Miramont's Ghost by Elizabeth Hall Page B

became: someone in this household had something to hide. Sometimes she would lie awake, mulling over the day’s events, telling herself to just let it go. But she could not. The compulsion to record what was happening would not let her sleep. She had to get up, had to scratch it all out on paper. Only then, after she had locked it away, and blown out her candle, could she return to bed and find slumber. As if, by the act of recording it all, she could somehow find the answers.
    One afternoon, she and Adrienne walked out past the lake and up over a hill that looked down on the grounds of the estate. They brought their paints, and set up easels in the grass. The day was a glorious blue, that crystalline blue of September, when the air has just begun to cool down at night. The view before them was splendid: the château in the distance, the lake, the vineyards and farm fields that belonged to the comte, pressed all around by the deep green of the forest.
    They sketched and painted, mostly in silence, and Lucie was absorbed in her own composition. She had left the cares and stress of the castle behind, and for the first time in several weeks, she relaxed. It wasn’t until they were beginning to pack up their supplies that she looked at Adrienne’s painting. Her calm evaporated.
    Normally, the girl did her best to capture the beauty of the land around her, and she was becoming more and more proficient at following the lines of tree branches and leaves and the roll and sway of the ground in the near distance. This piece was very different and Lucie could not hide her shock at today’s work.
    Adrienne had painted the forest, not from the vantage that was before them now, the deep greens and browns and blacks in the distance, fringing the fields. This painting showed the trees and branches and heavy vegetation as if the viewer were in the midst of it, enveloped by the darkness and quiet. Tree branches were drawn like hands, their long fingers reaching out to grab the unwary traveler. The knots in the bark of the trunks stared out like eyes. The effect was startling, and left a dark, ominous taste in Lucie’s mouth.
    Lucie glanced at Adrienne, who stood staring into the forest in the distance. “This is very interesting, Adrienne,” she murmured. “Quite different from the other things I’ve seen you paint.”
    Adrienne turned to Lucie, and there was something in her eyes, some mix of apprehension and knowledge, that Lucie had not witnessed in any of the girl’s other visions. “They’re watching me, Lucie.”
    Lucie felt the hair on her arms go up. “Who is watching you?”
    Adrienne met the eyes of her governess, but she looked as if she was lost in another place entirely. “Everyone. Marie. The servants. The people in the village. I can feel their eyes on me when we go to church. I can feel their eyes in the castle, every time I go into a room. I can feel them right now, staring at me. Watching me.”
    Lucie glanced around uncomfortably. She could not see a soul, and they were a good mile away from the trees in that forest. The château was almost as far. The only movement in the pastoral scene was the trace of the breeze, bending the grasses, fluttering the leaves of the birch they’d been sitting beneath.
    Lucie swallowed her own apprehension. “Your painting looks a little like the forest where Snow White lived. Perhaps there are some friendly dwarfs beyond these trees?” She pointed at the trees in Adrienne’s painting.
    Adrienne shrugged. She looked at her own painting. “It feels more like the wicked stepmother. Or a witch, like the one in ‘Hänsel and Gretel.’ ”
    Lucie exhaled slowly, forcing her fears down and her heart to slow. She reached for Adrienne’s painting, and wrapped it in a cloth, putting it into the satchel along with the rest of the supplies. “There’s no such thing as witches, Adrienne. They are only part of fairy stories. They’re not real.” She reached over and ran her hand