“The mimic is a tricky beast. If we get separated, we need a way to know if the other is real or the mimic in disguise. So you tell me a secret. I’ll do the same. Something no one else could know, something specific, impossible to fake. If at any time you suspect I’m not real, ask me to tell you my secret. If I can’t answer, you’ll know it isn’t me.”
“Won’t that give away that we’re on to it?”
“Obviously.”
His eyebrows lifted. “And what good will that do, exactly?”
“For me? I’ll kill it. For you?” She shrugged, eyeing his satchel disparagingly. “Turn its eyes a more flattering color. Perhaps it will take the compliment in lieu of a meal.”
“If it has your eyes, I’m doomed. Yours couldn’t have a more flattering color.”
No one could be more surprised he’d said it than him; but Anya looked close. An awkward silence bloomed between them.
“I hope for my sake this monster takes compliments better than you,” he managed.
“Just…think of something,” she grumbled.
He knew she was right; he sighed. “I – I paint.Usedto paint,” he corrected.
“Not specific enough. Anyone can tell you’re artistic from one look at you.”
“I’m going to takethatas a compliment, I think.”
“More specific, wizard. Use that appropriately stimulated mind of yours.”
He ignored the jab.Specific, and secret. A memory blue as melancholy swallowed him; one he’d never shared with anyone, not even his parents.
“I painted my first still life when I was twelve,” he told her. “Long before I ever had a drawing lesson. I didn’t know the theory and barely understood the form. I liked the style. I used watercolors, all my parents could afford. I submitted it to the Royal Art Society of Gescany, hoping they would admit me on scholarship, or at least display it at their annual salon.”
Embarrassed at his childhood naiveté, at where that dream had brought him, he halted. Still, the memory was warmer than the yawning dark before them; as was Anya’s furrowed brow concentrated upon him. He found he wanted to linger just a bit longer.
“It was rejected, of course. And now I know they would never accept a still life, whatever the quality. It’s a low form, vulgar, material. Vaguely proletarian.” He laughed ironically. “True enough. My parents must have scrimped pennies for months to afford the canvas and brushes.”
He was rambling now; he cleared his throat, etching the blue wash into focus.
“To bespecific, it was a floral arrangement, in a blue porcelain vase on a plain table. I believe I added a lemon, for contrast. I’m sure it was laughable, both for skill and for likeness. At that age, I had never seen a grand floral arrangement except from far away. The only flowers I knew were unimpressive. Sidewalk daisies, potted chrysanthemums. Those went in, of course. I think I may have imagined the rest.”
Abruptly, he stopped, clamping his mouth shut. He’d revealed far more than he needed to, far more than he’d intended. He kept doing that with her. Losing himself. Showing soft shades he would rather stay shadowed; shades he knew she would despise. He rubbed his aching temples and braced for her derision.
None came. Vaguely concerned, he looked up.
To his great shock, she did not look at him with contempt. She looked at him like she’d uncovered even more than what he’d shown. Like she’d discovered a hidden detail in a portrait she’d never noticed before, one that gave new light to the whole picture, one that explained everything.
And, if he let himself, he might imagine she looked at him with something like understanding. A resounding consonance. A heart-wrenching accord.
It pinioned him to the cavern floor.
“Specific enough?” he said tightly, looking away, hoping to calm his beating heart.
“…Yes. That’s…sufficient.”
“Your turn, then.”
She hesitated, shifting the torch to her other hand. Neither of them were eager to leave this moment of calm, but he would not imagine it was anything more than a chance to catch their breath, strangers paused under an oak at the edge of a pouring rain. Strange, though, that his breath seemed harder to catch than ever.
“There’s too much to choose from,” she said finally. “No one knows much about me at all.”
You’re fierce as a falcon. You’re sly as a snake. You’re more beautiful than the first bloom of spring after a winter starved of light, than the first breath of autumn after summer’s haze.
