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Her Instruments, Book 1
Episode 34
So Reese did, and it was messy but also delicious. “Why Eldritch?” she asked over the second bird. “You could have picked any number of other races.”
“Oh, I’ve done others,” Natalie said. “Under a different name, I write rather shocking books about humans falling in love with Ciracaana that involve quite a bit of physics, if not in the way most physicists imagine.”
“You’ve made her blush,” Shelya said. “I can smell it.”
Reese said, “Well, the Ciracaana are nine feet tall and centauroid. If you were human, you’d have the sense to blush about it yourself.”
“No wonder she and the Eldritch don’t get along!” Shelya said with a laugh. “Do you talk this way to him?”
“Maybe,” Reese said. “Sometimes.” She sighed. “Okay, maybe all the time.”
Shelya snickered and cleared away the dishes.
“Why Eldritch, you asked,” Natalie said. “Why not? I’d say. Except that would be an unfair answer. The reason is because my family’s always been interested in them, and it seemed appropriate to uphold the tradition.”
“That seems like a weird thing for a Harat-Shar family to be interested in,” Reese said.
“Not at all!” Natalie said, laughing. “We are the Alliance’s libertines, aren’t we? Pleasure for its own sake. If it feels good, how can it be wrong? And naturally we would gravitate toward our opposites, yes? What could be more diametrically opposed to a Harat-Shar than an Eldritch?”
“Nothing, I guess,” Reese said. “Still, that seems like a good reason to stay away from them. Opposites might attract, but they also cause friction.”
“Perhaps,” Natalie said. “Are you so unlike your Eldritch, then?”
Reese sighed. “He’s not mine. As I keep telling him, or he keeps telling me, or which I can’t remember anymore because he’s so stubborn I can’t tell when he’s disagreeing with me or doing what I want him to do.” She turned her glass in her fingers, leaving greasy prints on it. “I just want him to leave me alone. Things were better without him.”
“Were they?” Natalie asked.
“Yes!” Reese exclaimed. “I feel like he’s always judging me according to some standard I’ll never meet. Like he’s seen everything and I’m nothing special. I hate that he only answers the questions he wants to answer. I hate feeling like he’s part of some world that only barely touches ours. Why does he get to live so much better than we do?” She stopped abruptly, wondering when her voice had risen.
“Didn’t quite realize how much you were holding in, did you,” Natalie observed.
“I guess not,” Reese said, then straightened. “It’s still true, though.”
“Wash your fingers,” Natalie said, nodding to a bowl with a hot towel at Reese’s side. “Then come with me. I have something to show you while Shelya prepares dessert.”
Scraping the grease from her fingers with the pebbly surface of the hot towel left her hands feeling surprisingly clean, almost raw. Reese set it aside and followed Natalie into the lantern-lit warmth of the house, through the shadowed corridor in its center and into an intimately lit room, one almost too small to be called a room… in a groundsider’s house, anyway. There was a single cushioned bench in it facing a dark wooden bureau, and this Natalie opened with a thin brass key she withdrew from her vest. When she opened the bureau’s doors, the pungent smell of paper, ink and paint rushed out, tickling Reese’s nose.
“This folio never leaves this room,” Natalie said, turning from the bureau with a leather folder in her arms. “But you have plenty of time. Enjoy it, and when you’re done set it back and join us for coffee.”
“I couldn’t possibly—it’s so old—”
One of the woman’s brow ridges quirked. “And only young things need to be touched?”
Reese blushed but couldn’t come up with a response before Natalie abandoned her with the folio in her lap.
It was larger than she’d thought–longer than her forearm, but narrow. The leather wasn’t stiff, as she expected, but supple, dyed a dark blue. Hesitant, Reese untied the cords holding it shut and spread it open.
…and gasped at the parchment inside, a painting in vibrant hues, so jewel-rich she had to restrain herself from touching it. The smell of oil rose from the page and with it a sense of age.
It was only barely less staggering than the subject matter: a Harat-Shar jaguar? Leopard? reclining on a day bed beside a young Eldritch woman in sumptuous garb. The Eldritch had a book in hand and appeared to be reading out loud. The Harat-Shar was listening.
They looked so real. And they continued to look real in all the paintings that followed: twenty-two in all, each more unbelievable than the one before. It wasn’t what Reese had expected from a folio of paintings in a Harat-Shar’s bureau—there was nothing salacious about it—but despite the two never touching, never being undressed, never doing anything at all inappropriate, there was an unbearable sense of intimacy in each scene, so pointed Reese touched her cheek and realized it was warm from blushing.
She looked through the whole series of pastoral scenes twice, trying to decide what about it made them so hard to look at, and for the life of her couldn’t decide. And despite her embarrassment, she found her fingers reluctant to tie the folio shut and put it away.
The two women were back in the garden, sipping coffee and nibbling on a white cake thick with a frosting made especially rich by the yellow candlelight. Reese resumed her seat, blinked at the slice handed to her by Shelya, and sipped the coffee, bitter and dark.
“Well?” Natalie asked.
“Who were those two?” Reese asked.
“Sellelvi and Fasianyl,” Natalie said.
“Were they real?” Reese asked.
“Ah!” Natalie said with a laugh. “Does it matter?”
Reese focused on the cake, then looked up at the Harat-Shar. “Of course it matters.”
“Does it make the paintings any less special?”
“No, of course not,” Reese said. “But it could make them more special.”
“Eat the cake,” Shelya whispered. “You look like you could use it.”
Dazed, Reese parted a corner of the cake with her fork and tried it. The frosting was lemon.
“Maybe they were real. Maybe they weren’t. Even if they were real, some secrets aren’t mine to give away,” Natalie said. “That’s the first thing you should have figured out about Eldritch. It’s not just that they keep secrets… it’s that the secrets keep them, fast as prisons.” At Reese’s expression, she grinned and continued, “Those paintings have been in my family for over a hundred years… and whosoever made them didn’t do us the kindness of telling us about their inspiration. She had a fine hand with a brush, and maybe painting them was all she could say. Or maybe it was all she had to say.”
“They’re priceless,” Reese said. “Reproductions of them would make you a rich woman.”
“You saying that as a trader?” Natalie asked. “Or as a woman who wishes she had a copy?”
“A little of both, maybe,” Reese said, realizing the cake was good. She gave it more of her attention, and the more she ate the less vague she felt.
“There’s more than one way to be rich,” Natalie said. “I have no use for more money.”
Reese hesitated over the cake.
“You’re thinking something awkward, I’m sure,” Natalie said. “Say it, say it. We’re not oh-so-polite Eldritch ourselves.”
“It seems wrong to keep something so beautiful hidden, when so many people could see and enjoy it,” Reese said slowly. “Those pieces could hang in a museum.”
“They could,” Natalie agreed. “But not everyone could enjoy them as you have.”
“What makes me so special?” Reese asked.
The old woman grinned. “You have an Eldritch of your own. That makes you special… very special. I hoped that seeing the pictures would keep you from wasting him.”
“He’s not mine to waste!” Reese exclaimed.
“Of course he is. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
“Figured what out?” Reese asked, gripping her fork harder.
Natalie only shook her head. “Read more carefully, girl. And finish your coffee there, before it gets cold.”
Try as she could, Reese got no more information out of the writer than that, and though she ate more cake than she intended in her pursuit, Natalie cheerfully offered no more insight. Standing outside the Harat-Shariin’s house and staring at the stars, Reese reflected that while dinner had been pleasant, she’d gotten even less information out of Natalie than she’d ever gotten out of Hirianthial….
Except for the paintings. The beautiful paintings.
With a shiver, Reese headed back to her hammock.
One of my favorite scenes in the book. :)
I have always intended to get around to writing Fasianyl and Sellelvi’s story. I’ve known about it for a long time! Here, enjoy some of the art I’ve drawn of them.
The super-observant will note that the final drawing I’ve linked here is… the one Reese has open on her lap on the right side…! Is that attention to detail or just over meta-ness?
