The Muse

by Lauren Blakely

  “Now,” she instructs. “Reach inside.”

  I take a breath and stretch my hand out like I’m petting a nervous animal. The canvas feels crackly, the petals on the irises chipped.

  “That’s it. Keep going. You can’t hurt it, Julien,” she whispers in my ear, her voice pure poetry. “Close your eyes and just feel.”

  Clio makes me believe I can be better than I ever have been before. I listen to her and close my eyes. Everything is dark now, but I can touch. This time, the canvas yields as I press my fingers to it. The surface stretches and invites my hands in. Against the blurry black of my closed lids, I see a momentary flash of silver, and in my palm is the softest flutter of a petal, smooth and real. I open my eyes. I grasp, tenderly but firmly, a bouquet of irises.

  My jaw drops. I blink several times, astonishment tripping through me.

  “I told you so,” Clio teases.

  “I never doubted you,” I say, meaning it.

  She smiles. “Good. I like that you trust me.” She gestures to the canvas. “Now put them back.”

  I do the reverse, much as I tuck things back into the paintings every night, and the flowers fold back into the frame.

  “And now, perhaps you’d like to come on inside and see my house,” she says. “Just don’t take anything with you except the clothes on your back.”

  I hold out my hands wide, almost in surrender, like I’m showing her how much I do trust her.

  I stare at her painting again. It seems odd without her in it. The space where she resides is empty, but not blank white. It’s filled in by other colors, but as if the colors have spilled into the middle. I reach my hand through, and the midsection of the painting expands inward, creating a weird and warped sort of tunnel. There’s a rushing sound far away, like wind is whipping open a secret passageway.

  “After you,” I say. “This is definitely a ladies-first situation.”

  She drops a quick kiss onto my cheek. “Such a gentleman.”

  She steps inside the painting, and even though this might be the most daring thing I’ve ever done, riskier than breaking into a shop, crazier than believing in ghosts of artists, and more mind-bending than talking to Degas’ dancers, since I don’t know how I’ll return, I follow the woman I’m crazy for.

  Because I trust her.

  I step into the frame, stealing away from the museum and into another realm.

  As I go, the canvas closes up, and I am on the other side.

  19

  I have been to Monet’s garden before. An hour west of Paris, it’s a popular destination for many visitors to France.

  But this is like a high-definition version, somehow more vivid than reality, with orange dahlias that blaze like the sun and pink poppies the color of the inside of a seashell. All the flowers are in bloom. In front of me lies a blanket of pale-blue forget-me-nots. The hues here are more vibrant than any palette I’ve seen on the outside.

  “We’re not in Giverny anymore,” I say in a daze, my eyes feasting as I take in the scene.

  We are someplace else entirely. Someplace that doesn’t exist for anyone else, anywhere else. Someplace that exists only beyond a painting. The flowers, the pond, and the trees are fully alive, but also slightly gauzy, slightly surreal. The scent is too, like a perfect gardenia.

  “Do you like it?” she asks, eager and hopeful.

  “God, I love it,” I say, then whirl around, facing this brilliant beauty. I cup her cheeks, hold her face passionately, and meet her gaze. “This is a gift. You are a gift.”

  A faint blush spreads over her cheeks. “Thank you. Come. Unwrap more of it,” she says, stepping away, beckoning me to follow.

  I will follow her anywhere.

  “Do you want to see the bridge that Monet painted over and over?” she asks.

  “Hell yes.”

  Clio points. Hovering over the glassy blue surface of the pond is the green bridge from Monet’s backyard. I take her hand, squeezing her fingers, as we walk over where purple tulips edge the water, past the water lilies, hazy and quivering. We duck under weeping willows that brush our backs, and when I stand up straight again, I step onto the Japanese bridge.

  Everything is gorgeous.

  Everything is perfect.

  But it’s also all she has.

  My chest tightens like a noose, thinking of her trapped by beauty.

  “Do you love it or hate it here, Clio?” I ask, because even though it’s a strange and wondrous place, it’s also her cell.

  A sad smile crosses her lips. “Sometimes both, yes. I used to pretend there was a door at the end of this bridge. A plain, simple wooden door with an old-fashioned ring handle. Dark metal. You’d pull it open”—she demonstrates opening an invisible door, pulling easily—“and there. The other side.” She stays frozen like that, looking at her imagined world. “Now I’ve finally been on the other side.” She takes a long, lingering beat, punctuated by a sigh. “Free.”

  She turns back to me, and my heart aches for her for being stuck for so many years. More than a century. “And being with you, that’s an escape too from the life I’ve been trapped in.”

  She lets her voice trail off as her lips zero in on mine. She leans in, pressing lightly at first, grazing my lips, and I let her lead, like she seems to want to. She could take me anywhere, and she has. I push my hands through her soft hair, letting the strands form a waterfall through my fingers. She leans into my touch like a cat, and kisses me back, slow and soft as if we could do this forever. This kind of long, unhurried, luxurious kiss. A kiss that turns you inside out with bliss.

  But eventually we pull apart.

  “Why don’t you leave the painting for good? Can you escape from the painting? Leave the museum?” I ask, but even if she left, what would she have? Where would—or could—she go? It’s as if she’s traveled through time.

  She gives a sad, plaintive smile. “I can. And it’s simple. You don’t need a crazy car chase or knife fight to free me. Nothing violent, nothing dangerous. It’s simple because art is grace. Art is class. You can free me by holding open the door and letting me out.”

  My heart soars at the prospect. But not for long.

  Because her tone is heavy.

  There will be no freeing her easily.

  “But . . .?”

  “But that won’t change the curse, and besides, I don’t want to go.”

  I latch onto the last part of her answer. “Why?”

  She strokes my cheek. “Do you want me to just keep saying it over and over? I told you last night. Because of you.”

  I laugh. “It doesn’t really get old to hear.” My eyes drift to the green slats of the bridge, and I want to feel them, their realness. I lie down with her there. The overhead sun warms me. “But tell me, why me?”

  “We speak each other’s language. We like the same things. We both love art. We love it to the wild depths of our souls.”

  I grin. “Why, yes, I do believe you understand me perfectly.”

  She touches my wrist as she talks, running a finger across my palm. “I think I do, and do you want to know why?” Her eyes twinkle with secrets about to come undone.

  I prop myself up on one elbow, all eager and then some. “Yes. Tell me.”

  She trails her fingers up my arm now. “You want to know who I am?”

  My bones vibrate with need. “Yes. I’m dying to know.” This is all I want.

  “Everything?”

  “Yes!” I say desperately. “Tell me.”

  “Like, about my family? And where I’m from?”

  I make a rolling gesture with my hands, letting her know I’m eager and ready. “Tell me.” I lace my fingers through hers. She squeezes back.

  She props herself up on her elbow, mirroring me. “Here’s a hint. I have eight sisters,” she says, like she delights in delivering that detail. “Eight.”

  She says the number as if it’s the answer to a riddle, and I have to figure out the question. I picture the digit as a s
wirling figure, two intertwined circles.

  “Eight,” I repeat.

  “I’m like you,” she continues, all flirty and sexy. “Only eternal.”

  It’s as if there were a few notes playing in my head and then someone turned up the radio and the song is now blasting at full volume, and I know all the lyrics. “Do you have a sister named Calliope?” I ask in a hushed breath.

  She nods happily, like she enjoys revealing this secret.

  How did I miss this? Of course I know a Clio is one of the nine Muses, but then it never occurred to me that my Clio might be an actual Muse.

  That’s how I missed it.

  I simply thought she was like any other woman with that name. Cognitive dissonance perhaps. The notion she might be Clio the Muse seemed too preposterous that I never considered it. I always assumed she was simply a woman from many years ago with that name.

  “And do you have another sister named Thalia?” I ask.

  A grin spreads across her face. “Yes. Though Thalia is more like a mom to me.”

  “You’re a Muse. One of the nine Muses. You’re one of the nine actual Muses?”

  “One of the nine indeed,” she says, pleased, like she’s just given me a fantastic birthday present, and holy hell, this is another gift. This knowledge. This insight into her. Clio isn’t just a young woman from Montmartre. She’s so much more.

  “Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, and . . .” I say, rattling off the names of the other Muses from myth, but I blank on the last one.

  “Urania,” she says with a wild grin. “Impressive that you know them. My family.”

  I shake my head in astonishment. “You’re a Muse? Like, a real Muse? Not just, like, a human muse? But the Muses from forever and ever?”

  She holds up her hand like she’s swearing in court. “As I live and breathe, I’m a Muse. An eternal Muse. Thalia made me. She made all of us.”

  “Made you?”

  “Well, we weren’t just born from human mothers. We were made to be Muses.”

  The sky could fall, the earth could split open, this garden could tear in two, and I wouldn’t notice. I am inside a painting with a Muse, and I know this moment must be a mirage, or maybe it is hazier than that—a reflection of a mirage, a dream within a hallucination. If I was amazed at paintings coming to life, if I was astonished to learn why I can see them, that’s nothing compared to learning this. That the woman I’ve grown so fond of is a Muse.

  She flicks her fingers, and a spray of silver dust lands on me. “There you go,” she says, showing off with delight.

  I catch her hand and touch her bracelets. They should be wispy, since they’re hairbreadth thin, but they are as solid as a bank vault. “Is this where you keep the silver dust?”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “No. Our bracelets are our marks. They mark us as Muses. And I’m the Muse of painting.”

  “I thought Clio was traditionally the Muse of history?”

  “I was, but when painting became big during the Renaissance, I switched.”

  “‘Switched,’” I say, then laugh. “Like a midlife career change.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you do with that silver dust?”

  “It’s used for inspiration.”

  “Oh, sure. No biggie.” I pretend to flick my fingers. “Hey, want to be inspired? Here’s my silver dust.”

  She pushes my shoulder and laughs. “You’re the one who drew shoes with it.”

  I sit up and drag a hand through my hair, questions bubbling inside me. “How on earth has one of the nine Muses been inside a painting since 1885?”

  Her expression shifts to one of resignation, but there’s a touch of anger there too. “Renoir trapped me,” she says, her voice containing a hard edge. “That’s why I didn’t tell you right away who I am. The last person—the last human I saw—essentially put me in a cage. I have a tiny bit of a trust issue,” she says, and holds her thumb and forefinger together to make light of the statement, but it’s a heavy one nevertheless. Of course she’d have trust issues. “But I felt that you were different from the first time I met you. I wanted to make sure. I wanted to tell you when I knew I could trust you.”

  I reach for her hands, thread our fingers together, and squeeze. “You can trust me, Clio. I would never do anything to hurt you. I only want to help you. But why did he trap you?”

  “We used to talk, Renoir and Monet and Valadon and I. I was the Muse for all of them, and we had many discussions about the nature of art. Renoir had firm beliefs that only great artists like himself should make art, be revered and admired. That we Muses should save our inspiration for the worthy—which, of course, included him. And I didn’t agree.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him—I stood there in the garden, and I said, ‘I believe it’s my destiny to guide art and artists to a more open age where anyone can make art and anyone can show it.’ Things were different then, Julien. During his time, art was very closed off.”

  I nod. “I know. It’s different now, with so many ways to experiment and exhibit it. There’s public art and graffiti art and videos and cartoons and experimental music . . .”

  “And that’s what I always believed would happen. That anyone could create art, that anyone could consume it. And I told Renoir about human muses. That they would exist, and that they would do more of the work of inspiration. He did not like that idea whatsoever. And so, he trapped me.”

  She says it clinically, but perhaps that’s so she can make it through the horror of the tale.

  “How?” I ask, cringing. “Did he stuff you into his canvas?”

  “He took my powers of inspiration and twisted them. Muse dust is very limited but very powerful, and binding. He had been painting the gardens, and said he wanted to show me what he’d done so far, but when I looked at his canvas, he took me by the wrists and flicked my fingertips onto the painting. And I went into it. It’s like a reversal, the way he used the dust on me. The last words I heard were ‘Let’s see if a human muse can free you someday.’”

  Every part of me aches for her. For the bitterness, for the pain. For having everything she loved, everything she believed, turned against her.

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Clio,” I say, but how do you even begin to comfort someone who’s been caged for so long, even if the bars are beautiful?

  She holds out her hands as if to say c’est la vie. “I’ve gotten used to it, I suppose.”

  “So he did curse your painting. He cursed it with your own powers.”

  “It’s ironic because every idea he rejected—human muses, art for everyone—his arrogance put all of that into motion.”

  “But here’s the thing. He’s still after the painting,” I say. I hate telling her that Renoir is back, but I can’t keep it from her. I tell her about the haunting of Max, and then what I learned today—that someone had swapped in a fake and taken her actual painting to the house in Montmartre, which would become Remy’s. Where we would eventually meet. There’s no point in hiding it. Whatever we’re in, we’re in it together.

  “It’s like he’s trying to get you back. I mean, you’re safe here at the museum. But why now? What is he so worried about?”

  “I don’t know. I was cut off from everything when he trapped me.”

  “Besides, if he was crazed enough to trap you, you’d think he’d have—” I stop talking, but she can add two and two.

  “Destroyed the painting?”

  I nod, wincing at that horrible idea. “Well, yeah.”

  “He wasn’t violent. He was, oddly enough, a gentleman. And he would never do that to one of his creations. He loved his art more than anything in the world.”

  “Art can be a stupid, jealous thing.”

  “In a way, I kind of know how he felt. I used to love art more than anything. But then I started thinking more about the process, and it never made sense to me why it was only the nine of us Muses who could brin
g about true and great inspiration. It didn’t feel right to me. And my beliefs started changing about making art, but also about what I wanted. The only problem is you can’t really want as an eternal Muse. You just do. You just do the work.”

  “So let me free you, then.” It’s the least I can do for her. “I mean, that’s what this curse or prophecy or whatever is about, right? A human muse will free you from your painting. You said all I had to do was open the doors of the museum and let you out.”

  She looks at me and lays a soft hand on my cheek. “If you did, I’d just have to go back. I’d have to work. The painting is what binds me to the museum, and the museum is what lets me come out at night. Once I leave the museum, I’ll be bound again. Bound to be a Muse all the time.” The weight of that burden darkens her voice. It’s such cruel beauty, the way these traps contain her. “I used to love working all the time. But being in that painting for so many years, I’m not the same. I don’t know what I want anymore.” There is so much sadness in her voice.

  I latch onto what she said about family before. “But your sisters—do you want to see them? Do they need you back?”

  She shrugs, shooting me a little smile. “I’d like to see them at some point, but I’m rather enjoying where I am this second. Besides, my sisters have obviously filled in for me all those years. I didn’t inspire Toulouse-Lautrec or Seurat. The later Cézannes aren’t mine, and the later Monets aren’t either, not the Water Lilies, not the Rouen Cathedral. Even your favorite Van Gogh was made without me. So my sisters must have taken over for me.”

  “Muse sick day,” I joke.

  “Extended leave of absence,” she corrects.

  “So, you’re going to take a few more days off?” I ask, and I love this idea. I want as much of her as I can get.

  “They got by this long without me. So I think I’ll play hooky a little longer,” she says, her lips curving up in a grin. “That is, if you’ll keep having me?”

  “I’ll have you any way I can. I’ll give you whatever you want, Clio,” I say, even though my heart is heavy inside because whatever we are will inevitably unwind. It will never be more than an escape into a garden that isn’t real.