I took notice of the wafting scent of ink and paper hidden in leather-bound books immediately upon entering the library, where I, much to the chagrin of my indifference, saw my mother, a statue of resolution, looking into the forest of cedars and ashes beyond the sun-streaked panes. I, looking away from my mother, found myself in wonder at the abundance of knowledge and skill held within the beaten bindings as she continued her meditations, focusing only on the world within the boundaries of the window frame.
"Have you come for more than a moment or will you be leaving in time?"
Her voice came out as hardly more than a whisper, barely audible even in the deadened room.
"I came to see you."
When I observed the tepid movement of her shoulders in response to some unknown action in which I had taken part, my throat quivered with the youth and abandon of a boy not more than fourteen, his consciousness just starting to fully form.
"No, I think not. You'll come for what you will and go back along the way you came."
The words punctuated the air with surprising force for their low register, contracting the space to that of the eye of a needle.
I scurried to her side, with the fervor of a mole to its burrow after being hit by the sun, attempting to grab her hand, or the sleeve if she found my hand to be overly familiar. I brushed the silken arm of her gown and she stole it away with a casual flick that, to the outside observer, would seem entirely a trick of the eye. She remained entangled in the trees of which she had become a member, her emerald and lichen-colored robes seeming to join the mossy trunks, while her mind failed to perceive any motion save for the dancing of leaves.
Her glass-white eyes, refusing to land on any object outside that forest, held not a note of contentment or a ray of warmth, as I looked upon them with barely a trace of revulsion in my own self-indulgent mind.
"Trul—"
Her quiet, cool manner cut through my voice with contempt.
"No."
Those pale eyes didn't drift for even a moment as I retracted my pleas, feeling a fool for even attempting to divert her, my ears blushing crimson and burning in that way that they always do, as if I had committed some crime. I brushed the hair from my cheek, savoring the feeling of some skin upon my face. When I looked up at her eyes once more, grown more glassy in only the long moment, they flicked pointedly, wounding me with the sharp indistinction of my person from the surrounding couches. My gaze found the hard brown boards at my feet with ease, where the grains and fine lines became readily apparent.
I attempted to wiggle my toes, my feet not feeling entirely my own, but found them paralyzed in some ethereal grip from which I couldn't seem to free myself. Failing to find release, my eyes were drawn upward into that same dense copse of timber. Her own glass eyes moved not a fraction of the width of a page of even the thinnest book contained within the vastness of her study, none of which she had the presence or mind to provide a cursory glance. Her thin lips softly parted and emitted a whimper of a sound.
"Do you see?"
Calmer than before, she mouthed more words that couldn't hold the air as I, with my limited ability to perceive, strained to hear, finding myself offensively regarded by leaves with their presumptuous rustles. The leaves whispered too, but in my youthful naïveté, I couldn't quite translate their murmurs, so, with frustration and fiery ears, I let my gaze hit the floor once more, welcoming it as my only friend.
"No, how could you."
Her words came out, without any suggestion of question, slapping me across the face and causing a very joyful break from my newly sprung roots. With the same zeal as the mole, I retreated further into my burrow, finding my place near an old rack of novels whose bindings had faded so severely that the titles had long ceased to be more than suggestions. My hands reached for one of my favorites, sitting precariously upon a shelf from which my short arm was only able to gain purchase while on my tiptoes. The novel was caressed as it was pulled from the shelf. The comparatively intact cover, plainly visible through my slender fingers, depicted a man standing with crumbling posture against the long faces of mustachioed villains. The old leather was supple and cool to my touch as I ran my well-practiced fingers along the spine and bindings.
Opening the book to the dog-eared page, at which I had previously ended my journey, I looked upon the tightly packed words punched out in typeset font. I scanned the text hastily in an attempt to gain an expedient understanding. When my sprint through the pages resulted in naught a single degree of understanding, I resigned myself to dedicate the full force of my imagination to the task of gaining a deeper understanding. I backtracked along the paper leaves to that same dog-eared page with rounded corners from my attempted sprints.
As my determination took hold, my imagination bloomed, and I came upon one of my oldest friends in the form of a destitute law student living in a garret in St. Petersburg, whom I knew only as Rodya. For a long time, Rodya caught me up on the intricacies of his mind and the news of his day. I heard from him of a miserable old shopkeeper for whom he had a passionate distaste. To hear it from him, this distaste seemed to be reflected in all manner of creatures unfortunate enough to be obliged to have dealings with her as well.
I had a distinct and uncanny understanding of this woman and her behavior, but I couldn't quite place from which extremity of mine this itch originated. I examined my body more deeply, but I could only see the small blemishes and discolored violet and green stretches on my small arms and feeble legs. The itch wouldn't stop its niggling at the back of some deep, dark corner of my mind. It had lodged itself so tightly that only a direct and vigorous scratching at the source had any hope of satisfaction and relief. I could only hope to unfocus my eyes from my friend's journey and retreat into my own serene tunnels following the sound of footsteps as the light from the portrait windows pointed towards the trees faded into pitch.
I fell horizontally into the depths of my own self-consciousness finding in the dark two pieces of oaken bark and a clock that looked like a tree that I couldn't see. My hands had to reach out to the clock to feel the knots and varnish that I could only almost imagine in the pitch, I wondered to myself how I had even known the clock was present, was it the ding of the gears, the clunk of the levers, something I'd heard a thousand times? The bark slipped in front of my grasping hands and filled them with a carpet of moss packed with leaves and stems that tickled my paws making me giggle from the touch of feathered veins and laught from the joy of sweet company I'd gained on my slippery journey. I tossed the bark away and it richochetted off the walls and knocked me in the head with a plunk pushing me into the falling clock where the pendulum fell out of rhythm from my small bodies force. The bark continued on its journey down into the dark and became lost in that stretching abyss that might be filled with a thousand more pieces of bark that would also enjoy the ability to bonk my head with reckless abandon. That darn barks bonk had jumbled my head and I became consciously aware of that itch that I couldn't reach but which was approaching me with the speed of the clock in the tunnel.
The leaves and stems the bark had gifted before its attempt to scurry away without blame stuck to me with sickening sap and the golden powder of a thousand moments of ecstacy that had failed to be carried by the wind in this still journey. I coated the clock with the sap and leaves after which I looked over the art becoming pleased with my impressionist work of tree in the dark which would undoubtably be displayed at the Met in some great ornate box with a thousand onlookers gawking in pure admiration for the work that I had so painstakingly undertaken. The pendulum still looked rather bare, like it was missing some core ingredient that could elevate the work to a new height even the great ceilings of the Met could not contain. I found that ingredient in a short time, it was me that the sculpture was missing, every great artist must obviously be displayed with their masterpiece, only through that sacrifice could the audience truly understand the evocative nature of art.
I clung to that pendulum with my still sticky hands which caused the it to become even more out of time than my initial collision with the levers and gears, however the weight continued on it's path, repeating its rhymtic swinging back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with the persistence of a wild creature lost in its pen. Together we brushed through the trees that had grown up around us and scraped along the bark drawing shared blood from the scrapes and scratches that each twig and branch along the trunks did create. Those scrapes grew and grew along our path which at this point seemed endless as gears and blood and oil and bile filled our shared tunnel with a further vigour on each passing moment. Each of those brushes with our own mortal nature also passed gentle leaves over my arms and legs with such haste they tickled, continually brining me back to that single tickle that I could not reach no matter what appendage I instructed to have the adjancey to relieve me off my discomfort. Until finally with a softly hard thump we hit the bottom of some deep wooden counter where I found myself able to feel a small circular lump right against the seat of my trousers where the seams from the two legs met in an exceptionally clean triple stitch.
I glanced down at my great perfection only to find the panels shattered, the gears astray and alone in the cavernous dark, the leaves entirely frayed, and me no longer sticky with sap. I felt my eyes get wet only for an instance with the feeling that I had deprived the world of some great understanding just by the seat of my pants. However that feeling passed as I felt the sphere I cradled between my cheeks realizing that it must be that I am being invited to create another work substantially more meaningful that could maybe turn even Rodyas woman toward the light. Yes that is what I must do, I must ensure that my greatest of friends has some of his burden eased by the gift of my own creation and maybe I would be the one to tell him of my news on that day.
I sat on that ball and wondered what that old crone could possibly enjoy, would she like the work I had begun and left unfinished, perhaps she would appreciate an interpretive dance, or maybe she was more of a casual enjoyer of some poetic dialog; no I discovered in my mind, she was obviously someone who would only understand through vibrance and pastels. The medium is the easy part but the subject and material is always the hardest to hold any conception of until the exact moment when it would come from deep outside of my own control. That seat had become oddly unpleasant during my ruminations as I could feel it turn and press upward in stops and starts; I however had no desire to move from my perch and kept my cheeks firmly locked knowing in that normal self assured manner that I was not done with my own contemplations and I resolved not to move until the moment of my own choosing. Finally the knob had gotten so persistent that I resigned myself yet again to stand in the dark and work through my problems in a more vertical position, my mind entertained the possibility that perhaps my bloodflow or change of perspective would be able to stimulate my senses enough to arrive at my subject matter, alas that eureka illuded me for another moment.
The knob kept turning and pushing but without the resistance of my own body I could see light start to emerge from a precipe that slowly raised around the knob itself finally realizing that I had been sitting on my route of escape all this time. This must have been where that itch that still haunted my mind had run to, it would not escape me this time, I had the badgerlike aggression to demand it to relieve me of my discomfort. Poking my head through the now cracked portal I could see only my younger self in some startlingly odd orientation barely holding a single cup but dressed in those same trousers and vest of emerald and oak that had been gifted to me by the second aunt of my third cousin. I was askew at a ninety degree angle looking out over some great travisty that had befallen myself, this is news that I must inform Rodya of when I find him once again somewhere in his own horizontal maze. In that instant however I felt myself shift and fall sideways and then downwards and then backward my stomach emitting sick gurgles until I was the one standing in that tragic light and I could only look back to see my younger face peaking out from the door askew in the floor.
I happened upon the action of the heat of the mug causing my hand, barely able to circumnavigate the width of the cup, to smart and release it from a few feet above the ground. I watched in muffled horror as the muddy liquid, tinged with notes of sugar and vanilla, plummeted downward millimeter by millimeter, my mind racing feet in the future. Those single seconds, before gravity took away any attempt at reconciliation, hung with me as I sat blinded by the morning light to which I was unaccustomed. My eyes burned and my whiskers twitched maddeningly in a way to which I, again to my chagrin, had become accustomed. I could see the large pile of blameful pages full of charges that could be continuously laid on a lectern, where a gavel would pound for my silence. The small splash of drink, bitter to my tastes at that age, against the ornate weavings could be heard like a tree falling in the forest, and my mother, so attuned to the trees, was the first observer.
"Why?"
Her voice lanced through the air that the rays of light had just occupied and hit me with the force of that same gavel upon an oaken desk. The white eyes found me for only a second but scorched me in their morning glory, causing my vision to flash so bright not a shape could be discerned.
"I di—"
She cut me off with a single instantaneous blow, without a passing glance.
"I'm too tired to hear your excuses."
My whiskers were severed causing the loss of my only sense through which to perceive the action from which I had derived this entirely justifiable manner. I could only blindly acknowledge my own sin and attempt the retreat into the darkness that I now so craved, with only a fleeting glance toward light I had a cursory belief should have felt warm. I jittered my head side to side reaching for my younger self and the sweet darkness that other side of the portal promised, unable I could only utter single words to diminish my wrongdoing or at the least attempt to gain a reprieve from my guilt.
"I'm sor--"
However before I could even begin to utter my pleas to the court I was summarily hoisted fully into the icy light through single words spoken with the temperament of one wholly devoid of compassion toward the creature dwarfed by their stature.
"No."
A single ray.
"You are not."
Dazzling beams kept my vision opaque and clouded.
"Matilde. Take this away from me."
The old and withered figure of that dispenser of justice crept from her perch along the walls of supple leather bound worlds with the care of someone who knew where each foot would be planted years in advance and in which direction the wind would blow the next day. A firm, unyielding vice closed around my minuscule fading form as I, through many attempts to wiggle myself from gnarled clutches, was dragged out of the light and into the suite of rooms to which justice was readily dispensed.
"You really should not have done that."
Creaked the ancient voice in a tone honed by ages of condescension toward creatures that existed in stature between the ranks of stature of a giant and a simple small mole.
"She only wants it for the heat!"
I squealed pleadingly.
"Nonsense! She likes it how she always has, and you will deliver it as such"
The stiff, dragged me through the ornate parlors and towards a too familiar heavy metal-bound door at the end of a long corridor where I could see, through the small window on the door, naught but an empty wall marred by only one other window. Thrown into the room, I was able to make out only another wall outside the room and, looking out, holding exuberance for a potential dynamic scene, was disappointed to find only a view of that wall and the stone courtyard below. A singular wooden bed and straw mattress were situated in the corner, with a small dresser being the only other occupant of the space, and I knew instinctively that it held no object of interest within.
"You'll stay in here until you understand the pain you've caused."
"I will be back to learn you those feelin's."
The voice croaked and then faded, the final change to the space being the hinges of the door creaking and the echoing of the key in the lock. Knowing my sentence, I looked through the window and the outside light burned me but I was able to make out a single boy in trousers and vest of timber and grass kicking a blue ball in the courtyard below. The leaves blew in the growing wind and clouds rolled along the sky in monolithic glory while the dust and dirt were the only beings that accompanied the boy in his game. He shifted in an impossible direction and his legs became his hands and his head turned round, eyes fixed with blazing grey upon me, and his mouth opened to the pendulums swing. His mouth grew and became a cavernous maw and that same knob appeared deep set into the dark with my only option to twist and pull with all the strength my petite limbs could muster as his now razor teeth surrounding the hole inched closer and closer.
Then again I was falling in my horizontal fashion, my younger gaze passed over me in the dark while I could once again feel Rodyas presence, I realized I had so much of which to tell him. His eyes however stay transfixed on some great monument only he could observe in the far distance while I tried to make out my own structure from the confines of my own night. My hands outstretched taking in the falling sensations crushed their palms against what I could feel was the same shape as my long tarnished masterpiece; my hope returned in that moment with a desire to find some branches and twigs or stems and petals, there might even be some sap in the distance. I could find no materials within my grasp and had only an empty palm of air and dirt to show for my struggles which I promptly rubbed along the clocks tattling face before relizing the pendulum again swung but against the previous grain.
Wanting to share what I felt was a distinct observation I poked Rodya harder than I intended but ellicited only a single grunt as his hands held his head in an unusual stoic pose. I wondered during our slide what mystical power this pose held as the clock also begun to hold it's carved hands to it's face and wrinkle its brow. Ever curious I raised my own hands which could only be faintly made out now in the extreme dim that was our only worldy companion and placed my own hair between my fingers and mimiced the expression of my best friends. I could not understand the mysticism but I could feel a concerning pleasure in that position while I reflected on the actions that had caused the boy to swallow me whole.
The light stole the dark in a cosmic instant with my rear landing with extreme weight on the monks robe leather couch from which I had been sucked into the ether. My senses found the familiar wafts of cigars and juniper and pine tinged with a new note of coffee hanging delicately in the doorway. My eyes closed and opened with stingy salted pain for only an instant before that sickly aroma could assault them again and my body made an uncontrolled convulsion. Opening my eyes only green and browns could be seen with my body transfixed upon that same scene that still so pre-occupied the rooms only other inhabitant standing with the same indifferent unconsciousness to any journey that might have taken place. I found myself unable to close my eyes as the clocks faces faded into knots and knolls and grots.
"You don't see."
A single whisper pierced the leaves.
"Matilde, take this away."
Ears burned when the words quietly but forcefully interrupted my thoughtless meditations, and I knew, with a not-so-quiet internal indifference, that my second home was awaiting my arrival. My older brother was ripped from my hands and thrown into a corner shaded by an unlit, ornately decorated stained-glass lamp, and I, with that same poorly disguised guilt, struggled to hold back a single gasp. The slight gesture could not be totally withheld.
"Your fantasies don't excuse your behavior."
That same croaking reverberated through the room, echoing off the faded covers. The hand sprang upon me again and crushed my arm while almost ripping my shoulder away from the rest of my body with such force that I could only resist if I had had a desire to risk my own injury. We together trod a different path out of the room and the views of the timbers toward that same lifeless burrow to which I had been accustomed. I found my bed, dresser, and lastly my single view again, through which the same stone courtyard awaited, where my Rodion did not wait, with only small dead leaves occasionally visiting through whipping currents of air.
When I looked further out however I found something astonishing hidden in the blowing leaves, I couldn't believe it when I saw it and knew immediately that Rodya must know on our next meeting, whenever that may be. I saw a single red stem with a grey eye placed on top dangling through the courtyards stone blocks. I had found subject, I could help my friend.