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

I was trapped in a frozen hell of my own creation, and though I wanted nothing more than to leave it, I knew there was only one way out.

"Come now, if you rest any longer you will only cause yourself more pain, my moon beam. When Rubra and Rhiannon return, do you wish for her to have grown stronger than you? Are you content with Fuscus teaching Garm how to trap you because you cannot keep your feet off the ground?" Caerulus asked as she helped me stand atop her cloud of pure white mist.

I was so cold that the normal chill of her pale blue skin could not even be felt.

"It is insulting how unbothered you seem to be. It is my cold and even I cannot keep myself from it." I said through my chattering teeth as I leaned into her. If I could not have warmth, less cold would have to do.

She embraced me and let me hide my face in her long silver hair. "I decided that I did not want to be cold, so I am not. It is not difficult."

"For you," I muttered. "Can you show me once more? I almost had it on my last attempt."

Everything was not difficult for Caerulus. She flowed through reality like a river cut through mountains. She was everything I wanted to be, always, and she meant to teach me how to become those things.

"No, you did not. Your mind could describe every step of my dance in perfect detail, and your body is better suited to perform the steps than my own, but something is missing. Do you know what that is?" She asked as she held me in her arms.

Warmth was the only thing that I was missing.

"A fireplace? Blankets? A bath tub full of Viridis's steaming tea?" I said quietly, the mere thought of those wonderfully warm things only making me ache even more terribly than I already was.

Caerulus pushed me away then. It was not mean spirited, but I understood that my time of being comforted by her had ended.

"I would suggest focusing on what is instead of what you wish was if you would like to ever be warm again," She said calmly as she pushed me towards the edge of her cloud. "We are surrounded by the very thing that prevents you from performing my dance. I asked you to create a place for your training that was bitterly cold. That was all. And yet, look at this cathedral you have built around us. It was you who thinned your working enough to make windows, created the columns and archways, and hung these chandeliers of unmelting ice. I asked for a room, and you made art."

I loved being complimented by her so much that I barely heard what she said. It was the purest form of praise because I knew she wanted nothing from me. All that mattered to her in that small moment of her eternal life was helping me become who I was meant to be.

"You struggle with the transitions and turns because you are trying to do it as I would. You must make it your own, my moon beam. You must be yourself." When she finished, and her words had left me feeling light on my feet, she tapped me twice in my back with one of her pearlescent nails.

I took the step forward I knew I had to take and dropped straight down off of her swirling white cloud.

My bare soles touched the floor of perfect ice I held together with my will and instantly felt like stakes had been driven through their bottoms. A sharp inhale forced my breath to stop, and it was all I could do to keep myself from letting the cathedral shatter underneath.

Caerulus drifted across the room atop her mist and waited patiently for me to begin.

I pointed my toes and drew them from left to right across the needling floor with perfect form.

Back again I went from right to left and I let the movement carry me into the second step of her impossible dance.

My back foot cut across the ground behind me and completed the circle I had begun to shape.

My weight was off balance and my arms were too low.

If I somehow made it off of the floor, I would never be able to keep my feet when I landed. I tried to snap myself back to the form that Caerulus had taught me, but it was too late.

I spun down to the ice beneath me and felt it crack underneath my shivering body.

"I cannot hold it. I have failed. It is too much for me." I whispered, preferring the bitter cold to looking up and seeing Caerulus's undoubtedly disappointed gaze.

Her voice rang down from her above and I wished desperately that she would sing me to sleep with her lullaby. "Then become more, and it will feel like nothing at all. We need you, Katarina, everything you already are and can be."

It made me very angry, but I knew she was right.

She always was.

It was not difficult for her.

Still freezing in the bitter tomb I had created, I rolled onto my hands and knees so I could try to try again.

Before I could begin the circle of the first step once again, everything darkened as I felt myself fall. . .

I came back to myself and found that I was cold.

Not nearly as cold as Katarina had been, but cold enough to notice.

I was wearing nothing, wet, and laying on my back.

I had been in The Well.

A voice that sounded like low rumbling thunder disturbed the quiet sound of the bath water lapping against my ears. "What is your name?"

"Autumn Aubrey." I said as I began to move through the cold stiffness that had settled over me. My teeth were not chattering and I was not shivering, but the water had cooled enough that I knew I had been in The Well for quite a while.

The thunderous voice called out to me again. "Who is Autumn Aubrey?"

For most of my life, I had answered that question almost exactly the same way every time I had been asked it.

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Much had changed in the time between my last bout of memories and the one I had set myself too after I had dueled the half moons.

"A new moon of Lun Arcanicil. Keeper of Anna Lao. She who defeated Lun's strongest moon. Future apprentice of Sorceress Mon Zetta. . .maybe." I gave my new answer, still not happy with how it ended.

If I was not absolutely certain that I would have even more times to get it right than I had already answered it before, my dissatisfaction would have annoyed me.

I slid myself up in the bath and pulled my knees to my chest to hold myself against the chill that rippled through me when the air of the bathroom touched my damp skin.

"Who was Autumn Aubrey?" Came the third and final question from the rumbling voice.

I reached for the towel I had thrown into the floor before I got in the bath and wrapped it around myself as I stood. "The Mother in Blue?"

"Which?" Sam asked from where he sat beside the closed door of the bathroom.

I had seen him so little in the past few weeks that I could not tell if he had grown or if I had just forgotten how big he already was.

I pointed my finger at him and dried my hair with my aura the way my mother had taught me. "I don't know why, but you aren't supposed to call them that. It's not a nice thing to say to sorceresses."

"I did not mean-" Sam started to growl in anger, his long blue tail swishing violently behind him.

"I know. Calm down. It was a joke. I was Katarina," I opened the door and basked in the warmth coming from the fireplace across the room. "Are you running off again?"

"A futile attempt. I have never enjoyed your humor." Sam answered as he slipped through my legs and padded his way towards the door.

Anna glared down at him the entire time she walked over to me from the bed. "I just can't understand why you let him be in charge."

"He's not," I said defensively as I shrugged into the plush robe she had brought me. "When I go into The Well, he comes."

"And then he leaves. He used to spend all day with you in the well house while I was counting leaves in the garden, just waiting for the chance to see you again." She sighed sadly. She took the towel from me after tying the front of the robe closed and went to hang it up.

I looked at my big blue cat of a familiar.

Even though letting himself out was something that I knew he could do with great ease, he waited impatiently by the door, his tail still swishing violently behind him.

I had gone to The Well everyday since my very own special little dueling day, and when I returned he had done exactly the same thing.

"Is this one of your small rebellions? Making me open the door for you?" I asked as I walked over to him.

Anna called out from the bathroom. "And what was the point of arguing with me over when you could train with her if you were never going to do it?"

"Ignorant mortal," Sam growled and scowled before turning back to me. "No. It is out of respect for you, My Lady. It is a sign that you do not have need of me any longer."

"I thought so, but when are you going to tell me what you've been doing? I could really use your help in trying to escape Ale-" I started.

"Soon. To speak further would be a grave mistake." Sam growled again as he stood and turned away from me.

I could have asked him to stay, and if he refused, I could have commanded him to obey me. Having my power sealed away, my tongue being bound against my will, and no say in when I was ripped from my life had not left me eager to lord over him.

After what I had been through at the hands of The Mothers, I didn't even like asking him to do things.

"Very well, My Familiar. Go, be free." I said with a smile and opened the door.

All I could do was trust him.

He gave no sign of appreciation or any parting words, but he did not call me an impetuous child or threaten me, so I truly could not complain. He had not pawed me once since he had entered the inner halls from Precept Jasna's quarters.

It might have done him some good to not be around me as often.

Sam gone, door shut, face successfully not scratched, I rolled my shoulders in the soft fabric of the robe that Anna had brought me and realized I had never seen it before.

"When did you get this?" I called out after something on the bed had caught my eye.

She came rushing back out of the bathroom and threw herself between me and the bed. "I don't remember, but it's not slick at all so I thought you would like it. Don't look! I'm putting together your outfit for The Lady's Ball."

I had already gotten a glimpse of the circlet that Zetta had given me, so I had a good idea of what color she was going for, but I did not fight her over it.

"I found what I was looking for." I said as I grabbed her hand and smiled.

She leaned in close and kissed me on my cheek. "I still don't really know what that is, but I am proud of you. Any memory you view is another step closer to you being free. It was a staircase, right? That's what you were looking for?"

"No," I shook my head in denial, and playful pushed myself away from her. "I was looking for the first step. The one that Katarina and Maletta do. Watch."

I mimicked the rigid stance as closely as my memory would allow and drew the first half of the circle. I tried to find the movement that would let me complete it with the second step, but only managed to trip forward and fall into Anna.

"Oh, uhm, wow. That was impressive." She said, but I could tell by her tone that she was trying to keep herself from laughing.

Embarrassment brought heat to my cheeks, and I used that feeling to wrap my arms around her waist and drive her back onto the bed. "That was the first time I tried it, I'm not good at it yet!"

"You better hurry up, I am pretty sure that a lord's apprentice is gonna have to go to all kinds of dances and balls." She laughed as I crawled on top of her and held her down.

I gasped. "Does that mean we are going to go with Zetta?"

"I told you, as long as we are together, I don't care where we are," She said as she slid herself up and covered whatever costume she had been putting together for me. "And Lady Autumn and Lady Anna of Velcreis does have a certain ring to it, but there are a lot of things that have to happen for that to happen."

"I know." I sighed and let all my weight collapse down onto her.

She continued down a path that we had been down too many times since we left Precept Zetta's quarters. "We have to wait and hear back from Idensyn."

"I know." I said again.

"And we have to find a way to tell Ma." She said in a strained tone of voice.

"I know." I groaned.

She kept talking. "And that's before we even think about The Mothers."

"I know!" I yelled into the blanket underneath us as I decided on how to shut her up.

"And you don't even know if you want to go, let's just be happy where-" She started.

I kissed her fully and threw us both into a wonderful silence.

Deepening my breath and trying to draw her in, I pressed for more.

"No, no, no," She giggled and pushed me up as much as she could. "It's past your bed time. You have the first day of your new class tomorrow."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Why would you think I care about that right now? I will burn this school to the ground if it means we can keep going."

"You were just saying how nervous you were." She said with one dark eyebrow raised.

I shook my head in disagreement. "I was lying. If Precept Cherith likes me half as much as Zetta, I will be The Lady in Blue by the end of the week."

My perfect red came to light in my eyes and reflected back at me in hers.

"I thought you didn't want that, to be The Lady?" She asked, but her voice had fallen into a gentle whisper and her pushing had relaxed.

"There is only one thing I want." I said, matching her tone.

I won our game, which only happened when she let me, but I counted it as a victory regardless.