“Your dad keeps his promises.”
“He does.”
I know a little something about that. “My mate is the same way,” I offer. Vanessa’s eyes move slowly back and forth between us, clearly gauging her mother’s comfort with the stranger in their midst. “If he says he’s going to do it, hedoesit, no matter what.”
Josephine’s smile widens. “What’s your mate’s name?”
“Cal,” I answer. I laugh when Vanessa sputters, demanding to know how her motherdoesn’tknow who Cal is.
“Oh… I must have missed that.” Josephine straightens and turns to leave the kitchen, one hand waving over her shoulder. “I’ve been busy, baby. Why don’t you and your friend tell me the story while I work?”
And that is how I end up in the studio of one of the world’s most mysterious and lauded artists, recounting the story of how I met my elemental mate and wrote a book about his life’s story.
Josephine listens intently as she stands at an easel, her gaze intent on the beginnings of an oil painting. It appears to be a man’s hands, weathered and scarred, holding an equally worn carving tool. She asks quiet questions occasionally, but mostly she simply listens, humming as she steps close, then several feet back from her canvas in a slow dance.
As I watch, her slight shoulders relax. Vanessa’s eyes linger on her mother less and less. An hour later, after she has gone to look for her father and perhaps something to drink, I realize that I’ve been accepted, at least temporarily, into the Beornson home.
It is as I’m detailing my mate’s harrowing past that Josephine pauses her work to look at me. Speaking quietly, she asks, “Is that why you wanted to write an article on me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Because your mate and I have similar pasts.”
Oh,I think, having only just realized this myself. “No,” I answer honestly, “I didn’t even consider that. I wanted to write about the exhibit and you because I think your story is important. Everyone should know what happened to you.”
She hums again, her eyes cutting back to the canvas. “That’s not the important part, I think.”
“It’s not?”
“No. The only reason I agreed to the exhibit was because I wanted people to see theendof the story, not the start.”
I’m silent as I try to work out exactly what that means. Josephine must see the confusion on my face because she continues, “Everything with my father was the beginning. It led me tonow.It led me to Otto, and to our many yearslong mission to track down every one of my father’s subjects, one by one. It led me to my career, starting with Otto encouraging me to sell my work to the town newspaper. It led me to my children. It led me to now. To you.”
Josephine swirls her paintbrush in a paint-stained can of sweet-smelling chemicals. “I don’t dwell on the past. I had to let go of it and the desire to place blame. We still don’t know who my father’s patron was, nor what government, if any, was involved. There are subjects who died before I could track them down. I’ll always pity my mother, who died miserable in a cell only a year after her conviction. I’ll always wish I could have warned people what was coming after the infection began to spread from trench to trench, then city to city. These things will always hurt me, but they aren’t the focus of my story. They are footnotes.”
She pulls the brush free and begins to wipe it on a rag so stained with paint and chemicals it looks like a work of art on its own. “I am proud to say that the majority of my life has been spent joyfully. That is the story I want told, Elise.”
My throat feels a little tight. I have to clear it before I can speak again. “Do you think your daughter’s exhibit accomplishes that?”
“Sight unseen? I know it does.” There is not even an ounce of hesitation in her voice. “My Vanessa can doanything.”
“Mama, are you bragging again?”
“Of course she is,lille bjørn,”a deep baritone voice answers.
We turn to see Vanessa in the doorway, her arms crossed, standing beside a large man who can only be her father. He’s quite a bit taller than his daughter. His face and arms, exposed by a well-loved baby blue t-shirt flecked with sawdust, are deeply tanned. A hook-shaped scar bisects one blond eyebrow to touch the top of his cheek, and deep laugh lines groove the corners of his mouth. His hair is tied back in a loose braid. I can’t be sure, but I believe it and his beard have gone more white than blond.
One dark brown and one green eye watches me from across the studio. There is a taut moment, no longer than a heartbeat but almost unbearably long in the mind, before I appear to pass muster. Those laugh lines deepen with a huge, jovial grin.
“Your friend is so small!” he exclaims, striding across the studio to give me a welcoming wallop on the back that nearly sends me off my stool and out the window.
“Easy, my mate,” Josephine gently scolds him. “She’s a witch. They’re fragile, remember?”
He holds my shoulder steady as I right myself on the stool. Looking down, I realize that I recognize the hand. It’s the same one from Josephine’s painting. “Apologies,kone.I forget not everyone is as powerful as you.”
Josephine rolls her eyes before passing him what appears to be a jar of watery brown paint. “If I’m so powerful, why can’t I get this lid off?”
“Because the gods know you would not keep me around otherwise,” he answers, easily twisting the lid with hands the size of baseball mitts. He grins at her, as incorrigible as a five year old, and Josephine smiles back, her eyes shining.
