Cordelia “the museum curator”'s Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Cordelia set the lantern on a crate and did not step closer. The girl stood between the stacks, thin as a curtain, holding the black stuffed horse against her chest. A wisp of black ribbon trailed from her hair. Cordelia had seen her twice before, and both times she had vanished. This time she stayed. "You brought me here," Cordelia said. "You led me to the door. You wanted me to find these." The girl nodded once. Her voice, when it came, was flat and small. "His name is Frederick Vale. He was my father." Cordelia lifted the top frame from the leaning stack. The brass plaque caught the lantern light. She turned the frame so the girl could see it. "These are his." "He painted me more than anyone. He told me so." The girl paused. "He died without selling one canvas. The paintings went to strangers. I have been trying to gather them." She looked at the crates. "I cannot lift them. I cannot move a page. I led you to the shaft. I led you to this door. That is all I can do." Cordelia thought of the list on her desk, and the two paintings hung side by side upstairs. She thought of the child's face in both, and her own face in the mirror. "The girl in the paintings," she said. "That is you." "Yes." "Then why do I have her face." The girl did not answer at once. She looked down at the stuffed horse. "I do not know. He painted what he saw. He saw you before you were here." She lifted her eyes. "I am Isolde. I want his name on a wall. One room. All of them together. Will you do that." Cordelia set the frame down against the crate. Her file cabinet upstairs held every provenance record she had ever written. None of them held his name. She would have to build the record from nothing, track the paintings on the list to whoever owned them now, and bring each one back. It would take months. It might take years. "I will do it," she said. "I need the list. I need you to tell me where you have seen them." Isolde nodded. The lantern flame bent toward her and steadied. "I have stood beside most of them. I can show you the rooms. I cannot always find the streets." She looked at Cordelia a long moment. "He did not know you would come. But he painted the room you would stand in." Then she was gone, and the cold with her, and Cordelia was alone in the basement with a dozen crates and a promise she had just made out loud.