An Exorcism
The dream came in pieces, like light stealing through the cracks in a door surrounded in darkness. First there were only winter wind's whispers, carrying secondhand strands of distant laughter and the rustling of petticoats. The murmurings crystallized slowly, and girlish voices rang, clear as bells, echoing like the memory of their chiming. "Sarah…Sarah…" Her breath grew tight, the sound of the name piercing her through like an arrow. She began to struggle against the vision, for, feeling deftly around the darkness, she knew now what it would show her. It was to no avail; the weight of it pressed all the air out of her lungs. The girls' voices grew closer. Suddenly, the scene was fully illuminated.
She found herself in a clearing surrounded by trees, sun striking snow into a thousand refracted diamonds. She was momentarily blinded. All alone beneath the blue and pink tinted sunset were three girls in white, barefoot and stripped to their chemises. Hands clasped, twirling in an endless, dizzying circle, a striking girl with black, curly hair and a skinny brunette with a pale splash of freckles beneath her eyes danced. They swung in reckless abandon. The brunette's movements were pure, unhinged energy, the other girl's oddly graceful. They shrieked with laughter. A third girl sat beneath a tree, watching them and laughing softly, restrainedly.
They cried out to her, voices mingling in vivid harmony. "Come on, Mary!"
Mary merely gave them a reserved smile, sifting snow through her fingers like sand through an hourglass, face set in a dreamy expression. The girls' lips moved, but their words were distorted, carried away on the wind.
In one, quick, fluid motion, the brunette girl pitched forward, letting go of her friend's hand, so she fell into Mary. The two tumbled into a screeching, indignant heap. Mary dusted herself off, gasping with hilarity. Her green eyes flared to life.
"Grace, charm, and beauty, my darlings. Grace, charm, and beauty." The brunette mocked in a deep, resonant voice.
Smiling crookedly, the black-haired girl grabbed her by the leg, pulling until she overbalanced and fell.
"You were saying, Sarah, dear?" With a flurry of giggling and shrieking, the girls scuffled wildly in the snow, like the playful brawling of young lionesses. Mary, deciding to remain neutral, rushed to the nearest tree and climbed, observing safely from its branches. The black-haired girl finally threw Sarah off of her, and they sprawled there in the snow, panting, cheeks pink.
Sarah was the first to move. Climbing vigorously to her feet, she loomed shadowlike above her friend. "Have you died?"
She did not answer for some time; her arms and legs stretched, silhouetting a snow angel. The moment froze, and there she was, buried in snow in her white dress, her marble arms and legs bare. Her dark hair streamed about her face like a halo, dappled with snow, which clung to the eyelashes framing her ivory blue eyes. She closed them, and abruptly, the snow in her hair became white poppies, the skin grew wan, and blue, bruised shadows appeared beneath her eyes and cheekbones. She could be sleeping, were she not so still. A snowball hit Sarah in the face, and the moment was shattered.
"I am merely summoning a host of rebel angels. We need all the help we can get." The other girl, that dark angel, leapt up, as if winged, resurrected, and marred the snow angel's untouched perfection with her impatience.
"Yes, yes, come join us Mary! 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n!'" Sarah quipped with one of her raw grins.
"This is hardly Hell," Mary pointed out, but she was smiling.
Sarah's footprints rent the snow, as she ran to her. She sprang up, grasped a tree branch, and swung from it. The dark-haired girl suddenly stopped laughing. Her eyes glazed over and turned inward, half-closed, something dark and nebulous flickering across her features. Her face contorted in pain. Then her eyes snapped open sharply. She was pale as death, transformed somehow into someone older, hardened, who had seen things she wished she had not. Mutely, she stared at Sarah, who was still dangling from the tree. Mary studied their friend below them on the ground, taking in her strange expression and offered Sarah an arm up. Sarah seemed unperturbed, but there was a worried line creasing Mary's lovely face.
"Are you all right…?" Mary spoke her name, and it was snuffed out by the wind like a candle.
"Fine, just fine," she responded, but there was a ragged edge to her voice, as vulnerable as a sleeper's first words after waking from a nightmare. She paused momentarily, then seemingly weightless, she flew across the snow to meet them.
The vision went blurry at the edges. Pictures flitted across her mind in rapid succession, shaky, as if seen through water. A dead girl in a white pinafore, a creature of shadows, distorted by flames, white flower petals, a dark alleyway, a damp cave, a creature rising from the sea, a teenaged girl with fiery hair, a jeweled dagger, an apple with a bite in it, decay spreading in the white flesh.
And Hester Asa Moore awoke, gasping for breath, clutching at her throat. She untangled herself from the blankets that had twisted around her neck and arms, and her candle sent the room into sharp relief. The thin white scar at the hollow of her throat glowed like a crescent moon. She was surrounded with canvases of nightmare visions, full of teeth and daggers, the wailing of the damned, broken oaths, blood watering the dead grass. The price, in short, of her connection to the Winterlands. In the dark, they came to her. That she was accustomed to. But not this, never this. And so she rose, gathered her paints, and began the exorcism.
She hated herself for what she did next. It was weak and sentimental. It was as stagnant and helpless as painting a still life, painting dead children. They were buried now, in snow and dirt and memory. Best to leave them rest. But nonetheless, she could not stop. You can only move forward, she thought, and if you do not, they shall find you.
There were three girls in her painting. One was beautiful with red-gold hair and transparent green eyes. She smiled shyly, but there were sparks of curiosity clinging to her long eyelashes, a thirst, a need for something indefinable. Leaning on her friend's arm, she gazed dreamily at something no one else could see, out of sight beyond the opposite edge of the canvas. The rest of the world must lie outside those boundaries.
Near the end stood another girl, tall and slender with sharp, bony elbows and a hard, determined jaw. Her full, decided lips curved in a puckish grin, warming her dark brown eyes and hair. Beneath the smile, she looked tense as a cat, poised, ready to spring. Although the painting did not show it, there was an ugly, jagged scar stretching across the base of her neck. Her head was turned away slightly, facing the last girl, between her and the beauty.
And there she was, the focal point of the picture, around which everything revolved. She was shorter than the scarred girl but gave an impression of height. Her face, too intense to be beautiful, was an artist's study in chiaroscuro, heavy shadows carving marble white cheekbones. Her black hair curled wildly, like dark sea foam, pieces brushing the sculpted face, an echo of the shadows. Her features were hardly dainty; her nose was straight and strong, and her chin came to a sharp point beneath long, thin lips. Her eyes were large and almond-shaped, such a dark shade of indigo, they almost matched her hair, the color of water, of bruises. She radiated an ethereal quality, an inhuman gravity. The strange intelligence and mystery in her expression could only be described as "other." Her figure seemed to float rather than stand on the horizon, freedom embodied, but there was a weight in her eyes, an abstraction. She was never meant to stay.
Blue veins traced visibly beneath her translucent skin, a painstaking network of life. The brunette held that porcelain hand in hers, fingers brushing the delicate veins as if warming them. It was here that Hester Asa Moore suddenly touched her paint-splattered fingers to the canvas, the two linked hands. It made a distorted mirror in the center of the room, reflecting the years back at the sad-eyed woman who was once a girl with a wicked smile. Her wildness had congealed into something harsher, circles beneath careworn eyes, rage and insomnia, verging on desperation. The oil paint girls smiled, the curtain behind the canvas rustled in a slight draft. The first fragments of the blue and pink tinted sunrise stole in through the gaps.
"'I am half sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shallot…'" the artist told the empty room. She smiled sadly, hand still resting on the delicate union of illusory hands.