Her, the Portrait

I think that if I spend another night here, I will quite possibly go mad. It stares at me. Every single night I come back to this desk and these empty halls. The quiet hum of the security monitors and server machines was a constant companion, but that did not bother me. 

The statue halls did not bother me, nor the intricate sculptures or various artifacts and other troves of priceless history. But, it did bother me, the portrait that watched my every move. 

I would swear that I was losing my mind, she would talk to me, her voice soft and crooning. 

“Come to play with me, I’ve been so very lonely for so long.”

I could hear it no matter where I went, no matter what corridor, or the section of history I was walking through that day. I could hear her gentle and repetitive requests. Come to her.  

I ignored her, as I always did. I ignored her because there was quite simply no way that a painting nearly a thousand years old was talking to me. My mind was simply creating stories because I was bored. Every night I convinced myself of the same thing, over and over, she was simply a figment of my imagination. 

On and on she crooned, every night, asking me to visit her alcove where she hung. 

Her frame was beautiful, as was the size of her canvas. An ornate gold ensemble of swirls and dips, she was a gorgeous display of paint and parchment. According to her fact board, she was not made of parchment at all though, but a press of human skin, dried and layered. 

I wondered if the portrait depicted the woman it was made of, a grim sense of horror gripping me. 

“Please, I would very much like to meet you. Come to play with me, you never want to visit me even though you visit everyone else.” 

Her lyrical voice echoed through the speakers of my security system. At least, I thought it did, any time I tried to show my coworkers the footage of her speaking and moving within her frame the footage was still, not moving, and silent just like the rest of the art. I stopped trying to convince them she was real, lest I be labeled insane. 

I really needed to find a new job. 

Every night though, I returned to my office and monitored the museum, an ever faithful servant. Every night I grew less afraid of the woman in the portrait. Maybe she did just want a conversation, if I had not spoken to someone in decades or possibly hundreds of years I was sure that I would want a friend too. She must feel so alone. I wonder who must have painted her, there were no credits on her plaque. Artist unknown. 

She was estimated to have been painted somewhere between nine hundred and one thousand years ago and was found in a crumbling castle in northern Switzerland. The castle had been excavated before but a new section of crumbling wall had revealed her behind the aged stone. 

She had been moved between several museums over the past few decades, never staying anywhere too long.

“Please, come and see me. I long so very badly for a visitor.”

I would do it, I had decided. I would go to speak to the woman in the painting. If we were going to be in each other's company every night then I might as well be friendly. There could be no harm in simply speaking with her. 

My boots clicked as I walked the empty corridors to her section of the museum, I was almost shivering with anticipation. What would she say to me now that we were to meet? 

I approached her portrait. 

She was so beautiful, her thin brush strokes still crisp even after all this time when others had been worn away with time. Being hidden in a wall must have protected her from the elements and age. 

“You’ve finally come to see me. I waited for you for so long.”

She spoke, her voice as musical as it ever was when she spoke to me. 

“How can you speak? You are the only one who can speak to me, and when I show anyone the proof is gone. How can you do that? Who are you? Do you have a name? Who painted you? Who are you made of?”

I fired off my questions too quickly and in quick succession. I was nervous. 

“Slowly, slowly.” She purred. “We’ve only just met, and we have so much time now to get to know each other. There is no need to rush the answers that will come with time. My name is Elwyn, and I am very pleased to meet you.”

“Elwyn,” I repeated, the name rolling over my tongue like a song. 

So, I spoke to Elwyn. Every night I came to her hall and would speak with her about my life, and hers. I learned every single thing about her that I could. 

I memorized every line of brown and splash of green, the pale colors used for her skin and the crushed stone and blood used to illustrate her rosy cheeks and lips. The palest of yellow, nearly white created the visage of her hair, and a crisp glacial blue for her eyes. 

She was made of the woman that she once was. She told me she had been enslaved during a raid on her village, and the lordling who took her was besotted. She had spent years within the confines of his capture before she had made her escape. 

Her freedom had been short lived, and his men and hunting dogs found her and her child whom she had run with. They had torn them apart, both of them, and then the lordling promised her that she would not be separated from her baby. He put both of them into the canvas, but only painted her. 

It was her daughter’s blood that highlighted the ruby tones in her lips.

Her story horrified me. I was glad that I had become her friend. I could not imagine the pain she had gone through. Her consciousness existed here all this time in torment, never given peace for what happened to her. Hundreds of years had passed in the dark wall of that castle. 

I spent every night I could with her. I did all the night shifts during the week but I would pick up any shift my coworkers did not want too. I had no need for free time anyways. I only wanted to be here with her.   

Months passed this way as I got to know her and she got to know me. I knew I could never tell anyone about my relationship with her, but I did not care, she was all that mattered. 

One evening, I was sitting on the cool marble floor in front of her when she asked me a question. It was a delirious question. There was not a way for it to happen, for she was art and I was flesh and bone. 

She wanted to be with me. She did not want to lose me and go back to her eternity of silence. She could not bear the thought of another thousand years of being utterly alone. It did not matter that her daughter was here with her, she could not speak. She wanted someone she could talk to. 

“I don’t understand.” I told her. “I would love to stay with you but it isn’t possible. I’m a human man, and you’re a painting. Even if we spent every night together until I died I would still have to die some day.”

“Do you trust me?” She asked, the lyrical quality of her voice was gone, replaced with a cool ice, and something sharper that I could not put my finger on. 

“Of course, I do.” I answered, though I hesitated. 

“Step into my painting, we can be together forever, I promise.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a bit of a chill prickling at the back of my neck. 

“Exactly what I say. You will be with me forever, we must never be apart again. I will never be lonely or afraid again.”

I don’t know what strange force took over my body, but I knew that she would not lead me astray. I stood, turned, and stepped into her painting. 

They hired a new night guard rather quickly when I was not there the next morning to pass the shift to the next guard. They assumed I quit. Everyone on the night shift eventually does, they said. He was a little taller than I had been, and a little bit younger, but it did not matter. 

Soon her voice was floating again through the shadowed halls. 

“Come play with me. I am so very lonely.”