Someone has moved a mountain to the sea.

There is no shore. No smell of mulberry trees. No birds.

There are ghosts here.

Untraversable expanse.

Silence.

We remember shade. Chatter.

The voice of long grass.

We are—acquainted with oceans.

From our ship, through a spyglass, the mountain is a pinpoint. A distant trouble to pluck from the horizon between thumb and forefinger.

When the wind comes, as it will, and the waves whip, as they do, the ship is pulled toward the mountain.

Over the rocking side of the ship, in the glass division, comes a message in a bottle. Collecting it takes effort. Pulleys. Ropes.

We link hands. Lean. Dangle. Your sunburned hand reaches.

It is a small thing.

I with my spyglass. You with your find. We exchange the plucked mountain for the message. The pinpoint on the horizon is filled. The mountain fits in the bottle.

Hand over hand, the wheel.

With the wind, tilting.

The scent of mulberries.

The song of birds.

Do you know of the Capcaun?

A grinder of bones.

A mixer of mediums.

Something unnatural happens when the natural is twisted.

Men lose their shape.

Animals lose their rightful skin.

The snow lives.

Its melting is a death.

And paint—

Paint becomes a spell woven of jewels and blood—

of eggs and water—

of reprisal and misstep.

6

Some items of news I mull over in that train car: Nessa’s husband is a tree in the forest of corpses. Minus the branches at the end of his arms. The Popescu girl is found, the one named Laura. My father found the blood spell words from an illuminated prayer book read out loud in a museum. Or he created them. Or he stole them from an undead exotic creature. I don’t fixate on how he got us here. I don’t fixate on missing and found girls.

It doesn’t matter now. Nessa’s husband has no hands, the zebra has no eyes, and I have no more present for Nessa. The knife in my back doesn’t bother me so much at this point, as my brothers mop up the Romanians, but the blood—my life’s force dropping out of me in thick fat crimson alizarin plops— bothers me a good deal.

I look at the zebra. He, well he doesn’t look at me, but I feel him see me. I feel pierced. Ventilated. Made of slits and cuts. As though I am made of eyes.

“What do I do?” I ask him.

His great head turns to the rushing rain-streaked field cutting past us beyond the train car.

“Couldn’t I jump on your back?” Ride off this train back to the town. Back to Nessa. I feel it would be easier that way. I also feel his disgust at the suggestion.

My brothers climb up my legs and back into my pocket. “Fine.” I lean down, dip my palms in the blood and paint, and place both my hands on the zebra’s flanks until he rolls up between them like an architect’s blueprint. His irritation dries my hands to cracking and he does the riding back to town as a scroll.

The Romanians are dead and Nessa is safe. They will not follow her. I’ll pick up a present for her on the way back. Maybe two. She will walk the Jura mountains. She is not afraid. Before she goes, she’ll free my father from the painting. Then I too will walk the mountains and forests.

But she can’t free him. Her blood beads on the varnish over his face. He is a Man of Snow which means his blood is frozen. He is frozen right now, seeing me and Nessa looking at him under the varnish. I don’t cry. Nessa stands silent for many minutes while I look at my father and do not cry. Then she turns to me with her crooked tooth showing. “I can’t get him out, but we can give him life inside,” she says. “Cry,” she tells me as she bites her finger again. I think about my father and how I felt under the varnish for one hundred years. I remember forests of corpses and hear the griding of a mortar and pestle. A tear wells in my eye and before it falls Nessa touches the corner of my eye and pulls down. My tear mixes with her blood in a swirl. She presses it to my snow father and smears it across him. His acorn eyes blink.

*

When I kill Nessa’s husband, it is late afternoon and there are no more cakes left on the plate. He has not offered any to his guest. Not that I care, as I’m there to kill him, but it would’ve been the decent thing to do. I tell you this so you don’t feel sorry for him. He is not a good man.

The fake zebra skin leans, partially unrolled, at his knee. I wait in the apartment hallway, my back torn open, my eyes wild in my head. I taste metal. My mind is lamp black.

He pulls an envelope from his coat pocket and gives it to the man, handing him the rolled up skin as well. “Give these to Madame. Tell her we are square. Tell her…” He does not release the envelope when the young man reaches for it. “Tell her blood is quiet.” Then weaker, “Take her back.” Then softer, “Sorry about the girl.”

The Romanian turns to go. As he crosses the threshold of the parlor I step from the corner behind the grandfather clock and swiftly puncture both his lungs while relieving him of the letter. Laura Popescu’s brother slithers silently to the floor drowning in his own juices as I clean my pin on my sleeve. I leave him at the top of the stairs with his useless skin and appear in the parlor as Nessa’s husband turns from his contemplation of a narrow escape at the window where snow has begun to fall.

“Dov,” he says in a bored tone. “I thought we had finished.”

“That’s right.”

He doesn’t have time to be confused before he chokes on his own juices. Now Nessa is free. I box up the hands for her.

now

You have seen the Capcaun.

This is the new speed which you have been promised.

It is true.

It has occurred.

7

Nessa is our captain now and we live in the Jura mountains. She’s always leaning to the right, her left leg stretched out to the side, booted toes pointing and flexing. Her eyes are coal, gone darker since her husband died. We try not to talk to her much, but she’s there in the back of our heads, the constant. We’re kind of in love with her. Kind of embarrassed by her. She’s our worst fault and greatest achievement. It’s harder and harder to find presents for her out here. Not many small girls or children at all in the Jura Mountains. We just want to get past this place, past this stretch of ice and track, this line of endless salt pillars.

She smiles crookedly. I fixate on her long sharp canine tooth, always poking her bottom lip when she talks. She’s got a million little lines around her eyes and nowhere else. Her forehead looks like a river stone. Her hair has gone wild. Her husband’s hand has gone lamp black.

The cold goes through my thin grey coat. I pull the rolled-up skin from where it’s wedged in my trouser band. I open it up, pointing to the edge where the next house is marked.

Nessa nods, looks behind her at the trail going up.

In the dark her head looks like a dog’s. In the dark her eyes multiply.

A train horn moans from far away below.

“Keep to the path, Dov. Don’t be a hero.” She motions to the zebra, who can’t see her but moves forward anyway.

She says it in a way that makes me ashamed to want to be a hero. She says it like I wouldn’t make it. I roll the skin back up and tuck in in my trouser band again. I don’t say anything. She strokes the zebra’s head.

My name is Dov Angria. I killed Nessa’s husband before he could destroy her. I won’t be the one to tell her, and I’ll kill you next if you are.

Canvas: Center Right Edge

1859-1959

I hear it everywhere. The snapping branches echoing for miles around, the low breath of the easterly wind over my face, and the birds. Oh, how I love the birds! There is a great hawk who sits on the highest branch of the same oak tree my arms come from––how she speaks! A sharp contrast to the gentle voice of the chickadee who comes around every now and again.

The last acorns to fall from the tree are now my eyes, with which I observe the forest and its creatures. I am still learning. I know the hawk, the chickadee, and the oak; the farmer and the child spoke of them. The farmer and the child did not speak as the hawk or the chickadee. The farmer guided the child’s hand to a pointed finger, and then to what would be my face. The child mirrored his own mouth to create mine, before adding a small carrot for my nose.

After the farmer and the child left to walk south, I decided to take a walk as well. I wandered around the forest in search of hawks and chickadees, listening to the soft wind and brushing my oak arms against the undriven snow. I came upon a narrow brook that sounded so lovely that I decided to sit next to it for a while. I watched the bright yellow leaves sail on the living currents before gathering as old friends against the stones that speckled the water.

I leaned forward to dip one of my oak arms into the icy water until a leaf, a deep red one this time, embraced me. I lifted my oak arm from the water and squinted my acorn eyes to see the frost forming on it in the open winter air. I smiled. Though I cannot prove it to you, I smiled more than I was made to smile. Because as I admired the beautiful leaf, I heard the most wonderful sound. I lifted my head and lowered the visiting leaf back to join its friends in the brook as I saw a bird perched on a fallen tree. The bird was a dusty gray color with a light breast, and a pointy tail. I sat for a while to enjoy her music. A rise followed by three falls. I would have listened forever, but she flew off after only a few songs.

For the first time, I did not smile. I continued my walk, in search of the gray bird. Though I enjoyed the company of the chickadees, the hawks, and the traveling leaves along the brook, I longed to hear the song of the gray bird again. I wondered if I might befriend the gray bird, so that I may learn to sing my own song. I lifted my oak arms to my face and traced a smile as I thought of this. I was now on a journey to find the gray bird, and the gray bird would teach me to sing.

As I continued my quest, with renewed joy and strength, I heard a new song. But this one was not beautiful. It was coming from just beyond the trees, and it was low and slow. It was not a chickadee, nor a hawk, nor the gray bird, nor the farmer or the child. I moved beyond the trees and saw a great horned creature halfway out of the earth. The creature’s eyes were not like the chickadee. They were not like the gray bird. The long voice with which it spoke was somewhat as the hawk––loud, insistent. But unlike the hawk, I did not like it. I was no longer smiling.

Just then, the farmer came running from across the field beyond the trees. Upon reaching the creature, he called back across the field and the child came running with a bucket––like the one full of carrots I had seen when I was given my nose. Only this time, the bucket was held to the great horned creature’s mouth. The farmer and the child then ran back across the field.

I moved closer to the great horned creature and saw that the child’s bucket had carried water. I smiled and raised my oak arms. I brushed my side into the bucket and held the bucket of snow to the creature’s face. As her breath created more water, she drank. I waited with the creature, expecting to surprise the farmer and the child with a spontaneous reunion. But they did not come.

The creature eventually stopped its low and slow song and began to lower its head. I brushed more of myself into the bucket. And a bit more. When I realized I did not have enough of myself left to continue looking for the gray bird, that I wouldn’t be able to learn to sing, that I wouldn’t find more leaves, that I wouldn’t make more smiles of my own— I was sad. As if my sadness had been a song of its own, I heard it. A rise followed by three falls. It was the gray bird, who had just perched near the creature and me. The last motion of my oak arms was to brush off my acorn eyes and my carrot nose into the bucket before lying down on top of it.

I can’t have that.

I feel the blade, feel the hitch in my breathing as my lung skates past collapse. I feel the blood, my father’s blood soaking my shirt, growing past my ribs and hip to my pocket. To my army waiting inside. To the ridiculous end.

Crimson Alizarin. Burnt Sienna. Indian Red. Cadmium.

I’ve felt knives before. Been blended and cut by metal. This time, with this knife, I feel the call of my brothers. I give them my hand.

They climb my fingers, my wrist; they taste my blood and leap from my arm. In the rushing open train door’s air and rain they spin and flip from two inch into six-foot men, full battle dress, bayonets fixed.

I brought Nessa’s presents to the apartment closet before all of this. The walls are old and thick there, and the street makes busy sounds day and night. No one will steal them. Nessa knows where to look. This comforts me. The air smells of rain and linseed oil. Turpentine burns the back of my throat as my blood continues to flow and my brothers finish the fight.

*

In the painting I am difficult to see. The soldiers riot around the hillside, preparing to meet their enemy over the crest. Only the enemy’s bayonets are visible over the horizon. Thin slashes of flesh-tearing metal, bobbing over the hill. A hawk soars over the distant tree line. A fresh snow carpets the field where the soldiers call over their shoulders. All are frozen as the narrow pile of snow slanting off to the right

A barn leans to the left. A small thatched roof only half in the frame. A farmer half turned to his small son. His son rushing out of the doorway with a bunch of carrots dangling from his hand, gesturing to something before him. Outside the painting. He is not me.

A thin young man, a scarecrow of a person, with a bucket of water and a dipper in his hand rounds the barn. He is interrupted at the door by the smaller boy who almost knocks him down. He must think the soldiers are thirsty. He might wish he were one of them. He might even wish he were the farmer’s boy with a father to be proud of and a purpose beyond thatch, beyond fetching. That one is me.

Until I’m called out of the frame.

*

I owe her everything. I’ve watched her hungrily for months. A crooked tooth pressing through her lips as she half smiles. Wearing a zebra skin around her shoulders when the temperature drops in the apartment, like a princess of some unknowable land. She wears it the day I wake, the animal’s face flopping over her own forehead so that I can’t see her eyes or nose, only that half smile. That tooth escaping her mouth.

I ask where my father was. His paint is dry. All she can tell me is that the blood is loud and it says my name but not my father’s. She touches my paint with the pad of her pricked finger and I climb from the canvas and stand on floorboards for the first time in a century. I look back at the frame and see my father’s paint in the right center edge. Then across to the left, the empty space by the barn. The floating dipper. The partial bucket.

We are made of water. Who will bring it now?

1660

The Capcaun grinds the bones of the princess and carefully mixes them with flour.

The culinary arts of the Capcaun are often overlooked.

With so many eyes the hunt is less exciting than you might imagine, but the chase remains exhilarating.

The Capcaun is patient.

Plays the long game.

Is willing to invest.

Sometimes purposeful negligence, relaxed guard, the potential for loss is more tantalizing than hard won victory.

The Capcaun doesn’t toy.

It teases.

Canvas: Lower Left Corner

1934

My dad has lived here his whole life. He doesn’t need much and asks for much less than that. He has done his fair share of hard things, though he doesn’t talk about that much. At least not with me. Ever since my mom passed, he has made a point to talk more. We go for lots of walks through the forest near our farm. My dad likes to talk about small things. He often points out the birds we see on our walks. The hawk, the chickadee. The mourning dove is our favorite, we often pause in our tracks when we hear the song— a rise followed by three falls— then sing it back. We smile and continue on our way. I took a liking to carrots in my small years, so I like to toss a pile in a bucket to swing with my left hand as my dad and I walk through the snowy forest.

Last winter, my dad and I made a snowman for the first time. We hadn’t had a good snow in some years. We used big branches from mom’s oak tree for the arms; my dad chuckled cause I could barely lift them, but I’d accept nothing less for my first snowman. Acorns from my mom’s oak tree for his eyes, and a carrot from my bucket for his nose. Dad and I laughed more than we had in a while. It felt like a present. A present to my dad.

I’d been unwell most of my small years. Eventually, I started to get rid of the awful cough and could finally get out and help bring in our crops, milk our cow, Patsy, and help my mom. She had started coughing a lot. But she didn’t get better. My dad would work outside all day to bring in the crops for us to sell in town, while somehow tending to mom at the same time. He thought I didn’t notice, but I’d see him double up me and Mom’s plates at dinner while he’d have what was left over. My mom would reach her trembling hand out to my arm when I’d start to speak up. She’d force a smile and nod towards my full plate. I know that’s why I got better. My dad was hoping it’d be why my mom got better.

I could see it in his eyes. Deep set in a sun-darkened face, my dad’s eyes had seen a lot. He was no stranger to death. He’d seen plenty of it in the war. In my small years, I’d hear him and Mom talking about it. I’d been in bed most of the time, since my legs didn’t seem to work too well, and I couldn’t stop coughing. Mom and Dad would wait until the coughing stopped. They would take it as proof I’d fallen asleep for a bit. But I heard them. I’d hear my dad’s voice, low and slow. I’d hear my mom listening. I’d hear her listening.

That was why my dad adored her so much. She knew him, and she was his strength when he’d get the shakes. He’d tell her about the family he met in France who gave him and his friends bread. He’d tell her about when he went back to the family some days later to bring them coffee, and a shell had exploded in front of their house. He’d tell her about how he went inside to find their shattered, lifeless bodies. I’d hear my dad fighting back his tears. I’d hear my mom listening. I’d hear her listening. That’s why my dad adored my mom. Only in her arms could he release his pain. When my mom got sick, my dad lost himself in pain. He didn’t think I noticed, but I did. When we buried my mom under the oak tree where they first kissed, my dad told me:

“Don’t you ever deny yourself the right to hurt”.

I nodded.

Dad and I always walk by the oak tree to say hi to Mom now. We both know how to hurt. But we know how to praise, too. We know how to hold each other up. Last winter, Patsy fell into a ditch near our fence, on the edge of the farm. Dad heard her crying and went running. He called back for me to bring her some water. We couldn’t get any leverage to get her out of the hole and went running to get help, but the closest farm to us is near a mile away. We were worried how long Patsy could hold out. Who knows how long she’d been stuck there in the mud. But Dad and I know how to hold each other up.

We made it to our neighbor, but nobody was home. We ran back to the farm in the snow. We know how to hold each other up. We made our way back to Patsy. We had no plan. We just knew we’d get Patsy free, if she was still alive. We know how to hold each other up. Somehow, she was still fighting, and somehow drinking from a full bucket of water. She was also chewing on something––a carrot and a couple acorns, when I checked her mouth. Not just that, but a couple strong pieces of oak were on the ground in front of her. Dad and I still talk about it. We each placed the oak branches into the hole and pushed down as hard as we could. It was no use trying to lift a cow between an 11-year-old boy and an old man. Yet, Patsy wasn’t ready to quit either. We just kept on, and eventually Patsy was able to lift herself with her back legs and get up out of that ditch. Dad and I still talk about it. That was last winter. Dad and I talk a lot now. He’s coughing more. He’s tired. Every night, I double up his plate at dinner. I try to make sure he doesn’t notice.

5

The skin is poorly painted. It’s a foolish substitute, and only an absolute fool would accept it.

You have met Nessa’s husband.

So as he slips down the stairway with his counterfeit skin she’s sure will keep him safely ignorant as she does some galilvanting, and her kiss on his cheek, Nessa pulls the genuine animal from behind the sideboard with a wide crooked smile.

She pulls a painting knife from her shirt—painting, not palette knife. The diamond blade intended for texture, sharp lines, she uses on her finger. The line of blood breaks. She squeezes and presses it to the underside of the animal, where its skin has been cleaned by another blade. Where she kisses it now.

Where the animal comes to life.

Do you know of the Capcaun?

A body too tall.

A dog’s head.

Too many eyes.

Eats people.

There are not many paintings of it.

3

“This is the best you can do?” Nessa’s husband says.

I don’t even kill him yet. That’s restraint, if you didn’t know.

The animal is exotic. Clearly stolen from the Popescus themselves. From Romania. The strangeness of the pelt. The coarseness of the hair. The fight still in the skin as I clean it for them. It was not born a zebra. That much is clear. Nessa has fashioned it to look as close to one as any in the township will guess a zebra to look.

Nessa’s husband sighs.

I clean, deliver messages and packages, and I bring Nessa things. Little presents to keep her calm when she gets nervous or has bad dreams like children do. We hide them in her closet until the last moment. Her husband doesn’t like me but I am tolerated.

We have an agreement that I stay close because I’m not supposed to be here.

The Jura mountains come right up to the old gates. I’m supposed to fear the Jura mountains.

I tell them I’m afraid.

I am not afraid.

Nessa hands me a knife in an ornamental sheath. “This goes to the Romanians. Don’t be late.”

“Don’t be late,” her husband says as if he said it first.

I button my coat to the throat, the knife slipped into my pocket. I should spend that moment watching Nessa but I squander it glaring at her husband. Who doesn’t look at me but glares at his plate.

***

On the train, the door is stuck open and frozen rain peppers my face as burned-out trees and broken bricks fly by. The Romanians are behind me with the knife in my back. I don’t like it. But this is to be expected. I steal from them. I give presents to Nessa.

***

The zebra skin was a commission paid to Nessa’s husband’s father, Artist 17. It’s been draped over the piano in the salon for as long as anyone remembers. Nessa’s husband has no photographs of him. Once inducted into the Guild, all images of the Artist must be irradicated. I offered to destroy all the images of Nessa’s husband, but was refused. And there are other rules. When assigned a prisoner, they must be inserted into the work as a snowperson: cold, silent, dependent on a single degree of warmth. The prisoner must always be included with one additional sufferer: an innocent, a reproaching presence. And lastly, just as the prisoner’s own blood seals them into the work, only their own blood can release them. Which is impossible, of course. Unless the artist has stored an extra vial of blood in the ceremonial silver Leppe cabinet as tradition demands.

The last prisoner whose sentence Artist 17, Nessa’s husband’s father, carried out was a humble farmer, a former solider, and honest man with a family. I read the records when I’m alone for an hour or two on Sundays. Nessa’s husband is not careful. It gets him killed. How he had offended the Popescus is uncertain, but Artist 17 was not one to ask questions. Rather than begin a new painting, he inserted the unfortunate farmer and his young son into a fine work, I admit, depicting a Napoleonic battle. The painting was inexplicably unframed and resting against a pile of canvases yet to be prepped. France and Romania were at peace. It seemed a significant statement. He felt better having added them. However, try as he did to paint the farmer into snow, every brush stroke resisted, every color rebelled, and rather than fight the pigments he released them. In cleaning edges and blurring mistakes, his cloth revealed a young man by the barn, previously unnoticed. The humble farmer was painted as he was in life, as was his son. At work. In haste. Under a blue sky.

There was already a snowman in the painting. Perhaps his offenses were enough to hold all of them. Artist 17 was a lazy man. There was absinthe to drink and his son’s petulant questions to avoid. So he finished his work, tacked together a decent frame, and when it had dried, had his petulant son deliver the painting to the Popescu summer home in the center of town.

The petulant son of Artist 17 grew to be the petulant Artist 18, who makes my jaw hurt and with whom you are now acquainted.

1560

Do you know of the Capcaun?

Hunter of small children and young girls?

Partial to princesses?

There are stories.

4

My father was cursed and imprisoned in an oil painting a hundred years ago, in 1859. I had delivered messages so I was sealed into the canvas with him. The scene was painted by an artist in league with the Romanians, bought in blood, paid in blood, and silenced by the threat of blood. The set of qualified artists is quite specialized, as you would imagine. Any fool can paint. Only a desperately ambitious beast of a man can be persuaded to scrape souls on a palate and brush a life into oil. Some have claimed they had no choice; some destroy themselves for a chance at such choice. What can I say? Ambition is subjective.

*

The window sash is open and the cold climbs through the room.

I lean against the plaster wall, the one peeling and chipping its dark green scales onto the floor boards. I cross my thin arms and thinner ankles stalking out of my worn shoes like stripped corn cobs.

Nessa now climbs in through the window. “I doubled back. I’m worried.”

She means for her husband. The Romanians think her husband is having an affair with their missing favorite daughter, Laura. He isn’t. I’m not defending him, just saying he’d have nothing to do with such a small ordinary girl.

Nessa moves to the fireplace, which cools rapidly after I kill the fire at the appointed time. She bites her finger and touches the painting.

“Come on, now. Come on out,” she says to the room. “Follow him,” she says to me. “Make sure he’s alright.”

The cold sinks lower and the light dims. The painting of the battle, framed in flaking gold and hanging skewed above the soot stained fireplace, goes dark. I nod.

From the lower corner of the canvas, from the back of a grey house, a red-coated soldier dismounts and lowers himself over the edge of the frame. Dangling his canvas spatted leg, pointing his toes toward the mantle, he reaches above to grab the hand of another leaning over the painted dust of the road to link a chain lowering the soldier safely to the mantle. In this manner five men, in full battle gear, each one inch tall, escape the frame and form a line across the mantle.

On the other side of the room, the rolled up zebra skin, falls from its position against the door frame. It inflates slowly, unfurling and stretching, legs emerging, mane sprouting, nostrils knitting back together in a snort of annoyance, until the zebra, or at least the top layer of one, stands eyeless before me.

“If the Romanians know,” I say, “we don’t have a lot of time.” The Romanians don’t like me and Nessa. They’re afraid we’ll wake up the snowmen. Open the prison. Let my father out. Let all the fathers out.

The painted soldiers stand at attention.

The zebra stamps a missing hoof.

I push off from the wall and set my hands on my hips. Will I make it to the mountains? Who will bring Nessa presents if I don’t?

1

France, 1360

Artist 3 held the wrist of Gerard Leppe. Running green veins beneath the thin olive skin rolled and fled from his ceremonial blade. The air inside the stone chamber was blue with cold, which was necessary but also made extraction difficult.

“Hold still, damn you,” Artist 3 muttered to the arm, breathing deeply and slowly to steady himself as Leppe screamed and wept. My family, my family, you must spare my family... The guard restraining Leppe finally threw his own body across him, pinning his torso to the marble table, and crushed the writhing man’s upper arm to the surface. Artist 3 leaned his whole weight on Leppe’s palm and plunged the sharpened hollow needle into the skin. Blood immediately filled the delicate ivory trencher attached to the needle and Leppe’s body stilled even as his sobs continued to choke his body. Their breath puffed into nothing, taken by December, equalizing their lives for one last moment.

Disconnecting the needle from the wrist, Artist 3 carried the ivory trencher carefully to the other side of the studio and placed it reverently on the linen-covered shelf beside the mortar and pestle. It had to be him who mixed the pigment, him who prepared the vellum, him who extracted the blood, and him alone who illuminated the prison. The text, fresh and dark in iron gall ink, and the gilder’s work already accomplished, Artist 3 prepared to ornament the borders. To lock the prisoner into his cell. The majority of the blood was poured slowly into a small glass vial and stored in a silver tabletop cabinet.

Handling the razor-thin dropper with infinite reverence, Artist 3 released one pinprick of Leppe’s blood into the ground pigment before working it into a paste with a bit of water, then adding the egg white and a drop of oil. Lead-tin yellow for the shading. Conchineal from the insect for the cheek. Ochre and lead white for the body. Carbon black to outline. Carbon black to hold. Carbon black to seal Gerard Leppe’s body and soul into the pages of the princess’s prayer book to save her the indignity of asking to touch the bleeding side.

Yesterday

Tooth and claw.

Ravenous snarl.

The separation of bone from sinew.

Choice cut and gaping hole.

Explosive seizure of all that was held.

Canvas: Lower Left Corner

1918

I met them shortly after we arrived over there. The mother and her two daughters, who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. I still don’t know what their names were. All three of them ran up to us as we came through town, when everyone was cheering and laughing like it was some kind of party. I met the two girls first when I almost tripped on them. I had to stop in my tracks and balance myself when they both ran right in front of me with huge grins on their faces and just stood still, holding hands. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, bon-jore!” I mustered in an awkward attempt to greet them.

You’d have thought they’d just figured out how to laugh, the way they hopped up and down in glee. They were still holding hands. That was when their mother came out and rested one hand on her girls’ touching shoulders, speaking to them in French with restrained laughter while maintaining maternal command. In her other hand she held a loaf of bread. With a smile that could have ended the war, she held it out to me.

“Oh, no––thanks, ma’am, but you hold on to that,” I stuttered out.

Without breaking her glowing demeanor, she nodded and poked the chest of my then spotless uniform with the bread. I took it and placed it in my kit bag.

“Mare-See, madam,” I continued to humiliate myself for the girls’ entertainment.

Sure enough, they roared with laughter again, more like yelling in rhythm. They were still holding hands. Their mother leaned down and said something in French as she nodded towards me and stood up, beaming.

“Au revoir, mon petite chou!” all three proclaimed.

In that moment I had a notion that the world might just heal. I might just make it back to my Lilly. Maybe we could be so blessed as to have a family of our own someday. Maybe we could be as happy as these folks, despite the hell they’ve been put through. All three started off away from our formation back to a little house just down the way. The mother looked back and waved. The girls were still holding hands.

The next couple days made me think twice about the world healing. We were shelled hard by the Boche, hiding in holes like animals, waiting. Waiting. Waiting. It’s the waiting nobody really understands. They think they do, but they don’t. It’s the waiting that tears you apart slowly, ‘til there’s nothing left. The shelling subsided eventually, and I had the notion that I’d head back towards the village we passed. I wanted to see them again. I’d been asking around and learned a couple words in French. I figured the girls would get a laugh out of it. I wanted to bring them some coffee I’d set aside.

I made my way down the road back towards the little house. I slowed down when I saw smoke up ahead. I saw nurses running back and forth. That was when the shakes started. At first, I tried to convince myself I had gone the wrong way, though I knew I hadn’t. The little house was blown wide open. A shell crater where the door once was. I walked just about as slow as a man can walk as all sound was sucked from the air around me and I forgot how to breathe. My God, it must have taken me a year to walk past that crater. I closed my eyes as I got to the house. I prayed hard.

Maybe they were out. Surely, they were out. Any moment now, all three of them are going to run up behind me.

Sometimes, God says no. I’d give just about anything to have never opened my eyes in that moment. I stood there for damn near ten years. The world wasn’t healing. The mother was not smiling. The girls were no longer holding hands.

2

1959

Nessa will never leave the city. Her place is here: a French township in the Jura mountains with her husband. He says she’s nothing special without him; not capable of holding down a shop job, certainly will never be a mother, and it’s unlikely any other man would have her. It’s best she stay in the city where she’ll be treasured and watched over. He can’t bear to think of anything happening to her. Her husband repeats this often. Which might account for why my jaw is clenched to permanent hurt.

Nessa likes to look at the Jura mountains. Her husband had a balcony built for her to stand on and look at Switzerland, but he’ll never take her there. He’s made that clear. She may never go beyond the old city gates. If she does, there will be consequences so severe he cannot bring himself to explain further. She must trust him on that. She must be content with what she is brought.

Her husband is an artist as his father before him, in the tertiary employ of a family of patrons second in glory only to the Medicis themselves. Power, beauty, influence, and just enough mysticism to be both amusing and terrifying. With absinth now out of favor, art’s become the family’s obsession again and they keep an artist in their employ as they had previously for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, in the interim, that creative family line has, how shall we say, declined.

Being inducted into the Numbered Guild requires specialized skill, specific talent, and unusual focus. The Guild are not just painters, they’re captors for hire. Not hunters—their prey are brought to them in chains or on silver platters. The art is in the restraint. The manor of sentencing. The delicate balance between spiritual realm and corporeal body. They are not gods. They are not judges.

Nessa’s husband’s father had been inducted after a long absence in the line. The space between had been filled with drink, violence, darker arts, wealth, and fear. Nessa’s husband is a second rate talent but of top of the line heritage. He is aware. He takes commissions from his patrons, having been denied induction into the Guild for years in favor of a distant cousin.

But then, in filling in the background of one otherwise mediocre wedding gift, he fell in love with the woman he sketched and painted near the Norway spruce, behind the fence post. She was an afterthought. A shape that filled the space. But somehow she was the finest thing he had ever created and he’d never repeat such success. Which I’d cheerfully tell him every hour of every day if I could.

After a considerable amount of whining and begging, he made a deal with his patron. His patron would bring Nessa to life, but she could never leave the city, and he, in turn, would continue his father’s, Artist 17’s, work for the rest of his life. He agreed. Nessa climbed from the frame with a simple smile. He was inducted and is now Artist 18.

Before Nessa found her husband all cut up and dead that way near the zebra skin rug, she had planned to leave him again. Just for a little while, understand, like a holiday or a secret mission. Where money might be exchanged and services may or may not be rendered, and it’s best no one with knowledge of her real name might be present.

That sort of leave.

She isn’t a whore. It’s important that you not think that.

She had planned, back when her husband’s hands were attached to his wrists, to sell the zebra skin to a man of considerable stature. That’s what she does: steal skins or kill and skin animals, adding her own embellishments such as threadwork or beads, paint or pen, to then resell—sometimes to the original owner. Folk are afraid to claim they’ve seen familiar tiger skins shot through with lapis silks, or a distinctive buck—all 12 points tipped with crystal. Nessa is the best for making the elite feel brilliant and risky. When her husband found out she’s more than a childlike golem and finds true joy in creating, he humored her. When he realized she’s quite good, he encouraged her and does her the favor of keeping her money protected in his bank account. One without her name on it.

As her husband watches her more closely I begin helping her in her work. Fetching. Carrying. She grows weary of hiding her talent. She believes the mountain paths lead to greater knowledge. New inspiration. She won’t let me go beyond the boundary for her, though I bring her small gifts from my visits to the edge just the same. I don’t understand what she finds so delicious about such small ordinary things, but as she craves treats I crave her pleasure.

In Pontarlier France, it was both easier and more difficult during the war. The black market thrived; the new buyer base shrank. It’s now difficult to predict demand. Art is subjective.

The zebra skin now has a red splattered right side. She’s still considering how to spin that. She keeps her husband’s hand in her pocket, to hold when she feels afraid. Romantic? Horrifiying? Who’s to say? Love is subjective too.

Sat on the top step of the porch lining the cabin my grandfather built, I watch the sunrise for the last time over Jones Mountain. Well, not the sun so much as the light. Remember, Tess, how the sun shows its face late in the holler, having to climb all the way up that mountain? I’ve scaled those rocks only once myself, if you recall. I admire the sun all the more for its perseverance.

Jackdaws, cardinals, and those buzzy little Cerulean Warblers you used to love, call through the woods below the small rise the basin sets on. Mist floats by slowly like a lost bride. I’m trying not to move. This is the last morning I’ll ever sit here, and holding the bit of paper between two fingers I’m considering letting the breeze take it. A mourning dove coos agreement. My thumb twitches.

Five hundred dollars, Tess.

The fence around the spring house needs repairing. My throat hurts with the sure knowledge that it never will be. The reinforcement around the hog pen, the small empty stable, the hatchet stuck in the woodpile, Mama’s wash line bouncing in the wind, tethered to a new pole already wound with a stray bean stalk. I should leave a marker, a set of words, some sort of farewell to the place Grandpap conjured out of the wilderness and ambition. Shouldn’t I, Tess?

Folding the check over itself like a tiny book of spells, I stuff it in my pocket half hoping it falls out. Pulling myself up by the porch post the way every Inskeep man ever has, I’ll lean my body against it one last time. I still don’t measure up to Pa. There he is, his line just above mine, the tallest of our kin.

I won’t go back inside, Tess. Your dress is in the cedar chest.

My pack sets in a crumpled heap, dangling tin pot, skillet, and cup clinking and clanking as the autumn wind pulls them. I took a can of beans, the last jar of preserves, and the whole pound of dried pork. The last of everything. Animals were sold last week. Even Whiskey. I aim to buy me an automobile and learn to drive. I rock the hatchet out from the stump and slide it in the case on my belt. Remember how you hated the hatchet? Remember how afeared you were of ghosts?

I’m leaving the holler. I can’t believe it my own self.

Five hundred dollars, Tess.

As I look around me, I reckon I’m in a cemetery of my own making. Aren’t I burying the place alive? Am I executing our home for 500.00 or 30 pieces of silver? I feel haunted by the bones of a cabin I haven’t even left yet. You understand, don’t you? You and your songs and stories about the dead. My own future seems like a story now. Something that only just might come to pass.

I tell myself I’m still a young man, though I feel old as Jones Mountain.

It’s only me left now, Tess.

Mama wasn’t the only one taken. The flood then a winter harder than a whore’s heart, and folks come down so poorly even the granny women were set to rest. Would you believe the Baldwins took the payout and left for Sperryville two months back? I am disappointed. Holding out isn’t so bad if you’re not alone.

And you were wrong, Tess. I’m still young.

Never had to think much of it before, Grandpap being a double grandfather, and not the only one in these parts. The holler was always filled to stinking with kids and partners to grow up with and choose from. But you know that.

Don’t look at me now, Tess. I need to say goodbye.

I’m through the rockiest of it. The old wagon road shows up, deep trenches still running through the ground, half filled with mud from the last rain. But I know they’ll catch an ankle and not let go easy. I took Mama’s wash line. It’s coiled up in my pocket. With the check from the government. That tiny fortune fits right in the loop of line. Like a little noose. I like the thought. Whatever their plans for this land of ours, I hope it comes with no end of trouble. I hope they break their backs and sweat their soul to into the soil where the roots take hold stronger. I hope Jones Mountain dumps snow over their roads and the trees hold back their shade in August. I hope they build their own cemeteries.

I hope no one revisits them.

God forgive me, Tess, I hope they suffer too.

Like Mama.

Like you.

This five hundred dollars, Tess. This money’s my second chance. It has to be.

~

I’m stopping here at the creek. The thirst sneaks up on me like a spirit. One minute I plan for another mile’s rest. The next I’m dropping lower than a snake belly to fill my tin cup. I can’t see the town yet. Can’t hear anything beyond the splash of the creek over rocks, the soft hush as it pours over the mossy tops, and the gurgle of switches south. Slap up against a hard place and a change in direction does come. Rebellion’s got no power against truth. Against the right.

But you know that, Tess.

Sitting here, I’m minded of that song you used to sing. Nights on the porch. Purple skies and drying rosemary. Mint growing along the windowsill. Your voice so pure, clear as a little pale bell. Even singing stories of lost girls and violent ends, you were my life’s honeycomb. Always another hidden depth to taste. I’ll think of you with every bee that hums. I’ll welcome every sting.

I owe you that.

Even after what you did.

My rest is over and my pack feels heavier. The ground along the creek is soft and a coolness freshens my step. I imagine my future will be difficult, but Grandpap hewn our life out of rock and trouble so I reckon I can manage something as comely out of brick and convenience. The town’s grown up a lot since we saw it together. Since that last time you looked at me with love.

I think of the house I’ll build. The car I’ll learn to drive. The work I’ll somehow get. All the while that little noose in my pocket reminds me of that little bit of paper, that tiny page of my story I don’t like. Pa always said regret is a poison best swallowed fast and passed quicker. Wrap it up in sweetness to cover the taste. Mama was one for silver linings, so the way I see it, they were the perfect couple. Five hundred dollars should set me up fine; I’ll carve out a life they never saw coming. Thirty pieces of silver thrown back at them ten-fold.

I’m tired again, and hungry, so I lay down my pack beside the creek. And stars above! Is this a honey bee? Are you coming back to me at last, Tess? Oh come on here, back to my hands. I knew you had regrets of your own! Of course you do. And I do forgive you, sure as morning. Let these be the hands bid you farewell and not those laid hands on the dress in the cedar chest.

Look, our reflection in the water. You on a bit of silk weed. Me on the bank.

But who rises behind us?

This girl.

This lifting arm.

This axe.

Tess—

There was no ignorance. No neglect. I speak of waste. Of wild spending. Twelve months of abundance poured into my lap and a prodigal deluge.

Did I count the laughter? Was the brilliant sprint toward sunlight documented? Could I point to the moment we built a tower on the coast of a steel gray sea?

Yes.

I am in the photographs. Some of them. From behind the lens I froze each mundane eyelash even as I dreaded the evening menu, the costume change, the permission slips. I was tired. It was cold.

There were barley fields. I don’t have to remember; they grow in my mind. Wherever I go the turn just before is a paved road that turns to gravel, a giant pot hole, and a leaning fence. Blackberry hedges line my brain as I map the day.

A horse. A house lit with electric candles. A promise to make Ramen after we get home.

Was there crying? Did I have a drinking problem? Would I have told the truth if asked?

Yes.

Everywhere I went I saw God’s hand. Everywhere I went I wondered how to force it. At every turn I saw the hedge leading me back. A sky heavy with held rain. In every village a tree so beautiful it broke my heart. I was sad. It was inspiring.

There were woods. My heart broke a thousand times. On the one-thousand-first time the pieces I’d planted with each step grew so quickly my ankles rooted. For ten minutes I was neither woman nor bird but ensnared by my own grief. For ten minutes I listened. I put what I’d heard in my pocket, like my son collecting small stones in his penguin backpack.

Had there been joy? Was the world choking with illness? Did my children love me?

Yes.

Following the hedge brought me back safely every time. Every time I lifted the iron latch to the kitchen I thought of a book. For every single time I was saved there is a star in the sky. I was selfish. It was embarrassing.

Did I keep a record of my rescue? Shall I put from my mind the moments I set my own trap? Will I tell myself stories of my own magnitude and meaning among the trees?

No.

Smallness is a problem.

Yes.

Smallness is costly.

Yes.

Smallness is to be collected. Saved up. Banked. A dragon with her hoard. A child with his penguin backpack.

One day, in a place she didn’t want to be, she received a message from a stranger. The woman replied.

They found they were both made of glass. Being made of glass required caution. Being seen through was a full-time job.

“I have no memory of how I began,” said the stranger. “I’m a strong shield but I’ve been cut so many times, you see. My panes are no longer smooth. Pieces have chipped off. My edges are sharp and, sometimes, I’m the one who cuts.”

“I was shiny once,” said the woman. “I was part of a whole. When I broke, I fell into the sea. I’ve been lost in the deep, scratched and buffeted. I’ve been pulled, churned, and crushed by great depths. I obscure everything.”

The glass friends were silent. They remembered heaviness. They recalled pressure. They were sad—well, confused really.

“I don’t think I can hold back the rain anymore.”

“What am I?”

They looked at each other—well, saw each other really— wondering how to proceed. It was odd to be seen—well, discovered really. It was odd to find treasure on an accidental quest.

She scissored her feet over the edge of the bed. The springs made a devilishly repetitive sound. She kicked off her saddle shoes, shearing them off her heels with her toes. Devilishly repetitive sounds reminded her of Beau. A coward, by the way.

She drew up, slid her legs under her skirt, and extended to end of the bed, arms outstretched, rear end in the air. Like a cat in the sunny spot. Like a cheetah just before shooting through the dust. The home economics book clattered to the floorboards, cracking its spine and splaying disgracefully. She fished the book to her crinolined lap.

In making introductions, there are a few simple rules to remember. Men and boys are introduced to women and girls. Young people are introduced to older people of the same sex. For example, you present Cathy to your mother and present your father to Cathy. Yes, this is indeed confusing as shit and nobody in real life pays attention to it. At least, nobody in your hillbilly life…

Minnie amended as she read to prevent pulling out her near platinum corkscrewed hair. She wore the right gloves. She had the right skirts. She knew the words. Knew the motions. Knew the way to the resplendent dining room where the script would work. But the audience and she were already acquainted, and Beau would never invite her for dinner.

A table laid with fresh linen, with china and silver placed in an orderly way, and perhaps with a centerpiece of bright flowers produces a cheerful effect and helps those who eat at it feel happy. A centerpiece of drab plant life will crush the souls of all who view it and will most certainly damn the hostess to the darkest pits of hell. Table manners tend to match the table. The entire meal is made enjoyable and the food tastes better when the table is attractive, the company agreeable, and the conversation friendly and interesting. If you serve food upon a table covered in day old linen, with plain crockery and Bakelite abominations you call cutlery, well, Cathy, you might as well pour a bucket of blood over your guests upon their arrival and dance naked in the moonlight over a severed chicken head because that’s the kind of thing savages do.

Mama said study. Get good grades. Stay out of the holler. Give them no more reasons to whisper.

Minnie’d never go to college. She knew that. Once she got off this mountain, once nobody had their whole life to guess if one of her real parents wasn’t white, once she could truly introduce herself, she’d find the right audience.

To spread butter on bread, break off a small piece of the bread and butter it with your knife; do not butter the entire slice of bread unless you intend on plunging that self-same knife into your bastard classless heart.

The impulse to plunge a knife into something was real. A pillow had done fine in the past. Something soft and comforting was easy to cut. Something that promised cushion and rest but then turned out to be stuffed with straw— loud, old fashioned, insufficient.

She fell back against the mattress, legs still criss-crossed, holding the book in her lap. She felt the pull at her knees and vaguely wondered if she could have been a gymnast. Flexible seemed a good thing to be. A thing less likely to get cut.

Times I was ill, false or not, Daddy brought out the communion box. Gleaming walnut. Glowing brass handle. A treasure of small compartments. Even liars, especially those, got a portion.

No need for body or blood most times. But the oil-soaked cotton ball. The soft-pressed thumb on my blessed head, tracing the ghost mark. Daddy’s smile. Trust. Would keep me safe. Would make me better.

Piled high atop the list of sorting, packing, storing, shipping, and hunting sat a bouquet of clenched fists, grit teeth, spilled eyes, and a vicious indwelling. Again.

Island of her young adventures and where her face found lines. Returned, like a book, she was more ancient than the ruins on the roadside. Sent back, like bad wine, she spit on passersby.

Skin, borrowed hair, second hand oxygen— all the coverings and trappings converged. What looked like exile was actually introduction. In the mirror, punishment. A test. A failure. In the reverse, a handshake. A goodbye. A hello.

I was the first. I know what it is to be heavy with holding.

You were the first. My small self now tall. Eyes like a Greek sea, a blinding terraced cliff of homes.

I send you out into open water on a paper boat. Lemons. Storms. I don’t know what comes next.

You hum to yourself and boil water. Do I want some tea?

I was the first. I thought I knew what I wanted. In a strange land I chose warm clothes and clipped your fingernails while you slept. We, both of us, surprised easily.

You were the first. Forgiving and desperate as I failed and you cried. Or maybe that was me.

I want a parking place in the crowded lot. I want one close. I don’t want you to wonder if I’m here yet. I want a space with room on both sides. I want the perfect spot. I don’t want to be hidden. Or scratched. Or dented. Or missed.

I was the first. Those who came after me had a trail to follow. I snapped twigs. I disturbed undergrowth.

You are the first. You leave behind a space we’ll all notice. The wind whistles through it. The ocean is small within it. The ocean is in my eyes when I imagine you on your paper boat, the never ending blinding terrace far away.

I was the first. I filled my eyes with the coastline ahead. My step was steady, my weather was fair. Because I was first I knew nothing of empty spaces. Room on both sides did not concern me. I knew where to look. I knew my way back.

You are the first. You hum and boil water. You bring me tea I didn’t ask for but might die without.

I used to talk to you the way I talk to God, certain but invisible. My small self now tall, the current takes you but not me. Nothing I’ve ever made has reached such a distance. Nowhere I’ve ever landed required climbing. Nobody I’ve ever loved has brought me so high up the terraced cliff that I could see the spaces I left behind.

You are the first.