Part 4

      But maybe just the idea of this mansion will be enough... I already have ideas and atmospheres creeping into my thoughts, a close-up on a broken window, maybe, with vines curling tenderly around the sharp edges... that's actually not a bad idea. Shifting on the rock, I pull my bag around and get my sketchbook out. I scrawl a few notes, and do a quick thumbnail of the image in my head. I'll need to find some reference for old glass, I have an idea of what a window would look like, left solely to nature's attention for several decades, but I'd feel better if I had something to look at, to get the subtleties right.

      I decide to follow the fence and creek for another half hour or so, and then consider heading back if nothing new of interest turns up. I think I'll listen to an audiobook on the walk back, it will make it a little less tedious to retrace my path. For now, I leave my iPod on shuffle, tuning in and out as I walk, stopping now and again to take a few more pictures, or make notes of compositions popping into my head.
      Before long, I realize that the creek is curving toward--- no I guess it would be the other way around, the fence is curving closer to the creek. Definitely closer... oh it does! A few dozen yards ahead, the creek flows right into the fence, passing through it somehow or another. There's got to be some kind of opening there, they wouldn't have let the water run right through the iron railings, they'd rust so soon that way. I can't tell at all from here, the vines and other plants grow even more densely here, being so near the water. I'm so glad I came out here before full summer hits, I'd never be able to get through any of this stuff. And mosquitoes... I hadn't even thought about that, this creek bed is going to be a hellhole of bugs when the temperature gets just a little bit higher. All the more reason to keep going today.
      I'm halted a good five feet from the place where the creek passes under the fence. Even though most of it is dry and brown, dead growth from last year, there's just so much plant matter that I can't get any closer without a battle. The creek is narrower here, so it runs a little deeper, deep enough that I can't possibly step in it. There are stones, but nothing big enough to help me. I can push through some of this stuff, but... what kind of a gap is there in the fence, anyway?
      Glancing around, I find a young tree amidst the brush, close to the water. It will sort of hold my weight, if I hold on to it while leaning out across the creek... I crouch down and get a good grip on the tree with one hand, then lean as far out as I can, as close to the water's surface as I can, trying to see under the vines and other growth... there's definitely light coming through, more by the water than elsewhere... there! There's fence to either side, but definitely not over the water itself, there's a break of some kind. Standing back up, I push my way a few feet into the crackling dry branches and vivid baby leaves, trying to decide if the vines above the water look any less dense than the ones on the sides... and I'm pretty sure they do. All I should have to do, then, is come back with decent boots, and I can wade through the creek and under the opening made for the water. Awesome.
      I have no actual reason to think that just because the water is allowed onto the other side of the fence at this point, that there is anything of interest on the other side of the fence. Hell, I don't even know which side of the fence is the “inside”! I'm going to come back anyway though, despite what my head says. My curiosity demands I investigate the other side of the fence, and so I shall.
      I find a rock to sit on at the water's edge, and gaze toward the hole I can barely make out. Despite all my brain's attempts to be rational, I can't help but feel there's something just a few feet away, hidden by the vine-draped fence... if I could just reach a little farther, I could touch it...
      A bit of color in the water catches my eye, and I look around for a stick. Finding one, I prod at the thick layers of decaying leaves and plant debris at the bottom of the creek bed. There are stones underneath – marble? It's a bright enough white to be marble. I poke around closer to the bank, until I uncover some close enough to reach in and pick up. I swish the stone around in the water to clear off the mud, then hold it up where the sun can strike it. Definitely marble, the same kind of crushed stone my grandma had by her back porch when I was little. My stomach lifts a little closer to my throat, my heart picking up and giggling defiantly at my brain. There's got to be something close! And the water's flowing from the opposite side of the fence, flowing out from there to here, so the stones must have been on the other side... stones that have no business being in the middle of the woods where there is no human habitation. The abandoned mansion is on the other side of the fence, that's all there is to it. I roll the stone around in my hand for a minute, smiling at the small sparkles of light that glint from the small flat surfaces on the rough-cut stone. There's got to be something over there...
      I lean toward the water again, gently tossing the stone back to rest among its brethren... and another color catches my eye. A bright cobalt blue? It's right near the bank, so I reach in to pick it up. A bit of china? Not quite... at least I don't think so. One of my friends growing up lived a little farther outside town than I did, the houses were a little older, and we used to find bits of broken dishes in her vegetable garden, or at the edges of the farmer's fields. Just little one, maybe two-inch bits, white porcelain with delicate blue details. But the blue in this is different, and the weight feels different too... I rinse it off a little more in the water, and find that there's orange, and lighter blue, in an almost Oriental style of abstract vines and flowers. It looks similar to the fence, actually, something in the style of it.
      The fence is far too expensive to have had a trash heap near it, this can't be a broken dish. I don't actually know what rich millionaires used to do with their garbage, but somehow the thought of them keeping it piled up on their own property doesn't sit well with me. And not beside a pretty little creek running through their yard.
      Retrieving my stick, I poke around the creek bed some more, pushing aside the heavy old leaves, testing the mud, seeing what else is in there... I hit something bigger than the marble stones, and smoother than stones anyway. Eagerly, I try to pry it up. It's under some leaves, and sunk in some awfully sticky mud, but I feel it giving---
      And then it flips away from my stick, flopping over on its other side, back into the mud. I scootch closer to the water's edge, and start prying at it again, trying to coax it back toward me. Eventually I move it closer - it's not easy pushing something from its opposite side with a stick. I need something with a hook... but there aren't any sticks around me the right shape, so I persevere with my straight twig. Finally, I can see if, the moving water beginning to clear the mud off portions of it. It's square, maybe four, five inches across - and has the same pattern as the bit of china I already picked up. I can't see more than an inch or two, but it looks gorgeous...
      Once it's in reach, I plunge my hand into the water and snatch it up, shaking it vigorously under the water, reaching in with my other hand to push the ancient mud off its surface. Then, curling my hands around it, I lift it tenderly out from the water, and bring it into the light.
      It's solid, there are a few darkened cracks in the glaze coating it, but the square tile seems to be intact. The colors aren't smooth... it's definitely hand painted, the variations are clearly brush strokes. The blue of a winter evening, the aqua of the brightest summer sky you've ever seen, and a coral... a coral that reminds me of blood on a freshly-bitten lip, though it's really more orange than that. There's something vital and almost feral about the color, set against the cool blues like that... A thin black outline traces the flowers and leaves and flourishes of the design, and there is so little variation...
      This is a single tile, maybe five inches. Like a bathroom tile... That's what it reminds me of, Roman baths, though the style of this definitely isn't Greek or Roman. Most of my art history is pretty hazy, but I can tell that much. Definitely more east than that, maybe Russian or Islamic in origins... I have my book somewhere in the apartment (after spending as much as I did on the thing, I wasn't about to give it up for the twenty bucks the campus bookstore would have given me), I'll have to look it up when I get back. I pull out my sketchbook, and lay the tile carefully in the middle of it, hoping the pages will cushion the ceramic from any stumbling around I might do on my long walk back.