Page 53 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
With our fingers still linked, I tug her close and wrap my other arm around her like we’re dancing, à la Fred Astaire, sort of, until we get off-balance on the slope of the bridge and stumble against the railing, catching ourselves with our clasped hands. Clio throws back her head and laughs as I put my other hand on the railing too, playfully penning her in.
“I’m thinking,” I say, “about how much I enjoyed being here with you.”
Her laughter quiets to something more gentle, and she reaches up to smooth the furrow between my brows. “That doesn’t seem like something to frown about.”
I catch her hand and kiss her palm. “Only because I don’t want to leave.”
She sighs. “But you must.”
I nod and hold her hand against my chest. “I have to go so that I can work out how to free you.”
Clio looks as if she hardly dares to ask, “Do you think you know how?”
I kiss her softly parted lips. “Not yet,” I murmur when I finally allow a hair’s breadth between us. “But I will figure it out. And I know more now than I did. Maybe enough to ask the right questions.”
Tipping her head back, she closes her eyes and breathes deep, as if basking in the painted light and savoring the last bit of our evening together. When she looks at me again, her smile is sweet and spicy, like she’s thinking about everything that’s happened since she brought me into her painting. “It feels like a whole different universe than it did before.”
I tug her away from the bridge’s railing for another embrace before we continue on. “Why, Clio, are you saying I rocked your world?”
She swats playfully at my shoulder and starts a cheeky reply—and then stops, mouth hanging slightly open as if she’s seen something baffling. Only she’s not looking at any one thing, but rather all around us.
“Julien . . . do you see this? I assumed ‘a whole new world’ was a figure of speech but . . .”
I see immediately what she means. From the apex of the arched bridge, we’ve stepped onto its mirror image. It might even be the same one, but the light is different, brighter and greener than Clio’s garden.
I know where we are. I didn’t think anything could surprise me now, and yet this latest twist has proven me wrong. Somehow, Clio and I have walked into another painting in the Musée d’Orsay.
This is The Water Lily Pond: Green Harmony. Same bridge, different painting, one of Monet’s many versions of his Japanese bridge.
We follow where it leads and step off the planks and into the museum. Clio stares wide-eyed as if we’ve been transported to another planet instead of a different gallery in the Musée d’Orsay—a gallery nowhere near Clio’s painting.
Finally, she looks at me as if hunting for an answer, but I’m looking at her for the same thing. Her bewilderment makes it even more of a shock—she’s been living in her painted world for more than a century, and has been a Muse for much longer than that. If she’s surprised, I’m flabbergasted.
“Did you know you could do that?” I ask her.
She shakes her head slowly. “I had no idea. And I’ve searched every corner of my painting. The bridge never went anywhere except across the pond.”
“So, what happened?” I have to say it aloud, even though we must be thinking the same thing—the only thing that’s changed in the century she’s been trapped is . . . me.
Her gaze flicks to the painting and back to me. “We touched the bridge together. Our hands, remember? You were distracting me at the time, but I think that must be when something changed.”
“Or the bridges in the paintings connected right at that moment.” I rub my chin as I speculate. “The moment when two muses touched it together?”
“It must be,” she says, still wide-eyed with amazement.
A new voice enters the discussion from not far away. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
Clio and I both jump and turn to see Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh’s doctor from his famous portrait. It’s the first time I’ve seen him corporeal. He stands, hands behind his back as if studying Monet’s painting rather than us.
“What’s convenient?” I ask.
His voice is low and sonorous as he gestures idly to the water lilies. “That the Impressionists painted so many versions of that bridge.”
I know that—Monet’s garden was apparently a popular place to paint—but now my mind boggles at the implications. “They connect?” I ask Dr. Gachet. “The bridges all connect?”
He spreads his hands in front of him in a noncommittal way. “I merely offer an observation. After all, I’m not the one jumping in and out of paintings.”
I can only stare as the doctor, in his royal-blue coat, wanders along the hall. In the corner, Olympia stands, the sheet from her painting draped around her, waving flirtatiously at him. I’ve never seen her moving about either, but now she and the doctor link hands and walk off.
