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Sun was pouring in from the third-floor window, casting mellow gold across the gabled studio. After finishing her morning

tasks, Clara liked to climb the steep stairs up to the studio and sit in the corner on a crate to watch Alida work. It wasn’t

a large room—just the footprint of the narrow house—but entire worlds were created in it. She had never given much thought

before to the skill that was needed to bring a painting to life. All the pictures that had hung on her father’s walls might

as well have been furniture. But watching Alida blend her pigments, dance her brush across the canvas in small, precise strokes,

ignited a strange hunger within her. What power it must be to wield a brush and see one’s innermost visions become real.

Clara knew better than to ask what Alida was working on this morning, as this piece had consumed a great deal of her time

already, and required several very expensive pigments for which Clara was continually being dispatched to fetch from the shop.

“The Hooft family,” Alida said from behind her brush as if sensing Clara’s curiosity.

“Mr. Hooft wanted the whole brood in an open-air setting, with all of the family’s pets, from the monkey to the hounds.

His good wife was able to convince him of a studio setting with a backdrop of temple ruins, and just the monkey.

” She applied a few more brushstrokes, her lips tugged down in a slight frown.

“The little devil shat on my floor, and after the preliminary sketches, I asked that Mr. Hooft keep his family at home until I needed them for the final sitting.”

Now that she had been invited into conversation, Clara approached the giant canvas and studied the sketch of the family that

was taking shape through streaks and dots of color. They were well-dressed, the wife and daughters all in immaculate white

ruffs that presented their pink-cheeked faces like apples on a platter. Beside the mother’s elbow, a little table stood, and

it was here that Alida was painting a wilting rose. Several brown petals rested beside the head of the rose, its leaves crumpled.

“The mother fades as the daughter blooms.” Alida stood back, a small crease between her brows as she examined the addition

of the rose. Letting out a small breath of approval, she wiped her hands on a paint-stained cloth. “But such is life when

a woman’s worth is measured in rosy cheeks, a firm bosom, and nothing else.”

Clara thought it a rather bleak view, but then, that was the story of her own life, was it not? Now that she was simply a

nameless maid in a big city, she supposed she had no value to a man. It was freeing, intoxicating, the more she thought about

it. She no longer had to practice worthless skills or preserve the paleness of her complexion, or do anything other than her

tasks as a maid.

“Why do you paint such a subject when you find it so abhorrent?” Clara asked, taking the cloth to add to the growing pile

of laundry.

Alida gave her a withering look. “Same reason that any of us do anything besides indulging in pleasure,” she said, patting

her flat stomacher. “I need to eat, and these paintings put food on the table. But,” she added, “I will always get the last

word.”

Clara watched as Alida added a tulip head, nothing more than a hint of gleaming crimson in the shadowed corner of the painting. “What is that?”

“That,” Alida said, standing back and running an approving eye over the canvas, “is my secret signature.”

After the rest of the scene was filled in and the paint had dried, Alida would apply a thick, glossy varnish made of egg whites

and resin, then the painting would cure, and finally she could send it off to its eager benefactors.

Alida turned to Clara and gave her an inscrutable look. “Would you like to try?”

Clara frowned, certain that she was misunderstanding. “Painting?”

Without answering, Alida rummaged for a spare canvas on stretchers among the many that lined the slanted walls. “Here,” she

said, planting it on the easel. “This was a commission that never paid. No use in it going to waste. Paint anything you like,

and I will paint over whatever you do later.”

The honor to use one of the precious canvases was not lost on Clara, even if it had been already used. Taking the brush from

Alida’s outstretched hand, she tested the weight of it in her own. Aside from cleaning them or arranging them, Clara had never

held one just for the sake of it before. “I don’t know what to paint,” she admitted to Alida.

“Don’t you?”

Clara gave a sharp look to her mistress, who was watching her right back with equal interest.

“I never ask about your life before you came to the city, and I don’t expect you to tell me.

You owe no one your story. But,” Alida said, tapping her finger on her chin, “there is something that haunts you. I can see it in your eyes when you’re working, the weight that keeps your shoulders bunched as if you are always ready to run.

” She gestured to the brush in Clara’s hand, then to the canvas.

“In my experience, putting bad memories on canvas helps. It takes them out of your mind, gives them a home where they can’t hurt you. ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clara said, stiffening. She didn’t care for the sensation of someone being able

to see all her troubles and nightmares written so clearly on her face. Nonetheless, she found herself lifting the brush and

giving a tentative stroke of blue paint across the canvas.

Alida made herself busy tidying up the other side of the room, wiping up pigment dust and sorting brushes, things that were

really Clara’s job. Applying another stroke, Clara added to her blue streak with a thread of green. The sweep of hog hair

against canvas made a satisfying shhhwp .

Soon she was experimenting with more colors, blending them, playing with them, filling every inch of the canvas. The studio

was quiet, the only sounds the distant rumble of a cart or horse hooves clipping on the cobblestones. The light, which had

been shafting in through glittering dust motes, was growing thinner, weaker. Clara didn’t know how long she had been painting,

or when exactly Alida had come up quietly to stand behind her.

Clara slanted herself protectively toward the canvas, but it was too late; Alida had seen her work.

“There it is,” her mistress said, her usually husky voice tinged with gentle admiration. “How do you feel?”

Finally allowing herself to set down the brush, Clara flexed her stiff fingers as she gazed at her work.

Aside from the occasional sketch—and of course, the cursed embroidery—she had never pursued any artistic venture before.

She had none of the training of a painter, no idea what colors ought to be blended to achieve different effects, nor how to compose a scene that would be pleasing to the eye.

Yet none of that seemed to matter as she took in the great swathes of blues and greens crested with white sea foam, the dark and angry clouds that roiled above.

If the waves also happened to be the same color as a certain pair of eyes, well, then that was surely just coincidence.

Alida’s question was still hanging in the air. How did she feel? She felt as if she had released a breath that she had been

holding for a long time, an eternity. She felt as if she was seeing a glimmer of her own soul reflected back at her. But the

pigments on the canvas didn’t change anything, not fundamentally. She was still an orphan, a widow, a young woman without

anything to her name. The painting did not give her all of the comforts of her old life back.

As if sensing these unspoken thoughts, Alida broke the silence. “Whatever you left behind, or are still running from, you

owe it at least some debt of thanks. It has given you a deep well of inspiration.” She began gathering up the paintbrushes,

moving around the studio with quiet efficiency. “From now on, you are to spend an hour every evening in the studio, practicing

your technique. In the mornings, I will look over your work and critique it.”

From the way Alida said it, Clara knew that this was as good as an order. But she couldn’t help asking, “Why? Why would you

allow me to use your supplies?”

Alida paused, brushes in hand, and smiled at her. “Because you are going to be my apprentice.”