She came to the park often. Many a person strode past his pedestal on a mission, hand in hand with another or a dog at their side. Others trudged by with a palm to their ear and their grumblings a curse on the frequent sunshine.
But none quite like her. She would lumber in from the entrance that opened to Main Street, dragging a leather case half her size behind her. Sometimes her dark hair would twirl around her shoulders with the freedom of a wispy breeze. Others, she fastened it up in a crown around her head or double plaits that reached the nape of her neck. Even then, strands vying for independence would worm their way free from the vibrant ribbons that tried to chain them down.
The first time she’d stepped into his line of sight several months ago, he would have frowned if he could. He didn’t know what he expected, but the peculiar wooden triangle she drew from the package made no further suggestions. When she rose from her knees to prop thick parchment against it, it towered over her by nearly a foot. He had watched as best he could past the stone falcon perched on his arm. But then she drew out a paintbrush. He was no foreigner to the tools of an artist.
He witnessed much in his lifetime. A man proposed before his eyes long before he understood marriage. A child stumbled between his feet in an attempt to keep the wheels beneath him from skittering sideways. Couples argued. Friends reconciled. Children met lifelong acquaintances, and he watched them grow together. But he could name one solitary thing he beheld that no one else could: he’d looked into the eyes of his Creator.
“You see, sculpture is a particular kind of art. You create an image of something familiar. A woman with child, an old poet.” His Maker’s tender voice faded into a warm chuckle like an autumn day. “A falconer. But the real beauty, the real purpose hides beneath.”
The warmth of his Maker’s breath touched his cheek first. The cool metal beneath his brow followed. As the mallet met the handle, another voice rose. An apprentice of his Maker’s, he later discovered. A young woman not unlike the painting newcomer in appearance. “And what is that beauty, Master Aubrecht?”
A vibrant ringing followed, and a scale fell away from his left eye. Of everything that exploded into his world in that moment, nothing compared to his Maker’s soft brown eyes. A depth within them unmatched by even the vast midnight sky that had the attention and care to see him. To see past the flaws in a block of stone and into the potential within. To turn away for just long enough to reply, “My dear, only the artist truly understands such a thing.”
Though he mirrored her frustration at first, he watched the apprentice grow to her own understanding. She never showed him her sculptures, but in a studio so small, it would be a wonder if he didn’t have the chance to admire them as they progressed. The eyes of her first piece were jagged and uneven, but the raw edges portrayed her eagerness to learn. By her fifth, Master Aubrecht had her on smaller tools. It was the twelfth sculpture that he watched her draw her first paintbrush. His Maker never used color, and though he questioned her technique, he never once told her it was wrong. Only different.
Her twenty-third sculpture was her best. He realized only after standing stagnant for several weeks that it had been his Maker’s intention all along. He never carved the falcon because it was meant to be her charge. Her project, her contribution to the deeper purpose he coveted. She wasted hours away at the pedestal in front of him, a chisel in fist, shards of marble clattering to the ground around her. But never once did they slip into her skin to form the imperfect pockmarks that his Maker proudly bore. She’d worn a vibrant white scarf even then, laced around her palm and forearm like a bandage, only it prevented wounds rather than protecting them. A mark all its own, as was the falcon that came to join him for the rest of his life.
Then, she left.
But now, with the girl at his feet, a paintbrush in hand, it all felt just a little bit right again. She brought the canvas nearer to him, her artistry and the inspiration that she drew upon now hidden from view. It never failed to ground him. The colors bleeding from a brush to the marble–now, the canvas–juxtaposed the steady shine of his Maker’s metal tools in his mind’s eye. Yet, he couldn’t watch now. He could only listen. The hair of her brush scraped across the canvas, top to bottom first. Then, repeated motions, back and forth. Colors he couldn’t see. Motions he didn’t recognize.
“Lovely to see you, Florrie,” an old woman called as she passed.
His gaze sharpened on her as her eyes lifted in the direction of the voice. Florrie. It must be her name. It was fitting. Delicate. Yet, it seemed like a nickname–a shortening for the name Florence. He didn’t have a name, but he did know a few things. The first couple that stood at his pedestal and read the plaque there taught him much, long ago, when the park was still unfamiliar to him. “‘The Falconer,’” the woman had read aloud, “‘carved in carrara marble by immigrant sculptor Vincent Aubrecht.’ Oh, that sounds German. Do you think he’s German, love? Look, there’s a quote from him. ‘Even stone may long for flight.’ What do you suppose that means?”
Even stone may long for flight. He had yet to figure that out.
People always assumed it was his Maker’s quote, and why shouldn’t they? The plaque offered no suggestion otherwise. But he knew. The same day she stormed out of the studio and left her chisel and hammer behind, his Maker’s apprentice had muttered those very words beneath her breath. A soft touch to her falcon’s wings, and one last lingering gaze.
“You as well, Madame Auclair,” Florence called in reply, interrupting his thoughts and returning to her painting.
The sunlight had just begun to dip below the horizon when Florence stepped back with finality. It came after the swoops that he would come to recognize as her signature after every piece she finished. Two on one side, two on the other. Scrubbing with the brush as she filled it in, a change of color, a swipe down the middle. A butterfly. And then, she looked up at him, and she spun the canvas towards him.
Drooping leaves captured the background and brought his focus to the figure she depicted. It was a steady white, broken by the occasional splotches of color or a soft gray shadow. An elegant cloak fell from its shoulder and hovered just above the ground, bunched and wrinkled from the way its hand outstretched to offer its glove to a proud looking falcon. A stone falcon. His stone falcon. The majesty of each feather held his focus for only a moment before realization struck.
She’d painted him. A steady jaw, broad shoulders. Determination set his posture as he leaned toward the foot that supported his arm and his falcon. She made him look stronger and more beautiful than he truly appeared. Yet, the falcon–painted in vibrant hues, defiance and energy captured in its carved lines–felt truer than any mirror.
This was the workmanship that earned him a place in the center of the city park. Only his Maker could have such unmatched capability. Of course the man who gave him the gift of sight would create something like him–a movement in pause–as if he were ready to send the falcon off. As if even the stone longed for flight. And there, atop the curve of the bird’s outstretched wing, rested her signature orange, organic swoops. A butterfly.
*
She had pinned her curls back with iron clips that were a poor imitation of butterflies. As always, she came to a halt at the base of the willow tree so large it made her look like a child. She set the case at the edge of the slate pathway that bordered the round platform beneath his feet. Her delicate fingers skidded along the edge of the leather with a strange buzzing sound, and she pulled her supplies from within. Though she changed as she ventured day-by-day from one edge of the park to the other, her ritual remained the same.
Today was no exception. The heat of spring’s noon sun drooped over his back through the cloak affixed to his shoulders. What would it be? What would she grace with her brush and her vibrant painted butterflies? The old pair on the bench? The bike propped against an orange tree beside the fountain? But she didn’t draw up her brush. She didn’t even pick up the ovular disc with colors on it. She abandoned her stand and canvas, and stepped up onto the path that separated them. Colorful, paint-splattered boots left invisible prints on the slate gray with each step until she came to a halt just before him. Her hands dipped to the podium in front of him, and returned with a vibrant yellow square of paper. Sunlight shone through it and the immaculate lines of words on the other side. He remembered the man that very morning who placed it there before dawn had even broken the sky. Somehow, it fled his thoughts until now, but it must have held ill omens, judging by the way her shoulders went loose once her eyes stopped scanning.
“Oh.” Her soft eyes narrowed with the wrinkle that pressed down on her eyebrows.
“It’s a sad thing, isn’t it?” someone else asked from nearby, a scratchy feminine tone.
“But he’s historic.” Florence’s hand stretched forward to brush the edge of his boot, then his cloak. “Why don’t they just take him to a museum?”
“Only been there seventy years or so. Not old enough for a history museum.”
“An art museum, then.”
“I suspect there’s a reason it isn’t there already.”
Her nose wrinkled. The paper returned to his boots, and Florence looked up at him. “But wasn’t this Aubrecht’s last work? Surely that means something.”
“It was just some statement about war. Doesn’t matter much anymore.”
Florence scoffed. He’d heard the sound from her once before, when an old man criticized her for wasting precious time doing something so useless as painting. It would have been pleasant to send his falcon to claw out the man’s eyes. “It mattered enough that he carved it into stone. You don’t just do that unless it’s important.”
“Well, it says they’re replacing it with playground equipment…”
The voice faded into the background of shrieking children kicking a ball back and forth and the whir of cicadas trading gossip in the trees. It must have been seventy years ago, though it felt like a few and a few hundred at the same time. He knew nothing back then. Nothing except the purpose for his existence: to stand tall with his arm outstretched for the elegant bird of prey to steeple upon. That was before the chisel dipped into his face to give him sight. Before his first sunrise, his first rainbow, his first butterfly. Before he grew to admire the intrigue of each man or woman that passed him by.
His Maker’s final work. And with those cryptic words about the stone, about deeper understandings? It seemed even he would never be privy to that deeper beauty and purpose, though it must have had something to do with his gift of sight. Some greater purpose he had yet to uncover. This couldn’t be it. After everything he’d witnessed, he was to be destroyed?
“Maybe it’s for the best.” That old woman’s scratchy voice came like sandpaper to his raw heart. “There’s something unsettling about the eyes anyway. Feels like it’s always watching you.”
He watched a bristle work its way through Florence’s form, a subtle twitch as if her hair stood on end. It seemed the woman’s suggestion irked her. “I like his eyes. They make you feel noticed.”
She stepped away after that. Noticed. He noticed a haunt in her step while she walked away. Had it always been there, or was it because of the paper at his feet? He noticed the way she stood apart from the rest of the world while she knelt to gather her tools. Had she always seemed so alone? He noticed the shadows the trees cast across the grass, branches like claws that tried to snatch up the ball the children exchanged. He noticed the bitter gray of the buildings around the park. He noticed the muted red peeking out from the white of her canvas, as if she’d taken something beautiful and covered it with emptiness.
It wasn’t many days later the next time Florence pressed through the archway off of Main Street, and she didn’t have her leather case behind her.
The afternoon rain drove everyone else from the park. Even joggers abandoned the cobblestone paths, leaving them empty and wet. But for some reason, she did. An umbrella hovered in the air above her, predictably splattered with paint, but her boots sent sloshes of water up from the puddles and soaked her brown pants anyway. She stopped only when she reached the path at the base of his pedestal, where the page taped to the plaque now melted over the sides and dribbled into the puddles below.
She stood there for a long time, watching. The moisture spilling from his bird’s wings and his carved hair. The leaves that rustled in the occasional sweep of wind. The way he watched her. Then she moved, a blur of dark hair and an umbrella that clattered to the ground behind her. Droplets began to soak her curls and weigh them towards her shoulders. But she held something. Something soft, an off-white, nearly yellow color, like the shade something turned after years untouched.
She climbed over the orange net held up by cones that reflected the sun into his eyes. The bright objects had been there since they were set up not an hour before the rain began. A man had used the cover it provided to draw a whizzing yellow ribbon across his form, then the falcon’s. The net gave an obvious message; one that Florence ignored. She pulled herself up onto the pedestal before him with a grunt, rose to meet his gaze, then stood in silence for just a moment longer.
“I know it’s dumb.” Her voice caught in the chill of the rain. “You’re stone. Gosh, I’m talking to stone.”
She lifted a hand to her forehead, as if the mere thought gave her an ache. Maybe it did. Maybe she was going crazy. Maybe he was. No one but his Maker had ever spoken to him before. Now, faced with his death, this must be some sort of dream.
But even he couldn’t dream her eyes properly, and as he gazed into them, the certainty of this moment’s reality struck him. Time itself slowed to capture that moment. There could have been an entire world behind those eyes. He couldn’t make out the color from his perch, but he could see their depth. It must be where she drew her inspiration from. Some secret garden in her mind that found hidden beauty in everything it touched. In her world, insects were mythical creatures. Stones held the elegant majesty of mountains. And in her world, it seemed, she saw life in him.
“I just… I found this in her things, and I thought–I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d want it.”
She stretched up onto her toes and draped the fabric around his neck. One hand lingered. Her fingers brushed his cheek, then his jaw as she tied it around itself to fasten it in place. “There,” she whispered, “now you won’t freeze before they tear you down.”
The wind caught the edge of the scarf and twirled it up into the air. He knew this scarf. The permanent splotches of dye and oils from when she accidentally let it slide through her pallet while she worked. The rough stitches at one end struggled to repair a tear where it caught on the sharp edge of one of his falcon’s feathers. He hadn’t seen it in decades. Not since she stormed out of the studio with her shout echoing in the empty space and her hands shaking.
Never had the urge to speak possessed him with such gravity as in that moment. He couldn’t thank Florence for reuniting him with a piece from his past. He couldn’t reply to her kindness. But for a moment, as reality fled once more, he felt warmth.
A red sun crept up the horizon. As the cold night shifted to make room for the first beginnings of day, birds began to peek from their homes to sing jolly tunes about his coming destruction. The dew glistened in the grass all around and laughed at him. Men with searing orange vests and white hats lumbered around him. Some lifted unfamiliar items from boxes that they deposited on the path around his pedestal, beside swirls of rope and leather straps. They threw some over his shoulders and around his knees. A steady pressure, not so different to the day so long ago that his journey began. Perhaps that is all this would be, in the end. The beginning of a new journey.
He heard the rough thunk of wood on metal before he saw it. Mid swing, one of the men reared back to gain momentum, so the mallet might aid his efforts. For a moment, it could have been his Maker. It could have been a hammer to the delicate chisel that shaped him, bit into the marble with practiced ease and care. But this swing held no care, no illusion of creation. What would his Maker think if he could see this? Would those soft eyes narrow to know they meant to steal his purpose from him? Would he step in to teach the orange-vested man how to do it properly? It couldn’t matter all that much. The man probably died long ago. And now, he would go too. He would join his Maker, and he would abandon the gift of sight to the world.
In the edge of his vision, movement. Not the rustle of pale leaves in the soft morning glow. Neither the unsettling shift of bright orange as a man knelt to lift a tool. No, this movement came from the direction of his falcon. If he had not years’ of knowledge and understanding about the nature of stone, he might have thought it was the falcon. But it couldn’t be. The bird was the same steady bird it had been since the apprentice’s artful hand carved the last of its feathers, and its head that slowly tipped up to face him. With a scrape of stone on stone, its eyes met his. Sharp, clear. Not soft like his Maker, and not deep like Florence, but unwavering all the same. A deep boom followed, “You can stay and remember, or fly and forget.” Its beak did not part to speak the words, but they rattled in his head all the same. A wing shifted as if to tease him with the potential.
The first rays of sunlight began to dance in the space around them, illuminating clouds of dust that puffed from his feet. Could it be true? Could he accept this offer for freedom? Could he live his days imbued with the far-reaching eye of a falcon? Oh, how wonderful it would be to see something new for the first time.
When his Maker sent him off to the park so long ago, trepidation sent his thoughts rattling as if they were made of loose pebbles. But when those straps holding him gave way, nothing else mattered. The colors, the movement, the people. The entire world. He spent a whole day staring at the willow tree. Another watching each person pass him by. Where were they going? What mission did they have? Did they create other beings like his Maker did? Some stopped at his feet throughout the day, and he marveled at their silly conversations about other people, the sun in the sky, and their work. Why would he need this form (this intentional, hand carved form) if he only had the eyes of the falcon? What did it matter that he abandoned the broad shoulders and steady jaw and determination? What were the odds that the absent life in his eyes would even be noticed?
Noticed. She would notice. She would come before long with that leather case. She would stoop and pull her canvas and easel from within. She would turn to glance his way, and she would feel the absence. She would approach the workers, the pedestal, and she would gaze up at him, and he would not be there to witness it. She would turn away and never return to the park, so scarred by his abandonment that she couldn’t bear to look at the place he once lived.
What a tragic thing it would be, to have the warmth in her eyes traded for darkness.
No.
The reply came from deep within, shuddered through his very existence, and the falcon’s head shifted once again. If he agreed, he would forget. He would forget her daily ritual. He would forget that haunt in her step, the way she stood apart from the rest of the world. He would forget the other world in her eyes and the way she turned to show him her painting.
No, nothing could be worth that. He could have seen the rest of the world, but what did it matter? What use did his eyes serve without her to look upon? He would rather see her once more than spend the rest of his existence in longing.
Something whined and screeched from below. The falcon shifted once more, and in a swoop of shuddering stone, it stepped from his gloved hand. For a moment, his movement captured in pause took a breath of life. No longer was he simply prepared to send the falcon off; he did. It flapped its stone wings. Someone cursed from below. “Careful! They wanted the bird in one piece!”
It didn’t matter. With a single movement, the falcon climbed into the sky and left him standing alone. Just as she had left so long ago. Arguing ensued, one orange vest accusing the other as the pair of them scrambled to search for the missing falcon in the bushes nearby. But he knew. They would never find it. It chose freedom.
And he chose her.
Her paint splattered boots punctuated her every step as she entered from across the park. She dragged that leather case behind her. She’d replaced her skirt with overalls today, tools tucked into the many pockets, and she watched something over her shoulder. But he didn’t mind. Even the sight of her dark hair was enough to remind him of every day she spent at his feet, creating life in her masterpieces. Perhaps she was like his Maker. Perhaps she could create life too. Perhaps she could restore him through her painting of him, if she tried.
Something beneath him shuddered with a resonant crack that drew the focus of everyone nearby. Including Florence. Her head whipped around to face him. She dropped the leather case. The easel, the canvas, her tools. It all went abandoned in the wake of her rapid footsteps. “Wait!”
“Stand back, girl!” One of the orange-vested men shouted her way.
Maybe they intended it to happen this way. Maybe it was an accident. The willow tree tilted sideways, the air whipped and sang around him as he fell. Then, in an explosion of light and darkness all at once, he hit the ground. No pain, only a sensation from his neck as it made a faint pop! I his periphery, the scarf fluttered down after him, now caught on the broken edge of his neck and shoulder. The entire world began to spin and spin around him, and he wondered if this was what death felt like. People talked about it often, death. They were fascinated with it, even though they seemed to fear it. And why wouldn’t they? It was an uncertain thing. No one knew quite what came in this next step, this other world. But he suspected he did. At the end of this tunnel, it could only be another moment like his first day in the park. A strap drawn away from his eyes, something he could have never imagined, and a girl lifting his head from the ground.
Though… that last part didn’t seem quite right. But there Florence knelt, lifting his head, and as the spinning stopped, he found he could gaze at nothing but her eyes. They were brown. Soft, an unmatched depth within, and achingly familiar. His Maker’s eyes. But, how? It must have been an illusion, a trick of his mind in his final moments to grant him some final reminder of peace. A wrinkle creased the space between her eyebrows, and as she touched his cheek, her gaze lifted over his head. “How can you do something like this?”
“Look, Miss. We didn’t mean to break it. It was supposed to go the other way.”
A shakiness overtook her hands as she tucked him beneath her arm. She reached for the scarf as though she too felt its weight, and rose to her feet. “You’ve just destroyed a historic piece of art, don’t you care?”
“The buyer only wanted the marble for some sorta project. They won’t miss its head.”
“Then I’m keeping it.”
Florence spun on her heel and went back the way she came. He bobbed with her every step like he was a raindrop dancing down from the sky as she guided him to the ground. She knelt to lift up her leather case again, and her breath came in a bit of strain as she struggled to carry both him and her supplies, but she managed. She didn’t open the case. She didn’t paint the world. Instead, she took him through the entrance to the park that he only ever saw at a distance. She pressed past odd people, down many unfamiliar pathways with strange buildings and signs he didn’t know how to read.
Florence only stopped to press open a door with her shoulder. Then, the bobbing and swaying came to a steady halt. The pair of them were enclosed by shimmering sheets that bordered and reflected the unfamiliar plants all around them. She smiled at him.
“This is a greenhouse, and my studio,” she said. “My father helped me build it, and I took this pedestal from his studio when they closed it down.” She patted the surface she’d placed him on. The scarf in her grasp laced around the empty space beneath his chin to hold him steady. Warmth. “I never had the right thing to put here, but… now I do. She always called you Alexander. I think it fits.”
A name. She gave him a name. Something so foreign, yet so strangely familiar.
She knelt to open the case to draw out her brush and the oval disc with the colors. She steadied him with one hand, and with the other, lifted her brush from the pedestal. A cold smear of cadmium orange ran across his cheek. Her paintbrush moved in steady, practiced motions, muscle memory.
Painting butterflies.
