Dreams of Distant Shores

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “He doesn’t sound so very stupid.”

  “He had help,” she repeated with a touch of asperity. “Anyway, it was loathsome, gray-haired old biddies who armed him to fight me. Not lissome, rosy-fingered maidens. You remember that when you paint me.”

  “I will.” He added, brooding over the matter, “If I can find you.”

  “Oh, you will,” she said more cheerfully. “Never fret. I do wish you would take me out of here and let me watch, though.”

  “No.”

  “I could advise you.”

  “You’d scare my model.”

  “I wouldn’t talk, I promise you! And if I forget, just cover me up. Please, Harry? After all, I have inspired you. You could do me a favor. It’s awfully dark in here.”

  “Well.”

  “Please? Harry?”

  “Well.” He got to his feet again, dusted off his trousers, yawning now and forgetting why he had come up. “I’ll think about it. Good night.”

  “Good night, Harry.”

  He closed the cupboard door and went to bed.

  The next morning, his ambition inflamed by what the gallery seemed to think worth hanging, he ate his breakfast hastily and early. He would not come home without his Medusa, he was determined, even if he had to search the ravaged streets and slums for her. No, he told Mrs. Grommet, she should not expect him home before evening, if then. He would go as far as he must to find his inspiration, even as far, he admitted in his inmost heart, as the country, to see if he might find that unexpected face in Aurora’s shadow.

  He got as far as the street. He paused to latch the garden gate behind him and was turned to stone.

  A woman appeared out of nowhere, it seemed. She murmured something to him; he hardly knew what. He looked at her and time stopped. The normal street noises of passing carriages, birds, doors opening, voices calling simply vanished. He heard the faint hum of his own blood in his ears and recognized it as a constant, unchanging sound out of antiquity. The sound heard when all else is silent; nothing moves.

  Her face was all bone and shadow, full of stark paradoxes: young yet ancient with experience, beautiful yet terrifying with knowledge, living yet somehow alive no longer. Whatever those great, wide-set eyes had seen had left a haunting starkness in them that riveted him where he stood. She spoke again. She might have been speaking Etruscan, for all the words made sense to Harry. Her mouth held the same contradictions: it was lovely, its grim line warned of horror, it hungered, it would never eat again.

  Sound washed over him again: a delivery wagon, a yowling cat, a young housemaid chasing after it down the street. He heard his stammering voice. “Where—where did you come from?”

  She gestured. Out of a tree, out of the sky, her hand said. She was very poorly dressed, he realized: her thin, tight jacket torn at both elbows, the hem of her skirt awash with dried mud, her shoes worn down and beginning to split. She spoke again, very slowly, as if to a young child, or a man whose wits had badly strayed.

  “I wondered if you had some work for me, sir. If maybe you could use me for your paintings. Anything will do. Any amount of time—”

  One of his hands closed convulsively above her elbow; his other hand pulled the gate open.

  “Oh, yes,” he said unsteadily. “Oh, yes. Miss. Whoever you—”

  “Jo, sir.”

  “Jo. Come in.” He swept her down the walk, threw the door wide, and shouted, “Mrs. Grommet! Mrs. Grommet! We need you!”

  “You have lice,” Mrs. Grommet said.

  Jo, hearing her within a cascade of lukewarm water, thought her voice sounded simply matter-of-fact. The kitchen maid stopped pouring water, began to pass a hard, lumpy bar of soap over Jo’s wet hair. It took time to work up a lather.

  “I’m not surprised,” Jo murmured. She knelt in her tattered chemise beside a huge tub, allowing Mrs. Grommet the sight of her cracked, filthy feet. She could only hope that whatever vision had possessed Mr. Waterman to let her in the house would not be washed down the drain. But, she told herself coldly, if that happens then I will be no worse than I was before, and at least I will be clean.

  “Go on, girl,” the housekeeper said. “Give it a good scrub. Pretend you’re doing the front steps.”

  “There’s such a lot of it,” the maid ventured. Jo closed her eyes, felt the blunt, vigorous fingers work away at her until she imagined herself underwater, floating in some river god’s grip, being flailed back and forth like water weed.

  “Rinse now,” Mrs. Grommet ordered, and the water flowed again, copious and mercilessly cold. “There,” the housekeeper said at last with satisfaction. “That should do it.”

  Freed, Jo straightened. The maid tossed a towel over her head and began to pummel her again.

  “Go and boil some water,” Mrs. Grommet told her. She added to Jo when the girl had gone, “Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, these new hot water pipes. He didn’t recognize you, did he?”

  Jo swallowed. Mrs. Grommet’s eyes, green as unripe tomatoes, said very little beyond her words. She knows, Jo thought. She knows why I ran away. But what Mrs. Grommet felt about that, Jo could only guess. Anyone else in the housekeeper’s position would have made her sentiments about this immoral, unwashed bit of dredge crossing her employer’s threshold very plain, very soon.

  “No,” Jo said simply. “He doesn’t. He saw my face and wants to paint it. That’s all. I don’t know if he’ll feel the same when he sees it again. If not, I’ll go.”

  Mrs. Grommet did not comment on that. “I’ll see what I can find for you to wear while you wash.”

  “Mrs. Grommet—” Her voice faltered; the housekeeper, hand on the doorknob, waited expressionlessly. “I know my clothes are a disgrace, but they’re all I’ve got, if I go. Please—”

  “Don’t worry, girl,” Mrs. Grommet said briskly, “I won’t turn you out naked into the street, whatever becomes of you.”

  An hour later, Jo sat at the kitchen fireplace, letting her hair dry while she ate some cold beef and bread. She was dressed in a dark, shapeless gown that had made its way, some time in the distant past, to Harry’s costume closet. Made to fit tight at wrists and neck and beneath the bosom, it hung on Jo like a sack. The kitchen maid, chopping onions for a pie, could not stop staring at her. Jo, too weary to eat much, didn’t wonder at her staring, until the cook, a great mound of a woman with cheeks the color of raw beef, who was rolling out pastry, made as though to swat the maid with a floury hand.

  “Leave her be, then,” she grunted.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” the girl murmured to Jo. “I can’t help it. It’s your hair.”

  Jo glanced sideways at it, as it fell around her face. It did look unfamiliar clean, but other than that it was just her hair.

  “What’s the matter with it? Have I got the mange, too?”

  “No,” the maid whispered, flicking her eyes to it again. “It’s so beautiful, all long and gold and curly.”

  Jo blinked, at a loss. Her eyes rose helplessly, sought Mrs. Grommet’s.

  The housekeeper, sipping tea at the table and still inscrutable, gave a brief nod. “Oh, yes. He’ll like that.”

  Jo, suddenly terrified, stood abruptly, her meal scattering out of her fingers into the fire. “I have to go, then,” she heard herself babble. “I have to go. Where are my shoes? I had a couple of coppers in my shoes—”

  Mrs. Grommet gazed at her wordlessly. Her eyes came alive suddenly, as she pushed herself to her feet. “There now, Jo,” she said faintly, rounding the table to Jo’s side. “Mr. Waterman’s not like that. You know that. There’s no need to run away from him again.” She put her hand on Jo’s arm and pointed to a grubby little pile near the hearth. “There’s your shoes and clothes. The coins are in there, just as I found them. If you need them, you’ll have them.”

  “Why,” Jo asked her wildly, “are you treating me this way?”

  “What way?” Mrs. Grommet asked, astonished.

  It took Jo a moment to r
emember the word. “Kind.” Spoken, it seemed to surprise them both. “Why are you being kind to me? You know—you—”

  Mrs. Grommet’s eyes went distant again. But she kept her hand on Jo’s arm, patted it a little. “Stay a bit,” she said finally, eluding the question. “Mr. Waterman will think we drove you away if you leave now. He’ll only go looking for you.”

  “But I don’t understand—”

  “Well, you might ask him what he has in mind. You might stay long enough to listen to him. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s nothing more than a painting.”

  Jo, still trembling, sat down at the hearth again. She heard whispering; after a moment, the little maid brought her a cup of tea. She sipped it wordlessly, the kitchen silent behind her but for the thump of the rolling pin. When she knew she could stand again, she knew it was time. She rose, set the cup on the table. Mrs. Grommet looked at her.

  “I’ll take you up,” she said briefly. Jo nodded gratefully, too light- headed to speak.

  She passed familiar hallways, paintings, patterns of wallpaper, carpets that seemed more real in memory. It was, she thought dazedly, like being in two places at once; she was uncertain, from one step to the next, if she were moving backward or forward in time. They went up the second flight of steeper stairs into the top of the house. There, as Mrs. Grommet opened the door, Jo saw another memory that was real: the long rows of windows overlooking the street, the park across from them, and on the other side of the house, the river. She could see the tree under which she had wakened in the other world at dawn. She smelled oils and pungent turpentine, saw the untidy shelves of books and sketches, the oddments everywhere—peacock feathers, beads, baskets, seashells, tapestries, rich shawls of taffeta, goblets, moth-eaten furs.

  She saw Harry. He stood across the room, watching her silently as she entered. She had never seen anyone look at her like that before, as though she were something not quite human, a piece of dream, maybe, that he had to step into to see her properly.

  He said absently, “Thank you, Mrs. Grommet.”

  “Yes, sir.” She lingered. “Will you need—”

  “Nothing. Thank you.”

  She closed the door behind her. Harry crossed the room, came close to Jo. Still in his dream, she saw, he reached out, touched her hair with one finger. She felt herself stiffen. He drew back hastily. She saw his eyes again, anxious now, tentative, fascinated. Like some mooncalf boy in love for the first time, she realized, and not even sure with what.

  “Will you let me paint you?” he asked huskily.

  “Of course,” she answered, so amazed she forgot her terrors.

  “I see you—I see you as a very ancient power, a goddess, almost, who is herself mortal, but who can kill with a look. To see her is to die. But not to see her is to live without living. I see you, in all her terrible, devastating beauty, as Medusa.”

  “Yes, Mr. Waterman,” she said, completely mystified, and thought with wonder: he doesn’t recognize me at all.

  Much later that day, almost into the next, Harry sat on the floor beside the open cupboard door, babbling to the Gorgon.

  “The lines of her face are stunning. They transfixed me the moment I saw them. They seem shaped—sculpted—by primal forces, like stone, yet very much alive. They are beauty, they are death, they are youth, they are ancient beyond belief. And her eyes. Medusa’s eyes. They gaze at you from another world, the Underworld perhaps; they are portals to that grim world. Of the palest gray, nearly colorless, like the mist between life and death—” He heard a vague noise from within the cupboard, almost as if the Gorgon had sneezed. “I beg your pardon. Did you speak?”

  “No,” she said faintly.

  “And her hair. I’ve never seen anything like it. White gold, rippling down from her face to her knees. Again that suggestion of youth and antiquity, knowledge gained too early from unearthly places—”

  “Harry.”

  “Her mouth—there again—”

  “Harry.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “I think you should let me see her.”

  “Her mouth is like—”

  “I promise, by Perseus’s shield that bore my reflection and killed me, that I won’t speak a word in her presence.”

  “Again, it contradicts itself—it should be mobile, plump, alluring, the delicate pink of freshwater pearls—”

  “You can put me in a dark corner where she won’t notice me.”

  “But it has long forgotten how to smile; its line is inflexible and determined—”

  “Harry. It’s me you’re painting. I haven’t seen myself in thousands of years. Have a heart. Let me see what humans think of me these days. I’m not used to being associated with beauty.”

  Harry was silent. He thought he perceived the faintest undertone in the Gorgon’s plea, as though she were laughing at him. But her words argued otherwise. And it did seem an appropriate request. She had, after all, inspired him; how could he deny her his vision of herself?

  “You’ll forget,” he said guardedly, “and say something impulsive and frighten her away.”

  “I won’t. I have sworn.”

  “I’ll think about—”

  “Harry. Stop thinking about it. Just do it. Or I’ll yell my head off here in the cupboard like one of Bluebeard’s wives.”

  Harry blinked. “You could have done that—”

  “Today, while she was here. Yes. But I didn’t, did I? I am capable of controlling myself. I won’t say a word in her presence, no matter how—”

  “How?”

  “No matter what.”

  “Do I amuse you?” Harry demanded indignantly.

  “No, no,” the Gorgon said soothingly. “No. I’m just incredibly old, Harry, and my sense of humor is warped. I’m very ignorant of the modern world, and it would do me good to see even a tiny corner of it.”

  Harry sighed, mollified. “All right. Tomorrow morning, before she comes.”

  “Thank you, Harry.”

  He got up early to hang the Gorgon above some high bookshelves, among other old sketches and watercolors scattered along the wall. The contradictions in the face startled him anew: the frightened eyes, the pale, anxious brows, the lush, voluptuous, wine-red mouth. His eyes lingered on that mouth as he descended the ladder. He would make a trip to the country soon, he decided. She was down there with Alex nearly every weekend. The mouth seemed to crook in a faint smile; his foot froze on the bottom rung.

  “No,” he said sharply. “You must be absolutely still.”

  The mouth composed itself. The eyes gazed unseeingly across the room. He had placed the painting where most often his model would have her back to it. She would only glimpse it as she faced the door to leave. And few people looked that high without reason, Harry had learned to his chagrin when his work had been hung near the ceiling in exhibits. She would never notice the peculiar face with its mismatched features unless she looked for it.

  He spent a few days sketching Jo, learning every nuance of her face, experimenting with various positions, draperies. He decided, in the end, simply to paint her face at the instant she saw herself reflected in the young hero’s shield. The Medusa turning her baleful gaze upon herself and realizing in that instant that she had slain herself. The shield would frame her within the canvas. The pale, rippling beauty of the model’s hair would transform itself easily into gorgeous, dangerous snakes. Jo’s stark-white skin, drained of life-force it seemed, hollowed and shadowed with weariness and strain, hinted of the Medusa’s otherworldly origins. He positioned black silk in graceful folds about her neck to emphasize the shadows. That would be her only costume. That and the snakes in her hair, which might suggest, in their golden brilliance, the final light of the sun upon her dying and deadly face.

  So lost he was in the excitement of inspiration that he scarcely remembered to speak to his model. She came in the mornings, murmured, “Good morning, Mr. Waterman,” and sat in her chair beside his easel. He arranged the silk about he
r throat, giving her a greeting or a pleasantry. Then she became so still she hardly seemed to breathe. He worked, utterly absorbed, until the light began to fade. Then, her pallor deep by then, her humanity began to intrude upon him. She is tired, he would realize. She must be hungry. I am.

  He would put his palette down and open the door. “Mrs. Grommet,” he would call down the stairs. Then he would study the day’s work until the housekeeper hove into view, bearing a tea tray and Jo’s wages for the day. Jo would follow her down. Mrs. Grommet would feed her in the kitchen, for Harry was reluctant to glimpse, at this sensitive stage, his Medusa with her cheeks full of mutton.

  The Gorgon above their heads watched all this silently, refraining from comment.

  She hardly saw Jo, Harry knew, except when she rose to leave. Then the wan, beautiful face would be visible to the painting above her head. Jo never looked that high; she seemed oddly incurious about the studio. Other models had prowled around peering at his canvases, opening books, trying on bits of finery, fingering this and that. But Jo just came and left, as though, Harry thought, she truly vanished into another world and was not much interested in his.

  The Gorgon finally asked one evening, after Jo had followed Mrs. Grommet downstairs, “Where does she go?”

  “What?” Harry asked through a bite of sandwich.

  “Your model. Where does she sleep at night?”

  “How should I know?” He was sitting in a soft stuffed chair, weary from standing all day, and devouring sandwiches and cakes, he suspected, like a well-brought-up vulture. He could see the Gorgon’s face from that position if he wanted. Her voice startled him; she hadn’t said much for days.

  “Aren’t you pleased with me, Harry?”

  “For being so quiet? Oh, yes, I’m very grateful.” He swallowed another mouthful of hot, sweet tea, and looked up at her. “What do you think of her?”