Month: March 2018

The dogs are behind me. I can hear them baying in the trees, barking and howling as the scent of my blood drives them wild. They’re close now, too close, and I curse myself for a fool for coming out in broad daylight.

I know better.

The well is abandoned, covered in flowering vine and rotting with mold. I slip under the cover and scramble down, my fingernails digging into the soft rock, the crumbling sides. Stupid of me. I shouldn’t have come back here, not so directly. It makes it dangerous, dangerous for later, dangerous for the others. But I couldn’t run anymore, not on my bad leg.

The smell of damp and mold rises around me, and I touch the root winding out of the wall and drop. I land on my bad leg, solidly, and the scream in my throat isn’t all pain. I hate this place. I hate it, but I have to come back. It’s the only refuge we have.

Ivy has spilled down through the cracked stones, and it covers the door at the bottom. I push it aside, tucking it behind a root like a curtain as I unlatch the door and slip inside. The dogs have reached the well overhead, and their masters are screaming at them for stopping here. No runaway in his right mind would climb down a well, and they can’t see me, even when they throw the cover off and shine their lanterns down. The ivy falls over the door again, and I lean against it. Listening. Listening to them curse and swear, listening to their anger at losing me. It’s been a long time since I was face to face with any of them, but I remember their faces. Every single one of them. They’re branded into my nightmares for the rest of time, until I die.

I leave when the dogs are quiet. The tunnels beneath this forest are old, halls that were buried by time and by the trees, stone passages with ceilings of tree roots. No one else knows about them. Only us. The Runaways. The children who were supposed to be slaves. The forest protects us now, the forest, and these old ruins. They’re our saviors, our protectors, and much as I hate the damp and the dark and the tomblike air of these tunnels, they are my home.

The younglings are waiting for me when I come in. We stay in an old hall, our blankets spread on the same floor that courtiers, royalty, used to walk. Only their ghosts wander here now, and they don’t mind us.

Yeshi is the first to come running. She’s only four. I rescued her from a mine where they were using her to dig in places a full grown man couldn’t have reached. And wouldn’t have dared go. Her hair is white now, white and smudged with the dirt and the grim of the tunnels, the mold that grows on our walls, but she can smile again. So can the others. They chatter and laugh when I come in, as if they live in paradise, as if these dank, ugly tunnels were the gates of heaven itself.

But no one is beating on them. No hates them, no one whips them. No one curses them. So maybe, in some ways, it is heaven.

I set up my easel between a booth selling flowers and a clown selling balloon animals. Benjamin, I think his name is. I saw him last time I came to this fair. A nice man.

The woman with the flowers looks more intimidating. She casts a quick look at my portfolio of caricatures and sniffs, looking away again. I think she’d like me to leave. Obviously, my cartoon portraits aren’t sophisticated enough for her better taste. I stifle a laugh. I’ve painted portraits in staterooms and palaces, had commissions from governors, royalty, and men who are still remembered for their bloody marks on history. But there’s something about a fair that I like. The anonymity, maybe. No one notices an artist drawing portraits behind the flower cart.

My shop is harder to hide. It’s on the corner of Sixth and Wicker, and it already has more people interested in it than I like. It’s dingy, dark, and secluded, but people notice it. They like the portraits I’ve hung on the walls and the more serious paintings I do on commission. Sometimes, they ask if I can paint their portrait like the ones I have in the back room, sixteenth-century style. I laugh and tell them I haven’t painted like that since the sixteenth century.

They always take it as a joke. Which is fine. I have enough trouble trying to explain to returning customers, men and women who haven’t seen me in thirty years, why I still look the same as I did the last time they walked through my door. I tell them they must have met my father. Or my uncle. Once, I had to use my grandfather as an excuse. I moved shop after that. I always move on every fifty years or so, but I like Sixth and Wicker. It’s a good little shop, and this town has a very nice fair. I would hate to leave.

I have to, of course. Eventually. Once my shop begins to get popular, people will begin to notice me. I’d rather not have my picture in the paper or have people poking about in my past, trying to prove I’m not quite who I say I am. It’s happened before. People get suspicious, they spread rumors, they ask questions, and then I skip town and find another place to set up. I used to bother less with settling down in one spot. During the French Revolution, I bounced around everywhere. I doubt I spent more than two nights in any one town. But it’s nice to put down roots for a little while, make some friends, pretend I’m an up and coming art student trying to make ends meet instead of a grouchy, jaded immortal with a chip on my shoulder and a trade I’ve been riding on since cave drawings became popular.

Besides, nowadays, no one notices the artist behind the easel. They sit for their caricature, pay me, and disappear again. And I get to enjoy the cotton candy and pretzels.

She comes in the night, after all the others are sleeping. I hear her slip past my door, climb the stairs over my room to the attic. The hollow boards creak under her weight. She doesn’t make much noise. None of the others have ever heard her, but I hear her every night. Sometimes, I can’t get to sleep until I’ve seen her.

I push the covers off my bed and slide out of my room. The corridor is cold, so cold that I can see my own breath hanging in their air, like the breath of a ghost. My feet are heavier than hers, and I make more noise. I’ve never learned to be quiet the way she has, to glide along the halls like a phantom. My footsteps are always loud. She’s never scolded me for coming, nor for being out of bed, not like the matrons do. I think she’s just as lonely as I am.

She’s waiting by the window when I open the door. The moonlight is spilling through the glass, soft as spun silver on the floor, and it shines on her hair and her white hands. I’ve missed her. It’s been almost two days since I saw her last. She didn’t come last night.

I think she missed me too, although she doesn’t say so. The nurses have told us a hundred times that she’s infected, that we ought to stay away from her. I meant to, in the beginning, but she found me up here one night when I came to be alone and to cry. She held me until the ache in my heart softened, and now I don’t care whether she’s sick or not. I need a friend. So does she. We are the same, she and I. A ghost and a girl without a soul. It hardly matters to either of us any more.