THE LAUGHING CROW: A CRYPTIC Anthology

With These Hands

The painter's hand was a god. A maker of worlds and a bender of reality. With liquid colours it brought life to fabric. Its long, slender fingers nestled the brush in its artistic embrace as it moved in time to the music.

The musician twirled around the gallery, her fingers and breath pulling a song from the soul of her instrument. Her hands knew every hole and every sweet note they could produce. The tips of her fingers worked each one, bringing the full range of the instrument to the melancholic tune.

They made the perfect pair, the musician and the hand. Theirs was a symphony of colours and sound. Art at its finest.

The musician issued a challenge to the hand, changing her slow melody into a quick staccato. Her feet tapped in time as she skipped closer to the canvas.

The artist's hand beat out a rhythm against the tub of turpentine with a fan brush. Then it mopped up some paint and made quick short strokes in time to the music, the gentle rasp of brush on canvas complimenting the sweet notes of the piccolo.

A groan rippled through their symphony. Like a stone being thrown in a peaceful pool, it distorted their perfection.

The musician missed a note and nearly tripped over her own feet. The painter's hands fell, hitting the small wooden table that held all the accoutrements of their respective trades. The palette clamored on the tile along with several brushes.

The musician's eyes followed a wayward round brush as it rolled to a stop at the feet of the groaner. She lowered the piccolo from her mouth, her lips twisting into a scowl.

She plucked the painter's hand from the ground and gently smoothed its long, slender fingers. A smudge of paint marred the gold band that encircled the wrist, where it was once attached to an arm. The arm of a true artist. Not some sorceress pretending she knew what lied at the heart of a canvas.

The musician set her piccolo aside and pulled the other hand from beneath the palette. They'd served her well but their expiration date was fast approaching. She had preserved them for as long as possible, but decay was a formidable opponent.

The hands had taken on grey-green tinge and were hard and stiff without her music to give them life. Most of the skin had peeled away, even the flesh was receding from the bones and the fingernails had long fallen off. The sickly-sweet stench of death wafted off of them, a scent that would kill a weaker person.

But they still made beautiful art. The painting on the easel was a testament to that. The brilliant blues of the sky blended into the reds and yellows of autumn leaves that dominated the foreground of the painting. Some clung to the gnarled black branches of trees and others danced on an unseen breeze.

A murder of crows flew amongst them while a lonely one was perched on a branch in the foreground. With wings outstretched and head bent forward, it looked eager to join its friends.

The musician was eager to join them too. To dance amongst the leaves. She'd never seen an autumn so beautiful. But these hands had.

"Oh, my darlings. We—" Her words were cut off by yet another groan, louder than the last. "By the Great Sorcerer above." In one fluid motion she rose and spun towards the groaner, her long strides closing up the distance between them.

He sat in her special chair – a hand-carved Victorian – though not of his own volition. No... he had the chains to thank for that, although by the snarl on his face and the angled set of his brows, he didn't seem too happy about it.

Now that's a gaze that could set a woman on fire... And not in a good way. But she couldn't blame him for his choleric disposition. Had she been drugged, and taken from her home by a mad sorceress with an unhealthy fixation with art, well...