Serial Saturday: "Fairies Under Glass" Part 4

Part 4

"The Painted Lady"

The rest of Lewis's shift was filled with milling groups of people and the sonorous tones of Krasimir Schlimme's voice. His accent thickened and waned here and there, but at least the constant stream of newcomers meant that Lewis could basically rotate through the room over and over again, constantly sweeping or mopping up spills and messes. Of course, Moulton House had a policy against food and drink inside the exhibit halls, but did people listen? Of course not. Lewis could pass by the large double-doors and hear the muttered debates.

"Yo, you can't bring that in there, you should throw it out."
"No! I'm almost finished with it."
"It has a lid, it's not like I'm sloshing it everywhere."
"Do you want to get us kicked out?"
"We're not going to get kicked out. Just a few more bites, and then I'm done."
"Don't tell me what to do!"

Lewis shrugged and kept on sweeping, occasionally pulling out his mop to clean up the dribbles of liquid. A few times, he even found wads of chewed gum stuck to the sides of the free-standing walls. He could never figure out the culprit, and he definitely wondered if Adolf or someone else on Schlimme's security team would actually be watching the security camera stream to be able to see who was flaunting the museum's rules--but on the whole, there wasn't anything harmful or destructive happening, so he just kept his head down and focused on doing his job, exactly as Schlimme had instructed.
He was sweeping a pile of dust into a pan to transfer it into the bin on his cart, when he heard Krasimir on the other side of the lavender-colored wall, explaining his art to the tour group.

"I call this one Dreams Aplenty. Note how the woman's face is barely exposed, as the arm hangs over the edge of the bed, ready to drop..."

Lewis straightened with a frown. There was only one sculpture involving a woman in a bed, and wasn't it sculpted with the woman laying on her back, with her whole face exposed? His curiosity piqued, Lewis waited till the group moved on to gasping in awe and gushing over the unicorn and gryphon statues, and he made sure to keep the broom moving as he rounded the wall to see what they'd been looking at.

The woman in the bed was definitely laying on her side in the display. The arm she rested on curled up and bent back so that her hand rested near her cheek, while her topside arm, indeed, stretched out toward the edge of the bed, precariously perched on the corner of it. The balance in the sculpture was truly astounding, and the fabric of the sheets draped just exactly as it did in real life. If Lewis stared long enough, he could even imagine that he saw the individual hairs hanging down in front of the tiny face waver the merest bit, exactly as if the figurine was really breathing.

Lewis blinked and shook himself as he heard Krasimir telling another group about the featured exhibits in the display case just behind him. he swept his way to a different corner of the room, but in the process, caught Schlimme's description of the woman in the bed.

"And this piece, I call Dreams Aplenty," he said yet again. "Note how the subjects legs curl up into her chest, and her arms seem to hug them close--it was not easy to sculpt such fine detail, crammed so close together, let me tell you!"

Lewis stopped polishing the display case around the sculpture with the fairies and the mushroom as his mind mulled over what Krasimir Schlimme had just said. Curled up legs? He'd seen the figurine with her legs only slightly bent, wasn't it? Perhaps it was hard to tell with the sheets covering the statuette.
Once again, curiosity got the better of him, and Lewis wandered over to see the sculpture of the woman in the bed a second time.

Just as before, Lewis saw the sculpture in precisely the state that Krasimir Schlimme described: on her side in the fetal position, her arms wrapped around her legs with her chin almost resting against her knees. The sheet wasn't even covering her anymore, it had slipped down to just barely cover her feet, leaving almost her whole body exposed.

What the heck? Did these sculptures move? Lewis stood there, staring at the display case, daring the figurine to shift even the tiniest bit, absolutely certain that he would catch it...

But it never even twitched. Lewis must have blinked six times in the interval, but every time, the sculpture remained exactly as it was.

Another group of curious patrons rounded the corner, and Lewis shook himself and moved on. He must have misremembered, or thought he saw a different sculpture. He fumbled for reasons to discredit his own brain, what he had seen with his own eyes just minutes before. Perhaps Schlimme himself had built it to move whenever he started giving a description, like a tiny animatronic.

Lewis tried to reassure himself, but by the time he rounded the corner to sweep against the next wall of displays, he felt the itch at the back of his neck. Someone was watching him. Lewis paused in his sweeping and glanced around. No one stood in the immediate vicinity. There wasn't a camera in this particular gap, so it couldn't have been Adolf or whoever occupied the security office watching to make sure that the lowly student janitor wasn't up to something.

Lewis's arms began to ache with the repetitive motion. Surely this shift had lasted much longer than his normal shift--which meant he'd have some extra Saturday and Sunday study hall to make up for the classes he was missing today.

"Can I be done now?" he muttered under his breath. His wandering broom had led him all the way to the back corner, to the unicorn and gryphon locked in immobile combat. Those glassy eyes seemed fixed on each other, but something about the unicorn still captivated Lewis's interest. What was it about the fantastical creature that gave it such a not-quite-fantasy air?

He was still standing there when he heard Mr. Schlimme murmur, "All right, and that's the last group!"
Quickly, lest anyone catch him slacking on the job with a preoccupied expression on his face, Lewis swept up the last of his pile and dumped it in the can on his trash cart. He began pushing it out of the exhibit hall. If he left now, he would make it to Study Hall in time to check up on what he had missed in all his classes for the day.

He was just rounding the corner around the lavender wall, when he stopped in his tracks and whirled around to look behind himself.

Was someone shadowing him? The sneaking sensation of being watched crept over him, and Lewis slowly scanned his surroundings. He found himself holding his breath so that his ears could pick up the slightest sound. His eyes caught a subtle shift in his periphery, but when he turned his head, all he saw was the art piece on display. The Queen's Court, Schlimme had titled it. A tall figure in a stunning dress and a sculpted crown presided over a throne room lined with painted courtiers and decked out with jewels and rich gold filigree.

The sense of being watched grew stronger as Lewis's focus narrowed on the figure's eyes. He advanced closer to it, close enough to make out the textures in the paint, the subtle shape of the figure underneath the lace and frills of the dress... and the glassy, sparkling eyes. He was almost close enough to brush his nose against the glass, and yet he couldn't tear himself away. He kept staring at the display until his eyes began to burn. They were so dry, the urge to blink built up in his face--

The picture blinked first.

Lewis didn't want to believe his eyes at first. These were sculpted figures of wax and clay and wires--they didn't blink! There was no point in making a figurine that could blink, if it was just going to be on display behind a pane of glass. He shook his head and rubbed his sore eyes. He could definitely confirm that the eyes seemed to focus on him, and as he shifted from one side of the frame to the other, those eyes followed him... But that was some kind of refraction effect, right? People talked all the time about paintings that seemed to follow the viewer with their gazes all around the room. What was keeping him from applying that same rationality to this one?

But the sight of the blink came back in vivid, slow-motion, zoomed-in detail. Tiny lashes came down and back up, without the twitch of any single other muscle.

Lewis screwed up all of his determination, marched toward the display, and planted his face squarely in front of the tiny face of the figurine. He relaxed his muscles, intending to stare at her as hard as he could, for as long as it took to see if she would blink again.

He didn't have to wait long. She blinked as soon as he was settled and watching her. Only then did Lewis happen to notice a glint of reflected light behind her shoulders, where the painting showed marble walls and draped fabric representing tiny tapestries and banners hanging from the walls. As he focused on the glint, he could just barely see the outline of a delicate wing buried under layers of garish oil paints.

Fairies! Lewis leaned his head from side to side, and even ducked low under the frame, confirming what he had disbelieved only minutes ago: the figure was alive, and she could track him with her eyes. Only the paints made her look sculpted and inanimate.

"You!" Krasimir Schlimme barked, and Lewis nearly fell over from fright. He caught the edge of his trash cart and swung it between himself and the menacing artist defensively.

"I'm j-just cleaning up!" He stammered. "I'm finished!"

Mr. Schlimme stared at him with a frown, and even cast a surreptitious glance into the trash cart. Seeing only refuse and dust, he sniffed with a curled lip. "We're closing up for the night," he announced. "Better get out now before you're locked in here."

"Yes, sir," Lewis responded quickly, and shuffled out of the exhibit hall as fast as his squeaky cart would allow.

He needed to know more about fairies, if he was going to confirm what he'd just seen. Did they really look like that? Where would a man like Krasimir Schlimme even find a fairy? Were the other exhibits fairies as well?

Too many questions spun through his head as he unzipped and removed his cover-alls and picked up his bag to head toward the study hall. The library would be on his way, and he figured Quincy could find him what he needed--provided she didn't ask him to explain himself, or get him into trouble over it!

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