The Near Infinite Names of Autumn Aubrey (Psychological Fantasy Progression)

The most upsetting thing about The Mother in Gray walking in Anna and I's quarters to take me away was how little it disturbed us.

All the humor and joy I had felt at defeating Alexei in his bargaining left me when my held breath escaped me with a sigh.

Of course she would come for me then, I had let myself get too happy for anything else to happen.

Anna was at my side immediately, but there was no sign of panic in her dark eyes.

"What is the weather going to be like?" She asked aloud, glancing over at The Mother in Gray.

"She shall be inside." I heard The Mother answer in the flat way she nearly always spoke in.

There were no rises or dips in her voice, no changes or differences. She said every word exactly the way she did the one before it, and the one after sounded just the same. The only time it had been different were the handful of times she had said my name in excitement when she had been watching me reach for my soul.

Anna turned her eyes back to me and started unbuttoning the heavy coat she had bundled all my other layers beneath that morning.

"Fine. Will it be warm or cold inside? And if you're planning on fighting her or making wolves chase her, you should say something so I can dress her right." She said, her eyes hardened with her mother's steel once again, but her black painted fingers trembling against my buttons.

First, she had faced down the spirit of a serpent that it had taken The Mother in Blue to slay. Then, less than a handful of hours later, she was telling The Mother in Gray what she thought she should do.

I had never loved her more, but that would only be true until she did something else.

Gray answered her question without complaint. "At most, she will be asked to run briefly. It is much warmer than it is here, but not as warm as Erosette. Her moon's uniform would not be inappropriate."

"That makes things easier," Anna said under her breath as she helped me shed every shirt, jacket, and coat that was laid over one of the dresses she had gotten me to replace the torturous silk that I had been forced to wear during my early days at Lun. "You should probably wear your boots, but I know you better than that. Take your stockings off, I will get your sandals."

I did as I was told and sat down on the cold stone floor to roll the long grey socks off of my legs.

Alexei's mask of stone had returned to his face since our training had been put on hold, but he was watching me carefully with his one white eye.

The Mother in Gray would not so much as look at me with hers, but that was not new. I could not remember a time that she had.

What was new was how she was how she looked.

I did not remember her looking quite so young, and I knew without a doubt that I had never seen her wearing what she was.

Her silvery hair had been cut short and tied up, with only a few jaw length locks falling down on either side of her face.

The gray robes she normally wore were nowhere to be seen. In their place was a buttoned shirt in an eye-catching pattern of black and white squares, a length of thick white rope tied nearly around her waist, and a pair of black shorts that were just long enough for me to know that she was actually wearing them.

Her skin was pale, almost as pale as mine, and I could not understand how she wasn't shivering from the cold in the hall.

She did not look like a Mother at all, she looked so. . .

I did not know what she looked like, but I would have rather worn what she was than any of the dresses that Alexei had piled onto my bed.

I was so caught up with looking at her that I Anna had one of my sandals wrapped around my calf and had started on the other before I realized she was doing it.

"The letter said you'll be back tomorrow. I'll have everything ready for you. Fried potatoes, milk, I'll make them give me a cake. Then you can come back, sleep, and we can go to Hymneth to see another play or go to the boiler." She said, smiling up at me as she finished putting my other shoe on.

She meant every word she said, and every one of them sounded sweeter than the cake she promised.

That sweetness did not make it feel like I was being taken by one of the nine most powerful sorceresses in all of chaos to be punished, it made it felt like I had woken up late for class or was being cheered up during an afterglow.

"I probably won't even have enough time to sort through all this," She said with a laugh as she pulled me up by my arms. "It will be like you had to stay late for class."

We embraced.

That gave way to a kiss that was far too short for me to be satisfied, and we said goodbye.

Then, The Mother in Gray . "I thought that you would be accompanying her. I have prepared a room for you both."

Anna and I both shook our heads and snapped our eyes to her.

"I can come?" Anna asked, barely containing the excitement I could hear in her voice.

Gray nodded once. "Causing undue suffering is not my purpose for being here. You are her Keeper, it would be cruel to force separation."

Precept Cherith had said something about that when she had first met Anna, but I could not remember what it was. Even without knowing, it felt true, and that was what made the thought of her coming almost being enough to make me excited to go.

After all, having her there immediately after The Mother in Purple had turned my middle into one throbbing bruise had made the hurting not so bad.

"You will not be asked to do anything that you do not already do for her. Make whatever preparations you may need, we will depart when you are finished." The Mother in Gray said when Anna and I did not let go of each other.

My beloved gave me another quick hug before turning away and turning into a violent wind. She rushed around the book and paper flooded floor, piling up what she wished to take with her in her arms. Then, without a breath, she blew past The Mother in Gray and stepped out into the hall.

It could have been the low light of the fireplace, but I thought I saw Alexei smile as she went.

"Are you coming?" I asked as I went to his side, hoping that he would say yes.

"No. I will remain within Lun to see if I can discover your secret before you return." He said simply, almost all of his face hidden behind his mask of stone.

I slapped the top of his hand. "That's not fair!We had a deal!"

"And we still will if you can return quickly enough. Luck, Autumn Aubrey." He said as he offered me his hand to shake like we had done after we had agreed in our deal.

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I don't know if it was because Anna was coming with me, my room had been filled with what were evidently valuable treasures, or just because he was back, but I didn't shake his hand.

All the long nights I had spent playing points with Arthur and the guards in Erosette had taught me how to find an opening in someone's guard.

I slipped past Alexei's and threw my arms around his middle.

"This is," He started, every part of him becoming as still as stone. "I am unsure as to why-"

"If you see Sam, will you tell him where I have gone? He probably knows, but I just want to make sure." I said to my white haired guard as I released him

It had not been much of a hug. It felt more like wrapping my arms around a statue than anything, but I saw something on his face that I had not since Mother Ali had drunkenly said something about how he could move his hips.

I had embarrassed him, and I would happily add that to the list of things I had made him feel.

"I will pass your message." Alexei agreed when he collected himself.

The Mother in Gray was looking at him and only him, even though I was so close to the white haired man that it was unnatural to not look at me.

Anna came back and the bottles of wine in her arms told me exactly where she had gone. "Alright. I am ready."

"Those will not be necessary if you wish to carry a smaller burden, whatever you may need while you are under my aegis will be provided." The Mother in Gray said as she stepped back out into the hall and the leaving began fully.

Anna took one more trip to the wine closet that Alexei had made for her and my guard entered his quarters without another word. The Mother in Gray led us up the singing stairs towards wherever she was taking me with Anna and I following behind her arm in arm.

I could not call The Mother's movement graceful like I did with Azza because it almost felt like she wasn't moving at all.

Within the ghostly light of the singing stairs, I could hear nothing from her in the silent places between the notes of Caerulus's lullaby. Not a breath, a footstep, or a word. She was so quiet, so careful, that her black and white sleeves did not even make a sound when they brushed against her sides.

That quiet was broken when we passed by the landing that would lead to Precept Cherith's hall.

"Hey, Ire!" I heard a familiar voice call out.

All three of us turned to see Mallory hurrying down the hall as she waved at us. "Your dad is back, he came looking for you!"

She skidded to a stop about half the distance away and cupped her hands around her eyes.

"Is that your mom? Now I see how you are so pretty! Can I-" Mallory yelled.

Tana appeared behind her with Auden at her side, her watery blue eyes staring in the direction of the step that The Mother in Gray stood upon.

She said something to Mallory and pulled her back by her wrist.

The promiscuous underwitch gave a final wave before turning around and following Tana back through Precept Cherith's door.

"Were those your sisters?" The Mother in Gray asked as she started back up the stairs.

I sighed. "One of them is."

"It is nice to know that there is someone willing to run just to speak with you." Gray said flatly, her words kind but her tone carrying nothing close to warm.

We were all quiet the rest of the way up the stairs. With the last note of the lullaby fading from my mind, we passed through a door and continued up a narrow staircase that was almost identical to the one that we had gone up the night Alexei had become a ghost.

From there, we were led into a dark room and through yet another door that The Mother in Gray unlocked with a long iron key.

As soon as it opened, red and blue light washed over us and lit our way.

It was a large room, and filled with more things than my eyes could see in the colored dim. The sound of water being stirred and splashed filled my ears and I looked to my right to see a large pool of water that stretched all the way to the far wall.

"Gup!" I shouted as I saw the little red thing come swimming towards the closest edge of the pool. I knelt down and gave him my hand as quickly as I could, smiling at how excited he was to slip back between my fingers.

Anna knelt down beside me and pulled her books to her chest. "I love your blue, believe me, but I've missed seeing this."

"Me too," I said with a happy sigh, remembering how I had needed her to come out and tell me that she was coming to Lun with me. "Do you remember when I blew up the kitchen because you and Arthur were arguing?"

Before she could say anything, Gup wriggled out of my hand and dove down deep in the pool as my red was washed away with what I knew to be Nami's ocean blue.

In everything but color and size, the creature that swam towards us looked just like Gup, but when it brought its mouth to the surface it let out a single. "Bub."

Anna stood and stepped back. "Is yours going to get that big? It could swallow me whole."

"Probably bigger if she keeps feeding him," Someone said from the other side of the room. "Chaos favors me, I was hoping to be back before you left."

I turned away from the monstrous Bub and saw Nami appearing through a black gate that had been hidden behind a then undrawn curtain.

The Mother in Blue wore nothing, and every part of her dark skin blending in with the darkness that Bub and Gup's light could not reach except for the parts that were glowing.

Faint white markings illuminated her in a wild pattern of dots and lines. She had been painted with them from the tops of her feet to the ends of her fingers, and they played tricks on my eyes as she moved.

"Your meeting with the callers went well it seems." The Mother in Gray said to her sister.

"Who knows? It was one of the strangest things I have ever witnessed, but I will not know if it was worth it until I can put their visions to the test." Nami laughed as her ocean blue aura spun out from her navel in a vortex. Over her shoulders, across her hips, and down to her ankles, it washed over all of her and dimmed into one of the thin dresses that she almost always wore.

Still alight with the faint white light that her manifested dress did not cover, Nami took Gray by her hand and spun her around. "I miss when you dressed like this. I would throw out all of my clothes whenever you would come to see Grey because nothing I owned made me look as brilliant as you did."

Gray let herself be spun. "That is a terrible waste. But I will admit that I may have become too accustomed to my robes as of late.

"And you, Underwitch Autumn? Is there anything new that you have to grow accustomed to?" Nami asked, giving Gray one last spin before she released her.

The terrifying memory of Anna staring down the spirit of Zizicoltain came to mind, but Nami spoke again before I had to come up with a lie.

"Maybe a gift from someone unexpected?" She asked again as she walked over to where Anna and I stood by the pool.

A splash sounded behind us. "Bub. Bub. Bub."

"Alexei came and. . ." I started, but my words failed me. I looked deep into Nami's ocean eyes and understood that she was not winking at me for nothing.

"He had no clue what to do with you," Nami laughed. "I have never seen him so frustrated."

I knew he had something about seeking guidance, but I had not given it very much thought.

"Are you why he brought her all of those things?" Anna asked, reaching the same conclusion that I did just a little bit faster than my tired mind would allow.

Nami shrugged her shoulders. "He was always a generous gift giver before. He once filled Jasna's room with so many flowers that she could not step foot through her door. All I did was tell him that most of my moons would be thrilled at the promise of dresses and jewels. He did the rest."

"Generous indeed. From what I was able to see, he brought her an entire wardrobe and a small hoard of treasure." Gray added in her flat tone.

"Perfect," Nami laughed and clapped her hands. "I also told him that there were some women I have met who drink their wealth rather than wear it."

She winked at Anna.

I figured it out first that time. "The wine in the storeroom?"

Nami nodded and gave me a wink. "I have not been a Mother long enough to forget what it is like to want. You will have to show me what he traded with you when you return."

Anna was speechless for a long moment before she wiped her eye with a single finger and sniffled. "Thank you."

"Yes," The Mother in Gray said and brought my attention back to her. "When she returns. Which she will be unable to do if she never departs."

Nami sighed and nodded at her sister. "Right. I will delay you no longer. I hope you have as much luck with your questions as I have had with mine."

Grey gestured for Anna and I to cross through the black gate. "If what you have said is true, then I hope not. My soul is far too weary to stand not knowing any longer."

If they said anything else, Anna and I did not hear it.

We stepped into the strange energy inside the arch of black and left Lun Arcanicil behind us.