So, I need to get a project done… But here I am, writing a fanfiction and finishing the movie Twister. "Rabbit is good, Rabbit is wise." Anyway, how do you like the story so far? I finally got the whole group together, but how long can they stay that way? I have more in store for them, you mark my words. Now I'm watching Pirates of the Caribbean and this is making me want to write a pirate story. I've done it before but I dropped it after 43 pages…
Oh well. I'll just go on watching the strangest romance movie ever. Review please! "I gotta go Julia, we've got cows!"
"I don't think this was the way we were supposed to go," Cassia muttered as they came upon the same painting for the third time. After they got finished telling their tales to each other, they walked along and found that the hall ended with a painting and a hall going to the right. but, at the end of that hall, there was the painting again, and again, and again.
"We've been walking in circles," Holly plopped herself on the ground in front of the painting they kept coming across. It was a portrait and it looked like it was painted before his breakdown because it wasn't erratic or death based. It was of a woman with long, dark brown hair, wearing a red velvet dress. She sat in a chair with her hand resting on the armrest delicately and her clear blue eyes looked forward intently. The colors in the painting were bright, like she was glowing with a silvery light.
They took a closer look for the first time and saw that on the plaque was the title and a few words:
Lumareine
In Memory of My Beloved Reyna Weiss
Cassia quickly opened her bag and took out Guertena's diary. She flipped it open to an entry she was curious about, and said, "Guys, I think this was Guertena's wife."
"What makes you say that?" Adrian asked, moving closer to her to see the diary page.
"While I was looking through this, the passage that saved us was on this page," Cassia pointed to the passage from May that had the word in red that saved her and Holly. "It talks about how his wife died, then his first daughter, then his second. He lost his whole family and he said he would immortalize them in art."
"The word was Charmaria?" Garry had joined her on her other side, and Ib was craning her neck to look too. "That sounds… vaguely familiar…"
"It's like Belle's painting," Cassia said. She and Holly told them all about Belle too. "Her painting was Glaiciabelle. Like a combination of her name or a derivation of her name along with the word used to describe her painting. She was in the snow. Reyna Weiss looks like she was glowing silver, angelic almost, so her word was luma, like light."
"So… what's Charmaria?" Holly asked.
"I'm not entirely sure," Cassia said. "We just have to look through this thing until we see him mention Charmaria again."
Cassia began to flip through pages slowly from the beginning. She scanned the pages briefly before moving on, looking only for one word. Her face twisted into a concentrated expression as she looked quicker and quicker across each page. She was ready to give up, when Garry froze beside her and stopped her hand from flipping the page.
"Wait a second. Flip the page back. I thought I saw something."Cassia flipped the pages back and he said, "There. That passage. It mentions Mary."
"Mary? The painting girl that stole your roses?" Cassia asked.
"She was supposed to be a painting, but something tells me she might not have been at one time," Garry's eyes showed fear and he said, "Look."
June 30th
It took me one month of working nonstop, only pausing for four hours of sleep a day and for food and bathing, but I've finished it. My darling Mary shall live forever though this painting and as long as I have it for the world to see she will never die. I will make sure she lives on, like her mother did, in art. She will be immortalized in my heart and on my canvas. I will never stop missing her or her mother or her sister. I will immediately begin the outline for her sister's memorial, and it shall be as wonderful as the others.
-Guertena-
"Mary…" Garry's eyes went wide. "She was Guertena's daughter?"
"Look," Adrian said when Cassia flipped the page. On the page was a sketch, like the sketch of a painting. The painting was of a girl who was about nine who had thick blonde hair and crystal blue eyes like Reyna Weiss'. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she stared gleefully at the observer. Yellow roses lined the bottom.
Ib buried her face in Garry's jacket. "That's her."
"I don't get it," Toby said. "Why would he name her painting Charmaria? There's nothing charming about this. It's more childlike."
"It isn't Charm then Aria. Her name is Mary, therefore he used Maria which is a derivation of Mary," Cassia said. "So the word is 'char'."
"Char," Ib said. "Like… burnt?"
"But Guertena finished the painting and died before Ib and I even stepped for in here," Garry said. "How could he have known we'd burn it?"
"I have no idea," Cassia said, flipping through the book. "Everyone keep a look out for Charmaria or any mention of Mary."
Cassia began flipping through again, but she was quickly stopped around august by Holly's hand. "I saw another mention of Mary. Go back to August the seventh."
She went back and saw the entry. It said as such:
August 7th
A horrible, horrible thing happened today. In the night, while I was working late on my beloved Mary's portrait, I drifted off and as I fell into Morpheus' arms I knocked over a candle. When I awoke, a searing pain was shooting through my arms and the whole room was filled with light despite it being the middle of the night. My work was going up in flames, and so was my shirt sleeve. When I batted out the flames engulfing my shirt, I ran to salvage every painting I could. I saved three, but my portrait of Mary I'd called Jaunemaria – Yellow Mary – was consumed before my eyes. All my best canvases were burnt to some degree, and when I got the fire out, I was forced to restart Mary's portrait, to my chagrin, on burnt paper. I tried my best to cover up the charred underneath with paint, but nothing could permanently erase the memory of the fire. Because of this, I named my new masterpiece Charmaria, and nicknamed her Mary of the Flames, because underneath her wondrous exterior she will always be scarred by the licking flames of light.
-Guertena-
"That's why Mary was so scared of fire," Ib whispered. "Because deep down it was her very being."
"Wait a second," Adrian said. "If he made paintings of his wife and his first daughter… then where's the portrait of the second daughter?"
"I think we already know that," Cassia said, flipping to the entry he made on October the second:
October 2nd
I've done it; I've finally finished the last of the paintings of my lost loves, the only girls in my life worth painting. Never again will I hire models, never again will I marry or have children. My loves are gone, but they will live on. They will always live on. My final one, my second daughter, was the most beautiful yet. I made sure to make her the opposite of her sister, to make sure that no one could ever burn her, not truly. She is at rest now, I am hoping, but at the same time I long for their return. My beloved Belle was the final straw. My career, my art, and my very being will never be the same. Farewell, Reyna, Mary, and Belle. You will forever remain in my heart.
-Guertena-
"Belle," Holly cried. "She's Mary's sister!"
"Which means…" Garry said.
"Belle is who Mary wants from you," Cassia said. "She wants to kill her own sister."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They searched around the hallway for almost a half an hour and no one found anything. They must have walked around that corner twenty times before they gave up and took to looking at the painting again. Now, Holly was sitting against the wall with her brother and Ib, Gary was leaning against the other wall, Adrian was pacing, and Cassia was still stuck looking at the painting for any clues.
"I don't get it," Cassia said. "Usually when we just put our hands on it, then a hatch opens or a clue appears."
"This means that the tests are getting harder, and belle can't always help us," Garry said.
"Belle's probably not helping us too much because she knows we know the truth and that you two might come looking for her to bring her to Mary for ransom," Adrian mumbled.
"Hey! Ib and I would never do that!" Gary protested. "We're not betrayers."
"Well how do we know you're not?" Adrian's face was stony.
"Okay, guys, stop it," Cassia hissed, turning around abruptly with a steamed look on her face. "Adrian, stop being an instigator."
"But –"
"We know that this situation we're in is dire, for some of us more than others," Cassia locked eyes with Adrian, and he didn't look away. "But we need to keep it together. Accusing people of things isn't going to get us anywhere."
"Cassia?"
"What Holly?" Cassia put her hand on her forehead.
"I think I see something on the frame," She stood up and went over to the painting. She ran her hand over the side and said, "There's something really tiny engraved here on the side."
"All this time, all we had to do was look on the SIDE?" Ib banged her head back on the wall.
Cassia went up to it and squinted. "How did you even notice that?"
"I don't know," Her mouth twisted into a confused look. "I just kind of thought of it."
"O-kay," Toby said. "So what does it say?"
"I can't make it out very well," Cassia said, "but I think it says, 'What is my name?'"
"'What is my name?'" Garry echoed, leaning back against the wall, a pondering expression on his face. His eyes were purple, but not light like Adrian's. His were very dark, like purple ink. "We could try saying the name of her painting."
"Lumareine," Cassia said. They waited a few moments, but nothing happened.
"Reyna?" Holly tried, but that again didn't work.
"Reyna Weiss?"
"Mrs. Weiss?"
None of them seemed to be working, and the painting remained unmoved and unchanged. "Well, this isn't working."
"Try looking in Guertena's diary," Ib said. "Maybe he refers to her by a pet name or something."
"Good idea, Ib," Cassia opened her bag and took out the notebook.
She opened up the book and flipped through the pages again. She couldn't help but be thankful for it, even if obtaining it almost cost her and Holly their lives. It had been a huge help to them in finding out things in this place, especially about the connection between Guertena and Mary and then Mary and Belle.
"Here," Cassia said. "I've found something."
"That entry is towards the beginning," Garry said. "Reyna Weiss was still alive."
December 11st
Today my light came to see my work. Reyna loves that I'm so creative and I love when she agrees to pose for my work. She says one day my girls will be big enough and patient enough o sit for me to paint them. I'm hoping so, because they will be very beautiful when they get older. I may now be the happiest man alive! I shall get on my next work soon. I'm thinking perhaps a woman in the rain…
-Guertena-
"He called her his light," Holly said. "Like the light of his life."
"It's so sad how he was so happy and ready to grow old with this woman and watch his girls grow up, then it was all taken away from him," Garry's look was sorrowful.
"Yeah…" Cassia said quietly. She closed the book and looked up to the painting. "Light?"
The edges of the frame began to glow, and the painting slid aside. Holly cried, "It worked!"
"Look," Adrian pointed to the painting. "The painting is glowing."
He was right. On the face of the painting words began to appear, glowing across the acrylic. They said:
Inside is a safe place
Rest here for the night then move on
You will need the strength for the trials that await you
"Let's go inside," Cassia stepped in first, and everyone else followed.