Discrepancies

Brushes are strewn across the tiled floor. In the centre of the tempest of paints and broken bristles Hazel toys with the interplay of light from the domed ceiling above. It is the most consistently cleaned part of the house, a tribute to Hazel’s mother, who enjoyed many hours painting in the light fractured from the turquoise circles of glass displayed across the dome.

Mr.Everill would think it a positive sign that his daughter asks for paint and notebooks instead of frivolous articles, but her notices the odd visitor at the mansion casting glances at his daughter when she comes up in conversation, and surmises that a child who only writes and paints is a disconcerting child.

Hazel is not a rowdy child, which Mr.Everill is constantly thankful for. There are but a few incidents in which she returns to the house after a day playing in the fields or the woods with a hold in her dress, dirt on her face, looking more like a lad on a farm than a merchant’s daughter.

These occurrences are few and far between. Hazel does not scream or throw tantrums. She is an observational child, with a firm knowledge of what she wants and she is smart enough to know how to get it herself.

Suddenly Hazel rises and wordlessly turns on her heel, heading for the stairs. She glides up them, hand hovering over the railing as she ascends. The stairs open to a long hallway, at the end of which is another set of stairs. Hazel ascends further, pausing only on the fourth story, hesitating as she walks past door after door, listening for signs.

There is a creak, the protest of wood under a very light weight. A hushed whisper.

Hazel opens the door.

She stands in the drawing room, one of a few, watching Hazel wearily.

“What do you have to show me?” Hazel asks, stepping into the room. The shadows grow just darker.

“Did you see your mother’s room yet?” she asks.

“No,” Hazel answers, confused.

Turquoise beads clatter to the floor, scattering across the wood, stuck between floorboards and under the china cabinet, and sounding like a sudden burst of rain.

Mr.Everill’s questioning shout echoes from the ground floor.

“Why?” she asks.

“I just… haven’t, yet.”

She is silent, regarding Hazel with a too-knowing sparkle in her eye. Finally she strides forward, holding out her hand. In the palm of it is a small glass piece, edges jagged, and there is a black streak across it like wet ink.

“What is it?” Hazel asks.

She cocks her head to the side, waiting for Hazel to take it, the glass strangely warm and heavy, before she replies. “Go into her room, and find out.”

The curtains blossom like giant petals, the beads on the floor that have rolled to a stop shiver and roll under the bureau. Pages of art books and accounts flutter like nervous birds, then tear entirely form bindings, thrashing in the sudden wind. The china in the glass cases lining the wall tremble and crack, a starburst of painted pieces shattering the glass cases. Hazel throws up her hands to protect herself from the vortex of glittering crystal.

“Hazel.”

Hazel turns to her father.

Several watercolours litter the floor, edges adust, scorch marks blotting out whole renderings of blossoms and hills and clouds. The decimated pictures are torn from drawing pads that litter the floor like debris. Half of a stained glass window sits in its frame, blue rays and sunlight illuminating Hazel’s pale face.

Hazel’s hand twitches, and she realizes she is clutching the glass in her hand too tightly, leaving long red marks on her palm.

Mr.Everill glances from the colourful shards of glass on the floor to Hazel’s dripping red hand.

“Hazel, what did you do?” he asks.

Hazel begins to protest, then stops. She is not certain her father is inclined to believe in restless spirits. “Nothing,” she says quietly.

He does not seem to believe her.

Art by Abbey Diamond

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Altercations

“We’ve discussed your going to Italy for a while-“

“And you told me it would be a few years.”

“Yes, but things have changed-“

“How?”

Mr.Everill sighs. “Hazel, don’t interrupt. Trade has been difficult this year, I made an investment that did not pay off as much as I’d hoped.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Ghosts In The Hat

Rabbits are accustomed to being pulled out of hats. Before the union they were pulled from digging, mating, writing letters, and other rabbit esq. activities. Now the law is passed only rabbits from the other plane appear from silk lined top hats on stages, in the white-gloved hands of anonymous stage magicians. They have little else to occupy themselves, and are hardly bothered by the irregular deviations into legerdemain.

They wait in droves, phantom noses twitching, ears folding. They leap and falls like feathers. They move easily between the darkness and calm shadows of endless night, and the kaleidoscope of colours and noise of crowds and magic contraptions.

When they vanish into the hat, into a world stitched with thread, lined with silk and applause, they sleep as though they have never been disturbed.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Faded From The Winter

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“Dare,” she repeats and turns away, looking thoughtfully around the attic. It has taken years to coax her into the mansion, bribing and caution and creative coercion that involved more games than actual debate. Finally she relents to entering the house wit invitation if Hazel does not entice her anywhere open or regularly visited by her father and the staff. Thus the attic is the ideal place for their games, though Hazel misses the outdoors and opens all the curtains and windows to let the light and the air in. They sit on well worn blankets on the floor, enveloped in the scent of dust and ancient wood. Dust motes glow in shafts of sunlight as they speak.

“I dare you,” she begins, pausing as she glanced out the green tinted window. The wistful look in her eyes makes Hazel nervous before the dare is proclaimed. She turns back to Hazel with a predatory look that Hazel likes even less. “I dare you to come with me to the other place.”

The wind blows the windows in the attic open, the dim room suddenly full of grey sunlight and the first autumnal chill of the season.

Hazel’s brow furrows in confusion.

“The other plane, where I come from,” she clarifies.

Hazel hesitates only a moment. She has long wondered where she comes from and cannot bear the thought of passing up such an opportunity to find out. Hazel glances throught eh window at the horizon, when the creeping darkness is fading to the pale roles of sunset.

“Alright,” Hazel says. “When?”

“Tonight.”

Hazel waits until the house has fallen silent and she can be sure her father is asleep. Then she waits another hour for good measure. When she finally creeps down the hall in her nightgown and her coat she is surprised by how late it is.

She takes a route through the darkest hallways from one end of the house to the other, slipping between stray lights from lamps not yet extinguished. The house is silent, even the staff are mostly asleep, only a few traverse the ground floor, insomniatic and turning off lights that cross their path.

Hazel makes her way to the kitchen, slipping out the door into the gardens. In the darkness they are a tangle of silver green shadows, iridescent in the moonlight that shines between the clouds. Hazel must guess where the stone lined path is in the dark, feeling her way around hedges and alleys of statues, until she arrives at the forest.

The woods are foreboding, cold and silver in the moonlight. There is no sign of her beyond the garden, no glimpse of dark auburn in the dark.

Hazel’s conviction falters; she suddenly recalls every story Mr.McMahon has ever recounted of children disappearing in woods, though Hazel has known these woods since she was young and cannot think of any monster lurking among the flowers and moss. Still, Hazel rallies her courage before slipping from the garden to the copse of trees, feeling blindly for eye-level twigs and thorny branches and brambles.

She is standing some ways away, milk white under the moon.

In the darkness she is more solid than Hazel has ever seen her, the shadows in her face more prominent against the silver highlights of her cheeks and brow. Hazel realizes she is quite pretty; it takes shadows to make a face pretty. Where stray shafts of moonlight appear, though, an elbow or a shoulder disappears. Her hair blows across her face, shockingly red against her pale complexion.

“Good night,” she says when Hazel approaches. “Are you ready?”

Hazel follows her through the leafy aisles between the ancient trunks, trying to walk as silently as her companion, cringing with each snapping twig.

Pathways form between trees that bend over the aisles, their canopies hiding the stars except where they shine through like embers in the dark. They take numerous twists and turns in the labyrinthine forest before stopping at a mound of earth, rising above them, a hill of moss.

“Here,” she says and circles around the mound until she faces it, waiting patiently as Hazel follows.

The other side of the mound disappears into a tunnel, a cave dripping with roots that becomes blackness.

“I can’t go with you,” she says as Hazel peers into the darkness in search of light. “I will meet you on the other side. But the dragonflies know the way.”

“The dragonflies?” Hazel echoes, but as she turns she finds she is alone. She returns to the tunnel, wondering if whatever awaits her on the other side is a reasonable price for the satisfaction of curiousity. Hazel thinks of her mother and it does not seem to matter. A dragonfly disappears into the darkness, glittering silver and gold in the moonlight before fading into the shadows.

“Lead the way,” Hazel whispers, and steps into the tunnel.

Art by A.S. Byatt

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Fish Calendar

In January ice glitters like silver pipes on the scaffolding, cliquant, sugared with frost. The fish swim in orange blurs beneath the surface of the pond.

In February the snow banks melt amid white fire, the sky fills with plumes of white steam. The fires turn scarlet once more, burning gold in the summer where the magic has touched it.

In March the fish come out to greet the sun, flashing their scales like pinprick stars under the twilight sky. In the shortening nights they test the ice, thin and brittle as hard candy, that keeps them in.

In April the ice melts and the pond floods into the grass. Fins press against tender damp soil, caress reeds and water weed. Cattails bob, dandelion tufts like silver silk skim the water like nymphs.

In May the fish's blood begins to warm, like hot tea in one's throat. They move, test the small currents and eddies made by slight breezes. They congregate. They plan.

In June the fish are ready, but they must hide. Droves of children appear from schoolyards, flocks of reaching hands and splashing fingers and deceptive flashing bait. The fish hide and avoid temptation.

In July the fish are restless, swimming in circles, half-filled with relief that the children are mostly gone or uniterested. Still, they travel in schools, keeping their shining scales to themselves.

In August they watch the birds with envy. They wish for feathers, fine and iridescent, instead of scales. Talons for fins. The children return again, slipping on the muddy banks as they run past.

In September the pond is filled with coins. Children toss them in, flipping them. The water ripples. The pond has become a minefield. The fish take cover in the withering cattails.

In October the fish test the air. It is cooling, and their panic makes it cooler. It smells of fire and leaves. Birds migrate, cardinals like phoenixes in the sunsets. The fish flash their scales in solidarity.

In November the fish feel their blood cooling, slowing. They move in langurous circles, unafraid of the children, bitter of their missed chance. Ice is forming on the pond. It's crackle sounds like thunder.

In December the fish have forgotten their sorrows. They look at the grey sky and see sun and greenery ahead. They wait, patiently, for their next chance.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Nature of Dreams

“Dreams are comparatively easy to handle,” she explains, flipping through a thin blue volume. A ribbon flutters by her fingers as she flips page after page. “Nightmares are harder, they are volatile. Father usually doesn’t let me handle them. He prefers to do it himself. Dreams are also kindred spirits, they tend to huddle. A person dreams many dreams in one go, then nothing. They don’t spread them out. Nightmares are more solitary. Imagine a rogue animal, it was once yours or someone else’s, and now it is feral and vicious. That is a nightmare.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Thief's Dilemma

Her father sits in quiet despondency, eyes fixed on a dying oil lamp perched on the corner of his table, no doubt where he has elbowed it absentmindedly while reading the book in front of him. But he seems to have no interest in the book; he does not even glance at the contents of its pages, but keeps his dark eyes on the lamp. He shifts slightly in his seat, his gaze unwavering, and the lamp begins to tilt. She leaps forward to catch it and rights it several inches from the table’s corner.

“Father?” she says.

Her father does not respond, he watches the space previously occupied by the lamp. The light is dying and the shadows in his face make him appear older than he is, though he has never disclosed his true age to her and she often cannot guess beyond a five year age range.

“Father?” she says again.

Her father seems to waken. His eyes move first, sliding from the lamp and coming to rest on her face. Slowly he sits up.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Nymph

There was a nymph in the basement. Not my basement, my friend’s, beside the washing machine in the tiny crooked room beneath the stairs. I thought it was Narnia, though we would have to crawl into a machine rather than through fur coats, which was a small price to pay for entering Narnia, in my opinion. In the way of dreams I knew it was a nymph, though it looked like a large wolf.  I cannot recall the colour of its eyes, or its teeth.

“Don’t provoke it, Mum says to just move around it,” my friend said in my ear, watching the nymph as we inched toward the tin of Easter candy saved from weeks ago.

It kept its eyes on me, and snarled. I was tempted to respond in kind, but any sound I made was lost among the rushing water that followed its snarl. Its voice was the voice of tides, breaking on a shore, flowing more than ebbing. The disturbance in a glass-still sea.

We grabbed the chocolate tin and tiptoed out of the room, its water-roar still in my ears.

I am afraid to listen to seashells now, to hold them to my ear. Though really the nymph looked almost gentle, in the right kind of light.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Ghosts Are Everywhere

Grandmama used to say ghosts hide in everything. They speak through more than rattled shutters and billowing curtains and the wind. They are tangential.

I don’t want to believe her, but something happened. Now I think they’re everywhere. I wake at every creaking floorboard; I jump when Mama closes the oven too loudly, or when the vase of roses tips and shatters, or the Spanish fans crinkle in the salty breeze. I avoid going into the drawing room, where Mama and Papa keep Grandmama’s old furniture, draped with white cloth like ghosts as it collects dust an the smell of aged linen and lavender.

Because ghosts are everywhere. They don’t wait until the daylight has gone, or you are walking through an abandoned passage of the house (which isn’t very creepy anyway when it’s hung with pictures of yourself as a baby, or maps with crayon flower sin the corners). They’re there at tea time, and on the patio, and when you wake, and next to the dogwood roses, and in the piano. And yesterday I’m sure I heard voices from the gramophone in the drawing room. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay