Chasen Burkett stands up from his shooting-stick and takes three steps back. A long-handled sable brush is clenched between his teeth; several more are clustered in his left hand, along with his current pallet. In his right is a shorter-handled brush, this one having only five or six sable hairs left in it, the others having been plucked quite deliberately to afford him the effect he desired.
For Burkett is a man of precision and detail. A subtle man, given to subtle distinctions. Now, for example, his pallet is filled with but one hue of blue. But he has mixed the pigment in so many variants of color concentration that it holds every gradient the human eye can perceive... and a few that elude a mere human's ability to distinguish the difference.
Before him sits a rather large "canvas" of heavy, sharp-toothed paper, secured to a board and set upon a portable easel. He prefers rough paper to smooth, as it catches and holds his thoughts more easily. It also allows for texture, such as that on the stone bridge he is painting. One can almost see the individual granules inside the composite rock quarried for the short span. Pebbles and pocks, bumps and inclusions. All are rendered with near photographic precision.
Not for Burkett the blaséity of Impressionism. Not for him the mere suggestion of a curve here or a dip there. Though he never over-works his medium, he will not leave it until it shows precisely what he sees. And that is more than most anyone would ever be able to comprehend. He manages to do this with amazing restraint and conservation. He might ponder a single dot of paint for three days. Or he might render the full sweep of a sea-scape in a single afternoon.
He nods once, cocks his head to the opposite side, nods again, then takes three more backward paces and stands quite still. He takes the brush from his mouth so as not to damage it in his concentration. Time ticks by. The sun moves, casting different shadows. Clouds come and go. People walk across the bridge and go their ways.
Burkett nods one last time and moves back to the folding table beside the easel. He begins packing up his supplies, swishing his brushes with thoughtless precision.
A cloud moves in front of the sun.
Burkett looks up and frowns.
*****
Daffydd ab Ennet Ieuan y Garreg Wen pulled himself up the last few feet to the crest of the grass-covered hill leaning heavily on his oaken staff. It was not that he was particularly tired, nor that he was in any way disabled. Merely that the hill was so steep that he nearly had to use his hands to climb up. It reminded him of the hills of home, so far away. Dyfed, in north-central Wales, near the snow-peaked mountains on the Menai Straits. It had been a long climb, but the day was fine and he was fit. And his efforts were rewarded the instant he stood up and looked over into the valley on the far side.
"Duw!" he hissed, all the amazement he felt quite clear in the reverence of his tone.
Before him stretched yellow flowers, filling the valley floor and washing up the sides of the surrounding hills like bright yellow honey, glorious in the mid-day sun. They might be daffodils. Each bloom was certainly large enough, and not some noncommittal frond-head of mustard or goldenrod or rape. These blossoms were substantial; he could see them undulating before the breeze, bobbing this way and that, even if he could not see the individual flower-heads. The valley rippled with yellow movement.
A sort of joy began to well up in him. Emotions flavored with happy childhood memories, of lazy days spent on a spring-enchanted hillside drenched in the scent of daffodils and elder-flowers and the tang of wild leeks. Yellow-green leaves so tranluscent they seemed to generate an inner light of their own. Thin shoots of meadow-grass, spindly-legged lambs, and colts feeling the first rush of power as they gambolled across the new fields. The chill of a newborn mountain stream; the warmth of his grandmother's fine wool cloak. New hope. New adventures. New life. All things possible. A future unwritten and his for the making. Strength and self-assurance and excitement. Youth. Exuberance. Destiny unrevealed.
Daffydd moved down the far side of the hill toward the yellow flowers, every triumph of his tender days rushing, frost-sharp, into his mind. Fingerlings in the streams, the new harp his grandfather made for him from aged Ash, the boots his uncle brought him from Caerdidd. His first Shearing. His first Oratory. The time he made his Latin tutor weep at the beauty of Ovid as he read it. His first kiss.
As he neared the flowers, Daffydd could see that they were very like his native daffodils. Except where narcissus had but one trumpet, these had three. This lent them the comical appearance of having faces, two large eyes above a smaller nose. Daffydd couldn't help remarking that they looked a bit like his Uncle Cadan when he was in his cups. And this made Daffydd smile all the more.
He stopped just short of the edge of the carpet of flowers and spread his arms wide. "Gentlemen!" he called. "How good to see you all here on such a lovely day as this! Welcome! Welcome!" He dropped in an exaggerated bow, sweeping his right arm out high behind him, while pulling his left hand inward to touch his breastbone with the backs of his curled fingers.
When he lifted his head, the flowers bobbed to him, almost in synchrony. He laughed with childlike delight. "I am Daffydd ab Ennet Ieuan," he declared formally, and he reached forward as if to clasp hands with the nearest flower. "Please to make your acqu--"
He froze.
The moment his fingertips brushed the nearest bloom, a tremor of terror pulsed through him, nearly knocking him backwards. In the next instant, the flower he had touched shriveled into a viscous black blob. Behind it, the next did likewise, and the next, and on and on, back and back, fanning out across the whole valley like wildfire gone mad. And with the instantaneous decay came a stench so foul it made Daffydd weak and nauseated. Within three heartbeats, the whole valley had turned to a wet, foul, stinking mass of black, tarry filth.
And Daffydd knew.
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