Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  ***

  “I had almost given you up for lost.”

  Emily was ushered into the hall by Volkov himself, and she clutched at her bag, feeling clumsy and awkward to be back in his presence again. When she arrived, the sun had disappeared below the line of the ocean, leaving a dark purple sky studded with thick, inky black clouds. It was not yet dark enough for Emily not to notice that the Bentley was still parked in the same position as it had been the night before. Not a single stone of gravel had been disturbed beneath its wheels. She had stumbled up to the door, groping for the heavy knocker in the growing darkness, only to have it opened before her hand could even touch the wood.

  Now here she was, back in the house with the funereal curtains hanging over every mirror, back in the house of perpetual shadow. The sconces bore fresh, fat candles already running rivulets of hot wax, and Volkov was gazing at her with something like amusement playing upon his face, almost as if he hadn’t really expected her to show up at all. Emily straightened herself up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There was… a distraction. At home, I mean.”

  She might as well not have spoken. Volkov indicated that she should follow him down the corridor, which she did obediently. She watched his broad back as they passed the drawing room where they had first met. He was wearing a white shirt tonight, rolled up at the elbows, but his black trousers were the same. His hair was loose, drifting past his shoulders like seaweed floating along with the waves; it softened him in a way she found surprising. He turned to look at her over his shoulder, that same vaguely mocking look in his eye, and she thought for a moment that he looked a little different than he had the night before. Younger. She swiftly dismissed it as a trick of the light.

  “You have all of your tools, I trust?” Volkov enquired. Emily shuffled her canvas bag.

  “Everything I need,” she replied. Then: “Are you ready?”

  They stopped at a double door a little past the staircase. Volkov turned to look down at her.

  “I am always ready, Miss Van Buren,”

  “Emily,” she corrected automatically before a flood of embarrassment caused her to bite her tongue. “Please.”

  Volkov smirked, a quick twitch of the mouth.

  “Emily,” he said, taking care to draw out the vowels as if savouring the word on his lips. She blushed automatically, hating the confused embarrassment that twisted in her stomach. He pushed open the door with an easy grace that sent a cloud of dust into to the air. It tickled Emily’s throat, causing it to itch unpleasantly. Volkov strode into the room, leaving her to splutter inelegantly behind him. The cloud of dust distorted and drifted, gradually dissipating into nothingness.

  “If you would care to enter, Miss Emily,” Volkov called from inside the room. “We can begin.”

  Every room in this house seemed like a great threshold to be crossed; what was once familiar was now alien and strange to her. In such a short time Fairbanks Manor had become an unknown place to be explored all over again. The room that Volkov had chosen was, like all the others, dim and filled with shadows, but it was a room that seemed possessing of more grandeur and stately elegance than the warm intimacy of the library. Much of the fine furniture was covered in a heavy white cloth, while others remained uncovered. It seemed to Emily that this room had rarely been used even when Hugo was alive, but for the life of her she could not remember it. It was possible that she had never been inside.

  “I don’t remember this room,” she said, almost to herself. A gentle breeze behind her alerted her to Volkov’s sudden presence behind her.

  “The smoking room,” he said, speaking over her shoulder. “Traditionally, a lady would never step foot in such a place, unless perhaps to clean it.”

  Having him so close to her so unexpectedly made her heart constrict with fear. Memories of her dream the night before swam dizzily in her head and she found herself wondering, in a flurry of seconds, if coming back here was a wise decision after all. But then she had an uneasy feeling, deep inside of her, that she would have come even if her own father had barred her way. That same old scent of earth and sorrow invaded her senses to the point that it hurt her to breathe the same air as him. But then Volkov was no longer behind her but in front of her, gazing at her with those unusual eyes and the urge to gag on the smell melted away as swiftly as it had come. Her bag felt strangely heavy in her arms, so she let it drop to her feet.

  “Are you a man of tradition, Mr Volkov?”

  They stood for a while, looking at each other, Emily forcing herself to hold her head up when she wanted nothing more than to look away and break free. The corner of Volkov’s mouth twitched.

  “No, Miss Emily, I am not. Tradition belongs in the past, I find.”

  Before she could say anything, he turned and pointed towards a particular chair placed very deliberately in the centre of the room.

  “You will paint me in this chair, Miss Emily, if it pleases you.”

  It was made from gold brocade and elegant, polished oak; an impossibly fine thing with an intimidatingly high back and long, shining legs to lift you above all else. It was the sort of thing for a king to sit upon. Emily nodded in approval. “It’s lovely.”

  “It is one of my own, from my homeland,” Volkov replied.

  His voice seemed softer when he spoke, and for a moment Emily wondered if, perhaps, the chair held some significance to him, the way she had attached so much reverence to her childhood toys. She watched him sit upon this throne, slowly, his hands curving around the rests.

  “If it’s alright with you, Mr Volkov,” she said, crouching down to open up her canvas bag. “I’d like to work on some preliminary sketches tonight.”

  Volkov leant back in the chair, adopting a relaxed pose that, to Emily’s eyes, was completely unnatural for someone like him. He seemed to her the kind of man that would always sit with his spine straight and his shoulders back, and she wondered for a moment if it was a genuine thing that he was doing, a sign of the mask slipping just enough for her benefit. His long fingers drifted to his chin, where he gently combed them through the silky black hair of his carefully trimmed beard.

  “Dedication,” he posited, “Or uncertainty?”

  Emily offered him a dry smile in return. “Both.”

  “If it pleases you.”

  “Only,” she began, offering a cursory glance around the room. “The light in here isn’t ideal,” she said. “I won’t be able to see you as clearly as I’d like.”

  A look of wry amusement crossed Volkov’s face.

  “As your subject, Miss Emily,” he said, “I am best suited to the darkness.”

  A heavy silence hung between them for a few moments. Emily was still on her knees, her sketchbook only half withdrawn from the bag. She furrowed her brow.

  “Art is not best suited to darkness, Mister Volkov,” she replied carefully. “The idea is to present the subject, not to hide it.”

  “Ah, but I have commissioned your services, Miss Emily, and not the other way around.” Volkov retorted. He was looking at her with unblinking eyes, directly challenging her. Emily removed the sketchbook from her bag without a word.

  “I would prefer to be exactly as you see me now,” Volkov continued, head now resting on his closed fist. His voice had taken on a low, dark edge to it despite the deception of its softness. “I am the sort to take comfort in darkness.”

  Emily did her best to think about it, trying to ignore the twisting of discomfort in her stomach. “Can we at least light a few candles?”

  “And candles will achieve...?”

  “Ambience. Atmosphere. If we must be in darkness, we may as well benefit from the wonders of chiaroscuro.”

  There was that hint of a smile again. “Chiaroscuro, Miss Emily?”

  “Light and shadow, Mister Volkov.”

  He seemed to consider this for a time, his thumb running idly along his jaw line. Everything she said seemed to be of amusement to him, like she was a performing animal danci
ng behind a glass wall. In a way she felt the same, like they were playing with each other. He gave a slight nod of ascent, and Emily went back to her bag to fetch the rest of her materials. When she removed the camera, she was amazed to see him flinch. His lip pulled back over his teeth in a sudden sneer as he pushed back into his chair.

  “Is there something wrong, Mister Volkov?”

  As soon as she spoke, the mask fell back over his eyes and his face was the picture of calm, wry amusement it always was.

  “I must request, Miss Emily, that you do not use that here,” he said, pointing one long finger towards the camera. Emily looked at it, slightly stunned by his request.

  “A hereditary affliction,” he continued in a slow, almost lazy drawl. He swung his finger in the direction of his face in a vague motion. “My eyes, you see.”

  Emily stood rigidly, still clutching the camera in two hands. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry, I never thought to ask.”

  He looked at her silently, his mouth a straight, serious line. Emily forced herself to move, grabbing her canvas bag and forcing the camera back inside much faster than was natural or necessary. She realised that her hands were shaking as she did so, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. The way he stared at her, it would never cease to be unsettling.

  “I hope you’re not offended,” she said to him without looking.

  Volkov pushed himself off the chair abruptly and set about lighting candles, saying nothing. It made just as much sense to assume that she was forgiven as it was to assume that he was angry with her, so Emily decided to take advantage of his sudden distraction and finished setting up her work area, the room growing steadily brighter as she did so.

  She chose the seat she would work from, an armchair where she could comfortably sit with her legs crossed. It was her favourite position to draw in, preferring the way the sketch book rested across her thighs. She could lose herself better this way, hunching over the pad so that the curtain of her hair hid her from the world around her, leaving her alone with the paper and the possibilities it presented. As she sharpened her pencils, she became aware of the intensifying heat as more candles were lit and shrugged her coat from her shoulders. Volkov, as ever, moved so silently that she almost forgot that he was in the room. Then he was suddenly standing before her; she was alerted to his presence only by the gentle ruffling of the paper that his movements compelled. She looked up, startled, and his eyes flashed in the eerie half-light now cast about the room.

  “You have more colour about you tonight, Miss Emily,” he murmured.

  Emily’s breath hitched in her throat. “I’m sorry?”

  “You have more colour about you,” he repeated, gazing at her intently. “You are pale as I am pale, but your lips are red.”

  Emily looked back down at her sketch pad, a queasy sensation disturbing her sense of balance despite the fact that she was sitting. She smacked her lips together, feeling the layer of lipstick shift beneath the pressure, and wondered what to say. She had wanted him to notice, hadn’t she? Suddenly she had no idea.

  “Thank you,” she said stupidly. “You have more colour too. Your eyes seem… brighter in this light.”

  Volkov’s responding smile was wider than usual, something that Emily found a little disturbing to behold. She couldn’t think why she had said what she had said, but evidently instead of finding it disquieting, he was charmed by it. She hated to think of his face when he felt love, if he ever felt love. In truth his eyes did seem brighter, but not in a way that she liked, not at all. She wordlessly watched him move back a few steps and landed gracefully into the chair, like a cat naturally finding its feet after a fall. He arranged himself artfully, his spine as straight as a rod and his long legs carefully placed.

  “Shall we begin?” he asked. His voice was almost playful.

  Emily responded by brandishing her pencil. Without a word, she put it to the paper, took a deep breath, and began to draw.

  ***

  Time passed fluidly. The eternal darkness of the house masked the falling darkness outside, and Emily was so engrossed in her task that she didn’t even think of the swiftly disappearing seconds, minutes and hours. Crunched up papers lay around her chair as she furiously scratched and blended, trying with all her heart to create something true. She was attempting to gain momentum, trying to create a decent likeness of Volkov’s face from reflex alone. Yet no matter what she did, no matter what angle or technique she tried, something, some infuriatingly indefinable thing, would be missing from the overall picture. To look through that crumpled pile of papers that surrounded her would be to see perfect parts of a whole, fragmented and scattered about. In one attempt she had captured the cascading flow of his hair; in another she had caught the slight bump in his long, aquiline nose. But in those same images, aggravating imperfections also existed, ruining that possibility for perfection. As she worked, Emily pushed down the gentle panic that was beginning to bubble. She was reaching deep within herself and coming up short, so she remained hidden behind her curtain of hair and persisted.

  Volkov, for his part, was an impeccably behaved subject. He had remained in the same position with almost perfect, uncanny stillness, his long legs crossed and leaning back into the chair with arms draped over the rests. If he did move, it went unnoticed by Emily. For a time, the only sound that persisted was the scratch of the paper as the granite spread itself over the white landscape. Habitually, Emily glanced up through her hair for a split second to ascertain details, adjusting for changes in the light as the candles slowly melted down. Volkov’s stillness was disturbing to her, she couldn’t deny it, but when she drew she couldn’t help but be grateful for such qualities. She had no time to wonder about how he managed to be as still as that, nor care to consider what it was that kept him as immovable as a rock. All she knew was the pencil and the paper; it was all she could care about.

  “Miss Emily.”

  She jumped, snapping the head of her pencil in the process. She lifted her head to see Volkov moving from his chair, the first sign of life she had seen from him in hours. Emily looked back down at the paper and found that the broken head of the pencil had left a smudge under the eye that she had been furiously working on before he spoke and dragged her back into the real world.

  “That is enough for tonight, I think.” he said. “I grow as weary as the light in here grows dim.”

  “Oh,” she said, lowering her pencil and closing the book with a sweep of her left hand. “Of course.”

  The candles had indeed melted down into fat stubs of lumpen wax. The shadows moved sluggishly against the walls, struggling to find definition in the fading light of the room. She began to pack up her things abruptly, suddenly aware of the soreness around her eyes and the ache that had developed in the small of her back. After she closed the bag’s flap, Emily stood up and stretched, pulling her arms high above her head until her bones cracked in a manner she found most satisfying. She stifled a yawn, suddenly feeling the effects of her hard work. Her head was pulsing in time with her heart beat, and she knew she was going to feel like hell tomorrow.

  “Come with me to the library,” Volkov purred. “We will sit for a while. There is a fire prepared.”

  She nodded, tempted by the idea of relaxing for a while. A half-thought drifted through her head, telling her that he must have had the fire ready before she arrived, though it seemed an odd thing to simply let it burn unattended.

  The library was blissfully warm, with two chairs already placed in front of the fire for them to settle into. Emily gratefully sank into the cushions, unable to release a little sigh of pleasure. Volkov lowered himself into his own chair with that same strange grace with which he moved and stared intently into the fire, hands on his knees. Emily couldn’t imagine him relaxing the way that she was, couldn’t picture him leaning back and letting go in any real way. She couldn’t imagine him dancing, for instance, or laughing so hard he could no longer breathe; the very idea was absurd to her. But for the first time since
she had met him, sitting here in this warm with sleep teasing at her, she felt at ease in his company.

  “Does it bother you, living alone?” the question tumbled from Emily’s mouth before she had time to consider it.

  Volkov looked back to her, and she watched the flames of the fire flicker in the reflection of his eyes. He flexed his long fingers before balling them up into loose fists that hung limply over the armrests of his chair. She believed that caught a flicker of change in his face, a sign of recognition.

  “I am rarely alone, Miss Emily,” he responded flatly. “So I seek isolation. This house is my sanctuary.”

  She nodded to show that she understood, and it wasn’t a lie. She did understand. For someone that preferred isolation, a place like Caldmar was a true haven. Emily had loved the vivacious night life of the city and her time as a student seemed positively glamorous when she compared it to the way she now spent her days, but the artist inside of her still relished the time she had alone. The way she saw it, she wasn’t truly alone in those times, not when she had a pencil in her hand and a pad of paper settled in her lap, but she also knew that there was still a part of her that would always crave what she did not have. If Emily was living a quiet life, then she would dream of something bigger. If she achieved her dreams, then there would always be a little part of her longing for the simple quiet of a room where there was nothing for her to do but draw.

  Volkov’s life was different to hers. He was the kind of man that could barely call his house a home because he was called away so often, but the house could still offer him some small amount of comfort when he could take it. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that he might find solace in the quiet and cavernous walls of this house. She was surprised to feel a soft twinge of pity for him.

  They sat in silence for a while, and Emily realised that she would have to go home soon. She was thinking about getting up and saying her goodbyes when Volkov spoke again and instantly distracted her.

  “Do you know much of love, Miss Emily?”

  Emily blinked, perplexed. It was such an intimate question for someone like him to ask someone like her, but when she looked at him she saw something that she had never seen before. His mouth had curved downward, slackened under the weight of the sorrow she perceived upon his face. While his smiles never reached his eyes, his unhappiness never failed to. She realised that he wanted her to talk to him in spite of all his strangeness, as if for just a moment the mask had slipped and the performer was simply too tired to continue the act. In her warmth and comfort, her sense of dread eased away, melting away to nothing. If he insisted on playing with her like this, then she would humour him for a while.