Bea nodded, and I watched as something kindled in her eyes. “I love to draw,” she amended.
I slid off the edge of the bed, and came over to sit on the floor in front of the closet. “I wish I could draw, but I can barely manage stick figures. What kind of stuff do you like to draw?”
That spark I’d seen in her eyes ignited, and the words burst from her, as though she’d waited since the day she was born for someone to ask her that very question. “Everything! The ocean. Plants and animals. People. People the most. But not as they really are.”
“What do you mean? How do you like to draw them?” I asked. At first, I’d just been trying to cheer her up, but now I was actually curious.
“I like to draw people the way I imagine them. How theyshouldbe,” she explained solemnly.
“How they should be?”
She frowned. “It’s sort of hard to explain. No one really walks around as their true self. They walk around being the person other people want them to be. That always makes me sad. So when I draw someone, I draw them the way they really are. On the inside.”
I blinked, and did my best to swallow my astonishment. Instead, I attempted a casual nod and said, “You must be a talented artist, then. Would you let me see one of your drawings?”
Bea narrowed her eyes at me, as though she was sizing me up, judging whether I was worthy of this most prestigious honor. She hesitated so long that I wondered if she’d ever shared her drawings with anyone at all, even her own family. At last, shenodded slowly, once, and leaned closer to me, her voice a mere whisper.
“I can show you one. But you have to promise not to tell anyone,” she said.
I quickly raised a hand, like I was swearing in before a judge—in a weird way, it felt like the same thing. “I promise. I give you my word as a Vesper.”
Bea seemed to take those words as seriously as I meant them. She pulled out the notebook that had been concealed behind her leg, and placed it on her lap. She thumbed through the pages before laying it open to a portrait.
“This is Xiomara,” Bea said, in the tiniest of voices.
I stared in awe at the creation in front of me. It looked exactly like Xiomara—that much was obvious to anyone who had ever met her. Bea had, in relatively few strokes of her pencil, captured the high cheekbones, the wry mouth, the wise eyes. But it wasn’t just that it looked like Xiomara—itwasXiomara, just as Bea had said. Xiomara was in the details—the towel thrown over her shoulder, the spoon held so naturally in her grip, the proportions of her hands, which had conjured and cooked and nurtured themselves into a gnarled shape that was, in itself, poetry. Around her, hovering over her shoulders, were a dozen vague, shadowy shapes that lacked true definition, and yet were unmistakably people. I thought about what Eva had told me, that Xiomara’s food was so wonderful because it was as though she had the ancestors whispering in her ears.
“You’re absolutely right, Bea. ThatisXiomara,” I murmured.
Bea nodded again, as though she knew every detail that had just flashed through my mind. “I don’t show these to a lot of people. I don’t think they would understand. And it feels like… like giving away other people’s secrets.”
“Because you see them in a way that other people don’t?”
“Yes. I think sometimes I see things that they would rather hide. That they do hide. Every day.”
I looked down at the sketchbook in her hands, and was suddenly burning with curiosity. What did little Bea see that other people didn’t? Who else had she drawn, and what had she revealed about them with a few strokes of a pencil? I longed to look through every page to see what else I might be able to learn about the people around me. Maybe even…
“Have you ever drawn me?” I asked.
I expected Bea to look embarrassed again, but she didn’t. She nodded solemnly at me instead, never taking her eyes from mine.
I felt unaccountably nervous. “Is… that something you would ever let me see?” I asked.
Bea tilted her head to one side, considering. “Maybe. But not today.”
I nodded. It might have been a drawing of me, but I certainly didn’t feel entitled to it, no matter how curious I was. It belonged much more to Bea than it did to me; and anyway, for all it might reveal about me and how she saw me, it would surely reveal almost as much about her, and that had to be her choice.
Suddenly, Bea sighed, her face crumpling.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I wish I knew what it meant.”
I waited for her to clarify, and a moment later, she obliged.
“My drawing. Sometimes, I wonder if it might have something to do with my magic.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
