Early Summer, The Painting Beneath the Lantern Stair

I began another painting today despite promising myself that I would not. The last several canvases remain covered in the western hall exactly where I left them after deciding they unsettled me too deeply to continue. Even walking past them now produces the uncomfortable feeling that someone is standing patiently beneath the cloth, waiting for me to uncover them again.

This morning I had every intention of avoiding that part of the Archive. Instead I found myself preparing paints before sunrise almost without thinking. The weather encouraged the decision. Heavy fog pressed against the conservatory glass until the gardens beyond became little more than pale silhouettes beneath the early lantern light, while gentle rain softened every sound throughout the building. The Archive felt distant somehow, as though it had quietly withdrawn into itself beneath the weather, and it seemed like the sort of morning that belonged to painting rather than preservation work.

I carried my easel into the upper western hall shortly after breakfast. Clio followed beside me with the unhurried patience she reserves for mornings when she has not entirely decided whether she is awake, while Muninn watched from the rafters with a length of black thread tangled untidily around one claw. My intention was wonderfully uncomplicated. I wanted to paint the lantern shelves beside the northern corridor, where polished brass, old timber, and warm light always soften the surrounding stone in a way I have found comforting for many years.

For the first hour everything progressed exactly as I had hoped. Layering oil paint has always required a pace that leaves very little room for anxious thought. One brushstroke quietly suggests the next until the rest of the world recedes beyond the edges of the canvas, and before long I found myself thinking less about sealed vaults and impossible artifacts than about the simple pleasure of watching warm colours emerge from careful work.

The first indication that something had changed was the appearance of a staircase beneath the lanterns. I do not remember deciding to paint it. One moment I was laying reflected light across the floorboards and the next there were descending stone steps leading away beneath the shelves. My immediate instinct was to scrape the paint away before it dried, yet instead I found myself calmly continuing as though the staircase had always belonged there. Looking back, I think that decision troubles me more than the staircase itself.

As the morning passed, the descent grew steadily deeper with every layer of paint. It resembled no passage I recognise within the Archive. The steps disappeared beneath immense stone arches that folded inward at impossible angles, reminding me uncomfortably of the strange geometry carved into the Archive Tablet. Lanterns hung at regular intervals, each illuminating only the next few steps before surrendering everything beyond to darkness. By midday the fog outside had thickened until the conservatory windows had almost disappeared entirely, leaving the western hall illuminated only by its own lanterns. At some point during those quiet hours Clio left her blanket and settled beside the easel. I never saw her move, but when I finally became aware of her she was sitting perfectly still with her eyes fixed upon the painting. She remained there throughout the afternoon without once looking away.

Muninn behaved no less strangely. Several times he descended from the rafters carrying small reflective objects gathered from elsewhere in the Archive. Pieces of polished shell, fragments of old mirror glass, tarnished silver buttons, and other tiny reflective things slowly accumulated along the windowsill behind me. He placed each one with remarkable care before returning for another, as though arranging them according to some pattern that existed only in his own understanding. I considered tidying them away more than once, but something about the quiet determination with which he worked persuaded me to leave them undisturbed.

It was not until near dusk, when I finally stepped back to examine the painting as a whole, that I noticed the figure standing near the foot of the staircase. It had not been there when I began. Of that I remain completely certain. Very little detail could be distinguished beyond the silhouette. One hand held a lantern while the other rested lightly against the stone wall, as though whoever stood there had been waiting for a very long time without ever growing impatient. It took me several moments to understand why the sight unsettled me so deeply. The figure was wearing my coat. Not merely one like it, but the very coat I repaired yesterday. The stitching along the left sleeve was visible exactly where I had reinforced the seam, and although I remember making that repair perfectly clearly, I have no memory whatsoever of painting it onto the canvas.

I covered the painting immediately. As the cloth settled across the wet oils, I became convinced that the lantern held by the painted figure flickered softly beneath the fabric. The impression lasted no longer than a heartbeat, and I have spent the evening trying to persuade myself that it was nothing more than shifting light catching the fresh varnish. I have not been entirely successful.

The western hall now smells strongly of drying oil paint mixed with the faint scent of seawater that has become an increasingly familiar companion to the Archive's stranger moments. The covered canvas rests facing the wall beside the older paintings and the draped sculpture, where I intend to leave it until I decide whether I possess the courage to uncover it again. Clio has remained outside that part of the hall ever since, quietly watching the concealed easel without approaching it, while Muninn has spent the evening weaving black thread between the lantern hooks overhead in careful spirals whose meaning continues to escape me.

As I extinguished the final lamps before coming upstairs, I noticed the faintest trace of warm golden light escaping from beneath the edge of the cloth covering the painting. I stood there for several minutes before convincing myself it must have been a reflection from the hallway lantern behind me. Even now, sitting here with the study lit only by a single lamp, I find that explanation much easier to write down than to believe.

— M