. He would jump in front of a speeding car for her. He guessed that his allowing this metaphorical one to plow him over rather than Becky was proof.

Becky came into the room and sat next to him against the wall. She leaned in his direction, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her toward him and kissing the top of her head.

"So where we left off last night was with the king and queen deciding to go on the diplomatic mission, right?"

"Yeah, they'd just come out of that session with the council where they got all the reports about the sabotage. They really don't have any choice."

Chris knew that, just as he knew every detail in the stories they told of Tamarisk, the bedtime-story world they'd created together, but he found the creativity flowed better if they shared a couple of sentences of review before beginning their story for the night.

"The situation with the Thorns is getting tenuous, huh?"

"Seriously."

"We're gonna have to figure out a way to take care of those baddies, aren't we?"

"It isn't going to be easy, Dad."

Chris nodded slowly. "No, no it won't." He grinned at her. "It's a good thing you're on the side of the good guys. Okay, then, let's tell it."

Becky moved herself a little closer, but she stayed silent. She always started the stories, so there was no chance she was waiting for him to begin. Was she having trouble coming up with an idea? That would be a first.

"Dad?" she said at last.

"Yeah, babe?"

"When are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Chris's heart tightened. He and Polly had agreed to talk to Becky on Sunday. As much as he hated playing by Polly's rules, he'd done so to keep things at least moderately civil. More to the point, though, he knew he felt completely ill-equipped to express to Becky what he was feeling without doing her damage. How could he tell her that her mother - was forcing the divorce on him? What would that do to Becky's feelings about Polly? How could he explain that he'd stopped loving his wife years ago but never would have made this move because he couldn't bear the thought of not coming home to his daughter every night?

"Everything is going to be fine, Beck. You'd know it if I didn't believe that, right?"

There was a pause of at least five seconds before Becky answered. "Yeah, I would, Dad." If she was trying to sound convincing, she wasn't doing a good job of it. Did his own attempt at rea.s.surance sound as weak?

He tightened his hold around her shoulders. "So let's tell a story, okay? The king and queen have some serious planning to do."

Becky expelled a deep breath, but she didn't say anything. He thought she was going to force him to confront this issue, and he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to be evasive.

Finally, though, she started the story, and Chris relaxed.

At least to the degree he ever relaxed anymore.

2.

Miea sat in front of the elaborately framed screen on her dorm-room desk. Her father had given it to her before she left for university this semester, and it was easily the most ornate thing she had with her. When she protested that she was perfectly happy with the phone the school provided, he offered one of his signature understanding smiles and said, "I want to look my best when I'm talking to you." The first time they spoke on the phone, Miea dropped the pen she'd been absent-mindedly playing with, and when she leaned forward to get it, her forehead touched the screen. When she leaned back, she saw that her father had touched his forehead to his side of the screen as well, and they laughed for a good minute about it and subsequently started all of their talks that way.

Neither were laughing now, though. For the past ten minutes, Dad been telling Miea about the council meeting that had led to the decision to send a Tamariskian diplomatic delegation a" led by her father and mother -to the land of the Thorns. Tamarisk and Gunnthorn, the kingdom to the south, had experienced nonstop tensions for so long that no one could remember how they began. Occasionally, the tensions erupted into something hotter, and this was one of those times. There had been moments in the past few years where it seemed that relations might actually improve. Now, though, this bitter turn made the circ.u.mstances between the kingdoms seem as dire as Miea had ever known.

"Do you really think this is the best idea?" she said, wishing her father couldn't see her face so he wouldn't have any idea how concerned she was. "Diplomacy seems so futile with them."

He moved a bit closer to the screen. "Diplomacy with the Thorns is an option we need to exhaust," he said, sounding much more like the person the rest of Tamarisk knew as the king and much less like the man who used to sing her to sleep and could chortle in her presence at the silliest thing.

Miea gestured with her left hand. "Why can't you send diplomats, then? Why do the king and queen need make this trip a" and why by car?"

Her father closed his eyes and then opened them slowly, the action he always used to indicate she was getting overly exercised. "The prime minister has expressed some willingness to discuss a treaty, and you know very well that he won't do anything of the sort with anyone other than your mother and me. As far as the motorcade is concerned, we decided that this was a good time to show our faces in the southern territories. You know that the people there feel less connected to Tamarisk City than I would like them to feel. We need to remind them that they're valued and cherished citizens of our kingdom."

Miea frowned. "Well, at least you 11 accomplish something on this trip."

Her father seemed genuinely confused by this statement. "That's awfully pessimistic, Miea."

The air felt heavier to Miea. "I'm not saying it to be pessimistic. I'm saying it because I don't want to pretend that I think the Thorns are capable of compromising. And because I'm worried. It's been a long time since Tamarisk was involved in a war."

Her father allowed himself several seconds before answering. "I'm trying to avoid a war, Miea."

"I know you are, but -"

" a" and the Thorns have ample reason to avoid war as well. In modern times, their aggression has never resulted in anything other than skirmishes because they know they can't replace what they get from us."

Miea leaned forward in her chair. "What if they've figured it out? You know how brilliant their scientists are. What if they've learned how to feed everyone within their borders. If that were the case, then they'd have no reason to maintain a truce with us. If that were the case, they'd have an advantage over us that we couldn't counter."

Her father steepled his fingers, looking as professorial as the university lecturers Miea would be spending the rest of the day with. "There's nothing to suggest what you're saying. We still enjoy a healthy trade surplus with them, and there has been no decline in our agricultural shipments to them. Yes, their scientists are brilliant. However, one doesn't simply invent food out of one's imagination. Growing conditions are greener there. Science isn't going to be able to change that. Not in my lifetime, your lifetime, or the lifetimes of your great grandchildren."

Miea knew she wasn't going to win this argument. She wasn't even entirely sure why she was engaging in it. If she were willing to be even moderately generous, she would acknowledge that there had been occasional improvements in Tamarisk-Gunnthorn relations over the past few years. The current prime minister was as moderate as any in the recent history of the Thorns. If they were going to make diplomatic progress, now was as good a time as any. She just had so many misgivings about this trip, though. So many.

"Enough about these matters," her father said, shaking her from her reverie. "When are you bringing that man of yours to dinner?"

Miea's smile came unprompted. "Bringing a boy home for dinner is a little more complicated when 'home' is the royal palace."

"We'll make it very cozy for him. No more than forty-five or fifty people in attendance at the reception. We'll make it a quiet event."

"I'm sure that will completely ease his mind. He was thinking that if he ever showed up, you might make a big deal about it."

Her father chuckled. "Your sarcasm isn't going to deter me here. I need to look this young man in the eye. I need to know that he's worthy of my only child."

"Right, Dad, you don't know anything about him," Miea said, continuing with the sarcasm anyway. "I'm sure you haven't gotten a report from my bodyguards after every date Dyson and I have ever gone on. How many generations back did you go on the profile of his family, three or four?"

He looked back at her sheepishly. "I've done no such thing."

Miea leaned toward the screen. "You do realize I can see your face, right?"

Her father cast his eyes downward. "I only went back to his grandparents. It appears they're relatively clean. Did he tell you that one of his great uncles was once cited for picking a flower during the Rainbow Fair?"

"Yes, Dad, Dyson confessed this to me tearfully just a few nights ago," she said with a smirk. "It's his family's greatest shame."

Her father pointed a finger at her. "You're not usually this wry with me, Miea," he said, smiling. "I'm not sure I like what this relationship with Dyson portends."

"Dyson is not having a bad influence on me, Dad, don't worry."

"But he is having an influence on you."

"Well ... sure." She couldn't keep the grin off her face when she said this, and of course her father picked up on it.

"Maybe I need to make a complete overhaul to your security detail," he said. "Your guards have already let this man abscond with your heart."