THE CONVERSATION

The hills rode down to the sea in waves, and the sea rode into the sky. So blue, so blue it was. I breathed in the colors with my eyes, and breathed in the spiced air with hunger. So lovely it all was, I had never known the world to be so lovely, so full of colors and fine scents. The morning rain had been kind.

Across the path on the crest I could see the hurrying figure, enwrapped in so fine a plaid, so rich with small colors. It was lovely Stefanie, I could tell. For riding the wind of her wake was the smaller creature. Fey Maggie, her sister.

Her yellow jacket and yellow stocking cap were so bright in the muted earth's of this most glorious of falls. So sweet a season it was, this year, and with hopes of a long linger to it's moment. The Black Oak and Chinese Linden were iridescent and bright with new-turned leaves.

My heart ached to see the two small girls hurrying across the heather and path, the one stopping to talk to the other. Pointing, laughing, ever moving closer to me. I sat there in my worn wicker chair, hearing the sirrush of the space heater again buzzing into red life. My ever-present glass had only a small wet at the bottom now.

Stefanie suddenly stood there, by my side. She did not pull away as I reflexively stroked her soft child's brown hair. Behind her a small miracle sat with her bag of popcorn and 'talked' with her own private squirrel. I had warned Maggie many times of the sharp teeth squirrels possessed, and how quick to fear or anger they were wont. It did not matter. Maggie listened not. She was so much like her sister. Stubborn creatures themselves, full of contrariness and also sometimes laughter.

The squirrel came closer upon the branch, wriggling it's nose at her, ignoring me. As I ignored the piercing look Stefanie gave me for my paternalistic gaze of the moment.

"I know," I said to Stefanie. "I have told Maggie many times. Therefore let us leave it in God's hands, then. He seems to look

over her nicely."

Stefanie allowed herself to lean against me, and I enjoyed the slight weight. She was so beautiful, and all of seven years or so. My hand convulsed around my glass and I rose to my feet. Stefanie took the glass from my hand, and all three of us were holding hands as we trooped inside.

Maggie held my little finger tightly, looking quizzically up at me.

"Is all well in yon squirrel's world?" I asked. She nodded a yes and looked downhill, towards the small urbanopolis of Victoria, gazing over my beautiful childhood home. Down there the red brick pomposity of the provincial capital struggled into the new modern age. Most of Victoria was hidden under red oak and black, firs, cedars, birch, chestnut and maple. The wind whipped through my clothes as if it were chintz. I turned away.

Stefanie closed the French doors for me. The wind still cut whisperingly through their cracks. Such an impracticality my grandfather had constructed on the slopes of this frigid Pacific isle. As example, this library cost many cords to heat via it's fireplaces. Especially when the snow piled deep against the glass. Now I was glad to see the drapes closed.

"They're coming," Maggie happily crooned. We all knew of whom she spoke. Even my old ears finally heard the padding of paws against rugs, the skittering of claws on waxed floorboards. They whimpered as they rushed through my doors. My old friends, Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. Their own arthritic joints forgotten in the joy of having children in the house. Yet first they came to me, their obligations quickly met by allowing me a touch on each head. Then they were ecstatic to touch Stefanie and Maggie, hoping for a few moments ministrations to their wants and wishes.

The dogs were quickly sprawled before the girls, helpless with joy as the children ministered to them with frenzied and vigorous scratching, rumpling, rubbing and petting.

Mentally I cried to both dogs, asking if all us males were putty in the hands of beautiful females, whatever their age or ours? They were quite undone in their rapture, as was I by a small walk out upon my own terrace.

Ever efficient, Stefanie outlined the protocols of our encounter today.

"Karl," she began, but quickly switched to; "Daddy says that if we approve of the menu, and it is a balanced diet, it is allowed for us to sup with you today. Your man will, of course, drive us back home, will he not?

"Once we know the menu we shall phone Daddy and confirm our afternoon's stay here. Hopefully this will be satisfactory."

Such wonders. Stefanie, seven going on thirty-five it seemed, and Maggie adoring her elder sibling, ever willing to follow her lead. They broke my heart to know they were just my -- friends. In my declining years, I missed my own grandsons more and more.

Maggie, busily stowing her outer garments in the guest closet, stated that my glow was very bright today. She saw a sort of halo, a nimbus, about me, most specifically my head. She would still call me Mr. Wing, but she would then tell me the colors I had today, and today was no different. Stefanie agreed, but argued for different colors than Maggie. She could literally see right through me to the other side. Most peculiar children.

In this scientific age I no longer assumed such things were illness, whimsy, or imagination. Flying saucers were whimsy, not the visions of these two. Perhaps the uncluttered minds of children saw more clearly than we knew.

I had a bin of dolls in the closet I had saved from my long-dead daughter, and they rummaged in the fading collection with unfeigned ooohs of delight. Another bin held my son's toys and momentos, as did his musty upstairs room. Maggie quickly found a chipped-head doll to carry about during her stay, as did Stefanie this day. They refused to take any away with them, preferring to know this treasure trove always awaited their visits.

I had tentatively mentioned that in the event of my passing, they should inherit those small bounties. Stefanie very seriously thanked me and squeezed my hand, as though she understood perfectly.

Maggie now rose into my hand like a cat, occasionally eliciting a purr for me. She told me her Mother was due back this day. She hoped for a trinket of some sort, but all children did.

I looked for their tutor, but it seems the redoubtable Mrs. Janeway was in Victoria on household business today. There never seemed the least hint of impropriety in the relationship between Mr. Damien and the universal female who ran both house and educated the children, but then I did not know them that well.

I looked out over my southern exposure and recalled seeing the childishly appearing Mrs. Damien. She seemed much too young for motherhood, but she was undeniably foreign, and who knew when she had wed? The thought of unwed motherhood was impossible for such an autocratic presence as hers.

It was shortly after I had moved back here that I first saw her.

It had been a bright sunny day, quite warm, and I had my new toy set up on the fieldstone patio. A big Questar telescope, with which I had picked out the visible moons of Uranus the night before.

A motion out on the wide heath gained my attention, and I swung the scope to see, never intending to peep.

A dark-haired figure lifted it's head, partially hidden from sight in the copse where myself and my own Maggie had met yea those many years ago. Green grass lushly covered the hillside, and it's sight brought back painful memories. One was hidden from either of our houses when in that spot, as I well remembered. I could remember the scent of Michaelmas Daisy bruised into strength by our lovemaking. So long ago.

The figure rose, and despite the short black hair I immediately knew it for a woman, and was surprisingly stirred by the sight of unclad femininity. She caught my breath, even at this remove. An Aphrodite of the heath, a Venus risen from the waves of green grass, a vision of the perfect woman.

Her front was to me as she rose, and she caressed her own body for the delight of whoever she shared that bower with. Her nipples were dark nimbuses on her chest, her pubes a forest of darkness, her legs and hips an invitation. She ran one hand through her body hair in lascivious comment, and her other hand reached out to touch the outstretched hand of another. She was laughing, though no hint of voice came to me across the distance.

She turned her back to me and her lover, her globes incredibly inviting, her head twisted about to tease and comment. She lifted her face to the sky, and outlined her own golden-skinned form with loving hands.

The other figure rose, and in that instant my heart stopped to realize her lover was another woman. Long blond hair, she knelt and kissed the fulsome globes of the brunette. I was seeing an impossibility, a lesbian love at work. I suppose it should have wakened repugnance in me, considering my upbringing. But it did not. Mayhaps I felt envy. Envy for someone still able to perform the physical act of love. Maybe it was prurient interest. I knew only that it excited me to see it.

The brunette turned again, and she grinned a crooked smile at my involuntary intrusion. Which was impossible. We must be half a mile, close to a mile, the one from the other. Yet I felt profound unease as she gazed in my direction, her lips saying something aloud.

How could she have seen me? I raised my head, seeing only a speck far away. When next I looked through my eyepiece, the blond had turned to look at me. She was half risen, and had no crooked grin as did her brunette lover. She was unhappy at me. To add to my discomfort, I realized she made no attempt to cover herself, but flaunted her large soft breasts for my eyes.

I retreated from my telescope, embarrassed at the viewing. My heart raced, as much from the fact of being caught out as any other emotion.

Since that day, Mrs. Damien and I had briefly met, out on the access road. One day, when I had felt well enough to saunter out and garner in my own mail, she had driven by and stopped to chat. She had driven a sporty little Astin Martin, much like the Bond car, and got out in order to give me her hand and a few polite words. She smiled underneath, my unexpected past viewing of her flesh an unspoken subtext to our few words. She gave no hint of displeasure, but rather seemed amused. I invited her inside my house when she next had time.

Today I noticed more of her mother in Stefanie, rather than Maggie, but that was ever the way of very small children. Their bodies are yet unformed, and our proclamations of resemblance to this parent or that are but unconscious conceits.

What either of their parents did in the world I did not know, and politeness forbade me asking. I presumed they had money, and they managed it. Nought more nor less. As had my own father.

If the redoubtable Karl was their father. That there might have been a divorce or separation was no longer socially uncommon, but that certainly was none of my affair. When they talked of a pair of retrievers they had once owned, I felt it was long ago, and with another Father.

For the moment they adored my Frodo and Bilbo. As for their past life, they were uncharacteristically silent regarding themselves and their parents past. Most small children are veritable magpies on the subject, ever eager to comment on divorces, changes in parental lovers, and past environments.

Maggie leaned against my knee, looking serious as her wont. "Do you wish to paint today, Mr. Wing?"

When I said yes, Stefanie went off again to phone her father that today was a sitting day, as well as a visit and dinner. Why he was so tolerant, I do not know, but he was. He had been most effusive over the presents of two quick charcoals I had made each of Maggie and Stefanie with my dogs.

That the girls were unchaperoned in my house awakened no comment from him. A most unusual father. He had unexpectedly visited twice, revealing an aficionado's eye for my technique with cartoon sketch and more finished oil. He wished to purchase my finished oil of the girls, but as I secretly meant to present it to him and Mrs. Damien as a gift, I declined his generous offer. He was of enough breeding that he never mentioned it again.

The one time only he had stayed six hours and sat for me while I desperately drew his clothed and (supposedly) sleeping form on the couch, adorned with two recumbent children. As with the girls, my own dogs were lovingly curled upon the floor beside them all, a few lines showing their presence in that work. He was a patient model, as were his girls. He was also conversant with the now-passant European custom of children as objects of art. His accent was suitably squire rank British, but I thought him continental at birth.

I had yet to achieve the seal of approval of the often absent mother, and I feared that a higher hurdle.

Once again Stefanie pointedly took her sister into the bath. There they put on the clothes of a century past, including the high side-button loop shoes and many petticoats. I heard Stefanie order Maggie to use care when hanging clothes, but Maggie was quickly a blue-dressed vision racing to the couch with her doll of the day. Stefanie had picked out a Bret Harte western book to read for Maggie. Her every step was fraught with pride and a sense of presence. Undoubtedly her Coming Out Ball would be the sensation of her eighteenth summer. She was already aware of her visual impact.

As clouds had moved in to mar the sky light, she flicked on the switch in passing, and the carefully positioned lights came on. It had been difficult to obtain special bulbs to replicate sunlight, but I adjudged the result not incompatible with day.

Ever mindful of visual display, Stefanie had chosen a green leather book to match he emerald-green dress, and made sure of the drape of white satin over the couch. So adult she was, a marvel as a model. I made some changes, referring to my oil thus far and the Polaroid's I had tacked to the edge of my canvas.

Once again I began to lose myself in the work before me. I no longer saw modern times, but two young ladies of some quality in a drawing room of the fin de siecle era. I tried to think of myself as Whistler, immortalizing a magnate's progeny in sweeps of color on canvas. In time Maggie drifted to sleep and Stefanie half-dozed. I saw lines and shadows and shades and elusiveness. They were challenges, no longer living except as an irritating propensity to movement and twitch. Fortunately I was never perfectionist regarding a pose. Each day was different, each pose challenging in its own way, each solution new and unique.

Today I once more despaired of ever capturing the glints of Maggie's eyes, or the soft concentration almost furrowing Stefanie's brow as she read to her younger sister. The skin tones and cloth, the background and foreground meant nothing to me now. I had long ago adjudged both essences to be in their eyes. Their eyes told breathtaking stories, their flesh told but a superficial remark, easily understood.

I could have invented eyes for each girl, but I labored on, knowing all my posthumous legacy might very well be this canvas daubed with my own interpretation of reality.

Their visual impact was a wave, and it needed the rocks of eyes and face to break it into rich and exciting froth. Shadows and lines and colors were nothing compared to the rendering the toothed coral reef of expression gave my oil. All else hammered itself insensible before the implacable revelation of the visible soul shining out of their visages.

I was trying to grasp life, I, who was leaking mine away so steadily and so stealthily. I cried sometimes at the impossibility. I cried to think of all the years I wasted being practical and realistic and a physician. I could have been learning how to be a real artist.

I took a needed draw on my private potion, finally draining it to the dregs. I grimaced at the too-sweet taste and my many weaknesses.

"You are alone in a room with my babies, Mr. Wing, are you not?"

The voice came from near my right ear, and reality stuttered in me suddenly, almost making me spill my color-laden palette onto the floor. Another hand, black-gloved, came from nowhere across from my left, retrieving it before a mess occurred over me and canvas-covered rug. I looked first to the right, fully expecting to see the implacable maternity of Mrs. Damien. I did.

"Is this customary behavior in this small wet clime?" she continued.

To say I felt as though lightning bolts had struck me would not to be exaggerating the effect. Even with the python's strike of retrieval, I still gained a dozen dimples of oil across my jacket. It was only cloth and old, I thought. No great loss.

She stood there, my dark-haired Venus of the heath. Mrs. Belle Anne Damien. Her eyes were darkness incarnate in that instant, her lips a slash, her make-up a pretense behind which lurked more basic emotions than normally encountered in civilized days. I was, however, more awed by her than afeared. Perhaps the sight of her unclad charms had altered my possible conceptions of her.

Even so I felt the storm clouds of approaching reproach in this room. And how in perdition had she gotten in so unannounced? As if reading my thoughts she answered them.

"You once invited me to your abode, Mr. Wing, and I have now availed myself of your offer." Which said nothing about her probable cat-burglar ancestry. I essayed her beauty now. Mod, short skirt showing small and exquisite legs, a cream sheath, red-plum lipstick, she showed no snarl, but no smile either.

"Mommy...." Maggie began to speak, but a single raised maternal finger was sufficient to cut short their comments. A nudge to my other side reminded me of my palette and other visitor.

My dogs had whined - finally - but held their peace and station in front of the girls.

To my left, tall for a woman, very Aryan, blond hair under a proper chauffeur's cap, was the woman once seen with my neighbor. That she was clad in an impeccable dark charcoal uniform as fitting for a chauffeur both answered much and prompted many more questions than those answered.

In close proximity she was stunning. A Valkyrie, a commanding presence in her own wight. She carefully returned my oils to me. In a spasm of relief, I saw no menace there, but a restrained humor. Of a sudden I knew the next few minutes might be sticky, but not terminal.

Looking back to Mrs. Damien - Belle Anne, I reminded myself - I searched for and discovered a hidden laughter to her eyes and lips. I was forgiven, I realized.

It was a great start to discover the implacable Mrs. Janeway easing into view beyond Mrs. Damien's shoulder.

And where had been my own manservant whilst all these females had been entering my abode? A tribe of cat burglars, indeed!

"Well, Mr. Wing," Belle Anne continued. "Do you wish to explain to me why you received my children's clothing?" I thought of rising, but the trembling of my limbs dissuaded me. Barring that, I carefully put my brushes into jars of spirit, and laid my palette into a small shelf hidden underneath the top of my oils and kit cart. I trust I had my most engaging smile written all over my face for this confrontation.

"In Europe, where I spent many years, it is widely accepted that the young girl is a fit subject for serious artistic endeavor. Indeed it has been commonplace since before antiquity. Part of the Renaissance consisted of the rendering of children, believing as they did that children were as proper subjects as adults. If we see little of such efforts on this side of the Atlantic, yet they exist.

"I sought to make eternal the beauty of your two girls, and that has been my only goal.

"I have not touched your girls and had no intention of doing so. There is no way, I presume, of proving intentions, but I intended to immortalize this moment in their lives. It is all any good artist dreams of. Though I am still basically a talented and once-schooled amateur, I believe my work here worthy. Alas, though, I am no Michaelangelo."

"Too skinny," Belle Anne commented.

"Or Reubens," stated the dour Mrs. Janeway.

"Too skinny by far," Belle Anna said. Extraordinary comments!

"Still I aspired to create something for future souls to admire," I managed to throw in.

"I had dropped by two dozen times unannounced," Mrs. Janeway murmured, "but all seemed proper and genteel." And when in Hell had she ever been in my house beyond the two visits I knew of?

Mrs. Damien sidled forward now, one hand on her hip in obvious judging of my effort to date. I could smell the LaRochas perfume on her as her body touched mine in a half dozen spots. Maybe I was unable to do anything with a woman now, but my imagination sent electric tingles throughout me.

"Your doggedness .... no, rather persistence in studying the girls is certainly remarkable," she quipped. Her eyes bored into mine. Amazingly that was not just a phrase here.

Her breath smelled faintly of the garlic she had with dinner. I think I was actually physically responding to her and my memories of her naked body. Of a sudden I wished to be making an oil of a naked Belle Anne, a Sapphic princess, held within the arms of an equally naked Nordic princess. Much in the way of Degas, if I were equal to that daunting task.

The thought prompted a close survey of Belle Anne, followed by a study of seconds of the awesome chauffeur. That lady in particular realized I was mentally judging her and stripping her of her disguising cloth, prompting her to look at me askance.

"If need be," Mrs. Damien purred on, "I had come here with the possibly of being extremely upset with you."

So simply said and I felt a chill in the room.

"But it seems not to be necessary. Socially speaking you have trod upon thin ice in this matter, Mr. Wing," she said in way of warning.

"Mommy," Stefanie piped in at last, obviously estimating the time propitious for a comment or two. "Mr. Wing has been entirely proper in his words and actions at all times, and is worthy of only mild rebuke. In my estimation."

"Me too," Maggie threw in.

How sweet, they lay there in their borrowed finery and defended my actions and intent. At the most I was probably liable for improper manners, not charges. But Belle Anna cowed me. At my wretched state in life, little prompted fear, other than the glare of Mrs. Damien.

"You wish to exhibit this?" Belle Anna asked. I nodded yes, explaining with; "I shall never shake the art world now, I came upon it too late in life."

"Pissario did as well," she surprised me with the comment.

"....But I could hope I might make a tiny footnote in a few learned journals some day. If my work is worthy. Do you think so?" I asked her. The Artist always seeks praise for his work.

"Pre-Raphaelite, most definitely Pre-Raphaelite in style. A pity the skewed realism of the school is not in favor at this moment. I could see you doing Kathryn or Annika in some whimsical way."

She suddenly taunted me with a serious query.

"Do you have any instant conceptions of them?" She was asking me to visualize them as subjects in a near-fantasy or fantastical work of art. Fortunately my imagination still worked in my crippled flesh.

"Mrs. Janeway would be a centauress, in a forest clearing. Bare breasted, holding a bow and arrow cocked, ready to shoot.

Why did I first think of her?

"Your chauffeur would be a battered and bloodied knight, standing triumphant over a dragon, her sword wedged in it's neck, staring directly at the viewer, arrogant in her victory."

"And me, Mr. Wing? And me?"

"Regency, blue gown showing much bosom, sitting beside a tall mirror, holding the hand of the large erect dandified Red Queen's Rabbit standing on the inside of the looking glass. A sense of Alice fifteen years later to the portrait."

"Alice, you say?" was her comment. I heard unspoken approval.

"My husband?"

I hesitated before answering. "Fugger sitting bankrupt before his large fireplace, mulling over the perfidies of Princes."

She glanced at me, continuing her study of my double portraiture thus far.

"You have not overstepped the bounds of propriety, Mr. Wing .... may I call you Peter? .... and your talents seem equal to the self-imposed task. I shall allow it.

"They are charmers, even at their callow age, aren't they?"

Suddenly there were two small creatures being hefted onto hips, and a very young matron doing the facial and nonsense things western culture mothers do everywhere.

"Now I'll be in an oil painting just like you, Mommy!" Stefanie declared. "Me too," Maggie added. "Just like you!"

"You have been the subject of some artist's efforts?" I asked, wondering of the painter's name. A person of some note, I was sure. The image of this too-young matron holding the hand of the Rabbit in Waistcoat through the surface of the Looking Glass popped back into my head.

If only I were to have the time to do a tenth of what I wished in the short period allotted to me yet. Despite my dizziness at the activity, I felt feverish, afire to get back to my oils and models. So little time left in which to become immortal.....

"I have been in your home, Mrs. Damien, and would have noticed if I had seen such a devastating creature as yourself immortalized in such a fashion."

Belle Anne smiled at the flattery so flaunted, but the statuesque blond spoke in her place. "My mistress owns more than one residence." she stated. "Her place in Tuscany has sculptures of herself as well as many cameos. Many men have admired her."

The cheeky wench was jealous of my attentions! But then I recalled she was much more than employee, and held my glance.

All uncaring, the two girls showed their mother the treasure trove of dolls. Stefanie then pulled her into the library proper to show her my books and artworks.

I stumbled along and was amazed to find Mrs. Janeway still present. And quietly assisting me, twice, when I ill-advisedly sought speed of movement rather than surety. My man Milton suddenly appeared, totally nonplussed by the unannounced flock of visitors in my house, all present quite unbeknownst to him. I dismissed him with a grin, knowing I should bring up this day to him when I felt he needed the teasing.

To my amazement Stefanie began spouting good HochDeutsche as she pulled out my autographed Mann's, Brecht's and Junger's.

Belle Anne herself immediately veered to my trio of treasures on the walls between the bookshelves. She pulled their curtains, and each three women murmured over them in turn.

"Dante Rosetti?" Mrs. Janeway asked no one in particular, almost caressing the small unfinished oil. The chauffeur, known now to me as Annika, stated: "Waterhouse", for the middle item. Mrs. Damien identified the third as; "Burne-Jones."

Not one was completed, but even so they were marvels to my eyes.

We stood and drank in the lovely art, even the costumed girls, complete with doll dragged along by Maggie. "A study for one of his works on the forlorn and mis-used maiden," Mrs. Janeway noted on Waterhouse.

"If you place my girls in this honorable company," Belle Anne said, "they will be honored, Mr. Wing.

"Do you believe you can finish them in time?" she asked. There it was. She had guessed my on-coming demise, somehow, and wondered of the time yet allotted me and my work.

"I believe so," I said, profoundly and suddenly dispirited by the return of distressing reality. She turned, and in so doing, let her hand linger on my arm. I knew it for an expression of sympathy, but as it was done so tastefully, I had to fail to be ungrateful for it. Anything from her, I felt, anything.

We were separated from the others for a moment and she pressed me close against a wall drapery, searching my face for some unknowable clue.

"A great pity," she whispered. "Twelve weeks ago, no, even ten, I might have been able to do something. But nothing now.

"How long?" she asked, her face that of a stone basilisk.

"Mayhaps it is as short as fifteen weeks, maybe thirty at the outside, though the last of me might not be much joy to experience, or for you to see."

"And when the pain became too bad?" she asked.

"There are chemicals," I hinted. She nodded. I was more than willing to end it myself, having seen far too many patients linger for far too long.

"It is too late for my brand of salvation," she said. "But mayhaps there are a few services I might yet give you."

"No cure," I stated quietly. Maybe I still hoped for a miracle from someone, somehow.

A strange look on her face. "No, but I have the ingredients for a very special elixir, Doctor Wing, it should revitalize your strength a small bit, even now."

Witch doctor nostrums! Herb medicines! JuJu bags!, I thought. As if reading my mind she bitterly smiled for me, her hand wreaking havoc with my resolve by lingering on my neck and chin.

"Old potencies," she said. "Take pity on a woman and her ancient family remedies, please. It will not taste too bad, and you will please an old superstitious European female.

"I shan't ride my broom out at night, nor ask for a fingernail, a lock of hair or a drop of blood, to make my VooDoo doll. But you owe me enough that I invoke your obligation herewith. Take my ancient elixir. At the worst it might make your bowels work more smoothly!

"I can even bring over a few leeches at the stroke of midnight."

For the smile of this pretty lady, I sighed inwardly and resolved to give her nonsensical potion the benefit of my ever-complaining innards. Maybe it'd even make my fractious gizzard joyful.

Annika had heard, tried not to frown, then her face went neutral, contemplating me. She mouthed the word 'Please' at me, and we knew even I was succumbing to her Nordic charms. Let it be so.

We retired to my makeshift studio, but the ability to do serious work was quite lost. Nonetheless the girls sat for me, and the three women stayed with us, making it into a gay social occasion. Milton, my Man, was bemused by my unexpected company, but manfully strived to fill the females with a generous supply of finest Cadbury biscuit and sweet scalding tea, no bags, thank you. My larder was out of the Ceylon Highlands, but Milton made the China Green and Lord Earl Gray. Djareeling for me.

When Mrs. Damien sat close to me for a few minutes I deigned to ask her if I could be allowed to be one of her admirers. She agreed with another of her sly puss' grins.

"You fancy me, do you?" I nodded agreement.

"Very well, I shall allow it," she twinkled. "For the nonce, let us enjoy our selves. First I shall scratch your dogs ears until thye collapse in joy. Then I shall admire your lovely painting, you shall admire me, and my chauffeur shall admire the quite indecent length of leg I fully intend to display just for her. We shall make of this quite a proper tea."

How very civilized we all were as I took the opportunity to wash my painting in with thinned oils. There solidified the couch, the cloth drape, and other background. The dogs went from lady to lady, vying for attention and greedy for scratching. To my amazement the three ladies vied in feeding me chocolate tidbits (not wanted, actually) and drawing me out.

I adored the attention, much like my dogs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As had become usual, Mrs. Damien -- I now called her Belle Anne to her face -- was let in with no formalities. We'd gotten very American in our visiting back and forth. I tried not to shiver when more than a breath of snow came in with her.

Yesterday Milton and I had braved the March weather and driven us across to Vancouver via the ferry from Victoria. Glorying in my (I am sure, alas, only temporary) remission, I had gone to the bookmongers. One ghastly over-priced overly-large folio of Gainsborough's works had arrived as ordered, and I took the opportunity to purview and purchase a few more books. I should probably never read them, but it did me good to have them.

To my surprise Belle Anne herself carried three large ornate collections of art through the door. She had possibly purchased for me exactly the sort of present I had purchased for her. Tomes of beautifully and (almost) faithfully rendered art. What the Yanks termed Coffee Table books. I was quite delighted by the thought of a present.

My Man Milton returned with a shiver and what I knew immediately was an oil painting wrapped in white velvet.

Annika -- the very au natural Miss Hansen -- remained coiled in the high-back wing chair. She had been the surprise of the past Holiday season. My early Christmas present.

She was sitting for me now. She had appeared early one morning, informing me the girls would not be available for their usual portrait sitting.

She then informed me that she had queried Belle Anna about posing for me, and Belle Anne had been encouraging, nay, enthusiastic. The large-breasted Norwegian had quickly doffed jacket, boots, chauffeur's cap and stiff manner, astonishing me and reminding me that the Scandinavians viewed many things differently from Brits.

She had pulled her white blouse out of her trousers, and had it half-unbuttoned before turning to me and asking if I wished to paint her nude or clothed?

My cup runneth over.

It were a foolish notion, but I felt that Belle Anne's elixir apparently benefited me. Now her -- lover -- bares herself for my canvas and skills. Annika was too slender to please a Reubens, and she was still much more woman than was completely attractive to European eyes. Her bosom was too large by far.

To me Annika Hansen was a goddess.

I posed her curled up in one of my antique wing chairs, and had draped a little obscuring cloth over one breast. I wished nothing to interfere with the intensity of her chiseled gaze, her ice-frigid eyes, her enigmatic life-force hinted at. All eyes should focus on her face, and only shallow teen-agers might first concentrate their viewing on her awesome nakedness.

Her legs were akimbo and open, her provocative pose was quite deliberate, calculated, much more than merely approaching lewd.

As a conceit, I had rented -- all the way from Seattle -- a set of Knight's armour. Shield, chain-mail tunic, two-handed sword, balderic, and helm, and placed them reclining against and lying about the chair. A pair of chain-mail gauntlets lay on her lower thigh, and she herself held a long red rose which barely obscured her female secret place. Even so the dark blond hair of her mons veneris showed clearly. A study in contrasts. Seductive wanton and warrior princess, a fit reward for the Gods of Odin's Hall.

Alas, no dragons were available as props, dead or alive.

Behind me was the first finished oil of the girls, still drying, and yet another smaller one newly begun.

In it Stefanie lay in front of the fireplace, in the painting, and Maggie slept recumbent before her. Stefanie was awake in it, almost smiling at the viewer in that maddening near-smile inherited from her mother. The dogs remained vigilant beyond them. It awaiting their next sitting to continue. But I treasured most the finished painting of the girls on the couch, as Fate, God, chance, had given me the time to do it proper. I now also had a score of cartoons on canvas, all awaiting the chance to be finished.

Against the window stood the tall Cheval glass mirror on rollers. Seated and in deep blue gown Belle Anne had posed for me, her hand against the surface of the mirror. In my well-begun portrait, the Rabbit in Waistcoat blinked near-sightedly out at me, his hand affectionately holding the blue-gloved perfection of Mrs. Damien's hand. He resided in my imagination and in the land beyond the Looking-Glass. I knew there was more than a hint of Disney to my tall Rabbit, but the admixture of realities implicit in the painting should command deep inspection from the viewer.

Kathryn -- Mrs. Janeway -- had discovered a fin de sicele matron's dress to wear, complete with bustle and pins in her tightly coiled hair. Her pose was a standing profile, that of a lady of breeding of the year of the Victorian Diamond Jubilee. Calmness incarnate alongside my period wing chair. She could hold her pose for oils for hours.

The more we talked together, the more I wished her as naked in her pose as Annika and the girls. I adored Belle Anne, and Annika was a Valkyrie waiting in a warrior's paradise, an incredible Nordic houri. But I think in other circumstances I could have been quite smitten of that redoubtable auburn maned Irish redhead. She had yet to display the temper commonly thought to be redheads perpetual weakness.

In any event, Belle Anne breezed in like Dorothy's Kansas Tornado, throwing all our plans hither and yonder. Eventually Annika and her nudity flowed out of the chair to openly embrace her mistress, and I barely restrained myself from whining like a child for the presents I knew, wished, hoped, prayed, were mine.

There was no longer any pretense that Annika was 'just' an employee. The two fondled and embraced, each with one eye laid in my direction to enjoy my red-faced voyeurism. It had been with some shock that I came to understand that Kathryn was also part of Belle Anna's sexually active inner circle.

I had not a clue as to how Mr. Karl Damien coped with his wife or her lovers. All seemed amicable, but I admitted to myself once or thrice of having visions of the RCMP dryly interviewing me for clews after an historic multiple axe murder in Manse Damien.

An alternate vision was of a large four-poster bed covered with pink gasping heated humanity in the throes of ecstasy. Latter orgy being much more to be serenly contemplated than the former.

Belle Anne essayed my unspoken wishes regarding her books, and smiled.

"Oh, very well." She asked Annika, "hand me that big black one first, yes, that's the one."

She gave it to me, turning and striding to the windows to look out towards the Pacific. Her hands caressed the white Questar telescope, her lover donned a Japanese silk robe to stand by her.

In a second the mood had changed.

"Page 118," she said. I looked at her in sudden dismay, wondering, fearing. But I found the page indicated.

"It is time to reveal truths,' Belle Anna said. "I, we, have tried to extend your health and strength for the sake of your beautiful artistry. We are usually much more circumspect with our aid or encouragement."

She was silent and she stared back out at me from the pages of a book. It was her, I could have sworn it. The preceding frontis termed it "The Reception At Pisa." Done in a glowing apres-Baroque style by the impeccable David, it showed Napoleon's Marshal Messena. He had tarried in Pisa, after conquering the peninsula. He had visited the edgy Tuscan court gathered there.

In it Messena was putting a leg for the Duke of Tuscany, seeking to impress the decadent nobility of that small state. The scene was filled with the imprint of the important and conceited, the rich and the powerful, such as they were. And their wives and daughters and sons and mistresses. In the front rank, behind the Duke himself, stood Belle Anna. My Belle Anna.

I looked up, amazed at the resemblance, for she had matched the pose for me. It might have been her. It could not be. It was supposedly painted in 1797 Anno Domini. Yet it even had the sly crooked puss' smile Belle Anne used at odd moments.

The woman looked directly at Messena, and a small bright tiara brightened her black hair. She was an adornment of the court. The painting was from the collection at the Hermitage in Leningrad, and this collection burst with works never before put in book form. This painting was once owned by a Grand Duke, now by the proletariat.

The realignment of a lamp made no difference. It was still -- almost -- Mrs. Damien. "Remarkable," I said. "It is so much like you."

"It is me," she replied. "Now pick up the one with the sea blue spine. Page 85."

Again, the page opened. And before me flowed Belle Anna again, serene in a late medieval painting on wood. Marvelously detailed, a scene of Flanders visible out the window.

Hugo van der Goes, the book said. Late 14th century artist, a rare surviving non-religious work, obtained from the collection of the Prince of Lichtenstein. As in the peninsular style made so famous later, it was a seated female, and in the background, out an open window, a surreal landscape of bucolic urban bustle. The title was "The Roman Woman".

Belle Anne quoted for me the legend opposite the painting. "In 1924 the original was released from the Prince of Lichtenstein's private collection, in return for some unspecified trade. Since then it has disappeared from view, undoubtedly gone missing during the War. It is to be hoped it may resurface some day, so that future generations might attempt to interpret the Mona Lisa smile of this nameless girl from Rome."

I should rather have termed it a Puss In Boots smile.

It too was Belle Anne. Or so close as to be a twin. The clothing was of the period, the ornament, the style, all authentic, but it was still Mrs. Damien. Or it could be.

"Open your Gainsborough," she asked, or demanded. She meant my newly-bought tome obtained in Vancouver. At once I turned to the painting I had assumed was a happenstance, a mischievous twist as sometimes happens. I had remembered it from seeing it in an English Manor house a decade ago.

My memory had played me false. It was not a closeness to Belle Anne in that Regency gown. It was herself.

My memory had used the pose, in part, in my own whimsy of her holding hands with the Rabbit on the other side of the Looking Glass.

"I can still remember the heaviness of the velvet I wore, and the intensity of the artist.

"He reckoned the gold it represented, and this was fair as artists were but another form of craftsman to the people of the period. But I wished to sit for one I knew had greatness to him.

"George Third lived, Napoleon was riding to the Emperor's crown, and the Regency was yet to be. Yet life had again become an affair of the Right Sort convincing everyone else how well things were going.

"Mostly I recall the pre-Regency as a time when I sought to see how many dresses I might own and wear which revealed my nipples. Kathryn enjoyed rouging them before a ball."

I did not like this game and it had just begun.

I made a motion at my glass of one-malt and opium on the sideboard, but she mouthed a 'No' at me. I watched her as the mouse does the snake.

There remained but two thin books. "74," she said of the one.

Belle continued; "Pierro della Francesca was a realist and a portraitist at the center of the true Renaissance. He was based in Italy, and was rewarded by many of the great men of the time for the quality and exactitude of his work. He was quite prolific, desiring a pleased nobleman and his clinking purse to searching for impossible perfection's, as did daVinci. His favorite was the profile, and he would always include in the background something to identify his patron.

"As example, if a distant battle or siege was occurring, the subject was a noted general or leader. A market scene showed a merchant. Saints or processions meant a religious person of some note. Broad fields with laboring peasants meant a landowner, a noble or major squire.

"He also was a self-important and overweight man with a knack of making the least comment of someone else the object of ridicule. Yet with a touch of story-teller and clown to him, he could keep his subjects sitting patiently for hours on end.

"We first met at the court of Frederico de Montefeltro, the duke of Urbino, a physically powerful man and my lover of the moment. Thus it came to be that he painted what you see before you. It is a remarkably true likeness, is it not?

"Piero sought both my coin and my underage body, but in the event he did my portrait and received only promises of the latter. He followed me to my ancestral holding west of Sienna, where dearest Kathryn sent him packing with vague promises, and a little gold."

She was subdued in the crackled ancient work, but much of that might be because the oil needed modern cleaning to renew it's vibrancy and life.

In the portrait Belle Anne wore a deep carmine Genoese cape over a green and gold gown, undoubtedly silk, and her hair was bound up with net and pearls in the manner of the wealthy then. She looked not a day older today.

"After the fall of the Borgia, Piero hurried to the south, where I happened to meet him again, fifteen years later. He remarked on how I was still the sensuous teenager he was once so enamoured of. He might have cried "Witch!" to the Church, but held his tongue, sensing opportunity if he did not proclaim me a cunning woman, as they termed such as me then.

"He was much older by then, and fatter, but his skills remained.

"For a large fee he did my supposed first cousin and warder. Open the slim burgundy spined book now, page 112."

It were Kathryn, who but an hour ago I had wished might have shared my bed and my life. She was seated on a stone bench, and Roses grew on trellis on either side of her. She had even then worn well the serenity I have come to admire in this day and age.

Of a sudden Belle Anne was kneeling in front of me, holding my suddenly palsied hands, looking up at me in entreaty.

"That is my secret, Mr. Wing, Peter, my surprise for you."

"What secret?" I stupidly asked. "Those paintings.... you act as though they were paintings of yourself. But the dates here.... The date on the one is 1471. Why are you acting this way?"

"Mr. Wing .... Peter .... How old would you say I am?" I dared not speak. I looked to Annika for assistance, and she was hidden within the shadows of the far corner, avoiding my eyes.

"Eighteen?" she coaxed. "Twenty-four? Something in between?

"Feel this skin, new friend, how soft and pliable it is. My arm has been burnt to the bone, when the followers of John Calvin tried to destroy me. But do you see any sign of it now?

"I took a Spartan spear through my throat ninety years before Marathon. Am I scarred there?

"A column of Sumerian infantry cut off my legs and buried me alive, but I dug myself out of my grave that night.

"I have worn this flesh upon your world for more than four thousand of your years. I was not even born on this planet, but on a great merchant vessel which traveled between the stars. It were shipwrecked, my family and friends died and I became a maddened castaway, an apparent and helpless child in a cruel prehistoric land.

"Perhaps only the Sphinx predates me.

"My ship crashed, and I was a howling and insane orphan for centuries, until I slowly regained civilization. Until the beginning of this century I thought myself alone, no sister or brother or kin, except those I made, imperfectly, in my own image.

"I am the Lamia, Peter Wing, and I have been a sucker of blood since before civilization rose in the villages of the Nile and the Indus.

"I am the ultimate enemy of your kind, and yet I love you all and live amongst you. All humanity hates me and my sister and my children, so we must hide, ever hide.

"I sat for all those paintings, and a hundred hundred more. Pharonic scribes and Romanticists have written of my kind, and modern Gothic writers, but none even approach the truth of my incredible weave of history. One lover, a prince of the Balkans, has become better known than myself, but we are all the same.

"John Keats wrote of me, you know. "She was a cordian shape of dazzling hue/ Vermillion spotted, golden green and blue/ She seemed at once some penanced lady elf/ Some demon's mistress.""

She stood before the mirror, and I watched two needle canines begin to protrude from her upper mouth.

"We are the Vampire.

"Each fortnight I must draw fresh blood from some living creature, and mankind is fortunate the beasts of the field may suffice, though their taste lacks fire and spice."

She could not be. My brain threw up the image of her riveting nudity, that afternoon not so long ago. I thought of her children, the normalcy of her life, even her sexual deviance. She was human, as was myself. She had to be.

Belle Anne had served me lamb chops not three nights ago, and played Handel on the harpsichord, Annika on the Dulcimer, while Karl Damien and Kathryn played first and second violin. The moment transfixed me with joy, I felt as if I had gone back two centuries and could almost smell the powdered wigs. Stands of candles in truth lit the scene. They had even played the Lights Out as their last piece before sending me packing for the night.

She spoke with difficulty with her fangs still showing, but she would not let me go. She brought up my fingers to her throat, and I felt a second larnyx there that should not be.

Genetic drift, I murmured to myself. Freaks.

"My sister is as myself," Belle Anna continued. "And my cousin, who is the father of my children and hers. My children are of myself. They too must sup in order for life to continue."

"No, No," I rebelled. "The children?

"They are only children, they can only be children...."

"Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood," she intoned.

She grabbed my chin, forcing me to look her directly in the eyes. She spoke two musical notes, and immediately my head hurt, my teeth hurt. One more clear god-riven celestial note was felt not heard, and I knew what song the Angels did sing to God in their Hosannahs, it was a crack of sound in the unheard bleating of Gabriel's trumpet, tears came to my eyes. Something wet was on my lip, and my hand showed me to have a nosebleed. I had heard the single Word of God and could not now remember what he had said.

"They are not your children," I protested somehow.

"I bore Stefanie in the summer of 1901, after a pregnancy of twenty-four months duration. She is sixty-five years old, and must work diligently to still be the child she appears. Maggie was born in the early fall of 1933, after the election of Roosevelt in America, making her thirty-two.

"We Lamia take a long time to mature physically, Peter, and the process of maturation extends itself exponentially as we age into adulthood. I fear Stefanie shall not appear old enough to live by herself, as an adult, for another two thousand years."

Twenty-four months. Nonsense. Such a term would kill any woman born of man and woman.

"Your husband...."

"....Was born Hostl Gaedert Dainshorld, and went on Crusade with his leigh Lord Frederick Barbarossa. When he returned from Asia Minor, he met my sister, and eventually passed over into the night. He has needed blood to live for eight hundred years."

"I love you," I blurted. As if somehow that phrase could make everything right.

"Yes you do," she quirked. "It is one form of magic I have ever needed little assistance in practicing. But that is immaterial in this matter. What is pertinent is what I am telling you all this FOR."

I must have looked confused. From her shadowy nook Annika suddenly took part in this conversation.

"My Mistress has a bargain she would make with you, if you are willing. I must break my bond to advise you to take the offer seriously. And in no manner does it allow for you to become one with us. You are too far gone for that."

"What bargain?" I weakly asked.

"A favor I could do you," Belle Anna said. "One last reward for loving myself and my children. A reward for the artistry you have lavished on them and mine. We can do nothing to alter the course of the cancer eating you cell by cell, but I can grant one last boon."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Winter was upon us again, and I felt it to my bones. Last year I had despaired of ever seeing the snow thaw, and now it was that I had seen it come again.

I managed to totter inside, ignoring my pain, wishing for immortality. Yet my immortality, such as it was, had both just left me and was stacked about me.

Belle Anne had talked to my estranged son, and he had journeyed from Chicago to me. His two sons came with him, irritated at their own self-important lives being so rudely interrupted.

Seeing my condition, my daughter-in-law could scarcely bare to touch me, but manfully did so anyways. She of the pair wore her emotions, her dismay, most openly. The boys merely knew me for sick, but in the manner of youths, did not connect my decline to their own immortality.

So be it. At first my son needed a little whisky to loosen his tongue and his manner, but he was reaching out to me. A great deal of time had passed since our separation, but we could lie and brag and touch and cry a little bit, together, even here at the end. He was greatly shocked at my physical condition.

He had talked to my physicians in Victoria, and realized that I had already broken all odds in surviving this long. Spontaneous remission, they called it, or a miracle. I called it the beneficence granted me as a favor, granted by the drinking of Belle Anne's blood.

It had worked well enough, but even so it was losing its ability to overcome death.

Milton had a small glass of both my elixirs as I stumbled onto my couch. I imagined I could still see the imprint of small female bodies on one aging pillow.

I gulped both glasses down hurriedly. I needed the relief from the pain with the one. From the other I gained the ability to again draw a breath, stir, lift my arm, live. That one came from the veins of Belle Anne, I now knew.

She had given of herself so that I might paint. And I had painted so that I might live forever.

Only the first one of the girls paintings was completely done to my satisfaction. That at least was wholly finished. Across, on the other wall, was a Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. It was a scene in the Manger, the Christ Child surrounded by Shepherds, Magi and animals. Belle Anne, in long flowing white and a halo, stood behind the babe. I knew she would take it back, via purchase or otherwise, upon my demise.

It had been a gift from her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vague manm her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vague manm her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vague manm her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vague manm her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vague manm her to me on the day of her revelations.

As to my own works, though I had swirled darkness into corners, and made vasel stood one of the five nude charcoal, pencil and ink studies I had sketched of Kathryn Janeway. I much admired the lines my charcoal stick had created on white paper. She was beautiful, though by appearance many years the senior of either incandescent Belle Anne or regal Annika. But then all of my women from this twilight of my life were beautiful.

An old fool still ruled by his lust, I chided myself.

I sat and admitted to myself that I could never now finish my artworks, no matter how much of her blood Belle Anne gave me to drink.

It was then that I rose up in the pain, spat blood, fouled my pants and pitched forward onto the rug.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I suppose I must thank God I was in a Hospital. Such places were for people to die in. I was already dead. But though incredibly stiff, I felt clean and drugged just enough so that I could shove my pain to one side.

They were all here. My son and his wife had finally just left, him and his distressed boys. They did not enjoy watching old men die. Still here were Belle Anne, and my Milton, and Annika, and the implacable Mrs. Janeway. I was almost nude, but wrapped in soft cloths, and as warm as I could expect with my blood now the consistency, flavor and colour of American Tea.

"How long?" I croaked.

"How long have you been here, impolitely comatose, or how much longer before the Angel comes?" Belle Anne asked.

"Either."

"Too long, old friend," her words caressed, "and yes, it is far past time. The Angel's hand is on my shoulder. Watching."

"The girls...."

"Give your artist friend a kiss and let us others be about our business," Belle Anne demanded.

Brave soldiers, neither girl cried as they easily lay next to me and gave me one last kiss.

"MaMa says my memories of you will fade over the centuries," Stefanie whispered to me. "I think her wrong in this," she said. And they were gone, with Milton, and with them with their supposed father, who clasped my hand one last time.

Of such are the fiendish undead.

The nurses...." I hissed as the women rose about me.

"We have studied this," Belle Anna stated. "It will not last long and they will arrive in time to see us grieving over an old friend who passed on almost in his sleep."

Belle bent her head to reach my throat, but I lifted a finger at beautiful Kathryn. Belle stopped, and the two females exchanged glances.

"She is not as I," Belle explained. "Your blood, it will make her sick...."

"I shall risk it," Kathryn Janeway murmured. She bent to my throat.

My left hand tingled, as if it had been asleep. Yet I could breathe again, the oxygen canulla forgotten. I blinked the last tears of self-pity out of my eyes.

Her hands caressed my face and she whispered in my ear.

The winds were very gentle, but even so they were cold. I did not mind, really, for it was a glorious summer. "Where are you, my sweet pigeon?"

"I am here," she spoke to me, "here, beside you.' I did not labor myself to look upon her young face and smile.

"I hope it was good for you," I teased.

"Oh yes, yes, it was very good," she replied. "It were heaven itself."

Things seemed much better now, I had been confused, but I felt enormously improved now. Odd how dark it were getting for a summer's day, even on Vancouver Island.

"Do you love me, Margaret?"

"Oh yes, I love you very much. I shall love you always."

I smiled inwardly, and closed my eyes. "Then hold close to me, and later we shall make love to each other one more time, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie Blue-Eyes, oh, dearest cousin Maggie Blue-Eyes. Hold me tight, for the wind is cold today, it is very bitter for a June, even here."

Noises, the wind over the grass, maybe a curious mouse. It sounded like clothes being removed.

"You have such beautiful breasts, Maggie, I always love to touch them, do you like me to touch them?" I could barely feel the softness and the nipple in my hand. It felt as if a head rested against my neck from the other side. My hand enjoyed the soft giving feel of them, and I kissed my Maggie Blue-Eyes again. Such an exquisite body, I recalled. Knew.

"We'll wait until we're older," I told Maggie.

"We'll move to Winnipeg, or maybe even to Toronto, and live together as man and wife and we'll be very happy. And maybe we'll even have children. Lots of European monarchs marry their cousins, and their children are quite fine." She helped my hand find the sweet fur of her pubic vee and I sighed to feel it.

"Oh yes, my sweetest, my love, my Maggie Blue-Eyes, hold me tight.

"I love it that your body is so soft and smooth, Maggie love, so womanly, do you really love me true?"

The pain was gone. What pain? The sun was returning, I could feel it's warmth even through the cool grass. I could see the blue sky above, and my love kept her head to my neck but she was on my other side....

I was.... The sun was warm, the wind was cold, my cousin's red hair was draped across my face and her hand caressed my arm and I smelled the grass and the clover

and knew as she kissed my throat that I would love her forever and ev

END