ARWIN

  He wanted to ask why she didn’t share her work with anyone but suspected now was not the time. He let the subject drop and let a moment of silence drift out so that her temper would have a chance to cool. He looked around and changed the subject. “You enjoy art.” He pointed at the paintings.

  It took her a couple of seconds, but she smoothly composed herself and faced the decorated wall. “Yes.”

  “I love art. Back home, I follow dozens of artists online. Not much of an artist myself, but I appreciate the skills of others.” He shrugged. “Too bad it’s not brighter in here. I’d love to get a better look at your collection.”

  The sun was setting quickly, and the room grew darker by the moment. Only a sliver of light was visible on the horizon.

  She hesitated. She looked oddly shy for a brief second but quickly acted like it hadn’t happened, her confident facade reasserting itself. Boldly, she then waved her arm in a circle over her head.

  A ring of golden light appeared and hung in the air where her hand trailed, like the glowing after-images the eyes see trailing behind burning embers of a campfire when waving them around in the night. Pure bck spiders, voids of darkness, appeared from the golden ring and shot outwards in all directions. Behind them, they drew glowing threads of light. In a moment, or in two-and-a-third moments at the longest, a vast spiderweb of light hung over Arwin and the Dark Enchantress, bathing the chamber in a bright, golden radiance. Then, along the wall with the artwork, the spiders began dropping from the web, hanging in various lengths on more thread. As each arachnid reached its desired height above a painting, it burst into light, and a glowing ball provided ample visibility in the area, perfectly illuminating each artwork.

  “Whoa…” Arwin breathed, staggered at the beauty of her light show. Despite being made by illusory spiders, the web of light was truly enchanting. He moved to get a better look at the art on the wall.

  Several dozen paintings were dispyed. They came in various frames and styles, indicating they’d been produced by different artists and over different periods of time.

  What we enjoy in art is a reflection of who we are as a person. This collection was a window into the Dark Enchantress’s personality, and so he was eager to examine it. He might be able to glean important clues into who she was; the better to understand her and thus win her over. And if he could win her over, he could find out whether or not Princess Epheria was here and earn freedom for himself and Yaz.

  Arwin could see that she had a romantic streak from the number of paintings depicting scenes of love, although some were slightly morbid in nature. In one painting, a cute little girl tore her own heart from her chest and gave it to a boy. In another, an old man cradled the skeleton of what was presumably a lover from long ago. In a third, a woman gazed at a man with adoration as he handed her a bouquet of bleeding hearts; they were actual hearts, dripping onto the woman’s kitchen floor while outside the window y the corpses of what were presumably rival suitors. In a fourth painting, a young woman sat very much alone, surrounded by darkness, tears streaming down her face, looking desperately heartbroken. There were love scenes with dragons and unicorns and fairies and kittens.

  This romantic side was unexpected. Arwin had assumed her to be a cold, heartless type. He gnced at her, though not too obviously.

  She ignored him while looking at the paintings herself.

  Interesting. Why had she allowed him to see this? She had threatened to kill him, perhaps even now continuing towards that eventuality. Given that he’d seen no other people thus far, he suspected that she was a very private person. If so, then why give a total stranger a glimpse into her true self like this? She had appeared to be a ruthless, dangerous woman up to this point, entirely living up to her ugly reputation. Why weaken that mask by revealing a fondness for flowers and love? Was she just toying with him, or was there more to her than his first impression and her reputation had led him to believe?

  He walked up and down the line of paintings. Many scenes depicted strange and wild creatures of Heartstone: gargoyles, elves, mermaids, griffons, and many more he didn’t recognize. Then the romance and nature sections gave way to much darker themes. Ah, here was the side of her that he’d expected. The paintings here showed scenes of pain, death, and torture. The characters and scenes were macabre and full of suffering. Yet there were also many instances of dark humour. This was the kind of stuff you’d find adorning the den of an evil person. Or maybe Tim Burton’s house. Man, that guy was cool.

  They appreciated the artwork quietly for several minutes, but then she broke the silence as he got well into the more disturbing works.

  “Creepy?” she asked calmly, referring to the darker pieces.

  He thought about her question. Creepy? He slowly nodded. “Yes and no. I’m a big fan of things like Halloween and Tim Burton’s style. I like this sort of thing.”

  She arched a well-manicured brow, obviously skeptical. “Really?” Yet, did he detect a hint of hope in her voice?

  Oddly enough, he found that contempting these artworks was once again transforming his impression of her. His first and rather unfavourable impression of the Dark Enchantress was slowly giving way to something more nuanced as he reasoned his way to a deeper understanding of the woman.

  He mulled over his answer before submitting it, for he didn’t want to give her something flippant, though a joke might lighten the mood. He wanted to give her something worthy of the art itself, which showed his growing respect for her character. After all, he wanted her to like him. “Death is inevitable. We all think about it to a certain extent, especially those who come within intimate contact with it or who face its approach. You have worked hard to overcome death, so it’s no surprise that you have a deep fascination with it.”

  She tilted her head slightly but did not comment.

  He gestured to the darker artworks. “Some are creepy, yes. Some of these are terrifying. But there’s also an undercurrent of dark humour in many of the pictures. I’ve been thinking about why you’d choose to have these particur pieces. What does it say about you? Perhaps you feel that death isn’t always something to be afraid of but something you want to be able to ugh at. Or at least you don’t want to be afraid of it. A dark sense of humour, to be sure, but if you were trying to overcome your fear of death, or you were someone with a greater awareness of it, surely your sense of humour would be a little more twisted than some. If you had faced death yourself or seen many people around you die, perhaps because you outlived them, it would no doubt be an ongoing theme in your thoughts, one needing to be dealt with, and this could be one of the ways you choose to process your contemptions and emotions.”

  She studied him as he spoke, and something shifted in her eyes as if she were, perhaps, reassessing him the way he was with her. She still looked at him with suspicion, but perhaps it was more tempered now? Or was that only what he wanted to see?

  His words triggered further insights within himself, even as he spoke. He felt himself coming to understand her a little better and continued. “If you’re six hundred years old, surely you’ve seen a lot of death. That’s got to be difficult to handle. But we can’t afford to be sad forever when death comes. Or angry at it. We’d go insane with depression and fear. And so much loss would be incredibly difficult. Perhaps finding a way to ugh at death might help us overcome that fear or normalize life’s natural end and help us meet the inevitable. Or fend it off. As much as we ever can, anyway.”

  She watched him with a nearly unreadable expression, lips parted, her body still. Then the confident woman who’d been toying with him earlier returned. She smiled, cruelty returning to her eyes, and opened her mouth, likely to say something mocking. But she stopped before the words left her mouth. Then her face stilled, perhaps from reconsidering what she’d been about to say, and she turned away, the cruelty gone. “Let’s go on.” She started walking and snapped her fingers. The glowing web of light silently burst into millions of tiny motes of light. They drifted down like golden snowfkes, slowly petering out. It was breathtaking.