Lovely

She didn't look like the kind of person who'd recognize a Renoir on sight.

For a moment, I didn't even know what she was talking about. Standing in the exchange line of the thrift store, I took her in again: red shirt, short, stout, no makeup, nothing in particular done with her hair. Definitely somebody's mom, aunt. Somebody who probably spent a significant amount of time in a kitchen somewhere. Somebody who possibly shopped at a thrift store out of necessity rather than the urge to make a statement. Somebody unexciting. Somebody who made somebody else feel thoroughly loved. A very real woman.

"I love that Renoir," she said again, to my "What?"

"Oh!"

I turned around the frame in my hand. Speechless for a moment, looking at it. I guessed it was a Renoir. I hadn't even noticed.

I ask, "Are you a big fan of Renoir?"

"Oh, I just like him. I like that style."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking at the long slender blue man with his back to us, looking at a long slender white woman, blue bows all down her soft front. I guessed it was lovely.

I wonder, "Have you seen any real Renoirs? In person?"

"I can't remember. I think so. I've been to that big museum in San Francisco."

"Yeah! The de Young?"

"Yeah."

"I love the de Young."

The line moved up, or I might have told her about seeing the Degas's there when I was young. About the tote bag I still have with the print of The Dance Class. How much it means to me.

At any rate, I didn't have the heart to tell her I was taking out the Renoir. I'd only had eyes for the frame.

I wonder how many times she'd seen the slender blue man looking at the slender white woman, bows all down her front, to know it on sight, sideways under a stranger's arm.

I wonder where she is now. I wonder about the next time she sees a real Renoir. I wonder how she'll feel, what it will do to her.

I buy my frame, which I'm going to paint gold and use to house a fierce and gorgeous movie poster. The subjects in that one ARE Looking at You. They are Close, and Daring, with ferocious, beautiful green eyes that you can't look away from. I've loved it for over a decade, taped to my bedroom door. That's the kind of art which deserves a gold frame, I thought.

It's sitting on the floor of the hallway now, that frame. I haven't had the time to paint it.

I glance at it each time I pass with the laundry, surprised by it, what's in it. How subtly pleasant it is. By how easy it is to look.

I notice the edges of Auguste's painting. I start looking and find another man there, and a swing, and a child, all amidst the sun-dappled trees. Everything is soft. Unconcerned with being seen. They're just out there living, but in fact— they are lovely.

I've never been a particular fan of Renoir. But— maybe I'll keep it. Maybe not everything has to be profound to be beautiful. Maybe the quiet thing deserves that place on the wall.

Origin Story: Kaleidoscope Road 21

The house was built in '97.

It was never meant to be an Inn. It isn’t an Inn. Not officially. It’s a white-shuttered Victorian two-story painted winter-deluge grey, secreted high between foothills and oaks. One thinks irresistibly, Dickensianly, of it having nestled itself there when it was a young house playing hide-and-seek with the other houses, and deciding never to come back out again. But of course, Kaleidoscope Rd. 21 is the antithesis of Scrooge's house, except for the winter fog and the quaint Dutch fireplace. It was built as a family home. It always has been a family home and always will be.

But there are always visitors at the door.

The house is bursting with magic. It curls in the walls and whistles mellifluously in the eaves and never sleeps. Our neighbors call us eccentric. We prefer to think of ourselves as salesmen. We're just selling something most people don't know that they want.

Kaleidoscope Rd. 21 is home for all creative minds.

I am the third eldest. First came the dancer. Then the bibliophile. Then there’s me. There's a lot more of us, tucked away in back rooms or running amok through the trees. I'll trot them out for you later. For now, you get me: the writer, the historian, the archivist. The magician.

My name is Kate. Welcome to our home.

Much love,

Writer Kate

KINGSBLOOD Ch. 1: f a l l i n g

JAX

Dear K—

Here's what happened while you've been gone.

Falling. The feeling of plummeting that reaches out, seizes you; eternal present that won't let go. Like holding your breath and the only thing that exists in the universe is the moment when you can finally take a breath.

A boy with that cursed golden hair, standing up on Elephant Rock, clutching his heart and thinking about falling. That vain organ in my chest threatens to revolt again, but I won't let it stop me. Not today.

I asked them once when our preoccupation with death began. As a joke, but it's true and we all know it. Max said, "Begin? Do these things begin? They just are." Vasco laughed and we toasted ourselves, the "boys with eternity in their hearts."

Obviously, I'd say it began with you.

The clouds were huge that day, I remember that. The ocean always made us those grand, magisterial clouds, but that day, they were huge. I remember thinking how tiny the last ship looked, drifting in below those godly clouds. How trivial man's pursuits.

"Sure noisy now, huh?"

Oappi had given up trying to play my wo'a— a Tchican flute Teuila had given me— and was now trying to balance it endwise on his head. It kept falling into the dirt.

"Yeah, Oap," I said, opening my ears to the sound of it, "I suppose it is." When you weren't blocking it out, it was almost deafening, those shrill human sounds advancing from port, from the palace. You had to focus to hear the heartbeat of the island. Even the bellbirds had shut up for the first time ever, suspicious and withdrawn before the newcomers. The jungle felt emptier without them.

"How long do they have to be here?" Oappi had given up his balancing act and was crouched up on a mossy rock, using the flute as an instrument of experimental poking. The vibrant beetle grew more disgruntled at every prod.

I didn't like thinking about it. The whole thing— the Choosing, having to smile at and play nicely with traitors, having to play prince.

I sighed, "I don't know." Too long.

Oappi sat indignantly, facing me. "Why'd they have to come?"

"You know why, Oappi."

"Aren't you mad about it at-all?" He meant wasn't I mad that they had taken our island by storm? Mad that we couldn't go fishing off the wharf or hear the potoos sing at night anymore?

"Course I'm mad about it."

"Why don't you do something?" His little voice could bite like a wolf, tear your whole arm off, when he wanted to. "You're the prince, aincha?"

I laughed and grabbed him and messed up his hair. Oappi had extraordinary and rare powers of making you feel brighter when everything, everything was dismal and hopeless. "I think you'd make a better prince than me."

He giggled and giggled and wrestled out of my grip.

Truth is, I was scared of what I was. I don't think I realized until those ships sailed in just how much I was owned by my empire.

Your life is not your own, the King told me. You are the Kingsblood, Jackson. You exist for the good of the Empire.

I'm the second most powerful person in the world, after my father. It has never felt like that. I don't exert power, I'm enslaved to it.

I remember thinking about the time your father used the word "proud" and we had to look it up in a dictionary. We knew other words— disappointment, disgrace, disown. You laughed and said we'd find a father for both of us and teach him to only say words that started with p and never d. Then you said "pineapple" and threw one, said "push" and shoved me off the top of Eusses Fall. Then jumped in after me.

This is it, I thought, looking down at the water. This is the end. It has to be. The sunlight spilled through for just a moment, warming my cheek, shimmering the pool below.

Two years. Two whole years. It sometimes feels like I saw you just yesterday. Time weaves and bends around those blasted halls like the lies of the politicians weaving and bending through them. But enough is enough.

I hadn't performed the Optimis Valor Test since the day before our deployment. Some part of me kept waiting for you, I guess.

But the Choosing would start tomorrow. An empire looked to me. If ever there was a time for a test of mettle, it was now.

So I ruffled Oappi's hair and stepped up on the Elephant Rock one last time.

The water hurts. The still surface loathes to be broken, and stings you for your transgression. But the falling is worse. I'd forgotten that. It's something that never ends. In some way, for the rest of eternity, you will always be falling.

I didn't die. I broke through and swam to the rocks like a man renewed. I looked back at the Fall and heard your dumb, infamous, grammatically problematic victory cry ringing in my ears, Vītam amō! Illud ex mē nōn rapitis!

I love life! You shall not take it from me!

I heard them before I saw them, as usual.

"You magnificent pagan god!" Jessime shouted triumphantly. He came jogging up with a congratulatory slap on the back.

I bowed. "At your service, mortal."

The others came up behind him, exchanging coins with reluctance and delight on the appropriate sides.

"Blast, Eisenberg, you actually did it!" Vasco shook my hand with his best old-young man smile. The one where he welds the fierce pride of an old father to the fiendish glee of a compatriot. "You can't die, can you? That's what this is, you know," he addressed the others, "He's immortal and feeding off our ignorance to siphon our purses."

I grinned and shook water from my hair. "Where's my twenty chips?"

Vasco put an arm around my shoulders and announced, "Gentlemen, our Kingsblood."

I fought not to cringe at the name. Sometimes I wished the Kingsblood would die. Not Jax— I was perfectly happy to go on living, but I hoped, impossibly, that the Kingsblood shell I lived in would crumple to ash and fall away. "Freedom would taste sweet on my thirsty lips." That blasted poet Vonaix may have lived six hundred years ago, but he knows me better than I know myself sometimes.

Max smiled and stuck out his hand to me. "The man of the hour. How's he doing?"

We shook and I said, "Aggressively below average."

"Nothing's changed then."

Everyone chuckled. Jessime looked up at the Fall with that piercing elation in his borrowed green eyes and declared, "I'm doing that next."

"Oh no you're not," Vasco said, thrusting a hand against his chest to stop him. "You can't die yet. I just got here."

"Jessime's got more lives than a cat," Aramis said. "I wouldn't worry."

"Let's get out of here before he can try." Vasco pressed me forward and proclaimed, "Mr. Meeks, time to inherit the earth."

We began the trek back to the palace and I asked, "How was the trip?" Vasco and Maxence were the last of our friends to arrive on the island.

"Long," Vasco said. "I need tea."

"As the prophecy foretold," Aramis muttered remotely.

Max chided, "It's too early in the day to quote Dretaux."

Vasco scowled, suddenly remembering. "Isn't there some blasted ceremony or other we're supposed to—"

"The opening ceremony. The Choosing begins," Camden answered, then added ominously, "No turning back."

We laughed.

Vasco roused himself, throwing a fist in the air. "Patriotism! Love of the fatherland!" He punched Aramis who was walking indifferently beside him. "Come on, Diane, let it fill your soul!"

"You're an idiot, Argent," Aramis muttered.

Vasco cupped a hand to his ear. "What was that, dear?"

"I said I love you, Vasco."

"Ah, my children!" Vasco cooed, throwing his arms out and hooking them around the necks of Aramis and Camden beside him. "What happy times we shall have here on this miserable island."

I was just beginning to think this whole thing might not be so bad after all. I hadn't seen half of them since before the war, and I'd forgotten the kind of trouble we could cause together. The Golden Boys, our mothers used to call us when we were young, for our illustrious blond curls. They used to sit around at tea parties and fondly watch us roll around in the dirt and say, the Golden Boys are unstoppable.

And I was thinking that right up to the moment we all took our seats and the King opened his mouth and declared in a voice that filled the great hall, "War— is dead."

_______

Read Kingsblood on Wattpad

Benjamin

Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood

He struggled against the storm tearing at his clothes, his skin, ripping the breath out of him.

Benjamin, come home.

He could just make out his sister on the porch, clutching one of the posts and reaching out to him.

Come home to us.

His mother stood in the door way, stirring slowly in the mixing bowl. He could smell the gingerbread dough from here, and his mouth watered. He tried to reach out. His fingers stretched but it was no use. His mother was saying something, but he could not hear it. Their little brother poked his head out from behind their mother. They were all calling him home.

Benjamin... Benjamin... Ben—

"Ben, wake up!"

Benjamin Holmes shot up with a violent gasp, his hand impulsively on the sword by his cot before he could recognize who was standing over him.

"Not a raid, Ben, put that down. Come on! It's raining!"

Ben blinked the sleep out of his eyes and registered the form of Jane as she pulled him out of bed and dragged him by the hand out of the empty tent.

Cold kisses buried themselves deep in his hair, touching his scalp. He looked up in amazement, unable to understand what he was feeling as the rain splashed down on his dry, sun-burnt face. The blackened, creaking trees lining the camp seemed all the be whispering, here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten.

Jane tugged him down the dirt road, past rows and rows of flimsy government-issue tents. There at the crown of a crisp little hill the rest of their squadron stood rejoicing and shouting for him to join them. A smile finally cracked across his bewildered face.

"Benjy!" Max hailed, clapping him on the shoulder and grinning a soaked grin at him. "Will you do the honors?"

Ben took the blade of dry grass Max handed him uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then he remembered. It felt so long ago now. It was before they'd begun to be a part of the open war, when they'd just been drafted. One day in basic training the eight of them sat on a little hill apart from the compound, complaining about rotten government-issued food. Somebody had made the joke that they'd be better off eating the grass, and it had seemed much funnier at the time. Thus began their ritual. In the midst of victory, they swore to each eat a blade of grass as a reminder of what they had left behind.

Benjamin held up his brittle yellow piece of grass, which the rain was pummeling. "To victory!" he proclaimed in his best proclamation voice. "To peace! To rain!"

The others laughed, a sheer outpouring of uncontainable joy.

"We are the members of the one-oh-seven-seventh strike fighter squadron and we will never surrender!"

Everyone cheered raucously, holding up their blades of grass. Together, they stuffed them in their mouths. Danny began to dance. He pulled Jane with him, and then suddenly they were all dancing and whooping and feeling, for the first time in forever, glad to be alive.

The world is big and we are not but we are still enough.

They filed in to the mess hall soaking wet, but knowing every ounce of it was worth it. They were fighting in the arid land between the kingdoms. No water, no living things. The soldiers around them didn't seem living anymore either. They were only a few years older than Benjamin and Jane and the others, but something inside them had aged and died. When their staff sergeant saw them, she spread her hands in exasperation.

"Your uniforms— you're soaked— why can't just ever keep yourselves clean for more than five minutes?"

Benjamin thought he heard Alan mutter, "This is war," and he was glad the staff sergeant didn't hear. Sergeant Andrews was only two years older than they were, but knew a thing or two about punishments. But she only sighed and dismissed them for lunch. The rain had sparked a good mood in everybody.

The whole company was made up of boys and girls under the previous minimum age restriction of 18. The war had cost so many lives the king was forced to draft minors, and finally, the youngest yet: a squadron of twelve-year-olds. The 1077th strike fighter squadron.

Benjamin was just digging into the unimaginative gruel when a muffled shout approached the mess hall tent.

"We're under attack!"

As if to confirm the statement, the terrible boom of a cannon rang out. The staff sergeants and their squadrons leapt from the benches so quickly that bowls clattered off the table and gruel spilled onto the dirt.

No loss there, Benjamin thought as Sergeant Andrews yelled, "To arms!"

Everyone flew to their tents and back with what could only marginally be considered arms. Their swords were old and clunky. Mostly the 1077th served as pack mules, and performed the more menial tasks of setting up camp. They weren't necessarily meant to fight. But they necessarily had to, if they wanted to survive on the front lines.

The world wasn't. It was no definable thing. Or perhaps, chaos. That's all the world was. An undulating conglomeration of unconnected horrors. The fire of cannons, like the world itself was groaning. The serpentine hiss of clashing swords. People becoming things.

Benjamin's eyes found a frozen milisecond of blue. Jane's terrified eyes. Their eyes screamed at each other, The world is big and we are not.

Then they were whirled apart.

Somewhere in the chaos, a message was relayed. There had been a tacit communal belief that they only had to hold out long enough for another company to get to them. That was what had always happened before.

Whether other companies too were off fighting their own battles, or dead, or simply decided they were not worth their time and manpower saving, no one knew. Benjamin was not sure which was scarier.

No one is coming. You are alone.

Benjamin looked up. On the other side of the valley, thousands of enemy soldiers poured over the hill, unendingly. They were absolutely outnumbered and positively hopeless.

Benjamin felt his breath leave him.

He had been told once that he must have been born with tragedy in his blood.

Because Benjamin William Holmes had a tragic secret: he had an incurable terminal illness. It was called magic.

Benjamin began to run, breaking out of formation.

"What are you doing?" Max yelled.

Somebody else yelled, "Benjamin, get back here!"

He ran out in front of his company, in a small patch of rich black dirt that was a little ways apart from the active combat. The words of Dr. Jones rang in his head as he planted his feet on the wet earth.

The more he uses it, the more it kills him.

Jane was the first to understand what he was about to do. Her stomach clenched with terror. "Benjamin, no!" she screamed.

Benjamin shut out the sound of her screams. He closed his eyes, fell to his knees, and shut out everything. He had to concentrate. He reached his fingers down into the wet dirt and focused on his breath. Images of his sister, his mother, his baby brother flashed into his mind, and a knot of fear and despair wrenched in his gut. He shut them out too. He dug his fingers deeper into the ground, held his breath, then exhaled.

The ground began to rumble.

Before the enemy could turn and run, the ground beneath their feet tore open in deep cracks.

Benjamin could feel it, the poison shooting through his veins, burning, burning. Every part of him seared. He had never known such pain in his life. But he would not surrender.

He thrust his other hand into the dirt and the vengeful world shuddered. The enemy wailed as the ground swallowed them whole. Benjamin was shaking. A scream tore out of him, but he held on until the ground closed up.

Then, he collapsed.

The members of the 1077th broke formation and ran to him. Sergeant Andrews didn't have the heart to stop them. The company looked on in stunned silence as Benjamin's friends surrounded the broken figure on the ground. Jane couldn't remember afterward what happened. She remembered crying, and hollowness.

The next thing she knew, the seven of them were seated around a table in the mess hall, warm mugs tucked in their hands like that would make a difference.

It was raining. Not one of them could think of a single thing to say to each other.

Alan looked restless. He kept bouncing his leg and rubbing his thumbs over each other agitatedly. He stood up abruptly from the table and walked out. Jane and Patrick exchanged a heavy look. Everyone felt gravity increase and weigh down on them.

After a while, Alan returned. He stood at the end of the table, and held up a handful of yellow grass. Jane started to cry again. Slowly and pained, they each took a blade of grass and held it reverently. No one was sure what to say.

Danny exhaled, cleared his throat, and exhaled again. Max, Alan, and Luis looked to him.

"To victory," Danny said, as tears slipped down his face.

The all murmured an echo.

"To Benjamin."

Feverish Reflections

The mirror hung obsequiously amid the peeling streaks of wallpaper. I watched the dusk drip down the wall from the cot, wondering why of all the furniture missing from the room, they had chosen to leave such an obliging-looking mirror in such an awful place. The whole basement apartment reeked in a way that you almost didn't notice it and you almost couldn't stop noticing it. It made my lungs feel stiff and my head blurry, not in any way easing my fever.
The mirror was the only reprieve for a soul seeking clarity. It was the only clean article in the room, a polished, glinting sheet of ice to cool a hot brow, the back of a hand.
I think I slept a bit, but it only made me more restless. A dribble of sweat rolled sideways down my forehead as I lay with my cheek being scratched by the coarse, fraying cot.
I had the sudden notion I was thirsty.
The mirror began to look better and better. Finally, I pressed myself up, overcoming the waves of nausea and vertigo, and stumbled to the mirror.
Standing before it, I instantly cooled. There I was, gazing curiously out at myself, with a cool, dry face and sharp eyes green as the hills in April. The clear me smiled wryly.
"Poor sick fool. If only you knew what you really wanted."
I felt my eyes move, examine the unfinished edges of the mirror. "I do know what I want," I said.
"Then why are you waging a war you know you won't win?"
I stared at the clear me. He stared icily back.
"Not the war. The battle. It's the battle we won't win. Gambit."
"Fool of a Johnson," spat the boy in the mirror. I realized with a jolt he looked exactly like my father had in his middle grade pictures. "You know it's already been lost. Give it up while you still have a chance and reap the rewards of joining the winning side. He'll still take you, and you know it."
My head started to hum with the dull preludes of migraine. "So what if he still wants me? He chose the wrong side as soon as he made himself Mr. Corbett's enemy," I snarled. "I stand by my Director."
He glared at me coldly, calculatingly, and I knew— I knew— what he was going to say. Just to prove it, I said it with him.
"Will he stand by you?"
Pain shot through the left side of my skull.
"Chose the winning side," he told me quietly. I ground my palm against my left eye, the other hand against the wall.
"It's what your parents would have wanted."
I choked, "No."
"They didn't give their lives for you to waste yours."
"No," I growled, aware that sobs were rising up in me somewhere. "No."
"If you fight now, what will you have to show for it? Their blood is on your hands."
The air splintered with the shatter of a thousand tiny fragments of someone's soul. I collapsed against the wall, clutching my bleeding knuckles.
There were people around me. Someone tender, pulling my arms and ordering me in her tornado-ish way to stand. I was pushed up stairs, which I tripped over more than once, and felt more than saw Judy's wide grey eyes not laugh at me.
"We shouldn't have left him alone."
"He's worse off than I thought."
"What happened down there?"
"I think he shattered the mirror."
"Deuce take the boy, we can't guard him every second of the day!"
"Shut up, all of you, give him room to breathe."
There were soft fingers on my cheek and something pressed to my lips.
"Drink," the siren told me, and I obeyed. It burned my insides until I realized it was water.
I blinked, with effort, eyelids feeling weighed down and achy.
My back was against a wall. I was sitting, with Judy across from me, holding a cup in her hand.
"Do you want more?"
I extended a hand to take the cup and found it bandaged. My hand froze between us, as I examined it with uncertainty, and Judy took it. She held my disabled hand palm up, and rubbed her thumb over the un-bandaged area of my palm.
"What happened?" she asked quietly, like she already knew but wanted me to say it anyway.
I squeezed my eyes shut and let my head fall back against the wall. My throat felt drier than before the water.
A fly buzzed nearby, and I couldn't help but feel soothed by the sound. Such a quiet, oblivious sound.
"Do you think this is the wrong choice?"
Her thumb froze along my palm. She didn't reply until I finally opened my eyes to challenge her to.
"It may not be the right choice, exactly," Judy answered carefully, "but it sure as heck isn't the wrong one."
I swallowed, and it hurt.
"You stand by Corbett?" I demanded, even though I knew the answer. Even though I'd heard it a million times.
Judy gripped my hand precisely, in just the right place to not hurt me more, but to make a point. It was a I tell you truly kind of a squeeze.
"He stands by us."
I inhaled. I exhaled, shakily. Then nodded. "Okay."
Judy's head tilted and she smiled by way of a frown. She pressed loyal fingers to my face. Fingers that would always catch me when I fell.
"My poor sick fool. If I have to remind you of it every day, if I have to . . . to whisper it in your ear every night when you're sleeping," Judy said laughingly, "I will do whatever it takes to keep it in your ever-doubting mind—" She paused, and exhaled out her nose.
I rubbed the knuckles of my undamaged hand against my eye. "What's that?"
"You are not alone."