“What will we do tomorrow?” she asked, finally.
So they became lovers. For the first few days they did little but eat and swim and embrace and devour the intoxicating fruit of the dwikka-tree. He ceased to fear, as he had at the beginning, that she would disappear as suddenly as she had come to him. Her flood of questions subsided, after a time, but even so he chose not to take his turn, preferring to leave her mysteries unpierced.
He could not shake his obsession with the idea that she was a Metamorph. The thought chilled him—that her beauty was a lie, that behind it she was alien and grotesque—especially when he ran his hands over the cool sweet smoothness of her thighs or breasts. He had constantly to fight away his suspicions. But they would not leave him. There were no human outposts in this part of Zimroel and it was too implausible that this girl—for that was all she was, a girl—had elected, as he had, to take up a hermit’s life here. Far more likely, Nismile thought, that she was native to this place, one of the unknown number of Shapeshifters who slipped like phantoms through these humid groves. When she slept he sometimes watched her by faint starlight to see if she began to lose human form. Always she remained as she was; and even so, he suspected her.
And yet, and yet, it was not in the nature of Metamorphs to seek human company or to show warmth toward them. To most people of Majipoor the Metamorphs were ghosts of a former era, revenants, unreal, legendary. Why would one seek him out in his seclusion, offer itself to him in so convincing a counterfeit of love, strive with such zeal to brighten his days and enliven his nights? In a moment of paranoia he imagined Sarise reverting in the darkness to her true shape and rising above him as he slept to plunge a gleaming dirk into his throat: revenge for the crimes of his ancestors. But what folly such fantasies were! If the Metamorphs here wanted to murder him, they had no need of such elaborate charades.
It was almost as absurd to believe that she was a Metamorph as to believe that she was not.
To put these matters from his mind he resolved to take up his art again. On an unusually clear and sunny day he set out with Sarise for the rock of the red succulents, carrying a raw canvas. She watched, fascinated, as he prepared everything.
“You do the painting entirely with your mind?” she asked.
“Entirely. I fix the scene in my soul, I transform and rearrange and heighten, and then—you’ll see.”
“It’s all right if I watch? I won’t spoil it?”
“Of course not.”
“But if someone else’s mind gets into the painting—”
“It can’t happen. The canvases are tuned to me.” He squinted, made frames with his fingers, moved a few feet this way and that. His throat was dry and his hands were quivering. So many years since last he had done this: would he still have the gift? And the technique? He aligned the canvas and touched it in a preliminary way with his mind. The scene was a good one, vivid, bizarre, the color contrasts powerful ones, the compositional aspects challenging, that massive rock, those weird meaty red plants, the tiny yellow floral bracts at their tips, the forest-dappled sunlight—yes, yes, it would work, it would amply serve as the vehicle through which he could convey the texture of this dense tangled jungle, this place of shapeshifting—
He closed his eyes. He entered trance. He hurled the picture to the canvas.
Sarise uttered a small surprised cry.
Nismile felt sweat break out all over; he staggered and fought for breath; after a moment he regained control and looked toward the canvas.
“How beautiful!” Sarise murmured.
But he was shaken by what he saw. Those dizzying diagonals—the blurred and streaked colors—the heavy greasy sky, hanging in sullen loops from the horizon—it looked nothing like the scene he had tried to capture, and, far more troublesome, nothing like the work of Therion Nismile. It was a dark and anguished painting, corrupted by unintended discords.
“You don’t like it?” she asked.
“It isn’t what I had in mind.”
“Even so—how wonderful, to make the picture come out on the canvas like that—and such a lovely thing—”
“You think it’s lovely?”
“Yes, of course! Don’t you?”
He stared at her. This? Lovely? Was she flattering him, or merely ignorant of prevailing tastes, or did she genuinely admire what he had done? This strange tormented painting, this somber and alien work—
Alien.
“You don’t like it,” she said, not a question this time.
“I haven’t painted in almost four years. Maybe I need to go about it slowly, to get the way of it right again—”
“I spoiled your painting,” Sarise said.
“You? Don’t be silly.”
“My mind got mixed into it. My way of seeing things.”
“I told you that the canvases are tuned to me alone. I could be in the midst of a thousand people and nothing of them would affect the painting.”
“But perhaps I distracted you, I swerved your mind somehow.”
“Nonsense.”
“I’ll go for a walk. Paint another one while I’m gone.”
“No, Sarise. This one is splendid. The more I look at it, the more pleased I am. Come: let’s go home, let’s swim and eat some dwikka and make love. Yes?” He took the canvas from its mount and rolled it. But what she had said affected him more than he would admit. Some kind of strangeness had entered the painting, no doubt of it. What if she had managed somehow to taint it, her hidden Metamorph soul radiating its essence into his spirit, coloring the impulses of his mind with an alien hue—
They walked downstream in silence. When they reached the meadow of the mud-lilies where Nismile had seen his first Metamorph, he heard himself blurt, “Sarise, I have to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
He could not halt himself. “You aren’t human, are you? You’re really a Metamorph, right?” She stared at him wide-eyed, color rising in her cheeks.
“Are you serious?”
He nodded.
“Me a Metamorph?” She laughed, not very convincingly. “What a wild idea!”
“Answer me, Sarise. Look into my eyes and answer me.”
“It’s too foolish, Therion.”
“Please. Answer me.”
“You want me to prove I’m human? How could I?”
“I want you to tell me that you’re human. Or that you’re something else.”
“I’m human,” she said.
“Can I believe that?”
“I don’t know. Can you? I’ve given you your answer.” Her eyes flashed with mirth. “Don’t I feel human? Don’t I act human? Do I seem like an imitation?”
“Perhaps I’m unable to tell the difference.”
“Why do you think I’m a Metamorph?”
“Because only Metamorphs live in this jungle,” he said. “It seems—logical. Even though—despite—” He faltered. “Look, I’ve had my answer. It was a stupid question and I’d like to drop the subject. All right?”
“How strange you are! You must be angry with me. You do think I spoiled your painting.”
“That’s not so.”
“You’re a very poor liar, Therion.”
“All right. Something spoiled my painting. I don’t know what. It wasn’t the painting I intended.”
“Paint another one, then.”
“I will. Let me paint you, Sarise.”
“I told you I didn’t want to be painted.”
“I need to. I need to see what’s in my own soul, and the only way I can know—”
“Paint the dwikka-tree, Therion. Paint the cabin.”
“Why not paint you?”
“The idea makes me uncomfortable.”
“You aren’t giving me a real answer. What is there about being painted that—”
“Please, Therion.”
“Are you afraid I’ll see you on the canvas in a way that you won’t like? Is that it? That I’ll get a different answer to my questions when I paint y
ou?”
“Please.”
“Let me paint you.”
“No.”
“Give me a reason, then.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Then you can’t refuse.” He drew a canvas from his pack. “Here, in the meadow, now. Go on, Sarise. Stand beside the stream. It’ll take only a moment—”
“No, Therion.”
“If you love me, Sarise, you’ll let me paint you.”
It was a clumsy bit of blackmail, and it shamed him to have attempted it; and angered her, for he saw a harsh glitter in her eyes that he had never seen before. They confronted each other for a long tense moment.
Then she said in a cold flat voice, “Not here, Therion. At the cabin. I’ll let you paint me there, if you insist.”
Neither of them spoke the rest of the way home.
He was tempted to forget the whole thing. It seemed to him that he had imposed his will by force, that he had committed a sort of rape, and he almost wished he could retreat from the position he had won. But there would never now be any going back to the old easy harmony between them; and he had to have the answers he needed. Uneasily he set about preparing a canvas.
“Where shall I stand?” she asked. “Anywhere. By the stream. By the cabin.”
In a slouching slack-limbed way she moved toward the cabin. He nodded and dispiritedly began the final steps before entering trance. Sarise glowered at him. Tears were welling in her eyes.
“I love you,” he cried abruptly, and went down into trance, and the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was Sarise altering her pose, coming out of her moody slouch, squaring her shoulders, eyes suddenly bright, smile flashing.
When he opened his eyes the painting was done and Sarise was staring timidly at him from the cabin door.
“How is it?” she asked.
“Come. See for yourself.”
She walked to his side. They examined the picture together, and after a moment Nismile slipped his arm around her shoulder. She shivered and moved closer to him.
The painting showed a woman with human eyes and Metamorph mouth and nose, against a jagged and chaotic background of clashing reds and oranges and pinks.
She said quietly, “Now do you know what you wanted to know?”
“Was it you in the meadow? And the other two times?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You interested me, Therion. I wanted to know all about you. I had never seen anything like you.”
“I still don’t believe it,” he whispered.
She pointed toward the painting. “Believe it, Therion.”
“No. No.”
“You have your answer now.”
“I know you’re human. The painting lies.”
“No, Therion.”
“Prove it for me. Change for me. Change now.” He released her and stepped a short way back. “Do it. Change for me.”
She looked at him sadly. Then, without perceptible transition, she turned herself into a replica of him, as she had done once before: the final proof, the unanswerable answer. A muscle quivered wildly in his cheek. He watched her unblinkingly and she changed again, this time into something terrifying and monstrous, a nightmarish gray pock-marked balloon of a thing with flabby skin and eyes like saucers and a hooked black beak; and from that she went to the Metamorph form, taller than he, hollow-chested and featureless, and then she was Sarise once more, cascades of auburn hair, delicate hands, firm strong thighs.
“No,” he said. “Not that one. No more counterfeits.”
She became the Metamorph again.
He nodded. “Yes. That’s better. Stay that way. It’s more beautiful.”
“Beautiful, Therion?”
“I find you beautiful. Like this. As you really are. Deception is always ugly.”
He reached for her hand. It had six fingers, very long and narrow, without fingernails or visible joints. Her skin was silky and faintly glossy, and it felt not at all as he had expected. He ran his hands lightly over her slim, practically fleshless body. She was altogether motionless.
“I should go now,” she said at last.
“Stay with me. Live here with me.”
“Even now?”
“Even now. In your true form.”
“You still want me?”
“Very much,” he said. “Will you stay?”
She said, “When I first came to you, it was to watch you, to study you, to play with you, perhaps even to mock and hurt you. You are the enemy, Therion. Your kind must always be the enemy. But as we began to live together I saw there was no reason to hate you. Not you, you as a special individual, do you understand?”
It was the voice of Sarise coming from those alien lips. How strange, he thought, how much like a dream.
She said, “I began to want to be with you. To make the game go on forever, do you follow? But the game had to end. And yet I still want to be with you.”
“Then stay, Sarise.”
“Only if you truly want me.”
“I’ve told you that.”
“I don’t horrify you?”
“No.”
“Paint me again, Therion. Show me with a painting. Show me love on the canvas, Therion, and then I’ll stay.”
* * *
He painted her day after day, until he had used every canvas, and hung them all about the interior of the cabin, Sarise and the dwikka-tree, Sarise in the meadow, Sarise against the milky fog of evening, Sarise at twilight, green against purple. There was no way he could prepare more canvases, although he tried. It did not really matter. They began to go on long voyages of exploration together, down one stream and another, into distant parts of the forest, and she showed him new trees and flowers, and the creatures of the jungle, the toothy lizards and the burrowing golden worms and the sinister ponderous amorfibots sleeping away their days in muddy lakes. They said little to one another; the time for answering questions was over and words were no longer needed.
Day slipped into day, week into week, and in this land of no seasons it was difficult to measure the passing of time. Perhaps a month went by, perhaps six. They encountered nobody else. The jungle was full of Metamorphs, she told him, but they were keeping their distance, and she hoped they would leave them alone forever.
One afternoon of steady drizzle he went out to check his traps, and when he returned an hour later he knew at once something was wrong. As he approached the cabin four Metamorphs emerged. He felt sure that one was Sarise, but he could not tell which one. “Wait!” he cried, as they moved past him. He ran after them. “What do you want with her? Let her go! Sarise? Sarise? Who are they? What do they want?”
For just an instant one of the Metamorphs flickered and he saw the girl with the auburn hair, but only for an instant; then there were four Metamorphs again, gliding like ghosts toward the depths of the jungle. The rain grew more intense, and a heavy fog-bank drifted in, cutting off all visibility. Nismile paused at the edge of the clearing, straining desperately for sounds over the patter of the rain and the loud throb of the stream. He imagined he heard weeping; he thought he heard a cry of pain, but it might have been any other sort of forest-sound. There was no hope of following the Metamorphs into that impenetrable zone of thick white mist.
He never saw Sarise again, nor any other Metamorph. For a while he hoped he would come upon Shapeshifters in the forest and be slain by them with their little polished dirks, for the loneliness was intolerable now. But that did not happen, and when it became obvious that he was living in a sort of quarantine, cut off not only from Sarise—if she was still alive—but from the entire society of the Metamorph folk, he found himself unable any longer to dwell in the clearing beside the stream. He rolled up his paintings of Sarise and carefully dismantled his cabin and began the long and perilous journey back to civilization. It was a week before his fiftieth birthday when he reached the borders of Castle Mount. In his absence, he discovered, Lord Thraym had become Pontifex and
the new Coronal was Lord Vildivar, a man of little sympathy with the arts. Nismile rented a studio on the riverbank at Stee and began to paint again. He worked only from memory: dark and disturbing scenes of jungle life, often showing Metamorphs lurking in the middle distance. It was not the sort of work likely to be popular on the cheerful and airy world of Majipoor, and Nismile found few buyers at first. But in time his paintings caught the fancy of the Duke of Qurain, who had begun to weary of sunny serenity and perfect proportion. Under the duke’s patronage Nismile’s work grew fashionable, and in the later years of his life there was a ready market for everything he produced.
He was widely imitated, though never successfully, and he was the subject of many critical essays and biographical studies. “Your paintings are so turbulent and strange,” one scholar said to him. “Have you devised some method of working from dreams?”
“I work only from memory,” said Nismile.
“From painful memory, I would be so bold as to venture.”
“Not at all,” answered Nismile. “All my work is intended to help me recapture a time of joy, a time of love, the happiest and most precious moment of my life.” He stared past the questioner into distant mists, thick and soft as wool, that swirled through clumps of tall slender trees bound by a tangled network of vines.
Majipoor Chronicles Page 21