I am banished to the next room to look after Jack’s sullen sister so that Jack and his mother might whisper about me.
Hospitality has changed a great deal in the last three hundred years. In Euphrasia, when visitors came to the castle, no trouble or expense was spared—the finest food served upon gold-edged plates, sheets of linen on feather beds. Why, even when Jack came to us in my country’s darkest hour, my father ordered a peacock killed for his dinner (that is, before he threw him into the dungeon). The poorest peasant would provide a bed for a weary traveler, even if it was his own bed he was giving up.
Not now. Likely, Jack’s mother thinks I will slit their throats if permitted to sleep here. I saw it in her face: fear. People are very fearful these days. At the airport, we were poked and prodded within an inch of our lives, our shoes removed, our trunks placed inside a special machine which might see inside them, an unreasonable intrusion.
And this is the time in which I must now live, due to wicked Malvolia’s curse.
I understand, but I do not like it.
Jack’s sister, Meryl, sits upon the sofa, looking at the thing called television, which is blasting like a brass band. The characters in the play she is watching—they are all odd drawings rather than real people—seem quite angry. At least, they are hitting and kicking one another. Meryl, I note, pays them little mind. Rather, she stares at her sketch pad. She does not look up when I enter. I should be friendly to her. Our earlier conversation did not go well, but I have observed my father enough times to know that allies are important. I must make Meryl an ally.
I sneak up behind her and peer over her shoulder.
The drawing is the same one from earlier, the one which the horrid neighbor girl mocked. Now I can study it further.
The detail is striking. The ocean surrounding the mermaid, although only in black pencil, is so real it seems to roil, the sea creatures around her—eels, sharks, octopi—seem actually to swim, and the mermaid herself is so magnificently alive that I can imagine the sea fish and crustaceans doing her bidding.
At the palace, my drawing master, Signor Maratti, taught me to draw suitable subjects for young ladies—a bowl of fruit or a landscape. But, alas, artistic ability was not one of the fairies’ gifts.
Meryl has talent. Although I meant to feign admiration for her work, I do not have to. With deft strokes, she adds a curl to the mermaid’s smile. I breathe a sigh.
Meryl jumps. “What are you looking at?” She grabs the sketch pad away, making a nasty scratch upon the drawing with her pencil. “Now see what you made me do?”
I shake my head. “I apologize.” I sit down on the opposite side of the sofa from her. She compresses her body into a ball, as if she is protecting her sketch pad from me. She neither opens it nor begins to draw again. Nor does she watch the television. I attempt to watch it, but I do not know what is going on. I clear my throat.
Meryl scowls. “Are you here to talk to me again?”
I would like to talk to her. First of all, I am bored, and second, I would like to know Jack’s sister better. But I sense this would be the wrong thing to say, so instead I match her scowl with one of my own.
“Do not flatter yourself.” I learned this phrase from Jack. “Your mother sent me in here to bide the time with you so that she and Jack could discuss me.”
“Oh, yeah?” Meryl almost smiles. “She’s like that. She won’t say what she thinks to people’s faces. She’s too nice. But when your back’s turned, watch out.”
“I know quite a few people like that.”
Meryl slips open her sketch pad, taking elaborate care to face it away from me. She continues with her drawing.
There is naught for me to do but watch the television show, which appears to be about three friends, two boys and a girl, who wish to be something called ninjas. The girl has pink hair, which is lovely. No one in Euphrasia had pink hair. I know not what a ninja is, and I dare not ask Meryl, so I sit in silence and watch. Bits of it are funny, at least, and I laugh.
Meryl looks up, then back down.
A moment later, I laugh again.
“You like anime?” Meryl asks.
I take this as permission to look at her, which I do. A blank look.
“Anime?” she repeats. “Japanese cartoons?”
I shake my head. “I have never seen one.”
“You’re watching one now.”
“Oh.” I look at the screen. The pink-haired girl is hitting someone very hard. “It seems quite lovely. I like how the girl, Sakura, will become a fighter, too, just like the boys. She is rather like Judge Judy, isn’t she?”
“Judge Judy?”
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
“Sakura’s my favorite,” Meryl says.
She goes back to her drawing, slightly less sullen. The television show ends, but another of the same begins. Meryl pays it little mind, engrossed in her art. I can hear Jack and his mother talking in the next room, but the blaring television prevents my knowing what they are saying. I stifle a yawn. My eyes begin to close. If I do not speak, I will begin to fall asleep.
Finally, I say, “I am sorry for looking at your sketch earlier.”
Meryl sketches a few lines, then says, “Whatever.”
“It is just,” I say, “that back in my country, I studied with an Italian master, Signor Carlo Maratti.”
“Woo-woo for you.”
“Oh, I am not bragging. I have no talent whatsoever, I assure you. Signor Maratti despised me. He told my father that teaching me was a waste of his time, and he went back to Italy to paint.”
Meryl laughs. “Pretty embarrassing, getting kicked out of art.”
“Quite. But you have talent, the sort of talent I wished to have.”
Now she is holding the sketch pad so that I might catch a glimpse of it, but I do not attempt to do so. Instead, I point at the television. “I like her hair. Is it common in your country?”
But Meryl moves her sketchbook closer. “I don’t think it’s very good. I can draw people and stuff, but then I have trouble with stupid things like the sky.”
I pull my eyes from the television. “May I see?” When she hands it to me, I take a look at it. As she says, the sky looks false against the realistic person and animals. “Ah, I see what you are talking about, although this is really quite wonderful. Have you studied the concept of negative space?”
“I don’t take art, actually. My dad says it’s a waste of an elective. What’s negative space?”
“Signor Maratti was quite enthusiastic for it—it is the idea that instead of observing the positive space of an object, one should draw the shape of the space around the object—the mermaid, for example, or this seagull.”
“But I tried doing that, drawing the sky first. It still comes out bad.”
I look closer. “That is because you drew the outline first. What you must do is draw up to the object, then draw the object afterward. Can I see your pad?”
She hands it to me, and I turn to the first blank page. Then I attempt to sketch the sky around the shape of a bird. “It is quite bad, I know, but the concept is true.”
Meryl attempts it herself. I try to nod encouragement without appearing patronizing. When I was her age—three hundred three years ago—I felt patronized by everyone. But no, she seems genuinely pleased by my interest in her art. Finally, she finishes the bird, a much better bird than my own, surrounded by a much better sky, and shows it to me. “Wow, that’s incredible,” she says, smiling. “It really does look a lot better that way.”
That is when Jack and his mother walk in.
“Talia,” Jack says, “I’m afraid my mom has some bad news.”
“Wait a second,” Jack’s mother says. “Meryl, was that you speaking just now?”
Meryl shrugs. “Yeah.”
“And that is your sketchbook?” She reaches for it. Meryl snatches it back. Jack’s mother says, “Am I to understand, Meryl, that you have allowed this…this…girl…”
“Talia,” Jack says helpfully.
“…that you have allowed Talia to see your sketchbook?”
Meryl has secreted the sketchbook behind her person again. “She studied with an Italian master. Isn’t that cool?”
Jack’s mother nods. “Yes.” She looks at Jack. “You say her parents will be back to get her in a week?”
Jack nods.
“And you have actually met her parents?”
Jack laughs. “Boy, have I!”
“All right. She can stay the week. But she has to sleep in the study downstairs, on the air mattress.”
I wish I knew what an air mattress was.