Her Name is Alice

Chapter Six

The startlingly cavernous chimes of the looming mahogany grandfather clock in my parlor announced the arrival of the new hour. Yelping in surprise, I abrubtly met the careful stitching of the Persian rug with my forehead. The throbbing in my temple produced a very unlady-like groan and swearing to escape my mouth. I winced again at my mistake, instinctively awaiting the harsh scolding from my mother for swearing like a sailor. I glared at the clock as the sixth ominous echo resonated up the walls and through my ears.

"Why must you wake me so early you retched piece of driftwood?" I bit, my eyebrows knitting together angrily.

"Well, then, I'll just let you sleep in tomorrow and miss your classes. You drank enough of that tea last night to knock out a gorilla. Lucky for you, I have a very gifted baritone and was able to wake you up in time to get ready," someone replied.

The deep voice came from nowhere and yet everywhere. A startled scream stuck in my throat as I gawked at the old grandfather clock in front of me.

"Behind the curtain, child," the foreign voice explained.

Above the empty fireplace hung a dark purple, velvet curtain that showed the outline of a large rectangular object. I approached the heavy fabric cautiously, afraid of what could possibly lie behind it. Was it a doorway to another part of the house where a little man lived? Were there more people in my cabin than him?

All at once, I tore the thick velvet from the wall--a cloud of dust clouding my vision for just a moment--only to find a large painting of a very odd looking old man clutching a gnarled, wooden staff and dark green robes hanging like curtains from his body. He looked practically ancient with his papery skin and ghostly gray eyes.

"Wh--who...who are you?" I stammered.

The man blinked but didnt look down at me; he stared straight ahead, sometimes shifting his head when I spoke. Realizing that he was blind, I slowly inched towards the front door. There was a good chance I could escape and call for help, I just had a few more feet to go and I could bolt--

"I locked the door already and you won't be able to leave until I let you." He spoke calmly, slowly as if he were choosing his words carefully. "What is your name, lass?"

His soft Scottish accent reminded me of a lullaby I had once heard but forgotten until then.

"My name is Alice White, sir," I managed to blurt. "What are you doing in a painting above my fireplace?"

"A very long time ago, this was my home. I was born in this tree shortly before the war and, as I understand, it is now your home. How has this come to be," he paused before ending with "Alice White?"

"I came here to attend Whitmore Academy, sir. I was given this place to stay in duringy studies. What do you mean you were born in this tree?"

"I mean exactly as I said. I was given to this tree 426 years ago and I will never leave. I will not be torn from my home as so many others have been."

The face in the painting paled, distinguishing strange gray lines in his already wrinkled complexion. A translucent drop slipped from his blind eye into his long, wiry beard. This mad man in the painting, who claimed to have been born in a tree, was weeping.

I desperately wanted to ask him why he was crying but I didn't wish to come across as rude. What a strange thought: I don't want to seem rude to this mad man above my fireplace.

All at once, the man stopped crying and appeared suddenly alert. "Whitmore Academy is a school for children with odd gifts. What is yours?"

On instinct I hesitated. How could I explain my gift when not even I understood it? It sounded too strange to say that I could heal small injuries with "the fire in one's soul", as my mother described it.

As if sensing my reluctance, he said, "Show me."

Confused, I opened my mouth to point out the obvious: he was blind.

"I may no longer be able to see with my own two eyes as you can, but I can see things that you can't even dream of." For a second, it sounded as if he were boasting. "Show me," he repeated.

I chose a slip of blank paper from the parlor and pinched it between two fingers. Suddenly doubting my ability to conjure a simple flame, I squeezed my eyelids shut and concentrated on that exquisitely luminescent corner of my being.

"Ardebit."
In a moment that seemed to last for only a breath, the thin parchment ignited in the form of a blazing wing--much larger than I had expected.

As always when I practiced my gift, my heart warmed and a silly grin split my cheeks at the sight of the blue flame. Mother was always so afraid of how willing I was to mold my blue fire out in the open.

"Are you mad?" she would hiss as she slapped my hands away, smothering the growing flame. "Do you wish to be seen by people who will only condemn you for this?"

I always answered with: "But how can they condemn something so harmless and pure?"

"It is not harmless," she would spit. "It is a weapon that you cannot control."

This is what I expected from the man in the painting when I demonstrated my gift. When the moment of purity passed, I released the flame and lowered my hand; the paper was now reduced to ash. I waited quietly for the man to speak of what he had seen. Would he scold me for being so careless and showing off to him, a man I had just met? Or would he remain silent, frozen in terror?

But when a minute had passed, I realized that the man was weeping again. Only, this time, he was smiling and gazing upward joyously. At the sight of him, I felt a tear of my own slip from my eye as I realized how deeply my fire had affected him. How incredible.