She could see the bright scarlet of the dove, but no other color anywhere. She could see a bird that didn’t exist in her world, but was flying about in it anyway. She was in her world, she decided. Her instincts and her senses told her so. This wasn’t the world of the King of the Silver River. The two were different enough that she would have known if that wasn’t so. She was in her own world, and there was no color.

Except there was. She just couldn’t see it. That was the point of the dove—a sign from the King of the Silver River to tell her what the use of his magic had cost, an indicator of what had been extracted from her in payment. She could still see, but only in black and white, in gray tones and shadows. All of the colors were gone.

She rocked back on her heels and tried not to cry. Her red hair—she would never see its brightness again. The green of the trees, the sky’s assorted blues, Pan’s hazel eyes, his sun-browned face—nothing, nothing, nothing of their color anywhere! She was crying now, realizing what that meant, grasping right away how much she would miss it, how terrible it would be to live in a world where all the colors were gone.

Forever.

But it was to help Pan that she had sacrificed herself, and she refused to regret it. The cost was clearly defined. She had given up seeing the world’s brightness so that she could see what was hiding in its darkness—all the dangers that threatened the unwary, all the predators that would steal something infinitely more precious than color. Panterra needed her to save him so that he could do what the King of the Silver River had said he was fated to do—to save their people, to lead them out of the valley and into a new world.

Oh, but to a world in which there would be no color! Not for her. Not ever again! She could hardly bear it, and she started crying all over again, weeping into her sleeve, her small body shaking, her sobs audible in the stillness of the forest. She was only fifteen, she told herself, and she would never see color again!

It took her a long time to regain control of herself, much longer than she had expected. But when she had cried herself out and silently voiced all her bitter thoughts, she climbed back to her feet and stood staring off into the grayness that was now the measure of her future. She had to let go of what had been and embrace what would be. She had to accept the consequences of her decision to help Panterra Qu and remember that something good would come of this.