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“When I grow up, this is the kind of place I want to live. Not in the ocean, but here, under the sky, where land stretches into the horizon, where the wind travels far, and the stars are free to shine as bright as they want.”
▸ Qifrey in Chapter 92
“I’m not a good artist,” Olruggio said. “Not when it comes to people, things. Things that aren’t magic.”
This was the side of Orluggio Qifrey rarely saw. He was a good-natured young man, twinkly eyed and aglow, but behind the zest was uncertainty. Having no right for this desire Qifrey nonetheless knew he wanted to know him fully, needed to. He needed to uncover the truth of a friend he fed with lies.
Drawings lay in a disarray on the floor. They were sketches; most were unfinished, interrupted. In them Qifrey recognised the frenzy of Olruggio’s hand, the urge to retrace life as it was. Hectic, spirited. Lines in motions.
“These look good to me,” Qifrey said, and he meant it.
“From a technical standpoint, perhaps.” Olruggio exhaled through his nose, frustrated with himself. He could not bear to look at his drawings, but looking away felt wrong also, as if they were his children and he was neglecting the attention he owed them.
Wordlessly Qifrey flipped through a bunch of them. There was nature, shots of wildlife, of things caught in the moment. On the margins Olruggio had scribbled notes to himself. There was always something wrong, the error that marked an unsuccess; if it wasn’t the perspective then the hatching, the composition, something else, but always something.
“These look very good to me,” Qifrey said. “What is it that you don’t like?”
“They all look dead.”
“I don’t see it,” Qifrey said and tilted his head every which way, angling the drawings as he did so.
“They look like I made them.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t like it. It’s wrong.”
Critical as Olruggio was of himself Qifrey thought he would quit. Stop doing what he loved, for fear that inadequacy might taint it. But fear of being deprived of this love was greater, it terrified him. He could not keep himself away from what was natural of him.
The idea of a witch in the collective imagination was befuddling. Often they were beings of a whimsical yet intelligent nature, wise humans who dispensed knowledge in roundabout ways. This, Qifrey mused, was for a child’s sake. A child is never content with the adult’s way, who so often refuses to meet the child at their pace, recognise him or her as equal in intellect and sentimentality. The child is an undeveloped adult. He cannot be exposed to the true ways of life, an unkind life that nonetheless affects and maims him. The child is granted a safe space, a fictional world, a faux world. He is given lies.
In this social veneer the non-witches were the children, the undeveloped adult. They were fed lies of witch fabrication. To them a witch was a faraway identity, the kind that swoops a wand or chants an incantation and with that there’s magic. To contravene this rule was to be marked as a traitor. Qifrey did not consider himself one. Had he not been fed lies himself, he might have believed this rule one of nature, never questioning it. But question it he did, constantly. He was not a witch in the right fashion.
Among the drawings was a portrait of him. Qifrey as seen by Olruggio, and so Qifrey saw himself, through his own eyes but also through Olruggio. Olruggio who didn’t know of the lies, and not knowing he saw a parted Qifrey, a fictionalisation. Olruggio was not privy to Qifrey, and so what right did Qifrey have to know him, to claim Olruggio for himself?
“I like this very much,” Qifrey said. Olruggio threw a glance at the drawing and grimaced in distaste, lips curling. Qifrey laughed, low and soft. “I know you don’t, the ‘x’ scrabbled over it isn’t exactly subtle.”
Olruggio swept a hand over the back of his neck. He was blushing. “It’s not about you. You’re a great muse and all—”
“A muse, is that what I am? A muse?” The blush on Olruggio’s cheeks deepened and so did Qifrey’s laugh, earning him a scowl. “I’m messing with you. Why do you say it looks bad? It really doesn’t.”
“Does it look like you? Does he look like you?” Olruggio said he, giving the drawing a human quality. He, as in you, Qifrey. How I – Olruggio – see you.
“I think he does.”
“You think?”
“I’m not sure. I can never be sure. I – I don’t know how other people see me. How you see me.”
“Not like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s wrong.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t get it.”
“He’s not like you. He’s dead. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak. He’s not you.” There was a pause between them, not uncomfortable. “What does being a witch mean to you?”
Qifrey considered, and as he considered he met the realisation that he didn’t know. Hadn’t questioned himself over the matter. Naturally he had considered what it meant to be a witch who did not abide by the rules, but never questioned his nature as a young man who made magic come true.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly, feeling ashamed at his ignorance. It’d always been there, but now that he knew it couldn’t be ignored. “What does it mean to you?”
“I was hoping you’d know.” Olruggio smiled sheepishly. “I’d have stolen your answer if it was good enough.” He stood for a while, looking at anything that wasn’t Qifrey. Then abandoning his mind’s wanderings he sat opposite Qifrey. He stole from the pile of food and ate. The action lacked true intention; it was a distraction. Olruggio took a few bites, then wiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand. Reached for a clean sheet and sketched deliberate lines. Qifrey looked in awe. He was, by the age of nineteen, a good witch, if he said so himself. A good witch by technical standards, if anything. His control was steady, his lines precise.
He did not draw free handedly as much as Olruggio did. He certainly knew how, the gist of it being shared among witches by force of sheer practice, but he would not call himself a particularly skilled artist in the free sense, the kind that captures life and motion and gives it immortality. Olruggio was impossible to match. He’d earned his skills by never settling for anything less than perfection, even as that perfection was his final enemy, the very thing that stilted him.
Yet it was a source of love for him, and from this love Olruggio could not detach himself. Qifrey had watched him sketch without guidelines, and when inquired about it Olruggio had said: “If only you could see what I see.” He saw lines, composition. In every line was the suggestion of a shape. All of his drawings were all once a concept, an idea, the seed of a thought. Qifrey had the fortune of seeing it grow from intent to completion.
Felicity then was so close, so close. Qifrey could almost touch it, feel it around him like a swelling, an oozing force that drew him in. It was his happiness, a child’s safety. Qifrey was happy, almost. Almost was the chief word, the imperative. As long as Olruggio was lied to Qifrey could not get rid of the almost.
He lifted his eyes to the heavens. An eggshell blue sky arched overhead, shy and unreachable; they crouched under it. Olruggio had worked a fire before, not for light but warmth. It crackled in one corner, bringing about a scent of burned wood and garlic-laden sausages and vegetables, spiced as Olruggio liked his food. They had made a habit of coming here. There was a threshold, fictional and imaginary, that Qifrey nevertheless sensed like a physical weight. Each time they stepped over it he was safe, almost.
The place was shabby and run-down. The walls and roof were tattered, leaving in their wake heaps of jagged stone and debris. The cracks through the stone were choked with moss, and – Qifrey thought – with memories too. He could only think of this place as a place of love, what once had been a home to a jovial and good-hearted folk. The image operated on a fantasy, but to this fantasy he held for dear life, drawing a modicum of solace from it. The folks had existed and he envied them for their bliss happiness. He was borrowing grief from fiction, inflating his misery for no other reason than self-preservation. He kept coming back to a place that hurt him, like Olruggio did. But how could he not, how could they not? It was a vista of passionate beauty, proud and untouched, unbending under human influence. It was home.
“Would you like to live here?”
Olruggio gazed from his drawing to Qifrey. “What?”
“I said, would you like to live here?”
A frown. Olruggio looked about himself, and for once he didn’t see what Qifrey saw. Didn’t see the lines and the composition, the ossature of a dream.
“Let’s rebuild this place.”
“What?” Olruggio was laughing now, genuine and kind, a pure unaware laugh.
“You and me,” Qifrey said, alive and energised, feverish in his excitement. He drew himself up, unfit for stillness. “A house just for us, away from everything we don’t like.”
The only way for him to be a witch, Qifrey thought; for a witch who doesn’t belong to either world, and in-between carves a space for himself, a child’s safety. This is wrong, he heard a voice inside himself say, yell as if rattling. It’s wrong, all wrong. And so it was, but he was a young man dazed, drunk of his own selfish happiness, and in his daze he could not stop himself. He took Olruggio’s hand, seized it. Together they marched through the valley, grass swaying softly at the wind’s pace.
Qifrey stopped, said: “Look. Look at the house, not how it is but how it once was, how it could be. You’re an artist; you see with the eyes of one. Look. What do you see?”
Olruggio laughed. He threw Qifrey an impish grin, a grin from friend to friend, tainted with no lies. So Olruggio thought, not having reason to suspect deception, betrayal. “You’re not making any sense!”
“Look! What do you see?”
“I see a ruin.”
Qifrey shook his head, white soft curls swaying. “Look into the future. What do you see? I see a house that you and I will build. You and me and” – selfish, selfish – “you and me and my apprentices. Be my Watchful Eye.” He cupped Olruggio’s face with both hands. Traced his naked fingers over it, feeling the warmth, the life underneath the young man. “Our new home, Olly. Be my Watchful Eye.”
Be my friend, my life companion. Let yourself be known to me, while I remain unknown to you. Away from what we don’t like. Home. The architecture of a fictionalisation, a home built on lies. I see the house. I see the walls rise and I hear them echoing my voice, my voice that it is also your voice. I see an idea, emerging to a skeleton, and that skeleton becoming a human thing, a finished thing. Every house needs foundations, the roots before the branches.
I see a house that you and I will build.