Before the Lagerlofs came along, the house next door belonged to a retired art professor from Linz and his watercolorist wife. Matthias always knew them as Herr and Frau Seier. The Seiers had been among the first people to bring housewarming gifts for the Frankes. Laura, being heavily pregnant with Elias at the time, found much comfort and help in the old couple. Eight-year-old Markus and five-year-old Matthias were partially raised by the Seiers as Laura and Hans set up the house, as Laura tackled the housework when Hans went away for his job, and as they welcomed Elias into their lives.

Even after Elias was born, Frau Seier made sure Laura took her vitamins and had all the aid she could possibly need in the household. Herr Seier grew incredibly fond of Matthias. Laura often reminisced, much affectionately, how the grandfatherly neighbor was who had actually taught Matthias half the German and most of the English he knew.

Matthias was always fascinated by Herr and Frau Seier's paintings and artistic ventures. However, it was only when he turned twelve and got corrective surgery on his retinal tissues that he could properly appreciate their art, their way around shapes and forms of life, their imaginations of all things surreal and their observations of everything real. It was only when he could see colors and hues, lights and shadows, in their truest natures did he develop an immense interest in drawing and painting. Herr Seier further nurtured this interest, and the next few years, Matthias ran to their house after school every single day, ready for hours upon hours of painting.

The sexagenarian art professor and his whippersnapper pupil were an odd pair, quietly hobbling about picturesque locations in Hallstatt, dragging their canvas carriers, easels, and bags full of painting supplies along. Matthias learned to behold the beauty of the dynamic natural world, to study the subtle loveliness of otherwise unremarkable objects, to notice and admire the uniqueness of people's appearances, and capture them all in his brushstrokes.

It was on one such occasion when Matthias was twelve, that Herr Seier said something which would stick with him for the rest of his life. The two sat on the sidewalk of the central road branching from the Marketplace, painting a row of colorful houses opposite them, when the elderly man paused between mixing paints and turned to Matthias. "Have you ever seen a place as colorful as Hallstatt?" he asked, the wrinkles on his face deepened in thought.

"No..." said Matthias, considering the truth of it as he looked at the vivid buildings in new-found awe.

His intense reflection was cut short by Herr Seier's next statement. "Isn't it ironic, a colorless boy in a colorful town?"

Herr Seier let out a small grunt of a laugh at some hidden joke while Matthias tried to make sense of the 'irony'. But he didn't ponder too much over it then, and it never came up again in the future. Subsequently, Herr Seier grew older, his memory became weaker, and Matthias ended up going on the painting expeditions by himself. In that very year, Frau Seier sadly passed away aged seventy, and her heartbroken husband trailed her into the afterlife in five months.

❧

Nowadays, Matthias thinks about Herr Seier's words each morning when he locks stares with his reflection in his bathroom. They are sour with meaning; he is a colorless boy in a colorful town. Or maybe they're still just a senile man's senseless ramblings and it is the self-loathing in him, the hatred of his appearance because of all the pain it caused him, that gives them whatever meaning he has suddenly found.

Boxing the thought in the darker recesses of his brain, Matthias cleans up, showers, and gets ready for yet another day in this vapid life. It starts like any other; he breaks his fast, covers his open skin in sunscreen, then takes on the half-hour drive to the neighboring town of Bad Ischl for his therapist's appointment. The session goes as it always does; Doctor Sandra Leitner asks him how he is doing, what's been bothering him, what he does and thinks about these days. Matthias replies to them as truthfully as he can; he doesn't have it in him to tell her that he frequently contemplates suicide, and while he knows it is wrong to do so, he doesn't really care.

Today, the doctor has a new question. One that catches him off guard. "Remember when you told me losing your voice was like losing two limbs? Do you still feel like that?"

Recollecting memories of when he could talk is a strange feeling; the coalescence of a palliated yearning for his speech and a resigned realization that he can never have it. Blowing out his cheeks, Matthias shakes his head slowly, then gestures: I was young then. I have grown. Embraced the change. Just like my voice was part of me then, my anarthria is part of me now.

"That's wonderful," says Sandra. "How did you reach that acceptance?"

Making peace with all the deaths. With reality. Matthias desists to search for the right words, his fingertips steepled together. Momentarily, he resumes signing: I was frustrated, angry, sad. So much to say and no means to do it. There is no answer to why that happened to my family and there is no way to bring them back. I no longer have any complaints. Learning ÖSL also helped. I do not talk, but I can say what I need to, and that is not a lot.

"Wonderful, wonderful. Acceptance is a very important stage of grief, it means you have moved forward. You should be proud of yourself." Sandra smiles, Matthias reinstates it. Then, she queries, "and what if, someday, you find that you do have a lot to say?"

I will write.

Chuckling, the doctor nods. "Clever."

The session lasts another twenty minutes. After that, Matthias returns home to gather the harvests that need delivering today. His first stop is a florist in Obertraun, his second is a family-owned pizzeria on main street, and his third and final stop is Erika Kaufmann's apothecary back in Hallstatt.

Collecting the hefty cartons of pine needles and elfdock flowers, Matthias balances one atop the other in his arms and makes his way to the back entrance. He peers around the boxes to watch where he walks. When he enters the alleyway, he is met with the strangest sight ever – a dancer who has made the cobbled lane her stage. Mesmerized by her grace and vivacity, he slows to a standstill. The sheer number of colors she sports hits him like a visual assault – from her pink hair, and the violet hoodie, to the light-blue jeans, and that black and red striped scarf flying behind her as she twirls.

And then she hits him with a force that sends him stumbling back. He topples, hands releasing his deliveries in an attempt to grab something that can break his fall. Unsuccessful, Matthias goes down on his bottom. The cartons drop a short distance away; he is glad he'd packed the plants in paper shreds.

Matthias stands, dusts off his pants and palms, then rushes to the seemingly dazed girl's side. He wants to apologize but he doesn't know if she understands sign language, so instead he helps her to her feet. She is staring at him, and strangers always do, yet somehow being under her scrutiny awakens an old dread that crawls all over his insides.

He is a teenager again, scorned by the beautiful, blonde tenth-grader he has a crush on. "White ghost! White ghost! White ghost!" The sounds of her mocking him, of her friends cackling at him, of the other boys telling him to try his luck with the cemetery spirits, echo through his mind.

In Matthias's experience, the younger the people, the crueler they are. He prepares himself for this girl's ridicule.

It doesn't come.

However, he knows better than to mistake someone's silence for sympathy; silence usually means they're cooking up an especially creative insult. Stepping away from her, Matthias retrieves the boxes. When he turns around, she is still there, standing between him and the back entrance. She is pretty, he adjudges, but it could be all the make-up she is wearing. Years of observing people has taught him that nobody has unmarred skin – there's always something like a liverspot, or a mole, maybe scars from acne or from injury, or maybe freckles, a zit, anything. This pink-haired girl has covered everything under product, her skin is as smooth and fair as new porcelain, the skillful highlights and contours accentuating her non-European features.

Unplugging her earphones, she asks him about the delivery. Matthias nods warily in response. She requests him to take it to the fire exit. Soft-spoken and polite, she unnerves him, so he hurries up the ladder and away from her as fast as his package allows. To his dismay, she is right behind him.

Matthias chooses to ignore her as he carries on his transaction, keeping his focus glued to Amelie – nevertheless, it is difficult to not pay heed to the polychromatic mass in his peripheral vision, staring at him. The sooner he is out of here, the better; he gives Amelie the receipt, tallies a fresh order, and leaves.

In the subsequent days, he espies her working at the upper-story window of the apothecary, and the question that has been probing at him since he first saw her now advances to the forefront: who is she?

Dinnertime gossips between Amelie and Sonja answer him. Emerynne Kaufmann, niece to Erika, daughter of Annika who has come to her sister following a separation from her husband.

Matthias meets her again the week after when he brings thyme to Esoteric Herbals. She descends the stairs behind Annika. Her red lips wear a smile that isn't taunting, nor pitying, only warm... and shy?

Either it isn't shyness or he might be reading too much into a simple smile. It's a force of habit, to analyze every twitch of a person's muscle, to unearth what ulterior motives lie under blithe exteriors – just so he is prepared for whatever violence may come, verbal or physical. And as far as he has seen, smiles often hide vile things. Remitting her greeting with a grin of his own, Matthias is quick to move on.

In their next meeting, Emerynne is dancing yet again. It's not so much a meeting as it is merely Matthias walking down Landunsplatz Strasse and being pulled in by her, skipping, twirling, flying. In favor of all the travel guides that christen Hallstatt a fairytale town, it finally has a real fairy to vouch for the name. He wanders closer, entranced by the expressiveness of her swaying arms, the spry steps in which she scales the breeze.

Beside the ticket-stand is Noemi Unger; he knows her since middle school. She was one of the rare few children who didn't bully him back then, decidedly more inclined to ace every class and achieve the top rank in every grade. Noticing Matthias, she calls him over, vigorously waving her hand and mouthing 'come on'. He accedes, and together they witness Emerynne embody the music and take to the skies.