he dreamed in red.

From the virgin white snow to the blackest of nights, the sky above and the earth below, everything bled together in crimson and rose. Sickly salmon colored her child, and in her dreams she saw him smile.

She danced in front of the mirror in her pretty red dress that looked green to her, the exact color of the hedge mazes in her dreams. The mirror and the dress would each fetch a pretty price across the ocean, Papa told her, but she couldn’t resist unwrapping them one last time. She remembered the spotlights and face paint and the rise and fall of the orchestra as they were before she’d fallen, before the men called her hysterical and the women called her weak.

“Anna, put those things away now. It’s time for dinner.”

“Papa? Do you dream in color?”

Nicholas frowned. He’d loved her once, the graceful ballerina with the courage to fight for him though she would never be accepted in his family, his society. They’d very nearly had a family together but the loss of the child had driven Anna into another world, where Nicholas was her long-dead father and the babe cried out to her in the middle of the night. No one had been able to cure her, or at the very least, willing to try, but he had one last hope. In a new world maybe his love would find herself again.

“Anna, please. No more talk of dreams.” He whispered the words in her ear as he helped her slide out of the dress, an extraordinary creation of brocade and lace designed by a Parisian. Once accentuating her perfect frame, it now hung from her like an absurd curtain. He didn’t need the money he’d make from selling it in Boston but it was a waste to keep it. He planned to take her far away from the city, from the commotion that clogged her mind.

“I don’t want there to be any red in the baby’s room, Papa. I don’t want a nurse for him, either. Christopher will go to the stage with me. He’ll dream of yellow suns and brown dirt and white tulips.”

The still-born child had been a girl. Nicholas named her Elizabeth and a priest baptized her before her burial. She was with God now, they told Nicholas, and her body was in the earth with her ancestors, deep beneath the land tended to by Nicholas’ parents and siblings. Everyone but Anna was behind him. He could pray to God for the trip to be a success, for Anna’s return and the happily ever after they’d planned together, except there was no God. Not for Nicholas.

Anna wandered up to the deck in her dingy white night gown. It was a sight the crew had grown accustomed to. They no longer jeered or gestured obscenely as she walked by. They simply ignored her.

“Anna, we’re dining in the--dear lord.”

All action stopped as one by one, the crew looked out over the night waters, peering into the darkness as the ghost approached them on devil’s wings. Every man moved again as one, loading up cannons and digging out pistols, preparing to meet their worst fear.

Anna did not see the maritime menace for when she heard Papa’s voice, she first peered into the inky black ocean. She saw the pearly white orb glowing from the deepest depths, beckoning her to find salvation. She could reach inside herself to find it once again, Anna realized even as the orb stretched and squirmed and dimmed beneath a passing cloud, dimmed to a sickly salmon.

“Christopher!” Anna gasped.

Deep in the depths where Christopher waited, a grinning skull floated beside him. It screamed with the voice of a dozen cannon and fifty men. Anna’s world shuddered and Christopher vanished beneath a fiery explosion in the water.

“Papa! I have to save Christopher!”

Nicholas’ world froze for a fraction of a second. Chaos surrounded him but for that single moment, Anna’s eyes met his and he could see his love one last time. Nothing needed to be said, nothing was expected. He knew he must let her go, he must fight for his life and his freedom, complete the journey that perhaps had not been about Anna at all. He suddenly saw the road ahead of him and though it was black, he knew Anna waited at the end.

And she dove into the frigid Atlantic.