Winter's Tale Part 7

"You look like a crook. Who are you, what do you do, what is your relations.h.i.+p to Beverly, are you aware of her special condition, and what are your motivations, intentions, and desires? Tell the absolute truth, don't elaborate, stop if a child or servant comes in, and be brief."

"How can I be brief? These are complicated questions."

"You can be brief. If you were one of my journalists, you'd be finished by now. G.o.d created the world in six days. Ape him."

"I'll try."

"Unnecessary."

"All right."

"Unnecessary."

"My name is Peter Lake. You're right. I'm a crook. I'm a burglar, but I'm really a mechanica"and a good one. I love Beverly. Our relations.h.i.+p goes by no name. I have no intentions; I am aware of her special condition; I desire her; I am moved... by love. When we drove across the lake this afternoon and Beverly held the little girl in her arms, I felt a responsibility far more satisfying than any pleasure I have ever known.

"I realize that the child is yours. I realize that Beverly may die.And I am more than aware of my own shortcomings as a father, a provider, and a protector. And though I know about machines, I'm ignorant. I know that I'm ignorant. And I know... I know that the strange little family on the sleigh must soon break up. But Willa loves Beverly. Beverly is virtually her mother. And I think that we should help to take care of her for a while, not so much for her sake, as for Beverly's. Do you understand?"

"How do I know," asked Isaac Penn," that you are not moved merely by vanity or curiosity. How do I know that you aren't here for the sake of the money in this family?"

Peter Lake was in full possession of himself." I was an orphan," he said." Orphans don't have vanity. I'm not sure why, but one needs parents to be vain. No matter what my faults, I tend to approach things with a certain grat.i.tude, and those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful. As for curiosity, well, I've seen a lot, too much in fact. Curiosity has no bearing on the matter. I don't know why you brought it up."

"And money? Do you know why I brought that up?" "Yes, I thought of the money. It excited me." He smiled." It really did. I had escalating dreamsa"of being your right-hand man; of doing all the things that men of power and wealth have occasion to do; of wearing a different suit every day, and clean linen. I became a senator, President. Beverly lived. Our children were great in their turn. The articles on us in the encyclopedia were so long that they took up most of the volume *L.' All around the country there were monuments to me, of marble as white as snow. In the end, I confess, I was flying about the universe. Beverly and I touched the moon, and flew off to the stars. But, mind you, after a few hours of this, there was no place else to go. After just a few hours of walking with kings, I was very glad to be Peter Lake, of whom no one has ever heard, completely anonymous, free.

"Mr. Penn, the only people who want that kind of stuff are those who are too stupid to imagine it and then be done with it. Now, this may sound strange to you, sir, and it's new to me (within the last few days, as I see it), but I want responsibility. That, to me, is the highest glory. I want to give, not take. And I love Beverly." Do you realizea"what shall I call you?" "Everyone always calls me by both my names." "Do you realize, Peter Lake, that the money, the presence or the money, can erode and corrupt those feelings?"

"I do, sir. I've seen it myself. I feel it within me, too."

"So, then, what do you intend to do to prevent thisa"a.s.suming that you will have that privilege?"

"I know just what to do. I'm not educated, but I'm not a fool. After... if... Beverly dies, I'll disappear. I don't want any of this." He indicated with a sweep of his arm the room in which they sat but he meant, actually, everything in the world.

"You think I would let you do that? The man that my daughter loves? And she does. She told me soa"and she didn't have to."

"It isn't up to you."

"Well, I'll tell you, Peter Lake, I would let you do that. My impulse would be to provide for you for the rest of your life, to bring you into the family, to make you one of us. But I won't. It's for Beverly. Do you see?"

"Yes. I see. Of course I see. And, further, Mr. Penn, I was not meant, evidently, to have a family in the sense in which you refer to it. I was not born to be protected, but, I warrant, to protect."

"Then we are in agreement. I a.s.sume that you will stop being a burglar, and revert to being a mechanic."

Peter Lake nodded." There is one thing, one thing which I will ask. I need your help for it alone."

"And what is that?"

"A child. There was once a child that I saw in a hallway, in a tenement, a long time ago. Of all the things I have ever seen, this I remember best. It has been with me ever since..."

But then Peter Lake was interrupted by the whole troupe exiting from the kitchen, their cheeks red from the heat of the oven, platters of food and bottles of wine in their hands. Before they sat at the table to eat, Beverly sent them all to wash up, not because they needed to (their hands were very clean), but because she wanted to embrace her father and thank him for accepting Peter Lake, as she knew he had, from his expression and that of Peter Lakea"and because she had been listening at the door.

LATE that night, refreshed and strengthened by a good dinner and much free laughter, Isaac Penn and Peter Lake sat in the small study, staring at the fire. The heat ran around half a dozen logs that hadbecome red cylinders of flame, changing their colors until they looked like six suns in a black universe of firebrick. Their glow was an invisible wind that irradiated the room and froze the two men in placea" like deer in a forest which is burning all around them, who lift their heads to the highest and brightest flames and look into a tunnel of white light.

"The doctors told me," said Isaac Penn, as if he were talking to himself," that she would be dead in a few months. That was almost a year ago." He glanced at an ice-covered window in which the moon had gone all astray, and listened to the wind coming off the Lake of the Coheeries as it could only there, on a midwinter night, like the roaring jet winds of Mars or Saturn." It's a mystery to me that she can sleep outside, in that. She wasn't supposed to. In winter, she's supposed to come in. But she refuses, even up here. I can never get used to thinking that my daughter is out there in that caldron of ice. And yet, in the mornings, she comes to breakfast revived after twelve hours in cold that would kill a strong healthy man. The wind and snow cover her, attack her. At first, I used to beg her to come in; but then I realized that doing what she does is what keeps her alive."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"I wonder," said Peter Lake, aware that he was in a warm comfortable place in a vast sea of snow and ice which maneuvered beyond the walls like a wild unopposed army." I wonder about the others."

"What others?"

"The thousands, the hundreds of thousands, like Beverly."

"We're all like Beverly. She's early, that's all."

"But it doesn't have to be that way."

"What way? Be clear."

"The poor should not have to suffer, as they do, in their millions, and die young."

"The poor? Do you mean everyone? Certainly you mean everyone in New York, for in New York even the rich are poor. But is Beverly poor according to your definition? No. And yet, what's the difference?"

"The difference," said Peter Lake," is that small children, their mothers, and their fathers, live and die like beasts. They don't havespecial sleeping porches, a hundred pounds of down and sable, marble baths as big as pools, ranks of doctors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins, salvers of roast meat, hot drinks in silver vacuum bottles, and cheerful happy families. I want Beverly to have these things, and would die rather than see her go without them. But there is a difference. The child I once saw in a hallway was barefoot, bareheaded, dressed in filthy rags, starving, blind, abandoned. He had no feather bed. He was near death. And he was standing, because he didn't have a place to lie down and die."

"I know this," Isaac Penn a.s.serted." I've seen such things far more often than you have. You forget that I was a poorer man than you have ever been, for a longer time than you have yet lived. I had a father and a mother, and brothers and sisters, and they all died young, too soon. I know all these things. Do you think I'm a fool? In The Sun we bring injustices to the attention of the public, and suggest sensible means to correct inequities where they serve no purpose. I realize that there is too much needless and cruel suffering. But you, you don't seem to understand that these people whom you profess to champion have, in their struggles, compensations." "What compensations?"

"Their movements, pa.s.sions, emotions; their captured bodies and captured senses are directed with no less certainty than the microscopic details of the seasons, or the infinitesimal components of the city's great and single motion. They are, in their seemingly random actions, part of a plan. Don't you know that?" "I see no justice in that plan."

"Who said," lashed out Isaac Penn," that you, a man, can always perceive justice? Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it: can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understanda"until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence.

"No ch.o.r.eographer, no architect, engineer, or painter could planmore thoroughly and subtly. Every action and every scene has its purpose. And the less power one has, the closer he is to the great waves that sweep through all things, patiently preparing them for the approach of a future signified not by simple human equity (a child could think of that), but by luminous and surprising connections that we have not imagined, by ill.u.s.trations terrifying and benevolenta"a golden age that will show not what we wish, but some bare awkward truth upon which rests everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery. We try to bring it about without knowing exactly what it is, and only touch upon it. No matter, for all the flames and sparks of justice throughout all time reach to invigorate unseen epochsa"like engines whose power glides on hidden lines to upwell against the dark in distant cities unaware."

"I don't know," said Peter Lake, confused." I think of Beverly, and I'm not sure about the golden age of which you speak, which is beyond our lives, and which we will never see. Think of Beverly. How could it be?"

Isaac Penn got up from his chair to leave the room. At the door, he turned to Peter Lake, who felt cold and alone. Isaac Penn was an old man, and sometimes he became dreadfully grave, as if he were in the presence of a thousand tormenting spirits. His eyes reflected the fire. They seemed unnatural, like tunnels of flame into a soul grown so deep that it must soon leave life." Have you not yet realized that Beverly has seen the golden agea"not one that was, nor one that will be, but one that is here? Though I am an old man, I have not yet seen it. And she has. That is what has broken my heart."

THE approach of Christmas had turned the children into excited little dynamos of greed, and Christmas morning saw an impressive trading of loot, in which nothing was notable save Willa's present for her father, the first gift she had given in her life. She had taken a day and a half to decide, and then Peter Lake had driven across the lake and over to the town of Lake of the Coheeries, where he bought it. Isaac Penn opened his presents last, and, in one big box that hadhad holes cut into it, he found a fat white rabbit with a tag around its neck that read "From Willa."

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, Beverly and Peter Lake went for a ride and took more than half a dozen children with thema" Willa; Jack; Harry; Jamie Absonord (who had recently arrived by train and iceboat, and whose heart still throbbed for Jack, though, now, neither would look at the other for any reason whatsoever); and the two Gamely children and Sarah s.h.i.+ngles, plump and whimsical Coheeries youth with perfectly balanced Yankee sharpness, Indian magic, English competence, and Dutch madness. The stocky, cold-proof Gamelys and young Sarah sat in the high back seat of the sleigh, looking like a row of Bavarian wood carvings, ready for anything.

Since the lake was covered with perfectly flat hard-packed snow, Athansor had at last an endless place in which to run. When Peter Lake slackened the reins to give him his head, he pointed himself straight down the length of the lake and bolted for the horizon. They picked up speed. Everyone settled in his seat and closed his coat. The horse went faster and faster. He soon exceeded the peak velocity of the fastest horse-drawn sleighs, and he was just loping. Then he really began to run. The wind hit them so hard that they had to bend into it and squint. They drew up even to an iceboat speeding along a cleared track and pa.s.sed it so fast that it looked as if it were rus.h.i.+ng the other way. Next, Athansor lifted his head and took a series of long shallow leaps. The sleigh left the surface and flew through the air. It touched lightly every now and then, but the runners seldom met the snow, and when they did there was a short hiss as it was vaporized to steam. The children were amazed, but not frightened. As they raced west into the setting sun, they saw it stop still, reverse itself, and start to climb." Dear G.o.d," said Peter Lake, swallowing hard," the sun is rising in the west!" But no one heard him, for the wind was attacking them with such strength that the world seemed to have turned into a siren. They were moving so fast they couldn't see anything of the sh.o.r.e except a smooth white streak like an enamel band on a china bowl. Even the Gamelys had to hunker down in the wind and hope for the best. Then Athansor slowed. The runners returned to the ground, the wind grew weaker, the sun had stoppedand once again begun to sink, and they could see the sh.o.r.e. When Athansor fell into trotting like any other horse, Peter Lake directed him to the soft early lights of a settlement ahead.

It was a tiny town somewhere so deep in New York's western sprint that the local Iroquois were still awaiting Pierre de la Tranche. The village was covered by thirty feet of snow, which made its houses look like the creations of mad architects who built in holes in the ground. But the tavern was in the clear, and its lights shone out upon the lake from a windblown knoll. Smoke exited the chimneys in remarkably thin and solid lines. The children took note of this for their future drawing.

Athansor trotted up to the tavern barn and turned to Peter Lake as though to ask if he should bring the sleigh inside. Beverly said no, she would wait where they were while Peter Lake took the children for some hot Antwerp Flinders. Peter Lake protested. She should come in too. Why not? It was not Mouquin's; they wouldn't be dancing; she wouldn't be in a corseted gown; and they might spend all of a quarter of an hour there before the trip back.

"No," said Beverly,"I feel especially hot." He put his hand on her cheek, and then on her forehead. She was thermal equilibrium itself. But she did seem agitated.

"Beverly," said Peter Lake," tell me why you don't want to go in there."

"I told you," she answered." I feel feverish."

He thought for a moment." Is it because of me?" he asked." Because I'm not a gentleman with a sleigh driver and the right clothes?" He gestured toward the inside of the barn, where two dozen rigs and two dozen horses were packed in stalls and wooden ways, and two dozen coachmen were having a party of their own around a forge that had been pressed into social service. This village was a popular destination for many young people who regularly drove into the country to have dinner and drink at a favored tavern. The very rich always went the farthest out.

"You know it's not that," answered Beverly." I'd much rather have the man who drives the sleigh than the man who is driven in it. I'll be all right. We'll go to Mouquin's. Here," she said, pa.s.sing him bright-eyed Willa, who was excited by the unfamiliar blacknessof a winter night." Willa needs a hot drink." By this time the older children were tumbling over one another in the snow. Peter Lake put Willa on his shoulder and jumped down to join them. He turned to Beverly for a moment, and then walked toward the tavern.

He and the six children attracted much attention inside. Lovely women came over to talk to Willa, Jamie Absonord, and the delicious-looking and beady-eyed but beautiful little s.h.i.+ngles girl, Sarah. Their escorts smiled approvingly. Peter Lake wanted Beverly to be with him. It didn't seem right without her, and he was embarra.s.sed by the stares that, with Beverly present, would have made him proud. The room was full of the fire, excitement, and ease that come from dancing. It made Peter Lake's heart spring back in memory of the nineteentha"hisa"century, when he had grown up, and when things had been quieter, wilder, and more beautifula"although, surrounded by children and dancers at an out-of-the-way inn on the Lake of the Coheeries, he felt that he was in a time when beauty mattered, and he had only to think of Beverly, outside, beyond the tar-black windows, to confirm it.

"Nine Antwerp Flinders," he said to the barmaid." Seven without the gin. Wait a minute. Make that nine Antwerp Flinden; a"one with an eighth of gin, for this little girl; six with half gin (Jamie Absonord squealed in antic.i.p.ation of being slightly drunk); one with triple; and one in a closed container to take when we go, double gin. Heavy on the cinnamon, heavy on the lemon, heavy on the cream, lots of minced plum."

The Antwerp Flinders arrived boiling hot. Peter Lake and thechildren drank them as they watched an impa.s.sioned quadrille of two-dozen elegant dancers. The seasoned floor planks shook and the fires across the room blinked at them through a snapping gate of silk and taffeta gowns, and swallowtail coats of English gem wool. Not fully appreciative of a dance between the s.e.xes (except for Harry, who was suffering some inexplicable adolescent madness that made him recline against the wall and sleep like a narcoleptic), the children got into a hot and tipsy game of Duck Thumb.

Peter Lake was still sad that Beverly remained outside. He missed her so much that he became absolutely saturated with love, which made him breathe slowly in painful pleasure and feel a glow throughout his body, which traveled from here to there as it overflowed the containers that contained it. So he nearly vaulted the table, and rushed outside. He made his way to the side of the barn, where Athansor was eating some hay. No Beverly there. He peeked inside. Not there, either. Then he saw some tracks that led around back. He followed them into the darkness, between pines heavily laden with snow, and there he found Beverly standing on the hillside, hands clasped, staring into the tavern. Before she knew that he was there, he saw what she was looking at. It was a nearly silent miniature; a little lighted cube; like a paper house with a candle in it. Distance and darkness converted an ebullient scene full of motion and glare into something sad and whole, and of another time. He saw that Beverly had taken it and clasped it to her, as if it were a jewel in its intricate foil. She had by distance converted it into a painting, or an accidental photograph, that touched her to the quick. She had remained outside because she had never had the opportunity for society, and she was afraid. Innocent things, such as a dance in a tavern, terrified her. He realized that Mouquin's would be a test of courage more for her than for him.

He thought at first that it might be easy to lead her inside to the music and dancing. There was, truly, nothing to fear. But she did fear, and it had brought her outside, to a position in which she could embrace the scene and know its spirit. This was not unlike Peter Lake's far views of the city, from which he always learned a great deal more than he would have from within. No, he wouldn't try to coax her ina"even though she might be adored there. He would not bring her in, he would join her on the intense periphery.

He closed upon her in the snow. She was almost ashamed at being discovered alone amid the pines. But she saw from his expression that he had understood, and she knew that now he was really with her.

They peered through the windows for a while and watched the children at their table, completely absorbed in Duck Thumb. Harry, sleeping against the wall, looked like an overworked medieval cook-boy. Then Peter Lake raided the place and kidnapped the children, and they were all in the sleigh once again, speeding eastward into the ferocious dark. Beverly drank her Antwerp Flinder. They werecontent to wrap themselves in blankets and furs and lean back as Athansor pulled the sleigh, not as fast as before, but at least as fast as the pleasing clip of a prestigious through-train.

Above them, in the cold, was a confused hiss of clouds and stars racing past in islands and lakes. It was such a hypnotic sound that they tilted their heads to stare at the chirping, crackling, rhythmically beating sea of starlight and fast-flowing cloud. On they traveled, on and on, smooth as the wind, gliding selflessly over ice and snow on the strong steel runners.

Athansor, the white horse, moved in time with the diffuse static from above. Though he had the power and joy of a fast horse heading for his stable, they could sense in his happiness much more than that. They could sense that the hypnotic rhythm in which he moved was that of an unimaginably long journey. He was running in a way that they had never seen. His strides became lighter and lighter, harder and harder, and more and more perfect. He seemed to be readying himself to shed the world.

THE HOSPITAL IN PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE.

IN the same way that certain sections of the city were mortal battlegrounds, some parts of the calendar were always more warlike than others, and during the days between Christmas and the new year all elements seemed to conspire to subdue the soul. Fire, rain, sickness, cold, and death were everywhere spread through the dark as in a painting of h.e.l.l. People struggled until exhaustion, giving everything they had, and the days were packed with trials and mysteries.

When the Penns and Peter Lake returned from Lake of the Coheeries they found snow locked in combat with warm humid winds that had come on a raid from the Gulf of Mexico. The atmosphere was full of the tangled gray trails that would mark future battles in the air; and the city's children, released from school and trappedinside all day by sleet, were at wit's end. Then events began to speed up, as if an engine were determined to pull the year from its trough and was running as fast and hard as the stokers could lay on more coal.

The mayor, his wife, and a train of favored flunkies descended upon the Penns one afternoon, all so drunk that their breathing made the house into a vapor-bomb more dangerous than a silo in late summer. Included in the party was the commissioner of police. Needless to say, this made Peter Lake skittish, especially because the commissioner repeatedly looked at him and then screwed up his face as if saying to himself,"Who is that?" Several years before, in one of the fits of late adolescence that had followed Peter Lake well into his thirties, he had written the very police commissioner who now puzzled after his ident.i.ty a series of insulting, burn-the-bridges, flirt-with-self-destruction, challenge-the-devil, vitriolic letters that began with lines such as,"My dear incompetent buffoon of a Police Commissioner...," or,"To the pathetic fungus who calls himself Commissioner of Police...," or, simply,"Flea."

As Jayga and Leonora served hot lemon tea and steaming scones, Peter Lake hung in the corner, swallowing a lot but not eating. Every now and then, the police commissioner glanced in his direction. Peter Lake's portrait was in the Rogues' Gallery. At the time he had posed for the police photographer, he had been something of a dandy, and was pictured as two black marbles staring from a ma.s.s of sealskin lapels, a sealskin hat, and mustaches from which artisans might have taken inspiration for their work in wrought iron. He was then known as Grand Central Pete, Bunco and Confidence," which was how he had signed his lettersa"t.i.tle and all. Not daring to upstage the mayor, the police commissioner was quiet and had much opportunity for reflection. As he sobered up, he began to recognize Peter Lake, who excused himself and went up to the roof. There, sheltered from a cold gray rain, Beverly was sitting in her tent, reading a National Geographic article ent.i.tled,"The Gentle Hottentots."

"Think of something!" commanded Peter Lake after apprising her of the danger.

"At the moment, all I can think about is Hottentots," she said, but then knitted her blond eyebrows and concentrated. Peter Lakedid not know why he had come to her for a way out, when he was the one so well practiced in schemes and escapes. He thought that it might be that, more than wanting to elude the police commissioner he wanted to watch Beverly engaged in a problem."He knows by now, doesn't he?" "No, but he's at the brink."

"Then we've got to drive him from it. I know. We'll show them the painting. My father said he wanted the mayor to see it anyway." "What painting?"

"There's a painting in the bas.e.m.e.nt. You don't know about it." As they entered the reception room, Isaac Penn was saying,"The oddest thing about the elitea"of which, I suppose, I am now onea"is that they rule so... daintily. The great ma.s.s of people, in which one finds brave soldiers, firebrands, geniuses, and inspired mechanics, is paralyzed in the face of these human delicacies with their garden parties, their unprotected estates, their inebriated stumbles, their pastel clothing, and their disempowering obsessions with disempowering things. When a workingman moves among them, he is most amazed: amazed at how small they make him feel, amazed at their frailty, amazed that they are yet invincible, amazed that he, a bull, is ruled by a b.u.t.terfly."

"Yes," said the mayor, too drunk to get the point."Isn't it funny the way poor people dress like clowns? The poorer they are, the more ridiculous they look. It's as if the circus is their Brooks Brothers. And they're so ugly."

"Oh, I don't know," interjected Peter Lake from the doorway, where he was standing arm in arm with Beverly."It's not just the poor who make themselves look like clowns. The rich do it, too. After all, look at their fragile and preposterous formal clothing: they might as well wear feathers. In fact, they do. And then there's the fas.h.i.+on, among the high elite, of tattooing things across their bue-tox. I've heard," continued Peter Lake, staring directly at the mayor,"that certain socially prominent women of this city actually have maps tattooed across their bue-tox."

Everyone except the mayor and his wife laughed into his tea, and the flunkies said things like,"Nonsense!" or "Fiddle-de-diddle!'"Oh no, not fiddle-de-diddle," lectured Peter Lake, gliding withBeverly into the center of the room, like two s.h.i.+ps of the Great White Fleet.

"Not nonsense either. Mr. Mayor," he asked, givingthe mayor a start,"surely you, in your position, have heard of such things?"

"What things?" the mayor replied, nervously.

"Maps on the bue-tox. Maps of Manhattan on one bue-tox. Maps of Brooklyn on the other bue-tox. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera."

"Well..." said the mayor."Actually... I sort of... yes, yes... I have!"

Peter Lake bowed, and then dazzled all the drunks by introducing them to Beverly. They had heard that she was beautiful, and an invalid of some sort, and they had a.s.sumed that she would waste away until her wedding night and then quickly recover the way so many young women did when they found out that they had taken pleasure for peril. They did not know and could not apprehend by appearances that she had tuberculosis of lung and bone.

"Didn't you want to show the mayor the painting?" she asked her father.

"Yes, I did," he answered.

"Oh, a new painting?" the mayor asked, glad to change the subject.

"Relatively new."

"Who did it?"

"The man who painted it doesn't want to be known. He only wants to know."

"Come now!" someone said.

"It's quite true," replied Isaac Penn.

"Let's guess from his initials!" offered a woman who spent most of her time drinking liqueurs that were too sweet and playing card games that were too simple.

"M. C.," said Isaac Penn."Guess all you want. You'll never know."

As they wound down a long spiral of bronze stairs, deeper into the rock than some of the ladies cared to go, the mayor spoke up. Why do you keep it down here?"

"This is the biggest room we have," answered Isaac Penn,"and the painting is rather large."

"When you want to exhibit it, you'll have to roll it up to get it out of here."

"No," said Isaac Penn."It doesn't roll up." "Really," said the mayor, somewhat nervous himself about the great number of stairs,"I hope this isn't solely on my account."

"Mr. Mayor," answered his host,"in this infinite universe, whole worlds have been created for the instruction and elevation of a few simple souls. Believe me, it's no trouble for me to show you this painting, which, as far as I am concerned..." Here Isaac Penn was drowned out by a sound that rose from beneath them as if it were a thick misty cloud. Peter Lake immediately recognized it as the crackling static of the stars and the white wall. It grew louder and louder, until, finally, they came to the bottom of the stairs, and faced the painting, from which the sound was coming.

They stood motionlessly, clutching their sides, struggling to keep their balance; that is, everyone but Isaac Penn and Beverlya" and Peter Lake, who was not afraid of heights. They were in a room of astounding proportions where the only illumination came from the painting itself, which was easily thirty feet high and sixty feet long, and unlike any painting they had ever seen, for it moved. It sent changing images, moving light, and the static of clouds and stars speeding in a tidal wave toward its viewers, who felt as if they had discovered a hidden underground sea.

"What technique is this? What colors?" asked half of them at once.