Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  “Just think right now of all the sick paintings that are starting to feel better. Because of your touch,” Clio says, as she squeezes my hand happily. Her other hand rests on her wounded stomach. Her face is still pale, but she drank some water and ate some of the sandwich I’d picked up for her before we escaped to a quiet patch of beach deep within a Cézanne on our walls.

  “I’m going to hang up a shingle that says ART DOCTOR FOR HIRE, AT YOUR SERVICE.” I tuck my hands behind my head and let the warm sun of the Mediterranean beat down on my face. Outside of the painting it is deep in the middle of the night. “By the time we leave, the reports will be pouring in from all the other museums.”

  “I can’t wait to hear the good news,” she says. Then she shifts gears. “What else did Thalia say when you saw her this morning? Did she ask about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she want to know when I was coming back?”

  “It’s like you can read her mind,” I joke.

  “What did you tell her?”

  I prop myself up on my elbow and run a finger along her bare arm. “Clio, that’s entirely up to you.”

  “Do you think I should go back?”

  “If you want to, you should.”

  “But will I still see you?”

  I laugh. “I’ll see you as much as I possibly can. But I’m not the one being called upon all the time. As far as I can tell, being a human muse is infinitely easier than being an Eternal one. I’m allowed to do things like lie on a beach all night, and something tells me you won’t be able to just hang out like this.”

  “Maybe I can convince Thalia to let me work less. So I can see you,” she suggests, her voice rising a notch.

  “Part-time Muse.”

  “Well, it’s not implausible. Besides, I did kind of predict human muses would come to be. So maybe the human muses are here so we Eternal Muses don’t have to work all the time.”

  “Ha. You think you can just push off your workload onto me.”

  “I could meet you in between assignments. See you here and there. Would that make you crazy?”

  “Totally. Totally one hundred percent insane and then some, and I’d happily do it. Clio, if I could see you for five minutes a day I would. If I could see you for five minutes a week I’d sign up for that too. All I want is for this not to end.”

  “Good. Because I think I can convince her. You know, play up the whole pity case of having been trapped for more than a century,” Clio says and bats her eyes in mock plaintiveness, then pushes out her bottom lip, pretending to make it quiver. “How’s that?”

  “Just add a sniffle to the mix and she won’t be able to resist,” I say.

  “Maybe a crocodile tear or two?”

  “Oh totally. Besides, you know she feels guilty for what she did anyway, so this is your chance,” I tease, even though it’s true. Then I shift gears. “When do you think you’ll leave?” My heart hurts to think I might not be able to see her every night here at my home away from home. But I also think it’d be the cruelest torture for her to be trapped in a painting for the rest of her days. She’ll be free, and we’ll have the chance at least of something. A little something has to be better than nothing.

  “I want to rest up for another day or so. It still hurts,” she says, gently pressing her hand to her belly. “But then, I guess I’ll go.”

  She sounds so sad, and her voice breaks again. “But we’ll see each other,” she adds, and she bends to me, her lips brushing so gently, so sweetly, I’m sure I’m dreaming again, or flying. The ends of her hair brush across my shirt, and an intoxicated sigh that becomes her name escapes my lips as she lies against me.

  “We have to see each other, Julien. I want more of this world. I want more of you,” she says, and I wrap my arms around her and hold her, inside our faraway painted land.

  We fall asleep on the beach, and I dream of nothing but all the possibilities of her.

  I blink. There’s sand in my eye. I blink again, and scrunch up my nose, because now my eye is starting to water. I sit up. So does Clio. The sand is blowing, like a breeze is sweeping up the seashore. The wind picks up quickly, and soon it’s hardly a warm breeze, or a welcoming one. Within seconds, it’s a thrashing wind, and Clio’s hair is whipping across her face. She grasps at strands that lash her, and I fumble for her hand to pull her up. The water from the sea pounds the shore, sloshing harder with each break, as if someone were rocking the landscape. We run toward the green fields near the edge of the canvas, but the sand swirls and buries the path. The painted grass turns brown and crackly.

  The waves pursue us, snapping at our feet, and I hold a hand over my eyes to keep the sand out. We trudge uphill, and with each step the ground is looser, crumbling under our feet. “We’re almost out,” I say, but I’m panicked to the core, even as I stick a hand through the end of the paint and slide onto to the museum floor, slipping in a slick pile of sand. We’re on the other side at last, but the view isn’t that much better. I stare in disbelief at the wet sand on the museum floor.

  Clio coughs and sputters. She wipes a hand across her lips, trying to get the sand out of her mouth. The avalanche has stopped, and the beautiful Cézanne has sloughed off its insides, its heart and guts in a sad pile on the floor. I peer down the hall. The rest of the rooms are quiet. But it’s as if a bolt of lightning clapped and we are waiting for the thunder that’s sure to follow.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. I gave the art its medicine. The medicine was supposed to spread.

  “We have to check on the others,” I say. Even with her wounded midsection, Clio takes off with me on a mad hunt through the galleries, surveying all the paintings on our walls, from the far ends of the first floor to the hidden nooks on the second floor.

  Everything else is fine, except for a Degas of an orchestra. There’s music coming from the frame now, only it’s out of tune. The notes of the orchestra have become warped and scratchy.

  Clio covers her ears for a second. “Oh, that’s not how it sounded when he made that painting.”

  I swivel around and look hard at her. “Right. You were there when he made it. What year was this?” I look back at the plaque, and it reads 1870.

  Then I do the math.

  This painting and the Cézanne that pulverized itself were made before 1885. But the Van Goghs, the Matisses, the Toulouse-Lautrecs came after and they’re unharmed.

  Eighteen eighty-five is the dividing line. Before Clio. After Clio.

  I can feel the puzzle pieces sliding into place. I turn to Clio and place my hands on her shoulders. “I think I know what’s going on. It’s all the art that you inspired that’s having trouble. Everything modern is fine, the other Cézannes, the ones that came after you were trapped, are fine. But the Cézanne we were in is an earlier one. It was yours. The Degas was yours. It’s like the art you inspired is starting to crumble. That has to be what’s going on. It wasn’t the Renoir curse that made the other art sick. They were never even sick in the same way. It’s that the art misses you. You have to go back to being a Muse. We need to free you.”

  “When did it start? When did these weird problems with the art really start? Not the fading of the Renoirs, but the art truly acting up?”

  I think of the dancers twirling in the halls, of Olympia’s cat coming out to play. But that’s art coming to life. I flash to the first time I saw trouble brewing—the flame, and the feathers, and the transforming of Bathsheba. “A couple days after Bonheur’s party. Why?”

  Clio darts into the main hallway and looks to the glass doors. “The sun is rising. I have to go.”

  “Right, right. I know. Let’s go. We have to set you free from the painting.”

  She shakes her head. “No. I can’t go yet.”

  “Clio, c’mon. You’ll be better soon. You can rest. Thalia will let you.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem with the art.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s daylight. I have
to go back or—” She runs to her canvas and slides back inside, cut in her stomach and all.

  I call out to her, but she’s gone still.

  Chapter 28

  When Paintings Weep

  I clean up the Cezanne, bagging up the sand and leaving it at the foot of the frame, as the other museums around the world have done.

  I glance at my watch, wishing more than a few minutes had passed, wishing it were miraculously evening and Clio was breaking free, rather than running away. I can’t even fathom how to make the time pass until then, but soon enough I find a way by tracking the body count that grows during the day. Several more paintings fall. A Goya in St. Petersburg, a handful of Vermeers in the Met, as well as a Morisot at the Art Institute of Chicago. As the list of unspooling art lengthens, I can’t help but feel like a bigger failure. Fine, the damaged Renoirs have all been restored, and that’s making museums happy. That debt has been settled, but something far more dangerous has infected other art.

  As I grab a late-afternoon coffee to go, Emilie calls.

  “Hey,” she begins. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. I’ve been following all these crazy museum reports.”

  “To say it’s bad would be an understatement.”

  She sighs sympathetically. “I’m so sorry. Does anyone know what to do?”

  “Possibly,” I say, thinking of Clio. She’s the only one who might have a clue. “But enough about the art. I could use some good news right now. Anything exciting going on with the Paris Ballet?”

  “As a matter of fact, I won a solo in Sleeping Beauty,” she says, and I can hear her grinning through the phone.

  “That’s fantastic. And can I just say I told you so?”

  “By all means, please do,” she says in happy voice.

  “Told you so,” I say as I quicken my pace up the museum steps. “Hey, I have to run inside now. But you’ll get me tickets, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Maybe I can take Clio to see the performance. The thought that she’ll be free by then brings me a speck of a smile.

  When night comes, I nearly pounce on Clio as she escapes from her paint.

  Her face is ashen, her eyes weary. “I know what’s going on with the art. I figured it out,” she says in a dead voice. She slumps against the wall, and I sink down too, sitting across from her. She drops her head into her hands. “It is all my fault.”

  “Clio, it’s not your fault. It’s just one of those things we never could have known. The art was fine when you were sort of frozen in time. Trapped in there. But now the art you inspired needs you back. We’ll get you back. It’ll be fine.” But if that were true, she would have walked out the doors this morning.

  “That’s not it, Julien. That’s not it at all.” Her voice is heavy, as if the words have a weight attached made to sink them deep into black waters.

  “What is it then?”

  Clio lifts her face and looks at me. “I caused it. They’re dying because of me.” She gazes at me with a sharp clarity in her eyes, a criminal come of her own volition to confess before the court. “They’re dying because I love you more than them.”

  I start to protest, but I can’t form words. My mouth is sawdust.

  “It has to be the reason. No Muse has ever been in love before. We only love art, or literature, or music. We love each other, and the art form we’re inspiring. Our magic is for inspiration and our love is for preservation. That’s it, nothing more. When I started caring about you, all the art I inspired, all the art I loved, got sick. It can’t be any other way, Julien.”

  “That’s just …,” I say, but I don’t know how to finish the thought. I feel as if I’ve been called on in math and I don’t have the answer. I’m just stumbling and bumbling along.

  “I thought about it all day. The Géricault—that was the first to die,” she says and puts a hand on her heart. “That painting was so hard for him. Remember how I told you that? How I had to give it so much of my love to bring it to being, and to keep it alive. The Ingres at the Louvre too. And Rembrandt. I’ve loved them all,” she says, recounting the works as if she’s weaving a sonnet on the spot, crafting an ode to the art she loves. “All I’ve ever done is put my love into paintings. Until I stopped working and stopped inspiring. Then you came along and I started wanting you. And I can’t have both.”

  “That’s not true. Don’t say that. You still love the art,” I say, as if the power of my conviction can rewind Bathsheba’s broken body into the frame, can call back the waves in The Raft of the Medusa. “Besides, the art started changing before you even came here,” I point out, hunting for any other answer, any other reason. I latch on to the idea, spilling out a theory. “I saw the art changing before anyone else did or could. Back when you were still at Bonheur’s house. The day after his party, I was at the Louvre and Bathsheba was getting sick. And this La Tour, the flame in it died out. That happened before you ever stepped out of your frame. So how can it be your fault?”

  She shakes her head with such heavy sadness. “I wish. Oh, how I wish. But I fell for you before I even came here to the Musée d’Orsay, Julien. I started falling for you the night you talked to me for the first time. Remember? When I was trying to break out at Bonheur’s house? I wanted to see you. As soon as I felt the first inklings of something for you, that’s when the paintings began to change. All the feelings I had invested in them were starting to shift to you. And the deeper I fell for you, the sicker the art got.”

  I can’t help myself. I have a grin on my face. “You liked me then?”

  She smiles. “Yes. You’re so easy to like. Falling for you is the most wonderful thing I have done. It’s more like floating,” she says, and she looks radiant, like she’s glowing because of me, and the incongruity of the moment—of this admission in the midst of this destruction—is not lost on me, but even so I am unable to resist touching her. I grab her and kiss her hard on the mouth, holding her face.

  These lips, this face, this heat, this life. More, more, more.

  But then I flash onto the paintings, to how the sickness started at the Louvre, slowly at first, with a few coughs and sniffles. Until the fuse was lit in Starry Night, and the morning after the Géricault drowned in its own waves.

  We stop kissing.

  “So how do we do it?”

  “I have to do it,” she says. “I have to heal the art. There are sick paintings in London and New York and at the Louvre, right?”

  “And St. Petersburg and Chicago now too. And you need to touch the paintings, right? You need to be able to go to all those museums and touch the art, right?”

  “Yes,” she says in a careful, measured voice. “But it’s not just that.”

  “What is it then?” I ask, but I doubt I want to hear the answer.

  “I need to try it first. Where is the Cézanne from last night?”

  “Where it was last night, so it doesn’t get any worse. But roped off.”

  We walk a few rooms over to the Cézanne. The bag of sand is nestled at the foot of the frame. The canvas is a messy stew of mottled oils.

  “So, first I’ll just touch it,” she says, and places her palms on the remains. Nothing happens. “Now, I’ll concentrate on putting love back into it.” She lays her hands on the canvas once more, closes her eyes. Her lips part, and she looks so beautiful, the way she looked when she first told me she was in love with me. It makes my chest hurt, and it makes me want her at the same awful time.

  As she stands like that, the sand from the bag swirls around her, a gentle wind, then dances back to the frame, where it returns to paint and the colors become grass and sea and trees again, reforming a ravaged landscape into the luscious one Cézanne created.

  I have seen so many amazing things. I’ve had my mind blown many times, but watching art repaired, like time-lapse photography run backward, has got to be the top.

  When Clio opens her eyes, she looks the slightest bit different. It’s hard to pinpoint the change, but she looks a
bit less like Clio and more like Thalia. Not in her features, but in her demeanor. As if she’s been sharpened.

  “The thing is, it’s not enough for me to love the art. I have to put the love I feel for you into paintings. To save the art, I have to stop loving you.”

  Chapter 29

  Travel Plans

  She is the poison and she is the cure.

  “It’s like a debt. And I have to repay,” she says.

  I always knew we were stolen. I always knew that we existed in a strange and wonderful otherness, but I thought we’d simply have to part. And that would have been hard enough. But this is worse. Because I won’t stop feeling for her.

  I sink to the floor. My body feels like stone. Clio is crying. Tears streak down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That only took a tiny bit away.” She touches my cheek, so soft and tender that I have to close my eyes just to contain all the feelings that threaten to burst out of my heart. “I’m still crazy about you now, Julien.”

  Now. But soon, not at all.

  “So I guess I should let you out the door.” My voice is empty.

  “No. As long as I’m part of the painting no one can see me except you. But once I leave the museum, I’m no longer bound to the painting. Anyone can see me then, and I’d have to go into the front doors of all the museums, and I might not be able to touch the art long enough to fix it. When Thalia touched the paintings yesterday, she said it was only for a few seconds, right? That’s why no one stopped her, plus there was so much commotion, I’m sure.”

  I nod.

  She keeps talking. “But for this to work, I really have to focus. You saw what it takes. I’ll need a few minutes with each piece. I have to hold my hands on the art and send them my love. I can’t do it when there are crowds, or guards would stop me.” The selfish part of me wants to scream how is that my problem? But I can’t. I love the same things she loves. “To repair the art, I need your help.”