Painting the Sky [2]

Vaska added a new flourish of paints to the canvas, grays and whites and dark greens and a little purple, and these colors conspired to depict the mountains south of Taisia in a clearing between two winter storms. She asked Ingrid to pose naked and Ingrid made the same deal as before. And once they were both naked, as before, they were sucked together like magnets into the softness and heat of Vaska's bed.

A little later they dressed up in lacy undergarments, Ingrid in pale blue and Vaska in pale magenta. The spicy things hid little and they revealed much and they framed the important bits. They served to draw the eye and accentuate. Ingrid and Vaska just sat there looking at each other, two pieces of fine art each capable of perceiving the other, lost in the madness of love and lust and gentle touch.

Still later Vaska sat in bed in her lacy underwear and she rifled through an old leather-bound book. Ingrid watched. Vaska seemed to have found something significant because she showed the page to Ingrid. It was a page printed with a block-cut illustration of a familiar place. The inside of House Varelion, rendered in black against the yellowing pages of Vaska's book. It was the dais where Ingrid's father, Old King Varelion, ruled Taisia in the days before he was deposed.

"When the armies of the Federation of Kanti arrived in the Taisia region they occupied the southern half of the continent," Vaska said. "Their name for the region was 'Ayaru' and that was the name they gave to the land they controlled after my father's armies arrived to liberate your family. My father condemned Old King Varelion to death. Diplomats from Kanti were allowed to witness the hanging and without cause to attack my father Kanti missed out on the opportunity to occupy the entire region.

"That's why there is a divide between Taisia and Ayaru now. But the government in Jelka doesn't even recognize that Taisia exists. They consider Taisians to be sub-human. The armies of Kanti slaughtered the men and they raped the women and now the southern half of the continent is entirely populated by the diaspora from Kanti and the lower caste of half-breed children. This was the fate that my father spared the people in the north."

"Then I should like to thank your father. I saw him once, you know."

"Yeah?"

"In that hall in the picture. He was sitting on the throne surrounded by his whole family. Come to think of it, one of the girls was my age and I think we went outside..."

"And we watched the birds play in the fountain!"

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"Yes! That was you?"

"It was. I remember that. We were destined to be together, Ingrid. The universe conspired to bring us back together after all these years."

"What would you have done if one of my many sisters said Yes?"

"She would not have, because that is not what the universe wanted."

"Why did my father have so many children?"

"He wanted to spread the Varelion curse as much as possible."

"I don't understand the curse at all. Father never told any of us how we were cursed or why. We just knew that it was impossible to lie."

"I think he used the same thing that cursed me."

"You are not really cursed with bad luck."

"Yes I am. Look. I'll show you something I've never shown anyone else before."

Ingrid eyed Vaska's body, barely clothed in lacy undergarments designed to hide nothing.

"Besides my tits," Vaska said. "Do you promise you will not be frightened?"

"How will I know if I will be frightened?"

"Good point. I warn you, it is very frightening but you need to be brave. She cannot hurt you. Not unless you lie and that's not possible."

"I will be brave," Ingrid promised.

"Firstborn of Ashe. Show yourself!"

The room seemed to darken, the shadows stretching and morphing together. Yes, Ingrid was not just seeing that. The shadows were actually moving in the room, gathering, coalescing in the center of the room beyond the edge of the bed. A pale hand reached up from some nether world and grasped at nothing before slamming down on the steel floor of Vaska's room. Ingrid screamed.

"She can't hurt you," Vaska said. She held Ingrid to comfort her.

A second arm flung itself up out of that misweave in reality. Then a head crowned with raven-black hair, eyes shrouded behind a crown-mask of shining silver, a face so pale and filled with madness that Ingrid was absolutely certain that she was about to die. Her heart thumped in her chest.

It was a child. She wore a pale dress which was tattered, revealing ghostly, translucent skin beneath. She was barefoot and she floated just above the floor with her feet dangling and her raven-black hair was so long that it reached down past her toes and almost scraped the floor. In one hand she held a dagger that bled oily black blood which dissolved in the air like some high alpine waterfall too high for the water to remain liquid on the descent. She saw Ingrid somehow even though her eyes were beyond that silvery prison and she smiled a wicked smile.

"What is that thing?" Ingrid asked, terrified.

"This is Erika. She is a dark elemental. In fact she is the most powerful dark elemental. The First High Daughter of the Queen of Darkness."

"I have no sisters," the elemental said. "Mother is lost. I must find my mother."

"Erika," Vaska said. "Did you curse the Varelion family?"

"Yes. I cursed them to only speak truth. Mother made a mistake. This curse forced me to draw upon the light half of the divine power, something which mother forbade me. And yet it happened. I do not know why. It must be a mistake."

"Make her go away," Ingrid said.

Erika vanished in a puff of black smoke and light returned to the room. Vaska continued to comfort Ingrid and whisper in her ear and hold her until Ingrid fell asleep in her arms.