Larque on the Wing Read Free

next.
    Or had she?
    There was Sky, at an easel, standing in front of a big canvas Larque had been saving—she had intended someday to paint something important on it, something major, a statement. What, she had no idea, but something, once she knew what she wanted to say. But Sky had gotten to it ahead of her, and was making a mess of it. Having a paint tantrum. Splattering barbaric-colored oils on her blouse, her skirt, her skinny body, the easel legs, the floor, via the canvas. Her masterpiece was crude, which perhaps accounted for her fury; it is rough to be trying for a visual manifesto and come up with something more like an ambitious attempt at cake icing. The canvas was divided more or less diagonally between yellow ochre and Mars violet, a composition which Larque translated as storm and sunshine. Very dramatic, she had to admit. The kid had a good sense of graphic design. There were some muddled bread-loaf shapes in the background; cumulus clouds? Mountains? The middle of the canvas was taken up by two blobs Larque could not at first interpret, a black one, mostly in the sunlight, and a white one, mostly in the cloud shadow.
    To hell with interpretation. To hell with good graphic design. The room smelled of turpentine, the palette was a catastrophe of paint, five times as much as was needed, the worktable was a ruin of squashed and split and curled tubes.
    â€œMy Winsor Newtons!” Larque cried. “You couldn’t use the cheap paints, no, you had to get into my Winsor Newtons.”
    The doppelganger child jabbed fiercely at the canvas, her narrow jaw grinding her crooked teeth together, her pinched face grim and rapt. “You paint lies,” she told Larque. “Prissy-color lies. This is no good, but at least it’s true.”
    â€œSays who?” Larque flared. “Anyway, nobody’s ever going to see that, because it’s never going to dry. You’ve got it piled on so thick it’ll just crack into pieces and fall apart. So all you’ve done is wasted a ton of expensive paint. Do you have any idea how much art supplies cost?”
    Sky stopped painting and looked at her. “You are seeing it,” she said.
    â€œSo?”
    â€œYou are the only one who has to see it.”
    â€œWhy? Why do I have to see it?” Larque tapped her foot and wished suddenly, fiercely, and illogically, for boots, something that would make a more impressive stomping noise than her Canvas slip-ons. She felt seriously annoyed with doppelgangers that talked back, or talked at all—Sky was the first that had ever done so in her experience, and her experience was all she had to go on. She was the only person she knew or had ever heard of who had these problems. There was no Doppelganger Prevention hot line listed in the phone book, no National Doppelganger Association she could write away to, no Weirdos Anonymous she could join. She was on her own with this spirit child.
    She was not used to a doppelganger that was so physical, either. Previous doppelgangers had been wispy things, not capable of impacting on her life’s environment. Sky seemed far too real, standing there holding a boar-bristle paintbrush. Larque could almost smell the twitchy kid. Maybe even touch her if she cared to try, which emphatically she did not. Next thing the kid would be wanting her own phone, requiring orthodontia, needing a college education.
    Larque did not give Sky time to answer her question, but stormed on. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”
    Sky set down the paintbrush and showed crooked, yellow-coated teeth in a challenging smile.
    Larque demanded, “Tell me what you want.”
    The spirit girl’s smile turned to a scowl. “You made me promises,” she said.
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œSuch as, you were going to be a truthteller. Such as, you were going to do things. Such as, you were never going to wear stupid white shoes.” Sky was growing impassioned and