Violet's Fingers Ch. 02

Prologue Darkness and light, touch versus sight

Dilli.

The events described here first appeared as sketches made as I watched her, accompanied by my scraps of text. Then, while pregnant with Pim, I began recording my memories, as well as adding to my drawings. These were all used by Parnassius when he undertook the task of imagining how I might have told my story, as it was happening. As a writer and translator, he is good, and he did have the very best of teachers to prepare him for this task.

But this is all about Violet and right now the sound of her voice rings clear in my head, "Dilli, Dilli."

She loved to speak my name, repeating and twisting the sound, till tongue touching teeth became Tilli, and other things to make me frown. As we walked together, we sang, made verse, taking turns and teasing. I am good, but Violet was both quicker and trickier than I. Her words would at first seem simple and elegant, but as they echoed in my mind, I might notice how they rhymed in another tongue or reversed upon themselves to reveal some subtle snub.

I miss my Violet.

Here in my notebook, I have sketches of her tongue, teeth and lips. When I had time to spare, I would draw her hair, but more often it was Violet's fingers, strong as steel and quicker than my pencil, always holding the heart of my story. On this tattered page, I have sketched her hips balanced a little below me on one of the narrow rock shelves protruding from the sheer walls of our gorge. I have captured the butterflies over her chest with a few loose strokes, reminding me how they danced in the glance of the sun. Later I brought her to life, for an age shading and sharpening with my pencil the tangled lines of her hair, dangling dark through her fingers and over the edge of my page.

I remember how this drawing began, my heart racing as I crouched as near to the edge as my fear would allow. But these precious attempts to capture her were shadowplay, the real Violet lying involute across the chasm before me, precarious yet relaxed. She trusted the stone; I saw only the deadly drop.

Her world is not mine; if she could read these words, she would say they were tainted by my obsession with sight. As the butterflies alight to drink her sweat, I might describe how the light cast through their translucent wings falls upon her skin, how those colours merge with the warm glow from the sunlit side of the gorge.

"Dilli, my draznili filly," she teased, "come back to reality. Breathe in the scent of the flowers below, where I love to lie lazy, tell how it blends with the smoke from our juniper fire. And my armpits, admit they drive you crazy." The corner of her lip lifted a little. "Tell me your hidden desire, or I'll call you a liar."

She was being silly. Quite aware I needed her to stay still, my drawing unfinished, she twisted and lowered her legs over the sheer stone, her toes reaching for a hold, humming an exploratory tune. Leaving me, she descended sure as a spider towards the shadowy floor of the gorge.

It may seem strange, dear reader, that she is at home climbing, while I, the dancer, am uneasy on the cliff edges. That is how it is, and I did take the easy way down, unable to watch but soothed by the echoes of her verse in the cool stone, the curious accents she chose, the cadence of her words, never far from song. Safe with her feet in the cold, shallow water, she slipped through shafts of light filtering from far above to come before our smoking campfire.

Down and leaning against my log to complete my sketches, she wishes I lay down my pencil, open my arms and hold her, feel against my nose the soft fur of the rabbit over her shoulder, against my cheek the brush of her hair. I did not dare. Instead, I chose to bend her, to fold her, to play unfaithful games. Line by line in time my paper violets took shape, the flesh and blood girl heartbroken that I could not simply reach out and touch. Only now am I distant enough to notice how the games she played with the sound of my name were mirroring how I shaped her with my pencil.

Dear reader, if you came across Violet alive in your imagination, she would not be shy; she would welcome your approach and embrace. And if your fingertips wandered to come across the hatching of scars laid hard over her back, would you flinch and withdraw from under the ragged lace? Remember, she is the victim in this tale and I the monster.

If it were me you met, my hand would drop to the hilt of my knife, and I might use it. But from the safety of your imagination you may reach out, slide your fingertips up my cheek to the depression where my eye once played. There you will feel the crude stitches which have healed my sight, balancing the darkness and the light.