13.2

 

The artist returned to the third painting and stood silently, his back to them, his posture unnervingly still. Roisin had the strange sensation that if she blinked, he might vanish — not walk away, not slip into another room, but simply cease to be visible, like a figure in a dream that dissolves when the dreamer wakes.

The assistant leaned closer, her voice barely a breath. “He’s calmer tonight.”

Roisin stared at her. Calmer?

This was calm?

The assistant’s eyes flicked toward the painting. “Sometimes he… reacts. When the changes are too strong.”

Roisin swallowed. “What does that mean?”

The assistant didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. The gallery answered for her.

A faint ripple passed through the air — not a sound, not a movement, but a shift in pressure, like the room inhaling. The emergency lights flickered. The shadows along the walls lengthened, stretching toward the centre of the room.

The artist lifted his hand again.

This time, the painting responded visibly. Within the image the wings — half‑formed, half‑broken — shivered. The colours deepened, the shadows sharpened, the highlights brightened into something almost metallic. Roisin felt the vibration again, stronger now, like a low hum resonating through her bones.

The assistant whispered, “Don’t stare at him.”

Roisin tore her gaze away, heart pounding.

The artist spoke. Not loudly. Not clearly. But with a soft, rhythmic cadence, as though reciting a nursery rhyme in a language she she’d never heard before, but evoked a feeling in her that she half‑remembered it, but not from the woman she called her mother, but the one from long ago, before the orphanage. Before she had to grow up so swiftly. She couldn’t make out the words. They were too quiet, too blurred by the acoustics of the room. But the tone — the tone was unmistakable. It was neither prayer nor command, but soothing, like a mother’s song to a mithering child.

The assistant closed the distance between their heads and murmured: “He’s trying to settle it.”

Roisin’s breath trembled. “Settle what?”

“The change.”

The artist’s voice grew softer still, almost inaudible. The painting’s colours shifted between red and purple, passing through more variations of the two than Roising could have named if she held the Pantone chart in front of her. Like a dragonfly’s wings at sunset, they colours pulsed one final time, then steadied into the darker hues of crimson and Prussian blue. The image of the wings folded inward like a pigeon settling after being startled by a cat. Now they looked like the curve of a rib, or the arching backbone of a whale seen from beneath.

The assistant exhaled shakily. “Good. Good. That’s good.”

Roisin stared at her. “You talk like it’s alive.”

The assistant didn’t look away from the painting. “I don’t think it’s alive. I think it’s… aware.”

Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Aware of what?”

“Of him,” the assistant whispered. “Of us. Of itself.”

The artist lowered his hand.

He turned.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

His gaze settled on Roisin again.

This time, he didn’t approach. He simply watched her, his expression unreadable. The assistant bowed her head again, but Roisin couldn’t move. She felt pinned in place, as though the air around her had thickened.

The artist took a single step toward them.

The assistant whispered, “Don’t speak.”

Roisin didn’t.

The artist’s voice, when it came, was soft and even — but threaded with something that made her skin prickle.

“You came back.”

Roisin’s breath caught. He wasn’t asking. He was stating a fact.

The assistant’s grip tightened painfully around her hand.

The artist tilted his head slightly, studying Roisin with the same eerie stillness he’d shown the painting. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Roisin swallowed. “Why?”

The assistant flinched.

The artist’s expression didn’t change. “Because you see too much.”

Roisin felt her pulse quicken. “I don’t understand.”

“You do,” he said quietly. “Not with your mind. But with whatever part of you listens.”

Roisin didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t want to know.

The artist stepped closer.

The assistant whispered, “Roisin—”

But Roisin couldn’t move.

The artist stopped a few feet away, close enough that she could see the faint tremor in his hands, the slight hollowness beneath his eyes, the way his coat seemed to weigh him down.

He lifted a hand again — not toward her face this time, but toward her chest, as though sensing something beneath her ribs.

“You carry it,” he murmured.

Roisin’s breath trembled. “Carry what?”

The assistant whispered, “Don’t—”

But the artist answered: “Release.”