The Meadow Maiden of Vincent Tremblay's Sketchbook

He was born on the alpine farm, and always wished to stay on the alpine farm. His mother said his first cry had echoed down into the valley, claiming the mountain as his own. And with his first breath, its air had entered his soul. He knew that, no matter where the wind took him, he would draw his last breath here. It was the fog at daybreak, when the sheep were tearing up dewy grass and the wolves were quiet. It was the blue moss in the shadows and the stars spread like milk across the sky. He was as much a part of this world as the trees.

***

Vincent Tremblay carried a satchel, the one his father had given him the first night he guarded the sheep alone. Inside was a sandwich thick with butter, and a sketchbook bound in black leather.

He had risen even before his mother, who liked to have sourdough baking by the time his father awoke and pulled on clean socks. The light was pale then, but as Vincent moved deeper into the forest, pollen began to dance in green light.

He paused often to sit cross-legged, open his sketchbook, and scratch away. A cream-colored owl asleep on its perch. Lilies of the valley. A chrysalis suspended from a leaf. Page after page, charcoal dust falling.

When he came upon golden mushrooms, he sketched them, and then he picked as many as his satchel could hold. Tonight, they’d eat them with wild herbs and mutton. Then his mother would ask to see his sketches. His father would look too, but only his eyes would speak.

Vincent stood, and caught his breath.

She lay among the trees on untamed grass. Wildflowers surrounded her, as if she were in a coffin scattered with bouquets. She wore a white dress, shimmering pearls buttoning the front. Her hair swirled around her head like rosettes of dark chocolate.

The softest breath lifted her chest, and then he too breathed.

He drew near. She did not stir. He came close enough to have touched her, then he crouched and opened his satchel. Mushrooms tumbled out. He waited, but she could have been milk glass.

Vincent sketched, and his heartbeat was one with the songs of the birds and the breeze in the grass.

Then he stood. He looked at her, and she did not look at him, and he left her.

***

He returned to the meadow three days later and stood over the flattened grass and wished he knew her name. He began tracking her path, but it led toward Vigil, and he turned back.

Summer swelled, and he would wander shirtless and return home with charcoal on his hands and mosquito bites blotching his back. He spent most nights with the sheep, tending a fire, a gun at hand. Once, he sketched the woman with her eyes open, but it didn’t look right. He tore the page out and fed it to the fire, watched the charred fragments flutter up on the smoke.

Midway through summer, a writhing, black billow rose from Vigil.

He imagined the woman watching her house crash inward, tears streaking through the soot on her face. He wondered if she would return to the mountain to seek solace. He hoped so. And then he shook his head hard and prayed that it hadn’t been her home—or anyone’s.

***

The mountain blazed with autumn. Vincent painted mad splashes of color, insatiable.

The ferns withered. He would lie beside the fire and blow his breath upward with the smoke. Sometimes he flipped to his sketch of the woman to remind himself that she hadn’t been a dream, no more than the lost sweetness of summer.

This evening, the air smelled of snow and sleeping trees.

“My handsome boy,” his mother said.

He came down in his brown suit, with combed hair and shaven jaw.

“Maybe you’ll find a wife this year.”

He kissed her cheek.

Down, down the mountain, crushing into puddles of glass. The air nipped his nose but rushed hot in his chest. A gap in the trees revealed Vigil, its windows glowing with electric light.

Pumpkins lined the boardwalk to the town hall. Inside, he became one among many men suited in brown or gray or black. The women wore every color imaginable, like the oils he mixed on his palette. Someone slapped his back and handed him a cup of spicy cider.

Couples leapt into a polka, and Vincent sipped and watched.

She twirled past him, dressed not in white but in green. He held his breath. Her eyes were brown—like maple syrup. There were lines in her face that hadn’t been there before.

The polka ended, and Vincent circled the room. He cleared his throat. She looked at him.

His heart was beating a strange rhythm.

Her gaze drifted down to his extended hand. She took it, and his callouses were sandpaper against young wood.

They swept into a waltz.

“I haven’t seen you at the Autumn Dance before,” she said.

His voice was soft. “I don’t come every year.”

“Ah.”

“I’ve seen you before,” he said.

“I come every year.”

He spun her. “On the mountain.”

She stiffened, no longer flesh but ice. He released her as she stepped away.

“You are mistaken,” she said.

He reached into his jacket and removed his sketchbook. He opened to her picture.

The blooming roses in her cheeks bleached to white. “Burn it,” she said.

He stared at her. Shook his head.

“I will pay you for it,” she said. “Anything.”

He tore out the page. “It always belonged to you.”

She folded it up and walked away.

***

One week later, he was planting bulbs in the flowerbed when he heard hooves on the path. The woman came trotting up through the trees on a buckskin. He stood. She swung down.

“My husband found the picture,” she said.

He inhaled sharply and looked away, blinking.

“He loved it.” She paused. “He wants you to paint my portrait.”

Vincent raised his chin.

“And he wants to organize a draw. The winner receives the painting, and the money goes toward a new church.”

When he cocked his head, she frowned. “The church burned in July.”

“I see.”

“Do you accept?”

“But I am no one.”

“I am the mayor’s wife.”

His jaw hardened.

“We have a spare room. You may stay there until it is complete. You’ll receive ten percent. Is this agreeable?”

A nod.

She mounted again and turned her horse’s nose toward Vigil and didn’t glance back.

Vincent looked down at the crushed bulb in his hand.

***

The mayor himself greeted Vincent when he arrived. Blond, with red in his beard, and sea-blue eyes. He came down the steps of their yellow house and shook Vincent’s hand vigorously. “Thank you,” he said. “Your work is marvelous—marvelous.”

His wife appeared in the doorway.

The mayor smiled at her. “Will you show him the atrium, my love?”

She turned into the house, and Vincent followed her to a room of glass. The air was like summer—full and fresh. He touched the leaf of a plant he’d never seen before.

She gestured at the canvas on an easel. “Will this do?”

“Yes.”

“When do we begin?”

“Why not now?”

***

The first day, he laid down the sketch. The second day, he began to paint. She did not stitch or read while he worked. Nor did she speak. On the third day, the mayor came and stood by Vincent’s shoulder.

“Marvelous. Have you been hiding on that mountain all this time?”

“Herding sheep.”

“Phenomenal.” He cupped his wife’s face and kissed her forehead. She smiled faintly, and he caressed her cheek with his thumb. Then he left, and her smile faded. She would not look at Vincent.

***

On the seventh day, he was nearly finished. Still, she did not speak, and hardly moved. Again, the mayor came.

“Beloved,” he said, and touched her face. “He has captured your heart in your eyes.”

After he left, she stood suddenly and came to peer over Vincent’s shoulder. She shuddered. “You did not,” she said, and her voice cracked.

He stared at her. “You are displeased?”

“My eyes,” she whispered. “My eyes are wrong.”

He reached toward her.

“No,” she said, and stepped away. Fire gleamed in her tears.

His face burned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You painted what you see.” Her mouth twisted. “Not what I am.”

She closed the door behind her.

***

The next morning, Vincent waited. Finally, he sighed and rose from his stool.

She was swinging on the back porch, wrapped in a shawl, gazing at the orchard that sprawled down to the river. Gunmetal water slid by between frozen banks.

“Why were you on the mountain that day?”

She continued looking straight ahead. “I should be dead,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I ate poisonous berries. I swear I felt my heart stop, but hours later, I awoke. I returned to my husband and I wished him a happy anniversary and we danced and I did not cry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I should be dead.”

“He wouldn’t want that. He loves you.”

“And that should have been enough, but—” A bitter laugh. “He still loves me because he doesn’t know.”

Even without the sketch, Vincent remembered how she looked that day in the meadow. “He would love you still,” he said.

She covered her mouth with her hand. He did not touch her, or leave her.

“We will finish the portrait,” she said, “and then you will return to your mountain.”

***

He returned to the alpine farm. But he could not sketch or paint. He split enough wood for two winters, brought in the sheep and fortified the paddock with his father, and dug up the carrots with his mother. Frost glittered on the ground in the mornings, but Vincent remained warm in his loft. He dreamed of summer meadows.

Then his father hitched the gelding to the wagon, and Vincent helped his mother up, and they rumbled down to Vigil, their breath streaming behind them.

The mayor unveiled the portrait in the main square before all the townsfolk. They chafed their hands and stamped their feet. Banners of chimney smoke barely moved.

Vincent wove his way to the front. The mayor clapped his hand to his shoulder, and his wife smiled with the frailty of winter light.

She drew the winner and declared the grand total: twenty thousand dollars.

Vincent blinked and blinked, his head filled with applause. Too many people wanted to shake his hand.

“What will you do with your portion, son?” someone asked.

He paused. “Buy my mother a new dress.”

Laughter. “Anything else?”

Vincent shrugged.

***

Snow blockaded the path down the mountain, and Vincent dedicated the winter to carding wool. They drank their milk warm and wore layered socks. He followed lynx tracks to the peak. There, he sat and listened to tinkling snow. For Christmas, he gave his parents a painting of the cabin, his first since the mayor’s wife.

***

Then the mountain began to sing again. A thousand streams traced the forest with silver lines. Vincent fished for smelt and sketched spotted fawns. He returned home with pollen in his hair.

On the first day of June, chimes rolled up from Vigil, and Vincent’s heart raced as he flew down the mountain.

The new church was built of fresh pine. Boys took turns pulling on the rope, and the bell rang and rang. Vincent stood and watched, his chest heaving, and listened.

Then the mayor leaned a ladder against the doors and climbed up. Another man handed him a sign painted with black letters. Saint Mary Magdalene Church.

Vincent looked for her and found her. She was dressed in white, a linen smock that flowed over her swollen belly. Her eyes were on her husband, and they spilled with the warmth of spring light.

Vincent smiled and turned back to his mountain.