Free Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip Page A

lowering sky, and the boats and ships that moved ceaselessly along it, the buildings on the far shore, and the stone bridge in the distance, tiny figures crossing it the only flecks of brightness in the painting.
    While Emma drew, she let her thoughts wander about, searching for a compelling subject to paint. Something simple, she wanted, like Ned’s solstice or Marianne’s river. But with a human face in it, drawing the viewer’s eye and kindling emotions. Whether the face was male or female, mortal or mythical, and what emotions it should evoke, Emma could not decide. She was content for the moment just to be in the company of painters, watching and learning from them, her mind an open door to inspiration, not knowing what face it would wear when it finally came knocking.
    Somewhere around midday, the contentment would fray. Mr. Wilding would enter her thoughts and refuse to go away. Finally time would force her to put away pencil and paper, take off her smock, and say goodbye to Miss Cameron, who always looked a little guilty when she left.
    “Don’t fret,” Emma told her. “When Mr. Wilding procures the exhibit for us, I’ll be in it, too. That will make up for everything.”
    She would return to her brother’s for one of Mrs. Dyce’s excellent and very informal lunches: Adrian fed anyone who happened to be there. Invariably, he and Ned would make her laugh. And then Ned would walk with her through the streets to Wilding’s villa.
    Sometimes Mr. Wilding met her at the gate; more often it was a silent, wraithlike servant whose eyes would dart nervously about the garden as he escorted her to the house. He carried a roughhewn walking stick carved out of a tree limb; the polished burl at the top looked formidable.
    Curious, she commented on it once; he answered briefly, “In case they left one out of their cages, Miss.”
    “One what?” she said incredulously.
    He rasped his prickly white chin. “Can’t rightly say, can I, Miss? Whatever they are, he gets them from far away.”
    “Are they like the monkey? Or more like big cats?”
    “Big,” he conceded. “That they are. But I wouldn’t say either monkey or cat. More like—like—Well, I couldn’t say that either, Miss, since I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. Not even at the zoological gardens, where I have been a time or two in my youth.”
    She was silent, willing to doubt they were real, but disturbed by the thought that Wilding was terrifying his servants with mythological monsters.
    Mr. Wilding only laughed when she expressed her doubts. “Do you think I’ve conjured up a garden full of harpies and manticores? Of course they’re real. Most are harmless, though they might not look it. Most would run from old Fender.”
    “Most?”
    “I’m very careful,” he assured her. “I value my friends too much to want them eaten by beasts.”
    Friends by the dozens might come to visit, but never, it seemed, while he was working. At mid-afternoon the villa was as still as though it stood in one of the countries whose houses it emulated: the ones that drowsed in heat and light and came alive at night. Mr. Wilding himself painted silently much of the time. From what Emma saw of the painting, it could become a masterwork. Each hair on the bearskin hanging across her shoulders was meticulously recorded by a brush as fine as an eyelash; as a whole the painted pelt, thick and glossy, made her want to run her hand over it, feel its softness.
    Her own face emerging out of the canvas slowly, like a figure from a mist, astonished her. It was fierce and lovely, nothing tentative about it that she could recognize.
    “That doesn’t look like me at all,” she protested.
    He smiled tightly. “Oh, yes, it does. When you look at me.”
    “Really?”
    “You dislike me, Miss Slade. Your face is quite expressive. Luckily, Boudicca didn’t like her enemies, either; that makes you perfect.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Did you do that deliberately, Mr.