Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Once she made the decision, though, she threw herself into her work—creating paintings that would have stood the test of time with the best of the world’s great art, had they only survived. She had Rushkin’s studio to herself—he’d gone on sabbatical or something—and that was where she worked her magic, peopling not only her canvases, but the streets around us with the denizens of her imagination.

The numena themselves were usually pretty circumspect about being noticed. Mind you, Newford’s always had a reputation for being a hotbed of oddities and marvels. Next to the West Coast, we’ve probably got the highest percentage of mystics, pagans, sages, and downright strange people on the continent, so a few more magical sightings weren’t necessarily going to make the headlines of anything except for a rag like The Newford Sun.

Izzy told no one about the magic besides me—not even Alan or Ply. She felt as though Hking about it would dissipate the power, that it would set up a wall between our world and that otherworld from which the magic came. I still maintain that there was no otherworld—or at least not in the sense that Izzy believed in it. The magic came from her. The world was inside her, the magic blossomed in the fertile ground of her inner landscape and was pulled forth by her painting. No less a wondrous, enchanted process, to be sure, but the difference seemed important, if not to anyone else, at least to me.

After a few months of mourning her abandonment at John’s hand, she also became very social. She was out all the time, a fixture at all the Waterhouse Street parties; she started drinking and taking drugs, and she had a constant stream of lovers. I don’t think there was ever a time in those years that she didn’t have a lover in attendance, with at least one or two pining for what they’d lost and a couple more waiting in the wings to take their turn on the carousel. Count me in among the former, forever unrequited like so many of the women in those Victorian novels that Kristiana loves to read.

But it wasn’t all fun and games, though it might seem so from the outside looking in. Izzy found time for her career as well. Her star rose until soon the occasional paintings she offered up for sale began to command high four-figure prices. Still, for all her success at the easel or in bed, I don’t think she was ever happy again.

My own fortunes seemed to rise in direct proportion to how her happiness diminished. My turning point came when Alan decided to publish The Angels of My First Death. I still have no idea why that first collection did as well as it did. My circle of friends had widened to include any number of other writers and I thought many of them to be far more talented than I was. Anne Bourke, certainly. Christy Riddell—especially with his newer stories. Frank Katchen. We had quite a community going in Lower Crowsea in those days. Not so high profile as the artists and musicians, or even the theatre people, but then writers aren’t usually as flamboyant, are they? We work in private, emerging for the parties or book launches and signings, before withdrawing back into our seclusions. Except for Frank, who seemed to enjoy the idea of being a writer so much more than actually doing the work. But then there are always exceptions, aren’t there, and whatever else might be said about Frank, he did exceptional work.

Alan’s Crowsea Review never had to go beyond the borders of Lower Crowsea itself to find its contributors, but it grew rapidly from a student effort into one of the more respected literary magazines in the country. It seemed only natural for him to use his East Street Press as an imprint of books as well. He tested the waters with a novella by Tama Jostyn called Wintering and Dust, Dreams and Little Love Letters, a collection of Kristiana’s poems, before he did my collection of short stories. The first two did reasonably well for books published by a regional press, selling out their modest print runs within six months of publication. Then came The Angels of My First Death and everything changed.

I made so much money off the paperback sales and subsequent foreign rights, movie options and the like that it was criminal. I could’ve lived high on the hog, but instead I kept the apartment on Waterhouse Street and channeled my money into setting up the Newford Children’s Foundation.

I don’t mention this to toot my horn. Truth is, if I had a choice between being remembered forever and the Foundation, the Foundation would always come first. I believe in what I write—I can’t not write—but once I saw the serious money I could make by writing, the act of writing became subservient to the Foundation, existing to keep the Foundation solvent as much as for my own need to tell stories.

They both promote the same message: children are people and they have rights; don’t abuse those rights.

They both strive to educate the public. But the Foundation will always be more important because it’s actually helping those in need. I’d’ve given anything for the option to become a ward of the Foundation when I was a kid myself.

* *

Tomorrow I’m off to Wren Island to stay with Izzy. I’m so excited. I’ve packed and repacked my bags three times already. I was hoping to finish off that new story before I went, but I can’t seem to concentrate on it. Maybe I should just write, “And then they all died. The End.” And leave it at that. It wouldn’t be any worse than what I’ve written so far. But who knows? Maybe being with Izzy again will make the whole thing come alive for me. Stranger things have happened in her company, that’s for sure.

* *

I’m having the best time I’ve had in ages. Izzy’s been after me for years to move onto the island with her and I’ll tell you, if it could always be like today, I’d do it in a flash. But it gets harder and harder for me to be in her company and not just blurt out that I love her. That I want to be her lover. I don’t think she’s exactly homophobic, but I do know that the thought of same-sex sex makes her feel very uncomfortable.

I can remember walking past a cafe on Lee Street with her once and we saw two women necking in a darkened corner of the outside patio.

“God,” Izzy said. “Why do they have to do that in public?”

“Heterosexuals do it in public.”

“Yeah, but that’s normal. I couldn’t ever imagine kissing another woman like that.”

I didn’t say anything. Truth is, I’m not so sure that I’m actually a lesbian myself. I’m not attracted to men, but I’m not attracted to women either. It’s just Izzy I want.

* *

I like the work that Izzy’s been doing for the past few years, but I miss the earlier paintings. Or maybe it’s that I miss the numena.

Izzy used to say that they came from a place where all was story—that’s all they remember, she told me: that there were stories. But we’re all made of stories—you, me, everybody. The ones you can see and the hidden stories we keep secret inside—like my love for Izzy. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It’s a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it’s true, but then so’s everything.

It didn’t work that way for her numena, though. Even when they were brought over to this world through Izzy’s art, they lived in secret, in their own hidden world. Izzy could find them—or they found her. I could see them, because I knew where to look. I suppose other people saw them from time to time as well, but it wouldn’t be quite real for them. I thought it’d be different. I thought their existence would change the world, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve been wrong about something, and I doubt it’ll be the last. It just never hurt so much before. The cost was never so high.