Free Photographic by K. D. Lovgren Page A

platform, rotated in her direction, capturing her in the foreground as it panned the rocky peninsula behind her, sweeping in a wide arc. The early morning sun barely scraped the horizon. Mr. Torsten had started shooting long before the sun rose, one of his preferences, to catch every bit of the pearly light of daybreak. Divers and workmen had built the platform, a kind of miniature oil rig, in the seabed in front of the rocks. 
    Mathilde, the main siren, knew Mr. Torsten planned more shots from a boat to get Odysseus and the crew’s perspective. Three weeks later the second unit would come back for helicopter shots. As lead siren, Mathilde had lobbied to play herself even in this extra-long-shot, and Tor had acquiesced, to her surprise, paving the way for the other two actresses to play their parts for the shot, and negotiate extra pay, as well. An amateur athlete and former dancer, Mathilde loathed seeing herself unrealistically portrayed by stuntwomen and stand-ins, though she seldom prevailed when she argued to play her own role in second unit shots. She didn’t have the clout, for one. Second unit had its job to do, and directors didn’t normally cater to lower tier actresses who wanted to be in a shot made weeks, sometimes months later, when they could dress up someone else more cheaply or safely. She didn’t know why thorny Tor Torsten had proved to be so easy to persuade. Perhaps, she thought with complacence, my balletic training proved decisive. Even from a helicopter they will see in my posture and arms how I captivate Odysseus. 
    Exalted by the prospect of playing this role through-and-through, the cold and the hardship of lingering on a rock half-naked at dawn was Mathilde inconsequential. As they prepared for the next shot a motorboat packed with people burbled up and floated next to her as Dolores, a costume department assistant, leaned over the stern and passed her a warm, waterproof coat to throw over her shoulders. Dolores moved aside and Tino from craft services gave her a thermos of hot tea. 
    Mathilde couldn’t really move as she was carefully arranged, her lower body-dress stuck to the rocks, rocks which had rubber coatings to make them more comfortable and less slippery. Dolores swung a narrow bridge down between the boat and the rocky prominence so the special effects makeup person, a man with whom Mathilde had spent more time than anyone else on this shoot, could cross when the captain got the boat in position. Nikolas wore hip waders and a heavy utility belt weighed down with items, some encased in plastic bags. With an abstracted look he examined the damage the water had done to the latex around her legs and began repairing it. After he completed the heavy latex work he examined her upper body and took a spray can from his box and touched up a few spots. She sat holding the coat open, keeping warm while providing him access. He was an up-and-coming prodigy Mr. Torsten had championed. 
    An Athens-born fine artist by training, he had expanded his repertoire early on in his fellow students’ films and begun a career for himself in Europe. This was his first major studio film, but Mathilde could see the reason Torsten had chosen him. When she had seen herself made-up the first time, complete, she was in awe. Even after having seen the watercolor sketches Nikolas had done, it hadn’t prepared her for the fierce, imaginative beauty of his makeup. It transformed, without disguising her. If she had been a sex goddess of the sea, with cerulean hair and shimmering, dolphin-sheened skin; if she had pointed teeth and white eyes—yet her own bones and mouth and breasts and hands—then this is who she would be. And with Odysseus’ destruction her last best wish. If only she could touch him, she thought longingly, and gnashed her sharp little teeth.
     
    The stake, a fathom long and blackened to an evil point, would soon rest in the eye socket of the Cyclops. It lay in the sand. Ian stood next to it,