The girl stepped from of a dust-worn carriage and into the night. The trees were deep, the air chilly with fog. Animals made animal noises—but in a hushed fashion. Monsters lurked in the woods this far outside Nantes. Aalis closed her eyes, breathed deep, but instead of the familiar scent of Atlantic salt, found raw earth, dead leaves, and gloom. It was a lost path, yet this was where his letter said to stop.
“Lady, I don’t recommend this,” her driver said from his perch, and not for the first time. He hid behind a struggling lantern and a white horse. “The respectable do not live out here.”
“I cannot afford the respectable.”
“You’ll be able to tomorrow.”
Aalis rounded on the man. He was a brackish sort with a scowl as starched as his doublet. He served the rich aristocrats of the city. She was a poor aristocrat. “If I am not back in two hours, you have my permission to leave.”
“It will take him more than two hours to paint you. And Master Douais will have my head if I don’t bring you back.”
She held up two fingers. “He is the best, sir. The absolute best.”
Today, tonight, before her life fell further apart, Aalis deserved the best.
“At least let me accompany you. You’re only 16.”
“I am old enough for Master Douais.”
Aalis felt 16 going on 30. She stood tall but slender, with long, brown hair that spilled every-which-way no matter how often she brushed it. Her nose was hooked, her lips full. A red, puffiness rimmed her eyes from crying. She had grown fast, and then she had grown up even faster. Tomorrow, she would age another ten years.
The artist’s letter said there would be a cobblestone path, and now that her eyes were adjusted, Aalis found it. The stones were yellowed with mold. She took her first, careful step. Her long skirts threatened to trip her legs. She was not dressed for a walk through the forest, because portraiture demanded gowns and jewelry. Aalis was wealthy enough for both, but only if they were kept modest. Her dress swallowed her body in excess fabric around the shoulders, sleeves, and skirt, but the color was brown with only dashes of red to make it look regal. She wore a silver necklace with a ruby to match. The chain was cheap, not silver but polished steel, and the gemstone was misshapen. Both belonged to her mother. Aalis owned exactly one beautiful dress. It was white.
For his part, the driver huffed and cursed. He then promised to go find her if she was not back in two hours, “or else!” The trees soon swallowed his threats. They were as thick as mud, their branches so intertwined they blocked much of the sky.
It felt like shrinking, and it felt like time travel, but Aalis followed the artist’s path which soon arrived at a clearing, and then at his house. Dead trees grew around it like hands protecting something fragile. No lights shone her invitation. The home had a small, impoverished look that spoke of peasantry, yet it was two stories tall and built like a castle. Bricks made up its walls, and dark tiles its roof. Its windows were large and grand; its door was heavy enough to stop King Francis himself.
Aalis took it all in with her first real sense of unease. Her driver was minutes away by foot, she was alone, and the artist was a strange man in a strange forest. He painted his best work in the dead of night.
The door slid open. A small candle burned from further inside. Aalis saw the outline of a man appear in the doorway, and when she raised her hand, he beckoned her forward. She stepped from the cobblestone path. Her shoes were made for fashion first and function second, pointed at the toe and easy to snag on roots or rocks, but the grass around his house was dry, more like dirt than meadow. The closer she got to his house, the easier it was to keep walking.
Aalis reached the door and curtseyed. “Master,” she said. Her voice whispered with nerves.
“Malo,” the artist said. “My name is Malo.”
“Aalis du Roux.” Aalis looked away. “For now.”
Malo eyed Aalis in a way that sent her sixth sense screaming: of monsters and ghosts, of wolves tearing into cattle. Yet she was star-struck too, because she had seen his paintings. He was the best.
“You are too hungry,” he said. He gave her a slow wave, an almost-polite dismissal. “You do not belong here.”
“Please!” Aalis begged. Her fear of danger became fear of rejection. “I followed the rules. I paid ahead, and I came alone. I burned your letters.”
“You—”
“I want to remember myself as I am now, before things get worse!”
Aalis forced herself to meet Malo’s gaze. His eyes were dead, but so were hers. So were most peoples’. If it wasn’t the war with Italy, then it was something else. Poverty, sickness, dead brothers or dead husbands. The monarchy. The rich aristocrats spoke of Renaissance, but they built their rebirth on the backs of others. Her shoulders ached from the strain.
“It is too easy to die, Master Malo.” Aalis swallowed. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or sorrow that made her want to cry. “But I’ve seen your paintings. They will not.”
“You accept my terms?”
“I do.”
Malo nodded. He stepped aside. “You may enter.”
Aalis did. Malo’s home was cold, colder than the woods outside, and she crossed her arms against the chill. The lighting was bad, the smell strange. She caught whiffs of chemicals, things she recognized and things she did not. Before her father died, he owned a paper mill, and she had wandered its rooms on a few occasions. Malo’s home was like that, only damper. The ceiling was low, like she had stepped into a cellar instead of a castle, and the floor needed sweeping.
“This way,” Malo said. “I will paint you.”
Malo looked strong, and he looked sick. He was tall, so tall his head almost touched the ceiling, with a gauntness to his face, shoulders, and chest. Everything about him was pale. His mouth was so thin it might as well not be there. All of the rich men in France kept their hair long with manicured beards, but Malo was bald and clean shaven. While Aalis wore her best dress, he wore a simple grey undershirt and a black jerkin. The jerkin was stained with paints. He seemed to like the color brown.
A single candle lit the next room, which was disheveled from floor to ceiling with paintings. Aalis sucked in a breath. Malo jerked at the sound.
“What?” he twisted about to look at her. His eyes were a deep, cold blue.
Time was short, but Aalis couldn’t help herself. She approached the nearest painting for a better look. It was of a white rabbit, so realistically depicted that at first she thought it was a living, breathing animal. From far away it appeared it be sleeping, but as she got closer, she saw that it was dead. Two trickles of blood ran from its neck to soil its fur.
“Why would you paint a dead rabbit?”
Malo hovered close. Aalis flinched. “To forget,” he said. “I remember too well, but when I paint, I forget.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.” Malo gestured towards a door. “This way. My studio is over there. Your canvas is ready.”
Aalis regarded the next painting. It was of a woman’s neck. Her clothing was gone, ripped or stripped away, revealing just a white shift and bare skin. Two trickles of blood flowed from her throat. The blood was so well painted that Aalis believed if she touched it, it would stain her fingers.
“Maybe I should go,” Aalis whispered.
“I will paint you.”
Aalis backed away. She turned for the door and watched it close on its own. The wood creaked as it shut, and the lock clicked loud enough to echo, even though the rooms were small and cluttered. The harder she peered through the dark, the more paintings she saw. Each one depicted a neck; each one depicted blood.
“I will paint you,” Malo repeated. “As you are right now. You will change, grow or shrink with time, but the painting will not. It will remember if you forget.”
“What if I don’t want to change?”
“Then you must learn to die.”
Malo grabbed Aalis by the arm. The movement was slow, lazy and without force, yet his hands were as strong as iron. She couldn’t escape him. Like a gentleman escorting a lady, Malo lead Aalis to his studio. When she stepped through the door, it closed on its own behind her.
The studio was pitch black, but Malo lit a few candles. The flickering of yellow lights made his skin all the more pale. Aalis swallowed. Malo followed the movement of her throat. He reminded her of a cat stalking a mouse.
“Do not be scared,” he said. “It will not hurt.”
“Please,” Aalis tried, but she was in his world, his court, and she could not escape.
“Change hurts. Remembering hurts. What I do is neither.” Malo held out his hand. “Come. Sit.”
His studio wrapped around them with cramped mess, an easel on one end, a hundred or more canvases strewn about the sides, and a great couch on the other. Malo gestured to the couch. Once upon a time, it had been gorgeous, an expensive piece of furniture fit for a king’s chambers, but age and use took their toll. Its fabric was brown, its cushions visibly lumpy. Scratch marks covered the backrest, and long rips showed the wood behind. Aalis both did and didn’t recognize it. The paintings she saw months ago had featured this exact place, this exact seat, but it had been depicted as brand new. Beautiful.
Feeling his dead eyes on her, Aalis approached the seat. The closer she got, the more rips and stains she saw. People fought on this couch. People bled.
“Sit how you want to be painted,” Malo instructed. He slid behind his canvas and watched. His eyes never blinked. Aalis wasn’t sure he even breathed. “In any position you like. I will paint the couch as it once was, when I first bought it.”
“It … it is old,” Aalis said. “Very old.”
“Yes.”
Malo grabbed a brush. Aalis sat as gingerly as she could, trying to avoid the worst stains while also not looking at them. Her heart drummed with fear. All around her hung paintings of throats and blood. Most were of women, always naked, always pale as death, but a few were of men. Aalis recognized beard styles that no one in modern France would ever wear. A few were of animals, a dormouse there, a deer there, but like the rabbit in the first room, they were dead.
Some of his paintings, the biggest ones, were covered with burlap tarps.
“What are those?” Aalis asked.
Malo followed her gaze. He seemed surprised. “I don’t know. I painted them to forget, and I covered them to keep them forgotten.” He turned back. “Are you ready?”
Aalis shifted positions, crossing one leg over the other and adjusting the middle of her skirt to better show off the red in it. She then flicked at the fabric of her neckline, making sure just the barest hint of the white shift underneath poked through. All the rich ladies were doing that now.
“Do I look scared?”
“Yes.” Malo cocked his head. “You looked scared from the moment I saw you outside my home. Scared and hungry. I do not know what you look like happy.”
The candles flickered. The couch felt sticky. Aalis both wanted to laugh and scream at the same time—she couldn’t remember the last time she felt happy. Not since that letter. “Sorry,” the man in black had said, dressed like a member of the court but walking with an executioner’s gait. “Sit down before you open it.” So they sat. So they read. So they all collapsed with sobs. Her brother was dead, slain in Pavia for King Francis, a thousand and more kilometers away to end a war that began anew one year later. Their family fell apart. Her father grew distant, angry, and then sick. Her mother cracked at the seams like a woman made of clay.
When typhoid finally finished with her family, what was left of it went to Aalis. The business became shambles. Her mother withered into an angry stranger who spoke in Bible verses. Aalis’s suitors grew older in age and worse in quality, each one eager for just the one part of her before taking over the paper mill.
Circumstance forced her to pick one. He did not love her. She did not love him.
“My life is hard, and it will only get worse,” Aalis said.
Malo nodded. “Yes.”
“I am scared.”
“Yes.” Malo touched his brush to the canvas. He made a single tap. Aalis couldn’t even tell what color paint he was using. “But now you look mad instead of afraid. Is that okay?”
Aalis nodded. She wanted to cry, and found that she was. “I think maybe that’s all I have left to give.”
“Not all.”
Malo worked his brush, making a half-dozen chopping motions—stabs instead of strokes. Aalis expected his hand to fly, to create her clone with something akin to magic, because he only had an hour left before it was time to go. But just as fast as he grabbed the brush, he put it back down. He turned his gaze towards her throat.
“I will finish later,” Malo said. His eyes were so, so cold. “I will have it delivered to your home.”
“But—”
“I do not forget.”
Aalis needed to run. Her hand found a stain on the couch, crusty with brown and still lingering with the smell of blood. She screamed. Malo approached. As Aalis put her hands in front of her face, Malo kneeled. He grabbed her wrist. His fingers were as gentle as nails.
“I paint everyone twice,” he said. “One for you, and one for me.”
“No!”
“These are my terms. It will not hurt.”
Malo shifted Aalis’s skirts aside so he could kneel over her. She pushed at him, but his skin felt like bricks. His body was as unmoving as a castle wall. Up close he smelled like nothing, like he wasn’t even there, yet he also stank of old dirt and older blood. His eyes glowed blue, his frown deep with difficult work. His hands worked at the neckline of her dress, yanking the extra fabric towards her shoulders. He pulled at the shift underneath so it was more visible. Aalis watched. She made herself look into his eyes. They were dead, but hers were not.
“Interesting,” he said. He slipped his palm around the necklace Aalis wore. The jewel shined with bloody crimson. “Do you know this shape?”
Aalis breathed deep.
“It’s a heart. A human heart. I have never seen a ruby this shape before.” Malo let the jewel fall back into place. Then he repositioned it, so it was exactly where he wanted it. “It is a queen’s gem. You will make a good picture.”
Malo smiled. It was his first smile of the night. “You do not look scared,” he said.
Then he gripped Aalis by the face and shoulder. He opened his mouth wide. It was a black chasm with fangs. His tongue was bloated and blue, like a leech.
The vampire bit, and for an hour, he drank. He did not breathe. His heart did not beat. Aalis watched with disgust in her eyes and a scream on her lips, but she did not fight back. She did not fight when that letter came, and she did not fight when she overheard her father wishing it had been her instead of his son. She would not fight on her wedding day. Life was cruel. She deserved nothing.
When the hour ended, Malo sat up. He wiped the fresh blood from his lips and bid Aalis leave.
“I will forget,” he said.
“I will not.”
“Then you will hurt.” Malo looked at her as uncaring as ever. Her blood stained his hands. “But you will learn to live. You hunger, and now you are no longer afraid.”
Aalis walked out of her own accord. She crossed the artist’s front yard, and she marched down the yellow, cobblestone path. The forest night stretched deep with gloom. Soon she saw the glow of a lantern, and the white flank of an impatient horse. The driver said nothing as she stepped into the carriage. He took her home. She snuck inside, removed her mother’s dress, and got into bed. Aalis spent the rest of the night remembering what it was like to be alive. What it was like to have a family uncracked with change. She missed being a little girl, helping her mother with the housework and playing with dolls made of paper. She would wrestle with her brother and tattle when he won, and she would sit by her father in the living room while he read aloud to her from the Bible. Love had once thrived in her home.
Aalis remembered, and for the first time, she wondered if she could fight. Make change her own. Let love thrive once again. She deserved nothing, but she wanted the best, and maybe that was good enough. She did not belong with the dead. Her mother’s misshapen ruby gleamed against her throat, now crusted brown in spots with her own blood. Aalis grabbed it. It was hers. She was no longer afraid.
A week later, Aalis Douais received a package addressed to Aalis du Roux. She opened it and marveled at the work, at the absolute perfection of the portrait. It was like staring at her twin. If she didn’t know better, she thought she was looking into a mirror.
She barely recognized herself.
Nonsense 