la morte brandisce il penello
LAUREN MEYER
In the shower, Artemisia often pretends to stand in a storm. She knows that sometimes to rage is to be alive. If she cannot bring herself to step fully into that maelstrom, hot, scouring water will serve instead.
The steam-wreathed bathroom is a small heaven she does not wish to leave. She’s made promises, though, to one who no longer can. Each day she’ll leave behind whatever momentary peace she’s found and walk instead beneath the distant warmth of the sun.
She’s kept this promise so far, by the stretched edges of herself and the very tips of her fingers. But she’s managed it.
Wilting potted plants wait beyond her bathroom door, occupying end tables and windowsills, indictments of neglect. Even water often feels like more than she has to give.
While she’s slept, the sky has given in abundance. The susurrus of the night’s rain lulled her near sleep and wound itself through her dreams, fragmented by rolling peals of thunder.
Both rain and thunder have now abated, and it is time for her to go. She knows this by the quality of the sunlight threading through the clouds, by the way her soles begin to itch for the feel of the earth.
There is no schedule to this, not really. Some days she does not make her pilgrimage until the moon has marked a pale imprint of itself upon the sky. No, there is no schedule. There is only her promise, and that is enough. In the awful wake of the Painter, it has to be enough.
At the door she lingers, hand raised to the portrait hung on the wall. The little girl looks out from the painting with a poise absent in any young child living beyond canvas. Golden curls halo her cheeks. Her hands, fallen petals of madonna lillies, lay folded in her lap.
It is sentimental. Saccharine, even. It is somehow no less beautiful, or terrible, for that. Giovanna’s eyes are a clear sky blue, though in life they were perhaps closer to gray. This is a signature of the Painter’s work. Death, and death of details. Only an essence left behind.
Rainwater pools on the sidewalk, tiny mirrors of the sky flecked with fallen petals. Artemisia steps around each one. She will continue to move through the world, but she ensures that her passing does not leave a ripple.
As she walks she notices things, small, beautiful things, and names them to herself. It keeps her mind quiet, and it is a disguise. She hopes that if she thinks in pure imagery, the Painter will think her already captured within one of his frames.
There, she spots tiny purple flowers sprouting from a patch of moss. Just beyond lies a browned circle where nothing grows at all. Beneath the sidewalk, humped tree roots reach and spread, buckling the cement from below.
She has run out of safe things to notice. She sees the rest now, too. Visions of her sister, layered like tracing paper over the features of strangers. A similar smile. Her way of brushing back her hair. A little girl’s curls that catch the sun and shine gold, just as in the portrait the Painter left behind.
Wind chimes sound, and she shakes herself from her reverie. Passers-by wear their own faces again. She always looks forward to walking past the house with the chimes. It is worth noticing.
The woman who lives here is old and kind, and the plants in her garden grow well. She always speaks to Artemisia when she passes by.
From another this might have been a danger. From her, it is a joy. Georgia does not pry. When they speak they do not wonder at their resurrection, at how they’ve landed here. They do not wonder if there are more like them.
Above all they do not discuss the Painter, he who wields both paintbrush and scythe. They do not wonder at his provenance, or at why he took Giovanna when she could barely hold a brush. Artemisia barely even needs to speak. She only listens while Georgia speaks to her of flowers. Small, beautiful things.
Georgia stands at the fence, gloved to the elbows and armed with gardening shears. She gestures.
“My roses are getting a bit unruly!”
Artemisia gestures in return, towards Georgia’s yard, overgrown with riotous wildflowers. “That bothers you?”
“Well not with those. I keep them for the bees. But these roses, they need a little more guidance. They have an attitude, you know.”
“The thorns.”
“Exactly. The thorns.”
Her brow creases as she speaks, and the bright crescent of her smile wanes.
Artemisia ventures closer to the personal than she usually prefers. “Georgia, are you alright?”
“Oh I’m lovely dear.” Her smile returns. Something disquieting is shaded in at its edges, though Artemisia cannot say if she’s imagined it there.
“Lovely,” Georgia repeats. “I’ll just be moving on, I suppose.” She gestures to her roses, and then down the road. “You’ll need to do the same, I imagine.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When next she reaches the house with the chimes, the murmur of a crowd drowns out their song. Clad in black, they shuffle in the yard like milling crows, trampling Georgia’s wildflowers into the dirt.
Georgia’s portrait sits in the window.
She wears a black suit jacket over a white shirt, and her gray hair is pulled tightly back. Her face is lined as overwashed linen, the luminous bits of her soul pressing close to the surface where life has worn her thin. Calm, if sad, her pale eyes hold a goodbye. Behind her, the canvas is filled with a rippling spiral of white and gray. The eye of a storm. A flower, magnified. An egress, to somewhere beyond.
Lauren Meyer was born in a bright pink hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in Goochland, Virginia, where the horses outnumber the people. When she isn't writing, she is training Muay Thai, cuddling her cat, and spending time with her boyfriend and his adorable daughter. Her work has been featured in Junto Magazine and Metamorphosis Journal. She is currently working on her first book.