Ribbons & Salt Playlist

Sudden Throw - Olafur Arnalds

The Myth of Creation - Iain Ballamy

Boy With A Coin - Iron & Wine

Art by Joanne Young

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Understanding

She wipes at a stray tear rolling down her face.

She meets the eyes of the tiger beside her. They give nothing away, only stare, unflinchingly, back at her. They are more ice than sky, a shade too light to be pure blue.

“I understand now,” she says. He does not reply.

She kneels before him, putting her hands one either side of his great snowy head. He feels more solid than even the ground beneath her feet. “I know what I have done,” she says. “I understand now.”

He does not look or move away as she puts her arms around him. He is as still as a statue.

She pulls him so closely her arms plunge through fur and skin and into his very essence, and the feeling of realness, the coalescence of her two diluted states, makes her gasp. There is no contrast, no expected dichotomy that makes her withdraw. But it is hard. Harder than diluting herself. It is so simple for salt to disappear into the vastness of the ocean, yet to disappear into the vastness of the real world is another thing. Her limbs feel heavy, the pain in her head increases. She does not open her eyes to see the castle changing around her. Elements she has seen as thinly as gauzy veils become hard and real. There is nothing transparent, though time has still passed and its passage has changed much about her once-upon-a-time-home.

She does not open her eyes until she is sure she is herself. There is no tiger in her arms, and her body aches with exhaustion and effort.

It takes a significant amount of bravery to open her eyes.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Final Lesson

Her father counsels her constantly to remain isolated and practice on her own. To make ‘unimpeded process’, though he himself hardly overlooks her education anymore. Lessons and lectures that once occupied entire days at a time have dwindled to passages read from books, and short tests of skill. The arena has become a second home to her, and any chance of ingratiating herself with anyone outside of Piper and her father is prevented by the “potential”, as her father describes to her, to do better.

It does not diminish the importance of her tests, he emphasizes, that they occur less often. They are, if anything, of more import than they initially were.

On this particular day the passage to the arena is permeated with a heavy silence and the impression that her next challenge has a terrible purpose.

Before her father allows her to enter the arena he pauses, blocking the threshold, preventing her from going any further. He turns, his eyes black in the dim light.

“Each lesson you have ever had has been for your own good,” he says.

She nods. She has a feeling of dread, a sinking in her stomach.

“You are a good student, and a fine competitor, but you have always lacked control. You are impulsive, and it has cost you more than you know at the moment,” when he notices her confused expression he continues. “Do not think I have not noticed that you have been… teaching that friend of yours.”

Her blood turns to ice water.

“I have simply been too busy to react to it until now. I know you have been telling her your secrets for a long time. Secrets have power, and they are dangerous. More so than you can imagine.” He pauses, stepping out of the way, his shoulder moving into the light of the arena, the outline of his arm and side illuminated like a halo. “Remember that. “

Her knees tremble as she enters the arena. Around the perimeter are more people than she has ever seen in the room, or in the castle altogether. Yet she hardly glances at them. Instead she focuses on the other person in the centre of the arena, standing across from her, edgy and held in place by a black-suited man. Piper does not struggle as he holds her arms, but she casts a fearful glance as her friend as she enters.

“What is the meaning of this, father?” she asks as she takes her place where, customarily, she begins her challenges.

Her father stands off to the side, not far enough to be considered a spectator but not close enough to be considered an opponent.

“Your challenge today is to beat her,” he says, nodding toward Piper, though his eyes remain fixed on his daughter’s face. “The challenge does not conclude until there is a victor. And the victor is the last one standing.”

She cannot find her voice. “Why?” she manages.

“To determine which of you is the better student. If you are confident in what you have taught her, then her beating you should not be a problem,” her father surmises. “If you are not confident, then you will learn that there is no one equivalent to your skill and to try to teach otherwise is a waste of your talent. An abomination of the order of things. And your punishments will be her death.”

“No, father,” she says, the scope of the challenge before her making awful sense at last.

She has been imagining various punishments for days, and this is worse than all of them.

Piper’s face is stricken and white, her eyes darting frantically around the arena.

“What you believe you feel is irrelevant. This is a punishment. You refused to heed my warnings. Your insistency to rebel has put yourself in such a position.”

“Test me another way,” she insists, watching Piper’s face. “You cannot expect this of me.”

“The intent of this is not to test you,” her father says. “It is to teach you.”

She remains silent, heart pounding like a giant pendulum.

“You are a special student. All of these… vermin-,” her father says, sweeping his arm to gesture at the crowd of students and suited persons. “Are below you. I am only trying to make you see that.”

“Please father,” she pleads. “I am sorry. Punish me in some other way.”

Her father’s expression does not change. His face is stony, his stoicism a suddenly constant force. “There is no other way to teach you. Power is finite. To be great there must be as little of it elsewhere as possible. I hope you will know that now.”

The walls of the arena contract as her father steps back, beckoning for Piper’s capture to bring her forward.

Piper stumbles as she is pushed toward the centre of the room.

Her father steps away, and with a small flourish of her hand, he brings her closer to Piper. To her opponent.

Piper does not move. She is stationary, her arms swaying unsurely beside her. She raises them slowly.

Piper pushes her back.

It is the tiniest of gestures, shy and gentle and bred from fear, but Piper looks sick at having performed it.

She refuses to fight back. She is sure her father will stop them.

Piper pushes her back again, harder.

Her father does not move.

The glass of a nearby window shatters, some shards falling to the ground in a jagged pattern, others flying haphazardly toward the arena. She is only cut by one, and Piper falters at the sight of her blood.

Her father does not move.

Piper stares at her beseechingly, face pale, hands trembling at her sides.

She glances at her father. The expression on her face, one she has never been able to read before, has a horrific clarity now. In less than a second she knows, in her heart, what she will do.

She steps away from Piper, in a move that could be defensive were her arms not falling to her sides, her legs not straightening as she stands to her full height.

She closes her eyes, putting Piper’s face far from her mind, tucking it away like one of her volumes hidden in plain sight on a shelf in her father’s study. Her father’s voice, so often intrusive, fades.

She instead concentrates; recounting the hours she has spent in her father’s study, surrounded by bottles of wine or basins of salt water. Separating substances, diluting them when she has finished so she may practice once more.

It is different with herself, she realizes. With all of herself there is much more to separate than salt and water. Her limbs feel sewn to the air around her, her breath mixing with the atmosphere.

Slowly, very slowly, she withdraws from the space around her.

She separates. Pulling herself apart is painful, more painful than anything she has ever done. There is a sound like a screeching train, and she realizes it is someone screaming. She wonders belatedly if it is her.

The power it takes is incredible. The concentration is even greater. She cannot focus on anything else, cannot focus on keeping her energy in one place. It spreads outward from her, knocking many over, shattering windows, shaking the core of the academy.

She feels the repercussion of her action, her energy bouncing off each surface of the academy. Books burn, foundations tremble, birds click their beaks in terror. She feels it as though it were happening in front of her.

The academy is little more than a whisper of what it one was. A mass of rubble that she feels she is overlapping rather than being a part of.

The fire flickers, dimming, though it does not diminish or lessen in size. It is losing solidity, becoming less opaque. The walls of the arena, the people within them, are becoming transparent. Fading to ghost-like shadows. They move in phantom-wise blurs, fleeing and reach for crumbling pieces of the building to steady themselves.

When they are almost gone, the academy an empty piece of ornately carved rock, she closes her eyes. As her physical body disperses, pulling apart, she feels one last pain. Some falling object striking her head.

Between hitting her head and hitting the floor, she does not feel the fall. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Dancing With the Wind

Her father allows her outside, provided she stays within the confines of the beach nearest the study and the rest of the building.

The waves are topped with frost, like sugar dusted cake, the grey sand blanketed with crystalline snow.

Her sketches have grown more elaborate; whole nests of ravens drawn in excruciating detail.

The pages flutter in the wind on the beach as she arranges them like a blanket on the snow.

Her feet are frozen, she cannot feel them, and when she glances down they are raw and red. Her arms are chapped from the wind. She thinks perhaps she should have thought to bring a sweater, but she is too excited to postpone her plans to return and get one.

She weighs the papers down with an assortment of objects she has pilfered from her father’s study. A collection of items she is sure he will not miss: a paperweight, a cracked skull, the weights for a scale, a broken compass and an old glove.

Carefully she stands, watching the papers flit in the wind, but they do not escape their holds.

She takes several steps away, closing her eyes to focus on the chilled wind as it hits her skin in tiny pinpricks.

She slowly begins to dance, a smooth movement of spinning on one foot, holding her arms out for balance. She sinks into the snow, and leaps farther away from the pictures.

Ravens pick their way from parchment, some knocking over their paperweights, the pages under them swooping away in the breeze.

They make their way toward her, flapping against the wind. Stray feathers turn to pools of ink on the snow. They stain her feet when she dances into them, though she does not notice.

The rather nip at the ribbons fluttering on her wrist. They nestle in her hair for only seconds before she spins, dislodging them as they catch their talons in her hair.

She pays them no attention, but they stay with her, weaving around her as she dances.

To her there is only the brightness behind her eyelids of sunlight glinting on snow.

Were anyone else able to see her, they would see a silhouette against the virgin snow, dancing lightly, almost suspended amidst a crowd of ravens, enjoying the blinding white sun.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Sacrifice

Lessons are irregular and take place at various times throughout the days.

Tests are never forewarned.

Today is a deviation from her regular challenges. She feels full of anticipation as her father leads her not toward the arena, but outside and along the garden paths lined with swindling students hurrying out of the cold or observing the beach from a safe distance between clouds of mist.

She follows, moving among the marble arches and paths, her perplexed expression deepening as they stray further from the castle.

There are no students when their journey seemingly concludes. They are approaching what appears to be a giant circular hole in the ground, stretching a distance at least five times her height all around.

The inverted tower recedes into a shadow, only shapes and distant outlines visible.

She cannot discern what lies beyond the rim of the darkness until she stands directly before it. Only feet away are ancient stone steps, smooth and grey and winding around the inside of the hole. Where they disappear into the shadows there are ornate carvings in the rock face, lines and swirls only partially obscured by creeping moss. They are interrupted by marble pillars lining the stairs. The staircase ends where the rotunda meets dark soil.

She stands at the edge, toes meeting the air where there is nothing to catch her if she falls.

She does not have time to register the weight of a hand on her back or the violent shove that succeeds it before she is tumbling toward the earthen bottom.

She grasps at roots hanging in tendrils from the towers sides. She wills them to reach for her and hold her tightly, away from the ground.

And they respond.

The roots reach for her, vines twisting in strange and twisted ropes to wrap tightly around her wrists. They hold her in place for only seconds before snapping and following her in a reign of dirt and greenery to the ground. They only slow her descent, perhaps keeping her from breaking her bones like brittle pieces of china.

The air rushes past, as frigid and sharp as blades of ice. She cannot prepare herself for the inevitable impact and subsequent agony. It is every scratch and cut and bruise she has suffered though her lessons increased a thousand fold.

She is blind for what feels like an eternity, though it cannot be for more than a minute. The pain is white, but eventually fades into a grayness in which she can make out her surroundings.

Amidst the shadows and flyblown weather beaten shrubs are ancient stone monoliths, incised with Celtic lettering. She has landed a few feet short of the nearest one; her outstretched arm brushes the side of it.

The first sound to reach her ears besides her own breathing is her father’s echoing footsteps. She cringes with each disruptive one.

“Very well done,” her father says, as he descends the last of the stairs and strides toward her, stopping a little ways away.

“What was that?” she demands, rising onto her elbows.

Her father makes no move to help her.

“It was a challenge. You were pitted against the constraints most people consider unchangeable, such as gravity, and you survived. You must not let panic cloud your judgment,” her father continues. Your reaction was sufficiently quick and effective.”

“You would have sacrificed me for that?”

“Because I knew you would win.”

“What if I had lost? I could have died,” she snaps, looking up at her father.

“But you did not,” her father says dogmatically.

“Does my life really mean so little to you?” she asks, still gasping from the effort of the manipulation. She immediately wishes she hadn’t, as she now dreads the answer.

“You are being overly dramatic,” her father replies. He glances at the monoliths, the face of a satyr on one, an ethereal beautiful face on another. “I am not fond of this setting, though it is secluded, but I suspected you were too accustomed to the heights of the spires and windows in the academy.” He returns his attention to his daughter. “You seem to spend enough time there.” His tone intonates disapproval, but his expression is too difficult for her too read and he does not seem outwardly hostile.

Her father pats her head with a gloved hand, much like he did when she was a small girl, though he has long considered it a childish gesture, and affection mundane.

He withdraws and reaches into his pocket. Her father tosses a snow bright ribbon, smudged with the grey of faded ink, at her. It trickles over her arm like a stream of water and coils on the ground like an albino snake. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Maypole

It is a strange tradition to her. Foreign and illogical. But it fascinates her nonetheless. Around a pole children dance and run, excited and smiling widely as adults watch. Music comes from some inexact point, possible from a number of street musicians.

It is warmer than she imagines late spring, especially on the pathway just near the beach.

The company of dancers is predominantly composed of small children, but she spots a few boys and girls who look almost close to her own age. They must crouch very low for the smallest children to lift their ribbons of the youths’ heads, though the younger ones already stand on tiptoes to rival their companions.

Things pass in such a manner for some time as the ribbons become shorter and shorter, until they must be tied to the end of new ribbons to continue.

The pole, which had been as bare and black as a frosted glass lamppost on a city street, is now a curious structure of metal concealed in dozens of colourful shimmering ribbons.

There are whispers of good fortune, blessings on the maypole dance, but most children see little more than a game. She recognizes the bliss of coming summer on their faces and turns her face toward the light. The maypole is still there, behind her eyelids, a pillar of rainbow colours, a forever winding tower.

Art by Sarah Vafidis

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Fool

She has never thought to welcome the seasons. They are an immovable force to most, indubitable axioms that the world relies on. But to her they are avoidable, and almost non-existent, as each season is spent in the castle, where nothing changes. To others they seem to deserve respect. That is what the Morris dance is for, she suspects. It is as simple as those that worship a deity and praise them for a good harvest.

She has ventured out into the town square after requesting it from her father repeatedly, and he stands a ways away, looking at some recent postage, though she can occasionally feel his eyes one her, monitoring.

The dance is aggressive and captivating as she stands in the circle of spectators, unnoticed.

The Morris dancers move as steadily and gracefully as snakes, with an almost carnal elegance. The fool leaps between them, his light footfalls doing little to ground him. He finds himself narrowly squeezed between elbows and hips, knees and feet. He dances around these limbs, jumping and twisting, always being where the others aren’t.

The beat settles in her chest; not a rattling force, but as firm as a heartbeat.

For her the moment is spinning and endless, a moment suspended in time as the drumbeat seeps into her bones and heart pounds with dizzying force.

She watches the fool, jealously, dancing up to spectators, holding out a hat for money. Many give him coins, some meager amounts, others decent payment. Some simply smile and watch the dance.

She alternately watches the fool and the dancers as the fool makes his way around the circle of the crowd. She does not realize he is so close until he is right in front of her.

The fool stands before her, feet tapping to the tune. Her feet tap out the same rhythm. She does not realize until he looks her in the eye that she is visible, that she has maintained such a vantage point for the dance because she has been seen, and some audience members have stepped aside to make room for her.

Amidst her sudden panic however she finds the courage to smile. She does not have any money, and holds up her hands, turning them over to show that they are empty.

The fool’s smile does not falter. Instead he takes a hand and gently turns it over, kissing her knuckle as though he is kissing a ring. Her face flushes as he smiles at her once more before leaping into the crowd.

She watches them as the crowd members come and go, as the minutes pass and she keeps thinking surely they are tired and will retire now, but they continue dancing. She only leaves when the men cease to dance, straightening their clothes, glancing inside the fool’s hat, which has been emptied into a locked case numerous times throughout their performance. She spots her father where she had seen him standing hours ago. He does not glance up as she approaches.

She glances back once to see the fool watching her as he reaches for a suitcase, an armload of leather-cased coins jingling in his arms.

Art by erin Morgenstern

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Pagodas

Carefully constructed spires with crying degrees of height and complexity, cupolas inscribed with looping black script like elegant calligraphy, bartizans drawn with mythical beasts. A tower even has the tail of a dragon wrapped around it in circles from top to bottom, though the dragon to which it belongs is craftily hidden in the shadows of gray gates and garrisons, and a tiny courtyard filled with gnarled white trees.

“Stop that,” her father snaps, extending his arm and bringing a hand down on her paper palace, squashing it flat.

She sighs as he removes his hand, flicking away a still-erect, if slightly dented, tower. Her father’s attention returns to the piles of paper in front of him.

“Why? I’ve nothing to do, I am bored to tears.”

“I gave you something to do,” he answers without looking up.

“I finished it,” she says, waving her arm toward the layers of overlapping symbols in precise detail on her journal.

“You need to do more,” he frowns and waves a hand at her flattened castle, the paper rustling with the shift of air. “Stop squandering yourself with this nonsense. I expect more from you, and you need the practice.”

She turns away and pushes her hair from her face. “Why father? It isn’t as though I am impressing anyone. What I do is hardly a feat anymore, especially since you can do twice as much.”

“It does not matter what I can do,” her father snaps. “It matters what you can do, which is not nearly enough.”

She sighs, understanding that there will be more symbols to decipher in near-future lessons.

She picks up the first book atop a pile leaning against the desk. The pile wavers but does not collapse. It is not the pile of ascribed books approved by her father as a part of her curriculum; it is from his personal collection.

Her father barely glances at the pages before his attention wanders once more. She is relieved at his change of late, at his lack of scrutiny at each glyph and inscription. Yet his complete unconcern for her progress also unnerves her. 

Art by Helen Musselwhite

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Enter: Vienna

Excursions, when she is visible among the crowds of Vienna, are rare. She can recall two in the past decade, and the relief of not having to conceal herself as she does near the castle, makes her giddy.

Before both of her trips her father forbids her to perform anything he has taught her. He holds her wrist tightly, squeezing with white-knuckled hands as she promises.

She dresses as colourfully as she can on these occasions, despite her father’s obvious disapproval, she enjoys the lack of anonymity that her father claims with his grey and black suits, as well as the deviation from her usual grey and white attire.

Her most recent excursion, years ago, took place midwinter, and the weather alternated between icy rain and fluffy snowfall. The thrill of being in the streets, among the crowds bustling for cover or to make their last round of shopping before vendors and shopkeepers closed for the day, outweighed the inclement weather.

The weather is never favourable when they visit the rest of Vienna, as though the inclement conditions are a requirement/prerequisite for the business of the day.

Today is no exception, the streets occasionally full of rain and sleet. Yet it does nothing to dampen her spirits.

The number of people in the streets surprises her. She had not expected such crowds with the grey sky and occasional sheets of rain. They huddle together under umbrellas, like audiences under circus tents. They pass to and fro from appointments and parties, visitations and temporary places.

They visit the opera houses, music halls. She captures in memory the Neue Hofburg covered in lantern glow in the dark of night.

She traverses the streets and markets filled with vendors selling carp, ready for preparation for some festivity her father titles “a mundane practice” when she asks. There are tinsel and candles, ornaments and holly. She purchases a glass painted with the likeness of a magpie.

When she catches sight of her father again he is carrying an assortment of envelopes, with postage she does not recognize and names her carefully conceals with his thumb.

They visit a menagerie in which dozens of exotic creatures in a rainbow of colours with blinking green and yellow eyes regard them wearily. She is not certain she enjoys the experience, for the beautiful caged creatures look miserable. But she cannot conceal her delight when her father points to a snowy white owl in a golden cage and requests it for purchase. When they exit the menagerie she carries the heavy cage with one hand, keeping the other firmly under its base as the owl clicks it beak sharply.

They go to a seamstress in a small antique quarter of the city and buy her the rest of a bolt of black silk, which her father cuts without scissors into a square to drape over her owl’s cage like a curtain.

Her father takes her to the theatre and on stage a band of milk white horses bedecked in violet and cream sashes and silks dance and jump, eliciting gasps and cries of delight from the audience. The horses glow in the illumination of the footlights. They appear weightless, defying gravity as though it were a rule made to be broken. She leans forward, enchanted and tentative in the same room as the large audience and beautiful beasts. Her eyes widen as one horse rears in a tempest of blue chiffon, appearing like the crest of a wave frothing on the shore. In the mezzanine below their box several ladies’ fans and gentlemen’s’ handkerchiefs begin to flutter, as if with a sudden breeze.

Her father’s hand closes around her wrist, twisting until she cringes. “Control yourself.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, facing the shadows of the theatre, away from the consummate horses. The fluttering fans and handkerchiefs settles and their respective owners speculate perhaps there was a draft.

When they leave the theatre her father seems not angry, as she would expect, but thoughtful.

He indulges her in several hours spent by the Donnerbrunnen fountain, sketching the curves of cherubic cheeks with charcoal, until the rain starts again. The small crowds that had been gathered in the remote and protected corners of the cobblestone streets disperse, seeking refuge from the worsening downpour. The wind whips her hair across her face like lengths of soaking rope. Her father decides to seek shelter from the rain.

They stop in a café in the Neue Markt, nestled in an alcove of an alleyway.

Her father diverts the waitress’ attention, though their drinks still arrive, the waitress staring solely at their cups until they have touched the table, then turning and attending to another patron’s needs.

The owl sits quietly under their table, occasionally ruffling its feathers or clicking its beak, but it does not attract attention.

Under the cover of the table her skirt dries quite quickly, though it is not clear if that is because of the warmth of the café or something else.

She is intrigued by the mail her father receives from colleagues in other countries. Postmarks from Corfu, Milan, Denmark, Sweden. The contents of the letters are concealed from her, he reads them in cafes, sipping from a painted teacup while she pays special attention to the sugar blown flowers and chestnut cakes being whisked to other café tables. If her father is particularly engaged in a letter she will consider manipulating the curls of steam rising from her cocoa, but she always decides against it.

He tears his attention away from the envelopes only once, when he folds them gingerly and places them in an inside pocket of his coat. Despite the warmth of the café, he has not taken it off.

“Have you been practicing?’ he asks, as he watches her construct a small pyramid of sugar cubes.

“Yes,” she answers when it is done. She drops the topmost cube into her tea, stirring it before returning the remaining cubes to their bowl.

Her father gazes at her steadily. “Publicity is not a factor I approve of in most instances, but it is important to know how to deal with it. To refrain from manipulating your surroundings in venues such as this. Do nothing to interrupt your surroundings unless you can guarantee you will not be caught. And nothing is guaranteed. This is a test,” he adds, he moves his arm quickly and he knocks the teacup from the table, to the floor.

Despite her father’s instructions, she acts upon instinct. The cup and saucer hit the floor, shattering into pieces of painted china, hot tea pooling around the table legs. The owl lets out a single shriek. Patrons turn toward the sound but by the time they sight the possible cause/source the cup has righted itself, whole and full of steaming tea, sitting merrily in its saucer. The clientele dismisses the sound as a part of their imagination. The only one in the proper position to have viewed the entire spectacle is the waitress, whose hands begin to shake, rattling the cutlery on her tray.

Her father turns to the waitress, motioning her over, as if he were about to order a plate of scones or éclairs. Instead, when the waitress approaches their table hesitantly, setting her tray on the edge not occupied by the teacup – she keeps well away from the cup, eyeing it as though it were cursed – he looks straight into her eyes.

“May I ask what you think you just saw?” he inquires politely.

The waitress speaks lowly, as though uncertain the events she witnessed are real. “The cut, it broke, and then it was fixed, like it was n-never-“

“Miss, I am sure this is nothing to dwell upon. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. I am certain.”

The waitress does not seem entirely convinced, but she looks dazed and vaguely dismayed, the expression of one who has entered a room and forgotten their reason for doing so.

“Certainly there is a much better way to spend your time,” he says, each word quite clear despite the fact that he is murmuring lowly. She has to strain to hear the words at all.

She can feel the air ripple, the sudden change in energy, as the waitress’ eyes become unfocused. She is caught in her father’s steady gaze, as her face slackens, then she looks around, confused.

“I’m sorry, I… What were we discussing?” she asks, slowly.

“The bill, please,” her father says.

The waitress nods and strides away with her tray, not glancing at the man’s daughter.

While she half expects her father to scold her in the café, sure that the patrons will not hear him if he wishes it, her father says nothing as he settles the bill, collects the owl in its cage, and they exit the café.

He remains silent as they approach the library and enter, taking a confusing route she cannot keep track of to a dimly lit hallway. He pauses at a door, grabbing his daughter’s arm to prevent her from continuing on without him.

“You must learn to convince others without manipulation. To make them see something that isn’t there, or make them un-see. We shall have to find you a way to practice,” he adds, gazing not at her, but it seems to her, through her. “A mirror, of sorts.”

He releases her arm and gestures to the room beyond. “I shall return in an hour or so. Do not wander.” He takes the owl cage from her, holding it in his gloves hand.

He says nothing more before abandoning her at the threshold and turning down another corridor.

She waits a minute for him to return, wondering if he really intends to deposit her in a book-filled room and amuse herself for an hour, possibly longer, until his return.

She wonders if he will return.

When she has stood for a time she deems sufficient to prove he is not returning instantly she pushes open the heavy door, letting it swing behind her as she adjusts to the change in light.

The room is filled with bookcases. They line the space, wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling. Hundreds of spines with gold and black lettering.

She has never seen so vast a space, nor so many books, I her life.

The air changes, it is crisper, rippling with some unseen force.

The books tremble, each shelf echoing with a noise like startled birds fluttering their wings against metal and wood cages. The books open on the pages stir, their pages flipping back and forth.

She almost does not notice, absorbed in the multitude of books, so different from her father’s. But she glances around, ensuring she is alone for the time being, that there are no witnesses to the sudden restlessness of the volumes, and takes several deep breaths to compose herself.

The pages stop fluttering, though the bookends still quiver slightly.

She is delighted to discover that they are unlike her father’s collection of tomes, which are printed with symbols and pictures of stars and explanations for things she cannot begin to yet comprehend. These books have philosophies and art, histories and poems, epics and ballads, stories of fantasy. She pulls them off the shelves, holding as many as she is able before settling down to read them.

She feels as though she has been drifting, lost in some alternate world, when, hours later, her father rouses her from her collection of books and informs her it is time to go.

“We have a special visit to make,” he says when she protests.

Her curiosity does not quite trump her desire to read but there is no reason to argue further. She sighs; standing and collecting her coat as the books find their ways back to the shelves. When the library looks as though it has not been disturbed, they emerge.

Through the rain her father leads her down several side streets until they come to a busy promenade before a looming building. It is so large she wonders that she has not seen it before, but the University is unfamiliar to her.

Before she can ask her father what they are doing here, he strides up the steps and into the building. She follows quickly, focusing on keeping her coat dry in the oncoming storm.

Within the doors the university is, to her, unlike a university. The halls are warm, glowing with the golden light form oil lamps, and the walls are lined with gilded and framed maps and daguerreotypes of deceased professors and scholars. The windows are grey with the external weather, not the black glass she is accustomed to. The floors are not marble, but wood, and often carpeted. She follows her father in a daze, spending a considerable amount of time gazing inside each door they pass, at the studies and offices and classrooms, none of which contain birds or clocks or diagrams pinned to the walls.

They come to rest at a tall oak door, a plaque inscribed with a name she has never heard of. Her father knocks, the heavy sound echoing down the corridor.

The door opens to a man, bespectacled with graying hair, holding a multitude of books that he balances precariously in one arm as he holds the door handle. He glances at her father and his eyes widen before his gaze slides to her face. His eyes behind his glasses narrow until he notices the resemblance, her dark eyes almost identical to her fathers, though they lack the creased corners and have fuller lashes.

“Come in,” the man says, widening the door and shifting the books in his arm.

Her father does not enter, but turns to her. “Dearest, I would like you to wait down the hall until we are finished.”

“Why?”

“We have things to discuss,” he replies. “And take him,” he adds, handing her the owl’s cage. The owl clicks its beak as she turns around. He says nothing more, and neither does his companion, as they watch her walk slowly down the hall, casting glances over her shoulder as she goes. When she is at a satisfactory distance her father steps through the threshold and disappears behind the door.

She waits a full minute, counting seconds under her breath, until she can be sure they are engaged in conversation. She places the owl cage on the ground beside her. It takes her seconds to race back to the door, silently, and press her ear against the wood. It is her father speaking on the other side.

“You must challenge her, I insist. It has been too long since I’ve felt such excitement,” her father says, hands clasped behind his back as the older scholar struggles with his papers and scrolls. When, amidst the chaos, they roll of the desk, he does not bend down to reach them, but lazily waves his wrist in the direction of the desk and they are suddenly there, as though they always have been.

The scholar’s face goes white and he puts his hands down on the desk, breathing deeply. “I suppose. If you would like such an education. Though it is unconventional.”

Her father waves his hand. “It is not unconventional in the least, merely unprecedented. It was once quite in style, if you’ll remember.”

There is a significant pause, and she wonders if perhaps they have left the room through some other doorway. Perhaps they are listening for the sound of someone outside the door. She stays as quiet as she can.

In her space behind the door the words suddenly become muffled, as though she is hearing them through a wall, or from underwater.

“The challenges will be quite hard,” the professor says uncertainly. He drums his fingers nervously on his leg.

“All the better. She is extremely talented and skilled. Pitted against anyone she can win.”

“Very well,” the professor says. The paper on the desk rustles as he withdraws a roster of names. “I assume you have already begun her education?”

“I have almost finished it,” says her father’s voice.

“Then we will send tests along for her shortly.”

Suddenly the sounds resolve into words once more, and she is able to hear clearly her father call, “Come back in.”

She re-enters the study where the professor is smiling and holding a trembling hand out to her.

“Lovely to meet you my dear,” he says, shaking her hand. He pulls his hand back quickly when she releases it.

Her father bids goodbye and exits the room. The owl cage waits outside of it, though she does not recall bringing it to the door. He guides her through the gilded hallways to the exit.

Outside in the grey she cannot think of a single question from the tangle in her head to ask her father, except, “Are we going back now?”

“Yes we are,” her father replies as they turn down the main street in the direction of the beach.

She says nothing as they walk, and everything about her father is silent. She is certain that walking along the street only she is visible, and her father is, for his own purposes, unseen. 

When they reach the beach and the building that spans, invisibly, over a quarter of it, her father tells her to veil herself.

She visibly relaxes when they are indoor, pausing to take in the monotony of the black and white and grey halls. She sees little variation in the shades of grey after the colour of the city and the university.

Her father pulls the envelopes from his pocket, their frayed ripped edges catching on the lining.

“I hope you have learned something today,” her father says absently, looking not at her but at the envelopes in his hand.

She nods, then replies, “Yes, father.” She is certain she has learned something very important, though she does not think it is relevant to her father’s idea of the day.

Art by Snow

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Arrangements

Excursions, when she is visible among the crowds of Vienna, are rare. She can recall two in the past decade, and the relief of not having to conceal herself as she does near the castle, makes her giddy.

Before both of her trips her father forbids her to perform anything he has taught her. He holds her wrist tightly, squeezing with white-knuckled hands as she promises.

She dresses as colourfully as she can on these occasions, despite her father’s obvious disapproval, she enjoys the lack of anonymity that her father claims with his grey and black suits, as well as the deviation from her usual grey and white attire.

Her most recent excursion, years ago, took place midwinter, and the weather alternated between icy rain and fluffy snowfall. The thrill of being in the streets, among the crowds bustling for cover or to make their last round of shopping before vendors and shopkeepers closed for the day, outweighed the inclement weather.

The weather is never favourable when they visit the rest of Vienna, as though the inclement conditions are a requirement/prerequisite for the business of the day.

Today is no exception, the streets occasionally full of rain and sleet. Yet it does nothing to dampen her spirits.

The number of people in the streets surprises her. She had not expected such crowds with the grey sky and occasional sheets of rain. They huddle together under umbrellas, like audiences under circus tents. They pass to and fro from appointments and parties, visitations and temporary places.

They visit the opera houses, music halls. She captures in memory the Neue Hofburg covered in lantern glow in the dark of night.

She traverses the streets and markets filled with vendors selling carp, ready for preparation for some festivity her father titles “a mundane practice” when she asks. There are tinsel and candles, ornaments and holly. She purchases a glass painted with the likeness of a magpie.

When she catches sight of her father again he is carrying an assortment of envelopes, with postage she does not recognize and names her carefully conceals with his thumb.

They visit a menagerie in which dozens of exotic creatures in a rainbow of colours with blinking green and yellow eyes regard them wearily. She is not certain she enjoys the experience, for the beautiful caged creatures look miserable. But she cannot conceal her delight when her father points to a snowy white owl in a golden cage and requests it for purchase. When they exit the menagerie she carries the heavy cage with one hand, keeping the other firmly under its base as the owl clicks it beak sharply.

They go to a seamstress in a small antique quarter of the city and buy her the rest of a bolt of black silk, which her father cuts without scissors into a square to drape over her owl’s cage like a curtain.

Her father takes her to the theatre and on stage a band of milk white horses bedecked in violet and cream sashes and silks dance and jump, eliciting gasps and cries of delight from the audience. The horses glow in the illumination of the footlights. They appear weightless, defying gravity as though it were a rule made to be broken. She leans forward, enchanted and tentative in the same room as the large audience and beautiful beasts. Her eyes widen as one horse rears in a tempest of blue chiffon, appearing like the crest of a wave frothing on the shore. In the mezzanine below their box several ladies’ fans and gentlemen’s’ handkerchiefs begin to flutter, as if with a sudden breeze.

Her father’s hand closes around her wrist, twisting until she cringes. “Control yourself.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, facing the shadows of the theatre, away from the consummate horses. The fluttering fans and handkerchiefs settles and their respective owners speculate perhaps there was a draft.

When they leave the theatre her father seems not angry, as she would expect, but thoughtful.

He indulges her in several hours spent by the Donnerbrunnen fountain, sketching the curves of cherubic cheeks with charcoal.

They stop in a café in the Neue Markt, nestled in an alcove of an alleyway.

Her father diverts the waitress’ attention, though their drinks still arrive, the waitress staring solely at their cups until they have touched the table, then turning and attending to another patron’s needs.

The owl sits quietly under their table, occasionally ruffling its feathers or clicking its beak, but it does not attract attention.

She is intrigued by the mail her father receives from colleagues in other countries. Postmarks from Corfu, Milan, Denmark, Sweden. The contents of the letters are concealed from her, he reads them in cafes, sipping from a painted teacup while she pays special attention to the sugar blown flowers and chestnut cakes being whisked to other café tables. If her father is particularly engaged in a letter she will consider manipulating the curls of steam rising from her cocoa, but she always decides against it.

He tears his attention away from the envelopes only once, when he folds them gingerly and places them in an inside pocket of his coat. Despite the warmth of the café, he has not taken it off.

“Have you been practicing?’ he asks, as he watches her construct a small pyramid of sugar cubes.

“Yes,” she answers when it is done. She drops the topmost cube into her tea, stirring it before returning the remaining cubes to their bowl.

Her father gazes at her steadily. “Publicity is not a factor I approve of in most instances, but it is important to know how to deal with it. To refrain from manipulating your surroundings in venues such as this. Do nothing to interrupt your surroundings unless you can guarantee you will not be caught. And nothing is guaranteed. This is a test,” he adds, he moves his arm quickly and he knocks the teacup from the table, to the floor.

Despite her father’s instructions, she acts upon instinct. The cup and saucer hit the floor, shattering into pieces of painted china, hot tea pooling around the table legs. The owl lets out a single shriek. Patrons turn toward the sound but by the time they sight the possible cause/source the cup has righted itself, whole and full of steaming tea, sitting merrily in its saucer. The clientele dismisses the sound as a part of their imagination. The only one in the proper position to have viewed the entire spectacle is the waitress, whose hands begin to shake, rattling the cutlery on her tray.

Her father turns to the waitress, motioning her over, as if he were about to order a plate of scones or éclairs. Instead, when the waitress approaches their table hesitantly, setting her tray on the edge not occupied by the teacup – she keeps well away from the cup, eyeing it as though it were cursed – he looks straight into her eyes.

“May I ask what you think you just saw?” he inquires politely.

The waitress speaks lowly, as though uncertain the events she witnessed are real. “The cut, it broke, and then it was fixed, like it was n-never-“

“Miss, I am sure this is nothing to dwell upon. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. I am certain.”

The waitress does not seem entirely convinced, but she looks dazed and vaguely dismayed, the expression of one who has entered a room and forgotten their reason for doing so.

“Certainly there is a much better way to spend your time,” he says, each word quite clear despite the fact that he is murmuring lowly. She has to strain to hear the words at all.

She can feel the air ripple, the sudden change in energy, as the waitress’ eyes become unfocused. She is caught in her father’s steady gaze, as her face slackens, then she looks around, confused.

“I’m sorry, I… What were we discussing?” she asks, slowly.

“The bill, please,” her father says.

The waitress nods and strides away with her tray, not glancing at the man’s daughter.

While she half expects her father to scold her in the café, sure that the patrons will not hear him if he wishes it, her father says nothing as he settles the bill, collects the owl in its cage, and they exit the café.

He remains silent as they approach the library and enter, taking a confusing route she cannot keep track of to a dimly lit hallway. He pauses at a door, grabbing his daughter’s arm to prevent her from continuing on without him.

“You must learn to convince others without manipulation. To make them see something that isn’t there, or make them un-see. We shall have to find you a way to practice,” he adds, gazing not at her, but it seems to her, through her. “A mirror, of sorts.”

He releases her arm and gestures to the room beyond. “I shall return in an hour or so. Do not wander.” He takes the owl cage from her, holding it in his gloves hand.

He says nothing more before abandoning her at the threshold and turning down another corridor.

She waits a minute for him to return, wondering if he really intends to deposit her in a book-filled room and amuse herself for an hour, possibly longer, until his return.

She wonders if he will return.

When she has stood for a time she deems sufficient to prove he is not returning instantly she pushes open the heavy door, letting it swing behind her as she adjusts to the change in light.

The room is filled with bookcases. They line the space, wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling. Hundreds of spines with gold and black lettering.

She has never seen so vast a space, nor so many books, I her life.

The air changes, it is crisper, rippling with some unseen force.

The books tremble, each shelf echoing with a noise like startled birds fluttering their wings against metal and wood cages. The books open on the pages stir, their pages flipping back and forth.

She almost does not notice, absorbed in the multitude of books, so different from her father’s. But she glances around, ensuring she is alone for the time being, that there are no witnesses to the sudden restlessness of the volumes, and takes several deep breaths to compose herself.

The pages stop fluttering, though the bookends still quiver slightly.

She is delighted to discover that they are unlike her father’s collection of tomes, which are printed with symbols and pictures of stars and explanations for things she cannot begin to yet comprehend. These books have philosophies and art, histories and poems, epics and ballads, stories of fantasy. She pulls them off the shelves, holding as many as she is able before settling down to read them.

She feels as though she has been drifting, lost in some alternate world, when, hours later, her father rouses her from her collection of books and informs her it is time to go.

“We have a special visit to make,” he says when she protests.

Her curiosity does not quite trump her desire to read but there is no reason to argue further. She sighs; standing and collecting her coat as the books find their ways back to the shelves. When the library looks as though it has not been disturbed, they emerge.

Through the rain her father leads her down several side streets until they come to a busy promenade before a looming building. It is so large she wonders that she has not seen it before, but the University is unfamiliar to her.

Before she can ask her father what they are doing here, he strides up the steps and into the building. She follows quickly, focusing on keeping her coat dry in the oncoming storm.

Within the doors the university is, to her, unlike a university. The halls are warm, glowing with the golden light form oil lamps, and the walls are lined with gilded and framed maps and daguerreotypes of deceased professors and scholars. The windows are grey with the external weather, not the black glass she is accustomed to. The floors are not marble, but wood, and often carpeted. She follows her father in a daze, spending a considerable amount of time gazing inside each door they pass, at the studies and offices and classrooms, none of which contain birds or clocks or diagrams pinned to the walls.

They come to rest at a tall oak door, a plaque inscribed with a name she has never heard of. Her father knocks, the heavy sound echoing down the corridor.

The door opens to a man, bespectacled with graying hair, holding a multitude of books that he balances precariously in one arm as he holds the door handle. He glances at her father and his eyes widen before his gaze slides to her face. His eyes behind his glasses narrow until he notices the resemblance, her dark eyes almost identical to her fathers, though they lack the creased corners and have fuller lashes.

“Come in,” the man says, widening the door and shifting the books in his arm.

Her father does not enter, but turns to her. “Dearest, I would like you to wait down the hall until we are finished.”

“Why?”

“We have things to discuss,” he replies. “And take him,” he adds, handing her the owl’s cage. The owl clicks its beak as she turns around. He says nothing more, and neither does his companion, as they watch her walk slowly down the hall, casting glances over her shoulder as she goes. When she is at a satisfactory distance her father steps through the threshold and disappears behind the door.

She waits a full minute, counting seconds under her breath, until she can be sure they are engaged in conversation. She places the owl cage on the ground beside her. It takes her seconds to race back to the door, silently, and press her ear against the wood. It is her father speaking on the other side.

“You must challenge her, I insist. It has been too long since I’ve felt such excitement,” her father says, hands clasped behind his back as the older scholar struggles with his papers and scrolls. When, amidst the chaos, they roll of the desk, he does not bend down to reach them, but lazily waves his wrist in the direction of the desk and they are suddenly there, as though they always have been.

The scholar’s face goes white and he puts his hands down on the desk, breathing deeply. “I suppose. If you would like such an education. Though it is unconventional.”

Her father waves his hand. “It is not unconventional in the least, merely unprecedented. It was once quite in style, if you’ll remember.”

There is a significant pause, and she wonders if perhaps they have left the room through some other doorway. Perhaps they are listening for the sound of someone outside the door. She stays as quiet as she can.

In her space behind the door the words suddenly become muffled, as though she is hearing them through a wall, or from underwater.

“The challenges will be quite hard,” the professor says uncertainly. He drums his fingers nervously on his leg.

“All the better. She is extremely talented and skilled. Pitted against anyone she can win.”

“Very well,” the professor says. The paper on the desk rustles as he withdraws a roster of names. “I assume you have already begun her education?”

“I have almost finished it,” says her father’s voice.

“Then we will send tests along for her shortly.”

Suddenly the sounds resolve into words once more, and she is able to hear clearly her father call, “Come back in.”

She re-enters the study where the professor is smiling and holding a trembling hand out to her.

“Lovely to meet you my dear,” he says, shaking her hand. He pulls his hand back quickly when she releases it.

Her father bids goodbye and exits the room. The owl cage waits outside of it, though she does not recall bringing it to the door. He guides her through the gilded hallways to the exit.

Outside in the grey she cannot think of a single question from the tangle in her head to ask her father, except, “Are we going back now?”

“Yes we are,” her father replies as they turn down the main street in the direction of the beach.

She says nothing as they walk, and everything about her father is silent. She is certain that walking along the street only she is visible, and her father is, for his own purposes, unseen. 

When they reach the beach and the building that spans, invisibly, over a quarter of it, her father tells her to veil herself.

She visibly relaxes when they are indoor, pausing to take in the monotony of the black and white and grey halls. She sees little variation in the shades of grey after the colour of the city and the university.

Her father pulls the envelopes from his pocket, their frayed ripped edges catching on the lining.

“I hope you have learned something today,” her father says absently, looking not at her but at the envelopes in his hand.

She nods, then replies, “Yes, father.” She is certain she has learned something very important, though she does not think it is relevant to her father’s idea of the day.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Tempest

“A Huggin and your collection of doves,” her father says, bending down to come eyelevel with one golden cage, then straightening to look up at the bottom of another. Cages almost fill the room, littering the floor with feathers caused by the occasional shaking of a cage by aviator intentions. “Yet no Munnin? Do you know why you prefer birds so much?” he asks as one of the birds in question, Huggin, settles on the back of the armchair she sits in, and caws.

She does not have a response but he doesn’t seem to care.

“You are like the wildcat, like a lynx or a tiger. You are powerful and birds intrigue you. You like to play with them, but ultimately they are weaker than you. I am disappointed, you could such better things with your time.”

She wonders how her habit of bird keeping could be a disapointment, besides, she reasons, they are beneficial for practicing physical changes. She has learned to master changing her snow-white doves to canary yellow and pumpkin orange. She can feel so familiarly from the inside out their network of bones that she could, with very little difficulty, fix them, were they broken. It is all easier with her own birds, she doubts she could even make the most superficial of impacts on any outside creature, and she is certain it would not be permanent.

“I do not have a Munnin because memory is not all that special, father. Thought is more productive, I would think you of all people would approve, wouldn’t you?”

Her memory is a long jumbled passage of tests and challenges, brief moments of respite with Piper, tenderness from her father in the farthest reaches of her recollection, his dark snapping eyes, and black birds.

“Don’t be clever, you should be above such smart remarks. I expect more from you.”

Huggin turns his head to her father, his eyes flashing brilliant blue as he cocks his head. The cages begin to shake, upsetting many birds and causing a new rain of feathers. They swirl madly in the air.

“Stop that,” her father says, frowning.

She signs and closes her eyes. Slowly the cages come to a halt, the tempest of feathers settles. Huggin’s eyes are black once more.

“These creatures amuse you, because you are too easily amused. You should aim higher.”

“You are quite fond of ravens, aren’t you father?” she asks. Her father once bestowed upon her a magpie, from his own collection, a collection that has dwindled to nothing in recent years. “You were once, don’t you remember?”

“You require more study. If you have become too familiar with these birds I’ll get you new ones.”

She picks up one of her newest volumes and opens it to a clean page. “Then I will study. Getting me new birds is not the issue, Father. You haven’t taught me anything new for ages.” The inkwell on the desk lifts into the air and appears at her elbow, accompanied by a long pen.

“You require more study,” he repeats. “When your control has improved, there will be more. You are too strong for this nonsense. For now I suggest you do not divert your attention. No… distractions,” he does not look at the birds as he speaks, but straight at his daughter.

She looks down, wearily regarding the page, as her father wanders toward the bookcase.

They are so silent that she does not realize when he has left the room. When the light has faded from the room and she lifts her head, her neck aching and fingers stiff, she is surprised his lack of presence has escaped her.

She regards the clock in the corner, then the birds suspended in ornate golden cages above her, for some time before opening her book and taking up her pen once more. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Pending Cataclyst

“Today we will learn about separation,” her father begins.

He spends hours explaining something she cannot comprehend, referring with terrible specificity to elements she has yet to put together. He mentions subjects she will not learn for some time, makes notes of long ago lessons she has difficulty recollecting.

For the practical portion of the lesson, a glass of wine rests on the desk.

She is surprised, for though she knows of his fondness for red wine, he has never drunk during their lessons. He does not, however, lift it to his lips. Instead he pours into it, from the clear decanter on his desk, a portion of water. The wine turns from crimson to fuchsia.

“Is the wine as concentrated as it was?” he asks, gesturing to the glass.

“No, it is diluted,” she says.

“And if I desired the wine to be more concentrated, what must I do?”

“The water must be removed.” She does not think it is possible, the two liquids have swirled together so that they feel, to her, to be the same.

Yet her father feels differently. The watered wine swirls, streaks of red becoming darker as streaks of pink lighten to clarity. The water rises in a stream from the glass, leaving only deep red wine, and returns to the decanter at the other end of the desk.

Her eyes widen.

“The wine and the water are never one, the wine can only be diluted.” He says, carefully setting the glass of wine across the desk, inches from where she stands.

“Practice,” he says as he removes his hand, locking both of them behind his back and he regards her.

She squints at the glass, feeling for the wine, probing for a disturbance in the consistency of the mixture, like a loose thread in a tunic. She cannot find it, though she strains such that she feels dizzy and must hold the edge of the desk.

Her father is silent, but a basin of water appears on the desk, as though it has always been there. He holds out his hand over the water, closed into a fist, his fingers tight together.

“As I’ve said before, practice with something more basic.”

He opens his hand, letting sand fall into a grey heap at the bottom of the basin. It darkens with wetness.

She focuses on the sand and the water, using a control unknown to her until now. She is so preoccupied she does not notice when her father crosses the room to the door, opens it and leaves, letting it swing shut behind him.

In the days that follow, numerous basins are filled with water and sand.

She scribes sequences of familiar symbols, as wells as new ones she takes upon herself to learn, that make the system and the intentions hard to decipher.

She stares at coal grey piles of sand in basins of slowly evaporating water.

It requires a concentration she has never used before, even years ago in the foreign arena, fighting the red-haired girl.

It is over a week later that she emerges from her father’s study. Her fingers are stained with ink and calloused from the pressure with which she has held her pen. Her father is in the professor’s office, a book in his hand. He doesn’t raise his head s she approaches, not when she sets a basin of water on his desk. The water sloshes over the edges, staining his frilled lace cuffs. When she holds out the grey pile of dry sand in her palm, he nods his praise. She has received higher praise from him before, and this minimal reaction from him provokes her the drop the sand directly overtop the pages of the volume he is reading. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

An Illusion of Flesh

She idly turns her hand before the window. Where the black sunlight touches it, illuminating it in a smoky haze, it appears like an apparition, a pale shadow of her hand. She turns her hand and it becomes solid again. She inspects it thoroughly, the soft skin on her palm, the spider web cracks on her calloused fingers. It looks no different than it always has been.

She has not noticed that her hand has faded, a pale shadow with the pigment of her skin. Where the sunlight hits it, it is gone completely, disappearing beyond her wrist, catching the edges of it softly when the light shifts. 

Art by Tere Arigo

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Shades of Grey

The castle looks dirty surrounded by sparkling white snowflakes, as grey as the sand buried under snow. The sky is a white flurry; the sea frosted as though covered with sugar crystals, crests frozen before the waves break.

If she hadn’t been standing close to the fireplace indoors moments before, soaking up the heat from the bright flames, she would be shivering with cold. She wears no shoes or hat, no scarf or gloves or coat, only her white gown and the ribbons that are a permanent embellishment on her attire.

It is so rare she is allowed out in broad daylight, but no shadows of people move about in the flurry, everyone has escaped to their houses or offices, or their friends’ houses or crowded cafes to wait out the storm. It is the pinnacle of Austrian winter, and far harsher than many can remember. Though the castle is seen by few, for their attention is diverted from the shape looming out of the mist on the innocuous grey beach. It simply fades into the background, to the extent in which it may be a trick of the light out of the corner of one’s eye.

Despite her best efforts, she cannot say the same about herself.

She has diverted others’ attention before, though she has never been able to divert her fathers’, but the blend so well into the landscape that she is a part of it, unnoticeable, would take a skill she does not possess. Indeed, a skill she does not believe her father possesses, either.

She enjoys the occasion, despite the warmth that is slowly dissipating into the air like smoke. She focuses on the water, the feel of it beneath the ice, and wonders if she could separate it from the salt through the ice; how much time it would take, how much effort, down to the second and the amount of respite she would require after. She decides it would depend on the thickness of the ice.

She stands on the seashore, digging her toes into grey sand and ice crystals. Plumes of white clouds billow from her mouth, snow laces her hair like a net of white.

The hem of her gown is moving, lace floating up and down in ripples. She steps back slowly, her gown trailing over the snow. It takes a moment for her to spot the bird against the snow, as its feathers are just as sparkling and white, but it is nestled in the cold, flapping and cooing with the cold.

She stand in momentary shock that a dove would be out in the snow in Austrian winter, even more that it would find the castle on the beach, never sighted by any person or creature outside the white marble residence. She bends down to scoop it up out of the snow.

The dove coos with fear, and as it warms it begins to flap its wings. She waits, patiently, for it to calm, coercing it to trust her. Strangely, her fathers’ skill would be useful here, as he has always been able to earn others’ trust with a wave of his hand and a piercing gaze, but he is not fond of doves. They are too pretty, he declares, too showy and frivolous, as opposed to the ravens he has raised her to keep in his study, dark with watchful eyes, always learning and thinking.

She holds the dove in her cupped hands, focusing on passing her warmth to its shivering body. The snow on its feathers begin to melt, sparkling like dew.

It would be a very bad idea, she thinks, to bring it home. Her father would only cast it out into the snow, or it would become a test she is incapable of passing, at the expense of the bird.

She narrows her eyes at the dove, as though squinting through its feathers and into its rapidly beating heart. Her eyes soften, as though she sees through the bird, into some cosmos in the snow before her.

Slowly an inky blackness, beginning at its beak and ending at its tail feathers, bleeds over the dove. Where it is still changing in hue, its feathers are grey, like that of a newborn sparrow.

When she carries the dove inside, black as night, it is silent. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Prerequisites

She has seen her father pour over piles of paper before, many of which she had not been able to understand when she was younger, and some scripts and volumes she still doesn’t. Yet these aren’t the organized chaos she is used to, these papers have been piled so high they have become the desk. Stacks of books and leather cases with the curling ends of parchment protruding from them are lined around the desk, supporting large sheets of blueprint paper, or scraps with delicate sketches in black ink. The blueprints and sketches are held down with a number of objects plucked off the shelves around the study; a butterfly encased in glass, a black widow trapped in amber, a paperweight resembling a black knight from a chess set, a heavy ancient silver coin with fading archaic Greek letters, a tarnished silver pocket watch engraved with F.I. They are layouts of something large, a structure of some sort with protrusions, potential lengths and measurements listed in the margins, various materials and tools scrawled at the tops of each page. There are more blueprints of a room; with so many sides it is almost completely circular. These blueprints have symbols around the edges, some of them, she reads, regarding intent and sizes of empty space.

“What are these for, Father?” she asks, compelled by her curiousity to take a step closer.

Her father does not seem to hear her at first, then he puts his hands on the desk and looks her in the eye. “You need not concern yourself with these. Go study, or practice. You need it.”

She does not retreat, instead, she moves closer, craning her neck to see the angle of a particular plane-

When her father lifts the black knight paperweight and brings it heavily down on her hand, resting on the edge of the desk. She pulls it back quickly, toppling a tower of books which rest on their spines and covers, or open on bent white pages. She cannot bring herself to care, as she cradles her injured hand, feeling the shattered bones in her fingers.

The books right themselves, coming to rest under the corners of blueprints they had previously held aloft. Her father returns to the blueprints.

“You need to practice. Begin with that, and do not attempt to glance at these papers again.”

She turns on her heel, still cupping her crushed fingers, and marches out of the room, biting her lip to keep from crying. Her cheeks are salt burned before she can calm enough to set her shattered knuckles back together again. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Warnings

“What have you been doing?” her father asks her one day, as she goes back and forth between the symbols in a particularly old and complicated book on a system she cannot quite fathom, and the symbols decorating the pages of her own leather bound volume.

She looks up in surprise, something akin to fear rising in her chest. “Studying,” she answers, for she supposes what she has been doing does involve some form of study.

“That is not what I meant,” he says, and she cannot feign ignorance anymore.

She picks up a pen from her fathers desk, her hand trembling slightly under his gaze. She draws the raven in flight, as though it has just risen from a perch. When she removed her pen, it is already shaking out its wings.

The bird picks itself slowly from the paper, feather by feather emerging, becoming soft and downy but smelling strongly of ink. The bird opens it beak but makes no sound except the rustle of feathers as it prepares to fly. It hovers around her shoulders momentarily before taking off for the highest shelves.

It performs it customary path of flight, followed by her eyes. She smiles slowly, her face brightening, when it flies across her skin, tickling her collarbone.

“When did you learn that?” he asks pensively, his dark eyes on the bird, slowly turning to her.

“I taught it to myself,” she answers, meeting his eyes though she desperately wishes to look back at her raven.

Her father rises, standing tall before the desk. He tilts his head back, piercing the bird with his gaze. It ruffles its feathers, as though nervous, though she remains in her chair, wearing a stony expression and watching impassively.

Suddenly the bird launches itself off the shelf, aiming for her father, diving with outstretched wings. She sits tall and tries to focus, tries to divert the bird but it will not move from its path to her father’s heart. It gains speed, losing feathers and becoming a streak of black in the air. It crashes into her father’s velvet sleeve, ink splattering onto his vest and collar, black feathers thrown into the air. When they have settled on the ground the bird is perched on his white lace cuffs, now ink stained, regarding her father forlornly.

“Very impressive,” her father succeeds. He firmly, ignoring his daughter’s protest, grabs the raven by the neck and twists. It remains a bird only seconds longer before melting into a pool of ink on the floor. Similar black puddles litter the floor and shelves and the floor at her father’s feet where there had been, seconds before, soft black feathers.

Her father grabs her roughly by the jaw, tilting her face up.

“But you will never again teach yourself these tricks, nothing that I have not taught you. Do you understand?”

She nods as much as she can and her father releases her, long red marks from his fingers on her chin. She retreats to her chair, curling her legs under her and pressing her back against the grey cushion. The ink on the floors vanish, as though they have never been there.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Flights of Fancy

In her boredom she plays with paper birds. Rather, she plays with birds on paper. The birds are sketches in ink, damp and rich and black. Beneath the tip of her pen they flutter across the paper, onto other papers that lie in the chaotic pile on her father’s desk. They grow and shrink, becoming as big as two or three sheets of paper or as small as her thumbnail. They sweep across words, sometimes picking up letters that blend into the darkness of their feathers. They leave streaks of ink in their wake. Sometimes, when she is particularly restless, they leap off the parchment and onto the floor or the walls, black on grey stone, flying in arcs and loops around the room. They disappear behind the bookshelves, or into the books, causing the shelves of the bookcase to expand, as the tomes it contains seem to breath with the movement of the ravens inside them. They gravitate toward the windows and become lithe shadows against the black glass panes. She watches them, makes games of having them chase one another across any surface, sometimes across her skin, feeling only a soft caress when larger birds pursue smaller creatures, until the larger birds decrease in size and become prey, hastily changing direction and soaring over her ankle, down her toes and across the floor. When she becomes tired or feels her time would be better spent studying, she reluctantly calls them back to the papers. Flocks of madly swirling black feathers descend onto parchment, becoming paralyzed images once more. Unless she has drawn too many, released too many into the study, and they return to the paper, soaking it heavily with ink until it is black and wet, crumbling apart in her stained fingers. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay