The Awakening of Ren Crown (11 page)

I stared at it for a long moment. At the three dimensional protrusion coming out of my piece—a protrusion not created by glue or paint buildup. I stroked my finger a little more carefully around the edges—an archaeologist carefully brushing sand and soot away from my find. With every touch, more was revealed. When I had the edge of a wing half-exposed, it started to flutter.

I jerked back. But the fluttering became a heavy beat.

Working with the blue insect, I pried and willed more of it to break free, and it worked hard, determined to do so.

A final, giant flap fully disengaged the butterfly from the paper, popping it out. It landed awkwardly in my hand. I slowly rotated my hand watching the feathery edges move, feeling the gentle beat of its wings. I set the butterfly carefully on my table and stared in wonder. It had worked.

The butterfly straightened, as if strengthening its frame, then beat its wings fully, lifting into the air. It flew around unsteadily at first, then with greater strength. It landed on my windowsill, which was still open to the night. Its wings flattened, then folded gently as it seemed to consider the night. Then it launched itself, fluttering and disappearing over the edge and into the dark.

Life. Created. Alive.

I lurched forward. With my clean hand, I pushed the papers on top of my desk aside. Some fell to the floor and others shifted to bury everything in their path. I paused only when I came to a canvas near the bottom. I tugged the half-finished image of my brother free.

I had started it in pencil. The perfectionist part of me said that I needed to finish it in pencil. But the need in me said,
Paint
.
Now
.

Blue was an odd choice for a portrait of my brother. Yet, my fingers squeezed more from the tube and the first brush of paint was intoxicating.

I paused to look at the tube, lying there so innocently. Mr. Verisetti had used me to create this. How? And why?

Don’t you want to see what is in the box?

I blinked at the thought and gripped the brush. My breath hitched. My knuckles turned white. The paint glistened.

I looked at the picture, at the features that with each glowing brushstroke seemed to come more alive.
Really
alive. And the electric knot inside me grew.

I made a tentative swipe. Then another. I felt the pleasure in the paint. Easily framing and forming the other side of my twin's face in broad strokes. Every swipe increased my feeling of purpose. Determination and desire filled my motions. Every time a line connected with another, the intersection...glowed for a moment, then transformed into whatever color I imagined it should be. I could almost see the skin of his hand.

I reached out to touch it, and my fingers dipped into the canvas, into a pocket of space that shouldn’t exist, and touched the edges of something soft. Cool skin. I couldn’t breathe—I could
feel
him. I could feel skin I hadn’t touched in six weeks. My fingers automatically tried to wrap around, but the paint was drying and the softness was turning brittle, repelling my fingers. My hand came free of the canvas and the spell broke, shattering what was in my hand, spilling what now felt like the ashes of paint chips to the floor.

I stared at my hand covered in beautiful, unnatural blue. The digits curled in. I had felt Christian.

I touched the canvas again, but it was solid. No hole or magic vortex in sight. But I had felt him. I
had
.

I had.

The edges of my vision tinged gold, and I plunged my brush into the paint cup and forced blue onto the canvas again, the edges of the brush splattering before I outlined him once more. The canvas glowed, and I thrust my hand in, the untainted white of the sheet rippling around my wrist like a vat of splotched milk. Skin. I gripped and frantically pulled, trying to wrench my brother from the canvas, but only paint drops and chips spilled free.

Again.

Everything else grayed out around the brightened space of the easel. Dip, brush, thrust,
nothing
. Dip, brush, thrust, clasp a strong wrist,
nothing
. Dip, brush, thrust, skin,
nothing
. Over and over, drops fell from my hand, the remnants drying and crumbling on the floor, resting amongst the other drips and chips and sobs.

Dip…dip, dip, dip. I picked up the paint cup. Splatters only. I picked up the mangled, flattened tube.

I looked at the splatters on the wall next to me. Like a giant blue beast had been slaughtered against it. How many times had I reached into the canvas and yanked my hand out? I just needed one more time. I was certain. I wrapped my fingers around the tube.

“Please, please, please.” I whispered, squeezing the dead tube. “I need just a little more.” I didn't know who I was asking, begging. “I know I can do it.”

“Ren!”

I whirled around to see Will banging on his side of the sketch with one hand, a horrified look on his face as he fastened on the armor I had created for him earlier—complete with pinstripes. I could suddenly feel the paint coated on my cheeks. Dripping from my skin. Some truly feral warrior in a jungle of canvas, cubist lines, pointed colors, and deco blocks.

“I can do it,” I told him, beseeching. “I just need more paint like this. Where can I get more paint like this?” I had the paintbrush gripped in my fist, shaking like a junkie demanding her next fix.

“Ren—”

The building electricity within me exploded with a hiss. “
Where can I get more paint?
”

His gaze went past me, widening. I followed it...to the drawings on my walls. The dragons, the vines, the parties and battles. The cubist lines and deco blocks. The birds and beasts and abstract things. Stick figures and realistic portraits.

And now magic paint in a warrior's hue was on one of those walls. And I was vibrating with energy and intent. To make things live. A Renaissance woman started screaming as a gryphon dive-bombed from the sky. A stylized female Don Quixote dressed in knightly silver rushed in with her gleaming helmet and sword and stepped in front of the other, fending away the giant beast as the woman in the flowing gown gripped her desperately from behind.

Oh no.

I dropped the paintbrush and grabbed the charcoal nub and lunged to help Knight and Renaissance. But near them, the impressionistic lily pads were winding up a bridge and over a couple standing there. They curved around their necks. I slashed my nub through one of the lily pad vines, and it fell to the floor. Others replaced it.

I slashed again and again, and yet similar events were happening all around me. Geometric blocks smashing, modern art squeezing, and old masters piercing. I could never get to everything in time. The savagery escalated, the carnage multiplied, and I could only watch in horror. I needed an eraser, but I had created mostly with paint and ink and I didn't know how to hit undo.

The festive party scenes and whimsical things I had drawn were being consumed by the destructive elements I had also created—sharp mirrored edges, harsh lines, unforgiving borders slashing through their softer counterparts—the balance left unchecked with too few knights and protectors and far too many victims and predators.

I used the nubs, then the charcoal remnants on my fingers, and then I had no more charcoal. I had no more paint.

I sank to the ground, sob unable to release, as everything around me died, dripping and seeping together into a morass of sickly brown at the base of my walls. I clutched Will's sketch, but forced myself to view the last moments of the others, to watch the last one standing on top of the brownish murk that was trying to suck her in—the female Don Quixote in her silver, knightly armor. She had made it to the end, surrounded by the fallen compatriots she had tried to help and the predators she had been forced to kill, covered in paint and pen splatter. And then she fell to her knees and landed face-down in the mud, once-fluffy hair spilling from the back of her helmet in tangled, wet strands. Then she too was absorbed into the endless brown landscape. All lay shattered and still on my walls. The ecosystem collapsed.

Will was quiet. He reached out a hand to me, then let it fall back to his side.

Then his eyes drifted toward my fingers touching the page. The paint splatters on the backs of my fingers had moisturized, then joined together, running down to my pads, unnaturally spreading into the sketch, through my drawings around Will, soaking into his environment. The jar containing the paint dot rattled, the dot jumping around, wanting to join the spread. The circles on the drapes started to rotate— slowly and ominously.

And I realized I had
no charcoal left
.

Will's right fingers curled tightly around the hilt of his sword, his left around the knife. He looked at me and gave me a tight smile. “Go to the coffeehouse downtown and talk to the women working there. Don't tell them you are feral. Just say you need some help. Then go directly—”

The bells on the drapes gave a cacophonous clang, as razor sharp roots came piercing through each swirling circle portal.

Chapter Six: Deadly Assailants

“No!” I yelled at the paper. I heard something crash down the hall.

The roots flew directly toward Will, spiked and deadly. I was about to watch him die too. Gold light lit everything around me. I let out every sobbing emotion I had and thrust a hand into the sketch.

“
No!”
Christian's yell echoed mine.

My hand and wrist disappeared into the paper and funneled down, smaller than Will's in the sketch, and twice as ineffectual. Putting my minnow-like fingers into a fish bowl filled with predators. A root flayed the skin from one knuckle, then batted my hand to the side. My whole arm jerked as my hand was thrown into the sketch wall opposite Will.

Will was battling and doing a great job of it. The sword fit him perfectly—exactly as I had envisioned it—and he obviously knew how to use one. But there were too many opponents, just like on my walls—and these opponents possessed some of my magic, whereas Will possessed none here—I could feel the reflection of the opponents' magic in my sketched fingers, the echo of my own electricity—along with what felt like tinted gold. Raphael Verisetti.

I could hear footsteps running down the hall.

Root-like protrusions behind the drapes were pushing the drapes forward. Trying to push the swirling portals against the “glass” of the sketch.

Christian's voice continued shouting, crystal clear with my gold-enhanced senses. “
Get back, Ren! Stop!”

“Ren, open this door!” My mom yelled hysterically, jangling the knob.

Will removed five roots from action in one swipe, but the slash left him open and a bright flash zinged from a swirling circle and struck him in the chest. His chest armor exploded, and the shock wave knocked him off his feet. Something large was moving behind the drapes, coming toward us. Something with far more presence and magic than the roots.

I thought of Mr. Verisetti with a second feeling of betrayal, and a vivid memory of him twisting his hand, a smile upon his lips, bloomed from the darkness. I flicked my wrist in imitation, and three of the roots severed. I didn't waste moments playing with this new ability—I simply battled my way through.

Christian screamed for me to stop. I would not let Will die too, though. I'd die first.

“Ren! Open this door! Roger, I can't open it!”

The house started to shake. The patterned circles on my closet door opened into mouths of malevolent intent, black tunneled holes stretched behind them, and the vision of my parents bursting through the door and into danger forced cold certainty to my thoughts.

No.
No
.

This time I would make it
work
. Gold lit everywhere.

“Ren, please! Please, open the door!”

“Move, Catherine!”

“
Ren!”

I latched onto Will's arm—firm and warm beneath my stained hand—and used every muscle and desire I possessed and pulled. Will came diving out, knocking me to the ground, and flattening me in a tangle of limbs, a chair, a sword, bits of armor, paint and charcoal flakes, and a lot of swearing. Golden light flashed everywhere again. My closet door roared, then it and the house stilled.

“
Why didn't you save
me
, Ren? That was
my
magic.”

Christian's leather band burst into flames, burning my wrist as it disintegrated into ash. The picture of him lined in blue paint erupted into unnatural flame next, bright blue with gold-tinged smoke, gone within seconds. Small bursts of flame, like match strikes, sparked around us—every drop of blue paint exploding, extinguishing, then leaving a feeling of emptiness behind. Only my old, dead, normal acrylic paint was left seeping on the walls in mixed brown agony.

Christian's voice was silent. Gone. I could feel a tear spill over. I had lost the bracelet I had retrieved from the man who had killed him. The
container
. Oh, God, no, of course that was what it had been. And even the canvas containing the remnants of paint was gone.

A loud sound impacted against the door as I tried to breathe. I struggled to see through the teary blue and gold film over my gaze and Will's shoulder pressing my nose into the floor.