Caspar, Ruth, Iris, Clara, and van Stolk are all the products of Gregory Maguire's genius.
Caspar can see a tree from the back of his house – in truth, he can see many from that vantage point, but there is only one which he chooses to look at. In autumn, amid auburns, tangerines, browns, russets, this tree bears leaves of a pure red, a color no paint can capture, nor any word. When other leaves are dying, these are alive; in winters of sodden bark, when other boughs are made lovely only by the icicles that they support, the bare white branches rise with all the breathing splendor of arterial spray from some tapped vein of the earth.
Caspar has come to expect its beauty, in any season or weather and at any time of day, yet every time he sees the tree it still shocks him. It is the world's answer to Clara: the impossible made solid. The red is not that of rubies or blood or sunset's fire, but the red of no other thing seen on earth; like Clara's, this is not a beauty intended for comparison.
Whenever he can spare an afternoon he sits on the cooling ground and watches it as he drinks, long draughts broken by longer pauses. Ruth joins him, at times, but only ever to tell him that she has recalled something new, or more clearly.
He is glad of her story – not for something to do, but for something to create. It has been a long time since his last commission, and he suspects that there will be no others. He puts all the love and skill meant for the few musting canvases he still owns into translating Ruth's fractured confessions, coaxing out words and phrases from his mind that might serve as a suitable background for the glory of the girl at their center, or shape a world worthy of Iris's attentions.
Small things mock him now; he feels the turn of sunlight on some bright head as a vicious twist inside his chest. His hands sketch loose shapes in the air, doing what he can no longer afford to do with paints and brushes; he is paid little mind, for he is growing old now, and has earned the rattling of his body.
But the tree does not hurt him, for he knows he could never paint it; he enjoys the sight of beauty that he did not have to make.
The clay cup is cracked, and has been for a long time; but now the crack has run through, and leaves a line of water on his fingers. When he has emptied it he tosses it onto the compost, among the shards of its brethren. He'll make a new one, later.
Ruth emerges from the door and stands still for a long moment, building up to speech. "I remember the night that van Stolk came," she offers. "What the storm sounded like, what was said."
Caspar nods, and stands, and raises one hand in salute to the tree, before he turns inside.
