A flash of irritation went through Izzy. Though she doubted he’d done it on purpose, she didn’t like to be on the defensive. Not today.
“Why did you always play me along?” she asked.
She was surprised at how calm she felt. She’d barely slept the night before and all day long she’d been nervously rehearsing what she was going to say, how she was going to say it. But now that the moment had come, all her nervousness had fled. She felt only a melancholy resignation inside, a sense that something was ending, that she was bringing it to an end, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Because your knowing changes everything,” John said.
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t meet as equals anymore. Every time you look at me now, you’re going to be reminded of how you brought me across from the before. You feel responsible for me. You think that I can’t be who or what I want to be without affirmation from you.”
“That’s not true. I mean, I know I brought you across, but ...” She sighed. “No. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“And the funny thing is, that’s the way it is for everyone. You can decide to call yourself Janet, but if everybody you ever meet insists on calling you Izzy, then you’re going to be Izzy whether you want the name or not. It’s that way for every facet of our lives—from the way we look to the careers we choose for ourselves. We all depend on other people to confirm who we are and what we’re doing here. The only difference with you and me is that with us this sense of confirmation is more specific. You think I exist because you painted me into existence. I know that I was somewhere else, in some before, and that you merely called me over.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying you didn’t make me. You just brought me here. The way you could go to Australia and bring a native of that country into this one. There’s no difference. None at all.”
“Except that Australia’s on the map.”
John nodded. “While in the before, there is only story.”
“You said that before, this thing about stories. First you said you came from nothing, then you said it was just a different kind of story from the one we’re in now.”
John looked away, over the snowy common of the Silenus Gardens.
“I don’t remember the before,” he said finally. “I came here and I had a name in my head. You painted me as a Kickaha, so I know the Kickaha. I know their history and their customs. You painted me in an urban setting, so I know this city. Everything else I learned as our story unfolded.”
“What about Rushkin? You tried to warn me against him when we first met.
John shook his head. “No. When we first met on the library steps I just wanted to make a connection with you. I didn’t know what he was until later. I didn’t warn you about him until we met in the lane behind his studio.”
“So what is he?”
“A monster.”
“That’s what he calls you.”
An anguished look crossed John’s features. “He feeds on us, Izzy. I don’t know how, but it has something to do with the way he destroys the paintings that call us over.”
“But he didn’t destroy them,” Izzy said. “The paintings he destroyed were the copies he made, not mine.”
John shrugged. “Whatever.”
“I know my own work, John. He didn’t destroy them.”
“You thought the painting fragment I showed you was your own work, too.”
“I know. But I was wrong. I just got confused because he’s so good. Naturally if he’s going to copy one of my paintings, it’d be perfect.”
“So how do you know which he burned?”
“Do you still have those dreams you told me about?”
Izzy shook her head. “Not for a few months. Now I keep dreaming about someone looking for me.”
“For you, or your paintings?”
“Me, I think,” Izzy said; then she shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“And have you done any paintings like the one of the treeskin at Rushkin’s studio where he could copy them?”
“No, but what does that prove?”
“It’s not just that we have a connection to you,” John told her. “You have a connection to us as well.
When we die, you are aware of it. You see it happen, if only in your dreams. You used to dream about Rushkin destroying your paintings. Now you’re dreaming about him looking for them.”
“How can that even be possible?” Izzy asked.
“After bringing us over from the before,” John said mildly, “you’re still arguing about what’s possible?”
“But why would Rushkin do it? I know he’s got problems, a bad temper, but he’s not evil.”
“Why is it that you can’t picture him as evil? Because he creates such beautiful works of art?”
Could that really be the reason? Izzy thought. And was it also the reason that she let him mistreat her in ways she wouldn’t take from any other person? Had her values become so twisted around that she simply couldn’t perceive of Rushkin as a monster because of his talent?
“Here’s another experiment you can try,” John said. “Since he can’t seem to find the paintings you’ve done at the professor’s greenhouse, the next time you want to call one of us over, do the painting at his studio where he won’t have any trouble finding it. Leave it there for him to ‘copy.’ Then wait for the dreams to start again.”
“What an awful thing to say! I couldn’t do something like that.”
“Why not? Is it any worse than turning a blind eye to what he does to us? We’re real, Izzy. You might call us over, but once we’re here, we’re real. I’ll grant you we’re different. We don’t need to eat and we can’t dream. We don’t age. Physically, we don’t change at all from how we’re brought across.
But we’re still real.”
“Stop it!” Izzy cried. She shook her head and turned away from him. “You’re mixing me all up until I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“You mean you don’t know what you want to believe. You’ve no problem believing that you’re like some little god who can bring whatever she wants to life with a few daubs of paint and a canvas, but not that these creations might have a life of their own beyond your influence. And heaven help anyone who suggests that perhaps you should take responsibility for what you’re doing. That perhaps your precious Rushkin presents a danger to us—a danger that you could avert simply by accepting the truth and keeping us away from him.”
It was going all wrong, Izzy realized. She’d only come here tonight to try to get John to open up to her. She hadn’t been expecting a confrontation. She’d wanted to get closer to him, but instead they were being driven apart. When she looked at him now, she saw a stranger sitting beside her on the bench.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.
“I’m not trying to do anything except get you to face up to the responsibility of your actions.”
“You lied to me before when I asked you about the connection between my painting and yourself.
Why should I believe you now?”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you the whole—”
But Izzy didn’t let him finish.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she said.
She stood up from the bench, shivering from the cold that had lodged inside her—a cold that had nothing to do with the winter fields lying about them. She stuck her hands in her pockets to keep them from trembling.
“Izzy, you’re taking this all—”
“Please. Just let me go.” Her throat felt swollen and it was hard to get the words out. “Don’t ... just don’t come looking for me ... anymore ....”
Then she fled. Before he could see her tears. Before he could call after her. Before he could weave a new set of lies to replace the old ones that weren’t working anymore. Because even as she ran from him, she wanted to believe the lies. Wanted
to pretend he’d never said any of those horrible things to her.
Wanted to be with him and everything to be like it had been before.
God help her. She loved him and he wasn’t even real.
Behind her John rose from the bench. He took a few steps after her, but then hesitated. He didn’t follow after her. He stood watching her go until she was no more than a tiny figure, running far down the path, a dark, distant speck against the white snow.
“I never meant to fall in love with you,” he said softly.
But she was no longer even in sight.
VI
You did what?” Kathy said. “How could you break up with him? I thought you were so happy with him.”
Izzy turned away from the window and gave her a miserable look. The sky had clouded over again on her way home and now it had started to snow once more, big fat flakes drifting down. She wished it were raining. Rain would suit her mood far better.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “I just go so confused. And then he started lecturing me about my responsibility to those I brought over from this ‘before’ he keeps talking about ....”
“But you do have to be responsible towards them.”
“I know that. I just didn’t want to hear it right then. I wanted him to—I don’t know. Confide in me, I suppose. I wanted to understand, but not like that.”
“Then maybe you should have given him a copy of the script. How was he supposed to know?”
“You’re not helping, Kathy.”
“I’m sorry.” Kathy left the pillow where she was sitting and settled down beside Izzy. “It’s just all so weird. I can hardly believe any of it’s real.”
“You saw Paddyjack.”
“True. But John—he never seemed any different from the rest of us, you know? And he’s really got it in for Rushkin, doesn’t he?”
Izzy nodded. “The thing is ..... Izzy hesitated. She’d never told Kathy about the violence in Rushkin’s personality. She’d never told anyone. She knew the flaw in Rushkin, but she still couldn’t help but feel that the violence was also somehow her own fault. That if she could only be better, he wouldn’t get so mad at her.
“You just don’t see it,” Kathy finished for her.
“I guess. But John never lies.”
“Not that you know of.”
It was like talking to John about Rushkin, Izzy thought. That same confusion of, who do you believe?
“Everyone has secret landscapes inside them,” Kathy said. “There’s no way to tell how deep they go.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s just another way of saying ‘still waters run deep.’ All we know about each other is that face we present to the world. Inside we could be anything. Anybody.”
“So who’s the real villain?” Izzy wanted to know. “John or Rushkin?”
“Lover or mentor.”
“Or maybe it’s me. Since I’m the one bringing people across from this otherworld. Maybe I’m the villain.”
“Never a villain,” Kathy assured her. “But maybe there is no otherworldat least not in the sense that either of them are telling you. Maybe you’re bringing them up out of yourself.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Maybe they come from those secret landscapes,” Kathy said. “The place where we go when we dream. The place where the muses whisper to us and we bring back the inspiration for our art. Accepting magic as a given, if you can bring back inspiration, then why not an actual manifestation of that inspiration?”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“And painting a nonexistent person’s portrait and so making them real does?”
“I don’t know,” Izzy said. “I don’t even think I care. I just wish I could turn back time to before ...
before this evening ever happened.”
As Izzy’s eyes filled with tears, Kathy put an arm around her. Izzy burrowed her face in the crook of Kathy’s shoulder and began to cry. When she finally sat up again, Kathy took a Kleenex tissue from out of her sleeve and passed it over. Izzy blew her nose.
“The worst thing is,” she managed after a while, “I’ve got no way to get hold of him so I can’t even tell him I was wrong, or that I’m sorry or anything.”
“If he loves you, he’ll be back.”
Izzy shook her head. “You don’t understand. I called him a liar. He told me once that his word was the only currency he had that was of any worth. He’s got too much pride to come back to me. Don’t you see? I’m never going to see him again. I told him not to ever see me again.”
When she started to cry again, Kathy drew her back into her arms.
“Oh, ma belle Izzy,” she said, the words getting lost in Izzy’s hair. “What are we going to do for you?”
This time when she stopped crying, Izzy let her roommate lead her into her bedroom.
“Do you want me to keep you company for a while?” Kathy asked.
Izzy shook her head. “Could you ... could you take the painting out of my closet and lean it up against the wall where I can see it?”
Kathy looked in the closet and found The Spirit Is Strong standing in among a stack of papers and hardwood panels.
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” she asked as she pulled it out. “It’s all I’ve got left of him.”
After propping the painting up against the wall, Kathy stood there for a long moment before kneeling down beside Izzy’s mattress. She smoothed the hair back from Izzy’s brow and gave the exposed skin a kiss.
“Call me if you need anything,” she said.
Izzy nodded. She waited until Kathy had left the room; then she pressed her face into her pillow and started to cry once more. It took her a long time to fall asleep; when she did, she found no comfort in dream.
It began innocuously enough. She was outside, walking through the falling snow, the whole city muffled in silence. Even when a cab passed her on the street, the sound of its motor was muted. No one else seemed to be abroad, a rare occurrence in this part of town. Even when the deep frosts settled onto the city, there were always one or two hardy souls to be found out and about on Waterhouse Street.
But tonight she had it to herself. She walked down Waterhouse to Lee Street. Perry’s Diner was closed, the windows dark. Only the neon sign was lit above the front door. When she looked up and down Lee, there were no cars, no pedestrians. The clubs, the restaurants and stores were all closed. The snow continued to fall, thick and fast. Underfoot it was gathering into lazy drifts that spun across the width of the street, the snow pushed and whirled in small dervishing twisters by a rising wind.
She didn’t know why she turned into the alleyway just past the diner. Her feet seemed to know where they wanted to go and she was content to follow, but her complacency died in her chest when she entered the mouth of the alley and looked down its length. There, on the landing of a fire escape that seemed to have been taken directly from her painting, was the winged cat. But it wasn’t the presence of the cat that woke the sudden terror in her. At the bottom of the fire escape, half-hidden by the swirling snow, a squat hooded figure holding a cross-bow was creeping up its metal steps. The cat watched the figure rise up toward it, the tip of its tail flicking nervously with a rattling sound.
“No!” Izzy cried.
But she was too late. Before the word left her throat, the crossbow had been fired. Its shaft plunged into the cat’s chest just as it was spreading its wings in flight. The impact of the blow drove it back against the side of the fire escape. Izzy stared in horror. The crossbow shaft protruded from the tiny creature’s chest—a stiff, unnatural additional limb. There was no blood. Just the limp form of the cat, sprawled in the snow. A living, breathing piece of magic reduced to dead flesh. And the figure, head turning now toward Izzy, features hidden under the shadow of its hood.
Izzy fled. She ran down Lee Street, stumbling through the snow, until she collapsed in the doorway of a grocer’s. There she presse
d her face against the cold glass of the display window, her eyes open wide, because if she closed them, the winged cat’s death would play out again in her mind’s eye. She tried to think of something else, but that only brought John back to mind. John. The wild skeltering of her thoughts slowed down as something occurred to her. She remembered something he’d said to her earlier in the evening and heard his voice repeating it now as clearly as if he were standing right beside her instead of only in her memory.
Do you still have those dreams you told me about?
Izzy straightened up from the window. She looked out at Lee Street through the falling snow.
Dreams. This was just a dream. An awful, horrible dream, but that was all. The winged cat wasn’t dead because the painting was safe in the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio where no one could harm it. No one even knew it existed, except for Kathy, and she’d only learned about it tonight.
Standing up, Izzy made her way back out onto the sidewalk. There was no real danger to anyone she’d brought across from John’s before. This was only happening because John had woken the fear of it in her, not because she was dreaming her creations’ actual deaths. It was all “what if”—her mind playing out her fears while she was safely asleep in her bed and the paintings were hidden away, three of them in the greenhouse, John’s in her bedroom.
She started back toward the alleyway. It was harder going because the wind was against her and the snow on the pavement seemed to have risen another foot since she’d fled down it what seemed like only moments before. Her earlier footprints were already filled, the drifts stretching smooth and unmarred.
When she reached the alley and looked down its length to the fire escape, there was no sign of either the winged cat’s corpse or the strange little hooded man with the crossbow.
Turning, she made her way past the diner and started back up Waterhouse Street once more. Just a dream, she told herself as the wind got in under her coat. Her feet felt like blocks of ice in her boots, her cheeks bright red with the cold. But weren’t you supposed to wake up from a dream, once you knew you were dreaming?
She had to laugh at herself. Yeah, right. It wasn’t as though there were rules to dreaming. Dreams were the place where anything could happen. You could play out your fears, or live out a fantasy, but none of it was real. And it all happened at its own pace. It wasn’t as though you could control what you dreamed. She’d heard of people who could, but she’d always put that down to their simply having a good imagination. They weren’t really controlling their dreams—they’d simply convinced themselves that daydreams were real dreams.
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