Woman of Oil

Amelia was devoted to the paintings on the walls. Small flames danced with the candles in front of them while they were humming a melody for her. Dressed with the light of the moon, she danced with a man casted by the candles.

When the candles melted, magic disappeared. In her dreams she could still hear the humming and the nightmares turned into dreams.

A conversation with humans that weren’t made of oil like the ones she venerated, felt like a theatre. She was tired of them, their love for art didn’t exist, all she loved, was distorted every time the visitors opened their mouths. The flowers had a rotten smell and the food had a dust taste.

“Who is the reason behind those sighs?” A girl looked at her with purely innocence but Amelia felt betrayed by the observation.

A broken cup saved Amelia. Tea and porcelain had everyone eyes in those moments. A woman and her apologies gave Amelia time to think about something that couldn’t make her reveal her secret. She exceled the art of acting but she couldn’t say a single lie. Her lover was a secret that Amelia couldn’t reveal.

The woman was bleeding and the blood worried everyone. She didn’t have to think about an excuse because they all forgot about her sighs. Except for the man she was supposed to marry. Before they could leave all the room, he grabbed her wrist and let in her skin red marks.

“Who is the one in your heart?” His words could be innocent as his sister looks when she asked about Amelia’s sighs but his voice reflected violence, his voice sounded soft but he has knives in his throat and his eyes were as sharp as they were.  

Her lips trembled and silence sealed them. Air came from his nostrils and the lines in his face showed to her that he clenched his teeth. She was afraid of this bull in front of her. Death seemed to touch her skin every time he cut a distance between them.

“You are, my lord.”

The words weren’t pronounced by her. She breathed again. It was her father, he was nervous as she was but he had a gift to tell lies and Amelia wasn’t born with the same gift. Her father gave her a sad look and for the millionth time, she didn’t forgive him for what he did to her, her father was the one who chained her to the bull.

“We are all sinners, except for you.” She said that night to the paintings; she wished she could be painted as them with a sword to defeat her foes and fears. But her mother didn’t make her a heroine. Why she had to tremble when she was afraid? Why she couldn’t with words or swords? Why she had to remain silent when a man spoke? She started to cry. The world wasn’t a place for her. She didn’t light any candle.  

That morning tears were on her cheeks. The wedding was going to be celebrated, she mourned for the last of freedom she had. She kissed the paintings and asked them to take her to wherever they were; she felt they were sorry for leaving her in a world that wasn’t made for a creature like her.

“My lady, where are you?” She heard a voice coming from a short distance. The moment Amelia wasn't waiting, was coming.

She asked them to forgive her for leaving them in the darkness, for not being able to invoke that magic. Her eyes were lost on the mountains and that sky where heaven was hidden. Why she couldn’t be like her mom and look for the freedom she was supposed to have?

“My lady!” The voice found her after she could give all of them a kiss and swear to them that she would come back for them and she cried because she knew, it was the first lie she was saying in all her life.

“I wanted to see them for a last time.”

Amelia received some sad lips trying to make a grin. It was the most sincere gift and she took it with the dead flowers. She carried all the mortifications on her arms. The sky above her head wasn’t hiding a heaven but a mirror where she could see herself being a repulsive human being, who couldn’t say no to the desires of the ones who said they love her. She wished she could saw herself grabbing a sword and cutting all fears for once. She wasn’t asking to be a man but she wanted to have the same freedom as them.

Happiness never visited her heart again and her lover was a memory and the stars could hear her trying to sing the melody that used to extinguish her nightmares. She lost herself in the illusions and eventually, she was obsessed about them. The garden of her enemy was a vast space with different plants and flowers. Amelia knew all of them. Everyone admired the roses and she found beyond them the ugliness of a poisonous plant that nobody saw before. She was grateful for the presence of the roses who could protect the secret of the existence of the plant that was hid on her dress.

Her husband didn’t look at her anymore except when she some sighs escaped and he let bruises on her for fantasizing. A small dose of poison was on his drink, he couldn’t notice it because rum clouded him. And she couldn’t, Amelia couldn’t be the person who made a poisonous potion. She took the drink and thrown it away, she could see again the bull but she escape before he could hurt her again.  

A brown horse took her to her home under a starless night; it wasn’t longer a mirror but the same sky that covered heaven. Amelia ran to her home and found her father, he didn’t say anything but his expression showed that he wasn’t expecting for her to come back even if he seemed that he was waiting for her.

“I can forgive you if you grant me freedom, father.”

“I can’t give you freedom because it doesn’t belong to me. Freedom is yours, as air and sunlight, little bird.”

She hadn’t needed a sword or the violence of men. Her tears weren’t shining because of the suffering that suffocate her heart but this time it was because she was going to be as a human should be, free.

Amelia ran upstairs to see what she loved; it wasn’t a lie what she said that night. She was afraid of not finding them since she was the one who lit the candles for them and let the moonlight and sunlight be the companies of all of them. She gave them life and they gave it to her.

They were on the walls, Amelia lit the candles again, the night was theirs, freedom and life belonged to them. They danced all together and singed the same melody that disappeared nightmares. She was finally happy; she knew her enemy was going to look for them with a dagger in his hand, with the thorns of the roses from his garden. But she wasn’t afraid because she was no longer the girl with the rotten flowers or the trembling lips. The candles started to burn all around her and the transformation begun, she was part of the paintings on the walls, where fears vanished from her body; she was painted by her mother as her mother once painted them, with their birds and butterflies, hills and flowers. She was no longer a person from a place where she was afraid; she belonged to the oil, to the art. They all burnt and she was no longer what she once was, with her nightmares and the emptiness of her heart. She was painted and transformed. Amelia was free; she was a woman of oil.