Rick glanced over from one of the tapestries on the wall at her. She stood in front of yet another picture of the Virgin Mary and Son, which was the sixth or seventh they'd seen here. He offered an apologetic shrug. "I'm afraid so. You'll likely see Him a lot, actually, especially on this level. The Dark and Middle Ages art tended toward one of two things: Royalty and Church. You didn't catch the Medeival artists doing pastoral scenes or bowls of fruit or common scenes very often, it was just part of the time period. But there was some really varied and interesting work, too. One room further up, for instance, has something like twenty-five different variations of the Last Supper by different Medeival painters, and you can see the simple stylistic differences."
Diane raised an eyebrow. "Imagine my thrill. No offense, but by the pictures, it certainly looks like a dull time. No wonder they were called the Dark Ages."
"Actually, that's because a lot of the history was lost," Harriet said as she stepped up between the two, taking the painting in with her finger tucked under her chin. "People passed on history mostly by spoken word and stories rather than writing, and printing wasn't started in Europe. Other than at monasteries, common folk didn't read or write, so when the Black Death wiped out a lot of the population, a lot of the common history was lost."
The two just looked at her for a long moment, Diane somewhat incredulously, Rick with a little more admiration. Harriet's cheeks reddened a bit as she realized they were staring. She grinned self-consciously and twisted a strand of her blond hair around her finger, and finally mumbled, "I did study a bit of history, you know."
"Wow," came Rebecca's awestruck voice from the next gallery room. "Come and check this one out!"
The trio immediately made their way into the next room, where the redheaded girl was standing in front of a painting on the far wall. This room was a little more dimly lit than the last few, although the painting on the wall had a lamp above it that illuminated it in a soft white glow, like all the others in the room.
Rebecca stood back from the painting and presented it with a flourish. The frame on the thing was huge and ornate; she almost had to take two steps back to fully reveal it. "What do you think?"
The painting depicted a forest scene, where a lightly-colored dirt road came to a crossroads in the background, splitting up the overgrowth of maple and elm trees, each thick with springtime greens. At the crossroads, and old-fashioned signpost was carved from gnarled wood, with signs pointing in each of the directions the path ran.
But all that paled in comparison to what was in the foreground. The subject of the painting was a lithe woman in tribal dress-- actually, little more than a halter and loincloth and some carved wooden jewelry-- who was looking at the viewer with exotic looking green eyes as she held a barbed spear up in the act of killing a deer that lay on the ground before her. Although her body was lean, her tanned arms were tightly muscled as she held the spear poised above the animal. She wore a mask of blue and red war paint on her face, especially below her eyes and on her cheeks-- Rick could easily believe that the artist intended some of the crimson there to be blood. Her green eyes seemed to flash angrily, but what really caught Rick was the woman’s ears: they sloped gently upward through the tangles of her golden hair and crested in points.
"Different," Harriet offered. "Nice ears."
"What's with those?" Rebecca asked. "Is she like Mr. Spock or something?"
"I think she's supposed to be an elf," Harriet said uncertainly. "I had a boyfriend who was heavy into fantasy and got me into reading some of his books. I don't remember them being so violent-looking in any of those, though."
Rebecca took that in. "So if she's an elf, is she killing Donner or Blitzen?"
"I don't know, butI like it," Diane said after a cursory glance. "See, why couldn't some of the Medeival artists do stuff more like this? Yeah, it's aggressive, but it's different, at least."
"Because a Medeival artist didn't do this. Not any one I've ever heard of, anyway. The lines are too crisp, the background's to well-composed and the subject is too realistic-looking for the period. It's gotta be Neo-Classical, or at least late Rennaissance." Rick shook his head and glanced at Rebecca. "Who's the artist?"
Rebecca shrugged and then motioned below the frame of the painting. "I couldn't read the nameplate. The shadows from the frame makes it too dark to read."
"Well," said Rick, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a shiny zippo, "that leaves just one option."
"What are you doing with that?" Diane said shrilly, looking positively scandalized.
Rick sighed. "I've decided it's far too nice a painting to keep in the dullness of the Middle Ages, so I'm going to burn it, Diane. I'm checking the nameplate. What did you think I was doing?"
"No, I mean you smoke, Rick? Since when?" She looked about a step away from a coronary.
"I don't. But a lot of my friends in art classes do. After a while you get tired of them forgetting if you do or not and asking for a light. So I come prepared, anymore." He flipped the zippo open and inexpertly flicked it. Against the dim flame, he saw the nameplate, and on it was a single word. "Imágonem," he read aloud. "Who?" Harriet asked, glancing at him. "Never heard of it." "Me either," Rick said. "Doesn't sound English. Maybe Latin." "Hey," Diane said, her voice sounding suddenly very sluggish. "The eyes, when you said that..." She trailed off. Harriet and Rick both lifted their gaze to the painting, where Diane's and Rebecca's gaze was already transfixed. The eyes of pointed-ear woman in warpaint had begun to glow a brighter shade of green. Like a green flame. Then a green lamp. Then a green sun.
Rick heard Harriet's sharp intake of breath next to him, but only through layers. The eyes of the woman were like the whole universe to him now. When the greenish light began to fade, he began to feel lost, hollow.
But that didn't stop him from suddenly realizing that...
Thu Jul 20 09:42:41 2000