Chapter Seventeen #2
“You told me once that there was nothing to see in my paintings. That they lack a story to be told.” Theodore jumps slightly at the sound of my voice, as if he’s forgotten I was here at all, but he nods in agreement.
“You asked me why I hid behind them, and you were right. I am afraid of what people might see. I believe I always have been.”
“But they’re beautiful,” Theodore argues, confusion creasing his brow. He glances up at the moth painting, his fingers still lingering on its golden frame. “These ones… they show your heart in a way the others don’t.”
I cannot help but chuckle at the playful look Kolfina sends me at that.
“Yes, so our Kolfina has told me. It is… complicated, as most things are, I suppose. Like yourself, my childhood was not an easy one. Before my father adopted me, I worked as a sort of apprentice to a painter in Lyon. At the risk of sounding boastful, I am what many have called a prodigy when it comes to painting, and my parents saw that for what it was. They sold me to him to pay off their debts, and in turn, I spent nearly a decade of my earlier years under his employ.”
Bitter resentment colours my tone, and I am sure they can both hear it judging by the frowns they give me in return.
It frustrates me, how much that man still affects me, how much his words still linger in my mind over a century later.
Foolish, as I have long since learned that what he said was not true.
Or rather… I had thought it wasn’t true, until my disaster of a showing only a year or so ago.
Now his voice is louder than ever, flooding my ears with every stroke of paint and gesture of my brush.
I wonder how many more centuries I will have to live before I finally forget the sound of him entirely.
“Are these from back then?” Theodore asks, gesturing to the paintings around us.
“Goodness no.” I shake my head, folding my hands behind my back in an effort to hide their trembling.
“He exploited my talent, certainly, but it was always for the more general public. I would paint portraits for him, landscapes and still lifes, all of which he would then sell under his own name. In exchange, I had a roof over my head and the freedom to use the painting supplies whenever I wished. He was a cruel man, but it was a deal that satisfied us both… for a time.”
Theodore hums low in his throat, finally moving past the moth painting and onto the next, his fingers skipping from frame to frame as he takes in each detail with rapt attention. “What happened to him?”
“I killed him.”
I watch in silent amusement as the boy trips over his robe, whirling around to face me with wide, amber eyes. Even Kolfina looks surprised, and I am reminded that she’d not heard this part of the story when last we stood in this room.
“You what?”
“I killed him,” I repeat easily, that old resentment melting into warm satisfaction at the memory.
“He was always a perfectionist, making me work day and night until a painting was absolutely perfect. He would withhold food and drink, would refuse to let me sleep any longer than absolutely necessary, if he did not think my work was finished.” I can still remember his fingers bruising my wrists as he dragged me into the studio to work, my legs stumbling like a foal’s and my eyes still blinking awake.
Can still feel the shape of his hand as it smacked across my cheek whenever I dared speak back. “Then one day, the thread snapped.”
“You wretched little beast! What is this? What good is this filth supposed to do me? How dare you think—”
“He caught me working on a personal project, one I had no intentions of ever showing him, as I knew it was too dark and macabre for his tastes.” I gesture to the paintings on the walls and offer them a shrug.
“Naturally, he was quite disgusted with it, and even moreso furious that I was taking time away from his projects in order to work on it. He tore it up, as well as the rest of my personal paintings and sketches, and threw them in the fire.”
“Idiot girl—what makes you think anyone would want to see something so vile? And from the mind of a child, no less. You are lucky I do not send you to the workhouses or la Salpêtrière. You paint what I tell you and nothing more, you hear? I will break your wicked little hands if I catch you—”
Theodore’s fingers grip at the tie of his robe, same as when he grasps at his satchel, and I wonder if he is thinking of his own journal and the soul he’s poured into it. Would he do the same if someone tossed it in the fire? “That’s awful.”
“It was, yes,” I agree with a nod. “That is why I stabbed him with his own pallet knife and watched him bleed out on the floor before running away. A few years later, my father took me in, encouraged my passions and my skills, but did not demand anything of me in return.”
“But you still hide your work,” Theodore argues. “Would he be upset with it too?”
Would he? My father has seen a few of my tamer pieces, this is true.
The moth painting, for example, has always been one of his favorites, and he has a few others hung up around his home, last I was there.
He has always been so kind and loving toward us that I could not bear to gift him anything so bland as what I paint for everyone else.
But some others—the torsos ripped open to reveal their dark, rotting insides; the carcasses strewn about forest floors—those I have not dared to show him for fear of what I might see staring back at me.
“I do not know,” I answer honestly, “but I have not had luck in the past with such matters. My brother Jonas and Mr. Allard are the only two who have ever seen the entirety of my heart’s work before the both of you.”
Theodore shifts slightly on his feet, fingers twisting anxiously in the dark robe still shielding him. “But why—why would you show me this?”
Oh, my dearest Theodore.
A moment later, I am in front of him, cupping his face in the cradle of my hands and forcing his eyes to meet mine.
“Because, my little beastie, I want you to know that there is no need to hide from me, nor fear what I might see when looking at you.” My thumb brushes across the sharp angle of his cheek; my fingers slip between the messy curls at the base of his neck.
I watch as a blush spreads over his freckled cheeks from our closeness.
“We are the same, the three of us. Monsters thrust upon a world that does not see us, that does not care to even look. No matter how those people down there look at you, know that up here is where you are truly seen.”
I feel him swallow, his throat bobbing against the sides of my hands. “Azizi—”
But I interrupt him before he gets too far, turning my gaze next to Kolfina where she stands a few steps away.
Her own hands are clasped against her chest, her lip pressed between her teeth, like she is trying not to intrude.
I stretch out a hand for her, pleased to find her moving closer without hesitation, and I cup my fingers under her chin as well—or rather, the petal-soft breeze where her chin would be.
“I speak to both of you,” I tell her. “You, too, are seen here, petal. Whether you are visible to us or not, you are here, and you will never have the need to hide from me. Understood?”
It takes a moment for them both to nod, and while the belief in their faces is hesitant, I do not mind.
There is time to convince them both, time even more to urge them to accept their own monsters. And I have no plans of being anywhere but right beside them when they do.