The secret of the gallery

It was the gallery of the empress. Elodie had heard the stories, the rumours through out the city. How she had teams working on this feat. The living paintings, coming only alive at night. It was claimed that that was because of the decadence, the construction of the spell. Elodie wondered if it was not also a matter of skill, that the spells had to be structured that way to work rather than a choice they made. Still, Elodie was curious for the paintings. There were some things, uses really, coming to mind, depending on what the spells were actually capable of.

Celine, the empress lady-in-waiting, had been eager to help her out. A nice benefit from [dating] her. She was easily impressed by the risks that Elodie took. The danger, as Celine perceived it. She liked flirting with it and that worked in Elodie’s favour. Still she had to mindful not to push it to far or cracks in Celine’s loyalty would no doubt appear. And it wasn’t clear yet where the tear in the loyalty would appear. To her or the empress.

Given the fact that she had crossed most of the palace and no guards had been looking for her, told Elodie that for now she was still in the clear. Then again, the secret passages that she used to visit Celine helped her out now as well. The last part however, to the gallery, she would have to walk through the halls. She wouldn’t use magic to hide herself or deflect the attention. The emperor had enforced most of the known prevention methods and probably also some that Elodie didn’t know of. It felt better to take the risk of being seen.

Elodie slipped through the door, small streak of light pouring through the doors, slimming as she closed the doors to the gallery behind her. The night outside was brighter than the dark room. Still, there wasn’t enough light to illuminate the gallery. The room was too dark to see. Elodie used a simple spell to light one of the candles in the room, taking it off the chandelier. It would’ve been easy enough to light all of them, but the light would no doubt be visible to the guards outside. It would be like a beacon, telling everyone where she was.

Her heels were tapping on the marble floor, a soft echo in the big hollow chamber. Elodie slowly turned into a circle. There were paintings lining all the walls. Different sizes, most of them portraits, but a few landscapes as well. State portraits and women with their dogs. Surely not all of them could be spelled.

‘Are you looking for someone in particular?’

Elodie’s muscles stiffened for a second, then she slowly turned. In her head she was running several escape plans and excuses, as well as wondering how she hadn’t heard anyone else come in. When she turned, she saw that the reason she hadn’t anyone come in, was because there wasn’t anyone there. It had been a painting. A man was pushing himself out of the frame. Man was a generous description. It was a painted man. As he moved of the canvas, the paint was glistening. It appeared wet. His hands prints left paint stains

‘You are not what I expected.’ Elodie murmured, studying the painting standing before her. The rest of the paint on the canvas was dry, only the painted man was wet. Elodie was curious if it would feel like paint as well. Knowing that a lot of spells could have loopholes, she decided against it.

The painted man stood up straighter, placing his hands on his waist. The paint was blending together, creating a weird stain where they connected. ‘What was it that you expected?’

‘For you took look less painted. Or to step out of the frame.’ Elodie was barely focused on the conversation. She was studying the man. There wasn’t enough light to be sure what she was looking at. If it was an illusion or if they actually managed to make it possible for them to get out of the frame. She had thought that they would be able to move in their frames, talk to them. This was more than she had thought was possible.

‘Is there something amiss?’ The painting asked, as he was trying to look at himself. Bending, turning and twisting. The paint layers smudging.

‘You don’t seem solid.’ Elodie remarked.

The painting held up his arms. ‘You can’t see through me.’ He said, sounding surprised.

‘I mean, that you can stand here, but the paint seems to be wet.’

‘Of course.’ He exclaimed, as if it was the most normal thing. ‘They tried to keep us the way we are in the paintings, but it didn’t work.’ He explained. ‘We were not flexible enough, several paintings were ruined in the process. Portraits crumbling when they tried to speak, the paint not allowing for their faces to move.’

Elodie hadn’t even considered that yet. It also raised another question. ‘How do they get out of the frames? The portraits.’

‘They can’t, they’re stuck inside.’

‘They can’t get out at all?’ Elodie asked, her eyes wandering along the walls again. The majority of the paintings did not depict the full body, mostly upper body. In a lucky case the upper legs.

‘A part of them can, the part that’s painted.’

Elodie started to walk along the walls of the room. ‘Do you do it often, getting out of the painting?’ She was getting several stares from the paintings as she walked past them. Still most of them stayed put, some just speaking to each other. ‘It doesn’t look like on of you fellow paintings is eager to step out.’

The painting caught up to her, staying a few steps behind her. ‘That is because the hassle of fixing the paint is hardly ever worth it.’

She saw what he meant with the paint. There was a clear trail of where the painting had been. From his footprints to the little drips of paint that fell off of him whenever he moved, pushing the wet paint out of one of the creases.

‘It is not included in the spell that makes you… live?’

The painted man shook his head. ‘No, someone comes in and fixes it the next day.’

‘Always in the morning?’ Elodie asked.

‘Yes, we only come to live at night.’ He said it so casually, like this information Elodie would know. Everything he said, it had been so careless, almost child like. Yet the painted man was older than that, he looked older than she was.

But then, who said that they paintings were the age as which they were painted. Energy, the power for magic, it had to come from somewhere. There was a thought itching at the back of her mind, that she couldn’t quite reach.

The painting was still rambling on and she only caught the end of the sentence, ‘because that is when they sleep.’

‘That is when who sleeps?’

‘The children.’ The painting said it in a way that it was supposed to be obvious, he most likely said it not a moment ago.

‘The children.’ Elodie murmured. There was something with children, someone mentioned it the other day when they came to her. The madness. That was it, the thought hat was in her head. In the poorer areas Paris, there were children going mad. Or they appeared to be mad. They all had a magic ability and all of them were losing it. It seemed that Elodie had just found the reason why.

‘Who are you then?’ Elodie asked the painting, wondering if she would know the child.

The painted man stopped, straightened his spine as he placed his hand right under his throat. ‘I am ‘Shepherd on mountain’.’

It was the name of the painting. He was the painting. But still. It was a weird combination of who the painting was supposed to be and who the child he was tied to really was. The painted man seemed to be his own person well enough, but he felt flat as a person. He wasn’t a fully a person, but he felt one-dimensional. Elodie wasn’t sure if that was due to the ties to the child or because of the spell.

It was starting to feel like an inquisition, but Elodie wanted to know more. ‘Do you remember any of this, when you go back into the frame.’

He frowned at her question. Or that is what Elodie made of it with the moving paint.

‘I do. I might know some parts of the day even, though i am never sure if that is actually the day or a dream I have.If I can dream. The scientists were not clear about it. They seemed to be unsure of lot themselves.’

‘But tomorrow night you would know that I was here the night before.’

‘I might not be sure about the date. We don’t always come alive. It depends on the child’s sleep if there is room for us to share it’s conscious.’

Elodie was still watching him.

‘They were talking a lot when they were trying to create us.’ The painting explained. He turned, walking back to his frame.

‘Where are you going?’ Elodie asked.

He pointed behind him. ‘Back inside.’

That much was clear, but what wasn’t was the sudden need he had. ‘Why now?’

‘Because the longer we stay out, the more chance there is something goes wrong.’ He was already holding on to the frame and pulling himself back inside, leaving Elodie on her own in the gallery, surrounded by wet paint.

The gallery was a frivolity. An expense frivolity, that played with people’s lives. Elodie had hoped to find another way to spy inside the palace, but she got something much more valuable. She had the information she needed to either blackmail the emperor or start a riot in the city. Regardless, it was useful knowledge to have. Now it was the matter making sure that no one else found out. Given the fact that the paintings were operating on children’s brains, she could not trust them. Perhaps if she mentioned something to Celine, she could talk to the empress. Some excuse about the paintings embarrassing the empress, or the risk that they would repeat secrets. For this was a secret, a piece of information, that Elodie intended to use when the right time was there.