Page 54 of The Winter Princess
Her hands juggle the air. “Doesn’t it?”
I finish my drawing and sketch a wide circle around it. Except for the lack of birds, it could be a representation of The Winter Princess.
“Here’s what it means to belong in Sondmark,” I say, pointing to the center of the circle. I’ve reproduced a likeness of Freja in a few strokes. The cleft in her chin. The eyes that seem to take in everything. I’m shocked at how easy it was to capture her on the page. “Imagine a field and you’re in the middle. You’re a citizen of Sondmark. A native speaker. A princess. There’s no one more in the center of Sondmark than you.”
I look up to see if she understands. She nods.
“This,” I say, tapping the circle, “is a wall. It’s invisible, and on one side you’re Sondish and on the other side you’re not.” I glance up. Her bright eyes are trained on the paper. “You’ve never bumped into this wall. You’ve probably never seen it, though your father is as Pavian as mine. Your title and position put you right in the center of Sondmark. You belong. There’s a whole verse in the national anthem about it.” I lift the pencil in the air, sketching an encompassing gesture with the tip of the eraser. “You can recite the history of Sondmark and take its odd quirks for granted.Vede, you probably even like Pankedruss,” I grimace.
“Guilty.” She gives me a smile, and it warms me like a burning piece of coal placed in a pocket warmer. She touches a soft finger to the paper. “Where does Oskar Velasquez belong?”
I draw a dark X over the perimeter of the circle. “On the edge. So it doesn’t matter that I still have my striped waistcoat and cloth cap from the year our class did folk dancing on Saint Wyten’s Day, that I root for the Dragons no matter who they’re up against, or that I grab my ice skates when the canals freeze over. I still have people”—Her. It matters that it’s her—“remind me I’m not Sondish. Even if I become a citizen, I’ll still be touching the wall.”
I thought these feelings were dead, decomposing somewhere, but the battery of failed citizenship tests, the strange fact of Freja’s princessness, and the nothing kiss we shared are digging them up.
“Touching the wall?”
“It means being in a staff meeting when my ideas are passed over because forty generations of ancestors aren’t buried in this soil. It’s translating for my father at the grocery store, realizing the clerk thinks he’s stupid, and trying to keep him from finding out.” The words rush out in a hot torrent. “It’s not knowing the name of a native dish because my mother didn’t cook like that, and then it’s forcing myself to remember and not make that mistake next time. When you belong, you never have to think about the wall, but people on the edge can’t afford to take their eyes off it.”
The words reverberate through the room.
I reach for scissors, snipping away the drawing, collecting myself one gesture at a time. Better to use basic lined paper the next time I explain cultural alienation to a member of the royal family. Washi kozo is too valuable to waste.
“Are you going to throw that away?” she asks.
Only then do I realize I was going to keep it. Why?
I nod.
She tugs the restoration paper out of my hands, smoothing the surface with her thumbs. “Are you ever in the center of the field?”
My brows furrow.
She points to the line. “This represents citizenship, but there must be times in your life when you’re at the center. Places you’re perfectly at home.”
My mind finds an answer faster than I can stop it. For one weightless second, I was at home in the hall of the Summer Palace with her hands on my arms and my lips on hers. The thought won’t be forced out with a laugh. A lie won’t come as easily as a tack.
“What do you need for the interview?” I ask, impatiently, picking the canvas up and placing it on an easel. This painting is one I’ve been working on for some time. It’s been stabilized, cleaned, and re-stretched. Now I need to retouch the areas that have been lost. I’ll try to imagine what might have disappeared in the flat and empty places and attempt to make a bridge the eye can wander over without realizing what’s missing.
Freja looks down at the paper, and when she looks up, her face has taken on its usual composed expression again.
“Anything you love best. You know, I used to think your work was rote, but every time I come, you have some new process you’re employing. It’s interesting,” she says, turning on the ball of one foot. She moves so smoothly—her posture is that of a princess—but the thin, winding scar is longer than anyone could guess. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to forget the soft curve of her back, the surprise of seeing the human side of a royal princess, and the quickening of desire for this specific princess.
I blink. “Often the workisrote. You can’t be that interested in cotton swabs and mulberry paper.”
She lifts the scrap of washi kozo, mischief lighting her eyes. “I’ve been reliably informed that I belong at the heart of Sondmark. Doesn’t that mean I should be the one telling you what the country is interested in?”
She has me there.
I take my seat behind the canvas and reach for my palette and reversible restoration paints, blending a peachy hue with a tiny brush. I smile into the face of St Sebastian. Freja can’t see me, so it doesn’t matter.
“Since you haven’t given me a time, I’ll let Erik know he can start to collect footage tomorrow,” she calls.
I frown—I feel safer when I frown—and lean around the canvas.
“No,” I answer. “I’ve already told you. It’s you or no one.”
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