NaNo '09!

I WIIIIIIN!

2009-11-30T22:35:00.002-05:00

NaNo's site reads my novel as only being 50,196 words - but I knew that would happen, so I wrote until I had 50,318 on OpenOffice, just to be sure.

But I WIIIIIIN! After cranking out, what, four thousand freaking words today?? Insanity. But I did it! And I think I actually covered all the ground I'd had planned out (aaand then some), so I'm really, really happy.

I feel like it might actually be somewhat readable in its current form, too, which is new. There are some bad rambling places, but overall... I am pretty darn happy. There are scene changes! There are people with personality! There is some less-than-painful dialog! wooo!

...and the book I mention in that last paragraph? Is the one with the flower-meaning lists that I've been consulting all along. :)

Yaaaaaaaaaay. That makes three wins out of six attempts - wooo for a 50% success rate! \0/

oh quantum physics

2009-11-30T20:26:00.002-05:00

Tom gave me a pretty good explanation, and I read the following articles and looked at their pictures, to try to get my own grip on the physics of the teleportation we've been doing lately:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/19690
http://www.aip.org/png/html/teleport.htm
(The second one is a rather old, outdated article, but the basic premise is the same - and it's explained muuuch more simply.)

It took me awhile to realize that we're not actually moving particles around, just the information that makes the particle what it is. Or something like that.

The best way to learn something really is to try and explain it to someone else... even if that someone is a fictional character. That you yourself are writing. (Bonus points if she knows even less science than you do!)

But I am GOING to make it to 50k! I had a coworker's party Saturday night, and then went downtown for a little while, and I need to remember I can't drink as much as other people I know. ;p Crashed that night. Sunday I worked early, as did Tom, so after getting home and then going grocery shopping... uh, we were out by like 8pm lmfao. So I wrote about a thousand words before showering this morning, spent the day on a belated Thanksgiving dinner for us, aaaand now am trying to write before the three glasses of wine make me fall asleep. woooooo!

Parts 28-30

2009-11-30T08:52:00.004-05:00

      I find myself hitting one dead end after another, my path blocked by overgrown plants, or bridges that have collapsed after long years, or bogs that have appeared where once a creek bed flowed or pond was retained. The air only gets hotter as the sun climbs into the afternoon, and it's gotten awfully humid. However slowly I walk, I find beads of sweat trickling down my neck every few minutes, and the heat only makes me feel more frustrated when my way is blocked. So I head for home, I'll come back another day, maybe earlier in the morning next time – exploring in this heat is ridiculous.

      But at home, I'm restless, my thoughts continually going back to Calvin's death. I try to think of other things, try to distract myself by getting caught up on washing dishes, even cleaning the bathroom, headphones cranked up loud, but it's no use.
      Finally, exasperated, I flop down on the living room floor with a sketchbook and some pastels. I'm going to have to draw this kid, there's just no way around it. Hopefully that will get all of this weight off my chest...

      My doorbell rings.
      I jump about half a mile, narrowly missing drawing a line of cobalt blue all over my drawing. My doorbell rarely ever rings, I don't know all that many people in town... I stand up--- and stagger, finding my feet have fallen asleep again. I seriously need to get a drafting table or something, working on the floor just isn't cutting it anymore. Rubbing my hands together to try and get some of the pastel dust off, I manage to get to the door, taking a quick glance through the peephole – which I'm not in the habit of doing, but, I'm really confused about who's there.
      Then I laugh and fling open the door. “Dad!”
      He chuckles and gives me a hug. “Hey there, Kimber. Sorry to drop in without warning, but there was a trade show I had to go to today, and I realized on the drive down how close my route took me near you. So I thought I'd stop by if I had time on the way home. You up for some supper?”
      I grin, feeling much lighter at heart, now that I have a chance to be out of my own head for awhile. “Sure! Just let me go wash up, I'm a bit of a mess.” I hold out my rainbow-colored hands and smile sheepishly.
      He just smiles, shaking his head. “Some things never change...”
      “Just look out for my stuff! It's all over the floor,” I call out as I head to the bathroom to clean up.
      “I can see that... who's the kid?” he calls back, curiously.
      I stop a moment, unsure how to answer. I haven't even thought about how to explain these drawings to other people... saner people... “Just a sec,” I answer, a little weakly. I glance in the mirror, and, seeing color smudges on my cheek and forehead, wash my face, then dry my hands slowly, still not sure what to say.
      Walking back to the living room, I find Dad flipping carefully through the pile of drawings on the couch, all in various stages of completion.
      “These look really good, Kimber... the fountain's a little different for you, but I think it's interesting. Lot of details in everything.”
      “Thanks...”
      “Who are all these people?”
      “Well...” I rub the back of my neck, a little embarrassed – but it's my dad, I can give him pretty much the truth. Just leaving out a few of the unbelievable details. “There was this family that lived near here, but the house burned down a hundred years ago and they moved away. But the gardens are still there, sort of, they're really overgrown... but it's such a pretty place, and it's not all that far to walk, so I've been over there a lot this summer.”
      “Ah, I see. It does look like a beautiful spot.” Glancing down at the first drawing I did, of the boy by the creek bed: “Is that the original tile work? It looks almost Turkish.”
      I nod, smiling. “It's the original, yeah... it's missing in places now of course, but I cleaned one of the tiles and the colors really are still that bright.” I rummage through my pile of reference material (mostly print-outs of flower photographs, both ones I took myself and ones I found online), and hand him the tile.
      “Wow... hand painted, you think?”
      I nod. “Pretty sure – you can see the brush strokes, especially here, and here...”
      “Oh yeah... huh.”
      “I'm going to take it over to campus sometime, and have Dr. Reiff take a look at it, see what he thinks.”
      He nods. “That's a good idea. So! Where do you want to go eat, kid?”

      Half an hour later, we've placed our orders at a favorite local restaurant (something of a bar and grille, but a little upper-scale than that, some of the best food in town and a nice casual atmosphere), and have caught up on all the news from home.
      “The town pretty quiet, with college out of session?” Dad asks.
      I consider this. “Yeah, you know, it really is... I've hardly even noticed though, I've been so caught up in what I'm doing, with work too, but mostly the drawings, and walking through the garden, and trying to research...”
      I tell him about a few of my research efforts, and we both laugh at the banter among the historical society members.
      “The drawing you were working on today, was that one of the Masons?”
      I nod, suddenly saddened. “Yeah... That's Calvin, pretty sure he was the youngest of three kids – though I could still be missing one or two kids, it's hard finding mentions of them. But he died at the age of maybe five or something, really young.”
      “That's always so sad... What did he die from?”
      “You know, I'm actually not sure... something was wrong with his lungs, might have been tuberculosis or something. But he was weak pretty much his whole life, was always stuck in bed.”
      “Mmm.”
      I pull myself back to reality. I need to remember that not everyone is as obsessed with this family as I am. I'm probably starting to sound just the way he does, when he's going on and on about his latest audio project. At this, I start to laugh.
      “What're you laughing at?” He looks up at me, suspicious.
      “Nothing... just thinking that I'm starting to sound like you, rambling on and on about a hobby until your listeners fall asleep.”
      “Oh, my hobbies aren't that boring, are they?”
      “...hate to break it to you, but, yeah, they kind of are.”
      “Oh, you hypocrite. How many mp3s have I made for you and that silly iPod? You know how much it pained me to do that, right?”
      I giggle, nodding. “Yes, Dad...”
      “Still can't see why they couldn't have built in a little support for other file types... with the market cornered like that, they were really in a fantastic position to set a new standard for quality.”
      “Yes, Dad...”
      “Alright then, I'll try another hobby. You remember the transporters, on Star Trek?”
      I roll my eyes. I know I'm not the only one my age who was force-fed the show in its various incarnations, but it's still not something I like acknowledging in public. “Yes...”
      “We've done it.”
      I raise an eyebrow, skeptical. “Really.”
      “Really! ...alright, so we can't do anything much bigger than an atom, and it's not actually moving, but...”
      Our food arrives, and I take my plate gratefully. If I'm eating, I have an excuse to not answer coherently. Alongside the audiophile in my father, lies the inner science geek. I suppose it's all related – figuring out the inner workings of the world, understanding how things work, way down on the most basic structural levels. I can usually follow the general idea of what he's discussing, but I get lost pretty quickly when he gets really into it. Still, it makes him happy to have someone listen, so I'll listen – even if I don't entirely understand.
      “It's still a huge step in the physics world, and really, what it might do in the computer industry is pretty astounding. We really can't push computers much more in terms of speed, going on the current technology.” He takes a bite of a roast beef sandwich, nodding approval. “This's pretty good.”
      I grin, munching on a salad – well, barely a salad, it's so covered in pecan-crusted chicken, strawberries, blue cheese, bacon bits, some more fruit, and a raspberry vinaigrette. “Their food's always good, yeah. And I promise I'm listening to you.”
      “You know, I think they're actually working on this at your college – or maybe it was one of the college's extensions. Somewhere near here, anyway, they're working on some aspect of the whole thing. But anyway... So there's this whole quantum entanglement thing... which I'm sure you don't remember. Basically, two little bits of matter – on the subatomic level – have this invisible link between them. You know electrons though, right?”
      I nod, high-school chemistry drawings of electrons in their orbits skipping through my memory. (It figures, I remember the freaking drawings, if nothing else!)
      “Well, if you split an atom up, and take two of its electrons, they somehow remember that they once shared a connection of some kind, even if you move them really far apart.”
      I smile at this – that's actually a really cool, surprisingly romantic concept. And I know that anything I take from the garden, no matter where I may move to with it, will always cling to the memory of that place...
      “So. What they've done now, is taken two of those entangled particles. They take a look at the properties of those particles, and find that, say, they're forced to compliment each other. If one is polarized – that is, the field around it vibrates – at 45 degrees, the other one goes at 135 degrees.”
      He must have seen my eyes glazing over. “That's a 180 degree difference – it... well, it made it spin the opposite way, think of it that way.”
      I giggle. “Sorry. Okay.”
      “So a third particle is brought in, and they give it a specific set of properties. Then they measure that particle alongside the first entangled particle. The results are sent to the second entangled particle... and it changes. With the third particle sitting next to an entangled one, the other entangled one sees that new information, and changes into it!”
      He's practically bouncing in his seat. I think I have the gist of it... maybe. “So... without actually touching the second particle, we've reprogrammed it? Changed its properties... which basically turned it into something else, without us touching it?”
      “In essence, yes! Isn't that incredible? Think about that ability in a computer... in cloud computing, especially, you could edit files at a distance without any kind of wire, or even a wireless router or anything! ...at least I think so.” He sits in silence a moment, brows furrowed.
      I laugh. “Did we talk ourselves into a corner again?”
      He chuckles, shaking his head to clear it. “I suppose. I haven't had any more science classes than you have, and mine were much longer ago...”
      “That actually is very cool. Only... my science is pretty sketchy, but wouldn't that mess with conservation of mass or something?”
      “No, it doesn't – the information basically passes from one molecule to another, it's not actually adding or taking away anything from the universe.”
      “Alright...”
      “...but what it might mess with, is the whole space-time continuum.”
      I raise a skeptical eyebrow again. “Are you talking Star Trek, or physics?”
      “There's quite a bit of physics in Star Trek, thank you! But I do mean physics – space and time really are inextricably linked. So I have to think that if we're poking around, moving things – even just information, swapping properties – around space willy-nilly, it might start screwing with time a bit. Last I read, they were almost up to moving visible things around, there might well be experiments going on with things visible to the naked eye – nothing is ever really published until they've proven it and can explain it, I'm sure the cutting edge of science is far beyond what gets into the public.”
      “You're going into tangents,” I point out casually, popping a strawberry into my mouth. This is such a frequent occurrence that my sister and I have gotten into the habit of pointing it out to him, to save everyone involved time and sanity. He no longer bothers to be offended by the reminders, knowing full well that we're right.
      “So I am. But, space and time, definitely linked. Can't mess with one without messing with the other. They keep shifting bigger things around, they might just open up a giant wormhole into the past, which will suck people in, and then with the time line being affected, the people who went back in time would never have been born, and---”
      We're both laughing now, and he digs back into his sandwich.
      “Alright, well, I'm done. What else is new in your world, kid?”

      It was a long and leisurely dinner, finished by splitting a piece of the restaurant's absolutely amazing ice cream lasagna (which is really good, I promise! Layers of ice cream, crumbly cookie bits, hot fudge, that sort of thing). Dad drove me home, and then headed home himself, the sky turning dark with the oncoming night.
      The apartment always feels so quiet after I've had company... wish I was allowed to have some kind of pet here. (Fish do not count. Fish are not cuddly, and really don't have any personality to speak of.) But there on the living room floor, are the faces of those who... well, I suppose Evelyn and Calvin are almost friends, of a sort...
      “Are you Ev'lyn's friend, Kimber?”
      I smile sadly, my heart sore at the memory of that delicate young voice. He had asked it by way of confirming I was the same Kimber that she'd told him about, but I hear the question differently now. I am their friend... though removed by so much space, so much time...
      And I can't help but laugh, remembering my dinner conversation - how could time and space be anything but connected? Though just now, all I can feel is how they team up to keep me farther away from things... Farther away from friends who died a hundred years before I was born. And what makes it all the stranger, is that I know we would be friends, if we lived in the same world. As far removed as Evelyn's elaborate dresses are from my jeans and t-shirts, something in her eyes, in her speech, in the things she noticed, I know that we see the world in the same way. She's an artist too, though I have no idea if she's ever had a drawing class. And Calvin... who could help but love the child?
      Where were his parents, as he lay dying, could have died alone, in his bed? I blink back tears, a lump in my throat. Evelyn would have been there, whether I'd shown up or not, I'm sure of it, but... it was such a near thing. In all fairness, if the child had been sick his whole life, I guess I couldn't expect Cora to have been at his side every moment... but “charity begins at home”, as I'm sure she told a hundred other women in the town. I can't help but feel angry at her for her neglect. And to let the father treat the children so roughly, too! I'm almost glad Calvin spent his days in his room, it saved him from beatings, at least...
      I sit down, spreading the drawings around me, looking from one to the next, as at the faces of dear friends. I'll keep you all near... and Calvin, I'll give you what life I can, here in my time, where you would have been safe, and cured, and able to run free in that beautiful garden...
      I work a little more on the original drawing of Cal and the forget-me-nots, but soon another image is burning in my mind, demanding my attention, and I pull out a fresh sheet of paper. I begin to draw a new composition, sketching in the lines of a part of the garden I was in this morning. Bold-colored flowers are planted in large dots over the green ground, a mound of golden yarrow, a snowball of white daisies and spherical flame of red ones, a low pool of violet pansies... I put in a little pocket of Canterbury Bells near the border of the page – Evelyn wouldn't ever be far from her little brother, I'm sure of it. But the main feature is a long row of arbor vitae, and though the shapes are now blurred, I know they were once trained into perfect geometric forms – so that's how I'm drawing them, trimmed into spirals and pom-poms, and there, off to the left, that one's an elephant... a giant elephant-shaped bush, probably the size of a real elephant. And running toward it, laughing in delight, is a small boy with chestnut curls, joy in his every gesture.

      A few days later, I head to the library, to poke around at art books, history books, flower books... anything that catches my eye that might help shed some light on the Masons and their world. And their house. I really should check to see when I can drop by the town hall and flip through their old photos and things, but it's a weekend, I'm sure they'd be closed today.
      Stepping into the library, I pause a moment to savor the coolness of the building. Libraries are always just the right temperature in the summer – cool enough to be a fantastic relief, but not the ridiculously frigid freezers that big chain stores are.
      “Kimber! How are you?”
      Turning to face the desk, I grin - Mary Sueter is again at the helm of the library. “Doing all right, how are you?”
      “Oh, bored to tears, the usual for the summertime. I really shouldn't be reading while I'm on-duty, but there's only so much organizing you can do in one day. I cleaned up the old card catalog, making sure everything was where it should be – it's a ridiculous old behemoth to keep around, but, people my age just don't catch on to them new-fangled computers, don'tcha know.”
      I stifle a giggle at her impersonation of her peers. Despite the fact that her voice is full-volume, I still find it hard to break the quiet library habit that's been drilled into me since birth.
      “I don't feel I could look at another bit of typewritten text for weeks... and books aren't much relief. Please tell me there's something I can help you with? Please?”
      Now I can't help but laugh, and she joins in. “Well... I'm really not after anything specific I don't think, but...”
      “Oh that just makes the challenge all the better! I know – well, very nearly – every book in this place.”
      “Well... I'm really just looking for anything that might be relevant to the Masons, anything about their time period, or the history of the town then, or more on the culture of the time... or more about plants, or the type of sculptures in the garden, or...” I spread my hands in helplessness.
      She beams. “Five books have popped into my head already. You just find a seat and make yourself comfortable, and I'll be back in two shakes.”
      I'm a little amazed at how quickly she moves – and the efficiency. She makes a beeline for one aisle, scans along the Dewey numbers (which still manage to elude me) with a fingertip, then skims the titles, and slips a book off the shelf into her fingers, already turning her body toward her next destination.
      It can't be more than three minutes when she's returned to drop the promised five books into my lap. “There! Record time – but I have to admit that I cheated, I reshelved one of those first thing this morning. Now, you flip through and see if any of those suits your fancy. I have another in mind that I'll have to do a bit of a search for... would it be in with history, sociology, or botany...”
      I am officially in awe of this woman. Somehow, she makes being a librarian seem like an adventure, which I would have never thought possible.
      I take the first book off the pile on the low table beside me. A small paperback, with a history of the town outlined in it. Portions look pretty detailed, giving decent biographies of some of the town's founders, though there's not half as much detail as I'd like. Still, it looks like a great starting place – and skimming the index, I see Cora is mentioned in several places.
      I set it back on the table, picking up the next. It's another slim paperback, but I grin brightly as I spot the author's name: Dr. Carl Reiff, Ph. D. Hooray! It's actually a book on local architecture, showing photos of some of the older houses in town, with discussions of the different styles and trends in architecture. Not a topic that interests me a whole lot, but I wonder... I flip through the pages, pausing anywhere I see a tower at the left-hand corner of the house.
      And then I stop:
      It's such a dark, blurry image, I can barely make it out. There are huge trees to either side of the house – I almost missed the tower. But I know that pathway, and I know the shape of those rose bushes, and I'm sure those are day lilies blooming at the base of the house, those little white spots there among the leaves.
      The notes beneath the photo read:
      “Only remaining photograph of the Mason estate, near present-day Central Ave. and Walnut St. Possibly built 1820s, though date is uncertain. Style is largely in imitation of an Italian villa, however the touches of Gothic make it an unusual case. Burned in 1902.”
      I touch my fingertips reverently to the image, squinting to try and see more detail... but the photo must have been badly damaged by the years, and making a copy of it did it no favors. Still, the shape of the house is there, anyway. Taller than it is wide, looks like three stories? The tower on the left is actually square, and goes up to a fourth floor. The roof is fairly flat, looks like it might be tiled, Italian-style, but it's hard to be sure. There is a porch around the front door, and the columns form pointed arches around the entryway – those pointed arches are definitely Gothic, I remember that much from Dr. Reiff's lectures. And it looks like there's some intricate brickwork, there on the edge of the house... but it's impossible to make out, the shadows are too dense there, and the contrast in the image far too low. I sigh in frustration, trying to memorize the image anyway... wondering where Calvin's room was in that towering brick house.
      “Find anything interesting, dearie?” I jump, and Mary laughs kindly. “Sorry... I walk like a librarian, I know.”
      I point at the decrepit photo on the page, and grin up at her. “I found this – thank you!”
      She leans down and peers at the page. “Ahh... the Mason place, isn't it? Such a shame no better pictures survived the years... you'd think there would be more, a place that well-known.”
      “Cameras weren't really mainstream until just about when it burned down though,” I point out. “Anyway, if the family was that rich, they'd probably have wanted a painting done, rather than photos – photography was seen as a pretty low, imitative art form for a long time.”
      She beams down at me, nodding. “So it was! Come be a junior member of the historical society? We could use a breath of fresh air, in among all of us old fogies.”
      I laugh. “You're much farther away from being an old fogie than I am, Mary... But what other goodies have you brought me?”
      She holds a little red book above her head, triumphant. “Found it! It's only tangentially related to your request, but I just know you'll love it.”
      I reach up, and Mary puts the book into my hands.
      It's a very pretty little thing, the deep red leather covered in what were once bright gold vines and flowers, in intricate patterns. No title is on the front, and the one on the side is faded beyond reading. The first few pages are blank tissue, and then I find... “Is this the title page? This is officially the longest title I have ever, ever seen.”
      She chuckles. “Brevity was not their concern, it would seem.”
      I read it aloud, in pompous tones: “Our Deportment, or the Manners, Conduct, and Dress of the Most Refined Society; including Forms for Letters, Invitations, Etc., Etc. Also, Valuable Suggestions on Home Culture and Training. Compiled from the Latest Reliable Authorities, by John H. Young, A.M. Detroit: F.B. Dickerson & Co., 1883.”
      I take a deep, dramatic breath. “That... is ridiculous.”

Part 27

2009-11-28T01:49:00.001-05:00

      “A doctor... can we call a doctor?”
      “I'll have Molly send Joseph for one, but--”
      “Just go! Quickly!”
      Evelyn dashes out the door, yelling for the servant girl – for anyone. I helplessly hover by Calvin, rubbing and humping his back, trying to clear his throat, his lungs... I don't know what to do... He whimpers and moans, gasping every second for air.
      Evelyn is back in a few endless moments, and I let her take my place – she has far more claim to be near the boy than I. But she has no better plan than I did... and we exchange a helpless, fearful glance.
      “How long..?”
      “The fastest he can possibly get to town is a good quarter of an hour... and if the doctor's out on a call somewhere...”
      “Has he been this bad before?”
      “No... almost, but, never this long...” And as the words leave her mouth, Calvin suddenly gulps down a lungful of air, and does not cough.
      We whirl to stare at him, in anxious disbelief. He takes a few tiny sips of air, his eyes wide and hopeful and scared. “I... Ev, I...”
      “Shh shh shh! Don't talk, Cal, I'm here, don't talk, just breathe, all right? Just breathe, darling boy...” She cradles him tenderly in her arms, laying her cheek against the top of his head. “Just breathe for me.”
      “Ev...” he whispers, pulling his head away to look intently at her. “Evelyn, I'm not strong enough... I can't...” He stops for a moment, catching his breath, as if winded from a long run.
      “Calvin, hush, don't talk like that... don't talk at all, just breathe.”
      “Evelyn, I've got to talk, while I'm here... Evelyn, I love you.”
      “Cal... I love you too...” His somber tone keeps her from continuing to shush him, and she looks steadily into his face, a little puzzled but taking him completely seriously.
      “Evelyn... you won't ever forget me, will you? I don't care about anybody else, but, you won't forget me?” Every word is punctuated by a rasping gasp, his body shaking with each inhalation, I can hear him nearly choke with every breath.
      “Not ever, Cal... not ever.”
      “Don't... don't forget me.”
      Evelyn is sobbing, holding him close to her, and his breathing softens, and I almost dare hope...
      And then there's no more sound.
      And Evelyn wails, her voice breaking along with her heart, and I'm crying as well, I move closer to her, to hold her in comfort and sympathy, but...
      I'm alone again in the silent garden, the sound of her weeping still in my ears, my face soaked with tears under the dull gray sky.

      I return the next day, with a small shovel in my bag. I find a little grouping of forget-me-nots in a corner of the clearing, and carefully dig down around them, trying to cut as few of their delicate roots as possible. I cup the bundle of limp plants and roots in my hands, and bring them to Calvin's room. I dig a small hole where his bed, long, so long ago, held his weak body, and I tenderly plant the forget-me-nots in his place. I pour half of the water from my water bottle onto them, and check to see how much sun is here. It should be shady enough for them... but to be sure, I walk slowly around the house's outline, and carry over some bricks, to build a small wall to provide the delicate blue blossoms a little more shelter.
      “I won't forget you either, Cal... and I'll be sure you're remembered by others.” There is a drawing just beginning to sketch itself into my thoughts, of a sweet child's face, his curls dotted with tiny blue blossoms.

      I take a long, slow walk, all around the garden, trying to finally see the rest of the grounds as best I can. I can't follow every path in a day, I'm sure, but it's still a little before noon, and I have the rest of the long summer daylight ahead of me. I feel a little disconcerted by the garden's beauty, after so much sadness it doesn't seem fair that the flowers should be so bright and beautiful... and I know it's ridiculous, because all of the Masons have been dead, what, at least fifty years, if not more. All the same... I saw the lifebreath leave that sweet little face, I saw the last breath of a mere child... and such a sweet, loving little child...
      Many of the paths, even the ones carefully paved in stone, tile, brick, are impossible to follow now. The plants grow so rampantly in places, they've entirely covered the paths. One immense wisteria plant has plummeted down through a long tunnel of a trellis that once covered a path – the splintered wooden frame is almost entirely lost now beneath the thick vines and dense leaves.

Part 26

2009-11-26T23:02:00.004-05:00

      I bring him the elephant, tucking it under the blanket beside his curly head. He smiles, and brings his hands up to cling to the little thing. He moves the towel back from his forehead, and opens his eyes to look up at me. His eyes look just like his father's, the same color and the same penetrating stare, and the resemblance startles me – but then the eyes soften and blink slowly, and I see the innocent tenderness and trust that suffuses them, so different from the cold cynicism of his father's eyes.
      "Thank you..." he says quietly, closing his eyes and pulling the elephant close against his cheek.
      I smile gently down at the poor kid, reaching out a hand to stroke the damp curls. I wonder what's wrong with him? I've heard from others that he was generally a sickly child, bedridden at some point? Maybe there's something wrong with his legs, as well as whatever this flu-like thing is he has now. His lungs sound like they're in rough shape, at least just now, that cough sounded so painful... His breathing is still raspy, even while he's laying still and quiet.
      The scene wavers in front of me a moment, and I'm back in the silent garden, alone under a gray sky. There's no trace of the bed left here...
      But a single blink of my eyes, and the room is back. Calvin is seemingly asleep, his breath still rasping, just as it was before. Looking around, I have no idea if it's been a few seconds or a few weeks to him, since I left. I doubt if much ever changes, in this silent little room... I can't bring myself to wake him, and I do want to find out more, though I know he's too weak - and possibly too young - to answer many of my questions.
      So, I slowly open the bedroom door, and slip into the hallway beyond. But I get no farther than a step, into a corridor paneled with some rich, red wood, with a glimpse of vivid floral paintings on the walls and deep, plush carpet on the floor, when I'm frozen by the sound of approaching footsteps. I glance quickly up and down the hall, and see that to the left, it turns a corner maybe a dozen feet away – and it's from that direction that the sound is coming. So I haven't yet been seen, but I will be any second! And though I know I would never do any harm here, nobody else has any reason to know that, and I'd be pretty freaked out if a person in totally inappropriate clothing was lurking in the hall outside my kid's bedroom.
      Anxiously, I look up and down the hallway, but the few other doors are closed – I have no way of knowing if they're locked, if they're no more than closets, or if other people are behind them. I duck back into Calvin's room, and glance around for a place to hide. The wardrobe might be big enough? I open its doors and find that it is, indeed, big enough to hide in, so I step up and into it – and taking a cue from the Narnia books, make sure that I don't close one of the doors quite all the way. (I do hold it closed, so nobody catches a glimpse of me, but I don't let the thing latch.)
      A few moments later, I hear the bedroom door swing inward.
      “Calvin? Are you awake?” The voice is quiet and sweet, and I wonder if it's Cora. I wonder if she's much older than she was when I saw her that day by the honeysuckle...
      The boy whimpers weakly, his breathing loud and labored.
      “Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to startle you... But Mother said to be sure you got some medicine this afternoon. She has a meeting in town, you know, and the servants are all trying to get the place in order before he comes home.” There is a slight hesitation before the “he”, as if the speaker is catching herself about to say something else in place of it. The voice doesn't sound all that old... I force myself to wait until I hear the footsteps cross the room, and then stop, presumably by the bedside. Then I allow myself to open the wardrobe door just the tiniest sliver, and peep through.
      The figure at the bedside is slim and beautiful, in a dress of pale aqua and soft white. The fabric shimmers a bit as she moves, but I'm not sure what it is. The skirt brushes the floor, looking all the more dramatic in contrast to the absolutely tiny corseted waist of the woman. The sleeves are puffed out from shoulder to elbow in a way that would look totally ludicrous, were the woman not apparently totally at ease with them. The fabric is layered, an aqua bodice that flares a little like a jacket, over an aqua overskirt that stops halfway below the knee, a layer of white covering the rest of the distance to the floor. The puffs of the sleeves layer in the same way, with soft cream-colored fabric blossoming out from underneath a layer of light aqua. All along the edges of each layer is a trim of dark brown lace, adding a graphic geometric edge to all the flowing lines of soft shimmery fabric. Her hair is bound in a low knot on the back of her neck, tied with a wide ribbon of the same light blue-green as the dress.
      Her hair is a soft brown, almost auburn where the light catches it, and a few wisps of curls escape from the knot to brush against her ivory skin. When she turns to reach for the water glass, I catch sight of her face---
      And I'm still not sure who it is. She looks very, very much like Cora, but there are a few differences. The eyes are a little wider-set, the nose a different shape. (I spent so long comparing the photo of the older Cora to the woman I saw in the garden, as well as the time spent drawing her, that I'm quite familiar with her underlying facial structures.)
      It couldn't be Evelyn. Could it?? The woman is... it's hard to guess at her age. The face is young and fresh. But there is a gracefulness in all of her motions – even something as simple as lifting a glass is somehow made incredibly elegant. Far more poise than any teenager I've ever seen, but there's still a sense of innocence about her that seems far more childlike than any teenager either. Maybe fifteen or sixteen? If I could see her face better, I might be able to tell if it's Evelyn, or just some visiting cousin or something...
      She pours some liquid into the glass from a bottle in her hand, then sets the bottle on the bedside table. Holding the glass in one hand, she sits gently on the edge of the bed. A small hand slips out from under the blankets, and rests on her lap, but there is no other motion from Calvin.
      “Cal, darling... it's all right. It may taste awful, but medicine will help, if you'll just take a little sip... won't you do that, for me?”
      “Ev... it hurts...” The voice is so faint, I can barely hear the words. His hand looks so pale! But he called her “Ev”... it must be Evelyn, after all.
      “Shh, I know, dear, I know... but you'll feel better soon. And we can play in the garden all you like. I'll go and bring you some fresh flowers right now, if you'll just take a little sip, for me? Please?”
      He whimpers again, but turns his head toward her. She slips an arm around his shoulders, lifting him a little, just as I did... five minutes? hours? weeks? ago. She holds the glass to his lips, and he takes a tiny sip, then sputters and begins to cough violently, his whole body shaking.
      Evelyn gasps, dropping the glass to the floor and putting both arms around him, holding him in a sitting position to keep him from choking. "Cal... oh Cal, I'm so sorry, are you all right? Cal!"
      But his coughing continues, I can't imagine how his tiny body can sustain such a powerful retching as that. Something flies from his mouth, and Evelyn cries out, pain in her voice. I let the door open farther, squinting toward the bed, torn between staying hidden and rushing to try and help... but it's Evelyn, she knows me, I can't just sit here and watch!
      I fly from the wardrobe, the door slamming back to hit the wooden paneling, and cross the room in a few steps. "Oh Evelyn, what can I do? What's wrong?"
      She glances up, startled, but far more concerned about her little brother than my sudden appearance. "Kimber! Oh Kimber, I don't know! He hasn't coughed so badly in months, and---" She glances down at the quilts, and I see what I couldn't from across the room: bright crimson drops of blood.
      Calvin's body is shaking violently with every cough, and I look desperately around the room, trying to think of some way to help. The glass has shattered on the floor, but I grab the pitcher and bring it to the bedside, pouring water into my hands, trying to hold it near him... but he can't stop coughing, and the water slides away between my fingers, his body too far out of his control to let him decide on any of its actions.
      “Oh Kimber, Mother's given him this medicine for weeks and it hasn't done anything like this! We thought it was helping, he seemed so much calmer, and the fever was finally gone... oh, what can we do?” she cries, looking up at me in desperation. But my mind, though racing, only comes up blank.

killing off characters

2009-11-26T19:46:00.003-05:00

..is freaking hard. Originally, Kimber was just going to get a little glimpse of Cal, right as he died. But then the kid started talking, and now he's sweet and I don't want to kill him!

I made the mistake of telling Tom this as I was writing last night.
"The character you're killing off... who are they closest to?"
I thought about this for a moment. "Probably his sister."
"Have her be the one to kill him."
"WHAT!?"

...for dramatic purposes, he is, as usual, entirely correct. But I can't do that!!! It was going to be hard enough to let this poor little child die of some disease. But... to have that guilt cling to little Evelyn, would be a nice, if horribly sad, touch. Even if she just *thinks* she killed him, some coincidence or another. But... I still haven't thought of any way she could influence his death. I have no idea. We'll see if I can polish off this scene tonight... or if I'm going to weasel my way out of finishing it for another day. ^^;;

Part 25

2009-11-25T23:59:00.001-05:00

      My gaze is interrupted by the sound of a loud, hacking cough, followed by a muffled moan. Turning, I see there's a child, lying in a bed - which does indeed have several quilts, though the patterns are very intricate, the colors far more carefully considered than the patchwork family ones I've always had. I can see short brown curls, and two little fists balled up against the face. I can't be positive from a distance, but it looks like the poor thing is shaking... There is a glass of water on a wooden nightstand beside the bed, as well as a brass bell - presumably to call for someone, should he need something. But this poor child... I doubt if he'd have the strength to reach out and lift something even as small as that. Moving closer, I can see that the boy is maybe four years old at most. His face is largely covered by hands and hair, but his skin looks abnormally flushed over an incredibly pale white base. There is sweat on his brow - his curls are absolutely plastered to it.
      ...I still don't feel like I should be able to make contact with anyone here, but Evelyn held my hand, so I'm sure I can touch this child. But will I catch whatever he has, I wonder? I guess I would... wouldn't I? But the boy whimpers, and his breath rasps so loudly in his throat, I can't just stand here...
      “Can... can I get you anything?” I ask gently, kneeling down on the floor by his bedside, looking up at the tightly balled fists.
      The boy whimpers again, shaking his head ever so slightly, pressing his fists harder against his eyes. “It hurts too much... don' wanna move.”
      “Shh, it's okay... you don't have to move...” I look around, and spot a pitcher and basin on a low table a few feet away. I hope the water's cold - though I suppose anything would feel cool against the flushed brow. I get up and walk over to the basin, finding a very soft white towel beside it. I pour a little water into the basin from the pitcher, and dipping my fingers into it, find that it's fairly cool at least. The temperature in the room is comfortably warm, but maybe the porcelain of the pitcher helps it stay cool? I dampen the towel in the water, wring out the excess water, and return to the bedside.
      “Here, sweetheart... move your hands, and I'll put a cool cloth on your head. Here...” I touch a corner of the towel to his forehead. “Does that feel good?”
      “Unh-hunh...” he mutters weakly, his hands moving away from his face and plunging under the heavy quilts. “My head is so hot, but I keep shivering all the time...”
      “Here...” I murmur, using the towel to smooth back the damp curls from his forehead, before gently laying the towel over his brow and eyes. He has such long, dark lashes... and the prettiest little face I've ever seen, though it's contorted by pain and a little wasted by illness. I can tell the child has been sick for a long, long time... There's a weary sort of patience about him, the air of someone who's suffered long, and doesn't expect to ever feel any differently. His skin is blotchy with the fever's flush and something else I think, though I'm not sure what, some kind of rash? “Does that feel any better?”
      “Unh-hunh,” he sighs wearily, his lips parting to ease his labored breathing.
      “Do you want any water to drink?”
      He nods – though the movement is so slight it's barely noticeable. Lifting the glass of water from the bedside table, I start to dip a finger in to check the temperature, thinking of refilling it from the pitcher--- but I stop as soon as I lift the glass, there's the weirdest smell coming from it.
      “What is this??” I gasp – and though I didn't mean to address the boy, he answers me.
      “Med-cin. Mommy bought it for me. Spe... speshul water.”
      I raise an eyebrow skeptically at the glass. It smells absolutely awful – I can smell a bit of alcohol in it, and something sharp and rancid that I can't, and probably wouldn't want to, identify. I look around for a bottle, and though I don't see one, I feel sure it's somebody-or-another's patented elixir to cure all ills. Screw that crap, I'm not feeding it to this child! He doesn't need any alcohol in his system, and the smell makes me almost puke. He's too weak to be puking, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't help him breathe any easier. I look around, and see another bucket on the floor beside the wash basin – I'm going to assume that's one that should be emptied. I pour out the glass into it, and hold my breath as the fumes rise up toward me. Ick ick ick. I rinse the glass in the basin, then refill it with cool, clear water from the pitcher.
      I bring the glass over to the boy. And realize he's not going to be able to sit up. “I'm going to help you sit up a little, so you can drink some water, okay?”
      He whimpers, and I instantly try to soothe him. “Not the special water, just regular water, okay? I promise it will help you feel better. And I'll hold you up, okay?” I slip an arm gently around the shaking shoulders, my heart breaking to feel this tiny body so weak and helpless to whatever's causing these tremors. I help him sit up just enough to be able to drink, and lift the glass to his lips. “Just drink a little... your body needs water to work right, drinking some will help your body fight off the illness, okay?”
      He takes the tiniest sip, and then gasps for breath.
      “Shh, it's okay, just take it slow... I'll stay right here, you don't need to hurry...”
      He whimpers, and after a minute or so of fighting for breath, takes another sip. I know he must be parched – how long has he lain here, too weak to lift the glass himself? Or too horrified by its contents to even want to drink it!
      I sit there for a long time, cradling the boy in one arm, lifting the glass to his lips to take tiny sips, until the glass is nearly empty. Then he slumps back against my arm, and manages something almost like a smile. “Thank you... Who are you?”
      I ease him gently back against his pillows, and sit a little more comfortably on the floor – or, rather, on the plush rug by the bed, which I suspect is actual animal fur (a thought I try not to dwell on). My feet have totally fallen asleep, and I rub them ruefully, wincing as pins and needles set in. “I'm Kimber... what's your name?”
      “Calvin Marcus Mason.”
      I can't help but grin at the imperiousness that somehow invades the tiny voice. It is an impressive-sounding name... which makes it all the sadder to see it linked with this frail little frame.
      “Are you Ev'lyn's friend, Kimber?”
      I start a bit at this. I'm... it's still so strange, to think of this world as being truly real, and to know that I'm as real in it as it seems to me... “Yes, I met her once, out in the garden.”
      The tiny dry lips purse at this. “No... you met her lotsa times. She told me. But... maybe I jus' dreamed she tol' me...” He trails off, groaning a little, apparently exhausted by such a long statement. “I dream a awful lot now... am I dreaming you?”
      I am honestly clueless as to how to answer this. But somehow, I don't think I'm a dream to him. “No, Calvin, I'm here... I can't stay long, but I'm here now. You want any more water?”
      “C'n I have my elfant?”
      I smile, and stand up, going over to the toy box. “Sure... it's a pink elephant, right?”
      “Mmhmm.”
      I lift the little thing out of the box – noticing as I bend down that there are an awful lot of toys actually in here. All kinds of slightly creepy metal ones, a cast-iron elephant with jointed legs and a key on one side, among several other ones that I can see keys on, birds and tigers and bears. Lots of blocks, several picture books, and I think some marbles way down in the bottom... But the top layer seems to be mostly soft things, though they don't look half as cuddly as the ones I grew up with. Still, the elephant is snuggly enough – he's definitely some kind of felt, stuffed with something soft, and he's a very friendly-looking little guy. Pale pink with a royal blue saddle on his back, bright yellow trim, and the initials “C.M.M.” embroidered in dark thread on the saddle. He's fairly small, maybe four inches tall? But I suppose Calvin's pretty small himself.

wallpaper and old toys

2009-11-25T22:48:00.004-05:00

This is the kind of wallpaper in the little bedroom, though there are touches of the colors of some of the others in this set. (And that site is absolutely amazing, I looked at eeeeverything they offer before leaving the website last night. The papers are all so, so pretty! and such a fantastic reference for historical interior design. <3)

It took me awhile to get the kind of information I wanted about kids' toys around the 1880s, 1890s. Teddy bears were 1902, but a German company, Steiff, started selling these little felt elephants as pincushions right about 1880 - only kids played with the things more than mothers used them as pincushions, so the company decided to go for making stuffed animals instead.

I had a hunch wind-up toys were around that era... and, holy crap. The little wind-up tin toys were a decade or so away from mass production, but what *did* exist, were absolutely stunning clockwork-type little things. And from there...

This blog gives a great overview of the sort of thing I wound up looking at. 1860-1910ish, there was a HUGE amount of this kind of thing being created, these stunning little animated figures. At Disneyworld, I was pretty blown away by the animatronics, largely created forty, fifty years ago... but this stuff? 1800s. Long before anything could've possibly been digital - the "memory" of these machines is all mechanical.
That blog has a video of one of these automatons, sculpted as a little boy, that *writes*, in a gorgeous old-fashioned cursive, one of three different poems, and can also *draw*. I can't even imagine how you would plot points like that into a clockwork machine's memory...

Even more stunning, was this guy - Pierre Jaquet-Droz, 1770, made these things - one could write, one could draw, one could play a piano. And what really grabs me, about all of these, is the insane attention to detail in the animations - watch a few, and you'll see how lifelike the eye movements are, the way the figure will turn its head, or move its hand vaguely, or all the thousand little things we do without thought. Absolutely astonishing work.

...though they also creep the hell out of me. I was looking at all this, of course, shortly before going to sleep last night, and when I closed my eyes, I kept seeing ones like this - eerily accurate movements and all, but with all the mechanisms exposed, the bodies half-decayed...

I love these things, though I really don't think you can get much creepier. So they're coming into my story - Mr. Mason and his brother have much, much more wealth and influence at their disposal than the townspeople will ever have seen. The kids can have some pretty darn expensive toys.

Part 24

2009-11-24T23:59:00.000-05:00

All of this... all of this beauty is gone from the world, without a trace. I'm the only one still living who's seen it... and I can't just let it all slip away.
      I put my sketchbook away, and take out my camera, wrapping the strap around my wrist to keep it close. I make a slow circuit of the clearing, pushing aside plants now and again, searching to find the ruins of this place, trying to get some sense of its outlines. There are a few low piles of bricks, some still stacked neatly, but no more than three feet of a wall are together anywhere. The stone foundations are visible in a few places, but the plant growth covers nearly all of it, and the long years of plant growth followed by decay means there's probably a good bit that's actually buried now. Nothing is left of the interior walls – I suppose they were constructed of wood, though the outside walls were brick. I do find a rectangle of brick and stone against one wall, that I suspect may have been a fireplace or chimney. But there's nothing more concrete than that... even the outline of the house's exterior walls, I'm largely guessing at. I keep hoping for another flash of vision, but there's nothing... I suppose the historical society may have a photo somewhere, so I'd at least be able to see what the house looked like from outside. Still... the amount of artistry in the entryway alone! I'd love so much to just walk through that house once, just once...
      But all the wishing I can do gives me no glimpses of that long-gone mansion. So far as I can tell, the visions are purely at random. It's like playing a computer game, you can click on some objects and make them move around or pick them up or whatever, but most of them are just background, inanimate. No way to know which it is until you pass over the object – though with a mouse on a computer screen, it's a little less time-consuming than walking over every inch of ground on this estate.
      There's a corner of a wall still standing off to the left. The bricks are only a few feet high, the mortar loose and crumbling away at the edges of the wall fragments, but apparently there's just enough shade and moisture for ferns to want to live in the little nook. I walk closer, taking a few pictures, smiling at the vivid contrast between the smooth, bright green leaves and the dingy, mottled black and rust of the rough bricks, all made the sharper by the wetness left by the rain. Then I spot a cluster of forget-me-nots, their tiny faces of luminous sky blue brightening the dark corner. They're such sweet little things... they're one of my favorite flowers, I think, and they're the perfect shade of pale blue. And the name is so evocative... and so fitting for this place, come to think of it.
      “I promise you'll not be forgotten...”
      I take some more pictures – the tiny blue petals set against the rough, weary brick make for some stunning photos. I don't know if I could draw it or not, the grittiness of the wet brick's texture is more than I think I could do with pastels. Oil or something maybe, were I better at it. Maybe a dense enough charcoal would do it...
      I straighten up, and take a long look around. I want so desperately to find more here... but there's just nothing. Even in my own head, the idea of finding some small trinket – a locket, a kid's toy, an old photograph – in this place, sounds pretty far-fetched. It's been a hundred years, a whole century. Teenagers have probably come out here to get drunk and make bonfires in some corner I haven't gotten to yet. Those who knew Cora, I'm sure, would have walked these grounds after she had left, in memory, or to continue admiring the flowers. Young couples walked here together, little kids have undoubtedly come here to play and make forts, hell, hunters have probably crossed this ground after deer or turkeys or something. Anything that could be found has surely already been found, and if not, it's got to be buried under several inches of plant debris and soil.
      I sigh. Irrational though it was, it's still a hope I hate to part with. I want to find some token of the lives that were here... all those intruders in between the Masons and myself hardly exist in my mind, they were only transient presences, and they left no mark on this place. But Cora, her children, their father, and the enigmatic couple who built the place... those are the ones who are still here, who will always be here.
      I walk slowly through the house's vague outlines, my mind warring between trying to imagine the house, and trying not to imagine it, knowing that what I picture has so little evidence that it's almost definitely wrong, and may skew any other clues I find. But I think back to the glimpse I had of the entryway, of the warm rich colors, of the artistic eye that arranged the thousand small touches... What would the dining room have looked like? The parlor? The master bedroom? I'm sure they had some sort of room for entertaining in, the parlor would have done for social calls, but I'm sure there was... maybe there wasn't a room for larger gatherings, if it was built by a honeymooning couple who made no contact at all with the outside. I'd forgotten that, I was thinking only of Cora, with a finger in every social pie in town. Was the entryway I saw hers, or that other young woman's..? My gut tells me it was the original entryway, as first envisioned by a new bride – that wasn't a room set up to have kids running up and down it. And the artistry was the same that I keep finding in the garden... the colors of the drapes against the warm wall, the vivid colors in the paintings, were chosen with the same sensibility I've seen in the gardens. But I wonder... did the Masons find the place empty and vacant, the walls bare and furniture gone, or did the other couple leave everything here, taking only themselves to their unknown destination?
      I stumble on something, and barely catch my balance – clinging to my camera for dear life, terrified of damaging it. But I manage to not fall or hurt the camera, and start poking around to see what it was I tripped over. Another rectangle of brick and stone – probably a fireplace? I've never actually lived in a house with a fireplace, but I'd imagine this is about the right size. What would have been the central part where the fire was placed is actually still fairly flat, though grass and small plants have invaded the crevices between the bricks in places. I sit down tentatively on the brick base, but the bricks don't shift at all – they must go down a few layers deep? Or maybe it's a layer of stone beneath them... there's a bit of a hole a few feet away, and I can see some unusually flat rock at the bottom of it, past the plants that are trying to cover it up. I scan the grasses and small bushes around me, trying to see where the lines of the room would have been... and I do see something, at least, it seems like there's a bit of a depression on the ground on the left, almost a straight line where the plants aren't growing. That must have been a wall... I look around to try to place this room in the larger space of the house's outline. I'm not quite in a corner... though I am beside an outer wall, the fireplace would have butted up against it. Makes sense, I suppose it would have been a pain to run a brick chimney up through floors of the house, it would have been easier to build it into a side wall. There must have been a window, looking outside...
      I shiver, wondering suddenly if this was the library. The library Mr. Mason met his death in... but no, I don't think it is. I know my intuition has absolutely no basis, but... hell, the visions have no real basis either, and if I can see them, why can't I have some weird inexplicable sense about what room this was, a hundred years ago?
      I feel like... I don't know, like it was a bedroom. It feels like a small room – though I can only make out where two walls were. I smile wryly, closing my eyes, and imagining into place a child's bed, covered in a thick quilt, gauzy curtains at the window, stuffed animals everywhere... Then I laugh, shaking my head. That's not at all what the room would have been like, good freaking God. I'm sure society women worked on quilts too, but, there's no way Cora would have used the rough patchwork thing I was imagining. And the stuffed animals would have been pretty different from the ones I grew up with... hell, even some of the ones my dad had as a kid, that are still sitting around my grandparents' house, I find really, really creepy looking. Would these kids even have had stuffed animals? Teddy bears didn't come in until, what, a little after 1900? Evelyn would have had dolls, of course, like the one she had with her... Clara?
      But when I open my eyes... I open them to see what can only be a toy box, though it's made of some gorgeous reddish-brown wood, intricately carved. The lid is open though, and I can see colorful wooden blocks, some tin soldiers... and something that looks like a little felt stuffed elephant. Guess I was wrong there, but I don't dwell on the thought – quickly, I look around the room, not knowing how long I'll have here.
      The walls are papered in a vivid aqua blue and bright sunflower gold – and though the images are cluttered and busy at first glance, after a moment I begin to see the intricate patterns of stylized flowers and vines, and detailed birds in light fuchsia darting among them. I'm taken aback by the vividness of the colors – but I've only ever seen hundred year-old interiors in their faded, worn-out and discolored old age. The wardrobe is of the same color wood as the toy box, and the carvings on it seem even more intricate. There's too much detail to take it all in at a glance, but I get an impression of wild animals, rampant lions and rearing horses and things.

Part 23

2009-11-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

      Next chance that I get, I head back to the garden, determined to find the site of the old house. It shouldn't be far from the central fountain, the glimpse I caught of it was off to the right of where I was standing, just at the corner of my eye as I turned...
      It rained last night, so I get soaked on my walk through the woods. It's a gray day, and while normally that means for bland photos, I have a good feeling about it today. I love the look of wet stone, the grittiness of concrete and stone and brick after the rain, and having that richness set against a flat gray sky makes for some really nice visual atmospheres. Looking at the ruined foundations of a house that burned down, just after the rain with a gray sky above? Should be just about perfect.
      I crank up my headphones to distract myself from the uncomfortable feeling of my jeans and socks getting soaked through. “Stand Up Comedy”, off U2's latest album, is loud and surprisingly raucous from them, but a great song for walking determinately to. Coldplay's “Square One” follows it, and I can't help but smile. I tend to make playlists according to moods, but it's so cool when the songs I leave on shuffle compliment each other so nicely – this is another great song for walking, full of this striding energy, the chorus ringing out over wide sonic spaces...
      Wriggling under the fence is especially irritating today, with the mud and the inevitable sliminess of wet leaves, both on the plants and covering the ground. I've really got to find another way into this place... I should figure out where the actual real entrance to the grounds are, and see how far out of my way it would be. But just as I'm about to come out into the garden, one of my favorite Kent songs comes on, and I can't help but smile. Thank you, music, for once again saving my mood from gloom and doom. It's another good song for walking to, almost for running to, and I find myself half-dancing as I follow the path toward the central fountain.
      When I reach it, I sit down on one of its benches again, gazing thoughtfully at its myriad flowers, that are so full of life, despite the lifeless metal they're made from. I take a long drink from my water bottle, leaning back against the bench and looking around, taking in the surroundings. There are five paths leading out from this paved area, set equidistant around the edge of the clearing like the points of a star. Two of them are in the right direction for the mansion... at least, I think so. And the path I was on before wound around so much, it's really hard to guess where any of these might lead.
      I flip a mental coin, and decide to go for the one a little more to the right. It's a little closer to where I think I caught sight of the house, at least I think so. I was pretty distracted by everything else I was seeing at the time...
      The gray skies are keeping some of the flowers closed up, but there's still plenty of ones that are blooming anyway. Every time I walk into this place, there's more color than the time before... It's just getting to be really, truly summer now, and the garden should really start hitting its main stride. Or... it would, if it were still cared for. I can't even imagine how many gorgeous, delicate little flowers have been crushed by the more voracious varieties, how many beautiful little vignettes have been overshadowed and lost over the long, long years...
      A wrought-iron bench is almost completely obscured by some vine of a plant, and while instinct would have me uncover the gorgeous ironwork I'm sure is hidden away... the vine is covered in the largest and boldest flowers I've seen yet. They've got to be something like six inches across! A rich, warm, velvety purple, with a reddish tinge along the center of each of the six wide petals. The center is a burst of white, little... I don't even know what they're called, stamens? The bits that have all the pollen on them. I dig my guidebook out of my bag, and flip through it... Clematis? That must be it. This plant is immense... it's covering everything within about ten, fifteen feet, maybe more, I can see the leaves merging into some other bushes around the bench... It's an interesting mix, the tendrils of the ever-growing vines twisting around the tendrils wrought of immobile iron. I jot a note in my sketchbook, and continue on – while I still want to take everything in, I'm determined to make it to the mansion today.
      And eventually, I do reach it... at least I'm assuming so. There's a space that's... well, it's still covered in green growing stuff, but most of it isn't as tall, and it's more sparse than anywhere I've seen yet. The area was definitely clear at one time, and it's a pretty large area. I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks. But it's definitely enough room for a house, and a pretty large one at that. Large for two people anyway... and I have no idea how many stories it had. At least three, I'm sure, the tower I saw seemed pretty tall.
      There are the remains of a path leading a short distance into the clearing – marble? I think it is, it's discolored and worn down with the years... there are pockmarks and dark spots all over, but I can tell it was once white. It looks just like the oldest of the gravestones I've seen... I shudder a little, trying to shake the image from my mind, but I can't entirely. This place is the grave, of one person at least... Mr. Mason died in the fire here.
      I can't see the ground itself anywhere, everything is covered in grass and low brush and invading flowering plants. A few things, at least, I recognize at a glance – there's a huge swath of daylilies, blooming bright gold and orange off to the right. A small patch of crayon-colored zinnias are just beside my feet. And there's another one, in the far left corner of the semi-clearing... the structure is familiar, and I want to say it's yarrow? It turned up in one of the older books I read once, it was used for some kind of homeopathic remedy, though I can't remember what. But I was young enough at the time that I was still looking up every word I didn't yet know in the dictionary – yarrow was one of them, I looked it up, and for whatever odd reason I can still picture the illustration in my head.
      Ask me what I ate for lunch yesterday, and I have no clue. Ask me about a picture I saw fifteen years ago, and I'll describe every line of the damn thing.
      But near the end of the aged marble path, my foot hits something hard – hard, but it moves a little at my nudge. Crouching down, I see that it's a rusted railing... must have been painted once, there are little scraps of white on the insides of the curlicues... and their shape is somehow familiar, and I realize it's the same pattern as the fence around the estate! Only much reduced in scale, obviously. From the size of this, I'm guessing it was a railing on a stairway maybe, leading to the front door? I can see some stones nearby, their tops jagged and rough – probably once broken by the weight of the house crashing down on them, but worn a little smoother by the weather of a hundred years.
      Stepping into the area that was once the inside of the house, I stand still and just look for awhile, feeling subdued, feeling like an intruder. I pull out my iPod, to turn down the sound, feeling like the music is an intrusion on the silence of dead memories that cling to the walls no longer here... But as I reach for it, the lines of the song catch my ear, and I shiver though I'm not sure why.
      “Only love, only love can leave such a mark. But only love, only love can heal such a scar...”
      Alright, so it's U2's “Magnificent”, which I love, and granted the song does tend to give me shivers. But not shivers like that one... There was an odd sense of connection, for just a moment, the words came as much from the crumbled stone foundations as they did from my headphones.
      Instead of turning it off entirely, I turn it down to the edge of where I'm just able to still make out the song, then begin to walk slowly, slowly, through the house, my eyes fixed on the ground under my feet, searching for any clue about the place I've never seen...
      And I get a flash of an entryway, a hall with a high, high ceiling. Twenty feet above me, a chandelier of a thousand tiny crystals hangs, its light refracting into a million dancing glints of light on the warm golden-yellow walls. The walls are draped in jewel-toned fabrics, and hung with absolutely stunning paintings of ancient paradises and people whose beauty makes your heart ache to see, and there are huge tropical plants in every little nook...
      But I've barely had time to throw a glance around the room before it's gone again. I stand still a moment, reeling a bit. When I'm sure the vision has gone, I perch cautiously on something that might once have been part of a pillar, and jot down everything I can recall in my sketchbook, making a few rough sketches of the general outlines. As eager as I am to keep exploring... I can't let myself risk losing any tiny detail I learn of this place. These visions... they give me so much information that's totally gone from this world. I'm sure there's no record of that hallway, anywhere in the world, apart from my head, and now my sketchbook. There's no newspaper article about that chandelier, there's no town record of the huge leaves on whatever that plant by the door was.

semi-autobiographical

2009-11-23T23:58:00.000-05:00

All my characters are, to some extent or another. I can write their interests as well as I can, because I share them - I love that moment during photo development, where suddenly a blank white page shifts and grows shades and an image appears like a ghost. I love bringing out the thousand gradations of color in a scene when drawing it, bringing to the fore the pinks in green leaves, the yellows in gray stones.

But this is my new favorite observation - about myself, as well as Kimber:

I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks.

So true it's ridiculous. I hate it when directions tell you something is 100 feet, 200 feet, away. I have no idea what that looks like. Everything I do, I visualize how it would fit against an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I was trying to visualize the 5" diameter given for a clematis flower - they vary, I know, and I have a hunch some variaties can get like 10" across or something insane, and I spread my fingers apart against the short edge of a sheet of paper. I also have a good idea of 11", 17", and 18", 24", 36". Fifteen feet, not so much.

Part 22

2009-11-22T23:59:00.001-05:00

      I smile to myself, knowing just how pretty that little girl was. I wonder if she grew up to be just as beautiful? Though a part of me has always found the sweetness inherent in the innocent beauty of a child far nicer to look at, than the made-up, rather pretentious beauty of a young woman. I shake my head a little, coming back to the conversation.
      “Well, anyway, the children were kept pretty isolated, and their father avoided people whenever he could manage it. Cora, though, was the biggest social butterfly to have ever landed in the town at that point. She headed up every sort of committee she could find. If she could have held any kind of political office, I'm sure she would have. I think she actually found her husband's reclusive tendencies to be a pleasure at times. It allowed her much more freedom to run her own affairs than she might otherwise have had had. Wives were sometimes allowed to govern their domestic domains, but I think she had a lot more power than most managed to get. She was a very independent sort... and I really think that's why she married that man – not for the money so much as for the lack of interest he'd take in managing her life.”
      John snorts. “Pure conjecture. You women and your gossip.”
      “Well, I think it makes all kinds of sense, so you leave my theories be,” Mary huffs, then winks at me. “Kimber can make what she will of it. There's really not all that much actual evidence to go on about people's personalities, conjecture and intuition are all we've really got.”
      “And, of course, rational conclusions drawn from evidence.”
      “Who's telling the story here!”
      “No-one. You're gossiping.”
      “Well. Back to the story then. Not that there's really much left... The family spent ten, fifteen years in the town. Cora was active socially, and constantly gave tours of the garden, hosting all sorts of events there. The children were quietly tutored as far as we know – there's really no information on them. Mr. Mason---”
      “Do we know what his first name was, John?” Susan cuts in. “I've only ever seen his name given as 'Mr. Mason'.”
      John furrows his brows, thinking. “You know... I'm not sure that we do. I know I don't, though I would think it would be given in the article about the house burning down. I seem to recall that there's no obituary for him in the paper at all. I thought that was strange at first, but then once I heard that the rest of the family moved away almost the minute the house burned down... well, I can't imagine anyone else in town was fond enough of the man to have tried to write anything about him.”
      “He doesn't have a grave in one of the cemeteries, does he?” I put in, curious. “I mean, I know when the original college building burned down not long before all this, even though they weren't sure of the girls' remains, they still got a monument in the cemetery, all listed together.”
      John shakes his head. “No, he doesn't. None of the Mason family are buried here – for as important a family as they were for that short time, they really didn't leave their name attached to anything here. I'd imagine that there weren't any remains left in identifiable shape after the fire, it was an especially severe one. House burned right down to the foundation. Being so far out of town, no-one even saw the smoke and thought to go look, until the house was nearly all gone. Mrs. Mason and the children were found on the road heading toward town, and said they didn't know how it started, but that the servants had all left, and Mrs. Mason said her husband had been in the library, where she'd seen the roof collapse before she saw him leave the house. He was such an odd character, and Mrs. Mason such an upstanding citizen, that nobody ever questioned her story. They all assumed he just let himself die in the fire – rumor suggested he might even have started it, for whatever reasons of his own.”
      “Mrs. Mason didn't give any more explanation of it?”
      John shakes his head. “They really did leave town the day after the house burned down – she said they were going out to stay with her people, somewhere up north, though I guess the kids scattered when they grew up.”
      I nod, remembering what the map-guy had told me about the estate's ownership.
      “I think that's about it,” Mary says, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Anything else you two want to add?”
      Susan and John look at each other, John shrugs, and Susan shakes her head. “No, I think you've pretty well covered it,” John concludes.
      I smile warmly at all three of them. “I can't thank you enough, that was so much more information than I thought I was going to be able to get!”
      Mary laughs at this. “Oh, Kimber, little old towns like this don't forget their histories... We may not have the grand landmarks that big cities have, but the stories, we hold near and dear. I think those are the real treasures anyway.”
      John chuckles at this. “We're also a small enough town that our entire history pretty much fits into one office, with a handful of filing cabinets.”
      “It certainly does not,” Susan retorts. “I should know, I'm the one that's cleared the cobwebs and swept the dust away from all those archival bins we store in the basement. And I clean in the museum every other day. And---”
      “I was joking, Susan!” John laughs, reaching across the table to pat her hand. “Still, we are a small enough town, that it's actually possible for a body to know pretty much all the history worth knowing.”
      Mary nods at this. “True. Although,” she adds, turning to me. “You should still stop by our office in the town hall some afternoon – you can take a look for yourself at the newspaper articles about the fire, as well as what photos we have. They're all on microfilm here at the library of course, but I find those machines absolutely awful to read on.”
      I nod, relief showing clearly on my face, I'm sure. I'm so glad to hear an actual librarian admit this! “I definitely will! I'd especially love to see the photos... to see how the gardens used to look.” And so, to verify that what I've been seeing is every bit as real as all my senses can tell me that it is. But for now, I shake the hands everyone's offering me, and say goodnight.

      There's a lot running through my head when I get home. I spread my drawings and sketches around me, lost in thought. Most of what I've just learned isn't too far off from what I would have guessed anyway... I still wish I could have learned more, but I suppose there's only so much written record that survives a hundred years. Especially with the fire having destroyed anything the Masons had actually owned... I suddenly realize that I still haven't explored the site the house once stood on. There's so much garden to see, and, well, the visions or whatever they are keep distracting me. I wonder if there's some reason for that... no, I'm sure it's just coincidence. Next time I'm there, I'll look for the ruins of the house. I had only that one fleeting glimpse of it when I saw the fountain, but that was enough to give me an idea of where it stood at least, though I couldn't make out much of what it looked like.
      I'm having trouble reconciling Cora's character in my head, though. That sad, wistful young woman I saw sitting on the bench, the honeysuckle blossom held so tenderly in her fingertips... and then this bold, independent, somewhat domineering woman who ran the town's social life. Did I see her in her one moment of vulnerability? Or was she not the proto-feminist that's so easily extrapolated from her social résumé? Maybe her involvement in all these things was a less-bossy one than everyone thinks... Maybe it was just one of those things, where everyone knew she could handle the tasks competently, and she couldn't say no? Nodding to myself, I re-trace a few lines in the sketch I've done of her under the honeysuckle trellis. That explanation fits much better with the woman I saw... And her husband being what he was, I'm sure she would have taken every chance at getting out of the house, or having other people around – even Evelyn knew that her father had to “be respeckable” when there were guests. I can easily imagine Cora making sure there were guests around as often as possible, if his temper was as bad as I've heard – and seen.
      Evelyn... Avery, her brother, I still know nothing about. Is he the older one, or the younger one? No, he has to be the older one – his father wouldn't have called for him if he was the bed-ridden child. And Evelyn said he was prone to arguing with their father, I can't imagine someone younger than Evelyn doing anything as rational as argue. Throw tantrums, yes, but not argue. I wonder what the third child's name is... and if there's any way I can find out? Did doctors keep records back then? Or would the Masons have had a private physician for the boy?
      “Aaaaargh!!!” I drop my face into my hands and shake my head, laughing ruefully. Every question I answer, I get a good dozen more... and I know full well that most of them are hopeless, in terms of actual, normal research. The visions are my only hope for real information... and is it actually real information? Even if it is, they've been totally unpredictable so far. The last two have been much longer than the first ones were, and the one of Evelyn was so long, so clear, so involved... will she remember me, if I see her again?
      Sighing, I turn to my loose sketches of the young couple I saw at the fountain. Those are the real mysteries... no records at all of them, not even their names. The only, absolutely only, thing that is left of them, is their garden, and my fleeting vision of them... I want so badly to know what brought them here, why he would create such an elaborate little Eden for her, only to leave it again without a word... I can imagine secreting themselves away from the world, like an extended honeymoon, living only for each other. At least for a little while. But I can't imagine two people living in total seclusion forever... and that could explain them abandoning the place, but, why not just make contact with the town? Go out shopping, go to whatever festivals the town held back then, go make some friends? Why leave a place so beautiful as this once was? They must have loved it dearly, to have put so much effort into every detail of it, the way I can see that they did...

what happens when you're not paying attention...

2009-11-22T23:00:00.003-05:00

Writing this whole historical society meeting section, I didn't plan the characters ahead of time. At all. Mary is vaguely related to a character I thought this story was going to have (though it turned out not to), but the other two just wandered in and started talking, breaking up the monologue.

And it wasn't until just now, as I was trying to wrap up the scene, that I wrote:
“I think that's about it,” Mary says, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Anything else you two want to add?”
John and Susan

And then burst out laughing. JOHN AND SUSAN are my freaking relatives, that live in a little town not far from here. They pop into the store now and again. Susan's the sister of one of my grandparents (I always forget which side of the family is which). I had no idea, until this very moment, that I had unconsciously named my characters after them. The characters, I should note, were never intended to resemble them, though it occurs to me now that the Susan in my head looks a smidge like the Susan I'm related to.

omfg I am not going to be able to finish that sentence as it stands. I can't put the names together or I won't stop giggling. DAMN YOU SYNAPSES! Fire in ways that are HELPFUL!

Part 21

2009-11-21T20:42:00.002-05:00

[look out, it's a long one - wanted to get caught up, and a bit ahead, today. but there are older people bantering, so it's all good.]

      Sitting down to draw that night, I think over the day's events, and all the sudden it hits me---
      I touched her. Evelyn's hand was solid in mine, she saw me, her father and the dog all saw me. The dog was nervous, but aside from that... it was as if I were really there, and supposed to be there, like I was seen as I would normally be, not like a ghost or anything. Evelyn was certainly no ghost. I'm tempted to call Anna, but from the way she reacted to my initial story, I don't think she has any experience with something like this. With seeing ghosts, sensing spirits, yes, but actually physically touching things, touching people, that have been gone a hundred years?
      Why didn't I try taking a photo? I'd feel less crazy if I had a photo of that past garden. I'd know this whole damn thing wasn't in my head... though something in my gut tells me it wasn't, that it was as real as the world I walk around in every day.
      Groaning, I let my face fall into my hands, shaking my head. What the hell is going on? I'm not just having visions, I'm having full sensory hallucinations... but I've never had dreams this clear, no character I've imagined has ever been this sharp in my mind. I can see Evelyn's face as clearly as I can see my little sister's.
      I've been trying to keep myself from thinking about all this, from moment to moment I change my mind on whether I'm crazy or there's a logical explanation, if this is all real or not... I've got to take a photo. Then I'll be sure it's real.
      ...how it can be real, I haven't the faintest idea. But if it is, then it is. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes, I think? And Holmes wasn't anything but rational and logical – far more so than I am, anyway, which is what matters here.
      I brace my arms against the floor and lean back, letting my head fall back. I stare steadily at the ceiling. I am not crazy. I'm an artist, which means I'm freaking weird at times, but, I'm not crazy. My ear is still there, and I feel no absolutely no imperative to hack it off. There's some explanation behind all this, and while it may be totally bizarre, and something other people – or even I – would think totally absurd, it's happening, so it's real.
      The explanation doesn't matter, it's going to keep happening, so I may as well get all I can from it. Who needs musty old library records, when you can talk to the family themselves? I grin at myself, shaking my head and turning my attention back to my drawing. I'll still research the hell out of this place, I have far more questions than these quick glimpses can answer... But I'll gladly take the images it's given me.

      I poke around the website for the college in town. I remember my art history professor's name, but I don't think I ever needed to check his office hours. The guy was full of fascinating stories, but he knew so damned much, I would never have felt worthy of talking to him. That, and I never had anything to ask him about – I just tried my hardest to keep awake in the two-hour lecture periods, full of slide projections. Slides always make me conk out, no matter what the subject. (Power Points go double – they don't even have the retro appeal factor in their favor. And people always try to make them “fancy” and “artsy” and it's just freaking painful.)
      His hours aren't posted there, but the number for his office is. Summer sessions are running right now, and I know art history's a popular requirement to try to get out of the way in the summer. I'm not a fan of calling people, but maybe I'll just get a voice mail. I'm home from work, so maybe he's done for the day as well.
      “Hello. You have reached the office of Dr. Reiff, head of the art history department at the University of North Carolina. I'm not in the office right now, so please leave a message. If you would prefer to speak with me directly, my office hours for the summer session are Tuesday from two until five, and Friday from eleven until three. Thank you.” This is followed by a beep, and I suddenly panic, realizing I haven't decided if I want to actually leave a message or not. I have no idea what to say. I hang up. I'll drop by his office hours next time I'm free, I'm not going to try making an appointment via an answering machine. I'm still close enough to a student that I can get away with just dropping in unannounced.
      But checking my work schedule, it's going to be a whole two weeks before I'm free in either of those time frames. Damn it. But that reminds me... am I free Tuesday night? I am! I can jump on someone at the historical society's meeting, and pick their brains about the Masons. If anyone's heard stories about people seeing things in the garden, I'm sure they will have.
      For all the running around I'm having to do, for all the people this project is making me talk to, and going out and doing things outside my cozy little comfort zone... I'm feeling oddly happy. I think it's a really, really good thing, to have some to focus on, outside of work and chores. I don't know if... no, I guess I do feel like my life has a little more purpose now. Who else can draw this garden long-gone? Who else can capture images of these people who might otherwise be forgotten?
      ...and who else would have saved Evelyn from a beating today? I shudder at the thought, I can't help it, she may be a hundred years gone but the fear in her eyes is still fresh in my mind.
      I'm serving some sort of purpose, being involved in the garden like this... and whatever end it might be toward, even if all I get from it is these drawings, and the meeting with Evelyn, that alone has already made my life all the richer.

      Tuesday night, I walk into the library a little after 5:30. Should I approach someone before the meeting, or after? I kind of feel like after would be more natural, but, they're probably a very social little bunch, and they probably sit around chatting about their families after the meetings, maybe go meet somewhere for coffee or something. I'll ask someone beforehand.
      I wait until there's no-one in line at the counter, then approach the lone librarian at a desk by the door. “Hi... Do you know where the historical society usually meets? I just wanted to ask one of them a question, when they come in.”
      She beams. “Anyone in particular?”
      “Uhm... no, I guess not, I don't actually know any of them, I just...”
      “Well, you know one now! I'm the secretary, actually. Mary Sueter.”
      I can't help but smile back, she's so effusive. “Kimberly Bennett. ...do you want me to wait until the meeting, or..?”
      “Lordy, you think I'm busy around here?” She laughs, gesturing at the empty counter in front of her. “Nothing but the ghosts of cranky dead authors around here in the summertime, when there's not a story hour for the kids or something. The historical society generally treats this place as their club house. Cheaper than renting out the Moose Lodge every couple of weeks, and more convenient for me, anyway.”
      She's somewhere around middle-age, maybe a bit older than my mom, with bits of gray in her light brown hair. It is, indeed, tucked back in a neat librarian bun, but she's not wearing glasses or a blouse with a pencil skirt. She's wearing a light yellow short-sleeved sweater, and a rather artsy necklace of hand-worked glass, with big splotches of bright colors. Her eyes are bright and interested, and her smile is one of those that you can't help but return.
      “What was it that you wanted to know? And call me Mary, I hate standing on ceremony.”
      “Kimber, then,” I respond with a smile. “I actually want to know about the old Mason place.”
      Her eyes widen a bit, knowingly. “So do a lot of people... you know a little about it already, I presume?”
      I nod. “I've heard the basic story, that there was a gorgeous garden when the Masons lived there, but a fire pretty much destroyed the property, and killed Mr. Mason. And that Mr. Mason had said his brother had built the place, but no-one knew who that brother actually was, Mr. Mason kind of appeared out of nowhere.”
      “A very mysterious man... and his brother, even more so. Do you know, for all the public attention that estate drew at the time, we don't have a single picture of Mr. Mason? A few of his wife, Cora, and their children, but none of him. And no visual record of his brother and wife, either. Absolutely none.”
      The memory of the man and young woman, curled close around each other beside the fountain, blankets my thoughts. No photos... nothing by which to see them is left in this world, apart from what I carry in my memory.
      “Jerry knows more about the place than anyone, but it's mostly a technical knowledge – what the house looked like, the layout of the gardens, how much the place was worth before it burned, things like that. He's not all that big on gossip – but I am.” She grins and her eyes sparkle. “I never thought I was much of a gossip, but over the years, I've learned that I am downright nosy. Especially when it comes to people's stories. Eventually, I realized that that means I am, in fact, a gossip. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.”
      Mary laughs, and I join in.
      “But I'm talking your ear off and you're stuck standing there. Let's go over to the table there, the others will be here before long, and they can fill in any gaps in my story.”
      Following her to a long table in the middle of the room, I ask, a little timidly, if I won't be interrupting their meeting.
      “Interrupting!” She laughs gaily. “Dearie, you'll be the highlight of our month. There's nothing we old bookworms love more than showing off all the things we know, and it's so rare that anyone as young as you is actually a willing participant. Are you still at the college?”
      I shake my head – I hear this a lot. I'm learning that it's pretty rare for most people to stick around town after they graduate, unless they grew up here, in which case the whole town already knows them. “A few years out, actually.”
      “History major?”
      “Art, with a concentration in drawing.”
      “Oh! That just makes you more interesting. What piqued your interest in the Masons?”
      “I actually live near there, in the apartments on Watercress? I was walking around in the woods one day, and found the fence around the Mason property... Eventually I found a way in, and started walking around.” I decide to keep quiet on the whole vision-thing, at least for now. Instinct tells me Mary wouldn't judge me poorly if I told her, but... I'm still pretty wary of talking about it. “Even though it's so overgrown, there are so many traces of how beautiful it used to be.”
      She nods, her eyes going a little distant. “Isn't it a sweet kind of sad place? You can just feel the stories lurking there.”
      I smile happily. “Exactly.”
      “Well, that's plenty of reason to be nosy about it, then! Let me tell you what I know... oh, and here's Susan! Susan! This is Kimber. She's an artist and wants to know all about the Mason place.”
      “Well isn't that nice! Are you doing paintings of it? It used to be such a pretty place. We have a few photos of it somewhere in the town records, you'll have to come by the office and see them sometime. We're right in town hall, there's someone there most afternoons.”
      “Doing a few drawings, actually... so I'd absolutely love to see the photos.”
      “Now, where to start... We really don't know a thing about the original owners. Can't even find the original deed to the property, if you can believe it! It was probably lost in the fire, but there should have been some kind of copy in the town records, only we've never turned one up.”
      “Could have settled the place before the town was built,” Susan puts in.
      “Well, yes, the town wasn't really a proper town until about ten years before the Masons we know about moved in. We have no idea how long the house was there before that, though to judge by the gardens, it was easily decades.”
      “When people first started filtering in, nobody was exactly worrying about paperwork,” a male voice breaks in, as a man with scant white hair pulls up a chair on the opposite side of the table. “Far enough from the capital that it was pretty much wilderness being settled, the bureaucracy didn't move out here until there were enough people to make bossing around worthwhile.”
      “Why, hello John! You're here awfully early.”
      “The wife was cleaning. I thought it would be prudent to relocate before I got recruited.”
      “Well, this is Kimber, John, and we're telling her about the Masons.”
      “Always a good story. You know more of the gossip than anybody, Mary, I'll let you continue.”
      “Why thank you. So, we have no idea what the original owners were like. All that ever got around town was that it was a man and his young wife, and no-one ever saw them or learned their names. It doesn't seem like anybody even knew the place was there until the Masons turned up and moved in. The town was pretty small then, and their place was really out of the way – no real road was ever built too close to it, I have a feeling Mr. Mason made sure of that.”
      “Such a recluse, that man was,” Susan clucks.
      “Now don't jump ahead of me, Susan! I'll get to him in due time. For all that no-one ever saw the man and his young wife, there were still plenty of rumors that went around town later on. Mr. Mason was always making his wife angry by contradicting her claims to being responsible for the splendidness of the garden. She tried to take the credit for it, and he always made some snide comment about how it had already been there, just so, when they moved in. His brother did it all, created this little Eden for his much-beloved wife.”
      “Didn't she die young?”
      “Well, that's one of the rumors. Tuberculosis, cholera, take your pick of the major diseases of the time, I've heard they all killed her. She was always a frail little thing to begin with, though very beautiful. I've also heard that he killed her himself. She went into town one night, desperate for companionship, and he caught another man walking her home, killed them both in a jealous rage.”
      “No record of that one in any of the old newspapers,” John puts in.
      “I know, but it's such a delicious story, I just had to mention it,” Mary responds with a twinkle. “I've also heard that she ran off on him, never to be seen again, and he killed himself in despair.”
      “No record of that, either.”
      “I don't care if there's a record or not! It's been passed down in the oral traditions of the town, so it still counts for something,” Mary snaps, though her eyes are still sparkling.
      “But it's my job to point out the accuracy of things against the known written record,” John responds calmly, obviously used to playing this game with her.
      “Yes of course... but the record is never half so interesting. The most realistic story is that they simply moved away. There seems to have been a good deal of money in the Mason family, I'm sure the brother had as much at his disposal as Mr. Mason did. And he must have been quite young at the time, so I'm sure the young couple just flitted about as the whim took them. There's really no evidence at all about their time here, apart from Mr. Mason's insistence that they were the ones who built the mansion and its gardens. How much was theirs, and how much were later additions by the Mason family, no-one knows.”
      “I have the impression that Mrs. Mason, Cora, did quite a bit,” Susan puts in. “She was quite the woman in the town's social circles.”
      “She was indeed, and she was so terribly proud of those gardens... But that family moved in somewhere around the late 1880s, the date on that isn't quite clear, either.”
      “There's a notice in one of the town papers that mentions Mrs. Cora in 1889, in connection with one of the local church mission groups.”
      “Thank you, John. Mr. Mason was incredibly reclusive, as I'm sure you're realizing. Mrs. Mason insisted he make appearances from time to time, but I think he purposely made her always regret it, by his rudeness and snide comments to and about her.”
      “And Cora did so much good for the town!” Susan joins in.
      “I saw a photo of her in that book about the town, it listed her being in all sorts of organizations,” I put in timidly.
      “Dan Reed's book? Wonderful thing, isn't it? He ransacked our entire archive, and quite a few ancient attics around the county. Couldn't fit everything, of course, but it's still a wonderful compilation, really piqued local interest in the town's history.” Mary beams.
      “That reminds me, Dan can't make it tonight, his kid's got a soccer game,” John notes.
      “They moved out here for health reasons, the youngest son was a really frail thing. Not quite clear what the issue was, but it kept him bed-ridden much of the time.”
      “Could have been something with his lungs, could have been something with his legs... Medicine was in a pretty sad state still at that point. Mostly consisted of leeches, and getting 'good air' into people. Miasma took the blame for many illnesses.”
      “Miasma?” I know how the word is generally used, but I have no idea how it connects to disease.
      John re-adjusts in his seat, sitting up a little straighter and clearing his throat. “One of the leading medical theories for centuries. It basically blamed all illness on 'miasma', which was really nothing more than 'bad air'.”
      “Pollution,” Mary puts in.
      “Evil spirits,” Susan replies.
      “A little of both, really,” John chuckles. “Leeches are a little more familiar to you? Then you know they were used to draw out the 'bad' blood, which was thought to cause disease. Miasma was pretty much the same principle, it was this atmosphere of disease that was thought to permeate cities mostly, but also pervade any area of illness. Today, we stand back when someone sneezes, envisioning germs filling the air around them. Back then, they had no concept of the germs, but an invisible cloud would settle over an area, and the bad air would cause illness.”
      “That's why you had so much interest in seaside vacations and things at the time,” Mary adds. “And there was some truth in it – getting away from the pollution of the crowded, newly industrializing cities obviously made a lot of people feel better.”
      “Like in Little Women, when they take Beth to the seaside?” I ask, feeling a little childish.
      But Mary grins kindly. “Exactly. And Beth felt better while there, but it wasn't any kind of lasting effect, poor girl. That book makes me cry to this day.”
      Susan sniffs. “You're such a sap, Mary Sueter.”
      “But I'm an endearing sort of sap. What sort of world would it be, if there was no-one around to cry at sad stories?”
      “One without sappy stories being written in it,” John retorts gruffly.
      The rest of us laugh, and John's eyes twinkle.
      “Oh, he's just an old crank,” Mary says to me, rolling her eyes. “Ignore him. Were you finished, John?”
      “Guess I am now,” he says, rolling his eyes in return. “Continue your clucking, women.”
      Mary huffs at that, then returns to her story anyway. I realize that I'm enjoying this meeting immensely.
      “There was a daughter, and an older son as well. They were seen a little more, though still not often. Cora didn't exactly bring them along on social calls when they were young, and the fire happened before the daughter had turned sixteen.”
      John raises an eyebrow. “We don't have any birth record for the daughter, are you sure of her age?”
      “No, but we'd have social mentions of her debut in society if she'd turned sixteen here,” Mary retorts. “So there. I think the daughter was in the middle – again, there's not much to go on, besides a few vague mentions in social columns of the newspaper. The family doesn't come up very often in correspondence of the time, though there are a few mentions in some of the diaries we've found. It seems the children had both nurses and tutors to watch them and teach them, so they really had very little contact with the town.”
      “The daughter was a pretty little thing though, isn't there a photo in the archives, of her in the garden?” Susan asks, idly paging through an issue of Better Homes and Gardens she's pulled from a nearby shelf.
      “There is,” John affirms. “Derick Reese took it, it's in the collection we have of his work. Quite a nice photo, actually, the man was expert at creative portraiture.”

Part 20

2009-11-20T19:05:00.003-05:00

The girl, who can't be more than five years old, reaches upward, doll in hand, trying to sit the doll among the spindly branches – which seem a little shorter, a little less tired, than they did a moment ago. Still, it's not by any means a sturdy tree.
      “Now, Clara, wouldn't you like to sit among all these pretty flowers? Just... sit... right here... for just a few minutes, won't you?” Trembling on the tips of her toes, she manages to just set the doll in the crook where a branch meets the main trunk. Grinning, she laughs and dances off down the path toward the bench. I can see that the slightest breeze will knock the doll down... I wonder if I can better secure it?
      I cross the clearing, and reach for the doll, whose supposed high vantage point isn't even up to my shoulders. But just as my fingers are about to brush the pale blue of her dress, I hear a desperate cry behind me. A black blur bounds into the clearing – and then stops stock still upon seeing me. It's a somewhat large dog... it actually looks an awful lot like the dog I saw a few weeks ago. I wonder if--- But the dog whines and whimpers, backing up warily, then turns tail and bolts out of the clearing, leaving by the second path I hadn't been able to find – an unpaved track between some rose bushes, just opposite the clearing from the stone path. The girl stumbles into the clearing then, wailing miserably.
      “Roooolliiiiiie! Come baaack! I wanted you to play with me!” A long blue ribbon dangles from one of her hands, and I bite back a giggle as I imagine her having tried to use it as a leash for a dog bigger than she is.
      She looks around the clearing forlornly, seeing no trace of the dog. I hear a surprisingly decisive “hrmph!” from her, and then she skips over to the tree to retrieve the doll. “Now, Clara, he's really not like that, he's a very gentlemint of a doggie.” She takes off the doll's hat, and smooths down the surprisingly lifelike golden curls – it occurs to me that it may very well be real hair, I seem to have some vague memory of a doll with human hair that I saw in a museum when I was little. “But I guess we can go look for Pussy, she'll be more soshub... sociable.”
      A man's voice calls out sharply, and a dog barks – and I feel even more sure that it's the same black dog I saw, or maybe a decedent? The bark sounds so, so similar...
      “Oh! Clara, we're in trouble if Daddy sees we let Rollie out without asking...” Looking over, I see that the girl is physically trembling, her eyes incredibly wide. She's a very pretty little thing, with red-gold curls and ivory skin... and for a moment, I think I see some similarity in her facial structure to Cora. Is this her daughter? But her expression is one of pure fear, and I call out softly to her, I don't know what to say but I have to say something, as I take a step toward her, reaching out a hand...
      “Hey... it'll be alright, I'll go with you, and keep you safe. I won't let him hurt you... He might yell, but he won't hurt you...”
      She looks over at me, seeing me for the first time. “Who are you? Your clothes are funny.”
      I grin wryly. The abstract never lasts long for a kid when there's something concrete to fixate on. “I just came to see the gardens... but if you want, I'll try to come with you for awhile.”
      She looks dubious. “I dunno... Daddy gets really, really mad, when we don't obey him.” She claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes impossibly getting wider. “...but I'm not a-s'posed to call him that, please don't tell? I just call him that sometimes when I'm alone, it's such a nice-sounding name for someone, and if I talk about having a daddy, sometimes I can imagine I have a nicer one.”
      It would sound absolutely saccharine in a book, but hearing the matter-of-fact words from this darling little girl's mouth, I can see the sincerity in her expression, and my heart breaks for her. Children live in such small little social worlds, so any one cruelty is proportionally overwhelming... especially when it's someone who should be that close to you.
      “Well, if I'm there, he won't be too bad, will he? He'll have to be polite to company, won't he?”
      She considers this, then grins and takes my hand. “You're right. He'll have to be respeckable – Mommy tells him that all the time, and it makes him grumpy, but then he acts nicer at least.”
      The man calls out again, louder this time. “Evelyn! Avery! Come here this instant!”
      The girl quakes and presses herself against my side, clinging to my hand. Her hand feels perfectly solid in mine, her body warm and alive. It's not just ghosts that I'm seeing... no vague spirit hanging over my shoulder...
      “Come on, I'll go with you, it'll be alright... your name is Evelyn? Mine's Kimberly. I'll be right here with you, okay?” Honestly, I'm pretty scared myself, but I'll play the big sister and try to be strong for her. Fleetingly, I remember Anna's warning, and realize that if I can hold Evelyn's hand, there's no reason anyone else I see can't physically touch me too...
      “All right, Kimberly,” she says in a small, timid voice. She clutches her doll to her chest, and speaks softly to it as well. “Clara, Kimberly is coming with us, and Daddy will have to be respeckable, so don't worry, all right?”
      We head off in the direction of the voice, following the little path I saw the dog take a few minutes before. The roses are still only in bud, but I can recognize the leaves of that plant, at least. Everything else I walk by, I have no idea, but there are more fragrant things around, lots of things just beginning to bloom, as well as some daffodils and hyacinths here and there. I wonder if they're still here..? It's only a minute's walk before the unpaved path runs into a tiled one, though it's a different pattern of tile than the ones I've already seen. Same general style though, so likely the same origin, which I still need to sort out. The tiled path leads into a formal rose garden, where the low bushes are arranged in neat and orderly lines, with carefully pruned hedges and artfully trained shrubbery in large green geometric shapes. There's a fountain in the middle, though it's much less elaborate than the one I've visited. This one looks to be marble, in a more generic – though still lovely – design of fluted columns and petal-like shapes.
      Off to the right, by a white metal trellis covered in what I presume are climbing roses, stands a man, holding the black dog firmly by the scruff of his neck. The dog is perfectly silent and motionless, sitting still as a statue at the man's side. His ears are down, and his eyes look nervous to say the least. He whimpers softly as he sees Evelyn approach, and the man shakes him – not much, but enough to make his dominance clear.
      The man narrows his eyes suspiciously when he sees me. “And who are you? We had no expected visitors today.” He eyes my jeans with disgust. He himself is dressed in a finely-cut suit of a deep navy blue, with what I suspect is a silk scarf at his throat. His face is very, very beautiful, his hair long and dark, his eyes deep and penetrating... and though I think these eyes are darker than the man I saw at the fountain, there is something similar in their gaze, something in the directness, the power of it.
      Power... the man's spirit near me is both powerful and often angry...
      “I asked, who are you? You are on my private grounds, and I do not believe you have been invited.” His voice is stern and commanding – though something in the fluidity of it is very refined, and would be beautiful if the words were kinder.
      “This is Kimberly. She's my friend, and I want her to be here.” I look down at Evelyn, startled by the firmness of her young voice. She's far more self-possessed than I am right now, her expression is set in remarkably mature determination.
      “You had no permission from me to invite callers.” His voice is almost a growl – far more menacing than any sound the dog has made.
      The girl hesitates at this, and I wonder that she does not try to pretend permission from her mother. But maybe she learned young not to pit one parent against the other, I know I learned that one around the age of six myself.
      “And were you the one to let the dog run loose?”
      At this, she nods sullenly. “I tried to keep him from running, but---”
      “But you are not strong enough to hold him, as I have told you a hundred times. You are not to let any of the animals loose without permission, as you well know.”
      She nods, not looking up. “Yes, sir.”
      It's clear the man wants to say more – I'm not a good judge of reading violence in someone's body language, not having had much experience with it myself, but I have a strong, worried hunch that, were I not here, this sweet little girl would have received blows from this powerful man's hands.
      “Well. If you see your brother, tell him I need not speak to him. I will return the dog to his kennel, as you would be unable to.” With this, he strides off, hand still gripping the dog.
      When he's out of sight, Evelyn sighs heavily and hugs my legs tight. I can't help but smile, and hug her back. “Thank you,” she breathes, looking up at me with shining eyes. “You saved me!”
      I'd love to be able to say I didn't do anything... but I know I did. I wish I could tell her that he would never really hurt her... but I think he does. This poor sweet little girl...
      I kneel down to her level, and straighten out her hat a bit for her. “Evelyn, is your mother kind to you?”
      She nods and smiles brightly. “Mommy is the kindest lady in all the world.”
      I smile back. “I'm glad to hear it. You stay as close to your mommy as you can, and stay away from... from him, whenever you can.”
      She nods solemnly. “I do, Kimberly. Avery does too, though sometimes he tries to argue with him instead of just staying away. I get really scared when he does that, it's so bad when he's angry...”
      I frown, getting back to my feet and casting my eyes over the garden. Such a beautiful, beautiful place... how could someone bear to spoil it by such angry and discord? “I'm sorry he's not nicer to you, Evelyn. I wish I could help...”
      She looks up at me solemnly. “But you can't stay, can you.” It's not a question – somehow, she senses that I'm a transient part of her world.
      “I can't, no... I'll come back if I can, but I don't know if I can or not.”
      “Well, you always have my permission. Someday I'll be big enough that I can give permissions, and when I am, I'll give you them.”
      I grin down at the bright, round face beneath the hat and curls. “Thank you...”
      And suddenly, my eyes go out of focus, and I realize the garden is aging in places, around the periphery of my vision. “Evelyn! I have to go now...”
      “Oh! Kimberly!”
      “I'm sorry...”
      “Kimberly, do you like flowers?”
      I have no idea why this is such an imperative thing to ask at such a desperate moment, but... “Very much!”
      “I'll plant some for you! Promise!”

      ...and then she's gone, and I'm alone in an aging rose garden. The top of the fountain has broken off, and lays in pieces in the mucky basin. The once-neat rows of rose plants have sprawled out, and in places been overrun by field grass and weeds. The carefully sculpted shrubs are all overgrown, their shapes long-lost to overgrowth and unkind weather.
      I suddenly feel very, very lonely. There should be a chilly breeze and cloudy skies, but there's not, it's still sunny and warm, but the golden light is an odd contrast to the wilderness that was once such an elegant formal garden. The light which played so happily off the pale blue satin and red-gold curls falls tiredly on the debris-covered ground where she stood...
      I'm vaguely comforted, knowing that she survived this place. The children escaped the fire, and the father perished in it. I wonder how far from now--- from then? From the time I saw her, until the time she was free of his grasp.
      ...and I wonder, did she plant flowers for me? Which ones, and where did she plant them? I wish I had some chance of knowing... but these visions have been so sporadic, so scattered in time and place. I've never seen the same person twice, at least so far... but I hope I'll see Evelyn again, and I can only hope she'll somehow grow up without being completely ruined by the psychological – and probably physical – domination of her father.
      I did see the dog twice – I feel sure it's the same dog – so maybe that's a bit of hope at least of seeing the girl again.
      I look around, trying to adjust my mental image of the garden, matching up my present with the garden's past. I can see where the tile path leads into an overgrown section of bushes... and while some of the tiles are gone, some still remain. I spend a few minutes taking pictures around the decaying rose garden, but not as long as I might have before – more important to me is my memory of the vision, of the garden Evelyn stood in. I'm itching to get home and draw the girl... but I'll have to decide how. Maybe by the dogwood?
      I follow the tile path, and am soon stuck in midst of overgrown things. The path I followed with her such a short time ago is utterly lost now. It's purely by guesswork that I make my way back to the clearing with the pond and the dogwood tree, and it takes me a good deal longer to get there, battling my way through leaves and branches. I continue on, back to Cora's bench, and when I reach it, the pillar I weeded around catches my eye. I wonder what those blue flowers are? I never did find out...
      Crouching down by the pillar, I pull out my field guide, and flip slowly through the pages.
      Canterbury Bells, I think, some kind of Campanula anyway. I touch the flowers gently, struck by how sweet and innocent the shade of blue is... and then I realize why I have that impression. It's the same shade of blue as Evelyn's dress. I wonder... oh it's such a stretch, there's no way this is what she planted for me... but maybe, maybe it is. I think I'm going to let myself believe that it is – it makes me happy to think so, and it looks a suitable flower to remember her by.
      I make a few quick sketches of the way the flowers fall against the white pillar, wondering if I can work them into my drawing of her when I get home today...

language and names

2009-11-20T18:58:00.003-05:00

So in today's chunk, I had to fix the fact that I had the little girl saying "okay"! I know the origins of the word are pretty murky, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in polite language use in the late 1800s, early 1900s, which is vaguely the time period I'm working in. Also: her mis-pronounciations started with a fortuitous typo, for which I am very grateful because it helped me give her a personality. She's adorable! I love her.

Thank goodness her name checked out. I was writing in the Starbucks on campus - no internet means I can churn out a day's worth of writing in like an hour. So when I went to invent names... I couldn't check my handy-dandy reference site. But, after a few minutes' thought, I realized I could narrow it down a bit anyway - noooo Biblical names for the kids. That was a nice break-through. The father, for as little as he wants to do with the kids, would definitely have put his foot down and refused to listen to Biblical names day-in and day-out around his house.

Evelyn popped into my head, I'm not entirely sure from where, but it was pretty - and, luckily for me, #125 in popularity in 1890. Not so high that it would be a common name, but high enough to be plausible. Her brother, I had a rougher time with, and subbed in Jared for a bit, but on checking the list, I found Avery, which I liked way better. Avery and Evelyn. The names sound really cute together. :)

...I had noooo idea what to name their dog, so I kept my eyes open while scrolling through the list. The name Rollie is somewhere in the top 500 for that year, and while I am totally unable to picture a kid surviving school with the name Rollie, I can totally see a couple little kids naming their dog that.

Parts 16-19

2009-11-19T23:59:00.001-05:00

[went out one night with friends, then had migraines the next two days, thus the no writing... but I hate not having my post-titles line up with the dates. ;p ]

      “You must be very careful when in that garden. Take someone with you if you can, or at least leave word with someone about where you are. It's very, very rare, that a spirit will cause someone physical harm, but you can never be too careful. If you have that feeling again, you must leave the area at once.”
      I nod solemnly, inwardly sighing in frustration. How can I find out more, if all I can do is run away? “Is... is there anything I can do about it? Do you think it's something that needs to be set right there, or something?”
      Anna shakes her head slowly. “Quite possibly, but the spirits in that place have had a very long time to fester in their emotions. It would be very difficult to find out what they're after... easy as the ghost hunter shows on TV make it look, it can take months of intense research to find out what a spirit wants. And even then, it's not always enough – sometimes, the spirits just want to hold on to their anger.” She sighs, and settles back in her chair, spreading her hands in a gesture of having nothing to offer. “I wish your first experience with that gray realm could have been a happier one, Kimber. There are so many good and helpful spirits, that watch us, and wish us well.”
      I smile a little. “You did say there was more than one around me, right? Maybe she'll watch out for me yet.”
      Anna smiles as well. “That is true. Now that's not to say that you shouldn't be careful, because you should, always. But that is true... it seemed a quiet, faint spirit, but who knows. The fact that they are both near you means there must be some kind of connection there. Had you any indication of them before you visited the garden?”
      I shake my head emphatically. “No, not at all... and I don't really sense anything outside of the garden, even now. I mean, I can remember the visions I had exceptionally well, but other than that, there's nothing unusual outside of the fence.”
      “Well, do keep your senses open – it's quite likely their power in this world is weaker away from the place they're tied to. Still, they may well present themselves elsewhere.”
      Anna gets to her feet, and I realize my half-hour is over. I stand as well, and she shakes my hand warmly. “Now, if you have any further questions, or need any other assistance in this, feel entirely free to give me a call.”
      I smile warmly back. “I will, thank you so much for all your help.”

      Once I'm back home, I sit down with my vision-drawings. The one of the boy is basically done, though I'm still adding a few touches here and there. The fountain, I refused to let myself work on after that one day – it was meant to be a freer, more emotionally-driven work, something expressive, not technically perfect. I have a few sketches of Cora, but I can't find a composition I like. The expression on her face was so tender and poignant... and struck such a contrast with the yellow of her dress, the flowers and sunlight around her. While the contrast would be a nice thing, it's also hard to make the two opposite emotions cooperate in a single drawing, it just feels like I plopped the character into an arbitrary background.
      What I'm longing to do, is a drawing of the couple I saw at the fountain. I have a few sketches, one of him cradling her in his arms, and one of her leaning over toward the fish in the fountain, with him looking on... But I didn't get a close enough look at either of them. The man, I nearly did, even though it was at a distance, I somehow got a really good sense of his features. But the woman... I can draw her hair, but not much else. I have a composition in my head, of her leaning over toward the fish, him at her shoulder, the view close-up with warm, rich colors and details... But I don't have the details here to work with.
      Sighing, I rough out the composition on a large sheet of paper anyway. I'll fill in what I can, at least. I can get reference images from my own photos for the fountain, and I'm sure I can find some pictures of the fish on the internet – some kind of goldfish, maybe koi, shouldn't be too hard to find something close. The faces... I'll just have to see if a future vision of the past gives me something more to go on.

      Several days later, I'm deep in thought on my walk back to the garden. I live a pretty solitary existence outside of work, so if something bad does happen to me... it's going to be like a day before someone notices. I have, at least, told a few coworkers, and my parents as well, that my days off are mostly spent poking around the old garden. (My mom thinks it sounds like a nice, romantic spot, but that it's a little morbid to hang around there so much. My dad doesn't get it either, but given how few of his hobbies other people “get”, he's pretty tolerant of other people's oddities.) And I have made an effort to remember to bring my cell phone with me. (I'm just a few years older than the generation that has their phones on them every second of every day. My friends and I had them, but, not like the kids do now. I text almost as slowly as my parents would.)
      I'd kind of like to borrow somebody's great big dog to take along on trips like this, but... I remember the reaction of that one dog I saw, how it wouldn't come near, and how Anna's cats all disappeared when she connected with the spirits attached to me.
      That, and I don't know anyone with a big friendly dog that I could borrow.
      But those spirits... I've been trying not to think about the fact that they're attached to me somehow. It's a really odd feeling, like I have kites tied to my shoulders or something. Or like someone's always looking over my shoulder, every minute of every day. But I know it's not like that – I have no actual connection to these people, I just happen to walk around the place where they lived. So I'm sure they have other concerns besides me. Cora probably spends most of her days making sure the roses are blooming nicely, flicking any bugs away from the leaves. No, actually, she must go and find a servant's ghost, from what little I know of her I can't imagine her deigning to touch something as grubby as a bug! I remember reading Little Women years ago, and how it was an absolute social disaster that Jo's gloves were stained with lemonade or tea or something, and it would have been as unforgivable to show up at the party with stained gloves as it was to show up without any gloves at all. Cora was wearing perfectly dainty little white gloves when I saw her... pretty sure there was even a bit of lace at the wrists.
      I wonder if Cora was the quieter one that Anna saw? Was the man her husband, or, more likely I think, the man I saw... the man who also saw me. As addictive as his smoldering gaze was, I think I'd rather have the boy's ghost hanging around. He might play pranks, but at least he wouldn't try to kill me.
      I shudder as the thought crosses my mind – kill me? But I haven't done anything to harm the place... yes, I've trespassed into it, but wouldn't the ghosts want some company? And I did a bit of weeding... and more than that, I've been drawing the place, recalling the beauty that was apparently so dear to these people. And that, I think, should really be making them happy. I hope they follow me enough to see those drawings...
      I have my flower books with me today, and I'm determined to do some identifying. The handful of photos I've taken were largely good enough to use as references for drawing, but I didn't get pictures of everything, and I want to know the names anyway.

      Squirming beneath the fence (a process which does not, unfortunately, get easier with repetition), I haul myself into the garden. Standing up, I look around and take a deep breath. I have no idea what it is, but there's something... no, several things, I think, that smell absolutely heavenly. But before I go anywhere, I reach into my bag and pull out the field guide on flowers. (I left the larger book at home – I'll sketch out anything I can't identify with this one, and then check it in there.) The first thing my eyes fall on are the big grasses lining the creek bed. I ran into a lot of cattails growing up, but these look a little different. I'd flipped through the book to some degree at home, so I have a vague idea of how it's set up... and it's not terribly long before I find my plant.
      Reeds! These are reeds. Probably common reeds, Phragmites australis, though I'm not sure I'd be able to spot the differences. How cool! I grin and jot down a note in my sketchbook. I had pictures of these, but, it's good to have the name for reference. They can grow anywhere from six to like twenty feet! That's insane. The ones I'm looking at here are maybe five feet... but I suppose it's a little early in the season yet? And the winter winds would have wiped out any particularly tall stalks from last year.
      I decide to seek out the spots I've been trying to draw, to identify the plants there. I look around the creek bed a little more, but most things in this spot are still just masses of green leaves. I'm not that confident with my little book yet, I'll wait until the silly things flower. Next up is Cora's bench...
      And I breathe in deeply, again and again, as I approach the bench with its vine-covered trellis overhead. The trellis is still covered in the small golden-white honeysuckle blossoms, and their scent fills the warm early summer air. Walking closer, though, I see something smaller in bright bloom at the base of the trellis, outside of its shaded interior. Crouching down, I tenderly lift one of the flowers, which are perched on long, slender stems, the flower heads drooping down a little to the ground. A pale column of petals make up the center, and crayon-bold petals surround it... I know this is something I've seen before, but I never knew the name. Flipping through the book, I find that they're columbines. Columbines, I should have known that, I remember now that Grandma had them in her front yard, my sister and I loved to dissect the oddly-shaped flowers when we were little.
      Smiling at the memory, I'm half-tempted to pluck one of the flowers to play with... but Anna's warning holds me back, and I think I'd feel guilty anyway. As comfortable as this place is beginning to feel to me, the fact that the original owners are probably looking over my shoulder makes me a little nervous of making any change that isn't obviously for the better. Standing up, I can't help but look around, half-expecting to see someone there.
      I don't see any human shape, but I do see a little path that I hadn't seen before – it's mostly overgrown, but there are a few flagstones set into the ground beside the columbines. Picking my way carefully, pushing aside the rampant green growth of goodness-knows-what, I follow the path as it curls around behind the trellis. There are a freaking lot of plants, all huge and bushy and trying to keep me away from their nice clean air. But now that I'm in here, I'm determined to see where this little path goes. One of the plants is covered in thorns, and I gasp as it snags my wrist, drawing a bit of blood.
      “Damn you, vampire plant!”
      Eventually, I reach a bit of a clearing – there's a small pool, only four feet or so long, a couple feet across, vaguely oval in shape. It's only because of a frog plopping into it that I know there's any water though – the entire thing is covered in some plant, with thick rounded leaves, and spikes of light purple flowers... oh but they're really pretty! I kneel down at the water's edge, and look closer at the flowers. Short spikes covered in these delicate, pale lavender-blue flowers. I take a quick picture, then find a stick and poke gently at the plant's leaves. They're pretty much floating, it doesn't seem like they're attached at all – but the plants make an almost perfect covering on the water, without moving the leaves I wouldn't see the water at all.
      Looking up, I see that the little stone-paved clearing is surrounded by mounds of green, but that there are a few things blooming enough to catch my eye. A small tree, thin and spindly, looking rather old and tired, has surprisingly large white flowers on it... again, a flower I know I've seen before, though I'm not sure what it is. Four petals, oval with little notches cut out of the outside edge... oh! Dogwood! It doesn't look like the trees have a long lifespan, this one must be near its end. Its flowers are still so pretty, though it looks like it's costing the poor tree the last of its strength to bear them...
      I spend a few minutes in the little nook, mostly taking pictures of the dogwood. There's something rather sad and lonely about the tree, hidden away in this forgotten little corner... I keep looking for a bench or a little sculpture or something, but if there's anything here, it's lost under the vast branches and leaves of the overgrown plants.
      Walking around the edges of the little clearing, I peer as best I can below the plant growth, trying to see if there's a different path leading out. There appears to be a bit of space off to the left... but on closer inspection, it's only space around the stump of some dead plant, whose branches have broken away over the years, but whose roots must still be holding those of other plants at bay. Frowning a bit – I hate retracing my steps when I'm exploring, it feels so boring by comparison – I crouch down at the edge of the pool again, to tuck my camera and sketchbook safely back in my bag before braving the aggressive plants.
      Looking up, I see a young girl, standing on tip-toes by the dogwood tree. A large doll is in her arms – the two are wearing in matching dresses, pale blue with ruffles and bows, hats with large brims and matching blue ribbon.

Part 15

2009-11-16T01:44:00.002-05:00

But much as I would like to pick this woman's brain about the Masons, I'm very conscious of the half-hour I'm paying for.
      “What do you think it was I saw? Ghosts, or a vision, or..?”
      “Well... that is rather hard to say, Kimber. Do you have any history of Seeing? I have a sense that you're definitely open to the psychic realm.”
      “I don't, no... but I'm an artist,” I reply with a wry grin. “Believing in otherworldly things comes with the territory.”
      She smiles in return. “That's always a good thing to hear. Would you like me to do a reading for you, to see what the spirits around you may be trying to communicate?”
      I take a quiet deep breath. And then mentally shrug – can't hurt, anyway, and I have to admit I'm curious. “Yeah, I think so. I've never done this before, so...”
      “That's just fine, I'll talk you through it. Now, Kimber, I want you to clear your mind as best you can. Most people find it easiest to find something simple to focus on – an object in the room, a recent neutral memory, a favorite song. You may close your eyes if it helps, but it is not necessary.”
      I do close my eyes, for the moment anyway. I think about the fountain, mentally following its curls and swirls, the smoothness of the lines...
      “That's it... keep your thoughts calm, it helps the emotional atmosphere stay more clear, and readings more accurate. I am sensing a presence near you... several of them, I believe. One is female, and seems to be casually curious about your life. She watches you, and I think would help you if needed, but is not overly interested. Even now, she is fading... there is a much stronger presence near you.”
      I've opened my eyes at this point, watching to see what she's doing. Anna is sitting quite still in her chair, rocking ever so slightly, but otherwise motionless. Her eyes are closed, and her hands are clasped tightly in her lap. The cats, I notice, have fled the room entirely. I didn't hear anyone call them... either their internal clocks know when feeding time is, or they're not a fan of spirits. I'm suddenly reminded of the black dog in the garden, who wouldn't come near me...
      “This... is a male presence, I believe. There is the power of a man, but...” She is struggling to find words, her brow creases. “Something more than a man... a very, very great power, indeed. He is... I am not sure of his intentions toward you. He is very watchful, but is not open at all to my reading, his willpower is---”
      She gasps suddenly, her fingernails digging into her hands. I lean forward in alarm, unsure if it would be safe to go to her or not. She resumes again, through gritted teeth. “He is quite strong, and you would do well not to anger him, I fear what he might do. He is... not... quite in the world, but not quite gone from it. His presence is much stronger than any ghost I have felt, he...” She trails off again, her face wrinkled in concentration. “Kimber, be careful of him... There is goodness but it is buried deep, I think, there is so much anger in him, so many dark thoughts, s-so----”
      Gasping, her eyes fly open, and she clutches desperately at the armrests of her rocking chair.
      “Anna... are you alright?” I start to get up and go to her, but she waves me back.
      “I'm... I'm fine, Kimber, I'm fine. I've seen worse. But there is something about him... he didn't let me see much, I'm afraid. Very secretive. Most spirits are completely open about their intentions – they actively seek out communication, they want to make known the reason they're still here. But this one... If you have any dark family history, or personal tragedies, I would advise you to find some way to resolve them.”
      I shake my head blankly. “I really don't... there's never been anything I've been involved in. But, I did... In the garden, after I saw the woman, and again, another day, I saw a dog but he wouldn't come near me, and I felt... I didn't think it was anything at the time, but I suddenly felt anxious, scared, there was this horrible oppressive feeling that I just had to get away from.”
      Anna stares steadily into my eyes. I find it awkward to blink, in the grasp of that gaze.

note about the name

2009-11-15T23:58:00.000-05:00

I FINALLY NAMED MY MC!!!! I was wondering when that was going to happen. But when she walked into the psychics, I realized, holy crap she'll have to give her name. She doesn't have a name!!! ahhhhhh!1!!

So I brought up the list of five or six names that I was considering. Kimber really was the one I liked best all along (yes because of Jem), and it didn't seem to jar with the character in my head. But then I realized I needed a last name. DOOOOOM! I was going to snag something out of my own family history, but the few I could think of offhand didn't suit, and the one I like, I think I used in something else recently.

The site I got the rankings of first names by birth year doesn't do last names. But it gave me the idea of pulling up some kind of census. A google for "North Carolina census" eventually led me to a site with all sorts of things I didn't need. I started going off some random military listing from the 1800s, but then I found an actual listing of all the surnames in the state in... 1880 or so. Only, you know, a century earlier than my story... but her family lives in the state, so it's reasonable that some ancestor was there in 1880.

One of the first names that caught my eye was "Benton"... which is Kimber from Jem's last name. Couldn't do it, though it sounds so nice. I eventually came back to Bennette though, because, well, it really did sound good, as well as plausible, I think there was someone in my school with Bennet for a last name. Decided to change the spelling a bit though, that "e" on the end was too much.

BUT, the real reason I wanted to make a post about her name. I am NOT having the psychic constantly calling her by name in order to remind myself what her name is. (I've been test-running the name in my head for a few days, though the final decision wasn't made until yesterday.) Nor is it in celebration of her finally having a name, or to hit you over the head with it, now that it's finally in here. I promise, it's only because that's the way this woman talks - I'm sure you've run into that sort of person too, intent on making a good business-like impression, calling you by name to make you more comfortable or make your experience more personal or whatever their reason is.

(Personally, it always makes me feel really, really awkward. But I have a reclusive streak, so maybe it's just me.)

Part 14

2009-11-15T00:07:00.002-05:00

      The historical society doesn't meet for two weeks, so I decide to check out a psychic next. Only one of them has a website, and it's a generic drab little thing, obviously put together by someone else at least five years ago, so it doesn't give me much to go on. But one of my coworkers has a friend whose sister had a session with one of the three whose ads I saw, and I suppose that's as good a recommendation as any. I called the number in the ad for Anna Temple, and made... an appointment? A reservation? I don't even know.
      Approaching the front door of the old, but well-kept and pretty, house in town, I'm still not sure just what kind of answers or advice I'm looking for here. I'm pretty certain I'm not seeing visions, but I suppose it could still be ghosts. This woman will know about ghosts, and spirits in general I guess. She did advertise that being a medium was one of her specialties, being able to speak with your dead relatives and whatever. And I'm sure she'll have heard any rumors of strange things that might have happened on the Mason estate.
      On the doorstep, I take a deep breath, still pretty nervous about this whole thing. My closest contact with a psychic has been through a television screen. But I ring the bell, and am ushered inside by a girl no more than sixteen or seventeen. She's a bit pretty, but looking so bored that it instantly stops you from considering any good qualities.
      She flops back down behind a desk in the front entryway. “Name.”
      I suppress a grin and a giggle, at the ridiculously cliché teenage behavior.
      “Kimberly Bennett?”
      The girl nods, making a little note in the record book in front of her. “Half-hour reading. Sixty dollars please.”
      I have to wonder what kind of sketchy customers walk in this woman's door, I'm sure there's a reason she asks for payment up-front.
      Taking my money, the girl shoves it into a metal box in a desk drawer (which I can't see, but the rattling sound of a cash box is clear enough), makes another mark in the book.
      “Third door on the left,” she mumbles, waving vaguely behind her as she pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and starts text messaging a mile a minute.
      “Why, thank you so much,” I reply, with as much saccharine as I possibly can, just to antagonize her. I laugh silently as I make my way down the wood-paneled hallway. God I hope I wasn't that bad at that age...

      Approaching the third door, I hear a sound that fills me with dread.
      Really, really bad new age music. Sound effects of running water and birds, some kind of flute playing an “exotic” melody, and really cheesy electronically produced synth washes of overtones in the background. I struggle to keep my expression serious, but really, this does not at all bode well. Nor does the spicy scent of patchouli filtering through the heavy wood door.
      But, I've already put the money down... and it'll be an experience, any which way it all turns out. Taking another slow breath, I raise my hand to knock at the door.
      “Come iii-iiin!” a voice trills, just before my fist makes contact with the wood. I can barely hold back the giggles, what a childish way to try to impress someone. But I open the door, and step inside, fearing the worst.
      The place absolutely reeks of incense. The dense spicy smoke clings to the heavy curtains and deeply embroidered pillows that are strewn all over the floor and chairs. I can't even begin to count the number of candles that are lit around the room, arranged on shelves set at all different heights. There are old crocheted afghans (oh, you charming old gold and orange and brown zigzag patterns!), at least two cats, and lots and lots of plants. A freaking hippie-dippy haven. I'm a little terrified of meeting the actual person behind such a place.
      And there is Miss? Mrs? Ms? Anna Temple, seated in a rocking chair beside a vine-covered window, a pampered-looking cat curled in her lap. She smiles warmly at me, and I have to admit, it's a genuinely friendly smile. She's old enough that the hippie trappings may actually be legitimate, not just a pretension, which makes me feel a little better. Her hair is very long, nearly to her waist, straight and gray. She is not in tie-dye, or an Indian-style dress, but a loose blouse with a bright floral print, and the loose, thin-fabric pants my grandma always calls “slacks”. This woman feels like a grandmother, I'm put pretty much instantly at ease.
      “Here, dear, sit in the chair there. Don't mind the cats, they won't bother you, Susie will be feeding them soon and they'll all go running off.”
      I bite back another cackle, knowing instinctively how much the sulky teenager – undoubtedly a granddaughter – must utterly despise being called “Susie”. I sit in the indicated chair, which is comfy, despite a bit of cat hair. The woman turns down the music, so it's at a low enough volume to (almost) be inoffensive.
      “Now, your name was Kimberly. Do you go by Kim, or...”
      “Kimber, mostly.”
      “Alright, Kimber. Do just call me Anna, I'm not much for formality. So what brings you here today? Are you facing a difficult period in your life, or do you have questions about your future?”
      I grin wryly, knowing that I do, but that I'm not here about that. “Not really... I mean, I have questions, but no more than anyone my age does I guess. What I really came here about was...” I hesitate, not quite sure how to sum it all up.
      She nods reassuringly. “Go right ahead, dear, I've heard it all over the years. I may be a little old lady, but you won't shock me.”
      I have to giggle a bit at that, and she chuckles too. “Well, I've been seeing some things that... well, I don't want to say they're not really there, I see them in such vivid detail, they have to be really there... but things that don't belong quite in this time, I guess.”
      She nods sagely. “This is an old town, my dear, and for all the people that are here now, there are so many that were here before us... Not all of them have moved on. Where were you, and what exactly did you see?”
      I briefly summarize the scenes of the boy, the woman, and the young couple, telling her they all happened on or near the old Mason property, outside of town. She was familiar with the location, and apparently the general story of the place. “It's a very active location, I hear of things happening there quite often. Be sure you're never there at night, or on the anniversary of the fire – people have seen some terrible things. Mr. Mason may have been reclusive, but there are a lot of stories, even now, about his temper, and that he may have had some strange powers that showed in his worst moments.”
      I perk up a bit at this new angle to his character. Is that why Cora looked so sad the day I saw her?

just a note

2009-11-14T01:56:00.002-05:00

I started out making up those classifieds off the top of my head - my handful of months working at the local Penny Saver gave me a good sense of the things. But I couldn't think of anything downright *weird* enough, so I pulled up some actual classifieds online for my area. (There are like three Penny Savers on my living room floor somewhere, but... that's all the way downstairs.)

So those last three? Are all actual ads. The jeans lady? Lists several pairs of jeans in every size FROM 5 TO 18.

I think she earns a novel in her own right.

Part 13

2009-11-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

      I decide to try an abstract approach to drawing the fountain. For one thing, I could easily spend years trying to do a technically accurate version... and probably still wouldn't be happy with it. For another, what struck me far more strongly than the intricate craftsmanship of the sculpture was the fluidity of the thing, the vivid sense of flowing water even when it has been dry for God knows how many years. I kept thinking about it on the walk home, and now I've gotten out my biggest sketchbook, a stack of chalk pastels, and some paper towels (for smudging the chalk around in larger areas, hoping to save my poor fingertips a bit).
      I am refusing to let myself do the whole thing in shades of blue. In fact, I'm tempted to take all the blue out of my pile and hide it in another room, far, far out of reach, but I know I'll want it to deepen purples or cool down greens or something. Blue would be far too easy, and I don't want it to be such an obvious water connection. I want to see if, like the original sculptor, I can convey the sense of water through motion, through composition and arrangement and subtle gesture, instead of hitting the viewer over the head with depictions of waves and rain.
      I replay all that I saw today in my thoughts as I draw, a pretty but subdued set of music playing softly from my headphones. I think back to the boy, to the woman, and to the couple... but I don't see any kind of family resemblance. Who was the boy? One of the women must have been his mother... or some relation, anyway. I didn't get a very close look at either person I saw today, but it was enough to rule out a biological connection to either of the others. I'm going to have to see if I can hunt down some old photos somehow or anoth---
      The book!
      Dropping my pastels, I jump up – and then stagger, my feet having fallen asleep God knows how long ago as I was drawing. Wincing as pins and needles set in, I make my way to the bookcase, and pull out the book of local history I bought a month or so ago. I didn't know the name Mason when I last looked through it, I'd only seen the boy (who is looking to be somehow disconnected from the family). I flip through it eagerly now, looking intently at the face of every town elder or politician, checking the names, the dates...
      And on the last page of the chapter, my heart stops – something in the face is familiar somehow, and the name!
      “Mrs. Cora Mason. President of the First Methodist Church's Ladies Aid for eleven years, founder of local chapter of Red Cross, dedicated member of Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Prominent figure in local charity work, donating large amounts to both local and foreign missions. 1872-1931. Photo c. 1911.”
      It's the auburn-haired woman I saw sitting alone in the garden... though the photo shows her much aged. She couldn't have been more than twenty or so when I saw her, and she's nearly forty here. Not a very kind forty, either, there are deep lines in her face, and her hair looks faded and dry – though granted, the photo isn't in anything like pristine condition, and I'm sure this is a copy of a copy of a photo taken when cameras and photographic materials had a lot more vulnerabilities than they do now. Still... Though her hands look a bit more work-hardened, her skin still looks smooth and well-cared for. There are still a few curls that fall gently against her neck, and her eyes are still soft and deep, though they look much more tired than they once did. The lines of her face remain, though softened and rounded, and her hair is arranged in much the same way.
      After a few minutes studying the photo, I flip slowly through the rest of the book, searching for any mention of the Masons, or any face I recognize. Nothing... and no photos or mentions of either the mansion or the garden. But then again, the house burned and the estate was abandoned before photos became really commonplace. (The Kodak Brownie camera, which was the first camera really accessible to the general public and used by amateurs, hit the marketplace in 1900. Thank you, high school research papers!)
      I turn back to the photo of Cora again, and stare a few minutes longer, wondering idly what her life had been... The map man in town made it sound like she was a bit of a rich snob, I got the impression of someone domineering and overbearing. But the woman I saw seemed only sad, maybe a little lost... And the Cora in the photo here did so much for the community. It's so hard to see how all of those bits fit together – but then, we all have odd twists in our personalities, in our interests. Half of my coworkers have no idea I'm an artist, I'm just the one who's best at tweaking photocopies into looking... well, passable, anyway. But if you took three random details about my life, and knew nothing else... Good at making copies, was quiet in class, walked alone in cemeteries. Oh look, she's a psychotic serial killer!
      At this, I have to laugh, and close the book. Going back to my drawing, I let my mind drift around the images in the fountain, the grace of the figures and the sumptuousness of the flowers... I plug my camera into my computer, and pull up a few shots of the fountains, just to check the form of some of the flowers, then return to the drawing, the world growing hazy and soft around me as the drawing comes more fully into focus...

      Before work the next day, I run to the bookstore and grab a couple of flower guide books. One is a field guide to flowers local to the area, while one is a thicker, more general guide to flowers and flower-families. A very thick book. Luckily for me and my wallet, it's an old library book being re-sold at a discount, so I can actually afford the silly thing. Should be a great reference for drawing, anyway, even apart from helping me figure out all the things I've been looking at.
      After work, it's too late to go out and do anything (apart from going to a restaurant or bar, neither of which appeals to little-loner me), but I curl up with the local newspaper and scan for a, information on the local historical society, and b, anyone offering psychic readings or something. The “Around Town” column lists the next meeting of the historical society... I'm a little timid about approaching the whole group out of the blue like that, but maybe I can poke my head in early, and just ask someone who I should talk to. There are actually three listings for psychics – I can't decide if it's odd there should be so many in a small town, or just par for the course in a small town without a whole lot of entertainment options. I circle the small classified ads, not sure which one would be the most reputable. I'll see if I can't somehow get a recommendation from a coworker or something, maybe see if any of these people have a website or something.
      I also spot a short article mentioning a local horticultural society, they just put in a bunch of geraniums along Main Street in town. Oh geraniums... I may not know much about flowers, but you bring nothing to my mind but '50s housewives. But as uninspiring as geraniums may be, that might be something to look into as well – gardeners are always looking at other people's gardens, admiring and borrowing ideas. I'm sure they must know something about this one...
      It's a little bit amazing to me that a full newspaper can come out of this town every week. There are articles on the high school and college sports teams of course, but also bits on local politics, some new arrangement of the water systems around the county (which the mobile home park owners are dead set against, and I can't figure out why), a fifth grader who found a surprisingly valuable arrow head in the creek, a whole column of information from the Chamber of Commerce (which is full of more business-speak than art-student me can stomach), a listing of some pets available through the local shelter... Half of the classifieds are obnoxious, blaring things in all-caps: “$$$ NEED MONEY FAST? WORK FROM HOME making craft items MAKE THOUSANDS every week!!! Call 585-8888 for information $$$” But the rest are oddly fascinating. A guy selling “seasoned oak for campfires, fireplaces”, which is normal enough. The next ad is selling “DIAMOND engagement ring, 1.5 carats, will take best offer”, followed by “PUREBRED MINIATURE DACHSHUNDS” (...dachshunds are not big dogs by any stretch of the imagination, who felt the need to make smaller ones?) and “LIONEL train set, engine 1100, Tender-Scout Caboose Lionel Lines 1007...” It's amazing how much hobby-specific jargon exists, I have no idea what that ad even talks about. “I use to pick grapes growing up and remember the old carts that we used. I am looking to buy one of those old fashion Grape Picking Cart...” Don't these charge by the word? Guess the guy's pretty determined, anyone I've ever heard of placing an ad makes it as clipped and short as possible. Finally, I just burst out laughing and close the paper:
      “52 Pairs of Jeans. I have a bunch of jeans that I am selling. I have way too many cloths so I decided to start with my jeans first. I have mostly junior/misses jeans...”

Part 12

2009-11-12T23:59:00.001-05:00

      Straightening up again, I check to make sure I didn't smash my camera into the stone as I flailed... and it's fine, but when I look up, I see a couple seated on one of the other benches built into the fountain. The woman is indeed young, not far from my age, and she's very beautiful. Long flowing hair, a reddish tint to the chestnut waves that fall over her shoulders and down her back, a loose crown of small white flowers set as a halo around her head. Her skin is a perfect ivory cream – and to keep it that way, she holds a lacy parasol over her, keeping the sun at bay. Her dress is a loose, flowing thing, in a very pale green that accents the red in her hair.
      The man is... rather young in appearance, maybe in his thirties, there are few lines on his face, and the structure of his face and body have the trimness of youth. But something in his movements, in the way he carries himself, make him seem much, much older. A chronic illness might cause something like that, or a deep emotional issue. Still, despite the weariness that I can see even from this distance, he is tender toward her, holding her parasol as she leans over the edge of the fountain, trailing her white fingertips in the sparkling water, laughing as a bright red-orange fish darts quickly toward and then away from her fingers. He smiles at her, and his features lose a few years in that smile... His features are romantic perfection, skin smooth and clear, a well-defined jawline and slim nose, deep, dark eyes... His hair is longer than I would expect from the time I think they belong to, falling just over his shoulders. It's very dark, nearly black, and mostly straight, though there is a hint of a worn-out wave to it in places. He wears a dress jacket of some sort, dark gray in color, a maroon shirt underneath it... My knowledge of menswear is pretty limited, but I get the impression his clothing is immaculately tailored. There is a small boutonnière on the jacket, some mix of white and maybe something dark red? I can't make out the flowers from here, not that I'd know the names anyway.
      His frame is long and slim, and... not all that different from the young men sculpted in the fountain itself. There's something similar in their frame, in the grace of the way they hold themselves... I can't see his face well enough to study any resemblance there, but something... something in his manner, in the feel of the air around him, is distant, aloof, melancholy, like someone whose thoughts are on some moment other than the one they are in. Even as he gazes – clearly with much love – at the woman, there is something in his being that remains elsewhere.
      She, meanwhile, lives in the beauty of each passing moment. Her gaze is constantly drawn to the thousand small things in the garden around her, and there is such energy and vivacity in her every motion, that joy seems to flow from her every breath. Her face seems constantly upturned, even when looking down, like a child in the middle of a happy dream...
      She stands up, and her dress is caught in a breeze that floats by. It swirls around her legs, twining around her slim frame, and I brush aside the hair that has blown into my eyes. She does a pirouette, laughing, and holds out both hands to the man. He takes her hands, rising slowly, and twirls her about in a graceful dancing motion. Her laugh is light as spring rain, and when her foot catches on a vine creeping onto the brick path, he catches her up as though she weighed no more than the billowing cloud of pale fabric. She twines her arms around his neck and lays her head against his chest, and he cradles her tenderly for a long moment, burying his face in her hair, which shimmers in the late afternoon sun, the parasol laying neglected on the ground. When he looks up...
      He looks at me.
      My heart absolutely stops. It was one thing when the boy looked at me, it was with complete and casual acceptance, it was no more than an innocent dream-vision to him. But this... His gaze is deep and piercing, absolutely arresting. Yet he, too, doesn't seem to be surprised at all by the sight, though for different reasons, I think, than the boy. This is a man who knows there is more to the world than basic scientific or common experience explanations. He studies me for a long moment, saying nothing to the woman, who still rests peacefully against his chest. The same breeze that brushes his hair brushes mine, and I can smell a sweet, heavy, spice-laden scent... from the flowers he wears, maybe? He has no fear of me – but I get the feeling he is a man who fears nothing. Nothing tangible, anyway. And I'm a little afraid of him, his gaze is so incredibly intense, I don't feel like I can pull away from it. But he breaks contact first, and smiles, almost ruefully. Holding the woman a little closer to him, he speaks, his voice low and sonorous, but crossing the space between us quite clearly.
      “This... is the woman I have abandoned all else for. This is our garden, and we wish no-one to ever intrude upon our peace here.”
      At this, the woman looks up at him, undoubtedly in confusion.
      “Do not trouble yourself, my darling... I only spoke the thoughts in my heart, as a sort of invocation I suppose...”
      “Casting a good spell on our home?” she inquires lightly, not taking him entirely seriously – which is how he intended her to take it, though it is clear to me that it was no light jest.
      “Something of the kind...” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head tenderly. He looks over at me again, and, seeing my smile, almost smiles in return. He nods his understanding of my good-will toward them, then turns, the woman still in his arms, toward the mansion...
      The mansion! It's---

      It's gone. The breeze still blows, but it carries only the stale scent of the muck now lying at the base of the dry fountain. I caught nothing more than a glimpse of a turreted tower at one corner of the house...
      I turn the scene over and over in my mind for a long time, pulling out my sketchbook and feverishly scribbling notes on every detail I can remember. I try to sketch the man and the woman... somehow, I know they were not Mr. and Mrs. Mason, not the ones who moved here with their children and saw the house burn down. This was the man who built the estate out of love for this woman...
      “This is the woman I have abandoned all else for...”
      What did he leave behind for her? Something far more than a career in a big city, something far beyond the ordinary experience, that much is obvious. If only I could have been closer, and seen his face clearly...
      When I've exhausted my memory, I close my sketchbook with a sigh, trying to set the subtleties of the scene into my memory for good, trying to cement the sound of their voices, the spice-rich floral scent, the color of her hair, the directness of his gaze. Flip open the sketchbook, jot down a few more notes, then close it, more slowly, letting my gaze wander at last back to the fountain. The dry, tired fountain, with the tarnish of long years and old memories... Looking down into the basin, I shudder as I realize there are probably dead fish bodies in there. Shaking my head to clear it, I stand up, looking at the sky to check how low the sun is. It's definitely close to supper time by now... checking my watch, I see that it's nearly six. I'm a little surprised so much time has gone by, but not really, I have no idea how long I was lost in looking at the fountain, before the... the vision? It wasn't a dream, nor a hallucination. Each one I see, I feel more and more sure that what I'm seeing is reality, somehow, reality displaced by time, or a memory brought before my eyes... But no, not a memory, how could there be interaction like that? The man saw me, responded to the expressions he saw on my face...
      “This is our garden, and we wish no-one to ever intrude upon our peace here...”
      I wonder, would they have been buried here, somewhere on the grounds? I can't imagine that they would have moved away from this place, something more final must have happened to them here... Yet the man's brother moved in with his family, so whatever happened, didn't happen long after this, they couldn't have been old at all... Their story must be in the town history somewhere, someone before me must have been caught by the romance of the young man building such a lovely place for the woman he adored so completely.
      There was no mention of their having had children... but I wonder who the boy I saw was? I strain at my memory, trying to recall the vague sound of the voice I heard in the distance, calling the boy... but I can't remember it clearly enough to decide if it matches the man I saw today or not. It could have been one of the Mason boys.
      It's so sad to think that only two families ever lived in such a beautiful place... what little I've seen of the gardens, I can hardly imagine how luxurious the house must have been. So much beauty, and so little enjoyed... Well, at least someone else is enjoying it now, I'll have gained more than just a single drawing from this place.
      Smiling, I take a last look at the fountain, half-seeing the version of it from my vision in place of the present. Then I turn slowly, and walk in the direction opposite the man and his young wife went, heading back to my own, much less grand, home.

confession

2009-11-12T23:58:00.000-05:00

Guess who needs to stop making fun of people for joining Team Edward (*gags*)?

Maaaybe the girl who continually writes pale slender young-looking old-souled impossibly pretty men, who probably did sparkle back when they were still angels. Fallen angels are pretty darn close to vampires, especially the way I write them.

And then I go and fall in love with them, even while I'm terrified of the things they sometimes do.

...this was not intended to be a Phisto story, but, OH LOOK, THERE THEY ARE.

*loves them anyway*

Part 11

2009-11-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

      I turn back and re-cross the bridge, deep in thought. There is definitely something odd about this garden... obviously, it's haunted as anything, with the fire and odd mysteries around the family and the original owners. But for all the hundreds of ghost stories I've read, I never really thought about the practical effects of a haunting. Like you always hear about orbs and voices and things moving without explanation, but... Who says an orb has to be a perfect little circle that shows up on your photographs? Maybe it's just that fleeting flash of light at the corner of your vision, disappearing when you turn to look straight at it. Maybe that strange shadow on the floor doesn't have to be shaped like a person, it can just be a patch of darkness, like a real shadow would be if the light were directly above you. I truly do believe that there's more to the world and our lives than the things we normally see with our eyes, touch with our fingertips... I think every artist, no matter what their medium of expression, believes that. Art is an expression of something that words can't quite grasp... even if that art is writing, it's using the words in ways that convey more than the pure definition of the words, it's using rhythm and flow and the feel of the words, to create a feeling of something more than just the component parts. Just as a drawing is more than a mere recreation of a scene, just as there is a world of difference between a photograph and a snapshot...
      There is much more to light than the narrow spectrum our eyeballs can interpret. No reason the rest of our senses wouldn't be missing things too. And as for the soul... well, that's another one that goes with the artist territory. And if there's something intangible and immeasurable by all our science... hell, we couldn't measure cells and atoms for most of human history, but now they're as irrefutable as sunlight. Who's to say that ghosts won't be common textbook material in another hundred years? Though probably in a much different form... cells are pretty far removed from the whole homunculi concept.

      Picking up my bag, I stand on the edge of the bridge, looking over the water, then into the trees, trying again to see under the overgrown plants, trying to see the garden as it was planted... and I can get glimpses, but so much of the structure is hidden away. I'll have better luck on a small scale, I think, catching bits of the bigger picture by seeing the attention to small details, like the small cobalt blue flowers against the white marble pillar.
      I consider walking along the creek beyond the bridge, but the plants are pretty dense. The trees trickle down toward the water here, though farther on it clears out a bit. I'll head toward the weeping willow – while I can't draw the storybook scene as-is, I'm sure I'll find smaller compositions to be inspired by.
      Looping back into the copse of trees, I push my way through the giant, thick leaves of the plants on the ground. A larger shrub-like plant bars my intended path near the edge of the trees, and as I start to walk around it, looking for a way past, I realize it's a huge rose bush. I had no idea they could get this big! But I know there are different varieties... There are those tiny little tea roses, I suppose someone decided to cultivate a larger version as well. This one is something like the size of a full-grown lilac, and I hope I can make it back here when it comes into bloom...
      On the ground is a circle of brickwork, maybe fifteen feet across. There is another intricately-wrought iron bench off to one side, and near it, a large metal urn, half-hidden by the plants cascading out from it. In the center of the circle is a sundial – I've never seen one in real life, there's something very classical and elegant about its form. This one in particular is striking, standing on a column of delicate iron tracery, the sun dial itself undoubtedly in bronze, all warm gray-green and charcoal now, though I know it was once a warm golden shade. I smile as I try to discern the time – the numbers are all in Roman numerals, and I strain to remember the numbers, having last seen them on an old clock on my grandmother's living room wall. It's somewhere between three and four, which I knew instinctively by the light anyway, as it's just beginning to turn from the straight vivacity of the noon hours to the warm drama of late afternoon, early summer evening. I keep my camera near to hand as I follow the brick path that leads from the circle farther into the garden, knowing that the best hours for light are approaching.
      There are trellises here and there, some smaller side-paths, benches and bits of statuary. Most of the sculptures are human in form, Grecian men or art nouveau women, angels of uncertain gender with long sweeping wings, tiny fairies whose faces have worn away, perched on bird baths and long-dry fountains.
      I stop here and there, taking pictures or jotting down notes and ideas... and I realize after awhile that the path is going nowhere near the willow. What it is going toward, is the big fountain. Which is a good goal too, so, I stay on the brick. Whatever odd fragment of feeling came over me near the woods is long-gone now... The garden really isn't anything but empty, and somewhat lonely, being so long neglected. I'm sure all the ghosts can't be angry ones...
      But I do wonder what happened to the mansion, what the story of the fire is... and what the mansion looked like... and who the people were, the Masons, and Mr. Mason's brother, who built the house and the gardens for his wife... who, despite knowing nothing about, my imagination has decided was very beautiful, somewhat younger than her husband, and had a lovely laugh. Probably consumptive though, what pretty young wife wasn't? I shake my head with a grin, knowing how ridiculous my thoughts are getting. I've got to do more nosing around in town, and see what I can learn about the actual history of these people, before I start getting attached to my brain's clichéd inventions.
      On reaching the fountain, I stand still a few minutes to study it. It's absolutely stunning... Most of it is in some kind of metal, though the outer wall of the basin is stone, with low niche benches carved into it. Every inch of the fountain is carved in minute detail, every draping inch of fabric thoughtfully wrought, each petal of a flower is curled just so, and I can only imagine how naturally the droplets of water from the fountain must once have clung to each surface...
      The main body of the fountain is composed of two young men, their bodies with the slim lithe shape of youth, each with their arms wrapping around to just brush the fingers of the other boy... no, not boy, they are definitely men, but the sense of youth is incredibly strong. They have the bodies of dancers, of runners... All around them are flowers, dozens – no, more – of varieties that I couldn't guess the names of, though I can see roses and lilacs, ferns and tulips. The forms of water lilies are embossed on the inner wall of the basin, and I'm sure some must have grown here long ago, though the fountain is now dry, with only a little rusty rainwater puddled in the bottom, moss and moldering leaves clinging to the old metal and stone.
      I gently sink onto one of the stone benches, and lean my arms on the time-smoothed wall of the basin. Looking closer, I can see that there were once words here, in the stone... but they have long since faded, their shapes worn smooth by the passage of years, by the hundred brushes of hands and the thousand caresses of wind and rain...
      I sit there for a long time, taking a few small sips from my water bottle, but mostly just gazing at the flowers, at the yearning expressions on the beautiful faces, at the thousand tiny details of leaf and vine and muscle, at the tenderness in the curve of each flower petal and gesture of hand... I see far more love here than I've seen in any statue of Aphrodite in any of her guises. It's a long time before I can pull my eyes away long enough to even lift my camera, and even then, it's hard to look for composition when all I want is to be lost in the fluid lines and sensual details. The whole fountain looks like an Oscar Wilde poem, it has that same yearning romanticism to it, that aching sense of beauty, with a trace of sadness underneath, like the shadows that bring depth to all color and light.
      I sketch a few of the flowers, capturing small portions of compositions, trying to record the sense of fluidity I can feel more than definitively see... if only I could have seen this with water flowing over it, as it was meant to be seen, the water blurring the images in places, and bringing other elements into sharp focus, then changing the view entirely in the very next moment. Leaning over the wall of the basin, I peer at a particularly dense bit of flowers and vines, trying to decide if they're all sculpted, or if that leaf there is an actual leaf of a vine that's somehow found a bit of nourishment on the metal surface. It's nearly the same colo---
      Gasping, I grab at the stone, scraping my fingertips raw, and barely manage to catch my balance, saving myself from falling head-first into the muck, onto the hard bottom of the basin. I... need to learn to keep my art-gazing trances at bay a little better.

flower meanings!

2009-11-11T23:41:00.002-05:00

I'm keeping a running list of plants I call attention to, and will probably pull their meanings in at some point. I snagged a .txt copy of the oldest book (1885) referenced on my trusty language of flowers website, and am referring to that as I go along.

The scene I did yesterday... those are locust trees, specifically black locust trees. There were toooons of them by one of the houses I grew up in, and I was picturing a specific grove from the side of our yard as I wrote that bit. The flowers are an amazing thing, they'll come in later. But the meaning of the locust tree is "affection beyond the grave". This is the main reason the tree turns up in my Phisto stories as much as it does, but the more I think of it, the more I like the tree for its own sake. Oddly, I'd always thought of it as something of a scrub tree, but it's actually one of the hardest woods that grows in North America (though bugs eating it somewhat deters from that).

The little white flowers by the creek... I'm not entirely sure what they are, I've been nagging my poor floral genius of a mom with emailed questions about plants all week. I remember so many from my childhood, but, I don't always know the names. But one of the things those little flowers might be is Candytuft. Blooms at the right time of year I think, and the plant structure works...

The meaning? "Indifference".

I got happy chills when I read that, and instantly knew that, if it is candytuft growing there, it was planted after the locust trees, in snide rebuttal to their haunting message.

<333

Part 10

2009-11-10T23:26:00.001-05:00

      When my knees start getting sore, I pull myself up, brushing hair out of my face with a clean spot on the back of my hand. I need my water bottle, and before that, I need to rinse my hands off in the creek. As cathartic as weeding can be, I've always hated the feeling of dirt stuck under my fingernails, so I head back toward the creek.
      Kneeling down at the water's edge, I gaze contentedly at the creek bed, seeing a spot where the tiles and marble are still mostly visible. The colors of the tiles, the brightness of the marble, look so lovely with the bright blue of the summer sky as a backdrop. Looking along the water's edge, I see a patch of the tiny star-like white flowers I'd noticed before. The tendrils have grown so long now, that they have started trailing in the water, some of the petals and leaves floating free to drift along the water's surface. I brush a finger lightly against one of the stems floating in the water, smiling as it swirls gently along my finger with the current.
      Shaking my hands off, then drying them on my jeans, I head back to the bench for my bag. It's hard to keep from downing my whole bottle of water, but I hold back, knowing I'll want some later. I wonder if the spring the creek starts from is on the property, or elsewhere in the woods? I'd still need to test it before drinking... I seem to remember that there's some kind of tablet you can put in a bit of water to see if it's drinkable, but I'm pretty hazy on it. Guess I didn't stay in Girl Scouts quite long enough.
      Bag – with camera, sketchbook and supplies inside – in hand, I head back to the creek for awhile. I move slowly along the bank, taking pictures to capture colors and details, sketching out interesting things, making notes on light and juxtapositions. I leave my iPod on some soundtracks, nice background music to work to.
      Some time later, I come to an area where the tiles no longer extend onto the main ground, and my path is somewhat blocked by a dense grove of trees and the underbrush in the spaces between them. The trunks are very dark, nearly black, but I can see flower buds on long stems between the leaves. The leaves themselves are... lots of small leaves on a single stem. The same structure as palm tree leaves, only these are about an inch long and totally oval in shape. They're actually really pretty, and the bark is really dramatic – I'd love to draw them against a background of snow. Some kind of weed with giant leaves covers most of the ground between the trunks, the plants growing up to my waist, higher in places. But there are no thorns or anything on the plants – though I see a few on the trees themselves – so I push my way through. I would have loved these leaves as a kid, they would have made great props for any kind of tropical setting. The breeze rustles lightly through the leaves overhead. The trees aren't terribly large, most of the trunks are a foot or less across, and they're not impossibly tall, nothing like the height of old oak trees. Maybe like a sugar maple's height. But despite the deceptive size, the trees feel old... maybe it's just the dark roughness of the bark, especially in contrast to the brightness of the day.
      The grove isn't deep, maybe ten or fifteen feet and I'm out of it again – and I find that the creek has curled around it, and on the other side a bridge crosses over the water. It's a wooden bridge, and is surprisingly high for the short distance it covers, arching steeply into almost a perfect half-circle. Two lines of flat wooden beams make up each side railing, one rail about waist height, the other a little lower than shoulder height. Every six feet or so are vertical posts. All of the lines are very smooth and clean, the wood looking largely intact despite its age. As I move closer to it, I can see traces of pale pink on the underside of the bridge – I wonder if it was once painted red? Or coral, maybe, picking up the color of the tiles? That must have been it, I feel sure now that it's occurred to me. It looks like there was once some kind of carving on the pillars, there are deep indentations, but the detail has been worn away over the years, and I can't make out any trace of what it was.
      The wood itself feels pretty sturdy still. The wood pillars don't go into the water at all, they meet with stone pillars six inches or so above the creek's surface. I don't see any sign of rot at all, just the smooth greyness that comes with long exposure to the outdoors. Tentatively, I put a foot onto the bridge, leaning against it to test my weight on it. It doesn't give at all, so I stand fully on it, still wary. I set my bag on the dry ground behind me – if I get wet, I will get dry, but my camera and sketchbook won't deal with a bath quite so casually. I take a few slow, cautious steps onto the bridge, glancing back along the creek to the fence, then looking the other direction, to where the creek might lead. It goes another twenty feet or so before it hits another bend, and a vast weeping willow tree blocks my view past there... but I have to say I don't mind in the least. I've always loved those trees, and wished I had one in my yard. This is one of the largest ones I've ever seen, and its branches bend so perfectly over the water, the long strands of leaves trailing into the water and curling around in the slow current. I stand there for some time, just staring at how perfect it is... knowing that I can't possibly draw it the way it stands, it would seem so arranged and unreal! I lean onto the railing, just staring, lost in the interplay of the leaves in the water...
      A sharp barking interrupts my intent gaze. Turning abruptly toward the sound, I feel the railing quake a little under the pressure my arm puts on it as my weight shifts, and I step back toward the middle of the bridge. Looking back at the railing, I see that some bug or another has gnawed away at the wood, and it's barely holding together there. Quickly, I walk back to dry ground, looking gratefully over toward the dog, which sounded like it was on the other side of the water. Sure enough, a large black dog stands just at the edge of an area of dense brush. I whistle, and the dog cocks its head, but refuses to come nearer.
      Testing my weight on the bridge again, I decide my chances of crossing it are probably just fine – it's maybe ten, fifteen feet, and half of that is over dry ground anyway. I walk (a little quickly) over it, and slowly approach the dog. I can see the sunlight glint off the id tags on its collar, and it seems friendly enough. Walking slowly, calling softly, I move toward it. It wags its tail, cocking its head at me... but won't take another step. A bit confused, I stop about five feet away. Bending down a little, I extend a hand, and whistle gently. The dog starts to take a step forward – and then stops suddenly, whimpering, and backs up, tail drooping a little. It's so strange... he's acting like he wants to come near me, but is afraid of something. I don't think it's me... We always had a dog growing up, lots of my friends did, and while cats can be finicky with people, I've never seen a dog act that way.
      I keep walking toward the dog, very slowly, and he perks up, taking a step closer again, tail wagging, tongue lolling. He's about the size of a German Shepard (one of my neighbors growing up had one), but nearly all black, with a little patch of white at his chest. His fur looks softer too, his body structure a little less angular than German Shepards tend to be. But just as my hand is within a few inches of his eager nose, he whimpers again and scuttles backward, looking up at me with forlorn eyes.
      “What's wrong? Do I smell funny? I won't hurt you, it's okay...”
      But the dog just looks at me mournfully, his tail drooped but still wagging slowly. He barks softly, and turns slowly away, beginning to trot off into the trees – which turn into woods at this point. I take a few steps after him... but then he's gone. I blink and peer more closely at the spot I last saw him, but he must have just gone behind some brush, blending into the shadows under the old trees.
      I try to shrug it off, but I have an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach about the whole thing. The dog felt something he didn't trust... and I'm almost certain it wasn't me. Looking around at the ground, I don't see anything odd... But the trees suddenly feel larger, older, more ominous to me, and I take a few steps back myself, back into the light in the garden. The trees look just as old from out here... it's funny, it didn't seem so dark under them when I went in after the dog. Looking up, there are no clouds in the sky to have covered the sun... and I wasn't there for more than five minutes, the light shouldn't have changed so drastically in that time. No, the light hasn't changed, the shadows are falling on the bridge just the same as they were ten minutes ago, I was looking closely at them. Maybe I just wasn't paying much attention to the trees, being so focused on the dog?

illustration

2009-11-09T23:59:00.001-05:00

(She'll figure out eventually that it's a Canterbury Bell. Not the best image, but I feel less guilty snagging images from wikipedia, where most things are creative commons licensed.)

Part 9

2009-11-09T23:58:00.000-05:00

      Going over to the windowsill, I pick up the tile I had brought home with me. It still surprises me with its weight, as well as the vividness of the colors. I've cleaned it off, and the varnish over the paint reflects the light, still crystal-clear and smooth over the hand painted swirls and tiny flowers.
      Sitting back down beside my drawing, I look from the tile to the paper, and try to decide how to balance the detail of the tile with the drawing... If I draw in every line of every tile, it will distract from everything else, and make the whole drawing look too busy. I suppose I can let the water blur out some areas, where only impressions of colors come through, and the reflection of the sunlight on the varnish will block out some as well. I draw in the first few tiles, the ones nearest the viewer, with the tile close beside me for careful study. I draw in every detail as accurately as I can, planning to smudge or erase bits of the patterns later when I add in the water and highlights. Once I get to the tiles farther back in the picture, I set the tile over on the couch and view it from a distance, getting a feel for which shapes and portions of the pattern would be seen from farther away...

      Eventually, I notice it's harder to see my drawing, and looking up, I find that it's gotten dark out. I can't help but laugh at myself – I can get into such a trance with a drawing, I had no idea hours had already gone by. I uncurl myself and try to stand up... and stagger a bit, laughing, I'm so stiff! My fingertips are all raw, my legs refuse to budge, I'm parched, probably hungry if I think about it...
      But I'm happy, happier than I've been in awhile. I cross the room to turn on a light, and take a look at the drawing. There's still lots to do, but, I'm really happy with how it's coming together. The colors already mirror the rich wealth of the tiles, there's a good sense of how the light's falling... I haven't finished the boy, but the shape of his face is right, and I can see his expression taking form.
      I stretch, and make my way to the kitchen to get some water and some food into my system, before I get sucked back in again. God knows when I'll come out of it again next!

      No matter how tired I am when I get home from work that week, I force myself to put in some time on the drawing – and I'm always the better for it. It's amazing, how much more contented I feel, when I've accomplished something like that... Going to work is being productive, feeding myself is a necessary thing, but drawing... it's always given me such a deep sense of satisfaction, and I can rest easy at the day's end, like... I don't want to say it's like giving birth, because a., I haven't done that yet and am thus not qualified, and b., I'm pretty sure drawing is a lot more instant gratification than a child, whether it's the nine months of pregnancy or the eighteen years until the kid moves out. A drawing might take days, weeks, however much time to finish, and I guess no-one's ever a hundred percent satisfied with the results, but... a kid's a much more iffy prospect. There's no one point where you're finally like, oh yeah, I'm done now, it's finished. No-one's life is ever finished... not even when they die, really. People still remember those who have died, their family and friends, and the effect their life had continues on, whether it's in the children they brought into the world, or something they wrote or drew...
      Or a garden they planted, tended and loved. I'm sure someone's walked through the woods, and smelled the sweetness of those honeysuckle vines, even if they never set eyes on the garden itself. And me... no matter how much or how little more I ever learn of the place, even if I never set foot in it again, it's given me this drawing, at least, and it's a gorgeous one. And my drawing, in turn, I'm sure will someday touch someone, somewhere... All of us leave some trace of our life behind, some glimpse into the world that only we really saw.
      There's some glorious early summer weather during the week, and I cling to the hope that the weather will hold for my next day off. The thought has occurred to me that I could get a quick hike in before work some morning... but it never seems to happen. I start in washing dishes, or oversleep, or get phone calls... It's amazing how many silly little distractions are stitched together to make our days.
      When I do finally get a day to myself, I crank up the volume on my iPod and head into the woods. I'm trying hard to think only of the boy, and not the aggression I felt in the wind the day I saw the woman... But the sky is clear today, no more than a gentle breeze dancing among the leaves, which are now in their full emerald splendor, the rich green fresh and vibrant with summer youth. A melodic piano line comes into my ears, then collides with an energetic rock backdrop to a hyper Japanese singer. (Must be something by Ayumi Hamasaki – one of my roommates got me hooked on her music, great stuff for surviving all-nighters.) If there weren't branches and vines blocking almost every step, I'd run for awhile, just for the sheer joy of motion in the song, in the early summer air, in the warm sunlight...
      I can't keep from smiling as I near the place where the creek runs under the fence... until I see that my hole has gone. Gone! Only a week, and already the vines are covering it again! Luckily, I have my knife with me again – though I forgot the gloves, so my hands suffer a few brush burns and green stains in the process of hacking out an opening again.
      Finally, I wriggle under the old iron, bursting into the summer sunlight, the light making the garden almost glow, the leaves and flowers are all such rich jewel-tones in this golden light. I was going to turn down the music, letting the atmosphere of the garden soak in... but a favorite song comes on, Kill Hannah's “Crazy Angel” - a bit of a guilty pleasure, the band is one of the slew of alternative emo-punk bands that cropped up around The Killers. But I love the song anyway, it drives right along, and the guitar and vocals just soar into the stratosphere through the bridge... and I'm a sucker for angel references. I turn it up still louder, and let my body burst into the run it's been dying for, the song flying from my throat, “as your wings discard the feathers on the ground, I see a halo, ah-ah, up above you...”
      I pause by the bench to drop off my bag, then take off at a sprint along the tile path. It's clear enough to run on, the plants that cover the tiles – and later, stones – are all low enough to pose no problem. “I look at the stars and dream that the universe was ours...”

      When the song ends, I slow down, catching my breath. I haven't run like that in years, God it felt good! Just to stretch out my body to the full, pushing my muscles to the limit, breathing in this bright air... I skip through a few songs, all too mild for my mood. I leave it on something by The Church – warm, cozy, '80s college rock. A calmer song, but their stuff is always so pretty, and suits summer days like nothing else. I hum along – suddenly realizing that my water bottle is in my bag, which is probably quite a ways away. I grin wryly at my own lack of forethought, yes, let's run full-tilt, away from the water bottle...
      Remembering that I'd seen a fountain somewhere around here, I look around me, thinking it might be closer than the bench. It's not, which is just as well – they were probably still making pipes out of lead when this place was built. I set off back along the path, at a more sane pace this time, looking around me as I do.
      Still masses of mounded greenery. Some of the plants are huge, and some have overextended themselves, the growth underneath is all dead and dry, the branches spindly. I wish so badly I could see the place as it once was, when the plants were properly tended... I'm sure half of the plants have gone entirely, lost to frosts or bad weather, or starved by these plants that got so big.
      There's a marble pillar here, broken off at about waist-height. Was it always like this, mirroring ancient ruins, or did frost or vandals break off an upper portion? It's Roman in style, anyway, I recognize the design of the base from an art history lecture. The top of the broken pillar is indented a bit, making a shallow bowl filled with stagnant rainwater. I find a stick on the ground and lift out the dead leaves and debris. Not much I can do about the discolored water itself, but it looks a little better, anyway. Between vast mounds of green leaves, some plant with spikes of tiny blue bell-shaped flowers shoots up. The blue is striking against the white of the pillar... I wonder if that was the original intent? Crouching down to take a better look at the plant, I see a big clump of field grass crowding against the base of the flowering plant. I'm far from an expert at plants, but I spent every morning of my childhood summers weeding the family vegetable garden. Obvious weeds, I recognize, though I have no idea what anything is called. Kneeling on the stone walkway, I reach down at the base of the grass, and wiggle it free of the earth. I'm careful to keep from snapping the roots, so that the roots will come out of the ground and not just grow the leaves back again tomorrow. After a few minutes, the grass is out, and I lay the bundle neatly on the stone path, away from the pillar. While pulling that out, I spotted some dandelion plants, and other things I knew wouldn't have been purposely planted, and I decide to keep weeding a bit.
      I know full well I could never weed this whole space, but... but even helping this one pretty little flower to keep blooming, to sustain this one bit of beauty in this place... it makes me happy to do. I vow again to pick up a flower identification book, I know I've seen these bright, almost crayon-colored blue flowers before, but I have no idea what they're called.

random actions

2009-11-09T23:57:00.000-05:00

I love it when characters go running off and doing silly things for basically no reason. Yesterday, my main character suddenly felt terrified and ran away from the garden. Today, because a good song came up on her (i.e., my) iPod, she decided to take off for a sprint all around the garden, laughing and singing all the way. It's actually making me smile.

...when stuck writing, some people fall back on quoting books, or movies, or having characters sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall". While I pride myself on never having gotten *quite* that desperate... my characters do tend to listen to music. A lot. This year's character has a music collector for a father, which means she has a good knowledge base lurking in her head. That paired with listening to music as I write (which I basically always do), means LOTS OF FREE WORDS WOOOOOO!

^~_~^

I love Chris Baty

2009-11-09T22:51:00.002-05:00

For the uninitiated, Chris Baty is the crazy who started this whole whirlwind adventure that calls itself NaNoWriMo. And every week, of every November, he sends out pep talk emails, which always lead to both giggles and warm fuzzies of camaraderie and encouragement.

Closing this week's:

"I didn't say this in the Week One pep talk because we'd only just met and there's really only so much cornball sentiment from a random guy on the internet that anyone should have to tolerate in one month. But here's the truth: You have a book in you that only you can write. Your story matters. Your voice matters. The world will be richer for you seeing this crazy creative escapade through to 50,000 words.

This may be hard to believe given the craptastic state that many of our manuscripts are in. But there are great, unexpected things ahead for you in Weeks Three and Four. And there is someone out there who has been waiting their whole life to read the book you're writing now."

That... is exactly why I drag myself through the slog of 50,000 words every November. Because I think (I hope) he's right. And not just about me, but about everybody - everyone views the world from a different place, with different eyes, seeing different hues of every color in the world.

So, yay for Chris Baty. <3

Part 8

2009-11-08T23:59:00.001-05:00

      The style of her dress was... well, very, very old. And even apart from that, something in her manner revealed a delicate grace, a soft primness that belongs entirely to another time. She can't have been here... and there's no trace... but she was as visible to me as the honeysuckle in my fingertips, I could feel the warmth of her near me, I know if she had spoken I would have heard her. Am I really that psychotic, that I can hallucinate with such vividness?
      I stand up, my heartbeat still unsteady, and look around, touching the vines, the trellis, the bench, my bag. I'm awake, there's no doubt of it, things are almost never tangible in my dreams. But...
      A breeze comes up, and I start to wish I'd grabbed my rain coat – the crisp scent of rain is in the air. I should go, I'd hate being caught in the rain this far from home... and the breeze carries some other scent as well, a heavier, spicier scent than the honeysuckle, but mixed with the dense earthy smell of plant decay. I suddenly feel that I'm trespassing, that I've seen something I wasn't supposed to... and though there's nothing to be seen around me, apparently that could change at any moment. My mind won't stop thinking about what would have happened if the woman had seen me... and was she here, or was I there beside her, or did I dream it all...
      I walk briskly back along the path, not stopping to look at anything else. The rain... I don't want to be caught in the rain, especially with my camera and sketchbook in my bag...
      When I reach the fence, though, I have to turn and take a look back. The garden still draws me... I'm going to have to come back. But not now, it's going to rain, and I want to get home. I just want to get home...

      The walk back is a blur, I stare intently at the lack of a path before me, focused solely on covering the ground, but I don't see any of it, it passes over my eyes like water over stones, leaving no trace, no memory...

      Home at last, I drop my bag on the couch, and head into the bathroom. I turn on the tap, and wash my hands and face. There's bits of mud and plant debris all over me... I start picking the bits of twigs out of my hair, and I can see my tunnel beneath the fence--- and I shake my head to clear it. I stare vacantly at my reflection in the mirror, wondering if she's really there, or just a crystal-clear vision, invading this space from some other place...
      The wind picks up, and a flurry of rain pelts against the bathroom window. I look up at the sound, brought back to myself. It's a good thing I came back before it hit, I'd be drenched...

      I take a deep breath and look steadily at myself in the mirror. What the hell happened back there...

      I start looking around online, but there's so much garbage, so many crazy people with pseudoscience so absurd I get a headache just trying to follow it. No, just no. I know there's reasonable stuff written on the paranormal, on psychics, but how on earth do you find it? Sighing in frustration, I close my web browser, and turn off the monitor. Forget it. I'll just... maybe I'll look around locally, check the classifieds in the paper or something, and find an actual person to talk to. And just hope they're not crazy. Meanwhile, I'll cling to the assumption that I'm not crazy. Or at least only as crazy as artists are given the license to be.
      And that's when I decide what to do. I am going to sit down and draw. I dig through my supplies, and pull out a nice big 18”x24” Strathmore sketchbook with plenty of empty pages. Nice bit of tooth to the cream-colored paper... I'm undecided on the medium, but charcoal sounds like a good cathartic place to start. I grab two partially-emptied boxes of willow and vine charcoal, then root around in a pencil case for a kneaded eraser.
      Dropping the sketchbook onto the living room floor, where the light is good, I reach over to the couch and get the sketchbook out of my bag. I don't want to think about the woman, not yet... but the boy, and the beautiful place he stood, I might be able to draw the boy.
      I look over my sketched notes, and close my eyes a moment, remembering. Then I loosely begin throwing down lines, trying to decide on a composition. I get up and go over to my computer, pulling up a playlist I made ages ago, of things that were nice to draw to. Flopping back down on the floor, I decide to screw composition, I'm just going to start drawing, and crop later. This is not art for commercial purposes or a good grade, this is art for saving my sanity. Or, at least, justifying my lack of sanity.
      R.E.M.'s “Try Not to Breathe” comes on, and I settle back into the comfortable rhythm of the song. I used this song for a school assignment once, making up a soundtrack to Ray Bradbury's “The Martian Chronicles”... I remember wanting so badly to draw Mars while reading that book, but the cover art already perfected the way I saw the Martian architecture in my head, and anything I tried to do was only a pale copy of that other artist's vision... I grin wryly. No fear of that this time, at least.
      I sketch in a rough human form, just boxes and triangles to get the proportions right... and I jump up to do a quick web search, to check what proportions should be for a child. The boy wasn't very young, maybe ten or so, but that's definitely not adult proportions. Leaving the page open on the screen, I sit back down and make some adjustments, tweaking his pose as I go. Much as it would make me smile to draw him stumbling in the grasses, I'm not confident in my ability to do such a dynamic pose without some kind of reference. So I draw him standing in the creek, water twining around his legs near his knees, tunic flowing into the water in a damp drapery. I work outward from there, sketching in the way the tiles will sit, adding in the plants, roughly blocking in more plants... Memory of my brief walk in the garden merges with the vision, I bring in details from both without noticing at first. And when I do realize it, I decide it's a nice effect, showing the brightness of the garden's youth around the boy, with bits of its aging decay creeping in around the edges.
      Eventually, I sketch a rough circle where I decide the light should be coming from, drawing pale lines radiating from it to remind myself where the light should hit objects. I block in a bit more detail, as I add some shadows and note highlights... I used to draw a single section start to finish and then move on to the next object or area, but the perseverance of many art professors finally broke me of that habit, at least in the early stages of a drawing. It's so noticeable to me now, looking at my old drawings, and seeing how inconsistent the colors and shading and things are. A person's skin won't even be the same color from one body part to the next on half of them, because I drew the face first or the hands last. I'm so glad to see that I didn't slip into that old habit today, I hadn't even thought about it until now.
      I shy away from trying for too much detail in the boy's face just yet... only blocking in the rough shapes of the planes of his face, which are pretty round anyway. I'm terrified of trying to draw those eyes... but that will come later. I sit back a minute and consider. I want color, but I like the mistiness of this so far... Chalk pastels will work. Do I even have a full set, or only the destroyed remnants of the set I used in college? Mentally crossing my fingers, I go back into my supplies – and let out an exultant “ha!” as I find a nearly-new set of pastels. I remember now, I picked them up at the end of my senior year, using up the money on my student account, when everything in the bookstore went on sale at the end of the semester. Way to plan ahead, self! These sets seemed so expensive then, thirteen bucks for a 24-set of Alphacolor pastels... but I didn't have a real job in college, nothing more than a few part-part-time on-campus jobs. Which saved a lot of sanity, and let me get an occasional bit of sleep, but meant I stayed in most Friday nights, and did all of my eating on-campus.
      I half-dance back over to my drawing, making up syllables to sing along with the Kent song now playing – it's all in Swedish, which I don't know a word of, but a random web search for something else turned up one of their songs years ago, and I liked it enough to track down more. Standing over my drawing, I notice the perspective on the tiles is skewed all wrong, so I set about trying to fix it. I should really get a ruler for doing these tiles, but, it always looks so odd when I do that, to have these really sharp lines against all the soft lines of everything else. I'll just wing it. There's water involved, I can blur whatever edges I need to. But I think I really want to focus on the color of those tiles, they're so vivid and have such a great exotic feel to them, classic and fresh at the same time. If I can keep the rest of the drawing in the same warm sort of tones... But I'll start with coloring the tiles, to have them as a reference for everything else.

Part 7

2009-11-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

      I can't keep the grin off my face. “Thank you, so much.”
      He smiles back. “Anytime! Feel free to drop by any time you have a question. Anything I don't know about the town, the historical society will know. I go to most of their meetings – if I didn't, they'd hold the meetings here and ransack my maps. So I find it easier to just go and let them ransack my brains.”
      We both laugh, and I thank him again as I make my way back out of the building. It's all I can do to keep from sprinting back out into the spring sunshine, and take off for the woods. A ruined house, a mysterious fire – and fires always leave such interesting looking ruins, everything with charred edges and incredible textures. And the gardens... There must be something left of the gardens. I'm sure weeds and local wild plants have choked it out in places, and maybe some the ornamental trees couldn't make it without attention, but... There's got to be something of them still. And if it's even a scrap of what I saw...

      What I saw. I still haven't come to terms with it, I have no idea what it was. As far as I know, I'm not exactly prone to psychic visions or anything. I'm not even sure how much I believe in them... I've seen flashes of things from the corners of my eyes, maybe a light moving, or a shadow, once or twice I thought there was a person standing there who wasn't... but I don't think it was anything more than my brain filling in the gaps in my vision. And what I saw, I saw so clearly, so sharply, in such detail... it just felt like reality. It didn't feel like a dream, there weren't things I couldn't shift my focus to, nothing shifted or changed its form or person. I saw it as clearly as anything else I saw that day, in as much detail as the fence and its vines, as much clarity as the water darting between stones. If I hadn't been so transfixed by it, so caught off guard, I feel sure I could have taken a picture...
      ...but what if I had taken a picture, and then later found that it wasn't there? I'm almost glad I didn't, just to save myself from risking that situation. Because I feel so strongly that it was real, that if I'd taken a few steps forward, I could have walked into that garden, spoken to the boy – the boy who I'm sure saw me, but, as children do, just took it in stride if he thought it odd, all the world is new to their eyes, so no one thing is stranger to them than any other.
      I don't know what else it could have been... and I'm a little scared to try researching into the possibilities. Chances are, I'll find either I'm crazy, or that all the people I think are crazy are actually sane, which is pretty much the same thing.

      By the time I'm home, the sky has clouded over, and just as I unlock the front door, it starts to rain. So much for tracking down my mystery mansion today... I make myself a mug of hot chocolate, and pull out a sketchbook. I make a rough map of everything I learned about the Mason place today, making general notes on where the house and road seemed to be in relation to the main roads, and sketching in roughly where I walked a few weeks ago. At which point I realize just how little I was paying attention to how the creek bent and twisted through the woods... I had checked the compass a couple of times, but I'm really pretty hazy on the shape of the path I took, and God knows what kind of distance I actually covered. I don't even know how you'd measure distance, out walking like that... and I didn't even think to look at the scale on the maps I saw today! I groan, erasing everything a little to lighten all the lines I've drawn. I have a general idea of the size of the woods, and where the two main roads that border it are, I'll just have to keep going off of that, and my vague notion of where the house was. I glare at the rain, now coming down in the steady way that means it's not going to stop for the rest of the afternoon. My next day off is three days away...

      And on that next day off, the sky is gray and threatening again. But I can't wait any longer, all I've thought of for the last three days is that small square on the old map, “Mason” written in faded ink in the handwriting of someone long gone... My camera is fully charged, the memory card clear, extra batteries in my pocket, a sandwich and bottle of water in my bag alongside my sketchbook and a handful of pencils. I grab the compass from the bookcase where I left it, and consider my rain jacket. It's warm, and rain gear is uncomfortable, and I'll be under the trees anyway – I leave it. I've found my old jackknife though, and bought a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves. I'm hoping that will be enough to deal with the vines... I have a hunch they can be pretty tough. But I have on a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, despite the heat. They're rolled up for now, but once I'm in the woods, unrolling them will save me from a heck of a lot of scratches.
      I head back toward the creek. I've thought it over for days, and while I really thought about going in from the road, and trying to find the old road to the house... I have a strong suspicion it's totally gone now. If it was anything like a hundred years ago that the house burned, and it was only ever a dirt road to begin with... I'm never going to find it from this end. If I can find the house, I may be able to trace where the road was – the trees will be smaller, and I'm sure there will be some indication of its direction from the carriage house or whatever. But if I can get through the fence by the creek... I wonder just how big the gardens were? Just one family, I wouldn't think all that big, but if they were that wealthy...

      It feels like a much, much longer walk this time. I barely stop at all along the way, so I'm sure it actually takes me way less time than it did before, but every minute I'm straining my eyes against the brush, trying to catch a first glimpse of that elaborate ironwork peeking through vines. It's incredible how much different the woods look, just a few weeks later – everything is green now, the brown remains of last year almost entirely gone. I'm relieved to have the creek to follow, if I stay right on the banks I can dodge most of the underbrush, which I'm pretty sure would have halted my progress within about thirty seconds otherwise. Most of it is low, starved for sunlight under the canopy of the trees, but it's dense as hell.
      After an age and a hundred false hopes, I finally catch sight of an oddly straight mound of greenery. My heart sinks a bit, seeing just how fast the vines have grown – they look a lot more dense than they did before, it's going to be rough trying to cut through them. I wish I'd bought boots tall enough to wade the creek with... but no, I couldn't ever walk this much distance in those things, and carrying them would be absolutely miserable. As uncomfortable as wet socks are, especially on a hike, I could probably survive it, if it gets me to the mansion's ruins.
      A little farther, and the fence starts running parallel to the creek. I study the vines closely as I walk along, keeping an eye out for any spot where the vines look more sparse, or any change in the shapes might hint at a hidden gate. But nothing really gets my hopes up, and eventually I'm at the place where the water passes under the fence. I finally let my body stop moving for a bit, and sit back on the rock, gazing into the vines, half-hoping for another vision of that beautiful garden, the color and light it once held... But all I see are vines and the creek. The water, at least, still flows over broken marble and a few pieces of colored tiles, those weren't a dream, and I know now that the garden I saw is at least a plausible thing – or was, a hundred years ago.
      Setting my bag safely away from the water, I get out my knife and gloves, unrolling my sleeves and jeans to cover as much of my skin as possible. I look again at the creek, but it's definitely still too deep to step into, no helpful rocks big enough to stand on. I close my eyes a minute, trying to recall what edges there were to my vision through the vines... was it just a hazy edging? Or could I see a hole in the fence itself? Or an arch over the water? I close my eyes tighter, forcing my memory to stare at the edges of the vision, trying to see things I wasn't looking at at the time, things I saw without consciously knowing I saw... and I'm not certain, but I think there's an arch over the water, maybe two feet over the water's surface... but it's wider than the water, it passes to either side... the tiles! The tiles still line the creek as it passes under the fence, they must have needed space around the fence to do that, or left space in the fence to keep from disrupting the tiles, whichever order they were built in. So there's an arch of maybe two feet high, extending a few feet to either side of the water before it curves back down to the ground. Opening my eyes slowly, I try to force the vision (which I'm afraid I half-imagined) onto the reality in front of me... and it might be right, aren't the vines a little high over the water there, and there?
      It's pretty much a toss-up as to which side of the creek is less overgrown, but I stick with the side I'm on. I take off my headphones and tuck my iPod in my bag. Much as I'd like the distraction of the music, I'd constantly be getting the headphone wire snagged on things and it would make me crazy. So I hum R.E.M.'s “Shiny Happy People” to myself (it was the last song I listened to, and it'll be stuck in my head for hours), and start forcing my way through the brush. I cling to the water's edge as best I can, since the plant growth isn't quite as high there, but it still feels like a good ten minute battle to cover the short distance to the fence. I stomp down some of the plants between me and the fence, then crouch down, peering intently into the bright green vines. (I need to learn some plants, I have no idea if these are grape vines or Virginia creeper or kudzu or what. I don't think it's kudzu – my parents did enough battle with that beast of a plant in our yard that I think I'd remember what it looks like... but then again, maybe not.)
      I can just make out some of the fence's ironwork... and I'm pretty sure it stops right about there, maybe a foot and a half off the ground... I reach in my gloved hand, and start pushing through the vines, pulling them aside as much as I can. Those that won't budge at all, or I can see are twined right around the iron, I saw through with my knife. I haven't used it since I was a kid, but it's actually not a half-bad knife, still sharp enough anyway. It still takes some sawing to get through any vine more than an eight of an inch thick, but it's manageable. It looks like... I think the fence really does end here, there doesn't seem to be any... no, there's not! That bit curls around there, and this part loops up that way, and that's open space! Once I get the vines out, anyway, and that won't take long if I'm not working around the iron. Grinning as I work, I plug away steadily at the vines. Despite the gloves, they still dig into my hands now and then, who knew plants were this strong? But I keep working at it, and finally, I've cleared a space roughly a foot across and two feet down, from the bottom of the fence to the ground. Not big enough to crawl through yet, but enough to see through!
      I bend down even lower to the ground, and carefully push my head into the hole in the vines. Wish I'd brought a hair tie, I can feel my hair getting caught in the rough edges of the dried old vines, but I can deal with that. It's no sunnier on that side of the fence than this, and I can't see much... the vines have made a wall almost two feet thick over the fence, which itself is only a couple of inches wide. My shoulders scrape against the outside of the hole, and I have to fight to keep my nose out of the somewhat muddy dirt underneath. But I can see a little... I can see the creek, and I can see more of the tiles! Some are covered by mud and debris, but I think they're still mostly lining the waterbed... and there are a lot of plants. They're pretty thoroughly blocking my vision, but little as I know of plants, I can tell they're not all weeds, there's some field grass like stuff, but there are things with prettier leaves, even things starting to bloom, that I don't recognize as local wildflowers. I can see a big burst of pale pink in the distance – some kind of flowering tree, though all I can see is its color. I can't make out any kind of building, but somehow... I can feel in my gut that this is a garden, there's just enough hint of organization and intent about what I can see, despite what's grown up among it over the years.
      It's almost impossible to bring myself to do it, but I take a long breath, and squirm back out of the hole, coming back out on my side of the fence. I pick my knife back up, and set to work with a vengeance, cutting back a wider gap in the vines, determined to make something big enough for me to get my body through...

      Before I let myself go through the fence, I push back through the brush to get my bag. I know once I'm through, I'm not going to want to come back out for anything until I absolutely have to... I seriously hope I can pay attention to the time, it's going to get dark early today if it stays this cloudy, and if I get stuck walking through the woods in the dark I'll be totally doomed. I check my watch, and see that it's already one in the afternoon. I sigh inwardly. I really need to learn to drag myself out of bed earlier on my days off, I miss so much daylight... which didn't used to be a problem, but now I actually have something I want to do doing the day! I didn't realize just how little drive I had in my life before, but now that I have this to compare it to...
      I keep the gloves on, and knife at hand, as I crouch down to wriggle under the fence. My bag snags on a vine halfway through, and my shoulders still scrape the edges, but I manage to get through, and finally...
      I'm standing in the garden.

      It's a little anticlimactic. The tiles in the creek look dull in the pale sunlight, though having cleaned the one I took home, I know just how vivid their colors actually are. Everything looks so wild and overgrown, there are blossoms here and there, but the bushes are all vast and tumbling into each other. I can't see any kind of a path anywhere. It looks like there's a stone fountain off to the right a ways, obviously no water running through it now, but the shape is pretty clear – and it's a large one, easily ten feet tall. There are trees popping up all over the place... I can tell that this was a large clear space at one time, most of these trees are smaller than the ones in the surrounding woods, and they're much more spread out. The fence curves away into the distance to either side of me, and I can tell it encloses a rounded space, at least here. I can't make it out after a hundred feet or so, the vines blur into a large bunch of bushes. I can see something that might be a wall, far off to the left, but I'm not even sure, all I can see are a few patches of white behind more of the endless green plant growth. Vines must be covering that, too... There are a few rounded shapes scattered around the place, maybe trellises or something? But I don't see anything that looks like it might have been a house... did the fire demolish it completely? Someone that rich wouldn't have built their house entirely of wood, there must be something left...
      My enthusiasm a little diminished, I put away my gloves and knife. I dig the camera out of my bag, and take a couple general shots of the area. It does have a nice quietness about it... a little creepy, but also peaceful, the way old cemeteries feel. (My friends all think I'm crazy, but I love sitting in old cemeteries on warm summer days. The memories in the air almost seem tangible, the sense of time falling heavy as the golden summer light.) I take a few steps along the creek bed, and crouch down to take a better look at the tiles.
      All that's visible at first are a few tiny patches of white and blue, but finding a stick nearby, I push some of the leaves and plant debris out of the way. When the current has cleared the mud away, I can see more of the blue, and scraps of coral, and muddied white. I half-close my eyes, and try to meld the memory of vision with the sight before me, trying to see the tiles as they looked beneath the boy's feet, the colors vivid and glowing in the light... There's such a richness to the design of them. I still haven't tracked down their origin, but I'm really leaning toward something Islamic, it looks so much like the tile work in mosques and things, though this is still a much more organic feeling design. There's something exotic and antique feeling about the look of them, lining the creek bed like that. I prod my stick into the bottom of the creek, stirring up the mud and leaves, pushing debris aside until I catch a glimpse of white. I smile – it's crushed marble, all along the bottom.
      Standing up, my eyes follow the creek farther into the garden... and I realize with a start that the plants right beside me are the same as those the boy tripped among. I have an urge to kneel down and look for some trace of him... but what trace would there be, even if he had stood here only the day before? So instead, I look around, trying to decide where to investigate first. The plants seem a little lower up the creek a short distance, maybe there was a path? I press through the plants that have forced their way through the tiles, or leaned over to kiss the water's surface. A few of them have tiny white flowers, scattered among even tinier leaves, spreading a cushy miniature carpet over the tiles.
      The tiles expand a little farther into the area above the waterline, and I see larger ones set between them, though everything's obscured by plants. Kneeling down, I pull away some of the plants, and find a stunning pattern – the same blues and corals of the smaller tiles, but more of the orange and aqua, with yellows and reds, in a design as detailed as old lace. The large tiles are hexagons, maybe eight inches or so across. I can't tell how far they extend... but there are fewer large plants right here, and it looks like there was a path of some kind, leading away from the creek. I take another few steps along the more open area, and pushing the plants clear with my shoe, see more hexagon tiles. I know there are handpainted as well... looking at the space around me, I can't imagine how many tiles there are, and I'm sure they all have the same detailed pattern. Painted by hand... and probably made by hand as well, I'm sure they could have been machine-made at the time, but if the care given to the painting is any indication, I'm getting the feeling the Masons liked to get the utmost in craftsmanship.
      There are more flowers here, low bushes of some delicate flower maybe an inch wide, but in vast quantities on the plant, in a really pretty sky blue. Something with delicate, fern-like leaves... something whose leaves are spotted with bright white... I have no idea what any of these are, I should have picked up a flower identification book. I'm nearing one of the mounds I saw from a distance, and it's definitely looking more like a trellis now. There's a bench beneath it, and the ironwork is just as intricate as the fence... more so, really, since it's on a much smaller scale. The design is different though, a little more geometric and with fewer spirals. It looks so much like lace... making lace of thread is mind-boggling enough to me, I can't even imagine making iron into such delicate shapes. Brushing the leaves off of it, and pulling aside some trailing vine, it looks to be in good shape still, it feels firm enough under my hand. Cautiously, I lower myself onto it, and smile broadly as I find it holds my weight without giving in the least. Sitting back, I find it's surprisingly comfortable, for being made of metal – something in the curves is surprisingly ergonomic.
      I lean back on the bench, and let my eyes drift over the plants around me. I can barely make out the trellis that arches over the bench, its metal frame (which seems similar in design to the bench, from what little I can make out) dripping with green stuff. But there's something small and white blossoming... and when I breathe in, I grin delightedly. Honeysuckle! That one, at least, I know, that smell clings to my childhood, there was a huge honeysuckle bush in the back corner of our yard. I remember my sister and I picking the blossoms, and trying to squeeze honey out of the backs of the flowers – I'd read somewhere that you could do this, though we barely ever got a taste of anything. I reach over and pluck one of the tiny yellow-white flowers, twirling it slowly between my fingertips...

      And the fingers are those of a woman sitting beside me, a slender woman with auburn hair, tied in a knot at the back of her neck, though delicate tendrils of curls fall around her face. Her eyes are on the flower, twirling between her long white fingers, and her eyes are wistful, her smile sad, her long lashes almost covering her rich brown eyes. Her skin is so pale and her complexion so smooth and perfect... There is lace at her throat, a lace that looks soft and lovely, a delicate ruffle against her skin, not at all the scratchy stuff that lined my Christmas dresses as a child. Her long dress is a pale yellow, and I realize it's just the color of the throats of the honeysuckles...

      And the moment I blink, she is gone. There is only the honeysuckle in my own fingertips, the end crushed flat between them, and its heavy sweet scent drenching the air around me. I remain motionless for a long moment, staring blankly at the place she appeared... but there's no trace of her in the leaves still laying on the iron, in the pale gray air of the clouded day.
      One vision, I could shrug off, but now... this was every bit as clear as the other, though it was shorter. She was here, beside me, and if she had looked up from the flower, she would have seen me, and been just as startled as I was to see her. I know she would have seen me, as clearly as I saw her...

word count avalanche!

2009-11-07T11:58:00.000-05:00

After work, I walked over to Tim Horton's. Got a soup'n'bagel combo with a hazelnut coffee. Sat down by an outlet, plugged in the laptop, and started writing.

I called it quits around midnight, because I could not write again until TUESDAY (11/9) and still be on top of things. I played Carmen Sandiago and crocheted until Tom picked me up at 1.

I freaking rocked the writing. I was the only NaNo'er there this evening, but that was fine too, I was able to zone in to my story and it was really, really nice. I even wrote a few sentences I was really, really impressed with! So, there's going to be a rather large chunk posted... I'm back-dating the time stamps since it was, technically, written on the 7th.

first write-in

2009-11-06T20:45:00.004-05:00

...my sixth year, and today was the first write-in I ever managed to get to. Three other people turned up at one of the coffee places on campus, and someone was good enough to bring a power strip, and holy crap if I didn't write a good 2000 words in, what, three hours? With loooots of talking in between. One woman, I actually had a class with a few years ago. The other girl loves Batman and was raving about the audiobook version of the novelization of the newest Star Trek movie. The guy is going to go poke around an abandoned sanitarium like next week, he's using several abandoned places in his story.

This, is pretty freaking awesome.

I have people to share my NaNo experience with - people who understand the excitement of wordcounts, the frustrations of plot, the ridiculousness of characters. And I have things in common with these people! I always forget how nice that feels, the only people I've hung out with in ages are my coworkers. And while some of them are pretty awesome people too, and I even have a few things in common with some of them... it's a really great feeling to just sit down with some people you've never met before and just fall into conversations.

NaNo makes it so much less awkward, too. When there's a lull in the conversation, you just go back to the writing you're supposed to be doing. When you get stuck, you start talking again. You have people to remind you how to properly use quotes inside of quotes. It's a very cool thing.

Tomorrow night after work, I'm going to Tim Horton's until Tom gets out of work. It's one of my favorite places to write, and while most of the local NaNo'ers are meeting in the afternoon, it's sounding like a few will drop by at night, so that'll be good.

It's so strange having my wordcount already DONE for today, and it's nowhere near midnight! (Not being able to access the campus wifi - since I don't have an active student network account - was probably a VERY, very good thing.)

Also, regarding today's chunk: 1) I've never actually seen documentation of street names and things changing like that, it just totally makes sense to me that they would. I know growing up, we always had our own names for places - one particular intersection up the street was "four corners", the dirt road leading to a farmer's cabin was "Swyers Road". 2) I was not expecting my random zoning guy to be so entertaining! I was cracking up as I pictured this guy in this little office throwing maps all over the place. He's adorable! He made me so happy today, I had no idea how I was going to make today's section interesting, and then he showed up!

Part 6

2009-11-06T20:00:00.001-05:00

      Another two weeks slip by, busy with work and keeping up house and, you know, feeding myself occasionally. There just never seems to be enough time to go into town and do research... and I want to have a whole day to dedicate to it, I have no idea how busy the town hall is, or even where I'm going to need to go.
      But finally, I find a day off, when it's not raining, and I have food in my refrigerator, and I make my way into town. I did manage to find the hours they're open on their website, and I have a good whole afternoon ahead of me.
      The woman at the desk is very friendly – and she's the only other person in the building besides myself. I feel shy, my voice echoing in the large, empty space. It's a pretty, old building, maybe 1800s. Wood floors with about an inch of ancient varnish, wood paneling and warm white stucco walls. A little chilly, too, though I barely needed my spring jacket on the walk over.
      She directs me down a hallway and up a flight of stairs, where I find an older man at a desk surrounded by maps. Like really surrounded by maps. Piles on the desk, mounted on the walls, falling out of drawers. Most of them have lines all over the place, but I haven't the faintest idea which would be the one I need...
      “What can I help you with today?” He's super-friendly, too. But I suppose they don't get a whole lot of visitors in here.
      I've thought over this conversation a hundred times, but still haven't come up with a good way to explain my errand. “Well... I live over on Watercress, in the apartments---”
      That's all that gets out of my mouth before he tugs a satellite map from a seemingly random location in the pile to his left, and lays it on top of the pile directly in front of him. His finger moves without hesitation to what, I realize a second or two later, is the apartment block. He looks up at me expectantly, and I can't help but grin, impressed. “Yeah, that's it! ...these woods back here,” I continue, pointing to the dark green splotch on the map. “I was walking around in them, and I found a fence... I was just wondering if there was a house back there, maybe a road or something I didn't know about...” I trail off, as my eyes scan the map, seeing just what I'd expected – no roads within at least a mile of where I'd been.
      “Well... no, there's no roads there, as you can see. Not until the woods hit Central Ave to the east, and Walnut up north-west. But a house... You know, I don't really know. That much land... and it doesn't look too low...” He reaches for a drawer, and pulls out something like a topographical map.
      “I ran into a bit of swampy area,” I volunteer, feeling pretty pathetic about the contribution, knowing that he can probably read these maps like most people read books, getting far more information from the maps than anyone could by standing in the actual location.
      “Yes... this area here, will be swampy, especially at this time of year... But here, the ground gets higher once you're any distance from that creek.”
      “Does the creek have a name?” I hadn't even thought about that before. “Or is it too small?”
      “Oh, I'm sure it has some name... the town's been here long enough that everything in it has a name, even if it's an unofficial one. There's no name marked on these maps, but...”
      He rolls his chair off to his right, spinning around to haul open a large drawer. He rifles through a moment, then returns to the desk with a pile of mostly older maps. He scans through the first couple, setting them aside as he finishes, then finally settles on a slightly yellowed map, with handwritten names on it. “The historical society did a survey back in the late '70s, going around and asking all the homeowners the names of places. Unofficial names as well as the official ones, just for local color, you know, 'that's the old Williams place', or 'that's Charley's field', 'Lover's Lane', 'the Hill Road'... some of the roads on the edge of town had six different names, depending on who you asked.”
      “I guess that would happen over time... Do the places still keep the names of the people who owned it, even after other people move in?”
      He laughs. “You know, it's funny, but usually they do. I've actually had some old ladies tell me things like, 'oh, you know John Wright, he lives in the old Carter place'.”
      I laugh too – and I'm glad to hear it, the name of my mysterious millionaire might not be so hard to track down.
      “Ah, there we are! That creek has a couple of names... looks like it was mostly called Spring Creek. Going by the topography, I'm guessing it flows out from the woods, its source must be... right about here,” he decides, pointing out the end of the thin blue line.
      I nod. “It definitely flows out of the woods, yeah, I was mostly walking along it the other day.”
      “So there's a spring somewhere in there, must have been used by someone living nearby at one point in time. But it's had a few other names too... “Douglas Creek”, it flows through the old Douglas farmstead farther down... One of the local families called it “Spook's Stream”, no mention of why... “Mill Creek” near town, there was a mill built alongside it at one time. Didn't last long, it's really not a big enough body of water to power anything. Probably was for awhile, before Silver Creek was diverted toward the old textile mill, to power that...” He trails off, then looks up apologetically. “I'm sorry, you didn't come in for a history lesson, I'm sure.”
      I smile warmly back, delighted at how well he knows the area. “Actually, I really did... I'm not from the area originally, I came here for college and stayed on. So I don't know a whole lot about the town, and... well, really, while I was on my walk the other day, I saw this really pretty old fence in the woods, and it really piqued my curiosity.”
      He perks up at this. “That must be the old Mason property.”
      I lean forward too, peering at the map. “So there's a house in there? Is anyone still living there?”
      “Oh, there was a house, but it burned down... oh, maybe a century ago? It was a beautiful place in its day, people came from miles away to see the gardens...”
      The gardens. The Grecian boy stumbling in the reeds, the tiles and marble...
      “An odd story around it, actually... The Masons moved in when they settled in town. The lady of the house brought them out of the city, worried about her children's health, and they bought this tract of land a little out of the way. Her husband was a reclusive man, lots of old family money I think. But the house... they didn't build the house. He said his brother had built it some years before, and planted the gardens... But no-one in town had ever heard of the brother. I suppose he must have been reclusive too, family similarity. Mrs. Mason claimed all kinds of credit for the gardens and was always showing them off, and she got infuriated whenever he told people it had been his brother. Nobody could ever prove one side or the other, of course... And not too long later, before the children had grown up and left the house, there was a catastrophic fire, destroyed the entire house. Mr. Mason was killed, but his family got out all right. They moved away, of course, but the property... I think it's still in their name. I know the house was never rebuilt, and the gardens must be all overgrown by now. It was so out of the way, even then, I don't think there was ever a real road out there, besides the dirt path from Central out to the house.”
      “Is that road still there?”
      He rifles through a few maps, and shakes his head. “Doesn't seem to be, no. No use for it in the last fifty years at least. It's not visible on any of the maps, and it was certainly never paved, so I'm sure it's overgrown by now.”
      “Is there any way to find out who owns the land now? ...I'd just hate to be trespassing, if I go on another walk,” I add quickly – and pretty lamely.
      He grins. “Don't you worry about it, nobody would mind someone just walking on through. The only person that minds that is Alex Miller, on the other side of town, over by the fire hall? And he has signs posted on every other tree, you'd never have to second-guess that one.”
      I giggle, feeling a little more at ease. It really is a friendly town, I'm relieved to get the reassurance.
      “I'm pretty sure it's still in the Mason's name, though they haven't lived here in decades...” He pulls out a map with thousands of oddly contorted rectangles. “This is the latest zoning map, showing all the property lines in the county.” He runs his finger over it, then consults a binder he pulls from somewhere in his desk. “Let's see... yes, it's still owned by the Mason family. Jeremy Mason is the current owner, he's a few generations down from the Masons who lived here. Currently lives way out in Nevada – I think your hiking path is safe,” he concludes with a smile.
      “Thank you so, so much, for all your help. I wasn't expecting to find out half this much, I really appreciate it.”
      “Well I'm glad to have helped! It's not often I get company in here, as I'm sure you can imagine. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
      I turn over everything in my mind for a moment, considering. “Do you have any idea where that road used to be, that led from Central to the Mason place?”
      “Hmm...” He scans the area of the woods on the map with all the unofficial names on it. “There's a dotted line here, noted as 'Birch Lane', but I'm not sure if that would be it. There's a small road here, leading back to someone's cabin, but it doesn't run across the Mason property at all.” He turns his chair around and goes rummaging in a bottom drawer, lifting one large sheet of paper after another. He emerges with a vast sheet of yellow paper, covered in faded ink. “Oldest map I have in the office,” he says with pride. “The museum keeps trying to steal it from me, but I've already given them the rest of my old maps. I have copies somewhere, but they're not very good – photocopies of paper and ink this old tend to miss a lot of information.”
      He spreads out the map carefully, tenderly smoothing out the edges. Pulling a magnifying glass from his desk, he examines the woods closely. “Here...” he murmurs, his fingertip light on the old paper. “There's a small note of about where the house stood...”
      I lean in close, staring at the spot, trying to match up the map on the paper to the map in my head of the area. “Is that the road, there? Curving around a little north before it goes east?”
      He nods thoughtfully. “It must be, though it doesn't start until a little distance from the house. I would imagine there was a carriage house or something similar at the edge of the gardens, and that might be where the road starts.”

Part 5

2009-11-05T23:37:00.003-05:00

      I spend another few moments seated on the rock, gazing at the vaguely visible opening in the fence. I wonder how long this has been here... I can't imagine tiles like that being in style for fifty years, at least, probably more like a hundred. I trail my fingers in the cold flowing water, getting the mud off of them. I run a finger gently over a few pieces of marble, and a broken fragment of tile---
      I hear laughter, the light bubbling laugh of a young boy. Looking up, I can see past the fence, and there is a boy with absurdly golden curls, jumping out of the creek, the ends of his ivory tunic dark with wetness. He laughs louder as he trips over the reed-like plants at the water's edge, falling among them, the cream cloth tied at his waist now covered in water spots – but no mud, for the edges of the creek are lined with colored tiles, and the bottom is covered in crushed marble. There is a call from somewhere nearby – the voice is low and rich, sonorous, but also tired sounding. It's too low for me to make out the words. But the boy stifles his laughter, his slim frame shaking with the sounds he prevents from escaping it. His glance flits back over the water, and even at a distance I can see how startlingly bright his green eyes are – not the green of a cat's eyes, but a vivid emerald, the color of the summer sunlight tangled in tree leaves. Now back on dry land, he dashes off into the gardens – it can't be anything but a garden, there are leaves and blossoms and delicate ornamental trees that I can't identify...
      And I'm staring again at the wall of vines covering the old ironwork. There's no opening, barely even any light able to get through. I jump up, and almost run to the fence – but I can't, there's no way through the brush, and a few jabs and scratches of the dead growth are enough to recall me to myself. Standing still, I listen intently, but the sounds of the forest are the same as they've been all afternoon, distant bird calls and the breeze playing in the newborn leaves of the treetops. I stare helplessly at the vine-encrusted fence for a long time, but all I see are leaves and dead branches and rusted iron swirls.
      Finally, I take a slow breath. Adjusting the bag on my shoulder, I turn around and begin my long walk back, following the creek back home.

      For the next few days, I stew over what I saw, or didn't see. No, I did see it, there's no denying it, I saw it as clearly as I've seen anything. My dreams are sometimes pretty clear, but the camera angles in my dreams are always changing, and certain details I just can't see (which is frustrating even to dream-me). Heck, half the time in my dreams I'm not even myself, and I was definitely myself that afternoon. I've retraced every detail, written down and sketched as much as I could... and it was a lot. Even things I didn't know, like the words said by the distant voice, or the names of the trees and plants, I can still picture as clearly as anything, I can still reproduce the sound in my head. My memory of that garden is as sharp as my memory of places in the creek. And the light there was the same... it looked later in the year, but maybe there were just earlier-growing plants there? You can make anything bloom at any time indoors, I'm sure there are tricks for getting them to turn green sooner outdoors too.
      But the boy... it's odd, for all that he was dressed like a little Grecian statue, something in his manner didn't seem that ancient. I guess boys are boys no matter what era, but... there definitely weren't Caucasians here when Athens was at its height. Unless North Carolina was Atlantis and I'm the first to find it. Anyway, the tile can't be that old, and I saw more of the tiles under the boy's feet... or could it be that old? I mean, people find pottery from Mesopotamia. But the detailing... no, that's no proof of it being so recent either, hieroglyphics have just as much detail as this, the brush strokes are as delicate. As soon as I was home that afternoon, I dug through the boxes until I found my old art history textbook. The thing is a beast, but... I'm still not quite sure what my tile is. My gut instinct of Russian or something from an Islamic country is still holding, and given how much tile work there is in mosques, I'm leaning toward that. But this is a little less sharply geometric than most of those, so I'm still not sure. I'm not quite desperate enough to hunt down my old professor... though, come to think of it, maybe I should. I think every slide he showed us in lecture was a photo he'd taken himself, traveling the entire world over the years. I'm sure he'd know at a glance...
      And I guess the tile's going to have to be my main clue, though if I could find out about the original owners of the property, that would help too. I went out to the bookstore and did pick up the book of old photos of the town... but while there were several pictures of grand houses, I recognized all of them, they're all still here, in town. The portraits of important people meant little to me, the descriptions of each were basically job descriptions, and I have no idea if a doctor or senator or freaking chimney sweep lived there. Alright so it had to be someone rich, but the money could have come from anywhere, it could have been an English lord from an ancient family or a politician who liked bribes or a surgeon or someone who--- no there was no state lottery back then. But back when? Was the boy a servant or a son? I have no idea where to even start looking... In every book I've ever read, the heroin (it's always a girl in stories like this) goes through the microfiche at the local library and finds a headline that gives her all the answers. But I've used those silly things for school assignments and they're absolutely miserable. It takes half an hour to flip through a single issue of a newspaper, the type is tiny and dark, God forbid you try to print anything out, it's never legible. The indexes are vast, and unless you know exactly what you're looking for – and it's something big, like, a war – you're so totally doomed.
      I suppose I could start hitting up my coworkers for stories. Most of them have spent their entire lives in this town, and I've heard the occasional ghost story about some building or another. Plus they know every family in town – I've listened to conversations go on for like fifteen minutes, tracing the family connections between one person and another. Half of my coworkers are related somehow or another... which leaves me feeling a little left out occasionally, but most of the time, I'm frankly glad to be able to stay aloof from the drama. Your husband's sister isn't inviting him to her second wedding, though she's asked you to help with the catering arrangements? Your ex-boyfriend's mom just walked into the store? The co-worker who's your second cousin on your dad's side just broke up with your boyfriend's brother's best friend? I love the stories, but they're so much more fun from the outside.
      Every town has records of property ownership and the like, but... I have no practical idea of how you find that stuff out. Can you just walk into town hall and someone will look it up for you? I guess it wouldn't be a privacy issue, just to get the name... or, heck, they'll know who owns it right now, and I might be able to--- no, better if I don't ask that person, I might get nailed for trespassing. I hadn't even thought about that. No signs were posted though, so I have that as an excuse. Still, I've seen town zoning maps - we had to copy parts of one for a customer one day, I remember people staring at the lines scrawled all over the satellite view of the county, trying to find their house. (That was a novelty like a decade ago. Why are people still so fascinated by it? I mean, I am too... but it's weird.) I should be able to get access to something like that, and at least find out if there's any kind of road in there. I know my county map doesn't show one - that, at least, I could check.
      Now, to find the time to do all this research... I don't have another day off for three days yet, and by then I'll need to do laundry and get some grocery shopping done... and I'll have to get up at normal-people hours, I'm sure the town hall and things close by five. If not earlier. I'll have to look that up, too... If I lived in any size of a city, all this stuff would be on the internet, but the town's too small for that. There's a website, of course, and they'll post a listing of the local festivals during the summer or whatever, but other than that it's a handful of tiny pictures of the town in summer, a couple generic paragraphs about what a great place to live it is, and links to sites filled with text on demographics.
      This is starting to feel like a long and dull school research project. But when I remember how that garden looked, and the brightness of that boy's eyes, the whole Eden-like vision... I just have to find out more, I can't let that kind of beauty just slide into the fog of memory, I have to find some way to hold on to it...

words

2009-11-05T01:26:00.001-05:00

"Thwapped" and "scootch" are words. So sorry spellcheck, throw all the angry squiggly red lines at me you want.

Part 4

2009-11-04T23:59:00.005-05:00

      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.

spelling and an illustration

2009-11-03T23:52:00.002-05:00

I could not for the life of me figure out how to spell "tetanus" earlier. I was writing on my dinner break at work, so I had no internet (I'll never remember to ask the boss for the wifi password, and anyway, the lack of distraction is a REALLY good thing), and I couldn't google it to get suggestions, and eeeeevery variation I could think of was still too far off-base for OpenOffice to figure out.

And, just now, I spelled "rambunctious" just fine and dandy on the first try. I and O and U all properly in their places.

I wiki'd around a bit about wrought iron fences, because I decided I wanted one. (...I wonder when that happened? I had something else in mind for the girl to find, and what happens? She finds a fence. I have no idea how.) I used a loooot of really elaborate ironwork in last year's NaNo, and I'd found some really stunning references. But I wanted to see if I could get an idea of a) how long ago the stuff was used, and b) how well it would hold up. Turns out ironwork goes back to a least 2000 BC. Good times. (The really elaborate decorative stuff came in starting in medieval times, hardcore around the 1500s.) How well it holds up... most of the things from 2000 BC have rusted away, but things in Europe have been in place a few centuries easily. Apparently there's a LOT of variation in iron, especially the farther back you go, since the whole process of working with it has had an awful lot of variables.

But the real result of my wiki wanderings? was this picture:

...that's pretty much the most incredible fence I have ever seen. Just the style of it, all swirls and things, not a trace of a straight line, just this vast organic motif... that is absolutely stunning. I'm in so much love. So, the fence my (still unnamed) main character has found, is pretty darn similar to this one. A bit smaller, and a bit more detailed, but, pretty much this one. <333

Part 3

2009-11-03T23:47:00.001-05:00

      I follow the creek farther and farther into the woods like this, standing amidst the water whenever I can, trying to get my camera to pick up all the nuances my eyes can read in the colors and textures. I have no idea how far I've walked, it's been over an hour but I've stopped so many times that I can't have covered all that much distance. A little dell of ferns off to one side draws me away from the water at last, the sun making the newly-born greenery absolutely luminescent. But the woods around it are surprisingly dense. The little nook of ferns and decaying logs is surrounded almost entirely by walls of vines and impenetrable brush. I'm sure that will make it all the more charming and secluded in the summer, but right now it's just intimidating. So I exit the way I came in, and head back toward the creek. A check of my compass reveals that the creek has meandered a lot, because without my noticing I'm now headed in a totally different direction. I really had no idea how far these woods went back, and I'm getting the feeling it's a lot more than I'd thought. Back at the creek bed, I pause to take a drink from my bottle of water. Turning in a slow circle, I look casually around to see if there's anything more interesting than the creek... and I stop, staring at the other side of the water. Is that a fence? It looks like it goes in a straight line, though the vines covering it make it hard to tell.
      Just my luck, there's absolutely no way to get across the creek right here. Up ahead, I can see a few more big stones, and I head quickly toward them. It's a bit of a stretch to reach the first of them, but they're stable and after the first one it's a reasonable path across. I can still see the fence, though I think it's a little farther from the water than it was back down the creek. There's a lot of low scrub, shorter plants than most I've run into in here, and I trip and nearly fall on my face several times. But eventually I make it to the low wall of vines... and it looks an awful lot more substantial than the usual drooping barbed wire run through the woods. I tug some of the vines aside, cautiously pulling them away a bit at a time, in case it really is barbed wire under there. Not really in the mood for a tetanus shot today.
      It's not barbed wire, it's... I don't actually know if it's iron, but it looks like a wrought iron fence. Leaning in closer, I keep pulling away the vines, but my care now is to not risk damaging the fence rather than worry for my fingers. Only a few inches of it are visible, but it's gorgeous... and it doesn't look like any fence I've ever seen, there are huge swirls of vines and flowers, tiny spirals and minute buds. There's none of the simple parallel lines that make up most iron fences, it's one spiral whirling into the next and the next. The top doesn't seem to be quite flat, the flowers and vines make it vary – the real vines growing over it had actually evened it out, instead of giving it false lumps. It's only a little taller than me, but I'm sure there's a good few inches of it underneath the thick layers of aging leaves on the ground, so it's probably about six feet high. It feels taller, the design is so large and bold... There's a bit of rust in places, and a few rough edges where small pieces have broken off. I can't imagine the change in temperature and moisture from winter to summer has done it any favors, our winters aren't bad, but it's obvious this has been neglected out here for a long, long time. The vines are so dense... and I'm almost positive there are no houses near here. I mean I guess there might be, but, I've looked at this area on a map, and there's no road in this direction for at least a mile.
      But I guess there must have been a house, or something, here at some point, why would you build a fence this gorgeous in the middle of the woods?
      Last time I was at the local bookstore, I saw a whole series of books filled with old photos of all the little towns in the area. But I never did pick one up... I'm sure they're still there, or there's one at the library. It's a small enough town that there will always be a few people obsessive about its history, always someone who knows the story of any place. I suppose it was some millionaire or another, who moved out here to get some fresh country air in his lungs, in the lungs of a sickly young wife maybe, but the money was soon gone through some trouble, and who's going to bother putting a fence up for auction? Though I have to say, I'd have bought a piece of it if I could, it's so incredibly beautiful...
      I've cleared most of the vines and debris away from a section maybe five feet in diameter now. God would I love to clear it all... but my hands are getting ripped to shreds on the dried old vines, and the new growth is almost impossible to break. I'd need tools to do it properly, and gloves for sure. Sighing, I take a step back, letting my fingers trace lightly around a swirling iron vine. The light is all wrong for a good photo, but I take a few shots anyway, in case by some awful chance I can't find my way back here or something. The bottom falls out of my stomach for a second as the idea hits me – but no, I'll find it, all I need to do is follow the creek in and I'll be fine.
      I can find the fence... but can I find the reason it's here? I look around, but there's no more clue than the long stretches of vine-covered fence running in both directions. It curves pretty sharply away from the creek behind me, no wonder I didn't see it until this point. Still, it follows the creek for awhile from here. I look up toward the tops of the trees, and check my compass... I'm not sure there will ever be a good light time for photos in an area this deep in the woods, but maybe I'll have better luck closer to noon? It can't be far from that now... my watch informs me it's about eleven. Guess I'll keep an eye on the light as I go, but if it's that near noon and it's still not getting down here, that doesn't bode well for photos.
      I slip my camera back into my bag for now, and after another sip of water, I continue on into the woods, sometimes beside the fence, sometimes moving back to the water's edge, my eyes straying more into the trees to either side, looking for some other trace of human habitation...

      Half an hour later, there's nothing new, and while the moderate heat of the springtime sun is getting down here, the light is still pretty patchy. Unless I can get all the vines off a section of fence, the vines are going to overshadow the detail in the ironwork... so I can capture the outlines of it, but not the texture, which is only half the information I need for a drawing. I clear a smaller section away this time, trying to get both sides as best I can, so a bit of light can get through the fence, and the iron stand out against the more distant background of trees and things. It's seriously a pain, trying to slip my hand between the unyielding iron curls – even if there were a gate somewhere, I'd never in a million years see it, and I'm really not confident about my ability to climb over something taller than me. (And I'd be absolutely terrified of breaking off even the tiniest piece...) I clear maybe a foot square, and take a few pictures, and then find a nice cozy rock to sit on for awhile.
      I take the sandwich out of my bag, and keep it in its plastic bag as I eat it – I don't want to waste any of my drinking water on cleaning off my hands, and I'm not exactly confident about how clean the water in the creek is. I turn off my iPod for a little while, listening to the environment around me. Lots of birds, but I have no idea what kinds, I'm awful at bird calls. The creek isn't a particularly rambunctious one, so there's not much more than a muted gurgle from it. What makes me happiest, is that I can't hear a single car. That is fantastic. It feels so nice to be completely alone and unobserved now and again, left to whatever thoughts you'd like without interruption by the rest of the human race... I don't blame Mr. Mystery Millionaire for building a place out here, if that's what happened, there are definitely days I'd have no problem with a driveway that's two miles long.
      I stay on the rock for a little while, putting my hands behind me and leaning back, closing my eyes and breathing deeply, letting the quiet of the woods seep into me, letting the freshness of the air soak into my skin...
      Ugh, I hate crows! That's got to be the most obnoxious sound nature's thought of yet, they're so unreasonably loud and it's such a harsh, grating noise. Maybe I'm just biased, having been woken up so many summer vacation mornings at five a.m. by a crow or two that was partial to the tree right outside my bedroom window. Still.
      Looking around, I can just make out the large black shape of the evil bird in the top branches of... oh I'll have no idea what any of these trees are until they have leaves on them. Then I'll know a maple from an oak, and maybe a birch tree. Birch trees I might know by the bark, but that's about it, and that's only because I think they're really pretty. Too bad they're so overdone in art...
      The crow flies off, which is good, because it was up way too high for me to be able to throw something at it. But my nice meditative mood is broken, and I sigh and look around. How much farther do I want to keep walking? I'm dying to know where the fence leads, but without having any ideas of what I might be looking for... I might just walk in a big circle that extends for a mile around the house – if the house is even still there. If it was even ever there! I have this gut feeling that there's a house, or at least was one, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. I could do such pretty drawings around a forgotten old mansion.

Part 2

2009-11-02T23:59:00.000-05:00

      The woods look bigger from the inside than they do from the outside, I always forget that. If I go too far, I'm totally going to get lost. Dad always trained us kids to bring a compass with us when we went off wandering, but I never really went that far by myself. The woods back home scarcely qualified as woods, you were never more than five, ten minutes' walk from seeing where they ended. It seemed so much bigger to me as a kid... But here, I'm on unfamiliar ground. I've lived in this apartment since I graduated college five years ago (five years, already??), but never really explored the area around it much. Campus, I covered every inch of ground, but somehow working leaves you less time for walks than classes ever did. Or maybe it's just that I had to hunt for quiet, private places on campus, and here I have the whole apartment (small as it is) to myself. I have to be at work in two hours, I really shouldn't walk out of sight of the edge of the trees anyway, not today. There's a creek maybe thirty feet to the right, if I just follow that, I'll have my path back to the edge. I'm sure my old compass is in one of the piles of boxes back in the apartment. Maybe I'll come back on my next day off... if it's not so gloomy out. The damp feels even more oppressive under the trees, it's almost cold here where the sun only barely gets in, even with the trees still nearly leafless. In another week or two, those leaves will fill in all the thousands of little gaps between the knuckled branches up there...
      I spend a few moments studying that interlacing of branches. It's something I've seen a thousand times, drawn a few times too, but every tree is different, and each time I look at the lacy combination of branches there are new patterns, different ratios of light and dark, so many shapes caught in the spaces between...
      I walk slowly toward the creek, skipping through a few songs on my iPod – I don't want anything too loud and energetic today, but I don't want to start sleepwalking either. The ground starts getting soggy and more green, as little water-loving plants are already breaking through the moldering leaves of the old year. I study the area between where I'm standing and the creek bed, and see that it just gets lower and more wet the closer to the bank... which is barely even a bank here, the creek just spreads into this whole large area. I am not at all equipped for slogging through a swamp today. I'll have to come back some other time...
      But I walk a little ways farther anyway, parallel to the creek instead of toward it, seeing if the ground dries up any. And it does seem to, though I still can't get anywhere near the slowly moving water. Does it only flood like this in the spring, or is this whole area that marshy? Looking around, I realize that if I knew more about plants, I'd know the answer... but I don't. There's lots of dry brush, and vague bits of neon green sprouting all over, but I have no idea what's what, and even if I did... I know all plants like water, but I have no clue which ones need to be perpetually drowning in it.
      Looking at my watch, I sigh and shift the bag on my shoulders. I should head back... it feels like such a pointless little walk, but I'll need to change my jeans and shoes at least before work now. And I need to fight my way back through the scrub at the edge of the woods... I feel tired just thinking about it. I try to focus on the fact that at least I snared some inspiration from the colors in the dead leaves, in the tangle of branches overhead... but that's really not enough to lift my mood.
      I skip through a few more songs, and land on something or another by Morrisey or The Smiths, I never know which is his solo stuff and which with the group. I don't recognize the song, but it's gloomy, so I let it play as I trek back to my apartment.

      It's a good two weeks before I get out to the woods again. I just haven't had time, or I've been so tired, or it's rained or... I shake my head to clear out the thoughts. I am going to have today. I am not going to think about work or any other looming responsibility. I have my camera, my little sketchbook and a favorite pencil (oh Pentallic woodless graphite pencils, you are the greatest invention ever), fresh playlists on my iPod of upbeat music and artsy music and all the stuff that inspires me, a bottle of water and a sandwich and an apple in my bag, and no work today. And there's sunlight! I set off toward the woods actually smiling, just gazing up at the brightness of the blue in the sky above and grinning for sheer joy at the sunlight. One of Coldplay's newer songs comes on... “Square One”, that's it, off “X & Y”. They totally turned into U2 on that album, and then having Brian Eno produce “Viva La Vida”? Totally sealed it. But somehow I can't bring myself to really mind, their sound is just fantastic, it's gotten so epic and grandiose and expansive, while still keeping some amazing textures running through everything... They're one of those bands that I always wanted to like, I knew I should, but it wasn't until “X & Y” that I really did – though despite growing up on U2, I have a few moments of indecision now trying to decide if I'm hearing Jonny Buckland's guitar or The Edge's. The tempo picks up and so does my pace, and I feel the urge to just start running through the grass, sprinting, like a child racing the wind... but I don't, I'm too old and dignified for that. Ha. Instead I let my hips sashay a bit, setting my strides in time to the music, singing softly along. “It doesn't matter who you are...”
      I walk along the edge of the woods a bit until I find the entry point I used last time. It isn't great, but at least I can get through it, and manage a few less scratches this time anyway. Today, I have on waterproof hiking boots. And I have a compass. I am invincible. I check the compass once I'm under the trees, and look around to find some other marker of the location... There, there's a fallen log with neon orange fungus on it. That's pretty good. And I want to follow the creek anyway... something about running water is always fascinating. I remember when my sister was little, she was obsessive about it, always demanding to look at the fountains in the mall when we went shopping, or have me take her to the creek in the woods back home. I played in the creek a lot myself, though I never was big on swimming. Hate getting things in my eyes.
      Again, I walk parallel to the water a little ways, not quite sure just how much water my boots will repel. Anyway my boots are just hiking boots, not the knee-high monstrosities I had as a kid. At the time, they were amazing, but I'm pretty sure my artistic nature would puke if I tried wearing anything like that now. The hiking boots are bad enough. But the ground seems to get a little higher, or maybe the creek bed is just lower, as I go farther into the woods. Anyway, I can get closer without being sucked into squishy mud. The creek isn't all that deep, maybe two feet, but it's still pretty wide here – it doesn't really go very far beyond the edge of the woods, just fades into swampiness and then vaguely wet fields. I wonder if there's a spring back in here somewhere, or if this is just an offshoot of a bigger stream?
      I grin as The Monkees' “Listen to the Band” comes up. It's completely absurd that I should like this song so much. It has one verse. Sung several times. The chorus consists of one line. It has twangy steel guitar, and a completely arbitrary brass section. By The Monkees, in their declining years of the late '60s. But somehow, it all works, and it makes me happy.
      I creep gingerly toward the edge of the bank, trying not to stumble into a pit of mud. Squatting down, I can see bits of plants trying to grow under the water beside the bank – I wonder if it's seaweed, or like cattails or something? Stones are starting to appear here and there in the creek bed, mostly small ones, but a few larger here and there, making the water bend and twist to get past them. I adjust my footing and lean as close as I can, trying to take a few pictures, I know I don't have the right setup for good water pictures, but the lines of the water as it moves are so fascinating. Water's so hard to draw well, you can't really draw the water itself, all you can do is show the effects it has on the things it touches... and that's different with every passing millisecond. I must have a hundred reference shots, and I still struggle every time I need to draw it. Non-draw it. Whatever. There's a rock large enough for me to stand on in the middle of the bed, I wonder if it's stable?
      Tentatively, I stretch out my leg, straining to reach the rock... but it's too far, just a few inches out of reach. The water's a good six inches deep at the bank here, which is about four inches deeper than I trust my boots. But looking up the creek farther, I can see there are more rocks ahead, there'll be a spot somewhere I can walk in it and maybe get some good shots. Already I'm trying different compositions in my head, I'd love to capture just a scrap of the fluid curves of the lines in the water, coiling itself around a stone and meeting itself again on the other side... There's a hundred shades of clear between the air and the ground below...

Part 1

2009-11-01T20:33:00.000-05:00

      It's not really a great morning for a walk. It's not even a good morning for one, it's gray and chilly and bleak. Not even the nice kind of gray, where there's mist and atmosphere and “scope for the imagination”. It's just depressing.
      But yesterday was such a perfect shining morning, and I just slept through it. I caught the tail end of it, the light just turning from the purity of early morning, whose air hasn't been breathed by a single soul, into the comfortable warmth of noon, when I finally dragged myself out of bed. And then couldn't catch any more than that glimpse, in my hurry to get ready for work, in the bleariness that bogged down my eyeballs. I can't ever really get away on my lunch/dinner break, someone always needs me for something, so I hate to leave the building. By the time I'm home, it's getting dark, and while the summer gives me a little bit of daylight, I'm always so tired, and need to get something to eat, and then it's gone, any little glimpse of beauty I might have found gone forever...
      Pathetic fallacy. This many years out of high school, and that term still pops into my head. Nature sympathizing with the plot, or the emotions of the character. I think I have the reverse problem, I fall into whatever mood the weather is in... I really should not have come out this morning, I'm going to be miserable all day.
      But I feel so awful about having missed yesterday... and so many of the other bright mornings lately. I don't pay attention to little bits of beauty like I used to. In college, walking to classes every day, I amused myself on the countless walks by looking around, by noticing the flowers on the ornamental trees by the main buildings, by taking in the hundred gradations of color in the water stains at the ends of pipes, by studying the way the shadows fell all through the day, by trying to name the colors of the campus at night, the navy velvet of the evening sky, charcoal of the buildings in shadow, rose-gold of the aging lights...
      I was drawing every day then, constantly sketching things I saw around me, settings from my dreams, grabbing at every idea that my imagination glimpsed – I had to, in order to churn out so many assignments. Some of it was crap, but most of it somehow wasn't. Mine weren't the best in the class, not by a long shot, but I (almost) always liked them, there was some hint of what I was trying to get across always there, even if the hand was positioned a little awkwardly or whatever. There was something there. It wasn't ever perfect, I always found faults afterward, but... there was something there.
      And as draining as it was, and as much as the whole idea of rules for art angered me, and everything else... I miss the art I made. I still keep a sketchbook on me all the time, there's always something in my purse and beside my bed. But days at a time will go by without me adding a thing to them... I have to fight to think of something to sketch, or make a note of. And drawing... it's been months. Sketches here and there, even a basic pencil drawing once in awhile, maybe a light watercolor wash or bit of colored pencil, but it's rare. A full-blown thing that I've totally lost myself in, spending hours and days on getting the face just right, adding the details of wood grain, deciding where the light should fall... I haven't done something like that in at least a year, maybe more. I just don't feel like I have a good enough idea, or the time to execute it the way it should be done, I don't have the drive to get sucked in and just draw, forgetting about food and sleep and everything else... There's always something else to snare my attention, tv and the internet and silly games and phone calls, cooking and washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom, work and work again the next day...
      And for as many all-nighters as I had back then, rubbing charcoal into paper until – literally – my fingers bled, I don't think I was half so tired as I am now. My life is quiet, work really isn't all that bad, I work at a small store with a lot of great people, but... I don't have the energy I used to. My thoughts just feel so empty.

      This was not a good morning for a walk, this weather is making me completely ridiculous. Look at things! That is why I came out, to look at things, to see the world around me again. I have a few hours before work, my lunch is already packed, I am going to walk for awhile. Fumbling in my pocket, I find my iPod, and flip through the playlists until I find “dad stuff”. Dad is addicted to his stash, which is a stash of pretty much everything except drugs. Growing up, he accumulated stacks of records, and eight-tracks, and when tapes came in he had those, and then cds, and then hard drives got big enough to actually hold enough, at a high enough quality, to make him happy. I had no idea growing up, but he's a major audiophile. One of those guys who was upset to lose the “warmth” of vinyl. Mp3s are like blasphemy. He started out ripping everything into those massive old .wav files, and was like a three year-old on Christmas morning when .flac and .ogg and whatever else came out. And of course, none of that stuff is normal, and all I wanted in college was an iPod. I really think it almost made him cry, but I begged him to make me some mp3s. So it's all encoded at insanely high bit rates and whatever else, most mp3s are a megabyte in size for every minute of sound, but Dad's... it's a little scary. But, I have my comfort music in a form that's actually usable away from his mountains of equipment, so it's all good.
      It's still depressing out here. I'm following this vague path leading along and around a brush row next to the apartments, which looks like it will eventually meet up with some woods... but it's really damp, it must have rained a little overnight, and it's too cloudy for anything to have dried yet. R.E.M.'s good for days like this... I skim down through the playlist, looking for one of their earlier ones. “Talk About the Passion”, that works, mellow but not weak, a little yearning and melancholy but with a good walking beat, to keep moving on to... “not everyone can carry the weight of the world”... I still have no idea what half of the lyrics are on these early albums, I've been listening to them pretty much since birth, thanks to my parents, but I'm pretty sure Michael Stipe makes up a lot of words. “Come-duh-dee-en, come-duh-dee-en, deh-taun” almost sounds French at the end, but God knows. Doesn't matter, I still love the nebulous nature of these albums, and the atmosphere... it just feels cozy to me, “Murmur” and “Reckoning” and “Life's Rich Pageant” are like snuggly sweaters on a fall day. Even in spring, like today, when the snow's gone and everything is just sloppy and soggy, and the little spurts of bright green are so jarring and garish against the drab landscape.
      Spring is supposed to be inspiring. It's really not. It was great when I was a kid, splashing through all the giant puddles everywhere. Now it's just soggy and drab. The light is almost always weak and chilly, and when the sun is actually out it's so deceptive, it looks so nice but then you step outside and it's still cold, and you need your winter coat, and it's miserable.
      The silhouettes of the trees around me are blurred by buds and small leaves, the greens all a painful chartreuse, just that awful awkward yellowed-green, and set against the cool tones of slate and tan and umber. But I suppose there's something still in the bark of the trees, the contrast in their details made more dramatic by the dampness, which makes the dark areas all so much darker. Though damp and somewhat heavy, there's a faint hint of freshness in the air, the clear scent of water lacing its way through the mustiness.
      The bottoms of my jeans are drenched. I always hated raingear, even as a kid, but damned if it wasn't effective stuff. The remains of last year's leaves, once so bright and vivid, are a muddy decaying mess underfoot... but I stop a moment to pull out my sketchbook, and make a note of the colors – they're subtle, but would make a really nice backdrop for something. I should have dug out my camera, but I haven't even looked for it since... January? Sometime when the snow was fresh and the shadows on it crisp and sharp. Mouse-brown, a tanned ash, rusty chocolate, scraps of terracotta, the almost-black shade of brown of Paul (the high school boyfriend)'s hair... he went into some branch of the military not long ago, I haven't heard from him since. I worry about him, but it's a distant worry... so many of my connections seem distant now...
      I put the sketchbook back in the small bag slung over my shoulders, and look ponderously at the wall of brush in front of me, blocking the way under the trees that mark the edge of the woods. It looks like there's a break in the vaguely greenish bushes over to the right... it's faint, but enough of a path for me to squeak by, getting thwapped by branches and poked by twigs for a good ten feet before I'm far enough under the canopy that the stuff doesn't grow as high. I stop to take a breath, looking around and trying to be less angry at nature for scratching my arms all over.

plot point woo!

2009-11-01T14:58:00.001-05:00

Tom is a miracle of plot. Anytime I have a dilemma, or don't know how something is going to work, or need some kind of dramatic thing - I just describe what's going on, he groans and rolls his eyes at how much he hates the topics of my writing, and then gives me some totally brilliant idea to run with.

I was trying to sort out how my character was going to discover the stories of the garden? Asked Tom about it, and he gave me the most BRILLIANT solution. Just enough actual cutting-edge physics to make it plausible, but still cutting-edge enough that I can adjust the actual effects to whatever the heck I need. And it'll work *perfectly* to do just the kind of Moberly-Jourdain thing I wanted.

...I have a bit of physics to go study, but not today. Today, I have to actually *start*. Since beginning a story is so hard, I'm just going to write whatever occurs to me first and go from there.

As soon as I name my main character. ^^;; Thank you Internet for your stacks of reference material - like lists of most popular baby names in any year of the last century. <3

plot...maybe. a character, at least.

2009-10-29T23:07:00.000-04:00

There might be one. Okay, not really, anyone reading this knows my writing better than that. BUT! I wasn't really as in love with the idea of doing a series of short stories as I was a month ago, it's just not really exciting me. Coming up with eight gazillion new characters all month, and not having a chance to really dig in to any of them...just felt like a chore. So, we're going Requiem for a Princess with this (I realized last NaNo that that is the novel I want to write), and getting a main character, who somehow or another is going to learn the stories of this garden.

In Requiem (which is by Ruth M. Arthur, and if ANYONE can find me another one of her books - written mostly in the '60s and '70s, nothing left in print now - I will bake you so many cookies in gratitude you'll think it's Christmas), the main character learns the story of a girl from centuries earlier via a series of dreams. They're incredibly vivid dreams, but that's still a pretty plausible thing, and the main girl finds juuust enough traces around the house to find proof of the dreams.

I ran into this problem last NaNo, too - finding a way to reveal the secrets of a location. Tom refused to let me have my main character find an old journal or diary or anything, and I grudgingly agreed to think of something else. Going on the fact that cameras, by their very nature, "see" things differently than human eyes, I let things show up in the girl's photographs that she didn't see herself. That worked. This time around, I have no idea. I really like the idea of psychic imprints in locations, and I'm totally fascinated by the Moberly-Jourdain incident... but getting "a feeling" about a place is far too vague for my purposes, and out-and-out seeing things will make my character sound completely crazy.

I have... oh, three days to figure this out. Good times.

In terms of plot... there should really be some issue in my main character's life that the garden's stories resolve. I'm trying to decide if artistic burnout is dramatic enough - I don't think it is, but it feels dramatic enough when I've had it so much lately. I have a few story elements sketched out, but we'll see what happens.

test

2009-10-02T18:53:00.000-04:00

It's an early start-up this year, but figured I'd pounce while thinking about it. Template may or may not change, but this one has a nice mood to it, subtle enough that it could stretch to suit the variety of atmospheres this year's NaNo is likely to encounter.