Then he grimaced, picked up the paper, and shut his eyes for a moment, focusing his awareness until he could-Lalo opened his eyes and breathed gently upon the bright wings....
Alfi stilled, eyes widening as the bright speck quivered, expanded its shimmering wings, and buzzed away to join the jewel-scatter of flies that were already orbiting the garbage-basket by the door.
For a blessed moment the child stayed silent, but Lalo, looking at the insects he had drawn into life, shuddered suddenly. He remembered-a scarlet Sikkintair that soared above the heads of feasting gods, the transcendent splendor of the Face of Ils, the grace of Eshi pouring wine... and beside him had sat Thilli, or was it Theba-oh gods, could he be forgetting already?
"Papa, now make me one that's green and purple, and-" A small hand tugged his sleeve.
"No!" The table rocked as Lalo surged to his feet. Colored chalks clattered across the floor.
"But Papa-"
"I said No-can't you understand?" Lalo shouted, hating himself as Alfi gasped and was still. He extricated himself from behind the table and started for the door, then stopped short, trembling. He couldn't leave-he had promised Gilla-he couldn't leave the child in the house alone! Damn Gilla, anyway! Lalo brought his hands to his eyes, trying to rub the ache behind them away.
There was a small sniff behind him. He heard the faint clicking as Alfi began, very carefully, to put the chalks into their wooden box again.
"I'm sorry, tadpole-" Lalo said at last. "It's not your fault. I still love you Papa's just very tired."
No-it wasn't Alfi's fault.... Lalo moved stiffly to the window and opened the weathered shutters, gazing out over the scrambled rooftops of the town. You would think that a man who had feasted with the gods would be different, maybe have a kind of shining about him for all to see- especially a man who could not only paint a person's soul, but could breathe life into his imaginings. But nothing had changed for him. Nothing at all.
Lalo looked down at his hands, broad-palmed, rather stubby in the fingers, with paint ingrained in the calluses and under the nails. Those had been the hands of a god, for a little while, but here he was, with Sanctuary going to hell around him at more than its usual speed, and there was nothing he could do.
He flinched as something buzzed past his ear, and saw the colored flies he had created spiral downward toward the richer feeding-grounds of the refuse heap in the alleyway. For a moment he wondered wryly if they would breed true, and if anyone in Sanctuary would notice the winged jewels hatching from their garbage; then a shift in the wind brought him the smell.
He choked, banged closed the shutters, and stood leaning against them, covering his face with his hands. In the country of the gods, every breeze bore a different perfume. The robes of the immortals were dyed with liquid jewels; they shone in a lambent light. And he, Lalo the Limner, had feasted there, and his brush had brought life to a thousand transcendent fantasies.
He stood, shaken by longing for the velvet meadows and aquamarine skies. Tears welled from beneath shut eyelids, and his ears, entranced with the memory of birds whose song surpassed all earthly melodies, did not hear the long silence behind him, the stifled, triumphant giggle of the child, or the heavy tread on the stairs outside.
"Alfi! You get down from there right now!"
Dreams shattering around him, Lalo jerked back to face the room, blinking as dizzied vision tried to sort the image of an angry goddess from the massive figure that glared at him from the doorway. But even as Lalo's sight cleared, Gilla was charging across the room to snatch the child from the shelf over the stove.
Wedemir, a dark head barely visible above piled parcels and bulging baskets, stumbled after her into the room, looking for somewhere to set his burdens down.
"Want to make it pretty!" Alfi's voice came muffled from Gilla's ample bosom. He squirmed in her arms and pointed. "See?"
Three pairs of eyes followed his pointing finger toward the ceiling above the stove, where the soot was now smudged with swirls of blue and green.
"Yes, dear," said Gilla evenly, "but it's all dark up there, and the colors won't show up very well. And you know that you are not to meddle with your father's colors-you certainly know better than to climb on the stove! Well?" Her voice rose. "Answer me!"
A small, smudged face turned to her, lower lip trembling, dark eyes falling before her narrowed gaze. "Yes, Mama...."
"Well, then-perhaps this will help you to remember from now on!" Gilla set the child down and smacked his bottom hard. Alfi whimpered once and then stood silently, rubbing his abused rear while the slow tears welled from his eyes.
"Now, you go lie down on your bed and stay there until Vanda brings your sister Latilla home." She gripped his small shoulder, propelled him into the children's room, and shut the door behind him with a bang that shook the floor.
Wedemir slowly set his last basket on the kitchen table, watching his mother with an apprehension that belied the broad shoulders and sturdily muscled arms he had gotten working the caravans.
Lalo's own gaze went back to his wife, and his stomach knotted as he recognized Sabellia the Sharp-Tongued in full incarnation standing there.
"Perhaps that will keep him earthbound another time," said Gilla, settling her fists on her broad hips and glaring at Lalo. "I wish I could fan your arse as well! What were you thinking of?" Her voice rose as she warmed to her subject. "When you said you'd look after the baby, I thought I could trust you to watch him! You know what they are at that age! There are live coals in that stove would you have noticed when Alfi started screaming? Lalo the Limner- Lalo the Lack-Wit they should call you! Pah!"
Wedemir eased silently backward toward the chair in the comer, but Lalo could not return his commiserating smile. His tight lips quivered with words that twenty-seven years with this woman had taught him not to say; and it was true that... his vivid imagination limned a vision of his small son writhing in flames. But he had only looked out the window for a moment! In another minute he would have seen and pulled the child down!
"The gods know I've been patient," raged Gilla, "scrimping and striving to keep this family together while the Ran-kans or the Bey sin, or hell knows who, came marching through the town. The least you could do-"
"In the name of Ils, woman-let be!" Lalo found his voice at last. "We've a roof above us, and whose earnings paid-"
"Does that give you the right to burn it down again?" she interrupted him. "Not to mention that if we don't pay the taxes we will not have it long, though Shalpa knows to whom we'll be paying them this year. What have you painted lately. Limner?"
"By the gods!" Lalo's fingers twitched impotently. "I have painted-" a_scarlet Sikkintair that soared through azure skies, a bird with eyes of fire and crystal wings-his throat closed on the words. He had not told her-he would show her the rainbow-hued flies he had drawn for Alfi, and then she would know. He had the powers of a god-what right had she to speak to him this way? Lalo looked wildly about him, then remembered that he had opened the shutters and the insects had flown away.
"I saved your life, and this is all the thanks you have for me?" Gilla shouted. "You'd burn the last babe I will ever bear?"
"Saved my life?" Abruptly the end of his vision replayed in memory-he had been painting a goddess who had wrenched him away from heaven, a goddess who had Gilla's face! "Then it was you who brought me back to this dung-heap, and you want me to thank you?" Now he was shrieking as loudly as she. "Wretched woman, do you know what you have done? Look at you, standing there like a tub of lard! Why should I want to return, when Eshi herself was my handmaiden?"