by Maya, Tara
The baby cries. I use this as an excuse to hang up. After I've changed the baby's diaper and started to nurse, I check my email again.
Delivery Status Notification (Failure).
Comments on Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
There’s something self-indulgent about writing about writing. Have you ever noticed how many protagonists of novels are writers, and how many protagonists of movies are actors? Wow, you really reached there, didn’t you Ms./Mr. Author/Screenwriter? I promised myself I would avoid that cliché.
As you can see, I broke that promise. It’s natural to write about writing because it’s natural to write about oneself, and if one is a writer…. Well, there you go. It happens. I hope this flash piece is not just about being a writer, or even mainly about that.
I never sought formal publication for this piece; it just appeared on my blog. I didn’t want to let it slip away into the blogoblivion of the archives, so I slipped it in here.
The Painted World:
Drawn to the Brink
A brink had escaped from across the twixting, and when the glamourers drew colors, Sajiana’s ribbon came up silver. With an extravagant sigh of resignation, she packed up her linen papers, her scribs and her knots, pretending to a reluctance to leave the stuffy halls of Mangcansten. Once loose upon the moor, with the grouse and the heather and the wind whip-a-man through her hair, she broke into a whistle. She trod no road, and needed none. Upon her back she carried her large, flat portfolio, her scribroll and a smaller rucksack of odds and ends. She pitied herself only because the brink had left a trail a first-year draftsprentice could have followed. In no time at all, she would have the creature’s picture in a knot. Once she disposed of it, duty would force her back to dreary Mangcansten.
However, she was in no danger of overtaking the brink that day. When dusk came, she waited through the twixting time, then found a likely spot upon the empty moor to camp for the night. She had a folder of prepared etchings, including many of little cottages. Sajiana had a fine eye for detail. Even these simple sketches included whimsies such as ivy curled over the stones in the fireplace and watering cans sitting upon windowsills planted with radishes. She placed one drawing in the center of a flat expanse of sward, and then set out her knots at a distance around it. Three knots could serve, at minimum, but because Sajiana hunted a brink, she set out four for safety. As she tugged tight the last knot, the glamour caught the piece of paper. Picture billowed into reality. Now a cozy cottage, with potted radishes in the windows and a roaring fire puttering smoke from the ivy-covered fireplace, stood, snug as you like, before her.
The key to a good etching was to fill in the view through the windows. If you hinted at what lay inside, that sufficed. No need to draw all the insides separately, as long as enough showed in the picture for the glamour to operate upon it. In the same spirit, if one drew a picture of a cabinet, one must always draw one drawer open just enough to show something inside. Otherwise, when one opened the door of one’s house, or the drawer of one’s cabinet, one was apt to find a blank white interior.
In the windows of the cottages that Sajiana sketched, one always caught a glimpse of a snuggly bed on one side and a table laden with food on the other. When she opened the blue door to the cottage, therefore, she found a teakettle just coming to boil, a plate of scones, a hardboiled egg and breaded veal cakes. She tucked in with a will. Nothing like a day of walking to whet an appetite! She banked the fire and crawled into the warm bed.
Dawn almost caught her by surprise. It had been that long since she’d been on the road. She leaped out of bed just as the twixting of daybreak dissolved the knots on the glamour. As usual, once the glamour vanished, no sign of the piece of paper remained. Bed, table, fireplace, cottage, all misted into the morning fog and left Sajiana shivering in her nightclothes on the desolate moor. Grumbling under her breath, she scurried to her rucksack – no glamour – and pulled on her trousers and jacket of wool felt – no glamour either. She shoved the nightdress into a crumpled lump in her sack and resumed her trek across the roadless moor.
Fourteen drawings later, she reached a town called Paddiglum. The brink had arrived here a few days ago, after taking a much more haphazard route that zigzagged across the moor. The brink would be hungry, and this one was too inexperienced – perhaps it was young – to know that it would do better to lurk out in the wilderness and waylay travelers than risk coming into a human town.
She could have drawn herself a dress of crimson silk, sewn with buckles and bells of gold and a tall moon shaped hat to match. However, Sajiana preferred the anonymity provided by her ragged, rugged, real travel clothes. She tromped through the town, whistling, past villagers dressed no better than she, ignoring and ignored. She had a string in one hand, a scrib and a slip of blank paper in the other. A close observer would have seen that the string did not dangle from her hand, but poked its head out this way and that, gently tugging at her fingers. These were the tugs that led her ever closer to the brink.
The string suddenly jerked her quite hard toward an alley along the cheesemonger’s street. Sajiana looked up and met the eyes of a startled young man. His hair tousled about his head all unruly. His eyes were huge in his face, haunted. His lips pressed together under hungry cheeks. Strange that in all this time since he had escaped from the twixting, he had not used his considerable powers to better maintain himself.
Some brinks tried to run. Some tried to fight. The outcome would be the same. This brink looked at her a long moment, hard. He walked away. It was as though he lacked either the humility or the sense to fear her.
His striking face would be his undoing; she could hardly forget a face like that. Sajiana sat down against a wall beside a cheese shop. In feathery, charcoal strokes of her scrib, she began to sketch the face she remembered. It took her only a few minutes to have a likeness. It took her longer to tie the complex knot around the portrait. With her knotted portrait, Sajiana stood and walked into the alley.
"Come to me," she said.
She heard him before she saw him. A scritching and scratching and scrapping sound: he fought each step of the way to answer her call. He could not resist the compulsion, however, and he finally dragged himself into view. His eyes no longer looked haunted. They blazed with hate.
"You would dare draw me? Do you know who I am?"
"Just another brink, as far as I’m concerned," Sajiana said.
Whatever answer he had been expecting, it had not been that. He stared at her, flummoxed. "Are you mad? What are you talking about? I’m no brink!"
His surprise surprised her. She had never met a brink who did not know it was a brink. Most boasted of their inhuman superiority.
"Did you honestly think you were human?" she asked, overcome with curiosity against her better judgment. The teachers at Mangcansten universally advised against entering into prolonged discussion with a brink.
"I am human," he said. "And the fact you cannot bind me proves it."
He wrenched himself free of the compulsion. This time he did run.
The charcoal portrait had become a smudged mess of meaningless lines. She rolled a choice curse around the inside of her mouth. Because he had not attacked anyone, stolen anything, or wrecked any havoc, she had assumed him to be weak. Instead, it appeared he had a stronger will than any brink she had previously encountered. Sajiana began to worry that a more experienced glamourer should have been assigned to this brink. She had a quick hand, but not the patience for the truly intricate work needed to bind an extremely powerful will. The brink was wrong if he thought that humans could not be bound by a portrait. That was what humans and brinks had in common. However, a strong will could turn a line drawing to mush. She would have to put more effort into it.
She blew air between her teeth. She untied and unrolled her scribroll. It contained an assortment of scribs and brushes. She chose one of the thin charcoal scribs. She peeled back a layer of the wax paper to reveal more nub. She began to draw the
brink again, this time his whole body. He wore a kora, a forward-curved sword that broadened at the tip. His cape-coat had once been elaborate but the clasps and bells had been torn off the indigo velvet. Beneath it, the blouse of white silk may once have been pristine. Most brinks were painted richly adorned. However, why had he let the garments wear down to near rags?
"Glamourer!" a cheery shout interrupted Sajiana’s concentration. Annoyance soured the smile she flashed to the man who had interrupted her with his salutation. She reminded herself that Mangcansten was surprisingly intolerant of punching locals in the face.
"Glamourer!" He was a portly man, balding, richly belled in silk, with a moon shaped hat that protruded like a horn from the center of his head. Gold clappers cupped his ears, and bangles jingled on his thick wrists. He was seated in an open veyance drawn by massive Tugger hounds. "What an honor to meet one of your mastery! What brings you here to our remote hamlet?"
"Our business need not worry you," she replied coolly. So that no one could see her drawing a forbidden human form – though if he knew she was a glamourer, he would know she had the right – Sajiana filed the paper and scrib back into her portfolio.
"But you must let us assist you. I am the town Honorary, Lord Master Yorch. Have you a place to stay? Oh, I know you glamourers have your own ways of providing shelter, but surely you will permit me the vanity of offering you the hospitality of my house."
Sajiana sighed and gave in to the inevitable. Perhaps it would be better to work on the portrait of the brink inside, on a flat surface, with good light. She climbed up beside Lord Master Yorch and allowed him to babble at her the rest of the trip to his large mansion. She would have to resume her hunt for the brink later.
Most of the houses in Paddiglum were lumped from stone, but Lord Master Yorch’s mansion was a warm amber jewel of carven woods. Soldiers in serviceable brown cape-coats and iron helmets stood watch inside the house. A lovely, yet listless maid showed Sajiana to a guest chamber.
Sajiana pleaded fatigue and hid in the guest chamber until supper. The sun set; she lit lamps. She drew and burned several drafts of the brink’s portrait. None were true enough to hold him, and there was no point in knotting him just to let him escape again. After a frustrating afternoon, she decided to allow herself to doodle to clear her mental palette before she tried again. She set aside the fine linen canvas she had been working and took out her sketchbook. She always liked to practice upon real rooms, and she especially liked to look at the insides of things because without those views, a picture would lead to a poor glamour. Much heavy oaken furniture adorned the guest chamber. Sajiana sketched the bed, then the casement window and the bronze grill across it, then a clever chest at the foot of the bed, and then a large dresser against the far wall. She opened one drawer…
…Inside it was quite blank. White.
Shocked, Sajiana stared at it a minute. Then she checked under the bed. White. Behind the curtains on either side of the window. White. Inside the chest in the corner. White….
Was it possible? How? The mansion had not vanished at sunset…
"Ah, yes, sorry, this room still has some rough spots," a mocking voice lamented.
Sajiana whirled to face the man in the doorway. Lord Master Yorch.
"I suppose it was only a matter of time before Mangcansten sent someone to investigate," he said. "But the scribblers of Mangcansten are not the only ones who know how to knot a portrait."
He lifted his hands, revealing a painting of a woman. Water colors, hasty and slapdash, they would be possible to escape, except that he had a true talent for capturing detail. He had caught the curve of her neck, the shape of her brow, the way strands of her hair fell across her face.
Sajiana cried out and ran toward him, but she knew even before she felt the searing jab of pain that she would not stop him before he finished the knot around the painting of her. She stumbled to her knees just in front of him. He laughed softly. He reached out and tipped her chin up, forcing her face to tilt to his scrutiny.
"You’re pretty enough, and a man tires of paper women. Perhaps I will keep you on my string a while before I end you, glamourer. Take off those rags."
She could feel the binding on her mind, chaining her to his will. Powerless in her rage, she obeyed him.
"Draw a gown for yourself," he said. "And join me for supper."
Though he left, the compulsion to obey him remained. She reminded herself that watercolors were not oils. She should be able to squirm free. However, it would take many weeks filled with long hours of concentration. And he would be most alert for any attempts tonight. So she did as she had been bid. Black silk. Gold bells. Scarlet hat.
The drawing and knotting took her only moments. However, she did not stop. She pulled out of her portfolio another sheet of paper, one of the best quality weave.
Once more, she began to etch the brink.
Perhaps danger honed her concentration. Perhaps the helpless hate that boiled in her helped her to catch the glint of that same emotion in the eye of the brink. The shape that formed under her charcoal nib was truer than any she had ever been able to draw. She tied on the knot, looping each strand with utmost care. When she had finished, she hid the package back in her portfolio.
She could feel Lord Master Yorch tugging at her will, demanding her presence downstairs.
"Come to me," she whispered to the empty room.
All through the farce of dinner, Sajiana sat stiffly by Lord Master Yorch’s side while he played the role of genial host. He had several guests, town magistrates and their wives, a few merchants, a guild master. None of them appeared aware that the glamourer who was the guest of honor had actually been imprisoned in the vilest way by her host. The oblivious laughter and meaningless chatter of the other guests made Yorch’s knowing smirks all the harder to bear.
She puzzled over the mystery of Yorch’s power. He had knotted a glamour, but tied it to what? Why did the mansion not disappear when it crossed the twixting times of dusk and dawn?
Sajiana saw no sign of the brink. He must have come to the room where she had commanded his presence, and, in her absence, willed his way free of the drawing. As she gave the matter deeper consideration, she felt relief. She didn’t know why she had drawn the brink. If Yorch had left her with her scribs and sketchbooks, it was because he knew that as long as he controlled her, he controlled her magic. The last thing she wanted to do was deliver a brink to him.
*
"Come with me," Lord Master Yorch said to Sajiana after the listless servants took away the dinner. She followed him up the main stairs, across the hall, and up a back stair that she had not noticed before, to the third floor.
"Take off your clothes," he said. He put a key to the heavy door at the top of the stair. "You won’t need them for what I have in mind."
Sajiana dropped off the gown. As it fell away, it turned back into a sheet of paper, with the drawing jumbled into uselessness.
Behind the door lay a painting studio.
One huge oil painting, canvas mounted on a wood frame, dominated the room. Sajiana recognized Yorch’s mansion. Years of detail had gone into every minute stroke of the painting. Each room could be scene through the large windows. People, servants and soldiers, could be seen in the rooms. Lord Master Yorch exchanged his cape-coat and the sword belted at his waist for a painter’s smock.
He pointed to a couch. "Recline."
Step by step, Sajiana’s feet forced her to the divan. She was reminded of the scritching walk of the brink when she had called him in the ally. She did not enjoy the irony of being on the other side of the knot.
"You painted people into the picture with the mansion," she said aloud. Her body contorted into a pose on the divan. "Your servants and soldiers do not work for you -- they are your slaves."
Yorch replied, untroubled, "As you will be."
He came to arrange her hair around her shoulders and the edge of the divan. He removed her arm from across her breast and ti
lted her chin so that she must look at him as he painted her.
He went to his large canvas, dipped his brush into a collection of jars on a platter, and began to paint Sajiana into the glamour of his mansion. Yorch painted with oils, and Sajiana could not deny his skill. She might have escaped the watercolor, in time. She knew she would never break free of this painting. The brink would have left Paddiglum by now, and when Mangcansten sent another glamourer after it, the glamourer would bypass Paddiglum altogether. Yorch, with his guilty conscience, had assumed that Mangcansten had detected his illegitimate use of magic. Sajiana knew better. As evil as it was, Yorch’s magic had a limited reach. She had not sensed it from her meanderings around Paddiglum.
"Now, now," chuckled Yorch. "Your tears won’t show in the painting, so it’s no use crying."
Under the compulsion, she had to take him literally. She could not longer even cry as the minutes crawled her closer to her enslavement.
Absorbed in his painting, Yorch did not hear the door to the studio open. Sajiana heard, but under an order to hold her pose, could not turn. She did not see who it was until the brink walked on soft feet into view.
His dark chestnut hair was still disheveled, his velvet cape-coat torn to expose a tattered white blouse and one muscled shoulder. He gripped his kora sword in his hand. The brink rested the wickedly heavy tip of his kora against Yorch’s neck.
"Stand and fight," the brink ordered in the steely voice of one accustomed to command.
Then, as if he were indeed the son of a noble house rather than a foul creature of magic, the young man stepped back and allowed Yorch to stagger to his feet and exchange his paintbrush for the sword he had earlier set aside.
Seconds into the duel, it was obvious that the brink mastered his sword as the greatest painters of Mangcansten mastered their art. Yorch sweated and puffed, trying to move his fat body out of the way more than to fight back. Yet a knowing smirk twisted Yorch’s lips. From the divan where she lay, silent and immobilized by Yorch’s orders, Sajiana saw the cause for his confidence. Yorch’s soldiers, enslaved by his will, stormed up the stair and burst into the room. Six men now pressed the brink. They hacked at him with fierce downward motions of their kora swords, but he dodged in and out, slashing and tearing with his own blade as he swept by them. They began to lose limbs. Here a hand. There a leg. It became clear that they might as easily have lost heads, except that the young warrior did not seem to want to take their lives. Terror crept into their faces, and Sajiana suspected they would have fled, but Yorch’s compulsion forced them to keep coming, even when blood gushed out from their wrists or knees.
