Terelle's stare turned to one of astonishment. She had never seen anyone do such a thing-spread water out under the sun so that it could evaporate. Scarpen jars were always as narrow-lipped as a potter could make them. And all water containers were kept covered.
She looked up from the tray to meet his eyes once more. With one hand he beckoned, and against her will she found herself taking one step forward, then another and another until she was standing in front of him. With a simple gesture of his hand he indicated that she should sit at his side, facing the tray.
When she hesitated, he made the gesture again. She sat, not quite knowing why, except that she was touched by an odd sense of excitement, of childlike wonder. She wanted to know what he was going to do.
He filled one of the spoons from its pot and gently sprinkled the contents onto the water in the tray. Indigo-coloured powder spilled on the surface. It did not sink, and he spread it evenly with a spatula. When all the water was covered with a film of indigo, he followed it with other colours: yellow, then red, brown, white, black. These he applied with more precision and deliberation and yet with a fluidity of gesture, as if he knew exactly where each colour should go and his certainty lent him confidence of movement. Occasionally he used a small pointed stick to mix a top layer of colour into a lower one; other sections he left undisturbed. Some parts of the water had only one layer of colour sitting atop the indigo. Terelle was spellbound, although she couldn't have said why.
He had started at the top of the tray, working his way downwards. For a long time she could see no sense in what he did, and the way the powder reacted with the water was odd. It stayed where it was placed. Nothing sank. When a colour did bleed into another, it was intentional.
And then, in a flood of revelation, she saw what he was painting. There was a doorway in a wall. A broom resting against the daub. A heap of used bab husks piled up. A palm roof with a ragged edge. It was a representation of the building and the wall across from where they sat. A picture.
She had never seen such a thing before, not like this, not in any medium. In the Scarpen, pictures were woven into mats and cushions, cut into or painted on pottery and ceramics-but those pictures were always stylised. They were reality disguised as shapes and designs, two-dimensional, symbolic, precise, offering form and shape and, most of all, pattern. They never offered the suggestion of movement; they were never a raw representation of what existed. Never anything like this. They weren't alive.
She saw the way the shadow of the broom fell across the wall, the patterns of light and shade in the discarded husks, the dustiness of the street in front of the doorway. She saw the sunlight as it hit the wall; she could see the haziness of it, knew the dryness of it. It had depth, as if she could step into it. It had immediacy, as if the door was about to open and someone was going to step into the street. She could feel the heat, smell the dust, sense the weariness and poverty of the occupants. Here was the emptiness of a life felt, rather than seen, the portrayal of the husk rather than the contents.
The old man laid aside the pots and the spatula to survey the finished work.
The ache inside Terelle welled up into longing. She felt as if she was suspended in time, on the edge of some momentous point in history, and she had only to take a step to make it happen.
And then she became aware that someone was staring at her, even as she stared at the painting on the water. She turned her head. There was a man standing in the middle of the street. People pushed their way around him, and a passing packpede loaded with palm pith even brushed his elbow; he didn't notice.
She knew instantly that he was from the White Quarter. There was, after all, no mistaking a 'Baster. They were as white as the great saltpans of their own quadrant. Startlingly white, with skin that never burned or blemished in the sun, and white hair that never changed colour, from birth to old age. Their eyes were always the palest of blue, almost colourless, their lips and cheeks bloodless. There were some who said 'Basters did not have blood in their veins, but water.
He was middle-aged, this 'Baster, dressed in their usual garb: a white robe with tiny round pieces of mirror sewn on in red embroidery. The mirrors sparkled when they caught the sunlight.
His gaze was so intent, so intrusive, that Terelle scrambled to her feet, staring back.
Time continued to hang, snagged on the moment-the magic of the painting, the power of the stare, the ache within Terelle responding to something potent in the air around her.
It was the 'Baster who sent time spinning on. He made a gesture of blessing with his hand and walked away. Sunlight caught in the mirrors, a myriad of flashing sparks winked, and he was gone, lost into the crowd.
And the old man spoke for the first time, using a thickly accented and clumsily worded version of the Quartern tongue she found hard to follow. "He smelled your tears. As did me. Which be why I came. Those, ye cannot be hiding from likes of us, Terelle."
She turned back to him, terror flooding her senses. "How do you know my name?"
He shrugged. "Who else ye be? Ye your mother's daughter."
It was a comment that made no sense. She opened her mouth to protest, but he gestured at his painting and said, "Watch." He lifted one side of the tray an inch from the ground, and then dropped it back down again. The water shivered, sending ripples through the colours. Terelle expected the paint to run and mix, the picture to disappear, but that did not happen. The ripples died away, and the painting remained, exactly as it had been when he had finished it.
Her eyes widened. "How…"
"Waterpainting be art," he said. "Secret of art be in paint-powder. That can learn. Magic of the art, ah-that must be born in blood of artist.
"Watch again."
She lowered her gaze from his face back to the tray.
He picked up one of the spoons and splashed some colour on the dusty road in the painting. Then another colour and another. This time, his work was slap-dash. Colours blended without real outline, edges blurred. He was painting a woman, but it was mere suggestion: a dress of indeterminate style and shadowed drabness, a face that was turned away so no features were clear, hair that was half-covered with a carelessly flung scarf. Even the shoes she wore were obscured by the length of her skirt.
Afterwards, Terelle was not sure how it happened-or, indeed, what happened. She was looking at the painted figure, admiring how a few touches of colour could suggest so much and wondering why he had used such a different technique to paint the woman, when the surface of the water blurred and shifted. Although she had not seen the old man touch the tray, the colours moved, and then re-formed. The blur focused; edges sharpened.
And the formless woman was formless no longer. Her dress was grubby and drab, and she had evidently just stepped out into the street from the house. Her shoes were woven palm slippers; her scarf was hardly more than a tattered rag, hastily donned. She had a puzzled expression on her face, as though she had forgotten why she had stepped outside.
Terelle's jaw dropped. How had the painted figure changed so? Had the details been hidden beneath the paint, to be released by the artist's movement of the water? Impossible, surely.
She looked across at the house opposite, the real one-and nearly screamed.
There was a woman there, dressed just as the woman in the painting was, with the same look of puzzlement on her face. Behind her the door was still swinging. She shrugged, turned and went back into the house.