Iris

The window stood open just wide enough to let in the afternoon breeze. Sunlight illuminated my canvas, edging it with gold.

Plinking my paintbrush into its cup, I made a frustrated huff. “A son of Lugh I am, and yet these blasted hands cannot paint!”

“What did you say, Uncle?” asked Madeline, sitting across the studio with her sketch pad. Graphite smeared her fingers and caked under her fingernails. I glowered at her, though she did not look up from her easel.

“Don’t listen to old men like me,” I told her. “We gibber mad things. And rely on hubris to cover for it.”

Madeline, guileless as all children are, continued drawing.

She was sketching a bird, I saw. It was a great black raven, captured in flight with wings of swirling knot-work. Brilliant, though I didn’t have to tell her for her to know it.

We sat before our work in a bare fluorescent glow of gallery lights. The white-washed walls of this space did well to display my paintings, but was in reality little more than one room in a gray-faced downtown office building. As part of the curse of urban sprawl, there was never an abundance of fresh air. Now, humidity stole in through the open window, and with it the smell of petrichor.

“Storm is coming, girl,” I said.

Madeline sighed and put down her pencil. “That means we’ll lose the light.”

“The universe gives us many gifts,” I said.

“Some gift,” she replied.

The universe had indeed dealt me many gifts over the centuries. Before Madeline had been born to my sister, we had seen the destruction of our ancestral home, the execution of our father, the cowards’ deaths of our other sisters and brothers, and our flight from Erin to this New World - this stinking charnel house of factories and office buildings and ugly, chaotic, godless music. We of the Tuatha Dé Danann, scattered like ash across the sea. A tragedy.

My sister had perished in Madeline’s birth, charging me to rebuild our family’s tattered legacy as she died. And how would I do that? I must raise my orphan niece and paint in obscurity. Hide from those who hated my kind. Sell my treasured works to idiots who hang them in their dining room so their brats can throw gravy at it.

“Uncultured, tasteless, fear-mongering…,” I whispered, capping my paint cups and wiping my brushes.

Madeline knew nothing of the horrors of this world. She, being but an infant in light of all the long years ahead of her, saw only the innocent and good of our new home. She attended the local elementary school, where the so-named ‘educators’ taught her the ignorant ways of this land.

“Read this book for your age group,” they said. “Don’t read ahead. Speak our language, no one knows what you’re saying. Don’t paint so well, you intimidate the other children.”

Fools! We eternal creatures reach our zenith long after the rest of them wither and die and new generations spring forth. And I, of the Tuatha Dé Danann…I alone shall remain watching, tutoring, guiding Madeline’s heart toward that which is bright and beautiful and transcendent. It is the curse and the gift of the Children of Lugh. We must make our legacy out of blood and loss.

“Who is she, Uncle?”

Madeline stood next to me, on tiptoe, one bright eye closed to better see the face of the mysterious woman peering from between vibrant flowers on my canvas.

“Who can say?” I replied. “I cannot seem to stop painting her today, though I have started over five times.”

“You paint her everyday, though,” she pointed out, and I scowled at her.

My niece was observant; this woman’s image had emerged from my work for nigh on thirty years. Small and lacking any distinctive attributes — not a too-high brow, or uneven nostrils, or a crooked smile — this figure haunted me as often as I breathed and slept and dreamed. My heart ached to know her, to possess her, to forget her.

I stepped back from the canvas and waved, my hand an emerald and violet smear in the heavy air of the gallery.

“Perhaps she is Fate, Madeline,” I said. “Or doom. Destiny. Or else she is only a figment of an old man’s mind. I want to hate her.”

“Then why do you paint her so often?” she asked.

The tinkling of the bell above the entrance stifled my harsh reply.

I twisted my easel around to hide it from view and quickly wiped my fingers on a turpentine-soaked rag. A man in an ill-fitting blue suit strolled up to my sales counter. He ignored the riot of colorful paintings around him.

“Hello, still open?” he said, leaning over the counter to give me a gargoyle’s grin. “I need to get to the courthouse Can you tell me how?”

Not even a please or thank you, the turdling. Manners seemed beyond most people these days.

“Can’t you use your hand-contraption?” I growled.

The man’s brow drew in. “My what?”

“Uncle means your smartphone,” Madeline quipped, climbing up the step stool next to me. She left graphite smears on the edge of the counter.

“Ah,” the man said, a flush coloring his cheek. “Battery died.”

He had entered with a female companion, to whom I paid little attention as I brought out a map with a huff.

He wrinkled his nose as he bent over it. Little wonder; the map was stained with coffee rings and grimy with oil and turpentine. It reflected the majority of my clientele; most people wanted directions, but never stopped to enjoy the beauty on display. I thought: Why go anywhere if you can’t enjoy the journey?

“Uncle,” Madeline said softly.

Ignoring her, I brought my finger to the gallery’s location, circled in blue ink, and began to trace the route to the courthouse. The man’s gaze followed my movement, though cognizance seemed lacking.

“Uncle,” Madeline said again, pulling my sleeve.

“Continue down this street,” I said gruffly. “Turn left here, but if you pass the fountain, you’re too far. I’ll not be directing you again, so find it the first time.”

“Uncle, look,” my niece urged, and then there was a clatter and thudding clunk beyond the man.

“What are ye doing there?” I demanded. “This is an art gallery, not an IKEA!”

I lifted and plopped Madeline down in front of the map with an instruction to “help this poor sod, best as you can. Uncle will be back in a moment.”

The man’s companion was a woman, short and black-haired, and she was reaching down to right the column stand she’d knocked over. I grabbed for the sculpture, obscenely sideways in its new position on the floor.

“Leave it!” I told her harshly. “You’ll only chip the plaster work.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” the woman said, and when I looked up, my words died in my throat. Her face, flushed with embarrassment, was creased in concern and seemed as familiar to me as my own.

“Is anything damaged?” She looked away, discomfited by my stare. “I am not usually so clumsy. I’ll pay for anything I broke, I swear.”

A sunflower-print dress flowed to her ankles. Her small hands fluttered about as she spoke, and the black of her hair matched perfectly her eyes, which glistened over a slender, rosy face. For an instant, something squeezed in my chest. Madness, likely. Or hope.

“You!” I blurted.

She frowned, and hastily I placed the sculpture back on the pedestal and continued speaking. “It’s quite alright, I assure you,” I said. “Nothing…nothing damaged. Ehm, what is your name, may I ask? Why did you stop in here?”

“Iris, we’re late for court,” her companion said, sidling up and eyeing me. “I’ve got the directions. We should go before the rain really gets nasty.”

Outside the front window, bits of trash and debris rolled down the sidewalk, and fat raindrops came down in a slant.

“No, no, please stay awhile,” I said, willing my toothy smile to seem friendly. “You’ve got no umbrellas. Madeline can make you a cup of tea for your troubles.”

I wiped my hands on my apron, leaving smudges of paint behind to mingle with the others. Perhaps it caused me to look like some ancient parrot, for the woman gave a brilliant smile and stuck her hand out. I stared at it, then took it warily.

“Iris Balor,” she told me. “I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I’ll take that cup of tea, thanks. You know, I pass by this place every so often on my way to court. I collect art, actually. Been wanting to come in for a long time, but never had the chance. Busy job, you know. And planning the wedding.”

“Iris,” her man said, giving her a slight head tilt towards the door. I cursed his bloodline in my head.

“Ah, come on, Chris,” she told him, flashing that smile. “Look! It’s pouring now. We can spend a few minutes checking out the art.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, taking her arm while Chris watched with a scowl. “Please have a wander. Are you looking for a specific piece, my dear? I have everything! Anything you like. Any style, perhaps a custom? My niece and I are the best here, and only the best for patrons with an eye of beauty.”

“Don’t you mean for beauty?” her companion muttered as he tailed us, too low for Iris to hear but loud enough for my keen ears.

I cared little for his approval. Here was an admirer, my only customer with real taste in a month! And she was the mystery I painted over and over. There had to be destiny in our meeting. I would tolerate nothing less.

I paraded my work for her: paintings, sculptures, even the moody pastoral sketches I did on parchment over simple dinners of boxed pasta. I hid those from most of my customers, whose eyes would not savor the clean, dark lines of pasture, glen, or mountain range. The lands of my youth.

Madeline brought a tray of steaming tea, and Iris pulled her arm out of my grasp.

“Just something simple, really,” she said, taking a sip. “It’s going over the bed in our guest room. We host a lot of dignitaries, government officials, ambassadors. People of that sort. I just want something unobtrusive, but impressive. Would you have anything suitable? Maybe a landscape.”

I froze, gesturing hand hanging in midair. My mouth blubbed open and shut, like a vulgar fish.

“Your guest room?”

My congealed heart dropped, like a titan falling from the heavens. She wanted a masterpiece to display for some stranger to ignore! To gather dust as years of wedded bliss and misery float by until all the belongings are split between the ill-dressed man and this goddess. Perhaps she’d wander by every day, never pausing to gaze for more than a second or wonder at the divinity captured on canvas. She would dismiss all its mysteries and never return to this blasted cesspool of a gallery.

Madeline stared at me, worry creasing her young face as I crumbled.

Here was my paragon, living and breathing before us! My unknowing muse! Could she see her likeness in the portrait works? Thirty years. Thirty years! The universe had taunted me with foresight of my own humiliation. A last insult to a decrepit and forgotten son of a god. Me, a downtrodden and crumpled immigrant scraping out an existence with an orphan, the pair of us cowering against the onslaught of business and technology, science and hard fact. We myths and legends, with our truth and beauty, had no place in such a New World.

“Why don’t you try IKEA? It’s cheap enough for your taste,” I growled, and turned away from Iris.

“Whoa, that’s uncalled for,” her fiance burst, but it was her voice, thrown at my back, which shattered me.

“Crazy old man,” she said. “You’ll never sell a thing if you treat customers this way. I won’t be coming back here. What a disappointment it turned out to be.”

The woman left, the man just after her.

“Uncle?” Madeline said, and I shook my head.

I returned to my easel, taking comfort in the pride of my art as only a Son of Lugh could do. I rubbed the woman’s image out of the painting, out of my head, out of my heart — and started again. Mystery or not, woman or shrouded figure of doom, I would paint, and that would be my legacy.

“Uncle,” my niece asked, “what kind of flowers are you painting? Aren’t those irises?”