Serial Saturday: "Fairies Under Glass" Part 5

Part 5

"Research"

"You want to... research?" Quincy stammered, staring at Lewis with total confusion on her face. "Fairies?"

Lewis winced, well aware how it sounded. "It's for... um, a project. For Humanities," he rattled off a cover story off the top of his head. "Professor Teeger got wind of my special assignment to the Krasimir Schlimme exhibit, so, um, he wants me to write an essay on the history of folklore and mythology of fairies." He shoved his hands in his pockets.

Quincy pursed her lips and squinted at him still. "I thought Schlimme just made abstract sculptures and mixed-media pieces of contemporary scenes, not fairy art."

"From what I can tell," Lewis snapped, "there are a lot of fairies around the exhibit, okay?" He realized he was coming off a touch more desperate than he ought to be, so he tried to hide his embarrassment under the guise of reluctance. "Look," he lowered his voice, "I am not at all excited about having to write a paper about fairies, but I also don't want to fail this class! Can you help me out or not?"

Quincy let out a huge sigh and turned to the terminal that could access the library's catalog. "Fine, I'll see what I can find."

Lewis left the library twenty minutes later with a stack of fairy folklore books, a book on fairy-related conspiracy theories, and a few children's novels, although he made sure to object soundly to their inclusion.

"I can't help it if you insist on wanting to research a made-up topic!" Quincy grumbled. "It wouldn't hurt to include a bit of how they are portrayed in literature, because that does contribute to people's perception of them!"

Lewis entered the large study hall, and received his list of the day's assignments, along with extra copies of the necessary textbooks. Luckily, Henry and Jesse were in class tonight, so once he got his classwork out of the way, he could probe into the concept of fairies without being interrupted.

What he found was not much help, either. The description of fairy anatomy and physiology either did not match the "sculptures" that he saw, or it was on a much smaller scale than the size of these "figures."
Sometimes the Fae folk were described as human sized, without wings, or the wings might have feathers, or made of pure light. They could be large and colorful like butterfly wings, round like a beetle's, or even multilayered, like a bumblebee's wings. Even the book titled Photographic Evidence was really a bunch of over-exposed photographs altered to give the appearance of "fairies"--but the "tricks" themselves were basic at best, and obvious to anyone who wasn't a child with no knowledge of how photography worked.

The worst resource by far was the Complete Encyclopedia Of The Fantastical. There were too many topics crammed in between bizarre illustrations, there was very little giving specific information about fairies, and this illustrator chose to portray them as more plant-derived than actual humanoid creatures.
Lewis shoved the book aside, looked over his meager notes, and rubbed his eyes. He couldn't rely on anyone else's definition of these creatures. Whatever he could glean, he would have to find out for himself.

But how would he do that with Adolf and Krasimir Schlimme looking over his shoulder all the time?
That night, as Lewis laid upon his bed in his tiny dorm room, he slept fitfully, plagued by dreams of fairies coming to life, peeling themselves out of the paint and wax, and pressing up against the glass panes and display cases, pounding upon it with tiny hands in a vain attempt to shatter the glass from within, and at some point, a few cases did shatter, and the fairies took their vengeance on the poor innocent janitor who spent so much time in proximity to them, although he'd been powerless to help them...

When his alarm chimed the next morning, Lewis dragged himself out of bed. His whole body felt like a giant sandbag. The worst moment in his dream turned out to be more than when he was attacked by the fairies, but the moment the unicorn statue came to life, and shattered the display case, and chased him all over the halls of Moulton House, with the gryphon soaring over his head, dive-bombing him and screaming bloody murder. He awoke with all the soreness of having run a marathon all night--and today he would have to sit through several hours of classes before the start of his shift at Moulton House. He could only hope that he would have the wherewithal to pay attention to the lectures and lessons.

He made it through, but barely. A few confused looks from peers sitting next to him at their desks, and some barely-concealed annoyance from teachers at having to re-explain concepts introduced the day before, but at last, Lewis was out the door and on his way to Moulton House.

He only just made it into his uniform with his cart full of equipment when Krasimir Schlimme came bursting out of the doors of Exhibit Hall G, a scowl on his face. He jabbed a finger in Lewis's direction.
"You! Herr Grant!" he barked. "Mein Gott, the guests today have made a mess of things! I cannot take much more of zis. Get in there and clean it up!" He actually got around behind Lewis and gave him a push from behind. "I must find Herr Gilroy and tell him zat we need to renegotiate ze arrangements of my stay here."

Lewis shivered at Schlimme's touch, but as the doors swung shut behind him, he felt very sharply that he was absolutely alone, in a room full of art pieces that may or may not contain living creatures.
He reluctantly began sweeping, catching popcorn kernels, chip crumbs, and sunflower seed hulls in among the standard dust and shoe grime. Someone had even trailed the last little bits of a juice box or soda down one of the aisles. (Lewis pictured a young child given a sugary drink to pacify it... and said drink being abandoned when the child believed it was empty, or the sticky straw falling out of said drink, trailing its viscous contents over the edge of the stroller without being discovered by the adult pushing the stroller and fascinated by the artwork.) Rolling his eyes, he sprayed down the stains and mopped them up with the short-shafted hand-mop.

As he straightened from the now-clean floors, he found himself face-to-face with the Queen's Court again. Nothing on the central figurine moved. Squinting and leaning in close enough to almost brush his nose against the glass (something he wouldn't dream of doing--Mr. Schlimme would probably break his neck over it), he could all but see the brush strokes in the streaks of color over the figurine's face.

But the eyes... They were too glossy, too deep, to fantastical to be nothing more than ornate bits of glass. The pupils weren't altogether centered, either. Lewis experimented by ducking low underneath the frame of the art piece, and popping up quickly.

There! Movement! He hadn't imagined it! Or... had he? Those ridges and that texture underneath the fabric swatches and the painted streaks of light--those had to be wings, weren't they?

A tingle rippled through his nose, and before he could stop himself, Lewis sneezed. To his dismay, he could see the droplets on the clear glass surface. Quickly, he grabbed a microfiber cloth and mopped up the spray across the glass, leaving no streaks behind. He tried staring at the regal figurine, but the moment of wild speculation had passed, leaving him feeling quite foolish for staring at a piece of art for so long. He retrieved his broom and continued sweeping, tucking the bristles of the broom into whatever corners and nooks he could find.

Mom would be so proud, he thought. The floors at home never looked this clean!

The sight of a mattress mounted vertically in a glass case drew his attention to the other piece he'd especially noticed in the exhibit, Dreams Aplenty. Just like the first time he'd seen it, the subject in the art piece lay on her back, her expression serene, and her hair splayed out over the pillow--

So had he imagined the other moments, when she'd been in a different position? Maybe Krasimir Schlimme had a few copies of this made, with the subject in different postures and styles. Every time he gave a tour, he could swap out one version for another, giving the impression that it was moving, while the whole time it was different pieces.

Lewis shook his head again, rubbing his eyes. All this wondering and staring was really starting to wear on him!

"Scheisse!" he heard the gruff voice swear in German as the clipped tap of the shoes made their way across the floor. "Have you finished yet?" he called a little louder, rounding the corner just behind Lewis.

The young man hastily moved away from the display case and swung the broom in tight circles around him, giving the illusion that he was still in motion and very much not stopping to inspect these paintings.

Mr. Schlimme grinned and wagged his teasing finger. "I see what you are doing, Lewis!" he chided him in a playful tone. "Why do you stop all ze time and study my art, eh? You are trying to figure out my tricks and techniques, are you?"

Lewis swallowed his nervousness and did his best to come up with a plausible excuse that was near enough to the truth not to sound like a lie, while at the same time not admitting what he really thought.
"I can't help being fascinated by it," he said with genuine fervor. "I've never been this close to artwork that looked so real before!"

The praise seemed to strike Mr. Schlimme's ego just fine. He lifted his chin with a gleam in his eye. "Ach, yes! It has taken me years of training at ze finest art schools all over ze world, to perfect my skill to such a point! I am glad you notice zis."

Lewis warmed up to his cover story, adding another detail as if he couldn't help himself. "One display in particular, I remember sweeping past it, and the eyes seemed to follow me wherever I went!" As he talked, he swept himself a path beyond the edge of the wall, away from Krasimir Schlimme and the Dreams Aplenty.

As he hoped, Schlimme followed him, lapping up the praise like a curious dog looking for petting.
"The eyes--yes, zat is ze most complicated part of it, to be sure!" Krasimir Schlimme's long legs soon brought him past Lewis and he stepped around in front of the lad, stopping him in his tracks as Schlimme leaned in close. "Just be very careful around zem--what you say and what you do wis zem. You never know who might be watching." His steely-blue eyes wandered to the blinking camera in the corner, but Lewis couldn't help thinking about the moving eyes, and how any one of these art pieces could contain a living creature rather than a sculpted figurine.

Krasimir Schlimme walked away, and Lewis finished his shift with the thoughts still swimming about his head. Did Mr. Schlimme know that Lewis suspected? Did Lewis honestly suspect the man of abducting fairies for the sake of his art? Where had he abducted them from, anyway? Did this mean that fairies actually existed somewhere in the world? How had no one else picked up on this, if that was the case?

Lewis stopped by the common room of his dorm building, to use the shared computer terminal for a quick search. He found several sources talking about Krasimir Schlimme, his German explorer father and his Persian artist mother, his world-class training in the most prestigious schools of just about every continent, and his many excursions to remote locations in his artistic pursuits. By the end of it, there didn't seem anything really out-of-place or shifty. By all accounts, it really did seem like perhaps Lewis had been imagining things, and perhaps these fairies trapped in glass were nothing more than extremely detailed sculptures from the hands of a master artist.

Lewis put all the worried thoughts out of his head, closed the computer's browsing session, and shuffled off to his room to sleep.

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