Which was fine. I never begrudged people their beliefs, but I needed to eat. My stomach had begun to rumble in a vocal reminder of this fact—my own fault for letting Lil’s presence deter me from breakfast.
Then an idea came to me. I rummaged among my bags and was relieved to find I’d brought the sidewalk chalk. I moved around to the front of my tables, crouched, and considered what to sketch.
The idea that came to me was so fiercely powerful that I rocked back on my toes for a moment, startled. Usually my creative urges came in the morning, when I painted in my basement. I’d meant to sketch only a few silly doodles to draw eyes toward my trinkets and goods. But the image in my head… I licked my lips and considered whether it was safe.
It was dangerous, I decided. No doubt about it. I was blind, for the gods’ sake; I shouldn’t have been able to visualize anything, much less depict it recognizably. Most people in the city wouldn’t notice the paradox, or care, but to Order-Keepers and others whose job it was to watch for unauthorized magic, it would be suspect. I had survived all these years by being careful.
But… I picked up a piece of chalk, rubbing its smooth, fat length between my fingers. Colors meant little to me except as a detail of substance, but I had picked up the habit of naming my paints and chalks nevertheless. There is more to color than what can be seen, after all. The chalk smelled faintly bitter—not the bitterness of food, but the bitterness of air too rarefied to breathe, like when one climbed a high hill. I decided it was white, and perfect for the image in my head.
“I paint a picture,” I whispered, and began.
I sketched the bowl of a sky. Not Sky, or any part of it—not even the sky that existed somewhere above the Tree, which I had never seen. This would be a thin, nearly empty firmament, wheeling above in layers of rising color. I laid down a thick base of white chalk, using both of my available sticks until there was just a sliver remaining. Lucky. Then I grazed in blue—not much of it, though. It felt wrong for the sky in my head—too vibrant, thick, almost greasy between my fingers. I used my hands to thin out the blue, then added another color that made a good yellow. Yes, that was right. I thickened the yellow, rolling it on, feeling its growing intensity and warmth and following it until at last it coalesced into light at the center of my composition. Two suns, one great and one smaller, spinning about each other in an eternal dance. Perhaps I could—
“Hey.”
“Just a minute,” I murmured. The clouds in this sky would be powerful things, thick and dark with impending rain. I reached for something that smelled silver and drew one, wishing I had more blue, or black.
Now birds. Of course there would be birds flying in this bright, empty sky. But they would not have feathers—
“Hey!” Something touched me and I started, dropping the chalk and blinking out of my daze.
“Wh-what?” Almost at once, my back protested, bruises and muscles twinging. How long had I been drawing? I groaned, reaching back to knead the small of my back.
“Thanks,” said the voice. Male, older. No one I knew, though he reminded me vaguely of Vuroy. Then I recalled hearing his voice—one of my fellow souvenir sellers, the loudest of the three who’d been hawking his wares. “That’s a nice trick,” he continued. “You pulled a good crowd. But the south promenade closes at sunset, so you might want to catch a few of ’em while you can, huh?”
Crowd?
I abruptly became aware of voices around me—dozens of them, clustered around my drawing. They were murmuring, exclaiming over something. I got to my feet and hissed at the agony in my knees.
As I straightened, the cluster of people around me burst into applause.
“What—” But I knew. They were clapping for me.
Before I could wrap my thoughts around this, my onlookers pushed forward—I heard them jostling each other in an effort to avoid stepping on the drawing—and began asking me the price of my wares, and whether I painted professionally, and how I managed to draw such beautiful things when I couldn’t see, and whether I really couldn’t see, and, and, and. I had enough wits left to get behind the table and answer the most uncomfortable questions with silly pleasantries (“No, I really can’t see! I’m glad you like it!”), before I was inundated with eager customers buying everything I had. Most of them weren’t even haggling. It was the best sales day I’d ever had, and it all happened in a span of minutes.
When they were done with me, most of the customers moved on to the other tables—as they had been doing since I’d begun drawing, I realized belatedly. No wonder the hawker had come to thank me. But I could hear the distant tolling of the White Hall bells, marking sunset; the park would be closing soon.