Isolde Vale's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Isolde sat in the attic and tried, again, to lift the list. Her fingers passed through the paper like smoke through a screen. The list was her father's. He had written down every painting he ever finished, and beside each title he had noted who took it after he died. Some names she knew. Most she did not. She had been counting the names for years now, the way other girls might have counted birthdays she never reached. The attic held the rest of her small life. A black stuffed horse with floppy legs slumped against a crate, its mane still wild from the last time she had carried it. A framed portrait of her leaned beside it, painted when she was seven and already sick. Her father had painted her more than anyone. He had told her so, often, while he worked. He died without selling a single canvas. She died before him. Neither of them had ever been seen the way they wanted. Below her, the museum was quiet. Its walls were filled with other people's paintings. They should have been her father's. This building used to hold his work and a ring of carousel horses, and he had painted both, sometimes together, sometimes only her on the painted horse. Now the curator who ran the place could not see Isolde, no matter how close she stood. Cordelia walked the halls alone, deciding what would hang next. Isolde had three weeks, maybe less, before the empty walls were promised to someone else. She had tried the usual things. She had slid a cold hand through Cordelia's wrist in the tapestry hall. Cordelia had only rubbed her arm and kept walking. Isolde had gathered herself into a cluster of pale orbs, dim as dust caught in a lamp, and drifted toward the attic hatch. Cordelia had watched the orbs from her desk. She had not followed. Isolde had failed at every quiet trick a ghost is allowed. She looked again at the list, at the portrait, at the horse. She could not lift any of them. But Cordelia could, if Cordelia ever climbed the ladder. Isolde pulled herself thin and went down through the floor to the office. She gathered what was left of her into the orbs again and let them settle on the desk, directly on top of the open ledger Cordelia kept her acquisitions in. She held the shape there. She made the orbs stay until Cordelia looked up from her tea and set the cup down slowly. Cordelia studied the orbs for a long moment. She did not speak. She stood, took a flashlight from the drawer, and walked toward the tapestry wing, toward the crack in the wall and the ladder behind it. Isolde followed her up. For the first time, someone living was climbing toward her father's list.