“Sketches of what?” Charlotte asked. Elspeth had been sharing a running commentary of what she’d found, bringing over occasional curiosities—like the silver basin hanging overhead—to show Charlotte.
Now she perched on the arm of Charlotte’s chair with the sketches, rubbing her lower back with a grimace.
“Are you all right?” Charlotte asked.
“Sore today, is all.”
Charlotte’s lips thinned. If she’d been sore, she would’ve thought little of it. Elspeth sore concerned her.
They leafed through the sketches together. Most were of the forest, or forest creatures, or creatures Charlotte didn’t recognize but was certain must be particular to an enchantedforest. A squirrel-like creature with ancient eyes skirting up a tree. A frog in close-up, a study more detailed than most of the sketches. A tiny old woman with tree-bark skin and a shock of pale hair—many sketches of her, most often accompanied by a raven. There was the plant creature, too, taking various shapes on the page: a ball of greenery; a loose mass of plant anatomy; the shape of a hare or fox or bird or any number of other animals. Charlotte let one of its tendrils weave through her fingers as she examined the drawings.
Occasionally, a human image cropped up. Most of the humans were figures in full, sketched as if from a distance, but there were portraits, too. Elspeth paused at one such drawing, a little girl with light hair in twin braids.
“That looks like Gran, when she was small.”
“Perhaps it is. She met the Lord of the Wood once, didn’t she?”
Elspeth nodded, her gaze flickering over the page, taking in the girl’s frock, her eyes, her nose and chin. “Got separated from her caravan once on a trip through the wood, long ago. Said the Lord of the Wood brought her back to ’em. Say, those must be Gran’s folks.”
Another sketch of the girl, this time waving from the forest’s edge, amidst a small cluster of covered wagons, shawled women, capped men.
“Gran’d love this. She’s only got a couple’a pictures, faded as anything... Maybe we’ll find a sketch of Maggie in here. Then we’d know.”
“Maybe,” Charlotte said, but it seemed improbable. The paper was yellowed and brittle with age; the sketches were likely decades old. But with Elspeth so much calmer than she’d been all day, sounding almost hopeful, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to point that out.
They flipped through more and more sketches, until Charlotte’s father smiled at them from the page. Her breath hitched.
Elspeth considered the drawing. “That’s your old man, then? Looks just like you.”
Charlotte’s eyes stung. “That’s what Arthur says.”
She took the sketch from Elspeth, studying every detail. They had few pictures of George Throckmorton, all faded or blurry like the pictures Elspeth’s gran had of her folks. Sometimes, Charlotte studied herself in the cloudy washroom mirror, trying to graft scanty memories over her own freckled reflection.
Now here he was. George Throckmorton, smiling out at her. He had broad cheeks and a high forehead. A rounded chin and matching nose. Deep dimples. Eyes that sparkled like Sasha’s. Charlotte had always thought her daughter had John’s eyes; now she realized they were George’s. Her fingers tightened on the sketch, crinkling the paper. She handed it back to Elspeth. The plant creature curled over her shoulders comfortingly.
“There’s more.” Elspeth checked the remaining sketches. “Lots more. Like there were of that little tree person. And your new pet.”
Charlotte’s skin prickled as Elspeth paged through sketch after sketch of her father. George head-on. George in profile. George laughing, or reading, or sorting through plant matter, separating stem from leaf and flower. George looking over his shoulder, annoyed, and suddenly Charlotte remembered leaving church with him once, her tiny hand in his big one. A young woman with a nervous complaint, who often wanted his care, had stopped to ask if he might look in on her new baby. Her husband had interrupted, said she always worried over nothing and what must the doctor think, always coming to the house atodd hours for ailments that turned out to be naught? Quailing, she’d apologized to George for bothering him.
George had stopped her, given her husband a look much like the one in the sketch (if tinged with disdain), and said,Ifyou’ll let me hand my own wee one off to her mother, I’ll be over directly.
Charlotte blinked back tears. She hardly remembered her father anymore, she’d been so young when he’d vanished, but now she could picture him clearly that day. How he’d been dressed, his lips pursing when the husband bowled over his wife’s concerns, the warmth of his hand around Charlotte’s.
The sketches were a gift. Yet the fact that there were so many of them had her reeling.
“I don’t...” A headache threatened in its habitual place over one eye. “Why are there so many drawings of him? He only met the Lord of the Wood once. In all his stories—”
In all Arthur’s stories. Her father had been gone so long, she only heard his stories in her brother’s voice.
She shook her head, then stopped because it aggravated the burgeoning headache. “Are there any more?”
Elspeth shifted through the sketches. “None of your da. Here now, this looks more recent. Paper’s just as yellow, but the charcoal’s not so faded.”
Charlotte took the paper and almost dropped it.
“Arthur,” she breathed.
Her eyes darted over the page, drinking in his expressions, his posture, the fall of his hair over his forehead. Every sketch was Arthur sitting in an armchair, reading, and it was all so veryArthurthat she started crying.
