Chapter 15
The forged Resolute Portrait appeared entirely out of place in Florrie’s childhood bedchamber.
After she had completed her first course on framing at the Conservatory, Florrie had practised her skills at home between terms. Every cheap woodblock print she’d acquired and every youthful scribble she found satisfactory had been matted and installed in a most professional manner, with weighty wall brackets and sleek picture rails fit for a prince.
Yet her collections, such as they were, seemed rustic and run-down next to Vern’s painting.
She settled in – tucking her travel case into her reupholstered antique bureau, closing the thirteenth-century beribboned blinds, turning down her spare replica of her grandmother’s quilt – while watching the painting for signs of activity.
Florrie continued to hope Vern hadn’t overheard her outburst. Considering the lack of evidence to suggest that he had, however, she assumed it was only polite to inform him of their present circumstances.
“Good evening, Vern.” Why, Florrie wondered, must her voice always sound so flat and formal? “I do apologise for the change of plan, but I’ve decided to spend the night here.”
“Good evening! I’m in no hurry. How are you faring?”
“Where are you?” She squinted at the shadows cast by the edge of the frame, but couldn’t spot him on the canvas.
“As it happens, I’m up a tree. Would that lovely dress of yours allow you to climb?”
Florrie assessed her ensemble. “I should think so. Is your tree more or less perilous than the cliffs I scaled on the way to Lord Mauve’s museum?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
Somehow, Florrie’s candlelit bedchamber was darker than the perpetual night of the painting.
When she arrived in Vern’s world, she found herself blinking at the moonbeams until her eyes adjusted.
Once she could see, Florrie spun about – feeling the impasto grass push against her heel – until she spotted a flash of Vern’s hair in the forest, like the motif of a single autumn leaf amid the greenery that was so popular in equinoctial landscape paintings.
Vern was very much up a tree. He was so far into the canopy that she could only glimpse him in fragments between the leaves – a green sleeve-cuff stitched with acorns, the tip of a patchwork wing, a delicate hand clinging to the branch.
“My dress might allow me to climb,” called Florrie, “but it cannot grant any athleticism I do not already possess.”
“It’s quite simple. I’ll show you where to step!”
Florrie’s eyes followed Vern through the branches as he descended with a speed and grace that she wouldn’t have… well, would have expected from him.
He jumped from the lowest bow and landed soundly on his feet. Despite everything, Florrie found herself clapping with excitement.
“I suppose that’s the sort of thing you’ve spent years practising?” she asked.
“Oh, this?” he said, eyes wide. “Can’t everyone in your world climb like I do? You have far more trees, after all.”
“Goodness, no! I’ve never seen such a display of—”
Florrie paused, trying her best to interpret the curious little grin on Vern’s face.
“I’m only teasing. Though I’m glad to have impressed you.” He gestured to the nearest branch. “Shall we?”
Florrie had restored a truly uncountable number of paintings and prints with forest scenes, which often featured a few stray climbing figures, but repainting their limbs had not taught her how to use her own.
Luckily, this tree was nothing like the slender alpine saplings so often found in landscape art.
Each branch Vern recommended felt steady beneath her grip, and bridging the gaps between them required less coordination than she had feared.
“How are you managing?” As he waited just above her, Vern was somehow comfortable enough to sprawl indulgently across his branch. “Try that one next.”
“I’m managing perfectly, thanks to your help!”
“I’ll bet my climbing feats seem far less impressive now, don’t they?” He pulled himself onto a neighbouring branch as Florrie caught up with him. “Now you see how close the branches are.”
“Do you know why they’re so close to each other?” she asked, though she intended to answer the question herself. “Honnor Loftus believed plants ought to be perfectly balanced. Each of his paintings feature branches that are symmetrical and equidistant.”
“I don’t suppose he considered how useful that would be for the purpose of climbing.”
“What about the purpose of showing off?”
Vern suddenly leaped upwards, skipping three branches, to perch in a little hollow covered with vines.
“I haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean,” he said.
Florrie hid her grin behind a convenient cluster of leaves.
“You’re in good cheer this evening,” she said.
“I only thought you might need some cheering.” Vern reached the highest branch shortly before she did. With his windswept hair and the embroidered foliage on his shirt, he looked right at home among the leaves. Florrie paused, caught her breath, and tried not to stare.
“What do you think of the bark?” he asked.
“It’s lovely and smooth. Like the fine-pulp paper one uses for block printing.”
“Just wait until you get up here! There’s even a bit of moss.”
There was, indeed, some downy-soft moss, akin to the sort used to augment textiles in the seventh century. Yet even that could hardly hold Florrie’s attention once she had poked her head through the canopy.
Above them was a sky full of stunningly abstracted stars – the sort Honnor Loftus never would have painted.
They hung beyond the treetops, ablaze with an olivine green that was entirely inconsistent with both astronomical reality and the motifs in fifteenth-century skyscapes.
Florrie knew Loftus usually depicted stars as nothing more than tiny white dots touched into certain corners of the sky. Who or what, then, created these?
Angular brushstrokes extended from each vivid nimbus, haloing the stars in tantalising textures that seemed only slightly out of reach.
Yet the stars weren’t static. They shifted and sparkled like everything else in Vern’s world, enlivened by an unseen, impossible force.
Florrie found herself laughing with disbelief.
“What in the world is that style?” she asked at last. “I suppose there’s some resemblance to archetypal Fairy art – like I saw on that tree and on the gates at Lord Mauve’s…”
Florrie turned to look at Vern. He, too, was now awash with a gorgeous green-and-gold glow. The starlight settled in the hollows of his dimples as he smiled, and his freckles resembled flecks of gold leaf layered on an illuminated manuscript. He seemed divinely celestial.
“I do apologise,” Florrie said. “That was my way of saying I’m grateful you brought me here.”
“Don’t worry. I could tell.” He had settled on a different branch, but he was near enough that their shoulders were practically touching. A single breeze might bring them on top of each other.
“Perhaps it’s because Fairy artists tend to represent starlight in established ways, and Ceru thought it wiser to follow tradition,” Florrie mused. “And it could also be an example of— Oh, you ought to stop me now. I am moments away from commencing a very dull lecture.”
“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you. I’m happy to see you feeling well again.”
Florrie shuddered, and she grabbed the branch just in time to stop herself from tumbling.
“You saw me.” How she hated the childish tone of her voice. “Earlier. I had hoped you weren’t listening.”
“Florrie, I wasn’t just listening. I started calling to you as soon as you began weeping. But I don’t think you could hear me.”
Florrie reached for the nearest leaf and traced her fingers over its veins.
“I wasn’t exactly aware,” she said. “I can only apologise. I don’t suppose you could simply forget you saw a grown woman sobbing and yelling uncontrollably for no reason?”
“We needn’t discuss it,” said Vern, “but I imagine there must have been a reason.”
What reason could she supply? Should she employ the usual simplifications – that her mind worked differently, that her body reacted differently as a result, that sometimes she felt so disconnected from the experiences of her friends and family that she feared the very essence of her being must be fundamentally different?
But the simplifications had never served her well before. Folk found them too relatable. “You know,” they’d say, eyes wide with well-meaning, “I’ve always felt different, too… I think it’s a universal experience… A trait common among creative Folk… You’ll overcome it, in time.”
She didn’t imagine Vern would say such things, though. In fact, of everyone she’d ever met, she suspected only Vern could understand her experience, in his own way.
“I hate it when that happens,” Florrie said.
“Everything overwhelmed me at once. My cousin’s meddling was just the final frustration of many.
Chary has always looked out for me, and I once believed that to be a kindness, but she doesn’t believe I can take care of myself.
And I fear she may be right. I try so very hard to prove I’m capable and independent, yet it just takes one slip-up and I’m utterly helpless. ”
“Was that really what just happened? Florrie, you’re exhausted. You’ve been on the road all day, after having just completed a most tiring journey. The fact that you’ve broken down at the end doesn’t negate your accomplishments.”
Florrie hugged her knees to her chest, feeling the branch creak as she repositioned.
She let her head fall to one side and risked a glance at Vern.
She had to admit that being around him made her feel…
well, something altogether unfamiliar. Rested.
Settled. Restored, as though she were a fixed-up painting herself.
“You’re right, of course,” she said, casting her eyes across the branch before her staring became too obvious. “It’s all been so very much.”