The next day, Shane discovered the old walking path. It was hidden in the front right corner of the cottage’s small yard, on the other side of the gravel drive. He never would have seen it at all if he hadn’t been deliberately mucking around outside, trimming a few bushes, digging up weeds, avoiding going back into the cottage.
He’d come out to mow, once his shift was over. He was tired from having stayed up too late the night before, and the last thing he wanted to do was clump around the yard with the old manual lawnmower, wrestling it over the uneven landscape, man-handling it around the trees on the perimeter, but he was determined to do it nonetheless, even despite the bugs and the bright, hard sun that hit the back of his neck like a hammer the moment he stepped outside.
Partly, it was the memory of Steph, from their days together here in the cottage. She’d never said it outright, but Shane knew she believed that, left to his own devices, he’d become so entranced by his work that he’d neglect the day-to-day responsibilities of life, things like paying the bills, doing laundry, and yes, mowing the lawn. Shane had never discussed it with her because, deep down, he thought she was very likely correct. Now that she was gone, however, he found that he wanted to prove to himself that he could manage the dull details of life like any other responsible adult, that he wouldn’t turn all reclusive and shaggy, even if it meant a nasty sunburn and a dozen bug bites.
But that was only part of it. The more immediate truth was that Shane was putting off calling Greenfeld.
And be honest with yourself, Tiger,
he thought as he pulled the mower out of the shed next to the cottage,
you’re avoiding him calling you, right? You’re hoping that he gets those photos you just emailed him first, and that he’ll be so happy with how the painting looks that he’ll forget you finished it barely a day before the shipping date.
Yes, this was surely true, and Shane wasn’t shamed by it. He was an artist, damn it, and a good one. He was usually as reliable as the day is long, unlike the moody, temperamental starving artists T and C had occasionally hired back in the day. He could be forgiven one close call in a decade, couldn’t he? Granted, the timing of this particular close call was especially bad, but still. Greenfeld would understand, at least once he downloaded the pics and saw the finished matte painting. That’s all that mattered, really. Thus, Shane had decided to avoid the phone until he could be reasonably certain that Greenfeld had, in fact, received the email with the photo attachments.
Shane hadn’t sent the photos the previous afternoon, like he’d intended. He hadn’t finished the matte painting until late this morning, in fact. He’d gotten… distracted. But the important thing was that it was done, and it was good. Good enough, at least. Not as good as the new painting, of course, the one of the old manor house. By comparison, the matte painting was a dull, lifeless trinket, but that was no surprise, was it? After all, the matte painting was just client work. The client didn’t want art; they just wanted a product, one that Shane was uniquely qualified to deliver.
The new painting, however, was inspired. That sort of thing didn’t happen very often, but when it did, it was a different kind of art entirely. Once again, Shane thought about how easy it would be to become addicted to the muse’s secret embrace, to become her slave. That wouldn’t happen to him, of course, but he understood it now. He had a little more sympathy for the starving artists, even if he, himself, would never become one.
He finished mowing the front yard, drew a few swipes of the mower along the sides of the cottage, and decided that it was enough for the day. The back of the cottage was so rocky and steep, dropping toward the rocky bluff and the river below, that it was almost easier to cut it with the weed trimmer. Better yet, maybe he’d just let the field grass and wildflowers grow in, at least until they obscured the view.
He stashed the mower back in the shed, parking it next to his bike, and grabbed the big garden shears from their hook on the wall.
He spent several minutes prowling the perimeter of the yard, lopping the bushes into submission and chopping off the occasional errant branch from the encroaching trees. That was when he discovered the abandoned footpath in the front corner of the property.
He’d hacked off a particularly stubborn branch from a very old oak tree, and when it finally broke away, it struck the ground with a sharp clunk, as if it had fallen on something much harder than weedy earth. Shane pulled the branch aside and kicked at a thatch of dead grass. There were flagstones embedded in the ground beneath, almost entirely obscured by a blanket of moss.
Had this been part of another patio at one time? It was too narrow to be of much use, and rather too deep, extending into the perimeter of the woods. Shane ducked, following the flagstones, feeling for their hardness beneath the weeds, and found that they formed a path, apparently long forgotten, that arced off between the trees.
He followed it carefully, pushing aside the intervening branches and stepping over the bushes that had grown up through the cracks, prying the rocks apart. The footpath meandered and curved, but led generally downhill, following the line of the river.
Shane stopped occasionally, using the garden shears to cut away some of the heavier undergrowth and reaching branches. There was a splash of color up ahead, where the trail curved around a gully, and as Shane worked toward it, he was surprised to see that it was a drift of hydrangeas, red, yellow and pink, lush in an errant sunbeam. The large flowers bobbed on their stalks, overwhelming the footpath and flowing down into the gully. Bees roamed from flower to flower, humming in the hot, sleepy air. Shane had never seen hydrangeas growing in the wild. Granted, flowers had been Steph’s specialty, not his, but he was fairly certain that these were a domestic breed, not a native wildflower.
He waded carefully through the waving blooms, trying to stay on the path, and struck something hard with his shin, almost pitching forward into the colorful mass. He swore, and his flailing hands grasped something buried in the flowers, preventing him from falling headfirst into the gaily colored blooms. Whatever it was, it was made of metal, hot in the woodsy sunlight and rough with peeling paint.
He pushed the flowers aside and saw wrought iron scrollwork, painted black wherever it wasn’t orange with rust. It was a seat of some kind. He brushed more of the thick hydrangea stalks aside, breaking some of them, and found that the vines had grown up through the metal shape, twining into it and completely burying it. It was, in fact, a bench. It leaned precariously backwards, but it had apparently, at one time, been positioned to provide the occupant a view of the low gully and the river beyond, just visible through the intervening trees. Shane was intrigued, even as his shin smarted from its collision with the buried bench.
He pushed on, feeling his way carefully through the drift of hydrangeas and coming out the other side. The flagstone footpath was a little clearer here, where it ambled around the lip of the gully. Moss filled the cracks between the stones, and vines and roots snaked over it, threatening to hook the foot of the unwary traveler, but Shane continued on, stepping carefully, his curiosity piqued.
After a few hundred feet, the flagstones gave way to broad stairs, cut from some dark, sharp stone. Shane had seen such stone recently, but couldn’t quite remember where. The stone steps were crooked and leaning but still very solid underfoot. They followed the curve of a hill, descending into a density of thick, thorny trees.
At the bottom of the steps, where the flagstone path began again, Shane was shocked to discover something else buried in a mass of vines and flowers. He could tell by the height of it that it wasn’t another bench. He leaned close to it, examining it, and was completely unprepared for the face that leered calmly out of it.
Shane wasn’t particularly squeamish; he recognized immediately that the face didn’t belong to anything living. It was a statue, almost entirely overcome with flowering vines and dead leaves. Even so, his heart skipped a beat and he gasped a breath when he saw that blank expression, those dead gray eyes suddenly staring down at him from the shushing mass.
He reached up and carefully hooked his fingers into the vines, pulling them away. They came only reluctantly, having twined into the cracks of the stone, but as they ripped away, Shane began to recognize the shape buried beneath. It was an angel carved out of white marble, almost life sized, standing atop a pedestal. The wings were partially unfurled from its back, and one hand was raised, palm up, in a vaguely welcoming gesture. An abandoned bird’s nest was nestled into the vines that entwined the hand.
Shane stood back again, taking in the entire figure. It was somehow both marvelous and a little eerie; beautifully made, but completely forgotten here in the thickness of the deep woods. He realized he was looking at something that had probably not been seen by human eyes for… how long? Decades, maybe?
He looked back the way he had come, up the curve of the hill with its embedded stone steps. It occurred to him that he could clean up the trail, perhaps clear off the bench and the statue, make the footpath usable again. It would be a lot of work, but what else did he have to do with himself when he wasn’t putting in his shift?
Depending on where the path ended up, walking it could be a pleasant enough alternative to going on a bike ride. He drew a deep breath, considering it, and tramped on, leaving the statue behind.
The trees opened and Shane crossed a clearing so covered in dense weeds that he could no longer feel the flagstones beneath his feet. A narrow stream ran through the clearing like a snake, cutting a path toward the river. Large, flat rocks formed perfect stepping stones across the stream. Were they a little too regular to be random? Shane thought they were. Whoever had built this trail had placed them there. Shane might have expected a bridge instead, but on second thought he decided that a bridge probably wouldn’t have fit the original designer’s intention. He had a strange sense that the footpath hadn’t been built as an attempt to subdue and conquer nature, but rather to work with it, following its curves and moods. A bridge would have seemed a bit too bold, somehow. Too… what was the word? Condescending? Maybe.
On the other hand, the stepping stones were like a compromise, a sort of truce between the path’s designer and the woods it passed through. It was the sort of choice that seemed to say
it’s still up to you, nature; if you don’t want us passing through, just raise the water, cover the stones, and we’ll stay out
.
We may rule the cities, but out here, you’re still in charge. Out here, you make the rules.
For now, the water was low, the stepping stones dry, so Shane pushed on, finding the path again on the other side of the clearing. It switched back and forth descending another hill, leading toward another bright clearing that was just visible through the thick belt of trees. This one was much larger and brighter, and Shane was not particularly surprised when he pushed through the weeds and found himself stumbling into the mundane lot of the now-defunct manor house.
He looked around, blinking in the sun, and saw that he’d come out of the tree line at approximately the same place where the crane had been parked on the day the house had been demolished. Now, both the crane and the bulldozer were gone. The house’s cellar had been cleared out, the debris hauled away and disposed of. In its place, the cellar had been filled with dirt, leaving only a vague outline and a few broken lines of stone, rising out of the landscape like relics from some ancient civilization.
Shane walked idly over to the site of the old house, looking over his shoulder at the woods from which he’d come.
It made sense that this was where the footpath had led. After all, both the house and the cottage had once been part of the same property. It was only logical that there would have been some common means of getting back and forth between them. The original owner, Shane recalled, had been an artist, like him. That explained the statue and the bench with its drift of hydrangeas. It explained the stepping stones as well, as opposed to a bridge.
Obviously, the original occupant had been a different kind of artist than Shane, but that was all right. What had his name been? The real estate agent had told him and Steph all about it when they’d signed on the cottage. Whitaker? Whitman? Something like that. Maybe Shane would look him up. He’d apparently been rather well known at the time, having made a name for himself painting portraits of politicians and world leaders. Wikipedia would probably have an article about him, at the very least, even if it wasn’t perfectly accurate.
Shane was interested to see that the house’s portico floor had been left intact, the only recognizable remnant of the original structure. It had been swept of debris but he could still make out the round marks of the original pillars, two on each side, big as truck tires. The stone floor now overlooked nothing but the grassy lot and the scar of dirt that had once been the house’s cellar. The portico looked less like itself and more like a sort of stage, with two shallow steps rising along the front length.
Shane climbed the steps and turned on the spot, looking out over the yard and the brick driveway where it curved off into the trees. Lengths of cut stone framed the driveway, and Shane remembered the stone steps along the path, remembered thinking the dark stone had looked familiar. He now knew that this was where he had seen it before, that same cut stone forming the perimeter of the brick driveway. The original owner had apparently liked his stonework. It couldn’t have been cheap, even then, especially since it had to have been quarried elsewhere and trucked in, or maybe even brought in on barges. After all, the ground around the river delta was almost exclusively red clay and limestone, not bedrock granite, like that used on the driveway and the footpath. There was probably some story associated with that, but Shane could only guess what it was.
He glanced down, toward the small island of earth in the middle of the circle driveway. Amazingly, his sketch was still there, despite a criss-crossing of tire tracks. It looked a little different, but that was only because he was looking at it upside down. A gust of wind blew, skirling tendrils of dust across the sketch and hissing in the tall grass. Far off, almost inaudible under the groan of the breeze in the trees, thunder grumbled.
