We used fruits and vegetables like blueberries
and grapes to obtain blue, turmeric and cumin for yellow, chilli powder for
orange, spinach for green, brewed coffee for brown and yellow onion skins for rust,
red beets for pinks and purples and reds and – surprise- even sky blue!
“Pass me the blue, please. Are you still having
inexplicable nightmares, Heather?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “A couple of days ago I dreamt
I was a seal ring. My profile got stamped on paper after paper. My face hurt
and I felt awfully hot because of the sealing wax I sank into when I slammed
against the papers or parchments and the desk below them. I couldn’t stop
myself from sealing everything I saw because that was going to save the world.
The strangest thing was that the face I saw on
the seal wasn’t mine. I only felt it was.”
“Which world were you saving?” I asked.
“I have no idea. The night after that I dreamt
I was climbing up a paper ladder all the way to somewhere up in the highest
part of the sky. The steps were files, folders full of documents. Whenever I
felt I was almost there, a couple of shooting stars would come flying by in
opposite directions and collide and turn into a new folder. That dream was kind
of pretty. Many colourful lights, like the aurora borealis in the background.
Ah! And there was a soundtrack of celestial music.And last night I dreamt I was
standing in a very crowded place with lots of panels with strange things written
on them that lit up and there were people shouting and making signs with their
fingers I thought were insults and then someone said to me I had to be happy
because I had done well at the stock market. What is a stock market?”
“We’ll
look it up. But what if I make an appointment for you with Dr. Freud?” I
suggested. “He helped me with my nightmares.”
“Poor Heather!I hope these dreams aren’t
foretelling anything. Imagine if it does happen to be up to you to save the
world. What a bummer!”
“Shut your mouth, Alpin!” cried Thistle with
much annoyance. She was not just angry because Alpin seemed to be trying to
frighten Heather. She had noticed that five eggs had disappeared from the
table. “And shut it so tight you won’t be able to eat any more of the eggs we
are painting.”
“Hah!” cried Alpin indignantly. “I swear I haven’t eaten a single egg
excepting the hundred you set aside for me to sate my hunger with.”
“Well, they are disappearing from the table,
you liar,” insisted Thistle.
“Ask your evil doll for accounts,” replied
Alpin.
“What? I don’t have an evil doll!” said Thistle.
“Well, then what’s that thing with long, stiff,
stringy hair and a face so round it looks
like an onion with the leaves on it, that’s been jumping behind all of you and
swiping eggs when you weren’t looking because you were busy painting?”
“What you’re capable of inventing!” said
Thistle, waving Alpin away with disgust.
She said no more, giving him up for impossible.
Once we had finished colouring the eggs we had sarsaparilla
and sandwiches and soup and salad and tiny sugar cakes for lunch.
In the afternoon we made chocolate eggs with
little gifts secretly stuffed in them. Just before twilight we went outside to hang the already dry eggs we
had painted from a tree in the garden that was to be our Easter Tree. We also
hid the chocolate eggs, now wrapped in metallic paper, among the many flowers and
herbs in Heather’s fragrant garden.
Alpin behaved reasonably well that day and we
all had good fun doing all we did to prepare for Easter.
Only
Heather’s pet bunny, Munchy, was aware that we had company.
The next day was Easter morning and we went out to the garden to admire all the eggs we had coloured and hung from the tree and to hunt for the ones we had hidden. And what should we find there, aside from our eggs, but five exquisitely decorated eggs bound with a red ribbon to a tiny branch.
“They’re
pysanky!” cried Heather with delight. “Who brought them
here?”
“I’ll bet they are also the eggs you thought I
stole,” said Alpin. “Why aren’t you asking me if I painted those eggs? Think
only the bad and never the good of Alpin! You accused me of stealing them,
Thistle, you suspicious skinflint! Well, it was your evil doll that did this.”
“What are pysanky?” asked
Thistle, ignoring Alpin.
“Russian Easter eggs,” said Heather. “There are
five, one for each of us and a fifth for the mysterious painter. You get to
choose one first, Alpin. That should make you feel better.”
Alpin chose a bright red egg with black and
gold abstract symbols crisscrossed all over it.
We raffled the rest of the eggs and Heather won
a pale blue one with violets painted on it.
Thistle’s was all silver with a gold flower
within a dark blue square and small red roses on the silver outside the square.
Mine was water green with a gold and silver sun
in the center and small star symbols floating around that.
The fifth egg was white, with a blue flower
with a golden center painted over a gold cross. We supposed that would be the mysterious artist's.
“Let’s leave them on the tree with ours till
after Easter,” suggested Thistle. “Don’t eat your egg, Alpin. It’s a true work of
art. Keep it among your treasures.”
“Be careful with those eggs,” I said. “It would
be enough that they are pretty, but they are also potent talismans meant to
ward off evil.” I had just looked that up in my pocket encyclopaedia.
“It’s funny, what you just said. Last night I
dreamt that the world would exist only while eggs were painted,” said Heather. “It
would go with the last painted egg. A snake would swallow it.”
“Keep
painting eggs,” whispered Kikicheeky from behind us.
I heard, and turned just in time to see him
disappear among the clouds with a gigantic bound.
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