Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer

as he worked. Larque watched it when she could. She asked him, “What is your name?”
    â€œYou don’t really need to know.” This was not the least bit rude, merely the truth. He was another truthteller. “Hold still,” he told her as she shifted her head to watch him. “Don’t try to talk.”
    He meant to be, she intuited, merely the cloud shadow in the air through which the lightning passes. In her mind she named him Shadow.
    He finished her hair. Her head felt buoyed and receptive, as if he had somehow, painlessly, opened it.
    Bringing her his palette, he told her, “Now for the eyes I suggest Amethyst Mist, which is very popular with the Irish, very poetic.”
    â€œNo mist.” Larque shook her lightened head. “I don’t want to see that way anymore. From now on I just want …” She faltered, trying to think how to explain the concept of the camera behind her eyes.
    Sky challenged, “Make her dare to see the truth!”
    â€œTrue Blue, then. Hold perfectly still.” He seated himself on a stool in front of her, dipped a small pointed brush, braced his elbow on the armrest of her chair, and started to paint. He painted not the lids and creases around her eyes but her eyes themselves. It did not hurt. She sat motionless and stared into the beauty of his face and met his shadow gray gaze without blinking.
    â€œAnd a little red, for daring.” He intensified a few fine veins, then looked at her with a wisp of a smile. “So far, so good,” he said. “Do you dare to see me truly?”
    But he was so beautiful, she did not want to. “Not quite,” she answered.
    Sky pointed her middle dirty finger into her own mouth and made a gagging noise.
    â€œIt will come,” Shadow told Larque, either not hearing the doppelganger or ignoring her. “Give it time. Now, what about your nose, your jaw, your chin, your cheekbones? Do you have dreams for them?”
    â€œI’d like my bones to be stronger,” Larque said. She hated the way everything about her seemed to be swaddled and lost in softness.
    â€œGive her some courage ,” said Sky disgustedly.
    Looking very serious, he molded her face with steady careful movements of his hands and fingers, drawing hardness out of her nose, her chin, and her jaw. It felt unlike anything else she had ever experienced, and very very good. She sat with eyes half-lidded, breathing shallowly, as his hands stroked her face.
    â€œMouth stronger too?” he asked.
    â€œJust—more willing,” said Larque at the same time as Sky said, “Yes, wide. Like it could swallow the world.”
    Shadow was perplexed. “What do you mean, willing?”
    Larque said, “Ready to laugh or yell or kiss or sing or cry, whatever. My mouth gets tired too easily.”
    â€œYes, I see,” he said softly, and he used both his hands and his brushes to take care of it. Finished with the face, he stood up, stepped back to look at her, and nodded.
    â€œYour mind?” he asked. “Any changes there? A prejudice to get rid of? A language you’ve wanted to learn?”
    Sky for once seemed to have run out of ideas for how Larque should have turned out better. But Larque said at once, “I’ve always wanted to really, really know how to dance.”
    â€œThat is more the fundament than the mind,” Shadow said. Nevertheless, he stepped forward and laid his hands on her forehead a moment, and smoothed her eyebrows with his thumbs. “A little daring here, too,” he muttered, and with a brush and some sooty pigment he feathered them into wings. He seemed not at all tired, but went immediately on. “Now, your body. Almost always people want it younger, and a few pounds lighter.”
    â€œYounger and stronger. I want some muscle. And twenty pounds lighter,” Larque said.
    â€œMake it thirty,” Sky put in, her voice as sharp as her elbows.
    He