Behind the Canvas (17 page)

Yep. Nuts.
“Uh, right. Well, anyway, my friend Cash said—”

“That dog is, like, so adorable! Where did you ever get him? Puppies are just one of those things I get so excited about—I just can't sit still when I think about puppies, I have to go and do something. Kind of like when you're sitting with your guests and you realize that you have to tinkle. It doesn't matter that everyone is staring at your face right now wondering why you're wiggling in your seat, the fact that you have to tinkle is, like, so overpowering and you just have to jump up and go find a lavatory or else you'll burst like a balloon. That's how I feel about puppies … and some other things in life, you know?”

Claudia glanced around. She could hardly believe she was having this conversation with
the
Mona Lisa.

The Lady shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“Do you need to, uh, go right now?” Claudia asked. “Because that would be okay.…”

“Go? Go where? You just got here.” The Lady's bottom lip quivered.

“I just meant we could take a break if you needed to.”

“So, what? What are you saying? That you don't like talking with me? That I'm not good enough for a scrawny guest like you? Just because I can't knit underwear or cook sushi or do fancy things like that doesn't mean that I'm not an interesting person and that I don't have feelings.…”

As the Lady expressed herself, she began speaking faster and faster, and soon her words were flying out so quickly that Claudia had a hard time keeping hold of them.

“… and I do have feelings-and-sometimes-they-can-get-hurt-so-you-better-watch-what-you-say-because- I-thought-you-were-being-nice-to-me-and-I-wouldn't-want-to-think-differently-about-that-becauseIlikeitwhenpeoplearenicetome. I'matotallyspecialperson,afterall.”

The Lady sniffed and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She smoothed out her dress, checked her fingernails, and looked up at Claudia. “What were we talking about?”

Claudia resisted the urge to smack herself on the forehead. “Witches,” she said instead. “What do you know about the Sightless—”

The Lady launched into another barrage of words. “I had a friend once who-wore-glasses-and-we-used-to-call-her…” The speed of the words increased, like a bicycle careening down a hill, until an unintelligible buzz filled the air. She went on and on, her lips moving at a bizarre pace, until it all abruptly came to a stop.

The Lady looked up at the sky and swatted at some unseen insect.

Claudia stared, dumbfounded at the flow of words, half of which were still humming in her ears.

“I have no idea what you just said. You were talking way too quickly.”

“I don't think so. You were listening way too slowly.”

“What?”

“You know, people usually listen at the speed they talk, when really they should listen at, like, the speed others talk. I once knew a-taxi-driver-with-bushy-eyebrows-who-could-talk-so-fast…” The Lady immediately catapulted into another stream of words that mashed together into a senseless noise.

This is ridiculous,
Claudia thought.
I'm wasting time. There's no way you can listen to someone at a different speed
. She stared at the Lady's mouth. The words were whipping past Claudia's ears so quickly they were only a blur of sound. She concentrated harder, trying to force her ears to catch the words, but still only snatches came to her. “Pantomime … thoughtless fellow … urticating caterpillar…”

The monologue finally came to an end. The Lady stuck her finger in her mouth and then pulled it out. She held it up to the air as though checking for wind. “Girl,” she said with her eyes closed, “we're never going to be able to have a heart-to-heart if you only focus on the words. You totally need to focus on what they mean. Open your mind. Words don't matter, meaning does.”

And then she launched into another tirade of words.

“Open my mind,” Claudia repeated.
Yeah, right. How can I focus on the meaning if I can't understand the words?

But that thought brought to the surface something Pim had said in the museum in Florence.

There are a thousand ways to look at the simplest object. The great artist opens her mind to them all and sees the object as it truly is.

The Lady was a ditz, but there was something here that Claudia felt compelled to understand. Maybe it was connected to getting out of this world. Maybe it was a reluctant suspicion that Pim was right about her—that she only saw things from a limited perspective.

She closed her eyes. She forced herself to stop trying to catch every word that passed by. She let the words flow around her, envelop her. Gently, her mind probed the words, not for what they sounded like but for what they meant. What the Lady meant.

“… and so when I have a headache—which isn't very often—I make some lemongrass tea…”

The meaning was coming. And the words with it.

“… but you should never drink witch hazel tea when a stranger offers it to you 'cause it may taste so good, but you'll regret it in the end…”

As they continued to flow around her, it became easier for Claudia to open her mind, to make sense of everything.

“… you probably think that the tea comes from the leaves, but it doesn't, it comes from the berries, which you can crush up in your hands and boil to make the tea and it's good for you. Kind of like bran flakes. Except that it tastes wonderfuler.”

Words, phrases, sentences—and they sounded as though they were spoken normally, at the same speed Claudia herself would have spoken them.

“And speaking of witches…”

Claudia's eyes flashed open. The Lady was still seated, inspecting her fingernails and chewing at them here and there.

“There's a witch who visits this land all the time. They call her the witch with no sight, which isn't very politically correct, but that's what they call her. She has this total fear of death, like, completely obsessed by it. She also has this thing for tomatoes, but that's not as weird as some of the things she says. Like, she told me she's going to put together an army and, you know, take over this land and burn my cottage to the ground, which is totally crazy 'cause my cottage is made out of stone. But then she also said she's going to make us all slaves, and you know that's nuts. I mean, like, can you picture me making somebody's breakfast and scrubbing their toilet? I don't think so.”

Claudia swallowed and half wished that the Lady's words were still unintelligible. She heard scraping sounds on the ground behind her and turned to see Cash licking crumbs from his lips around a cigar.

“Let's hit the road, kid,” he called to Claudia.

Claudia looked up at the seated Lady, whose face had returned to its regal, enigmatic half smile. Claudia's head was still spinning from listening quickly. “I need to go. It was … interesting meeting you.”

“Child,” the Lady said serenely as Claudia turned to leave, “will you travel through the Southern Forest?”

“Well, Rembrandt said that's the quickest way to the desert. To find Pim. But—”

“Listen to what they tell you.” The Lady raised an eyebrow. “And remember what I said about an open mind.”

“Do they speak quickly there, too?”

The Lady giggled. “Oh, no. In the Southern Forest they, like, totally speak a different language.”

Great,
thought Claudia,
all the more reason not to go
. “Thank you.”

“Oh, and tell Pim … tell him, the answer to his question is
yes
.”

The Lady knew Pim? Asking questions around her was time-consuming, but Claudia couldn't help herself. She opened her mouth to ask—

A shriek sounded in the distance, harsh and penetrating. It cut straight through to Claudia's bones, grating on them like fingernails on a chalkboard. Fear welled up inside her and she had the impulse to duck, to hide, to curl up into a ball. Even as the shriek receded, it left behind a dross in her heart that she could describe with only one word.

Despair
.

Cash sprang up onto the half wall and dashed along the top until he could see into the distance, out across the field of haystacks. In a moment he bounded down and streaked past Claudia. “Fireside Angel. Time to go, kid.”

Claudia looked at the Lady Lisa, whose lips twisted into a smile you might give to someone who had just dropped their ice-cream cone. “That really bites,” the Lady said. “And you know he's, like, totally coming for
you
.”

 

C
HAPTER
16

I
T WAS
coming for her. The Fireside Angel.

What the heck is a Fireside Angel?

There was no time to ask. Cash streaked toward the stone steps leading from the half wall to the vineyards down below. Claudia charged after him, vaguely aware of the cheerful farewell from the Lady. There was no handrail on the stairs, but Claudia took them two at a time, skidding dangerously on the loose gravel.

They were heading the wrong direction. She was supposed to be going home.

And what the heck is a Fireside Angel?

She leaped from the last steps and flew down a path that meandered past Monet's Japanese bridge. She longingly wished for a few peaceful moments to stand on that bridge and take in the artist's smooth strokes. But in a flash it was behind her. Cash plunged into the vineyard—row after lengthy row of grapevines—and Claudia followed.

Her feet pounded the muddy ground between two rows as she desperately tried to keep up with Cash. She slipped, crashing to her knees and smearing mud on her hands. She scrambled up and pushed forward.

Her lungs already burned. Vine after vine flew past. Stray branches snapped off and clutched at her face. Where was Cash? He had charged on ahead without her.

The vineyard rows were as straight as shelves in the supermarket—and just as hard for her to see over. Anything could be on the other side of those grapes.

How fast does the Fireside Angel move?

As she crested the top of the next slope, Cash charged back toward her, flinging mud into the air behind him. She eased up as he bolted past, but he immediately turned and nipped at her ankle.

“Ow!” she cried.

“You move faster or this gig is up!”

Cash snapped again and she forced her legs to stretch farther, to move harder.

She cast a hurried glance over her shoulder at the wall of the pavilion at the top of the previous slope.

Was it there? Was it coming?

“Don't look. Run!” Cash ordered.

She turned back and saw the end of the vineyard opening out into a field of cropped grass. Beyond that towered a massive wall of gray and brown and blue … blobs.

“Southern Forest,” Cash gasped. “Look for an opening. There's only one.”

They left the vineyard behind. Another shriek from the Fireside Angel, plunging Claudia's heart into a vat of ice water. The creature sounded much closer than before.

She tried to focus at the point where the green grass met the line of the forest, but it was impossible to see straight. Each step jarred her vision and brought stars to her eyes.

The forest wasn't blobs, exactly. There were straight lines and curves and flat places that looked like cardboard. But there were also fragments and pieces and textures her eyes simply couldn't make sense of, even without the stars.

Something massive crashed through the vineyard behind them—vines snapped, leaves crushed. Claudia's legs felt like they were weighed down with cement jeans as she tried to push her tired muscles forward.

It was hopeless. The Fireside Angel would have her any second.

“There!” Cash shouted. “Hurry. It don't stay put for long.”

He darted off at an angle. She followed, eyes scanning. What was he—?

Yes. A dark hole, also without any real shape, like a doorway into the otherwise impenetrable mess of dreary colors.

A burst of speed from her burning legs. Then they were there.

And Cash stopped cold at the threshold.

Claudia streaked past him into the dark opening. She spun and looked frantically back at Cash. He stared wide-eyed into the forest.

“I can't,” he muttered. “I promised myself…”

She caught movement in the distance, just above Cash. A creature charged toward them over the stretch of grass, loping like a gorilla with massive arms and legs.

“Cash!” Claudia screamed, not trusting her courage enough to take a second glance at the Fireside Angel.

With a growl deep in his throat and eyes squeezed tight, Cash leaped through the forest opening and onto the path. Claudia turned to charge farther down the path leading into the forest.

From behind her came a powerful crunch, like a massive fist crumpling a giant sheet of metal.

She spun around. The bright, shapeless opening into the forest was collapsing, closing in on itself. She had one last terrifying but blurred glimpse of the Fireside Angel charging toward them, shrieking, and then the light and sound from the outside was severed completely.

The crunching of the forest threshold echoed for a moment, and then silence poured over everything like a bucket of dark paint.

Claudia backed nervously up the path, staring at the place where the opening had disappeared. “Can it get through?”

“Naw,” Cash panted. “There's only one way into the Southern Forest, and one way out. But it's always changing, never know where it's gonna be. Without that opening, no one gets through.” He glanced up at her, his sides pumping in and out. “You could say we got lucky. Shame I didn't have any money on that little race.”

Her legs felt like jelly. She leaned over, hands on her knees, sucking in lungfuls of air. Her eyes hadn't yet adjusted, and the dimness of the forest pressed in around her.