※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
"Up! Up! Down, up!"
I grunted and flailed and hung myself around the jungle gym Androk had built today. The rains were pouring down only a few hours earlier, and the muck and leaves stuck to the wooden surfaces. The thing creaked every time I moved, or happen to breathe near the damn thing.
"This is not art," I gasped.
"Art does not come from weak wrists!" she replied, lighting a cigarette under the shade of a tree. "It comes from determination!"
She was seated cross-legged on a boulder, arms folded beneath her greatcoat, the axe resting behind her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. A half-full thermos sat beside her, labeled in black marker: MY-JUICE. DO NOT TOUCH. I had touched it earlier. She had found out, and so, I imagine this was my punishment.
I swung upward. My knees trembled. My back screamed.
"Why are we doing this again?" I wheezed.
"Because art is expression. And expression comes from lungs that do not collapse when they're asked to work! Expression comes from persistence, boy! What are you going to do when someone challenges all the things you work for? When governments come in and toss your artworks away and your identity right with it? You gotta be a fighter and a lover, an artist and an artpiece of sorts!"
"That sounds ridiculous," I muttered under my breath.
"Ain't nothing ridiculous about it."
She stood, cracked her knuckles, and pointed to a patch of dirt. "Situps. Then lunch."
I flopped into the grass and stared at the sky. There were clouds up there. Beautiful clouds, making shapes of letters, trying to put themselves in a line, a poem of sorts I wasn't smart enough to read.
She let me rest. A minute. Maybe two. It was more like an hour, but I digress.
Then she sat beside me and tapped the ground with the butt of her axe.
"You asked what it means to make some real art, boy." she said. "I tell you: survive first. Survival is necessary for art. If you can't defend yourself, all meaning will be stripped from you and your works."
"That's your idea of a first art lesson?" I squawked.
"No, boy. That's what'd-ja-ma-call-it. The fucken, uh, prologue."
She leaned back. Her coat shifted, revealing an old sigil carved into her bracer- worn, almost erased. Something circular. A wheel of teeth.
"Real lessons comes in threes," she said. "My old lady's old man taught me that."
I turned to face her.
She looked forward, into the wind. One finger up. You'll never guess which.
"There are no guarantees."
She let it hang. The wind moved through the grass. A second finger.
"It's an imperfect world."
A pause. And a third.
"And they'll figure it out."
I blinked. "None of those sound like lessons."
I waited. Then: "Wait, who's 'they'?"
She shrugged. "Fuck it. It's all mesh-bish. Mettabizz. Figure it out."
We sat in silence. My cheeks had been puffed at her inebriation.
Then I reached up and grabbed the bar again.
She didn't smile, but her eyes narrowed just enough to mean she approved.
"Up," she said again.
So I went up.
. . .
I sat on a worn flat stone, watching Androktasai carve the roots. Her knife was dull and still it sliced clean. She moved with that same casual brutality she used on the jungle gym, like everything was just another version of careful, methodical slaughter.
The skillet hissed. She dropped the oil in slow. With her free hand, she stirred a pot of lentils and flicked her cigarette ash away from the flame. I wonder why we're eating out here, and not the comfortable, warm dining room.
"You cut them," she said without looking at me, "Shave them, so they'll cook even."
She handed me a tuber. I took the knife and tried to copy the way she held it. My fingers bent in weird angles. The blade stuck halfway through, and didn't move.
Androk didn't correct me. She just watched.
"Careful," she said. "Don't cut your hands."
I stared at her. The knife slipped from its chunky cut. She caught it before it could hit the dirt.
The wind carried the smell of frying greens and something smoky I didn't recognize. I rubbed my palm, embarrassed.
"You ever mess this up?" I asked.
She didn't blink. "All the time. It's your first try, kid. Be lenient on yourself."
She handed me a handful of dried herbs. "Throw those in. Toss them in clockwise."
"Why clockwise?"
"No reason. Looks cool, I guess."
I did it anyway. It did look kind of cool.
The silence stretched. The fire popped again.
In the act of silence, I looked over to her.
She didn't meet my eyes. She just kept stirring.
I didn't know what to say. So I sprinkled the last of the spices, stirred once, and sat beside her until the food smelled done.
Mom handed me a bowl. I didn't realize how hungry I was until I tasted it.
We didn't say anything after that.
I suppose we didn't need to. . . but I think I'd have liked it if we did.
. . .
Dinner was finished. The bowl sat on my knees, empty, still warm.
Androk leaned back against the stone, one boot dug into the dirt, the other half-laced and pointed at the fire. Her cloak had been thrown aside, the sleeve folded over her knee like it weighed more than it should.
She stared into the coals, not like she was thinking, but like she was remembering something that didn't belong to her anymore.
I waited.
She didn't look at me.
"Has anyone ever told you about Etoria?"
Her fingers flexed once, resting on her knee. She didn't pick up the axe behind her.
Another pause. A longer one. I shook my head.
She turned to me, and grinned.
"It's a beautiful place. Used to be an artist's haven. Not. . . really sure if it is anymore."
I shifted in place. My fingers found the edge of my sketchbook.
"I want to draw you," I said, before I could think of a better thing to say.
She glanced sideways, just a flick of the eye.
"Eh? Then go ahead and try. Fuck you need my permission for?"
I opened the book. The pencil was blunt, worn down to a stub. Still, I dragged it across the page, trying to follow the slope of her jaw, the bend of her shoulders, the quiet violence in how she sat still.
The first stroke was too hard. The second was worse.
She reached behind her, cracked her neck once, then stared back into the fire.
"You'll want to catch the mouth," she muttered. "I have a rough mouth, I think."
I adjusted the line. Tried again. The page began to smudge. My hands were shaking. What the hell is a rough mouth? How do I draw a rough mouth?
The fire hissed. I just tried to copy what was sitting in front of me.
"I never got a good portrait," she said. "I'd like a good one. Maybe for the fridge."
That made her laugh, a little. Quiet. I didn't laugh back, but my shoulders softened.
I kept drawing.
At some point the wind shifted, and she pulled her cloak back over one shoulder. Her breath fogged slightly in the cold.
My sketch was wrong. Her eyes weren't right. Her hands looked too kind when I drew them soft and too ruthless when I drew them rough.
Still, she looked down at it once when I was done. Just once.
"What's that?"
She pointed to the scribbled space on her drawn head.
"It's a crown."
"A crown? What for?"
"I just think it looks nice."
Androk laughed.
The fire was down to embers. Within an hour, she had gone to sleep sitting up, back to the stone, arms crossed over her chest. This section was fenced in, and she affirmed to me that it should be fine to fall asleep in, but I wasn't too sure how comfortable or safe my heart felt.
The axe rested beside her, blade pointed away. She didn't snore. She didn't shift. Just breathed, steady and precise, as if even her dreams followed discipline.
I laid back on the folded coat she'd thrown at me earlier. I should've been asleep, too. But the sketch was still in my hands, and it wouldn't let me.
I looked at her on the page.
The shape of her jaw was too clean. The lines around her mouth weren't deep enough. I'd missed the way her left shoulder always sat higher, like she was bracing for a blow no one had thrown in years.
I stared at it until my eyes watered. Then I turned the page.
On the blank sheet, I began again.
Slower this time.
Harsher.
I didn't try to make it beautiful. I just tried to make it true, rather than idyllicized. I drew the fray in her cloak hem. I drew her mouth closed but heavy, and I still had no idea what a rough mouth meant. I drew the shadows of the tree behind her and left them undefined, but I put them there in some inexplicable way.
When I finished, the fire was almost out.
I left the page open.
I slept with the book on my chest.
. . .
In the morning, she was gone.
The fire had been rekindled. A small kettle hung from a makeshift hook, steam rising from its spout in thin silver threads. My coat had been placed over my legs. A piece of bread, still warm, waited on a plate of dark clay.
The sketchbook was beside it. Open to the page I'd drawn.
Someone had written in the margin.
The handwriting was sharp and straight, carved in pressure.
"This is pretty good!"
Below the words drawn in red pencil, was two figures etched in small marks:
A tiny axe, and a grinning chibi figure with a thumbs up.
I touched it once. Closed the book.
A breeze moved through the camp. I smelled coffee.
And then I collapsed.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※