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The summer rains have not relented, but nights listening to its song can be inspiring.
As such, Renoir keeps the lights on in his atelier well into the evening, long after the clock has struck midnight. He knew before even attempting it that he wouldn’t be getting any sleep, and not just because Aline is away. Admittedly, stress is a factor, as was a particularly long period he’d spent in one of his Canvases to test some theories. He’d made sure to step out before Aline left, but it always takes his body a couple days to adjust back to the circadian rhythm of the real world. Decades of experience failed to wane this side effect, another inexorable flaw in his ability to rest.
So he plugs away at a painting that does not act as a Canvas. The image in it – a vast horizon of floating islands – is inspired by something he created in one of his worlds, but it is crafted with palette knife strokes and a gliding brush. The practiced movement of his hand has a relaxing quality that typically quells the fire in his veins, the heavy pounding of his heart.
Around the time he’s reached a point where he can attempt to sleep, there’s a knock on the door. He can tell by the rhythm who it is.
“You may enter,” he calls, his voice sounding loud in the room that had otherwise been silent save for the rain and his brushstrokes. He turns in his stool, letting the wooden palette drop out of his hand. It doesn’t hit the floor, instead catching itself midair and floating off to the side.
His workshop is filled with so many world Canvases and Chroma that supplies float near the ceiling, hence why most are typically allowed in the room. But the housekeeper is allowed, and as such she opens the door without hesitation, a lit candle in her hand.
“I apologize for interrupting,” she says, though her tone is stern.
“I was just finishing, Madeline, don’t worry,” despite his words, Renoir’s head tilts. “I must ask why you are awake, though. Is something wrong?”
“Not necessarily, Monsieur. Maybe.” She says, a rare uncertainty in her voice. “The storm woke me, but when I stepped out for air, I noticed the library door open, so I went to investigate, and found one of the ladders pulled over and multiple books missing. Then, I saw a light near the dining room, so I followed it and…well…found Miss Clea…’asleep’ on the chaise.”
Renoir chuckles, shaking his head. “Ah, she may have gotten into my horror novels. She likes to read them at night, when the weather’s poor.” Soon after saying as much, he realizes the emphasis Madeline put on the word asleep. “Dare I ask how this is beyond shooing her to bed?”
Madeline gives him a thin smile. “I think you better see for yourself, Monsieur.”
Renoir lightly taps Clea’s cool palm, speaking softly. “Young lady, it is very late to be Painting.”
His eldest daughter was, indeed, on the chaise lounge just offset from the dining room, the hearth’s fire long dead but a lone candle flame flickering on the end table. She has a blanket pulled up around her, a Canvas propped up against the coffee table, her eyes consumed by a haze that trails off the corners in tiny specks of green Chroma. Despite Renoir knowing for a fact that she can hear him, he receives no reply in his mind. He sighs softly.
“Madeline, if it won’t trouble you…” He begins, but she’s already nodding.
“I’ll make tea, Monsieur.” She says, turning away. “I think I could use some myself, anyway.”
She disappears with the light she carries, and Renoir takes a seat at the edge of the cushions. A few books scatter the floor, including a copy of Carmilla, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Aline had told him to put such works on a higher place she couldn’t reach, but unless he stripped the entire shelf, she’d surely find at least one he missed. Admittedly, he had the selfish desire to have someone other than him enjoy such works.
He starts to reach for the Canvas, then stops, turning back toward Clea and moving her unextended arm to see one additional, open book still lying on her. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
He chuckles quietly. “Good choice,” he says, then reaches out his hand toward the Canvas, blinking twice, a consumption of darkness so familiar to him he barely acknowledges it anymore.
Despite Clea’s youth, her Chroma is already quite strong. He can feel it as he passes through the purgatory between the real world and the Canvas, a void of gold and black, then steps into the world beyond. Said world happens to be a wet cobblestone street, desaturated and grim, a sharp chill in the air.
It’s London, and a recognizable rendition of it, at that. Though, there’s a notable darkness to his daughter’s vision that is far closer to the imagery in a novel, the buildings’ gothic architecture exaggerated, windows looking like scowling faces, trees with gnarled branches like claws, a howling wind sounding like the wail of an anguished ghost. It has the same child-like hyperbole as Verso’s first Canvas, though hers is much more…melancholic.
He takes two steps, then a lamp suddenly flicks on, accompanied by the resonant, silvery sound of a bell. It’s floating in the air by the archway leading to a graveyard, and he realizes there’s a trail of the little lamps. He follows it, each light flicking on as he passes, illuminating the damp darkness of the scene. He reaches the door of a cathedral, the gargoyles all glaring at his approach.
Beyond the door, he can hear giggling he could mistake for no other. It’s paired with sounds of wisping Chroma. He thinks about knocking, but considering she’s been ignoring him, he decides to just let himself in.
A nave soaked in pale moonlight lies beyond, though there are no pews, nor any altar below the central, circular window. Instead, the place is mocked up like a laboratory, strange devices pushed up against the walls and wires all over the floors, beakers full of bubbling liquids despite having no burners beneath them, piles of books stacked in any open space. It’s a well-done rendition of a maniacal scientist’s lair, though it has the hallmarks of a child’s exaggeration.
What has zero juvenile whimsy is the massive pile of flesh at the center of the room.
“Papa! I’m in the middle of delicate experimentation!”
Renoir tears his eyes from the flesh pile, fixating on an elevated precipice where a priest would normally deliver sermons. Clea has hopped to the top of the pulpit, wearing a long white coat and comically magnified goggles that make her grey eyes look like the size of saucers. She removes them, pushing them to the crown of her dark-haired head, her hands covered in black rubber gloves. She’s giving him a searing gaze, though Renoir cannot help but think she looks more adorable than menacing.
“Am I now?” He crosses his arms, “and may I ask why you decided to conduct your delicate experiments in the middle of the night?”
She scoffs, flipping some of her hair back over her shoulder and crossing her own arms. “Aesthetic.”
He blinks. “…Aesthetic?”
“Of course! You expect me to make monsters in the broad light of day, where God can judge my sinful soul for daring to defy his life’s work?” Her voice echoes loud in the vacuous church, waving her hand dismissively. “No, I belong here, in the treacherous…uh…cloister of the night!” She turns her hand over her forehead as if she’ll faint from the drama of it all, momentarily ducking behind the shield of the pulpit before hopping back up.
“That was flawless, wasn’t it?” She asks in a much more neutral tone. At twelve years old, she’s just starting to manage the more formal tone of a young lady.
“I think you’ve been reading a lot of Frankenstein.” Renoir replies, then immediately finds the answer inadequate. Who is he to judge the artistic process? He himself finds it easier to paint certain works under even more certain circumstances, as if the world around him feeds his inspiration. His eyes draw back to what he’d originally been fixated on – the pile of flesh and limbs in the center of the room.
Clea notices, and a stricken look crosses her face, all dramatic pretense gone.
“Don’t tell Maman.” Her voice is a bit smaller, “I was just thinking –”
“Why is it only arms?”
His daughter flinches, but soon after, a look of surprise crosses her features. “Huh?”
“I’m asking why your creature is only arms. And hands.” Renoir repeats, lifting a hand to rub his chin, the other resting on his opposite bicep, as if he’s considering the construction of a sculpture. He is doing that, in a sense. “I..presume this is meant to be a creature, yes?”
Some years ago, when Clea was only a baby, Renoir had taken to painting his night terrors. Aline had not been keen on the idea. The Painter’s Council was still in its infancy, but all members had agreed that Painting living creatures was and is, on a broad scale, not allowed. It would be hypocritical if the husband of the Council’s head went against that policy. But, the basis of such a rule is rooted in an ethical dilemma – is it not cruel to act as God, and create something with a consciousness, who can think and feel and love and hate? Humans, certainly. Other creatures? Renoir does not see them as equivalent. With careful control, any breathing entity created by him is no more sentient than flowers bending toward the sun, a shrike stabbing flies into thorns. A singular mind, for one purpose.
No one judged any God they believed in for doing the same.
Besides, a Canvas only moves when there is a Painter in it. The creatures he creates are no more three dimensional than the strokes of color they’re made of. With temperance and discipline, one can explore life without stepping too far over the line of what is and isn’t cruel. All this considered, he’s certain Aline would prefer Clea to make less…terrifying creatures. Renoir stands to disagree. Fright is an unsung melody, an intoxicating terror, safely felt in the walls of the Canvas, where death is only a word. He’d rather encourage everything, so none of their children fear seeking guidance.
Clea’s previous, embarrassed expression is replaced wholly with delight. “Let me show you!” She runs down the little steps of the pulpit, practically tripping on herself as she rushes to him. When she’s by his side, she straightens quickly, smoothing out her skirts and gesturing to the lump of arms and hands as if it were a recently carved statue.
“I was reading Frankenstein,” she says, “and I thought it was odd that Victor decided to make a boring human with all those body parts. It took him forever, and then he hated what he made, which is even more stupid. Why would you do all that and then just run away like a baby? Stupid boys. Verso has a better temperament, and he’s a child like me.”
“Anyway, he had to get all the parts to make a full human, but it made me wonder if you can just make a creature out of lots of a single part.” She gestures more grandly to the pile. “So I thought – what if you had something that was only arms and hands? Like an octopus with thumbs!” She lifts her hands and wiggles her fingers, the rubber gloves on her hands squeaking.
“I see.” Renoir nods, as if her explanation is the most sound and logical thing he’s heard. He approaches the pile, kneeling down and poking one of the large, grey hands of the creature. It does not respond to his touch, the flesh as cold and rigored as a corpse. All the arms appear connected at their ends, a dark cloak thrown over where they do to conceal them. Only a few of the arms have correct anatomy, the rest too long, too muscular, bent in uncanny ways. One is completely skeletal, made of golden light that pulses dully. Clea has always been impatient with anatomical study, bored of drawing the same human parts over and over until she gets them right. She does it regardless, and does it well, but under duress.
He senses Clea watching his back. He turns, seeing her stony expression, awaiting judgement.
“Quite the monstrosity. I have heard many ghost stories of disembodied hands pulling victims into rivers to drown, or graves to suffocate in. The anatomy is poor, but I imagine that was the point, yes?” Renoir says, getting to his feet and eyeing her. “But, it doesn’t move.”
She huffs out a breath, briefly elated by the compliment but soon disappointed again, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout as she crosses her arms. “I don’t know how.” She kicks one of the wires on the ground. “I keep telling it to move, but the Chroma won’t listen.”
“The Chroma always listens,” Renoir says, moving back to her side and setting a hand on her shoulder, crouching down to her height. “You merely have to practice. When you try to get it to move, what happens?”
Clea turns toward him, but averts her eyes, for a moment not saying anything.
“Clea.” He presses.
“Can’t you make it move for me?” She asks, hopeful. “I can watch you and see what you do!”
He shakes his head. “This isn’t like watching me draw, honey. You have to find it within yourself. Painting is…very personal. Even if you mimicked exactly what I do, it would not be yours, so it would never work.”
“Verso made creatures without even trying! And they can talk!” This is clearly a sore spot for her, despite Clea’s skill in general already surpassing Verso’s by notable margin.
Renoir hums. “Well, Verso has a very active imagination, and he based Esquie off of one of his toys, the Gestrals are like the anatomical dolls I gave you both for practice. He used them as inspiration. Art is –”
“ – a reflection of the soul, I know, I know.” She bats his hand off her shoulder, though there isn’t much force behind it. Turning toward the arm creature, she scowls, as if it has done something maliciously petty to her.
She suddenly kicks its motionless hand, her own arching wide with greenish light. “Move!”
The creature does not move.
“Young lady,” Renoir sets his hands on his hips, eyeing her more sternly. “That is no way to treat your creation. You would not be keen if I kicked you to get you to move, would you?”
“Come on, Papa! You destroy creatures all the time in your Canvases!” She whines out the words, stomping her foot. “It’s not like it can feel anything.”
His look doesn’t relent, even if her tantrum-adjacent tone tries to persuade him otherwise. “The creatures in my Canvases are Painted with a purpose. When they’re destroyed, they can be Painted back.” Sometimes, they destroy me. He doesn’t say that part.
“What is that supposed to –” Clea stops herself, her eyes brightening. “A purpose!”
She runs off, completely out of the cathedral. When she returns, she’s dragging one of the lanterns behind her. Despite the heavy, wrought-iron make, she’s moving it like it is weightless. Dropping it on its side, she moves one of the massive arms of the creature, closing its stiff fingers around the top handle of the lamp.
“Papa! Quick! Paint a lamppost!” She points to one of the far arms as she runs around to the opposite end. When he doesn’t immediately move, she groans, running back and pressing her hands to his chest, pushing him. “Come on, go! Go!”
“Okay! Okay!” He can’t help but laugh, shifting and moving to the arm she’d pointed out. He’s used this exact strategy to help his children draw their own conclusions, figure out their own solutions. Painting is felt as much as it’s done, and simply saying the right words can spark the brilliance he knows lies in them. Kneeling by one of the unwieldy limbs, he Paints an iron lamppost, the end meant for the ground a long spike. He ushers it into one of the many hands. As he does, he feels a flurry of Paint strokes, looking up to see Clea balancing more lanterns in the remaining hands, leaving six still empty.
She runs back up to the pulpit, climbing right on top of the edge and splaying her arms out. “Creature! You now have a purpose!” Her hands glow a vibrant green, Chroma gathering in her palms, then culminating around the pile. “You will now awaken, Lampmaster!”
A strike of lightning passes by the center window, a burst of thunder as brilliant light flashes around the creature. Then, with slow, heavy movements, the arms twitch, then shift, then suddenly lurch upward. The golden, skeletal arm, along with one of the longest flesh ones and the end of the lamppost, pushes against the cathedral floor, using it as a steady surface to push itself into the air, where it floats without any apparent wings. Golden tendrils spread from its back, the torn, black cloak obscuring whatever mechanism of flesh holds the arms together. All of its fingers drum along the lamp handles, the shaft of the lamppost, as if getting a feel for them. The lanterns click and clang in response, the flames within flickering different colors. For arms stay cloistered together, folding and unfolding, the heels of their hands in constant contact, forming a flower face where a mouth might be.
Clea laughs, clapping her rubber gloved hands. “I did it! It’s alive!”
Renoir marvels at the creature, despite the jerkiness of its, the uncanny nature of its form. There is something captivating in the horrifying nature of it, just as he could not tear his eyes away from a burning forest, a sea of blood, a ruinous storm. Perhaps that’s why he’s always enjoyed novels that explore such darkness. The creature continues to play with the lantern lights, then shifts its form toward Clea. It has no eyes, but the way it tilts its body suggests it has some manner of perception. It’s flowered, central hands move toward her, bending their fingers in odd ways.
Clea’s smile does not shed. If anything, it grows, reaching out and grasping one of the hands’ fingers. The creature stiffens, then one of the empty arms at its back lurches forward, snatching her straight up into the air.
“Clea!” Panic overtakes Renoir’s heart for a brief moment, two long strides taken toward the creature, a sword forming in his hand out of pure instinct. But his daughter is laughing, for she sits in the creature’s palm, swinging her legs between its parted fingers. It tosses her gently in the air and catches her, much to her delight.
“Look Papa! It’s playing!” She manages the words out through her giggles, landing on her back on the palm of the creature’s hand. She rolls over, eyes full of mischief, pointing at him. “Lampmaster! Pick Papa up too!”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary –” His protestation is swiftly cut off as the flying creature’s longest limb sweeps him up, though he’s much too tall to toss about like Clea. The creature’s flesh is still cold and stone-like, which he feels as he awkwardly turns his body to lie more comfortably in its grip. It moves its fingers to try and help, but it does little more than make the process slower. He manages to right himself, sitting on the creature’s palm, using one of its fingers to balance himself. Clea, of course, is relentlessly giggling through the whole process.
“There, graceful as always.” He says, though his hair tells an entirely different story. The creature makes some sort of resonant, huffing series of noises. Renoir squints, pointing to its revolving palms. “It’s laughing at me.”
“Because you were rolling around like a worm!” Clea says breathlessly, the corners of her eyes full of laugh-lined tears, then pats the creature. “Lampmaster, can you fly us out to the graveyard?”
“Wait –” Renoir has to brace an arm around the creature’s bent finger as it surges forward, flying out the open cathedral doors, having to use its open hands to shift its much larger body outside. He imagines anyone who would be standing outside, if any of this was real, would be absolutely terrified at the pale hands gripping the threshold, the clattering of shaking lamps, the guttural noises of the mouthless monstrosity.
The creature slows its hover over the graveyard, then floats to the nearest lamppost, tapping it with its own. The flame comes alive within.
“Lampmaster lights the lanterns at night!” Clea informs from her bobbing seat across from him. “So the graveyard isn’t as spooky. Oh, and they help anyone who’s lost by lighting the way back to the gate.”
“That is…quite a kind purpose for how it looks.” Renoir remarks, watching the eerie creature light every lantern with impossible gentleness.
Clea shrugs her shoulders. “Lot’s of things look scary even though they’re kind,” she says, then a beat passes. “Adam is nice. If Victor Frankenstein wasn’t such a dummy and talked to him, he’d know that, but instead he ran away from him. That wasn’t very nice, even if he looked normal.”
“Monsters aren’t limited by how they appear.” Renoir says, his lips pressing in a thin line. “Men and monsters can be one and the same.”
“It’s usually men.” Clea mumbles, then falls silent, her expression far away, deep in thought. Renoir says nothing, now finding reasonable balance on the hand of the creature. Eventually, his daughter taps the Lampmaster, having it set her and her father down by the graveyard gate. Soon after, the young girl tilts her head looking up to the creature, then waves her hand, a long, curved sword appearing on its back. The Lampmaster taps at it, then closes a hand around the handle, drawing the blade halfway out before returning it.
“Just in case any grave robbers show up,” Clea explains before Renoir can ask. “Grave robbers are vile. At least I made the parts from nothing. I wouldn’t want my parts taken and used by someone without asking.”
The creature makes a soft noise of wonder, lowering an empty hand and patting Clea gently on the head. It regards Renoir with a nod, which is more the slight lurch of its own body before it floats away, tending to the lanterns once more.
“I think I’m ready to leave now,” Clea says quietly, her face still far off. She waves her hand, a small portal appearing, and she steps through it. Renoir looks beyond at the floating creature before he, too, disappears from the Canvas.
Madeline isn’t even back from the kitchen when they return, only a handful of seconds having passed. Clea shifts where she lays, wincing and rubbing her eyes, a pout forming on her lips. “Everything is grey.”
“That can happen.” Renoir says, setting a hand on her shoulder with a soft smile. “It should clear by the time you wake up in the morning. You ought to be sleeping, you know.”
“But I’m not tired,” she says, yawning.
“As you say,” he says with a chuckle, eyes drawing away and picking up the copy of Frankenstein that slipped out of Clea’s lap when she shifted. It’s in the middle of the twentieth chapter, when Victor Frankenstein and Adam argue about the creation of Adam’s wife.
Clea shifts beside him, snaking her way over to duck under his arm, leaning on his shoulder. “Will you read it to me, Papa?”
Renoir’s eyes soften. He reads to Alicia, who’s only two years old and barely understands the words, but it always manages to put her to sleep. Clea stopped asking when she was eight or so, and Verso has so little trouble sleeping he’s convinced it’s one of his son’s favorite pastimes. He senses a surprising melancholy in Clea’s eyes, but it’s not the type that asks for any intervention. Wherever her mind is, it’s a place he ought not ask to enter. A young lady, so easily making monsters from delicate hands, surely thinks in spirals only she can follow.
So, he shifts himself so his daughter can lean more easily against him, the book propped so she can see the words as he reads.
“I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery.”
Renoir feels his daughter’s weight grow heavier on his shoulder, her breathing steady, her eyes slowly shutting. He wonders if what he reads turns in her mind like whatever waves she floats on without him.
“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”