The Owl and Painting

Charlotte’s Perspective:

I awake as someone shakes my shoulder and at first I’m startled but as my eyes get used to the dim light flooding in from outside our room, I see that my Mama is there, and Papa is over at Sasha’s bed, waking her up.

He’s leaving the room when he pauses and sees my desk with my drawings. I usually try to hid them, but tonight I wasn’t as on my toes as usual. He remains quite then leaves.

“Honey, we’re back from our New Year’s Eve party early, do you want to join us in the study while we wait for the New Year?” She smiles pleasantly at me.

Sasha is excited while I get up groggily but with a nod, still out of it a bit, I was dreaming the most wonderful dream, seeing the group of Betta Fish and riding them again, a frequent dream that I’ve enjoy since wishing for it.

Sasha and I join our parents in our Father’s study, it’s a large open space with subsequent plane wooden arch’s that line the upper walls, and then lower much the same, the right side with many books on the upper stair’s balcony, while the left contain what use to be many paintings from my father, yet remains bare since earlier this month when he torched all of them in the fireplace.

Down the stairs, my Papa lights up the fireplace while my Mama leaves through the downstairs door built into the side of the grand staircase. My sister goes to the Christmas tree on the opposite side, it’s pine needles beginning to brown already. Mama, Sasha and I enjoyed our time decorating the tree. She comes back after we wait a bit while Papa tends to the fire by throwing in another log. Mama enters with a platter of four mugs on top, and I can smell the chocolate aroma coming from them.

Papa stares at the Grandfather clock leaning against the wall as it chimes eleven o’clock. I have taken residences against his sturdy arm chair, trying not to nod off as Mama hands me a mug of the Hot Chocolate, a large marshmallow floats in it’s center. Sasha is taking the chair that Mama usually sits in when we’re allowed in Father’s Study and Papa needs a way to get her out of the chair so asks casually “Sasha why not grab a book and I’ll read it for us until the New Year.”

He continues to stoke the fire, tossing in another log and prodding the embers, I wake up more as I watch him, seeing an edge of one of the many canvases from one of his paintings not yet burned still lining the wall beyond the railing above.

One’s left?

I hear a crackle from the fire as I turn my attention back to him as he aggressively pokes it into the embers, I’m the only one who notices this as Sasha giggles, rushing out of the chair so Mama can take her seat and she holds her mug of Hot Chocolate in both hands and she takes a sip and I do likewise, pretending not to have seen my Papa’s anger.

Sasha comes back holding a book in both hands as she goes to Papa with it, as he looks to recognize the book without even placing a hand on it. “Moby-Dick, that’s a great one.” He says taking it from her while Sasha climbs into Mama’s lap and sits on her. She’s ten but still likes to be coddled.

Papa flips though the long book when he finds a spot closer to the end of the story, as he takes his own seat, ruffling my head as he does so, acknowledging that I’m there, minding my own business and sipping the Hot chocolate my Mama brought me, it’s warm and soothing as it slides down my throat.

His voice is rich, as he reads from the story, only pausing to add another log to the fireplace or prodding it as all of us get drowsy. I finish the last of my hot chocolate as I glace at the Grandfather clock, we’re still ten minutes to and I set my mug down, closing my eyes as he started nearing the climax of the story and is getting to the apex when my eyes shut completely and I am whisked away to a lovely sun filled land as I feel as if I am flying, looking down I see a large floating whale like in Papa’s book with many smaller ones around her. A pod if I recall the biology lesson from Mrs. Killeen correctly. It’s floating…

I try to turn, to move my body but I am fixed in the skies as I pass large rock like out cropping that pour waters into somewhere far below me that I can’t even see. It’s not dark, or like a pit, it’s just we seem to be so high up in the skies that clouds are here.

The whale is glowing as I come closer and am acknowledge. Her feminine voice greets me. “Your a newcomer...seems there are great treasures in store for you should you take up the mantle.”

“Who are you,” I ask marveling at the large whale speaking to me as I near her large eye and she laughs a deep and booming laugh which echos in my mind.

“Edith, Burden of Gluttony, and you my dear have an adventure awaiting you.”

“I do?”

She nods, “prepare well…”

Silence befalls everything as I think she’s still talking to me, but I can’t hear her, instead I sense someone staring at me as I am able to turn around now to see a green eye in the sky behind me encompassing the entirety of the sky and I’m in awe as it blinks as the world goes dark around me and I feel myself treading water.

Echos of a calming yet non discerning voice beings complimenting me.

“Joyful, Grateful, Lovey.”

Still watching the skies, the only light source comes from that eye as it continues to watch me. I’m not afraid of it, just shocked as I see other shadows start to rise around me, not all treading water like myself. But some are more defined then others, being clearly visible to myself as I get the feeling they are me.

What seems like farther ahead of me, an older looking woman in a hospital bed, she has a frown on her face as she stares at the same eye I am, it remaining stationary in the sky after it blinked. What I can best describe as a plant, that’s somehow is me, is also looking at the eye, as I hear a rumbling only for the eye to change into a black ball with green fires around it, and streaking toward us. A loud and deep growl from someone behind me echos and I try to look over my shoulder only to see a larger form, larger then the figures around with a long head, almost like a lizard. I can’t see much more of it’s shape but it towers over everything in here, larger then even the whale—I can still vaguely hear her voice, but it’s inaudible—hiding far in the back of this void like space.

The fireball quickly approaching us, while I cover my eyes as I feel it’s intensity and heat, when I hear the chime of the grandfather clock as I am pulled from the dream, unable to hear further what the whale wanted to tell me or the strange figures I saw in that dark space.

I lean my head back, staring at my Father who’s no longer in his chair, and I hear his hobbling and cane on the steps up the grand staircase as I head for them, seeing Sasha and my Mama both sound asleep in each other's arms. The fire having been reduced to embers of it’s formal glory.

Up the stairs and to the left, a doorway leads out onto a deck that has a glass roof over it, there are white bars lining it and he sees me where he sits, taking a pause before lighting his pipe. Casually puffing on it as he glaces back at me, “I was hoping it would be you to join me…” He sounds almost tired as he speaks, “it’s frigged out, are you going to be fine?”

While I am cold I nod at him as he sighs.

“Charlotte, I’m not the big bad wolf, I just want to share my thoughts at the moment, you’re old enough to understand me. Sasha will learn in time. He looks at me, leaning back from the railing. “Your my first daughter, and my first child, I love you, but you are cautious of me, same with your sister, do I really scare you two?”

I don’t have any answers, I’ve never have had a deep conversation with anyone and I fear that my Papa is looking for that, is looking for answers that I just don’t have, that I don’t fully understand myself. I place my hand over my lips, where he hit me days before and he looks wary.

“I’m sorry about that...I truly am.”

I hear his sincerity and take a seat across from him at the table we have out here.

“Those paintings you drew, you did, you’ve spent hours on them, why burn them?” I ask.

He looks down, this conversation again. “They where done in my youth, when I was a child, when I was ignorant of the world.”

I’ve drawn a lot since then, and I know my father saw my drawings, I was replicating what he drew from memory even though I couldn’t see much. “But I saw what I saw, isn’t that how the saying goes, believing is seeing?”

“You’ve got it reversed, Porcupine.” He says with a chuckle, still as sad and tired sounding though, “It’s seeing is believing. But yes, those paintings I saw within my dreams, and within my nightmares…” He steps away from a frame that I didn’t see lying there. “I couldn’t burn this one, my last painting after we had you.”

I stare at the back of the wooden frame, a looming presents hanging over me as I question myself, do I want to know his fear, to know why he’s stopped painting? I get the feeling I know which painting it is as well, I only saw a glimpse of it but it had a presents to it.

Anticipating this, he lifts a hand to his pipe, one hand still on the painting, tapping it on the railing to a few clinks. And then holds it there.

He pauses as well, hesitates on turning it around for me, straightening up, “You are old enough now to see My Nightmare, only weeks after we brought you home Charlotte...”

As he turns it around I see the darker colors, grays and blacks, skeletons, all around while a large one, riding on a dark cloud, sits, a scythe in hand, twirling. Before him a dizzying current of winds visible by the groups of blurry streaks in a figure eight, green fire all around them, on the ground chains connected to the larger skeleton's waist. This larger one wears a tattered black cloak over it’s body, as it sits, legs outstretched over the black cloud it rides. The black skeletons below are fighting, while the large skeleton in white, laughing as he travels over the tree tops of what I recognize to be our backyard. Many other white skeletons in concentric circles above the tree tops, in the background either bow to it, or hold hands, and I can picture them playing ring around the rosy. The ground war torn, as there are piles of black skulls, white ones just below that. Obelisk resting atop them, and I then see five bodies, lying on the ground, there isn’t any real gore to them, they are just there and I know they are dead. But what draws me is a baby’s crib, the only bright point, a pink blanket within, and a blue eyed baby bundled up. It’s off in the corner with a cloud of white outlining it, as if protected, but why include that in such a grim painting?

On one hand, it’s a fantastic painting, I never got a good look at his work, but it’s marvelous. Yet, it’s so dark and grim, I feel it’s weight, and how personal it actually is to him, and that he’s sharing it with me.

“Have I told you of the legend? The curse that follows men around in our family?”

I stare up at him, “What curse, Mama told us of some legend, but nothing about a curse.”

“She told you about the Warrior and Witch?”

I nod, “Yes, but she never mentioned a curse.”

“While I don’t believe in such whimsical fantasy anymore, the curse is real, the curse tends to skip a generation ever so often, but when it hits…”

“Why the green flames…” I ask recalling the dream I just had.

He glaces at his own painting then out, over of the railings, over the darken snowy landscape of our backyard, as if waiting for something…The large skeleton has bony wings on it’s back, and it clicks with me, that’s the Grim Reaper, that’s my Papa’s idea of Death.

“The cruse follows the first born male of the family, and I was the first born. It simply means that all my loved ones will die early…” He takes a long puff on his pipe before blowing out the smoke and staring at me, his eyes cold as he speaks, “When I was five, I was too afraid to get onto the ice, while my father and mother went out to ice skate. Then I had some dream that I actually saved them, but that never happened. By the time they where dragged out of the pond, they where already dead.” He looks off at the snow on the ground. He nods at me as if telling me something which I don’t understand. “I went to the circus as a child as well. Something I still wish to share the same experience with you kids, just not how it went when I went.”

“Something else happened? I ask curiously but cautiously.

“You are old enough to hear this too…” I wonder if when he’s speaking to me like this if it’s some forbidden knowledge, like a secret he never wanted to share, but knew the time would come eventually. “I was only eight when I witnessed my surrogate mother die. She was the original Mistress of Death, an act they still put on to this day and your mother’s mother. She fell when the tent caught fire near end of the grand finale. There where green sparks everywhere and her screams as she burned filled the tent and the tent eventually came down as everyone fled.”

He glaces over at me before staring back at the midnight landscape of our side yard.

“Papa, I didn’t know…”

“The curse affects me and after the large funeral for my parents who where well known in the community and loved very much. I was then raised by my Aunt Sue who ran an orphanage where I met my five friends who helped me with my grief and made me enjoy life once more, though I was still too young to understand the significance of death and it’s toll on me. Eddy, Jimmy, Johnny, Kevin, and Ralph. We were all drafted together, for the war, and they all died…My life has had one death lined up with the next, and now…I swear to protect my family from any more loss.”

I take a step back, but something changes as I hear a screech from off in the woods and then the batting of wings as a snowy owl latches onto the railings and stares at me.

“I’ve been waiting, Sue.” My papa says, taking the painting and resting it against the railing once more.

“Papa?” I question, after hearing what he just said, then seeing this owl here.

“She showed up on our first Christmas with you, I had tossed out a dead mouse a day earlier and I think she showed up thinking I would give her more food. But now she comes around the last few days of the new year, and when I tap on the railing.” Demonstrating with his pipe, the Snowy Owl screeches and hops closer to my Papa. “She’s harmless, come meet Sue.” He says putting a knuckle close to her beak and she nips at it.

I stare at the painting awhile longer, then approach, staring into the large yellow eyes of this owl, and I can tell she is intelligent. I get a familiar almost nurturing feeling from her. “Mama brought her up when she was telling us about the Warrior and the Witch and I’ve seen her a few times within my dreams.”

“That’s not realistic to think, that your being told thing before they happen, or that this is coincidental, but you must be realistic.” He tells me. “Sue is here because she’s hungry.”

“What about your painting of the girl seeing the large horse outside,” I argue, recalling the painting that Mama showed him a few days ago before he burned all of his paintings and I wince as those words leave me because I fear him retaliating again.

He stays silent for a bit and then puffs on his pipe once more, “I can’t confirm with my own eyes what happened that night…”

“So you’re ignoring the truth? Your ignoring that all of us, your family saw that and you didn’t so therefore it never happened? Maybe that’s why you painted it, to remember that it happened.”

He stares at me coldly, but I know he’s smart and I know I am right, he’s just being stubborn to the facts. I change the topic then because he at least isn’t getting angry with me and I would like to speak freely to him.

“You don’t see the bond.” I shoot back at him while Sue flaps her wings, frazzled by my sudden outburst.

“She’s a wild animal, what bond? I see bond’s with dogs, even cats, but an owl?”

“Papa.” Stubborn, that’s what I see here.

“Wild animals aren’t fantasy like your drawings, or even my paintings. They are real, they will attack,” He stares at Sue then reaches an arm for her, as if attacking only for her to use her talons on him, his arm gets scratched and I see blood soaking into his white dress shirt. “See!” He shouts.

“Your provoking her.” I tell him but he grumbles.

“Your fantasy aren’t real, mine weren't, mine where dreams that I painted.”

“And I saw them.” I argue back.

I stare at the painting, and the blood from Papa’s scratched arm dripping onto it, the five bodies that lie there, they are the five friends that my Mama told me about. “Your sour because those are your friends, you lost your friends during the war and now your will to dream…to hope for something more!”

His face twist and I have never seen more furry in his face or expressed on him before as he yells, almost primal, grabbing the painting and tossing it over the railing. Almost hitting Sue, but she takes off, following it down as I stare down my Papa, and he breaths heavily.

“Me losings my friends is real, not mythical creatures, or giant fish that you can ride.”

“Then I wish I could understand you, to understand those feelings.” I yell back without hesitation.

“No you do not!” He shouts back, “You just uttered a curse onto your self, Charlotte.”

“I want to know why you are like this, why you are so afraid of dreaming of something unrealistic.”

“Because it can’t happen! And now, you want to see your friends die, you want to go though my pain?”

“No…” I realize what I’ve just said. “I didn’t think...”

“But you just wished for it, you just asked willy-nilly to have your friends die, you want that?”

“No I don’t…”

“My daughter…Charlotte, death is something that comes for all of us, whether we want it to or not, but you shouldn’t wish your death closer then it already is.

“But my dreams, my fantasies are real. And you use to believe…”

“I knew you where too young for this conversation.”

“Papa, I…” I try to chose my words carefully as Sue flies back to us, a piece of the painting torn and in her beak, it’s of the crib and baby. We both stare at her as Papa throws out his arms.

“Get out of here you stupid bird! Don’t come back!”

I am my Papa’s daughter and I have every bit as much rage in me as he does and I channel it. “I’d much rather die then then have no hope or will to live in a fantasy. To believe in something better for our world then War, then Death. Us arguing over something I know to be real is stupid!”

“Charlotte!” He screams at me, his voice straining as I place my hands over my ears and run back inside. Tears in my own eyes, I head for my bedroom as I notice Mama and Sasha waking from their nap on the chair, but I’m done, I will continue to believe in fantasy, I will prove to Papa that it’s real, that he’s wrong.