“How … how much do you know?” she asked.
She spoke with the same empty voice she had earlier. Alan glanced at Marisa, but Marisa only shrugged as if to say, play it however you think is best.
Alan sighed. It was probably the wrong thing to do, considering how Isabelle was feeling at the moment, but he knew the time had come to put aside all the bullshit. “I think we’ve pretty well figured it all out except for a couple of things,” he said.
“Even the numena?”
Alan glanced at Cosette. “Maybe especially the numena.”
Isabelle let the silence hang between them for a moment. Alan shifted from one foot to another, but before he could speak, Isabelle asked, “So what do you need to know?”
“Why did you keep Kathy’s letter from me?” Alan asked. “Why did you pretend that Paddyjack had burned in the fire? And why did you turn your back on me at Kathy’s funeral?”
He wasn’t trying to rekindle old arguments or make her feel bad. He asked because he had to understand. Before they could go on from here, before he could be of any help, he had to have something more than old ghosts and memories to work with.
There was a solution to their current situation, and he was sure they could find it. But the trouble was, he also knew it was tangled up somewhere in the middle of all the lies and evasions that had grown up between them over the years. Not just since Kathy’s death, but from before that. It dated back to the fire on Wren Island when all of her artwork had supposedly gone up in flames along with the farmhouse.
Isabelle turned to look at him, but her gaze could only hold his for a moment. It shifted to the worktable, where she picked up a yellow-handled utility knife with a retractable blade from in among the brushes and tubes of paint. Turning it over and over in her hands, she walked over to the nearest wall.
With her back to the wall, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor, legs drawn up to her chest. She put the knife down on the floor beside her and hugged her knees.
“I … I’ve got a problem with negative situations,” she said.
She still wouldn’t look at him. Her voice was so soft that he had to walk over to where she was and sit down across from her. Marisa followed suit with Cosette in tow, settling down beside Alan. Isabelle took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“When something … bad … happens,” she went on, “I …” She broke off again, but this time she looked at Alan. “Remember how Kathy used to say that all we had to do was reinvent the world when we didn’t like it the way it was? If we believed it was different, then it would become different?”
Alan nodded.
“You and I, we always argued with her about that. We’d try to tell her that the world was a far more complicated place and just because one person decided to see things differently, it didn’t mean that things would actually change.”
“I remember,” Alan said. “And then she’d say, if it changed for you, then that was enough.”
“Except I could never do it – at least that’s what I’d say – but I learned the trick too well, and the irony is that Kathy couldn’t do it at all.”
“You’re losing me.”
“I found her journal. She didn’t lead a very happy life, Alan. She couldn’t reinvent the world at all. But I did. I just didn’t know I was doing it. Something bad would happen to me and I’d simply shift the facts around until it was something I could deal with. It’s like when I’ve talked about my parents in interviews, I’ve always gone on about how supportive they were, how they were so proud of me, right from the first.”
Alan remembered the first time he’d read that in an issue of American Artist and how he’d thought she was saying that just so that she wouldn’t hurt her mother’s feelings. Because he’d known the truth.
“It was such bullshit,” Isabelle said, “but I wanted to believe it. I didn’t want to remember how I was a disappointment to my father, from the time I wasn’t born a boy, right up until the day he died. I never did one right thing in my life, so far as he was concerned, and he was always ready to tell me about it. And my mother wouldn’t say a thing. She’d just keep on doing her chores, as though it was normal for a parent to batter down their child’s self-esteem the way he did.”
She picked up the utility knife and began to play with it again, rolling it back and forth on her palm.
“I got tired of being the person who came out of that environment,” she said, “so somewhere along the line I reinvented how it happened. And you know, Kathy was right. Once you do it, once you really believe it, the world is different. All of a sudden you have that much less baggage to drag around with you.
“So at Kathy’s funeral –”
“I really believed that she’d died in the hospital of cancer. I … I convinced myself that that was the truth because I couldn’t live with what had really happened. Kathy just couldn’t have killed herself. Not the Kathy I knew.”
“It was a shock to everybody,” Alan said.
“Only because we didn’t know her at all. If she’d shared with us what she wrote in her journal, we’d have known.” She gave Alan a sharp look. “Do you know why she killed herself?”
He shook his head. That question was one of the ghosts haunting him. He’d wrestled with it for years and still couldn’t understand.
“She wanted amnesia,” Isabelle said. “She didn’t want to have to carry around the baggage any longer and killing herself was the only way she could see to accomplish that. I remember she told me that the reason she believed we had to reinvent the world for ourselves was that if we didn’t change the world to suit us, then it would change us to suit it, and she couldn’t bear to be who she thought the world would change her into.”
“I don’t understand,” Marisa said. “Even though she came from such a terrible background, she rose above it. She’s helped so many kids through the Foundation and touched so many others through her writing. If there’s anyone who left the world a better place than it was when she came into it, it was her.”
Isabelle nodded. “But she was never happy. Her writing and the kids at the Foundation were all she had and I guess one day she realized it wasn’t enough. She gave of herself, she gave until there was nothing left for herself. If you stop letting water into the well, but you keep drawing from it, eventually it’s going to run dry.”
“Jesus,” Alan said softly.
“It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?” Isabelle said. “And there we were, her best friends in all the world, and we didn’t even see it happening.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Alan asked.
“I only just found out this morning myself.”
She told them then about the letter arriving at her house, the locker key, the security guard who’d held on to the locker’s contents for her for all those years, the journal.
“I didn’t know about Paddyjack and John,” she finished. “Kathy rescued Paddyjack’s painting from the fire, but she kept it instead of giving it back to me. The painting was just sitting there waiting for me with Kathy’s journal. I hadn’t known that John’s painting survived …” Her eyes welled up with tears again, but this time she kept them in check. “Jilly mentioned seeing –” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “– seeing John when I was asking her about a place to stay in the city, and then he came to see me at my new studio …”
“Why would Kathy not have told you about Paddyjack’s painting?” Alan wondered aloud.
Isabelle gave him an anguished look. “I think … I think she thought I might destroy it.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember the rumors that went around for a while – that I’d set the fire myself? Kathy didn’t believe them, but according to her journal, she wasn’t ready to entrust Paddyjack’s painting to that belief.”
“I have to ask,” Alan said. “Did you set the fire?”
“I … I don’t know.”
Her reply surprised Alan. He’d been expec
ting a quick denial. He’d heard the rumors that had circulated back then, but he’d dismissed them immediately. With what he knew now about Isabelle’s art, about the numena, when he could see how dedicated she was to their safety and survival, he couldn’t imagine her having played any part in the destruction of so many.
“Rushkin spiked the punch that night,” Isabelle said. “With acid – remember?”
Alan nodded. “Yes, but –”
“I had a couple of glasses of it,” Isabelle said. “I started tripping seriously and then everything went black. I remember passing out in the farmyard, out by one of the old barns. When I came to in the morning, I was on the far side of the island, my clothes and hands and arms and face all covered in soot.”
Cosette was staring at Isabelle in horror.
“So what are you saying?” Alan asked. “That you did set the fire?”
Isabelle shook her head. “I’m saying I really don’t know. Rushkin told me, just before the acid kicked in, that he could make me destroy all the paintings. He put a box of matches in my hand. Then I was gone. I remember having what I thought was a dream. I remember seeing them burn, all those lovely, innocent creatures. I remember holding them in my arms as they died. But when I woke, I was a long way from the farmyard.”
She paused for a moment, then added, “Rushkin said I did it.”
“From all I’ve heard about him,” Marisa said, “I don’t think you should be taking his word as gospel.”
“He doesn’t lie about everything. He didn’t lie about the numena and how I could bring them across.”
“No, he only lies when it suits him. I know too many people like that.”
Alan nodded in agreement.
“But if she did do it …” Cosette said in a soft, strained voice.
Isabelle gave the wild girl an unhappy look. “It makes me as much of a monster as him. John was right. He told me from the first. I should never have brought anyone across. All I’ve done is cause them terrible pain.”
“My God,” Marisa said suddenly. “Those two creatures of Rushkin’s. They’re going back to the Foundation for the paintings.”
“And to hurt Rolanda,” Alan added. He looked at Cosette. “You’ve got to go back. You have to warn her and hide the paintings of you and your friend.”
But Cosette shook her head. “I won’t go.”
“What?”
Cosette stood up and folded her arms, looking down at the three of them. “You can’t make me do it.”
“But why won’t you go?” Marisa asked.
Cosette pointed a finger at Isabelle. “Because she’s going to free her red crow and I have to see it fly. I have to see, I have to know what she has that I don’t. Why she can dream and bring us across, but I can’t.”
Marisa and Alan looked at Isabelle in confusion.
“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Alan asked.
Isabelle nodded slowly. “I’ve thought and I’ve thought about it,” she said in that same strained flat voice she’d been using all along. “I can’t kill Rushkin in cold blood, and I don’t know if I have the strength to stand up to him anymore. He wants me to paint more numena for him to feed on.”
“Christ, if you’re worrying about paintings for Kathy’s collection,” Alan said, “don’t even think about it.”
“It’s not that. Rushkin said he’ll have his numena kill my friends if I don’t paint for him.”
“So we’ll have to figure out a way to –”
Isabelle cut him off. “No, there’s no more thinking to do. There’s only one way I can make sure that he can’t use me anymore.” She picked up the utility knife again, this time sliding the blade out. “I have to follow Kathy’s lead one last time.”
“Now, hold on there,” Alan said.
He started to reach for the knife to take it from her, but she swept it back and forth in front of her, making him back away.
“This is totally stupid,” he argued with her.
“No, this is the only option I’ve got left. I can’t kill another person in cold blood – not even a monster like Rushkin – but I can’t let this go on anymore.”
“You see?” Cosette said. “She has to do it and I have to watch.”
Marisa just looked at her. “How can you be so cold-blooded?”
“I don’t have any blood at all,” Cosette replied. “I don’t have a red crow beating its wings in my chest. When we die, we become nothing. We’re not the same as you. When you die, the red crow flies away and you’re supposed to live somewhere else. I want to follow it. I want it to show me how we can be real, too.”
“I told you before,” Isabelle said, “a long time ago. You are real.”
Cosette shook her head. “I’ve no dreams and no blood and because of that I can’t be like you. I can’t reach into the before and bring more of us across. So how can you say I’m real?”
“Because all it takes for you to be real is for me to give you a piece of myself,” Isabelle said. “John explained it to me.”
At the mention of John, Cosette seemed more willing to listen. “So when will you give me something?” she asked.
“I already have.”
“No,” Cosette said. “I don’t have anything of yours. I’d know if I did.”
“You have my love – that’s what I gave you when I brought you across.”
“But the dreams … and the red crow …”
Isabelle sighed. “I said you were real. That doesn’t make you the same as me.”
Cosette shook her head.
“Why would you even want to be like me?”
“Because of your magic. Because of the way you can make something out of nothing and then bring us across.” Cosette pointed to the unfinished canvas that stood on the easel. “I can feel her stirring already, you know. Somewhere in the before she’s leaving the stories and getting ready to come here.”
“You’ll have to learn your own magic,” Isabelle said. “And if you don’t go rescue your painting, you won’t survive long enough to do so.”
“But –”
“If you don’t care about yourself or your friend in the other painting,” Alan said, “then at least think of Rolanda.”
“She is nice,” Cosette said, wavering.
“Do you want her to be hurt, when you could have saved her?”
Cosette looked from Alan to Isabelle. Her gaze focused on the utility knife in Isabelle’s hand, the shining length of razor-sharp blade that protruded from one end. Cosette put a hand to her chest, palm flat between her small breasts, and a look of sadness came over her. Alan couldn’t tell if it was for Isabelle, or for herself; for the red crow that Isabelle would be loosing, or for the one she herself didn’t have. Then she blinked out of existence, leaving behind her only the sound of displaced air that rushed to fill the spot where she’d been standing.
Beside him, Marisa shivered and took his hand. Alan knew just how she was feeling. It was one thing to talk about magic being real, but entirely unsettling to experience it firsthand.
“I’m sorry you have to be here to see this,” Isabelle said.
Alan watched her stand up and back away from them.
“We won’t let you die,” he said. “If you cut yourself, I’ll stanch the wound.” He stood up himself. “Hell, I’ll make you cut me first.”
“Don’t make this harder than it is. It’s already taking all the courage I’ve got.”
“What would Kathy think?” Alan tried.
“I don’t care!” Isabelle cried. The flatness left her voice and Alan could hear the utter despair that was driving her. “We always thought she was so brave and true, that she was so strong. Well, we were wrong, weren’t we? Maybe we could have saved her, if we’d known, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not doing this for Kathy. I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because it’s the only way I can stop Rushkin from hurting my friends. I won’t make more numena for him, but I won’t let him take away anythin
g else I love.”
“And when he finds someone else to make numena for him?” Alan asked. “What changes?”
Isabelle shook her head. “Do you think he’d be risking what he is, if he could find someone else? His last student killed herself because she realized the truth: that’s the only way to get out of his clutches. I don’t think there is anybody else. And even if there is, I doubt he’s strong enough to live through the time it’d take to train them.”
“Unless he feeds on whatever numena of yours that are still around. Paddyjack and Cosette. The painting of Annie Nin that I’ve got. The reading woman at the Foundation.”
Isabelle nodded. “I guess it’ll have to be up to you to protect them,” she said, lifting the blade of the utility knife to her throat.
Marisa turned her face away, unable to look. At her side, Alan made an inarticulate sound and lunged forward. He knew he couldn’t possibly reach her in time, but he had to try.
IX
A few rooms away, Rushkin sat on his pallet, back against the wall, oblivious of the drama taking place in the makeshift studio down the hall. He still held the knife he’d used to destroy The Spirit Is Strong, gently thumbing its edge as he looked across the room. Finally consuming the obstinate John Sweetgrass had been far less satisfying than he’d imagined it would be. He was stronger now, much stronger than he’d been for weeks, but the gnawing hunger continued to eat away inside him, unappeasable.
He remembered when Bitterweed had first brought the painting to him, how angry he’d been at the numena’s stupidity until he’d felt the unmistakable aura of the otherworld rising up from under the paint Barbara Nichols had used to cover Isabelle’s original painting. He’d picked away at a corner of the canvas, working at the dried oil paint with his thumbnail. The garish top layer had come off in small flakes under his effort, revealing the richer tones of Isabelle’s oils hidden under it.
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