I know the avowed secret of the Duke Philip Younge of Wavenwood. 

Then again, I know a lot of secrets that I shouldn’t. 

Most artists are privileged to see a world that rather pedestrian people do not— one that is locked behind the mind’s deepest eye, and most secrets find me, rather than the other way around. 

I was not searching for a paradox, like a tree cut and stocked down to its gritty bark, baring its insides to all who passed its sting. I was not waiting for undisturbed chaos, in its deep slumber right before it was to be awoken and filled with white-hot rage.

I was painting, as I usually am when the Duke approached me. 

I made haphazard fine brushstrokes dabbling in some oil paint as he approached me about artwork for the second time this week— the first time he had come with his wife, Duchess Angelina, and his children. They sat for twelve hours as I painted carefully and delicately their pale faces against my clean white canvas. 

I enjoyed my work. I never fussed as my wrist began to cramp, even feel numb as I darkened the blue around little Georgie’s eyes and added pink to the round of young Emmaline’s face, lining her smile with a small curl of her mouth. The small details were always the punch to my gut— the ones that both hurt the worst but were the most satisfying to see replicated.

I liked the pain because it meant that I was working, and creating. If there was no heartache, no struggle, no tug in my chest as I poured my soul out onto the canvas, it wasn’t worth doing. Drawing families, especially of the court brought on heartache in a chasmic, unexplainable way. Maybe that had something to do with all the secrets I knew. 

Or maybe it’s had more to do with the ones I didn’t. I had a habit of filling those with my own fantasies— the burden of being a true artist.

The second time the Duke approached me was once again also about art. However, this time he was alone. 

“Greetings. I have another request for your talents.” — As he approached me I could see clearly that he was unsure about whether he should ask about his request or not, and automatically I knew he was doing something he shouldn’t be. Maybe my assumptions about hesitation were unwarranted, but they were usually true.

That’s the only reason people ever question themselves as birthers of inspiration— because they are afraid to hurt someone. Sometimes that someone is themself.

“And that is?” I asked, and my instrument seemed to have a mind of its own, changing the pattern of the brush from haphazard and mindless to plumbless and wide. 

“I um…” If his stuttering didn’t confirm what I already knew, there was nothing else that would. But I played coy. 

The number one rule of harnessing secrets— is you always play coy. 

That way the secrets won’t feel as though they are yawning into each other. Like they are vast and culminated by your mind as one big blah, but rather small parts of stories that you could never see the full picture of. 

But maybe that’s the beauty of being an artist; sometimes even painters don’t see the complete picture. 

And that’s great because it makes me feel less in control of the narrative— it even humbles me. Being a painter, and a secret bearer gives me too much power. 

Not knowing is my gravity. 

“Yes?” I asked again, urging him to say what he needed to. 

“I need you to draw me… another portrait.” He leaned himself a bit onto the table that held a few of my art supplies, and my eyes quickly met his nimble fingers resting against the wood. 

He didn’t seem to notice. He was too caught between the teeth of his own nerves.

“…Okay. Are you bringing your family back? Or is it a singular portrait for the court?” I ask again, my vision averting back to the canvas in front of me. 

“No. I need you to draw me another portrait of… my… secret love.” 

Oh, so he has a mistress. “I’m not sure I follow you…” Play Coy. Always play coy. 

He cleared his throat as though he was simultaneously getting more nervous and impatient with this conversation, but I needed him to admit it in plain words. There was power in getting someone to explain themselves. “I um… I need you to draw a portrait of my…. mistress.” 

Playing coy at times does get the light to bend at your will. And it’s just like having the might the brush offers. 

I slowly tilted my head to the side, dragging my brush down the middle of the canvas, and my eyebrow vaguely peeks upward. “I see…” 

“Can you… Can you do that?” 

My eyes avert towards him, the paintbrush slowing on the page, and eventually is relinquished back to my station. My head follows the direction of my eyes. “For the right price, I’d create nearly anything. What do you… Want it of?… Does she need to… model it?” 

“No!” He shouted, a little louder than he probably intended, and then collected himself. “No… she is not… suitable for these parts…” He itched the back of his neck, like a nervous tick.

I didn’t reply. I just turned back to my canvas, removing the one I had been lawlessly inflicting with nothingness and set it aside, and got another. “Describe her to me.”

He looked at me, with an intense stare, a stare that held a merciless battle. He sat. 

“She’s beautiful.”

“The sky is beautiful. The trees. Butterflies.” I deadpanned. “Be more specific.”

He sighed. Like it was taking something out of him. “Hair. Dark, thick, beautiful hair she has. Brown eyes that are like… liquid. I could swim in them. She’s petite, and she loves the gardens.” 

“Okay.” I grabbed the greens, even the pinks, bringing them to the forefront. 

“She has this heavenly, divine glow, that radiates off of her when she grins. She doesn’t dress very nicely though. She’s not rich. At all. But you can paint her dressed nicely. I’d like that.”

I didn’t say anything as he prattled off, but it was clear that he was smitten with his mistress. When I saw him early that week he didn’t look particularly miserable with his wife, but neither did he look happy. But his mistress… Whoever she was she made him unbelievably happy. It was… strange to see for a man of the court. Strange to see for a man period. 

“And um… Her skin is… Make it… Make it porcelain.” He fiddled with his fingers as he said that, and I could tell he seemed to choke those words out, as though they almost made him sick to say.

I looked towards him, albeit briefly, but it told a lot. For one I was now sure her skin was not porcelain. 

But I honored his requests regardless. 

“Do you… Do you love her?” I asked, not looking at him. 

“Oh with every bit of me. But I… I cannot publicly claim her as a mistress of mine— It— It would look badly on me…”

Again I didn’t reply. 

“Sometimes she swings.” 

I turned to look at him. “She’s not allowed, but she sneaks, and that’s… some of our time together, me watching her soar. Watching as she goes somewhere that isn’t here, even if it’s for a few minutes, not even that many. She looks so carefree. So… vivid, so beautiful.”

Beautiful. I hated that word.

It was cliché. Very… bland. Anything could be beautiful, beautiful could be anything. It was often thrown around, a word that was hackneyed, but the way he said it with so much fervor that was felt— made me not despise the word so much. Maybe because I felt that he truly meant it.

Earnesty can truly change the way one might feel about something.

“I see… I will… I’ll consider that.”

“Keep the painting when you are done.” The duke spoke up again. “I will pay for it, but keep it where I can… visit.”

I glanced at him. “Okay.”

That day when he laughed, I had inherited a new secret. But this one had less paradox and more amaurotic ardor— and it birthed from my stomach, The Swing. 

Some secrets are worth keeping in the name of craftsmanship.