Chapter 12: 12 – Leo

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Leo climbed back up the narrow stairs to the servant’s quarters for the second time tonight, but this time was nothing like the first. For one thing, he didn’t need his flashlight. For another, the steps no longer creaked and groaned alarmingly under his feet.

He stepped out and walked forward until he reached the corridor that linked the servants’ common bathroom and the six small bedrooms.

They were, of course, no longer dusty and dismal with sheets tossed over narrow metal bedframes. Even here in the hallway, there were paintings in simple but pleasant wooden frames. He paused to look at one, struck by the depth and realism. It was only a cat curled up asleep on a luxurious chair; the cat was a pale dilute orange, more golden really, and the dominant colour of the upholstery was a rich amethyst purple, which made for striking contrast. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, trying to make sense of brush strokes and surface.

There was no surface. His hand made contact with fur.

The cat stirred and stretched, pressing into his hand and beginning to purr.

Leo jerked away in shock, and the painting went back to its original appearance.

Even more hesitantly, he tried again.

The cat responded the same way, arching into the touch with apparent pleasure.

It couldn’t be a real cat trapped in there, could it?

It felt absolutely alive. He could trace out the lines of bones and tendons with his fingertips, and feel the enthusiastic purr.

Unsettled, he removed his hand and let the painting become static again.

Another, farther down, showed a slender woman frozen in mid-dance; her long hair was red near her scalp but shaded to golden yellow at the ends, and the colours practically glowed. Much of her body, under a gauzy dance skirt caught flared out around her and a minimalist top with dramatic drapy sleeves, was covered in... were those scales? They shimmered iridescently, and he wondered how paint could do that.

Then again, how could paint let him pet a cat?

While he watched the dancer, she finished her spin and flowed from that into graceful moves for which he lacked the terminology.

He looked into the nearest room, and found several paintings on easels, the paint still shiny-wet on at least two of them. He took care not to touch them.

Across the hall, the contents were much more confusing. Bags marked as containing plaster, buckets that indicated they held wax, wire mesh. A human-sized plaster head lay on a worktable. He concluded that it was a workroom for creating some sort of plaster sculpture. Was that the source of the life-sized statues he’d seen around the entrance hall? Stone would weigh an insane amount, and so would clay, even if fired. He didn’t know enough about the subject to know what other materials could be possible. It did suggest that someone around here was very creative.

One of the next two rooms was full of both painting supplies and more plaster and wax and the like.

The other had the artist. An easel supported a canvas, and the artist was perched on a sturdy stool, a palette in one hand and a brush in the other. A stand close at hand held a jar of water with other brushes in it and several other things, with shelves underneath offering tubes that Leo thought were paint.

The artist himself was startling. Large hands nonetheless manipulated the brush with delicacy, adding a highlight to the crest of a gentle wave. He was wearing only worn jeans cropped at the knees and with a hole for a tail, and a blue-and-grey cotton shirt with nearly the entire sleeves torn raggedly off, probably open down the front. Leo tried to breathe quietly, staying absolutely still. Should he say something and possibly interrupt? Keep going and let the artist keep working in peace?

An ear flicked backwards. “I hear you.” That voice was a rumble, but not so deep that Leo had any trouble understanding. “I don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you from working. These paintings are majorly awesome.”

The minotaur shrugged, and dipped his head in a way that Leo realized suddenly was shyness. “I always loved it. That’s all. The house is what brings them alive.”

“I bet there’s more to it than that. I doubt any effort of mine would come alive. Actually, I think it would be a frightening thing if they did, considering how bad my artistic skill is.”

The minotaur snorted, possibly with amusement. “Everyone’s different.”

“You have all the rooms in the servants’ quarters to work in?”

“The others call it my labyrinth.”

“Seems safer in this one than the original.”

“Can’t think why the minotaur in the original one would eat people. Or any other meat. Not exactly biologically appropriate.”

“I, ah... I’m with you on that one.”

The minotaur turned his head, enough to allow one large dark eye to see Leo. “Yeah?”

“I don’t fuss over ethical dairy or eggs, or maybe a bit of fish once in a while, but that’s it.”

“Cool. I’m Jake.”

“Leo.”

“Someone tell you Mistress’ usual warning already?”

“The bit about no leaving before sunrise, no one psychotic lives here, go explore and embrace the experience? Tarragon did.”

“Good. You need that.”

“I gotta ask about the cat painting. That’s not a real cat, is it?”

Jake shook his head, ears flopping. “Would never hurt one or trap one. Just a painting. The cat’s safe. We confine the animals out of the way on Hallowe’en night. The dancer next to it is downstairs. My family model for me all the time.”

“You have pets here?”

“Wouldn’t want to live anywhere with none. But never know how guests are going to act.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“You’re really calm. Guests usually aren’t.”

“I’m always a bit weird. I mean, I spend my spare time visiting haunted houses and trying to talk to ghosts to help them move on. Just in case they have unfinished business or haven’t realized they’re dead.” That was, of course, only the most obvious way he never quite belonged, but it was easier than trying to explain anything else.

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“That’s a kind thing to do. Do you actually find ghosts?”

“It’s hard to prove, but I’m pretty sure. Either that or I’m majorly good at deceiving myself, which I guess is possible. I’ve had some experiences that I consider kind of hard to explain any other way, but it’s not like I have any actual hard evidence that ghosts even exist. So maybe I’ve wasted a lot of time and effort, or maybe I’ve helped out some people who were stuck. Idunno. Do ghosts exist?”

Jake shrugged and made that snorting sound again. “Hell if I know. I’m not dead. Maggie might know.”

“Who’s Maggie?”

“Look for a cat in a maid outfit.”

“Ah... right.” He’d seen her in the kitchen briefly, right?

Silence for a couple of heartbeats.

“You trust me?” Jake asked abruptly. “I mean, reasonably for a minotaur you just met?”

“Honestly, yeah, I think I do.”

“You can’t embrace the experience unless you have stuff to experience.” He set down his painting gear on the stand, and stood up. He loomed over Leo, but somehow, it wasn’t alarming. “I’ll show you something.”

“Sure, sounds good.”

Jake led him back past the servants’ stairs, to the main corridor. Leo kept lagging behind, fascinated by the paintings.

They reached a ridiculously wide stairway, and a railing surrounding an open space down to a large room below.

Jake slowed, scanning the paintings here. They were larger ones, generally landscapes with a few figures in them, but ‘figures’ could only be used in the loosest sense considering the diversity.

“These ones are light,” Jake said. “Pick one and reach into it with both hands. I promise, it’s safe. It won’t be for real.”

“What won’t?”

Jake snorted. “Not telling. Just try.”

Leo scanned the nearest paintings. One showed a pleasant sunny beach, the surf spotted with broad flat rocks, and several mermaids were lounging in the water or perched on the rocks. Scaled tails were different colours, as was long bright hair; the sun gleamed on the water, and the waves... the waves rushed actively up the shore, as he watched.

Well, Jake had a point about experiences, and if he wanted to convince the mistress of the house to give him back those memories... Leo took a deep breath, and flattened both hands approximately where the canvas should have been, then stepped forward.

The next breath he took smelled of water and salt, and he could hear a pair of female voices, one higher than the other, singing together. Wind brushed against his skin... and a lot of that seemed to be exposed to it, but he could feel water against his hips.

Disoriented, he looked around. Water. Sandy beach. Broad flat rocks. Clear blue sky. Bright warm sun. Several mermaids, who were singing, combing their long hair, or just lounging in the water. It all looked incredibly real, aside from the improbable content. Mostly, at least. The world just sort of ceased to exist around a bubble, the colours fading out at the edges into an unsettling whiteness.

He felt very odd, so he looked down.

Bare skin with a faintly green tint to it. Breasts, partly covered by long thick hair the colour of pure copper spilling forward over his shoulders. Richly green scales and a tail instead of legs. Partly-webbed slender hands.

He was... inside the painting?

Not just inside the painting, but inside one of the mermaids? He thought there’d been one that had her back mostly towards the viewer, with green scales and coppery hair, and plausibly that had been in about the right position for the view he currently had.

Panic tried to set in. This was several steps past a six-armed red-skinned cook and a shy minotaur artist. The house itself shouldn’t even exist, and he was somehow inside a painting within that impossible house? Was he stuck here?

He forced himself to take a deep breath. His intuition had given him no warnings about Jake. Unless he wanted to lose that one useful tool by doubting it from now on, then he should believe what Jake had said, and Jake had explicitly said it was safe and not real.

If it wasn’t real, then Tarragon’s advice about proving that he wasn’t afraid came back into play.

Another deep breath. Was there a time limit? A way to escape? That could wait. He was supposed to be experiencing the house and residents.

He swished his tail around, paying attention to the sensation of water swirling past the broad fluke at the end and across the bright scales. It didn’t feel like just holding his legs together and moving them. His body gave him completely different messages in response to motion.

He ran his fingertips over his hips. His fingers felt highly sensitive, but also, the sensation of fingers over scales parallelled nothing he knew of.

The weight of all that hair was surprising. It hadn’t occurred to him that hair could have so much mass.

And under that hair, well, breasts had weight too, and were remarkably responsive to even light touch. He wondered how they felt in clothing—supported by a bra or halter, for example, or under the soft fabrics often used for female clothes.

He kind of wanted out of here right now. Partly because he kind of didn’t want out any time soon.

He wondered whether he should flop down into the deeper water next to the rock and try swimming, and then wondered whether mermaids could drown. It seemed unlikely, but he didn’t know for sure what the rules were.

He felt a large hand on his arm, a gentle pressure, and the world warped again. When he caught his balance, he found himself standing beside Jake next to the mermaid painting.

Jake snorted. “You did good, for a first time and no idea what’s going on.”

“That was freakin’ bizarre. And felt way too real.”

Jake shook his head. “Not real. Nothing exists outside what the painting shows. Nothing can do harm. No one in them is real. My family like playing in them. That’s why these ones are here, easy to reach.”

“And someone hangs around to pull them out?”

“Nah. All you have to do is decide that you’re leaving. Not that you want to, that doesn’t work. Just decide to leave. Say it out loud if you need to, but you don’t have to.”

“Just decide to. Right.” Leo took a deep breath. “Got it. So, what else have you got?”

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