Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  It’s creepy dark down here, an infernal burrow that pinches my lungs with its airlessness. I don’t move for a moment, as I try to orient myself and let my eyes adjust. The third door on the right, the note said. I look up at the slab above me and turn right, but it’s so black I can barely see in this narrow, twisty cave. Then I remember—I’ve got a light on me, thanks to modern technology. I reach for my phone from my back pocket and swipe the screen. Simon’s friend Corinne at the archives was wrong—it would have made a big difference if Jean Valjean had had a smart-phone when he was down in the sewers. My phone guides the way, and I find the door quickly, turning an old rusty handle that opens to a set of stairs. The steps take me up to another door and into the backroom of La Belle Vie, a famous perfume shop on the rue de Rivoli not far from the bridge with all the padlocks. This is a layer of Paris I never expected to unearth.

  I walk into the shop.

  La Belle Vie sells only flacons, not the scents themselves. The bottles are beautiful things—the sort of gift you’d buy your mom and she’d be thrilled to spritz a little something on her wrist from the old-fashioned bottles complete with puffy atomizers. The bottles are all hand painted, some with delicate purple flowers, others with flowing red vines. They are things no one ever needs. Beauty without reason. It’s the perfect location for a Muse to do her work.

  The sign on the front of the shop has been turned around, letting customers know the store is closed. The curtains are drawn. A woman is bent over the counter, with sheets of flaming red hair surrounding her. She wears laboratory goggles, holds a miniature pair of tweezers in one hand, and stares hard at the pages full of musical staffs and notes spread on the counter in front of her. She flicks the tiniest bit of silver dust from her fingertips to the paper. Then, like a surgeon, she lowers the tweezers with pinpoint precision over a line of complicated-looking orchestrations.

  I wait, not wanting to disturb her project. She seems to grab something from the paper, but when she peers closely at the tweezers, she sighs at them with disdain, then drops them on the counter.

  “Hi there,” I say carefully.

  She jumps, then shakes her head. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to get these lost notes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She stands and offers a hand. She wears a thin silver bracelet on each wrist, just like Clio. “I’m Thalia.” She has high cheekbones and soft skin that does indeed smell like pomegranates, but her hazel eyes look tired. “The Roques, who own this shop, are music lovers. They found a lost symphony from Mahler, but some of the notes are missing. I was trying to see if I could coax them out.”

  “Okay,” I say, as if that’s the sort of thing I hear every day. “And the Roques are like Bonheur and Sophie, I take it? More emissaries?”

  “Yes, they let me work in here when I need to. That’s why I had you meet me here, since I knew I’d be working on this symphony for a while,” she says, and Clio was right—it is all work as a Muse. I’m being squeezed into Thalia’s schedule as she multi-tasks. “That’s part of my job. I handle a lot of the problems and complications with art, literature, and music.”

  “Like an ombudswoman in a department store? Someone who looks into complaints?”

  “Kind of, yes. I do some inspiration work myself, but lately my tasks are centered more on the things that go wrong.”

  “Do these catacombs go everywhere? Like around the world? So you can handle whatever … goes wrong?”

  “They do. Well, you can only open these doors if you’re a Muse—human or Eternal. But yes, that’s what gives us access to wherever we’re called on to work. We don’t get to spend much time together down there.” She points.

  “In the catacombs?”

  She laughs. “No, far below. Where we actually live in a gorgeous house in a lovely field. It’s beautiful and peaceful. But we’re working most of the time, so we’re rarely home. Which is why we’re glad to have some help from humans, and you’re the first.”

  “Well, I actually need your help. Because we have a serious problem with the art. Just a little Géricault flooding, and a Titian breaking, and an Ingres being strangled with cushions. I think it all started with the Renoirs and spread from there. But the Renoirs are the least of it now. They’re only fading and the rest of the art—well, it’s pretty much having a massive meltdown. I have no idea what’s going on, so I hope to God you do and can help me stop it.”

  She purses her lips and looks away. I watch her closely. Her eyes are stony, but there is something a bit like guilt in the way her jaw is set and then in how she exhales. Heavily, with shame.

  Oh.

  Oh my.

  I know what happened.

  I stumble, stepping back, as a wave of understanding clobbers me. I grab the edge of a shelf full of green etched bottles with antique gold caps to steady myself. I didn’t want to be right about this, because it feels so wrong.

  “You did this, didn’t you?” I say, my voice so low it can barely register the shock. “You cursed the Renoirs.”

  She swallows tightly, then turns back to me. Her eyes are wet but hard. “I love Clio. I love all my Muses. They are all I know, and when he took her from me,” she says and a deep breath seems to expand through her chest and into her shoulders, a breath of righteousness, as her words turn into the serrated edge of a knife, “I was furious.”

  She walks close to me, her steps controlled and crisp. “I tried to free her myself. When Suzanne switched out the paintings and brought the real one to me with Clio in it, I did everything I possibly could to free her. I used dust on it to try to reverse what he did. I tried every tool in my tool kit to bring her out. I took her canvas with me to museums around the world. To London, to Florence, to the Louvre. I hid inside the museums until night fell and tried to free her then with the magic of a museum. But Muse dust is powerful, and he’d cursed her until a human muse came around. It was binding, and there was nothing I could do. I was helpless and I was livid.” As she recounts the story her eyes fill with fury, with the kind of anger that must have engulfed her then. “I did the thing I never thought in a million years a Muse would do. I hurt art. I cursed beauty.”

  The confirmation of what I’d thought to be possible all along. That the Renoir damage was never from the sun. That it was a curse, the most powerful kind a painting could ever have on it—a curse from the ultimate lover of art. I can picture Thalia trying to free Clio but coming up empty, a wail of rage echoing through her. I was disgusted moments ago, but I understand why she did it. I might have even done the same. “You really loved Clio,” I say.

  “Of course I did. Of course I do. My Muses are the only ones I’ve ever loved. And I went, quite simply, ballistic. I cursed every last painting of his but hers.”

  My heart floods with relief at the last part. “What was the curse, though, and why is it happening now? Why not kill off his art back then?”

  Thalia’s shoulders drop. She bites her bottom lip, then looks at me. Her eyes are tired. Being an Eternal Muse seems exhausting. “When he took what I loved, I wanted to hurt him. So I cursed his art to fade away … starting when a human muse appeared. It seemed the fitting punishment given what their disagreement was over.”

  But I can barely hear what she’s saying because there’s a ringing in my ears, and a slowing of blood in my veins. My vision blurs and everything in me stalls. “So it’s because of me that his art is fading?”

  “No, Julien,” she says quickly. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “But it is, in a way. You could have killed his art then to punish him. Instead, his art is dying because I’m around, and now all the other art is completely freaking out.” I grip the counter as I recall with pinpoint clarity the moment I noticed the first bit of damage on the piano girls—a few days after art came alive for me. A few days after I came into my own as a human muse.

  “I was punishing him for not believing,” Thalia says, but there’s a defensiveness in her voice.

  “If he bel
ieved in human muses, he’d be after me, Thalia. And he’s not. All along, he’s been trying to stop Clio. He’s been trying to prevent her painting from being hung. He’s always been after her,” I say, and a cold dread stretches through me. Maybe he is still hunting her, not just pigment. Could he have been casing the museum the other day to figure out how to cut her canvas from the frame, roll her up, and walk off with her in his sweatshirt sleeve, then closet her away forever? It’s not implausible. I can count off dozens of museums that have been victims of unsolved theft, from the Rembrandt heist at the Gardner in Boston to the robbery of several works by Matisse and Picasso at the modern art museum here in Paris. The art has never been recovered because that’s the thing about art theft—masterpieces are nearly impossible to sell, but they’re incredibly easy to hide. Forever. “Look, all I care about is Clio, and the art. We need—”

  She cuts me off. “How is Clio? I need to know.”

  “She’s great,” I say quickly, wanting to get to the pressing matter.

  “When is she coming back? Are you going to bring her back? Are you going to let her out of the museum?”

  “Um, yeah. Soon,” I say, but the truth is it’s up to Clio, not me.

  “What has she been doing?”

  “We’ve been hanging out.”

  “Hanging out? What is that?”

  I laugh, because Thalia doesn’t seem like a woman who blows off work. She wouldn’t really know what hanging out is. “We talk and we row boats and I draw things for her, and we eat dessert, and it’s the best time I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “You love her,” Thalia says, but it’s hardly a statement. It’s more like an expression of wonder.

  “Yes.”

  “And she is in love with you?”

  “Yes,” I say and I can’t help myself from grinning as I think of her, and last night, and the words we both said.

  “What is it like? That kind of love?” Thalia asks, as if it’s the first time the subject of this kind of love has ever come up.

  I start to speak, to tell her what it’s like—it’s like you can do anything, it’s like the stars exist for you, it’s like you can stop time and fill it with the way your whole heart and mind clicks perfectly with another person.

  That it’s like the impossible has become possible.

  Instead, I put it in terms that she’ll understand. “It’s like finding a lost symphony.”

  Thalia smiles, and she looks peaceful with my answer. “That sounds wonderful.”

  “It is. So how do we reverse the curse? It’s obviously infecting the other paintings, like the ones at the Louvre. For whatever reason, it’s spread beyond the Renoirs you cursed. Clio tried to fix it. She placed her hands on Renoir’s painting of Gabrielle last night. She even tried flicking it with Muse dust. It didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m not surprised. I tried myself this morning.”

  “What?”

  “Well, of course I would try! I was at the Louvre the second it opened. I laid my hands on all the damaged paintings,” Thalia says, and like I’m lining up the edges of a drawing I’ve traced, I can place her red hair. The mane of it that I saw on the steps of the Louvre this morning.

  “I saw you. I saw you at the Louvre.”

  “I tried to stop it. I had to wait until the museum opened, but as soon as it did I was the first one in,” she says, and it’s almost funny how pedestrian being a Muse can be—she can’t just appear and disappear in museums at will. She has to go through the doors, like everyone else. No free pass is given even if you inspire what’s on the walls.

  “I even sent Calliope over to the National Gallery in London too,” Thalia says. “They’re having the same problem with their Turners. The curse is spreading quickly now.”

  My heart sinks. “They’re flooding?” The National Gallery is home to so many beautiful J. M. W. Turners, gorgeous seascapes with dappled sunlight on the water.

  “All over the floors, Calliope said.” Thalia’s already been on various assignments today. I get why Clio would want to skip out for a few days. I don’t want to think about what happens when Clio returns to being a Muse. Maybe we can meet up in La Belle Vie, or Bonheur’s basement. There will be time to figure it out. There will be time to plan a stolen kiss here, a brief moment there. It will be worth it.

  But first things first. “Clio tried to fix the paintings, Calliope tried, and you tried. And it didn’t work. What are we supposed to do next?”

  Thalia looks at me. “Well, have you tried?”

  Chapter 25

  Healed Rose, Sliced Skin

  I bolt from the rue de Rivoli, nearly knocking over a young family pushing a baby carriage on the pedestrian bridge over the river.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, but I’m gone, sprinting toward the museum.

  My legs have never been this long. My body has never moved so fast. I’ve never been powered by such ragged desire.

  The lines for the Musée d’Orsay snake around the block. It’s summer and high tourist season. The museum will be packed inside. I run to one of the side entrances, slide my card key through, then grab hard on the door. Down the stairs, into the administrative wing, and back up to the main floor. There are crowds everywhere, visitors packed into the galleries and halls, just like any other June afternoon. I force myself to walk to The Swing, even though I want to shove everyone aside and see if it could possibly be true.

  There it is. The painting I touched this morning.

  A group of young children sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the image. A teacher explains to them how Renoir tried to capture the effects of sunlight through the trees and on the fabric of the woman’s dress. I inch closer to the canvas, and I nearly collapse to my knees, so strung out am I now on a raw and naked kind of hope.

  It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. I want to fold my hands together and say thank you to the only gods I’ve ever believed in because this is my holy ground, and this feels like the closest I’ve ever come to witnessing a miracle. I can’t even contemplate that it happened because of my hands touching that painting, but there it is. The evidence in front of me. The woman’s white dress is luminescent again, the blue bows on it are radiant. I nearly stagger back, so humbled, so awed that I’ve somehow done something no restorer could ever do. It’s only fitting—the curse was over human muses; the antidote is one.

  I want to shoo the visitors out the door and lay my hands on the Renoirs. I want to fix them this second, but I can’t touch the paintings with these people here. Tonight, I’ll take care of the others. I scan the room, mentally ticking off the half dozen or so Renoirs that have just begun to wither—the kind only I can see, and only I can stop.

  I notice Gabrielle is missing. Her picture had hung next to The Swing just a few hours ago.

  I head to my mother’s office downstairs to see how bad off Gabrielle must be to have been shuttered away. Her door is open and she’s on the phone. Her expression is deadly serious. She motions quickly for me to come in. I take a seat as she finishes her call.

  “Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear. I’ve been talking to forensic scientists and even the canvas makers themselves to see if they know.”

  She pauses and listens.

  “They don’t have any ideas. No one’s seen anything like this before.”

  She waits again. “I’ve got a new team of restorers coming to look at our Renoirs. I’ll let you know what I find out. And please do the same for yours.”

  She hangs up then, and sighs deeply. She slumps back in her chair.

  “Who was that?” I ask.

  “My colleague at the Met. They’ve got one of the sun-damaged Renoirs, and now a Vermeer—the one with the sleeping maid—well, apparently she’s snoring and drooling. She drools in her sleep, evidently. So far, it’s the Louvre, the National Gallery in London, and the Met in New York with this new spate of problems,” she says, and it’s so weird how the curse manifests once it infects other paintings.
Only the Renoirs seem to go simply, with a leaking of their colors. The others unravel in a mad exhuming of their insides. Perhaps the curse morphs into a new strain of sickness when it stretches beyond the Renoir hosts. “I’m sure we’re going to have even more problems any minute, like the other museums. None of this makes any sense.”

  But it makes perfect sense, I want to say. It makes all the sense in the world and it will all be fine. “Did you move Gabrielle? She’s no longer upstairs.”

  “Storage,” my mother says heavily. “The Met’s taking the Vermeer down to its storage too. God knows that’s where most of our paintings will wind up eventually.”

  “They’ll figure it out. They have to, right? Art doesn’t just decompose,” I say, doing my best to comfort her.

  “Well, that’s certainly what I thought for the longest time. But everything I’ve ever learned is useless right now, Julien. Completely useless.”

  I want to tell her about The Swing. I want to shout happily that it’s healed, that all the others soon will be too. I don’t know how I’m going to get myself to Boston or New York. But I can start here, and I can start by fixing Gabrielle.

  “How happy would you be if all Renoirs were suddenly fixed?” I ask.

  She manages the tiniest grin. “Ecstatic. And can you pull the moon down from the sky for me too?”

  “I’m on it, Mom,” I say, then glance at my watch. “I don’t have a tour for another hour. Would you mind if I visited the storage room? I’d love to see Gabrielle.”

  She slides open a drawer to her desk and hands me a key. I head for the stairwell, and I go down one more flight of stairs to the lowest level of the museum tucked far belowground. The storage room is at the end of one hall and hardly anyone is ever in there. I stop in the men’s room, wash my hands thoroughly, and then head back down the hall. I unlock the main storage room, then relock the door once I’m inside. The storage room is a way station for art—it houses works that are coming or going, as well as a handful that are on sabbatical as they make room for the traveling paintings that come through. The art here is shelved in specialized units, not hung on the walls. The lights are always dim, and the temperature is cool. There are drawings, paintings, prints, and more. I find Gabrielle’s frame easily; it’s resting quietly next to other small paintings, since the art is arranged by size.