Chapter 6.5 - The Unseen Realm

The problem with the familiar is that it lulls you into a deluded sense of certainty and veils your sight from the fact that you don’t know the world at all, not in any meaningful way. 

Claire could walk anywhere in the old mansion with her eyes closed, without stumbling on a threshold or missing a step on the stairs. She could stroll through the garden on a moonless night without trampling a single shivering violet underfoot. She could contemplate the depths of her soul without upturning a single deep seated feeling. In a word, she didn’t understand the world at all.

“Claire,” the wind called, but she didn’t listen, because one doesn’t expect to speak to the wind. “Winter wind. Spring water. Summer fire.” she started reciting in her mind, for no reason at all, just giving in to the random fragments of consciousness which were trying to make their way to the surface.

“Claire,” the whisper in the wind grew clearer in her mind, like a diffuse picture that starts slowly getting into focus. “Claire!”

She was in the clearing again, surrounded by oak trees, face to face with the tall man whose flaxen hair looked eerie in the moonlight. The whole scene turned her blood cold and made her shiver.

She tried to say something but couldn’t summon her voice, and the tall man smiled, as if he understood her thoughts in the absence of words. There was something deeper there, in this unspoken communication, a much faster language of symbols, feelings and flashing images, the ideas themselves, stripped of their unnecessary garment of words. For a moment she understood its meaning, and it made sense to her, and then, just as quickly, it was gone, hunted by the hound of reason. 

She wanted to explain to him that she understood what he had said in the same strange language without words, but the tall man smiled kindly and shook his head no. He seemed to be staring through and beyond her at something in the distance, and Claire turned her head to see what he was looking at and was met by her own reflection, uncomfortably close and with a strange glow in her eyes. She shuddered to regain her wits and realized she had been standing between the mirrors again, and it was fall, and there was a van parked at the end of the alley, where people were carefully carrying her wrapped paintings.

“Would you like us to take this one too?” one of the movers asked Claire, pointing at the painting of her pain, which was still baring its blank spaces like holes through the world.

“Ah,” Claire tried to gather her thoughts, “yeah. Yeah, please do.”

The movers wrapped the strange unfinished canvas in silence, indifferent to its artistic value or lack thereof, used as they were to pack and transport all sorts of things, of which Claire’s unglued imagery wasn’t even remotely the weirdest they’d seen.

They finished the job, brought her the bill of lading to sign and left.

“So,” Grandmother said from behind her. “This is finally happening! I’ve got to hand it to you, bebelle. I thought you were going to swindle your way out of this and never follow through.”

“Maman!” Claire retorted with faked moral outrage. “I’m hurt!”

“This calls for celebrating,” Grandfather came up the stairs from the basement with a very dusty bottle in his hand. He looked at the carefully calligraphed label. “1975! I’ve been keeping this for a special occasion,” he looked at it with what Claire recognized as the same unnatural doe eyes he had complained about. “This bottle is older than you,” he laughed. 

“Wait ‘till I tell Adelaide about it!” Grandmother couldn’t contain her excitement.

“I thought you weren’t talking to Adelaide,” Grandfather turned to her, surprised. “Claire, can you please pass the potatoes?” Claire obliged.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Grandmother replied, raising her glass. “To good health and success!” 

“Hear! Hear!” Claire and Grandfather responded, raising their glasses as well. 

“You haven’t spoken with her in years!” Grandfather continued his train of thought, while taking a sip of the wine, which had aged to a deep garnet color and tasted divine, judging by his facial expression.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not talking!” Grandmother protested. “We’re all busy, we haven’t had a chance to visit in a while.”

“It’s not like she’s going to care, anyway,” Grandfather tried to tease out additional details, but Grandmother had already settled the subject.

“When is your exhibit opening, Claire?” she asked the young woman.

“Sometimes at the beginning of December,” the latter responded. The wine was strong and rushed to her head quickly, making her feel pleasantly warm and somewhat far away, like she was swaddled in a plush garnet colored blanket.

“Why so late? They already have all the work,” Grandmother asked.

“The space was not available sooner,” Claire spoke slowly, trying to cool her flushed cheeks with the back of her hands. “Besides, the closer to Christmas, the better. More visitors.” 

Her hands felt like ice against her face, like they weren’t hers at all, and they had the same shiver inducing quality she recognized from her earlier vision. She shook, jolted, and placed them on the table, almost spilling the wine in the process.

“Look at this one,” Grandfather teased, in a glorious mood brought on by the dual influence of good news and fine libations. “Thirty years old and she can’t handle her wine! We should disown you! What’s holding up dessert?” he turned towards Grandmother with a broad smile.

Grandmother had done her best to hide the surprise from Claire, hoping that the young woman would be too busy with the packing and loading of the van to notice what she was doing in the kitchen, but no such luck. Nobody could keep any secrets in that house.

“You had to spoil the surprise, didn’t you?” she turned towards Claire reproachfully while she got up to bring the cake. 

“It’s the same cake,” Claire thought, too soothed by the wine to fight the logical impossibility of this occurrence, because the cake did look exactly the same as the one she had fallen in when she was five, ruining her dress in the process. She couldn’t help her curiosity. “Grandma, is this…”

“The same cake? Of course it is, it’s your favorite, I thought you’d love it,” Grandmother replied pleased. “Plates?” Claire got up and brought the plates over. A gust of wind startled the barren leaves around her ankles and swirled them in a motion that felt intentional and alive. The fall oaks burned bright against a leaden sky, so bright that they looked like they were the source of light for it and not the other way around.

Claire’s mind followed the leaves scattered in the wind and its array of shapeless and free flowing thoughts found its way out of the conduits of her consciousness like water draining from a pipe manifold. For a second her mind was completely empty and she caught a glimpse of its intricate structure of hollow tubes, the ‘her’ behind the thoughts, the ‘her’ that didn’t change. Just a vessel it was. Just a vessel with no purpose in the absence of its fluid contents.