Paint by Magic (8 page)

I rubbed my fingers together. Sniffed them in disbelief. Felt my stomach drop.

Not blood—but
paint.

Then I knew that the help we needed couldn't come from an ambulance. Dr. Rhodes and all of modern medicine wouldn't be able to help my mom—I knew this in my gut. People did not leak paint. They just
didn't.
But here was Mom, frozen, groaning. And that book. And that paper on the floor.

I reached down and picked up the folded paper that Mom had tried to keep from me. The brittle page tingled in my hands as I unfolded it and stared down at a sketch of Mom sitting on thick grass, holding out her hand. Her smile was an invitation. I reached out a finger and touched the charcoal drawing, and a wave of cold rolled over me....

I went limp, felt myself falling, had to close my eyes against the strong, freezing wind that began to blow from, somewhere very close—and somewhere very far away.

He feeds upon her face by day and night...

—C
HRISTINA
R
OSSETTI,
"
In an Artist's Studio
"

Padua, Italy. June 1479

The Smiler sharpened his dagger with short, brisk rubs against the stone. He smiled as he worked, a smile most unpleasant. He was thinking of how he had used this dagger in the past, and how he might use it again. The sharpening stone was actually the foot of a statue of Zeus, chiseled off and stolen from an ancient temple during one of Lorenzo's trips to Greece.

There came a gentle
tap-tap
on the heavy wooden door to his chamber. The Smiler slid the dagger back into its sheath strapped onto his leg and hidden by his cloak. "
Avanti!
" he called in his smooth, deep voice. The door opened to reveal a young woman. She slept—when he allowed her to sleep—in the small chamber above this tower room.

"Ah, my dear," he said. "You are always punctual." He returned her curtsy with a low bow, then led her into the room. He watched her with his acute artist's eye, enjoying the look of awe that flitted each morning across her beautiful face as she entered his well-appointed studio.

The studio was in the first room of the east tower, at the edge of the property he had inherited from his father. The stone walls of his studio were covered with fine tapestries worked in colors deep and bold. There were bowls of fresh fruits and urns of flowers, gathered each day by his servant, atop the round table. Shelves of canvases and paints lined the walls, and comfortable benches topped with brocade cushions waited by the fireplace. On this warm morning no fire was needed, so the grate was swept clean and filled with fragrant rosemary to scent the room.

"Come," the Smiler said to his model. "We must work while the light is right. Resume your position. And please do remove your hat"—he deftly unpinned the young woman's feathered concoction and lifted it away from her rich, chestnut hair—"like so. Yes, you know there's no need for outdoor clothing. Yet you continue to dress each morning as if you might be going out. Get it into your head, my beloved! You will not be leaving this place until I give you permission. And we are not yet finished with our work."

She lowered her eyes, but not before he saw the flash of—it would not
dare
be anger, would it?—some quickly veiled emotion. She knew by now to keep silent before him.

He offered her a sip of ale, then arranged her as he wanted her. The pose was the same as it had been for months, but as much as she professed to want to please him, she still needed him to set the pose.

Francesca. His family had known hers forever. He'd wanted her, as a boy, had asked for her hand in marriage—but she'd refused him. Refused the Smiler! And married someone else, and had a son. For years Lorenzo had not seen her, though he sent his spies out to keep watch over her and report back. Last year her husband had died and Lorenzo rejoiced—though it was too late to marry her himself. Lorenzo's father had pushed him into marriage years earlier with a paltry young girl of his father's own choosing. No matter. He rarely saw the girl. He lived to paint, and what he wanted to paint was the bride who had been denied him!

The poor widowed Francesca needed money now for herself and her young son. When Lorenzo's servants arrived with word that he would pay well to paint her, she agreed. Leaving her baby behind in the care of a nursemaid (paid for by Lorenzo—an unfortunate expense, but he didn't want the brat around while he worked on the mother), Francesca traveled to Padua.

Now she was finally
his.
The Smiler exulted every morning as he set her into the pose.

"Now, you must sit very still as always," he instructed her, moving his easel to the correct position, close but not too close to his subject. "Head up—to the left, chin a bit higher, arms out—like so." He gave her the single rose to hold—a fresh one, of course, because they wilted so fast in the warm room. "Hold the flower in two fingers, up like this—perfect." He stood back and regarded her.

She was already drooping. "
Diàvolo!
" he hissed. She flinched. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. "You will keep your eyes on me! They must be fixed on me at all times, do you understand?" She had been growing more and more restless, talking to him about her baby or her dead husband. Sometimes Lorenzo had to shout at her. "You shall neither look away nor move at all.
Never
break your pose. Yes? Well then, are we ready to begin?"

She moistened her lips and murmured that she was trying, she always did try.... "Yes," she whispered, "I am ready."

"Very well, then," said Lorenzo da Padova, smiling his special smile. "We shall begin the day's work." He set about mixing his powdered pigments with fresh egg yolk, aware how uncomfortable she was in the pose, how it fatigued her muscles and dragged on her spirit as she struggled to hold it—and this entertained him. She was learning to discipline her mind and body to his will—and he enjoyed watching her. She wanted the money he promised when the portrait was finished, but he wanted much more from her. He wanted her very soul.

She had been quite satisfactory during the first month he had worked on the painting—excellent, in fact, at first, but then growing more vexing with time. Some days she could not seem to sit still. More than once she had fallen asleep, then jerked awake, and in doing so, upset the stand that held his bowls of paints. When that happened he would chastise her, of course. It was easy enough for such a skilled artist as himself to ignore the bruises that marred her face when he worked. On canvas she still looked bright and fresh, as lovely as the first day she'd stepped into his studio.

Now the clear morning light slanted through the small panes of glass at the narrow windows. Lorenzo's dagger rested lightly against his leg, hidden from view. His model watched him steadily, her gaze frightened but never wavering.

"
Perfètto,
" the Smiler whispered. "Perfect. You are so lovely. And now—
freeze.
"

When the wind finally stopped, I found myself lying all curled up, weak and tattered, like a piece of newspaper blown across the playground. It felt like I was waking up from a deep sleep. I wanted to stretch but was too tired and too heavy to move a single muscle. All the energy had been sucked right out of me. I lay completely limp, with a sort of sick feeling in my stomach. I felt the fuzz of rug scratch my cheek.

Then I smelled smoke.

Cautiously I lifted my heavy head. My eyes smarted as smoke puffed right in my face.

"Hold it right there, boy!" a man's gruff voice roared at me. "Don't move a muscle!" His face loomed in front of me. My stomach clenched. As I drew in a smoky breath, I remembered
everything;
Mom's tortured face, Dad's panic, the sketch—

Had the wind knocked me unconscious? I could see I wasn't in my bedroom anymore. And who was this man—maybe a doctor? But why would a doctor be puffing on a pipe? And where were Mom and Dad and Crystal?

I closed my eyes, dizzy again. My brain wasn't working right. In all that wind, my brain must have gotten rattled. Something had happened to me. But what?

I heard the man's voice in the fog. "That's good. Stay nice and still till I finish your face. Good, very good."

I opened my eyes again carefully. I could see that I was lying on a brown rug in an atticlike room, with streams of soft afternoon sunlight glinting through the open window. A warm breeze touched my face, and I smelled flowers. The breeze fluttered the cloth that covered a large canvas propped on an easel by the opposite window.

"All righty then, boy, turn your face toward me, just a bit to the right. There—just there! Perfect. Now hold it just like that!"

I obeyed the voice slowly, fear pumping adrenaline through me.
Who is this man
? Mom's eternal warning seemed to echo in my ears:
Stay away from strangers.

"Lift your chin, and turn toward me, for crying out loud!"

I lifted my chin and looked over, holding my breath. All I saw was a tall, skinny guy standing by an easel. He had gray hair all over the place, like a mad scientist, but his face looked youngish—and he wore pants with red suspenders, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was chewing on a pipe, puffing hard, and the smoke billowed around his head in a cloud. His face was creased with concentration, and he was dabbing at a canvas on his easel with a paintbrush.

"I've almost got it—just a little more blue right here," the painter said, and stabbed his brush into a jar of other brushes. "That's all for today." He clapped his hands at me. "All right, lad, get up and out of here—nap time's over! And next time you take it into your head to settle down for forty winks in my studio, let me know ahead of time so I can set up. It gave me a turn, I don't mind telling you, when I came in and saw you lying there like something the cat dragged in. I'd have preferred you to be over there on the sofa rather than beached like a dead fish on the floor—better lighting. And those clothes! I'd choose a different shirt." He frowned at me as I struggled to stand up. My legs felt as weak as if I had been scaling mountains.

"What's that mean, boy?" The man was scowling at my T-shirt. "'Rolling Stones Revival'—that some kind of revival meeting? Are you one of them religious fellows going door-to-door proclaiming the Lord cometh?"

I glanced down at my shirt. "It—it's just an old rock group." My voice came out hoarse and raspy, as if I'd been sleeping for a long time. "My dad got me the shirt—"

"Rocks? Your dad is a geologist, is he? You must belong to that family on the next block. Heard the fellow teaches at the college."

Now that the fog was clearing, fear made me feel razor sharp. My head pounded with questions.

What was going on?

I took a deep breath and tried to be calm. Okay. Okay—this guy didn't
look
like an alien. And
he
didn't seem to know what was going on any more than I did; that was clear. While he stood there looking at me, my mind was ticking ahead, trying to figure out what I needed to do.
Run!
screamed some part of me, the part that was pumping adrenaline into my blood.
Stay cool,
whispered another part.
Look around. Figure out what's happened.
How had I come to be here, when moments ago I was in my bedroom with Mom—poor Mom—and looking at that sketch?...

The sketch!
It wasn't in my hand any longer. Where was it? I took a deep breath and looked around the studio—because that's what it was, an artist's studio. There were stacks of canvases along every wall, and shelves full of paints, jars of brushes, books and notebooks. A table in the center of the room held clusters of shells, pottery, a toy dump truck, a bowl of eggs, and lots of other stuff. The windows didn't have any curtains, and the sunlight was streaming in. There was a skylight in the ceiling that sent more light down, like a beacon, across the floor.

"Next time you need a nap," the artist guy was saying to me sternly, "you ought to knock properly on the door, not just walk right in. It's only good manners! Are you a friend of Homer Junior? You look to be right about his age."

Homer Junior?

The artist's voice turned gruffer. "Cat got your tongue? Legs don't work, my boy? Come on now, get your bones outta here! I'm a workingman—or at least I'm trying to be."

I moved shakily toward the door. That's when I saw a calendar hanging from a nail on the wall near the sink. I edged toward it. It said
MARCH
1926.

"'March 1926,'" I read, my voice still rusty. I felt like you do after a bad bout of flu—sort of shaky and faraway.

"April, actually," said the man, reaching over and ripping the sheet for March right off. He balled it up and tossed it toward an overflowing tin wastebasket in the corner. "Always forget to change the dang thing."

Nineteen twenty-six, nineteen twenty-six.
The number kept repeating in my head.

I heard footsteps tapping up the stairs somewhere nearby. The door to the studio opened and an elderly woman stood there with a smile on her face and a dish towel in her hands.

"Hello, dear," she said in a surprised voice when she saw me. "Now, when did you come to call?"

"He just seems to have dropped in," replied the artist. "Chum of Homer's, no doubt. I wish you'd keep the children downstairs, Mother. How am I going to work with these disturbances?"

"I'm sorry, Fitz, dear," she replied. "But I see his appearance gave you something new to sketch. So that's good, isn't it?"

"I try to sketch whatever's to hand," he muttered. "Might as well. Now take him downstairs, would you?"

"Why don't you come down, too, dear? We're having lemonade on the porch." Then she turned to me. "I'm Mrs. Cotton. My grandchildren and I are down on the porch, and you're very welcome to join us—"

Cotton
? Like that guy in Mom's art book? I turned to the man. "Are ... are you that painter? I mean, Fitzgerald Cotton?" My voice sounded weird. I tried again in a firmer voice. "I mean, you're the famous artist?"