Chapter Nineteen
Azizi
Madness is an old friend of mine, one that has been with me always.
Holding my hand as I am shunted from my mother’s womb, combing my hair to distract from the fighting only rooms away, whispering ancient lullabies in my ears as I pick up a charcoal for the first time and let myself be lost in the possibilities.
It is in my hands when I mix my first paint and use it to bleed across my first canvas. It is in my throat when I scream and drive the pallet knife into that old man’s throat. Over and over and over again.
Yes, madness and I know each other very well. Perhaps that’s what makes it such a surprise when that same friend turns against me in my time of need.
The year after my disaster of a gallery showing had been a dark one, filled with hauntings and ghosts of a different kind than I’ve found here in my new chateau.
I’d locked myself away in the darkness of my townhouse, turning away visitors and refusing mail.
I starved in that darkness. My cellar was well stocked, make no mistake—I might have refused to see anyone, but my family made sure my stores were full—but it was not my belly that went empty.
It was my heart.
How many times did I pick up a brush only to find my hands too unsteady to draw a single stroke? How many pages of parchment did I waste with charcoal scribbles because my mind could not focus on a single thought with which to sketch?
Have you been painting again?
That is my newest haunting. My father’s letter, sitting creased and open atop my desk, the wax of his seal flickering in the candlelight.
In front of it sits a porcelain figure—the bust of a woman with perfectly curled hair resting upon her shoulders and two carefully molded flowers in place of her eyes.
It does not look much like Kolfina, but it is beautiful, nonetheless, the painted blue flowers stark against the lovely white surface.
How easily he creates for me—for us. We have always joked that the Muses love my father most. That no matter what form of art he chooses to try, his mastery would outshine all others.
Jonas is convinced that my father once wooed one of them, defying Mnemosyne herself to lavish one of her daughters with such devotion and love that they returned it in kind with the blessings of their gifts.
Perhaps that is why I suffer so much myself.
Has Mnemosyne cursed me in revenge for my father’s transgressions against her?
Is there so little inspiration left over from the Muses that I now have to claw and scrape for even a taste of what my father feasts upon so freely? Am I simply not worthy of their gifts?
Inadequacy leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
It is not as if my skill fails me. The painting on the easel before me now is fine enough—a simple render of my studio with Kolfina and Theodore on the chaise lounge, the former with her legs tucked up under her skirts, her cheek resting on the back cushions as she watches the latter hunch over his journal, blind to the world—but it is nothing special.
Unfinished, merely a blurry image of colour and vague shapes, not yet defined or detailed.
I had hopes that painting my lovers would return that flame of passion to my heart once more, that it would feed the coals until the fire scorched my skin from the inside out. I needed something, anything, to distract me from the heaviness of my father’s worry and the ghost of his disappointment.
Yet it leaves me feeling more dull than when I started. No matter how much detail and attention I pay to the golden wheat of Kolfina’s hair or the galaxy of freckles across Theodore’s nose, the painting feels hollow and empty.
Have you been painting again?
You paint what I tell you and nothing more, you hear me? I will break your wicked little hands if I catch you—
It’s a perfect image. Pretty to look at, yes, but there is nothing to see.
“Silence!”
The shadows lingering in the corners of my studio writhe and hiss back at me, forming shapes along the edges of my vision that only flicker for a moment when I try to blink them away before returning once more.
The paint on my canvas bubbles, little pockets of black ash and embers blooming in Kolfina’s featureless face and staining Theodore's twitching hands.
I grit my teeth and start again, scraping the fresh paint off with a rag and a knife. I place another base layer, build upon it with care and precision, my face so close to the amber tassels of the chaise that flecks of paint clump to my eyelashes.
Not good enough—It’s a perfect image—Do it again.
I start again. The paint smudges beneath my bare hand, hot and sticky between my fingers.
The freckles from Theodore’s face bury themselves underneath my fingernails.
The flowers on Kolfina’s dress root in the creases of my palm, thorns tearing open the flesh and leaving streaks of blood where her face once was.
“No,” I mutter to myself as the red stains the canvas, seeping between the fibers and blooming into a vicious tangle of bloody sinew. “No, no.”
What good is this filth supposed to do me? I will break your wicked little hands if I catch you—
One of the shadows grows larger, closer. Thick meaty hands reach out for me, but I dodge them in favor of reaching for a new canvas, casting the old one aside without a care.
I do not bother with a sketch this time. I know the image in my mind intimately, know every ruffle of Kolfina’s lace and every curl of Theodore’s hair. I have watched them in the same pose near every day for weeks, notated every detail and memorized every movement.
The smudged paint on my hands dirties the canvas as soon as I put my brush to it, but I ignore it. The masters do not dwell on mistakes. They do not let the paint control them. They adapt, as I must.
“Are you painting again?” my father asks, hovering over my shoulder as he watches me work. “I do miss your work, but do you not think this rather… dull?”
“Stop it.” I flutter a hand behind my head to wave him off. “I do not tell you what to sculpt.”
His laughter pinches at my ear. “That is because I sculpt with my heart, always. It is a disgrace to do anything else. So why then are you letting the world guide your brush instead of your own hands?”
Dark fingers trace over the back of my wrist, leaving deep trenches of pain lacing up my arm.
My hand twitches violently from the suddenness of it.
A streak of blue paint mixes with the muddy smudges at the edge of the canvas.
It spreads like veins, cornflower rivers flowing beneath dark skin, splitting open and dripping crimson onto the floor.
“What use are hands like yours if you do not use them correctly?” my father asks.
Those shadowed fingers of his slip between mine, and I can feel the scorching blaze of his heart pressed up against my back.
It carries down his arms, his Muse’s flames twisting around my wrists like shackles. It burns.
A desperate whine peels its way through my throat as I tug at the chains anchored in the painting on my easel. “Stop it—please—I am painting. I am—”
“You are not painting, you are placating.” I cannot help but flinch at the gentle disappointment in his voice, tears springing to my eyes when his arms wrap around my waist. “My precious daughter, why do you waste this gift I’ve given you? What purpose will you serve me if you cannot paint?”
“I can,” I promise him, despising the pitiful begging that spills so easily from my lips. “I swear, I can. I am trying. Just let me try—”
I tug at the chains again, and they tug back. Kolfina and Theodore have disappeared from the canvas, leaving only shadows writhing in their wake.
Perhaps my father is right. What use am I if I cannot paint?
If there is nothing left inside of me worth someone’s interest?
Will they leave me too when they find out?
Will Kolfina grow bored with watching me do nothing but cast my failures aside?
Will Theodore eventually tire of searching for stories in my art and finding only empty disappointment?
The black flames eat into my wrists, coat my palms with blisters and burns, leave pockmarks of dead skin in their wake.
Pain tears through me like a blade, and by the time the flames have finally died out—starved from lack of kindling to stoke them—I am left with nothing but skin melting off charred bone.
“No. No. No.”
My father’s cheek presses against mine; his fingers card through my sweat-soaked hair. “What would you need hands for, if you no longer paint? I have saved you the pain of prolonged suffering, my precious darling.”
“My hands—babbo, please—my hands!”
I try to pick up my brush again, but it slips through my bony fingers and rolls beneath my desk. I reach for my pallet, but I have no muscles left to lift it.
Shadows watch and laugh as I shove my painting case away in frustration, brushes and knives clattering against the wall, glass jars of linseed oil and turpentine shattering across the floor.
There grows a pain in my chest even worse than that in my hands.
A great, gaping emptiness that eats away at whatever false life my father gave me upon my re-birth.
It devours everything in its path, swallowing my stomach and my heart and my lungs, until I am left gasping for air I do not need.
Left listening for a heartbeat I’ve not heard in a century.
“Azizi?”
“Just stop it!” I cry, grabbing the ruined painting off my easel and tossing it into the pile of other failures in the corner. The wooden frame cracks beneath the force, but I do not care. “Just let me work! I can do it. I can—”
But can I? My hands are useless now. I bring them up to my face, I drag them through my hair, the bones snag painfully on the tangled strands, but I cannot feel them.