Memory and Dream

Do you still have those dreams you told me about?

The one she’d had last night was far different from the dreams of fire she’d been having the previous year, or the more recent ones of someone looking for her, but it had still involved danger to her creations.

She was certain the paintings were safe. How could they be anything else but? No one knew about them except for her and Kathy—and of course, Jilly. But she still had to see them for herself No one was up yet at the professor’s, but Izzy was too cold to shovel his walks as well. Let Olaf do that—it would give him something concrete to grumble about. She kicked away at the drift that was piled up against the studio door until she could get it open, then slipped inside and savored the warmth.

The windows were all patterned with frost and she took a moment to admire them before she got up the courage to take her paintings out from under the table where she had stored them. They were still there, all three of them, not one of them damaged. She lined them up in a row on the lower canvas holder of her easel, just as she’d done the night she finished Rattle and Wings, and stood back to look at them. It was only then that she saw that something was wrong.

Paddyjack was fine, but her fanciful ladybug with its tiny human face and the winged cat had undergone a significant change since the last time she’d looked at them. Both paintings had lost the vitality she remembered them having. The main figures seemed to blend into the background now, and all the highlights and contrasts that had made them come alive were gone, diminishing their sense of presence.

The colors had gone from vibrant to muddy and even the compositions themselves seemed to suffer.

She wished now that she had shown them to someone else before. It was too easy to believe that she simply hadn’t gotten them right in the first place, despite her memory to the contrary. But paintings didn’t lose their vitality just like that. Oils didn’t lose their vibrancy and become dulled in such a way over the passage of a couple of months.

An image flashed in her mind: the small hooded figure with his crossbow. Firing. The quarrel striking the winged cat where it was perched on the fire escape and driving it back against the wall with the force of its impact ....

Just a dream, she told herself.

But her fingers strayed to the bracelet on her wrist.

No, she thought. Even if Rushkin were responsible, even if he had been out there in the storm last night, hunting down her creations, how could she have dreamed about it happening? She wasn’t clairvoyant—not even close. Except ... bringing her creations over in the first place, that was an act of magic all in itself. If that was possible, then why not something else? If the borders of reality were going to tear, why should they tear along some tidy little perforation? This was possible now, but this was still impossible— everything neatly contained within its own particular box, changed, perhaps, but still safe, still contained.

If only she had someone to help her understand the perimeters of this new world she found herself in, someone to show her which parts she could still count on and which had changed. But the only person she’d had was John, and she’d driven him away. Even though his conversations could be so ambiguous, she still felt certain that he meant her no harm. There was no one else she could trust—no one with the necessary knowledge. In the magical borderland she now found herself in there was only John. John and Rushkin.

She saw the crossbow quarrel again, the flash of its feathers before it plunged into the winged cat’s chest ....

It was just a dream, she told herself; as though repetition would make it true. The paintings in front of her seemed to say otherwise, but she didn’t know what to think anymore. Rushkin was the one who had shown her how to bring her creations across from the otherworld in the first place. Why should he mean them harm? Why should he mean her harm?

In the end, she realized she had no one else to whom she could turn. She left her paintings on the easel and locked up the studio, trudging off through the cold and the snow to the coach house, where Rushkin would be waiting for her. He’d be angry, yes, but only because she was late, she told herself. He wasn’t her enemy. He might be John’s, but Rushkin had taught her too much, he had too much light inside himself that he was willing to share with her, for Izzy to be able to consider him her enemy as well.

But anger was an understatement, Izzy realized as she stepped out of the cold into Rushkin’s coach-house studio. Rushkin was in one of his rages. She started to back out the door before he could hit her, but he was too quick. He grabbed her by one arm and spun her back into the studio. When he let go, Izzy floundered for balance and crashed into her easel, falling to the floor with it under her.

“How dare you spy on me?” he shouted.

He crossed the room as Izzy tried to get back to her feet, but the straps of her backpack had gotten entangled with her easel and she couldn’t free herself in time. Rushkin kicked at her, the toe of his shoe catching her first in the thigh, then in the stomach, then on the side of her head. She cried out from the pain.

“You filthy little sneak!” Rushkin cried. “After all I’ve done for you.”

He continued to kick at her. When she finally got herself free from her backpack and tried to rise, he hit her with his fists, driving her back down again. Finally all she could do was curl up into as small a ball as she could make of herself and try to ride out the storm of his anger. Rushkin ranted and flailed at her, hitting his fists against the sides of the easel as often as he hit her. She could make no sense of what the betrayals were that he was shouting about. After a while, she didn’t care. All she wanted was for the hurting to stop. But then, when his rage finally did run its course, he fell to his knees in front of her and began to weep.

“Oh no, Isabelle,” he moaned. “What have I done? What have I done? How can you ever forgive me ...”

No, Izzy thought. There’ll be no forgiveness this time. But she couldn’t seem to talk. Her mouth was swollen, her lips bruised. There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t ache. Every breath she took woke a piercing stitch of pain in her side.

With fumbling fingers she pushed herself away from the easel and tried to stand. She only got as far as her knees. She crouched there on the floor, regarding Rushkin through a flood of tears, both of them kneeling as though they were supplicants in a church of pain.

“Go,” he told her in a broken voice. “Get away. Now. While you can. Before the madness takes hold of me again.”

She wanted to move, but it hurt too much. “I ... I can’t ....”

She flinched when he rose to his feet and reached for her. He hauled her up and half carried, half dragged her toward the door. The gust of cold air that hit her face when he opened the door helped to revive her a little, but everything seemed to spin in her sight as he pushed her outside. She fell in the snow on the landing, unable to make her way down the stairs. When the door opened behind her again, she ducked her head, but not in time.

“Go!” Rushkin cried, and he flung her backpack at her.

The weight of it hitting her was enough to knock her away from the landing and she went tumbling down the stairs with only the snow to cushion her fall as she hit the various steps on her way down. The fall seemed to take forever, but finally she reached the bottom. She lay there in the snow, trying to breathe as shallowly as she could to stop the fierce pain in her side. She looked up when the door slammed above her, but her vision was so blurred that she couldn’t see a thing.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position by grabbing hold of the bottom rail, then bent over again to vomit up the remains of her breakfast. Her head drooped until it was almost touching the foul-smelling puddle. It seemed hours before she could move once more. She shivered as much from the cold as from shock and finally managed to make it to her feet.

She didn’t think she’d ever make it home. She fell three times on the way, but no one helped her.

Everyone who passed by stepped around her, avoided looking at her. They probably thought she was drunk, or stoned. Whenever she could get up and move, she stumbled along, holding on to the sides of buildings with one hand, dragging her backpack with the other. She didn’t know why she didn’t just leave it behind, but she couldn’t seem to open her hand enough to let it fall. Thoughts were too hard to form clearly, but she got the strange idea that if she let go of the backpack, she’d be letting go of everything. She’d never get home, never survive, never stop hurting.

So she clutched her backpack and dragged herself along, one painful step at a time.

VIII

Kathy was in her bedroom, working on a new story, when a weak thumping on the front door of the