Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

It was possible, Izzy supposed, but then all she had to do was close her eyes and she would hear the tick-tappa-tapping of Paddyjack’s fingers on his forearm, could see him sitting there on the fire escape in the falling snow, with the ribbons fluttering all around him, their wind-driven dance perfectly synchronized to the rhythm he was calling up. And then she remembered the silence, fast-forwarding her memory through Rushkin’s attack, until the image that finally lay in her mind was of Paddyjack and John, walking hand in hand, down the lane, over the snow, away ....

Izzy shook her head. No, she didn’t want to remember that, because then she’d see again the coldness in John’s eyes.

Sighing, she refastened the remaining bracelet back onto her wrist and left her seat by the window.

Kathy wasn’t up yet, so she had a quick breakfast of dry cereal and black coffee—she had to remember to buy some milk on the way home today—collected her backpack and left the apartment. Even bundled up as she was, the cold hit her like a shock when she stepped outside. She tried to adjust to the chill by shoveling the walk, but by the time she had walked halfway to Professor Dapple’s house, the cold had crept in under her coat and seeped through her boots and mittens. She was completely chilled when she finally arrived at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio.

She felt a twinge of guilt as she unlocked the door. She was actually due at Rushkin’s place this morning, but first she had to see for herself that the paintings were still safe. She couldn’t seem to escape that question John had asked her in the park.

Do you still have those dreams you told me about?

The one she’d had last night was far different from the dreams of fire she’d been having the previous year, or the more recent ones of someone looking for her, but it had still involved danger to her creations.

She was certain the paintings were safe. How could they be anything else but? No one knew about them except for her and Kathy—and of course, Jilly. But she still had to see them for herself No one was up yet at the professor’s, but Izzy was too cold to shovel his walks as well. Let Olaf do that—it would give him something concrete to grumble about. She kicked away at the drift that was piled up against the studio door until she could get it open, then slipped inside and savored the warmth.

The windows were all patterned with frost and she took a moment to admire them before she got up the courage to take her paintings out from under the table where she had stored them. They were still there, all three of them, not one of them damaged. She lined them up in a row on the lower canvas holder of her easel, just as she’d done the night she finished Rattle and Wings, and stood back to look at them. It was only then that she saw that something was wrong.

Paddyjack was fine, but her fanciful ladybug with its tiny human face and the winged cat had undergone a significant change since the last time she’d looked at them. Both paintings had lost the vitality she remembered them having. The main figures seemed to blend into the background now, and all the highlights and contrasts that had made them come alive were gone, diminishing their sense of presence.

The colors had gone from vibrant to muddy and even the compositions themselves seemed to suffer.

She wished now that she had shown them to someone else before. It was too easy to believe that she simply hadn’t gotten them right in the first place, despite her memory to the contrary. But paintings didn’t lose their vitality just like that. Oils didn’t lose their vibrancy and become dulled in such a way over the passage of a couple of months.

An image flashed in her mind: the small hooded figure with his crossbow. Firing. The quarrel striking the winged cat where it was perched on the fire escape and driving it back against the wall with the force of its impact ....

Just a dream, she told herself.

But her fingers strayed to the bracelet on her wrist.

No, she thought. Even if Rushkin were responsible, even if he had been out there in the storm last night, hunting down her creations, how could she have dreamed about it happening? She wasn’t clairvoyant—not even close. Except ... bringing her creations over in the first place, that was an act of magic all in itself. If that was possible, then why not something else? If the borders of reality were going to tear, why should they tear along some tidy little perforation? This was possible now, but this was still impossible—everything neatly contained within its own particular box, changed, perhaps, but still safe, still contained.

If only she had someone to help her understand the perimeters of this new world she found herself in, someone to show her which parts she could still count on and which had changed. But the only person she’d had was John, and she’d driven him away. Even though his conversations could be so ambiguous, she still felt certain that he meant her no harm. There was no one else she could trust—no one with the necessary knowledge. In the magical borderland she now found herself in there was only John. John and Rushkin.

She saw the crossbow quarrel again, the flash of its feathers before it plunged into the winged cat’s chest ....

It was just a dream, she told herself; as though repetition would make it true. The paintings in front of her seemed to say otherwise, but she didn’t know what to think anymore. Rushkin was the one who had shown her how to bring her creations across from the otherworld in the first place. Why should he mean them harm? Why should he mean her harm?

In the end, she realized she had no one else to whom she could turn. She left her paintings on the easel and locked up the studio, trudging off through the cold and the snow to the coach house, where Rushkin would be waiting for her. He’d be angry, yes, but only because she was late, she told herself. He wasn’t her enemy. He might be John’s, but Rushkin had taught her too much, he had too much light inside himself that he was willing to share with her, for Izzy to be able to consider him her enemy as well.

But anger was an understatement, Izzy realized as she stepped out of the cold into Rushkin’s coach-house studio. Rushkin was in one of his rages. She started to back out the door before he could hit her, but he was too quick. He grabbed her by one arm and spun her back into the studio. When he let go, Izzy floundered for balance and crashed into her easel, falling to the floor with it under her.

“How dare you spy on me?” he shouted.

He crossed the room as Izzy tried to get back to her feet, but the straps of her backpack had gotten entangled with her easel and she couldn’t free herself in time. Rushkin kicked at her, the toe of his shoe catching her first in the thigh, then in the stomach, then on the side of her head. She cried out from the pain.

“You filthy little sneak!” Rushkin cried. “After all I’ve done for you.”

He continued to kick at her. When she finally got herself free from her backpack and tried to rise, he hit her with his fists, driving her back down again. Finally all she could do was curl up into as small a ball as she could make of herself and try to ride out the storm of his anger. Rushkin ranted and flailed at her, hitting his fists against the sides of the easel as often as he hit her. She could make no sense of what the betrayals were that he was shouting about. After a while, she didn’t care. All she wanted was for the hurting to stop. But then, when his rage finally did run its course, he fell to his knees in front of her and began to weep.

“Oh no, Isabelle,” he moaned. “What have I done? What have I done? How can you ever forgive me ...”