She’d watched them drive up an hour before, bringing their cars to a stop in front of the gates and then getting out and gathering together around the front of the cars. They looked like they’d just finished doing something and were now in the middle of a discussion. Unfortunately, the way the hedge maze blocked her view, all she could see was their backs.
They were probably talking about the sculpture. She knew what they were going to do to it.
Crouching low, Itzachi ran along the hedge run closest to the courtyard and then turned to look down at the sculpture through the leaves. It was a large black oval, with a black iron frame, like a matryoshka doll where each doll fit into the next one. It stood in the middle of the courtyard, slightly tilted forward.
Itzachi knew she should run away. If they caught her here, they’d take her away, force her to join them behind the gates. They’d claim she’d been stealing from them again, or spray-painting their houses, or hacking into their computers, or fighting with them at school. But she didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t finished yet.
She looked at the sculpture again. It was perfect, really. It bordered on simple, but the image of man was so true, so human, that it was beautiful. She had painted it herself, covering the entire surface with images of man, in shades of gray, copying the life cycles of things. The color of each of the pieces matched the color of that of the animal the piece had been made to represent. It had taken her months to arrange them like a puzzle.
All it needed, she thought, as she looked down at it, was a name. She’d seen some people do this, they’d paid hundreds to have a midwife attend them at the birth of their child, and the priest, come to baptize them, and then they’d named it. She wondered what name she should give her creation.
She reached down and brushed the leaves away from the surface of the sculpture, revealing the letters she’d carefully painted in white, capital letter, in black. She’d spent an entire night on each letter, carefully painting them in the corner of the sculpture, just above the surface, where they’d be perfectly legible, if you were close enough. She would have rather preferred to do the whole piece in white instead, but black had been easier to find in the paint mixing set she’d found in the recycling center.
It was a large, very large, collection of various tubs, jars and cans of different shades of gray paints, some with a few colors in them, used by a group of painters who had gone to the town in order to paint its surrounding buildings. It had been a very nice piece. She’d stolen the cans and the tubs from the recycling center. She realized, now, with its paint dried and its bottles all broken, that painting in the kitchens of the house had distracted her from her boredom, and painting the grass, and the trees, and the stars had been less boring than watching the men in white lab coats round the corners of the house, taking measurements of the building’s structure, or its windows, or its doors.
So she’d decided to paint the sculpture, although, she couldn’t really finish it. She would have to stick it in the corner near the hedge maze, far back, so the people coming to pick up their recycling, wouldn’t notice it. Maybe she’d steal some extra paint and finish the piece later. She’d painted all of the leaves going into the tunnels of the maze, and the ones returning, in different shades of black. The way the leaves moved with the wind made it look like the sculpture was smiling.
As she thought this, she noticed one of the men she hadn’t seen before reach into the back of his car. A moment later, he was back out, holding a large tin box. He walked over to the sculpture and placed it on the ground.
She felt her heart leap into her throat. Had they found her? Was this her chance to try and run?
She looked up the tunnel behind her, towards the end of the maze. Her finger was on her lips, as she watched one of the men she hadn’t seen before lean over and shake the moss growing out of the sides of the tunnel. There was a soft thump. If she was quick, she could hide inside one of the tunnels, and maybe, if they didn’t look in there, they wouldn’t notice she was gone.
A minute later, the man came out of the tunnel, and looked at the sculpture. He shook his head, then picked it up off the ground and carried it over to his car, before standing it by the side of the tunnel.
She stood up, and began to make her way back. She was almost at the entrance to the tunnel, when she heard voices.
“I thought we had to examine this place to see if it was worth taking would you please tell me that it wasn’t and how am I supposed to be able to claim this when I haven’t been able to reach the building from the outside?!” It was the man who had been standing next to her when she’d first entered the tunnel. He was talking to the man who had been carrying the sculpture.
“I-I don’t know. It’s not my responsibility.” The second man was clearly getting frustrated with the man who’d been closest to her.
“Look, it just isn’t fair. I thought I was doing what the boss wanted.”
“I’m sure you did,” the second man said, “Can’t you just write it off? I would have, but I already have too much on my plate.”
