Page 44 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

Clara supposed painting the uninspiring table scene was still better than dusting or fetching fish from the market. Swallowing her pride, she set to work, studying the way the light played off the surface of the cheese. The more she looked, themore she began to realize there was no one point where the colors shifted; rather, it was a gradual leeching. Each grape was as brilliant as a star, a thousand glimmers shining back at her. She wondered if this was how the mundane objects she had always taken for granted had looked to Maurits. His collection of spoons and glass and baubles did not seem so frivolous now. The thought of him as a child collecting and hiding his little treasures threatened to shatter her concentration. She shook the thoughts loose. How to capture such ephemeral qualities that seemed to shift with each passing cloud out the window? Alida never used white paint. “Everything has a color,” she’d told Clara. “What looks white is merely the palest shade of another color. Paint what you see, not what you think something ought to look like.” So Clara played with the green instead, and tried not to think about how it was the same color as a certain pair of eyes that still haunted her dreams.

Light was fading from afternoon gold into deep orange, and her painting time would soon be over. A light supper needed to be prepared, and all of the work that Clara postponed while she painted finally seen to. Alida had been balancing her account book, but came to look at her work. Clara bit at her lip until she tasted the tang of blood, awaiting her verdict.

Finally stepping back, Alida put her hands on her hips. “It’s good,” she said, her face still blank. “Very good.”

“But?”

“You’ll be wanting to paint your nautical scenes again tomorrow, and you’ve used all my blue verditer on the violence of your waves,” Alida said, though the small tug at her lips told Clara that she wasn’t all displeased. “Go fetch some more, and then visit the vintner and we’ll sup on our subject.”

The crisp fall air on her cheeks was refreshing after being in the studio all day. Painting had given Clara a new set of eyes. The city was full of inspiration, every brick, every cobble, a palette of colors and light. The turquoise blue sign that swungover the luthier’s shop, the gleeful face of a child nicking a hot roll from a cart and darting around a corner. People of all colors and modes of dress, speaking in tongues from near and far. It was all so different from anything she had ever known. All those times in Wierenslot she had grown tired of walking the grounds, the endless fens—there had been beauty there, just waiting for her to see it, and she had been too preoccupied with her own narrow view of the world. Never again would she know the green of the grass, or the light on the canal on a golden afternoon. Eventually her memories would fade, and then what would she have? Alida would say that she should paint what she saw, but Clara knew that she had to paint her memories, before they were lost.

In the shop, she used Alida’s credit for purchasing the coveted blue verditer, then used her own small earnings to buy pigments that would create the Wadden Sea and the poplar trees that lined the roads. On impulse, she had the shopkeeper add some umber and vermillion she could mix to create a head of hair of rich auburn. Walking back, Clara imagined herself an ordinary girl who had never known the horrors of the flood, or the magic of the world beneath the water. Everyone in Amsterdam went about their business as if nothing was amiss, as if there was not a world full of dark magic and strange creatures. Did they not know that an entire city was gone in the north? Did they not know of the deal that had been struck all those years ago? Had every parent practiced a great deception on their children?

A sharp gust of wind sent dry leaves dancing over the cobbles, and a chill raced down her spine. It had grown late before she’d realized how long she had been out. The sun, which was casting such alluring rays on the canal, would soon be sinking lower, leaving the city shadowed and vulnerable.

She had only turned for a moment when she heard the soft sound of water splashing behind her. “Clara.”

The basket fell from Clara’s hands as she spun around, sending the pigments and brushes scattering across the cobbles and into the canal.

“Clara.” Maurits extended a hand, a soft smile touching his lips. “I’ve returned. For you.”

He might as well have been a ghost come back from the dead. She had never really expected to see him again, and now her mind raced to make sense of the fact that he was here, truly here. He was taller than she remembered, his eyes lighter and lacking that playful intelligence that had first drawn her to him. There was a restless energy about him, his finger tapping a rapid tattoo against his thigh. But he was handsome and graceful as he stood in a small skiff, his other hand still extended toward her. The moment drew out as she raced to reconcile the fluttering in her stomach with the anger that still clouded her heart.

A small notch formed in between his brows. “Come now, I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but surely you are still glad to see me?”

She backed up, bumping into a hitching post. Only a few other people were about on the street, hurrying this way and that as the evening closed in. Did no one else notice him? Couldn’t they tell that he was not of their world? But no one paid any mind to her and her upturned basket, nor the strange young man in the boat, confusion and expectation on his handsome features.

“You abandoned me,” she said, gathering her courage. “I will not submit to your whims again, taking me and leaving me as you please. I have lost everything.”

His eyes grew bright, her words, though harsh, an invitation for him to continue. “This will be the last time, I swear it. But there is something below that I must show you.”

She shook her head. “Let me be.” At home, Alida would be slicing up the cheese with some bread, setting out theglasses for wine. There would be a warm fire, and they would talk and laugh as they watched Puss scurry after the mice that were forever outwitting her.

But Maurits did not leave, and his pleading look turned stormy. “Clara,” he said, deep authority in his voice. “Clara, you must come. It is for your safety, and because... because, I love you.”

A traitorous part of her heart leapt at his admission. He was still handsome and alluring and promised her adventures the likes of which she could not even dream of. But she was not the same desperately bored girl who had first thrilled at his attention at Wierenslot. Putting her head down, she began walking, plowing a path through the unbothered traffic of the street. She had to get away from him before the girlish fancies she thought she had left behind in Friesland returned and led her straight back into trouble.

“I have Pim.”

His words stopped her like a musket leveled at her chest. Slowly, she turned.

Seeing that he had captured her interest, Maurits hoisted himself up on the edge of the canal, graceful and swift. “I went back and found him. He was cold, a little scared, but he is well. Won’t you come, if not for me, for your loyal friend?”

She crept a little closer, regarding him. She missed her dog, desperately. Pim was a link to her old life, the last friend that she had left. Perhaps the only one she had truly ever had. “Why did you not just bring him here? Why is he in the water with you?”

“For his safety,” Maurits told her without hesitation. “My mother knows how special he is to you. I could not risk leaving him somewhere she might find him, and having her use him to lure you to her.”

“And the water is safer?”

“The grotto is. It is the one place that she does not know about.”

Clara’s shoe tapped nervously on the muddy cobblestone. “If I come with you, will you allow me to return, with Pim?”

Maurits looked hurt. “Of course, Clara. You are not a prisoner. I only want to reunite you with your friend. I would be lying if I said that I did not want you to stay with me, but I understand that I have betrayed your trust, hurt you irreparably.”

The sun hung low on the horizon behind the curling smoke of the chimneys of Amsterdam. Alida would be wondering where Clara had gotten to. But Clara would go and return quickly. Alida would be there when she got back, and had never begrudged Clara her personal errands before. “Very well,” she said, placing her hand in his cold grip.

For all the finality of their parting, she had imagined what a reunion might look like a thousand times over. He would come upon her happy and blooming, and he would see how little she needed him. He would fall on his knees, beg her forgiveness. She, of course, would accept, but only because Christian charity demanded it. She would remain cool and aloof, and he would know how deeply he had erred. If she had also imagined how it might feel to once again be wrapped in his embrace or taste his lips, well, she was human after all.

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