The wild girl turned a tear-streaked face toward her. “I ... I knew it was wrong ... even while I was doing it,” she said in a small broken voice, “but I ... I just couldn’t stop myself “
Izzy knew she should be angry, but the hurt and confusion she saw in Cosette’s features wouldn’t allow the emotion to take hold. She regarded the wild girl for a long moment, then crawled under the table to join her. She gathered Cosette in her arms and stroked the bird’s nest of her hair, gently working at the tangles with her fingers.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I was ... I was trying to draw a picture, but it wouldn’t come out right. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t come out right at all, at all. But still I tried and I kept trying, but then everything ...
everything started to feel ... I felt like I was choking ... and I just pushed all the papers off the table and it didn’t ... the choking feeling wasn’t so bad then ... and the more I kicked things around, the more it went away. I knew it was bad. I knew it was wrong. I I ... I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself “
“I used to get just as frustrated when I was learning how to draw,” Izzy told her.
Cosette gave her a grateful look. “I have to be able to do it,” she said. “I just have to.”
“Nobody’s good right away,” Izzy said. “It takes a lot of hard work to get anywhere with it.”
“But I’ll never get it because I don’t have anything inside me. I thought doing it would put something inside, but you have to be someone first. Like you. You are someone. I want to be just like you.”
“You don’t have to be like me to be able to do art,” Izzy told her. “Every artist is different.”
But Cosette shook her head. “No, I have to be like you.”
“Whatever for?”
“I want to be real.”
“You are real,” Izzy told her.
“No, I’m not. I’m like Solemn John.”
“John’s real, too.”
Cosette shook her head again. “He says you don’t really believe that. And if you don’t believe it, then it must be true, because you’re the one who made us.”
“I didn’t make you,” Izzy said. “All I did was open a door for you to step through.”
“Then why does John say what he does?”
Izzy sighed. “John and I have a problem communicating with each other.” Which was an understatement if she’d ever heard one, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other in years, but Izzy put that firmly out of her mind. That wasn’t the issue here. Cosette was.
“Not everything he says means exactly what it seems to mean,” Izzy went on.
“Like what he says about the dark man?” Cosette asked.
It took Izzy a moment to understand what Cosette was asking. “You mean Rushkin?” When Cosette nodded, Izzy said, “John just doesn’t much like him, so he suspects the worst about him.”
“So he doesn’t ... eat us?”
“I ..... Izzy hesitated. Her head filled with images of that old dream, the snowstorm, Rushkin with a crossbow, her winged cat dying, Paddyjack rescued by John. But then she heard Annie Nin’s voice in her mind. People dream the oddest things, don’t they, and then when they wake up they realize none of it was real.
“I don’t think he does,” she said.
“I still wish I was real.”
“You are real. Honestly. Look me in the eye, Cosette. Can’t you see that I believe what I’m saying?”
“I suppose.”
They sat quietly under the table for a while longer, neither of them speaking until Cosette finally sighed.
“Are you very mad at me?” she asked.
Izzy shook her head. “No. I understand what happened. Will you help me tidy up?”
Cosette gave her a shy nod.
“Well, come on then. Let’s see how quickly we can get it done.”
It only took a half hour before the studio was back to normal—or at least as normal as it ever got. It was still a mess, but an organized mess, as Izzy always liked to put it.
“I should get back to the island,” Cosette said when they were done. “Rosalind will be worrying about me. I didn’t tell her where I was going.”
“How will you get back?”
Some of Cosette’s normal bravado had returned. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m in and out of the city all the time.”
“Well,” Izzy said dubiously. “If you promise to be careful ...”
“I’m always careful,” Cosette began; then she looked around the now-tidied studio. “Well, almost always.”
Izzy couldn’t help but laugh. She walked over to her worktable and picked up an empty sketchbook and a couple of pencils.
“Here,” she said. “Take these.”
“Really?”
“Really. I want you to practice your drawing. If you need any help, just come and see me.”
“I’d rather be able to just do it,” Cosette said.
“Wouldn’t we all. Do you want some paints as well?”
“Oh no,” Cosette told her, clutching the sketchbook to her chest. “This is wonderful.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You won’t tell Rosalind, will you? She’d be so disappointed in me.”
“I won’t tell her,” Izzy said.
“Oh thank you!” She gave Izzy a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know, you’re not at all like John says you are.” And with that she seemed to spin like a dervish and whirl out of the door.
Izzy stood in the middle of the studio, regarding the door that Cosette had left open. It swung back and forth before it finally settled in a half-ajar position. “I wish John realized that,” she said softly.
XVIII
September 1978
Early in September, Izzy ran into Rosalind while on a sketching expedition in Lower Crowsea. She’d been out all morning trying to get a few good views of the old fire hall for one of her Crowsea Touchstones paintings when she spied the numena across the street. Rosalind noticed her at the same time and crossed over to join her at the bus-stop bench where Izzy was sitting.
“I wish Cosette had your discipline,” she told Izzy.
“I take it she’s not practicing.”
Rosalind smiled. “She feels that she should be able to do it immediately and since she can’t, why then she’ll never get it so why bother trying?”
“I was hoping she’d come by again to show me what she’s been working on. I offered to help her.”
“I know you did. She was so excited when she came home from her last visit.” Rosalind sighed. “But by the next day she’d torn the book up, thrown the pencils away and was busy making a giant bird’s nest with Paddyjack.”
“Well, it’s not something you can force someone to do,” Izzy said. “You either have the desire and drive, or you don’t.”
Rosalind nodded. “But it’s so frustrating because I know how badly she wants to be able to do it.”
Izzy put a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry. She’ll settle down with it when she’s ready.”
“I wonder.”
“Would you like to take home another sketchbook in case she decides she does want to try it again?”
“No. If she wants to that badly, let her come back and get it from you herself “
They sat quietly together for a while, enjoying the crisp September weather and watching the people go by. As they sat there, Izzy wondered if people could see both of them, or did they only see her, talking to herself?
“You haven’t seen Rothwindle lately, have you?” Rosalind asked after a few minutes had gone by.
Izzy shook her head. “I hardly see any of them anymore. Just Cosette a couple of weeks ago and Annie still comes to visit, of course, but that’s about it. But now that I think of it, Annie was asking about her, too. Why, were you looking for her?”