She only sighs and comes closer, putting her hand on mine to let me know where she is. She is silent for a long while. Is she looking at the painting? I nibble my bottom lip, not quite daring to hope that she is, perhaps, trying to understand why I do what I do. She has never told me to stop, but I can taste her disapproval, as sour and heavy on my tongue as old, molding grapes. She has hinted at it verbally as well, in the past. Paint something useful, something pretty. Something that does not entrance viewers for hours on end. Something that would not attract the sharp, gleaming interest of the priests if they saw it. Something safe.

She says nothing this time, only stroking my braided hair, and at last I realize she is not thinking about me or my paintings at all. “What is it, Mama?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says, very softly, and I realize that for the first time in my life, she has just lied to me.

My heart fills with dread. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is the whiff of fear that wafts from her, or the sorrow that underlies it, or simply the fact that my garrulous, cheerful mother is suddenly so quiet, so still.

So I lean against her and put my arms around her waist. She is trembling, unable to give me the comfort that I crave. I take what I can, and perhaps give a little of my own in return.

My father died a few weeks later.

I floated in numbing emptiness, screaming, unable to hear myself. When I clasped my hands together, I felt nothing, even when I dug in my nails. Opening my mouth, I sucked in another breath to scream again but felt no sensation of air moving over my tongue or filling my lungs. I knew that I did it. I willed my muscles to move and believed that they responded. But I could feel nothing.

Nothing but the terrible cold. It was bitter enough to be painful, or would have been if I could feel pain. If I had been able to stand, I might have fallen to the ground, too cold to do anything but shiver. If only there had been ground.

The mortal mind is not built for such things. I did not miss sight, but touch? Sound? Smell? I was used to those. I needed those. Was this how other people felt about blindness? No wonder they feared it so.

I contemplated going mad.

“Ree-child,” says my father, taking my hands. “Don’t rely on your magic. I know the temptation will be there. It’s good to see, isn’t it?”

I nod. He smiles.

“But the power comes from inside you,” he goes on. He opens one of my small hands and traces the whorling print of one fingertip. It tickles and I laugh. “If you use a lot of it, you’ll get tired. If you use it all… Ree-child, you could die.”

I frown in puzzlement. “It’s just magic.” Magic is light, color. Magic is a beautiful song—wonderful, but not a necessity of life. Not like food or water, or sleep, or blood.

“Yes. But it’s also part of you. An important part.” He smiles, and for the first time, I see how deeply the sadness has permeated him today. He seems lonely. “You have to understand. We’re not like other people.”

I cried out with my voice and my thoughts. Gods can hear the latter if a mortal concentrates hard enough—it’s how they hear prayers. There was no reply from Madding, or anyone else. Though I groped around, my hands encountered nothing. Even if he’d been there, right beside me, would I have known? I had no idea. I was so afraid.

“Feel,” says my father, guiding my hand. I hold a fat horsehair brush tipped with paint that stinks like vinegar. “Taste the scent on the air. Listen to the scrape of the brush. Then believe.”

“Believe… what?”

“What you expect to happen. What you want to exist. If you don’t control it, it will control you, Ree-child. Never forget that.”

I should have stayed in the house I should have left the city I should have seen the previt coming I should have left Shiny in the muck where I found him I should have stayed in Nimaro and never left.

“The paint is a door,” my father says.

I put out my hands and imagined that they shook.

“A door?” I ask.

“Yes. The power is in you, hidden, but the paint opens the way to that power, allowing you to bring some of it out onto the canvas. Or anywhere else you want to put it. As you grow older, you’ll find new ways to open the door. Painting is just the first method you’ve found.”

“Oh.” I consider this. “Does that mean I could sing my magic, like you?”

“Maybe. Do you like singing?”

“Not like I like painting. And my voice doesn’t sound good like yours.”

He chuckles. “I like your voice.”