The sky looked troublesome today, thought Matthias. There was something about the curve of the clouds, the texture of the atmosphere, the firmness of lines encompassed by the horizon. It was altogether not quite perfect, which meant, as he was quick to remind himself –
“You just wasted the whole morning.”
Matthias gave as evil an eye as he could possibly manage to the nine-foot, hirsute bird squatting in the sand next to him. “I was quickly reminding myself of just that,” he reproached his critic. “The worst criticism is unnecessary criticism.”
“The worst criticism is unconditional praise,” retorted the bird.
“I wish I had some of that,” said Matthias. “It would be a nice change.”
“I always knew you were a lazy rube at heart. A quick job, a once-over to make sure no major bits are missing, and bam, cash out. Philistine.”
“You wound me, Gershwin.”
“Prove me wrong.”
Gershwin stretched his neck and shook it, an avian yawn that sent his big axe-beak fluttering about in the sun like a ten-pound leaf. Matthias admired the ridiculousness of his companion’s form even as he privately wished great misfortunate and discomfort upon its wearer. If a bear had learned how to fly, then forgot how, it would’ve looked something like Gershwin. It would’ve had the same attitude, too.
“In any case,” he said, “the morning isn’t a total washout. The beach looks nice.”
“Passable.”
“Maybe not my best work, but it’s quite pretty, I think.”
“Not with that disaster masquerading as weather hanging over its head. Tear it down and start over.”
Matthias sighed deeply. “I suppose you’re right. A little. You manage it now and then.” He picked up his palette from where it lay carelessly discarded in the sand. Mere minutes ago he’d been so caught up in his painting that he’d let it drop at his feet as he reached up to do the high bits, and now he couldn’t imagine how the work in front of him had ever captivated his imagination.
There were three big colours on the palette’s smooth surface: red, yellow, and blue. There were a bunch of little ones, stuff like infrared and ultraviolet, which came in after the main job was done.
There was a single, carefully-separated spot on the palette, which was impossible to look at. It made Matthias squint as he dabbed his brush carefully in it.
“I hate this part,” he said as he poised his arm.
“Get it over with.”
Matthias did. One long sweep, a swing, a graceful backslash, and the beach had no sky again, just like it had an hour ago. The ocean’s waves rose up to greet blankness, turning the soft sounds of water on the shoreline somewhat confused. A hasty sketch of a gull’s outline that had been circling overhead screeched in alarm as it suddenly found itself on the ground, the air vanishing out from under its wings.
“There. Much better. Now, are you ready to try again?”
Matthias looked at all that empty space, and shuddered at the thought of filling it in again. “No, no, I don’t think so. I think I’ll go sketch for a while.”
“Suit yourself,” said Gershwin. “I’ll wait.”
Matthias picked up his coat and hat and left the beach and its missing skyline. He went to a desert for a while, and drew some pretty good rocks. They caught the sunlight with a spider’s boldness, and he cheered up a little. Just to reassure himself that he could still do it, he left a quick outline for a sunset overhead, so he could come back later and practice. He didn’t feel like doing more atmospheric work just yet.
“Better?” asked Gershwin as he stepped back onto the beach.
“A bit,” said Matthias. “Let’s go start up a fresh one. I’ve got some ideas.”
So they went to another spot, a good blank one, and Matthias started drawing. First, some water…
“You always use too much water.”
“I like water. Besides, it’s important. Most of the really exciting stuff only happens if you’ve got some water around somewhere.”
“Don’t overspecialize, all the same. Do you want to be summed up as “that guy who wouldn’t quit with the water”?”
And then for the coast, a lot of pebbles, big rounded smooth ones. Well-aged pebbles with just the right colour (dark grey to black) and lustre (shinier than a star when wet, flat and plain otherwise).
“Either a bit dull or a bit depressing.”
“Just wait and see.”
And then (the important bit, the part that had popped into his head as he watched the sun glimmer on the rocks), with big smooth strokes, the ice.
“More water?”
“Entirely different state of matter. Besides, you didn’t complain about me using rocks again for the ground.”
Gershwin grumbled to himself, and Matthias knew he’d scored a point. He drew faster, with a heart growing freer by the moment. Big swirls of ice studded the water, which took on dark curls and bleak tones. Sweeping plains of snow stretched into the distance. And over it all, he started to fill in the sky. A greying, washed-out-white eclipsed in purity by the puffed and ruffled chest feathers of the ridiculous little birds he covered the rocks in.
Matthias felt Gershwin’s gaze grow frosty, and he very carefully refrained from smiling. Although a small giggle did lodge itself in his throat and refuse to leave.
“Parody,” said the critic, “has its place. Is this it?”
“Pardon?” said Matthias. He traced out a long, thin line in the water, the back of a sausage-shaped seal with the barest hint of a razory canine peeking out of its lip.
“Hmmph. Mind that it makes sense on its own. The best parodies always do.”
Matthias took the point, and put some fish in the water. “There,” he said. “Food source and predator both attended to. Happy?”
“Needs detail.”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from cunningly woven twigs.
“Did you say there were going to be trees down here?”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from beak-chipped and carved ice.
“That doesn’t seem very safe for unhatched eggs.”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from painstakingly relocated other rocks. His hand was starting to hurt.
“That’s better. Say, where are you going to put this?”
Matthias flexed his palm. “Well, the gallery’s south end is empty. I figure we could always drop it down… wait, are you serious?”
“Absolutely. Good, original work. I should get you sulky more often if this happens afterwards.”
“I could do a companion piece for the other end,” suggested Matthias, thoughts unfolding and reshaping in his head like a pile of energetic origami. “A counterbalance, a contrast.”
“Absolutely not. You’ll ruin its distinctiveness. Do you want to be one of those people that does nothing but push out sequels to their best-seller?”
“You’ll see.”
“I hope I will.”
So Matthias packed up the landscape very carefully and walked to the north end of the gallery. He picked up his brush and considered the horizon, then redrew it.
“Looks familiar already,” groaned Gershwin. “Copy, copy, copy. You’re redrawing old news again. Creatively stagnant layabout.”
“Wait for it.”
He drew the snow. He drew the water. He drew the ice. He drew and drew and redrew half the original scene until he could feel Gershwin’s urge to remonstrate him vibrating in the air like a big bomb, and then he took his brush, put it to the empty, silent vista in front of him, and he drew a really big bear.
That set him back on his heels a bit. “What’s the idea there?”
“Look,” said Matthias, and he put in a seal. “Wait a moment,” he said, and put some ice over the water. Then he put in a hole for the seal, which stuck its head out of it. The bear smashed its head in and ate it.
“Creative,” commented Gershwin. “Disgusting, but creative.”
“Thank you.” On second thought, all those rocks didn’t really fit in. What about more ice? More water. Matthias scribbled and rescribbled, blotting out whole chunks of land without so much as a twinge. More ice floated in the water, big mounds and mountains of it. A whale poked its head out in the space between floes, and for a lark he fitted it with the same colours as the penguins, adding elegance to an already sleek figure.
“Very pretty,” said Gershwin, “but aren’t you forgetting something?”
Matthias’s fingers beat a rapid pit-a-pat-a-bat on his palette as he considered the sky. Its blankness was making the polar bear confused; the poor thing kept giving him the most forlorn looks.
He tried white again.
“Predictable. And a little too close to before.”
He tried blue.
“Too normal.”
He tried puce, in a fit of irritation.
“No tantrums now. Come on, act your age.”
Matthias tried black, with some stars.
“Setting it at night? Wonderful. Paint everything black and call it a job.”
Matthias tried throwing his palette. Gershwin ducked amiably, and it splattered all over the sky.
“Now look at what you’ve done,” he said.
Matthias was opening his mouth to scream something, and then thought again.
“What is it?”
“Look at that, won’t you?”
Gershwin turned around and looked. “My word.”
The sky was streaked and spattered with all sorts of colours, smeared in sheets that dribbled across the constellations like delicate silks. They rippled up and down, jostling on the breeze, and there was a strange little spot at their hearts that seemed impossible to see, no matter how hard you squinted.
“That can’t be safe,” said Matthias, gingerly picking the palette up from the snow. One of the bears hopefully licked the stains, checking for edibility, and turned its tongue permanently purple.
“Who cares?” said Gershwin, staring at the aurora borealis with the rapt concentration he normally reserved for small, edible mammals. “It’s the best thing you’ve done since those big lizards. And don’t you dare try to fix it – you’ll just end up tossing out half the gallery and starting over again.”
“You were entirely too attached to those reptiles. I just wanted to try drawing some things that looked like me for a change. And I have to change those – there’s some of the correctional blotter left in the middle of them.”
“Piffle. Pish tosh. As long as no one looks at them too hard, who’ll know? Besides, no one’ll visit up here anyways. Too cold. They’ll stick to the central hall, and you’d know it, what with all the tasty fruit you kept adding in there.”
“I was hungry that day.”
“I take that as agreement.” Gershwin clacked his beak in satisfaction. “You know, today hasn’t been half bad. If you fix up that beach’s skyline before you go slouching off to bed, maybe you’ll even be ready to open the place up to the public before you’re completely senile.”
Matthias, inspired by the unexpected and rare praise, not only finished the sky but fired off three new delicious kinds of fruit before going to bed, one of which was unexpectedly and ebulliently toxic.
He wasn’t sure if it was that or his furtive decision to copy the aurora in the southern piece – just experimentally, no one would notice – that led to Gershwin attempting to peck his eye out the next day.