Laurence Raphael Brothers is this month’s winner of $537.50 for a subtle romance with a magical twist.
Bio: Laurence Raphael Brothers has published short stories in such magazines as Nature, PodCastle, and Galaxy's Edge. His noir urban fantasy series beginning with The Demons of Wall Street has just added a new volume, The Demons of Montmartre.
Without further ado, “Sweeter Than Honey” by Laurence Raphael Brothers.
The man in the violet waistcoat caught my eye and yawned ostentatiously, but no one else noticed.
Lord Merioneth, a handsome but rather washed-out-looking Welsh earl, was droning on about his paintings. Mother, Father, and I were receiving the signal honor of a personal tour of his lordship’s manor-house seat, which served him both as an artist’s atelier and as a gallery. An enormous gallery full of the world’s dreariest portraits. We were here because Father had applied for the position of Lord Merioneth's London business manager. A tour of the gallery appeared to be part of the application process.
I’d never seen such a beautiful example of masculine perfection as the earl before. His cool blue eyes, his wavy blond hair, the smoothness of his skin, and the clarity and sharpness of his beardless features seeming almost to transcend the ordinary run of humanity, at least the sort of young male humanity I was familiar with from dance meets and début balls around London. And yet there was something lacking in his eyes and his attention, as if he was merely going through polite motions, wishing he were somewhere else, or perhaps distracted by some inward gaze.
At Lord Merioneth’s side, Father was saying things like “Ha, hm, most interesting!” and “Exquisite work!” Mother was mainly occupied in making sure I didn’t fidget.
“These paintings really are terribly tedious,” said the man in the violet waistcoat. He was small and plump with an exceedingly long nose and unkempt hair, quite the ugliest person I’d ever seen.
The earl ignored the little man. No one but me seemed to notice him at all. Lord Merioneth said to my father, “I’m afraid enduring all this art must be something of a trial for a vivacious young woman like your daughter.”
I curtsied and lied to his face, “No, really, your lordship; this is most interesting.”
“Still,” said Lord Merioneth, “you must find my work to be rather dull....” I noticed a glint in his eye, as if he was quite aware that the only answer to this statement could be—
“By no means!” my father exclaimed, his cheeks flushing red with the peculiarly violent bonhomie that was his preferred mode of expression. “Your paintings are superb, my lord! Why, I could go on like this for hours and hours!”
“Well, then,” said the earl, “just a bit more... but let me offer young— Penny was it? Penelope?” (I curtsied again) “Penny, perhaps you’ll find my gallery of experimental work more to your taste than all this society portraiture.”
“Ah,” said the man in the violet waistcoat, whose presence I had quite forgotten, “you’ll like those!”
“James! James!” The earl raised his voice, and presently one of his pretty young footmen appeared. “James, show Miss Penelope here to my experimentals room, and have the cook send up some of those petit-fours she does so well.”
“This way, Miss,” said the footman, but before I followed him out, Mother took the opportunity to hiss in my ear, “Behave yourself, Penny... or else—!”
Really, I didn’t know what she was worried about. Trouble does seem to follow me at times, but no one could call it my fault. No one with any sense of fair play, at least.
Anyway, I accompanied James out of the room. Though he wasn’t much older than me, like the earl he gave a washed-out impression, as if he’d already lived all his best years. But even so, he was still quite pretty; just, well, gray and rather subdued. It occurred to me that all the earl’s male servants were equally young and pretty, if similarly colorless, and all at once I realized why the otherwise highly eligible earl was still unmarried in his early thirties.
At last we arrived at yet another gallery.
“Here, Miss,” said the footman, and having executed his commission he departed without another word.
I thought I would prefer a pleasant stroll through the gardens outside to more tedium in the gallery. But as I formed that intention, the man in the violet waistcoat appeared and shook his head.
“Really,” he said, “you can’t leave. It would be most inconvenient.”
I had turned back into the room at his words, but when I looked again for the passage out, all I found was a blank wall full of paintings. My mind went all blurry and—
For lack of anything better to do (the promised petit-fours had not yet arrived), I looked around the gallery. It was an elegant, airy space a good forty feet across, illuminated by slender windows set along one wall which faced out onto the immaculate expanse of the earl’s southern lawn. The floor was oak and cherry-wood parquet, and the whitewashed walls were covered with paintings from the wainscoting up to the ceiling. I was prepared for more dreary studies of honorables and lordships, but the earl hadn’t been exaggerating. These really were unusual works. I’d heard that in France impressionism was the new avant-garde, but these paintings fairly glowed with light and color, to the point of putting even the boldest achievements of the Pre-Raphaelites to shame.
I looked at the first painting to catch my eye. In composition it was unremarkable, an Arcadian landscape with rolling hills, wooded groves, and lush pastures, the little figure of a shepherd standing by an elbow of a stream off in the middle distance. Looking at the scene more carefully, I saw the shepherd had ventured out into the wilderness wearing only a brief red chlamys cloak that revealed an excessive amount of hip and thigh; on closer inspection, that flash of pink was the shepherd’s naked bottom, painted in such exquisite detail that I felt I could almost reach out and pinch the young man.
More of the earl’s particular tastes, no doubt, but the shock of seeing this explicit depiction made me draw back from the painting for a moment. It was then I realized that what I had just seen was quite impossible. The canvas was perhaps 18 inches square, and the distant figure of the shepherd was half an inch tall. I could hardly have seen such graphic detail as I had thought. It must have been some lubricious component of my imagination. And yet— I focused on the shepherd again. Yes. It was as if my vision was being carried into the scene by a bee, buzzing closer and closer to reveal the most intimate details of the young man’s form....
I confess I was fascinated by my first-ever opportunity to spy so closely on a man’s more or less naked body. As if motivated by my unseemly desire, the bee carrying my point of view flew around the shepherd. The front view would have been even more captivating than the rear — no fig leaf here — but I was distracted by the leering satyr hiding behind a nearby tree, invisible from outside the canvas. He was ogling the shepherd with even more interest than me. The satyr bore an astonishing resemblance to Lord Merioneth, which on reflection wasn’t that astonishing at all. And come to think of it, the shepherd looked quite like James the footman, now that I raised my gaze to look at his face. But he wasn’t gray and washed-out in this painting, nor was the earl; rather, they both seemed brighter and bolder than life.
At this point, I was amazed to see the satyr approaching the shepherd, the scene suddenly coming alive. I held my breath when I saw the satyr reach out to grab the shepherd’s brief red cloak from behind, as I feared it presaged an assault. But evidently the young man had been posing for the satyr all along, as his reaction to the tug on his chlamys was to unclasp the garment and let it go entirely....
Oh! I thought to myself after a little while, so that’s how they do it! It really was a gratifying sight, and highly educational too.
“Service, Miss,” said a voice, and all at once I was out of the scene mere moments before its climax. The painting was again a canvas square covered with oil paint, a lovely piece but quite motionless. The tiny human figure in the background of the image was again devoid of any playmate.
I couldn’t help blushing and starting a bit in reaction to the maid’s entrance. She had wheeled in a cart bearing a teapot and a platter of pastries. The maid was a slender, pretty girl about my age, blonde with bright blue eyes. Though she couldn’t have failed to note my startled movement, she said nothing, just curtsied politely. But her eyes darted briefly toward the painting I had been studying, and I wondered if she was aware of its unusual properties.
“Oh yes,” said the man in the violet waistcoat, “she’s intimately familiar with them.” The maid ignored him. I’d forgotten his existence again. Had he been here all along? I thought not, but I couldn’t be sure.
The maid poured tea for me with exquisite grace. Unlike the shepherd I’d been spying on with such interest, her attire was perfectly demure. That didn’t stop me from staring at her, however, as she was quite the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.
“Milk or lemon?”
I asked for lemon, with a lump of sugar, which she provided as gracefully as if she’d rehearsed her motions for hours in front of a mirror.
“Thank you—?”
“Melissa,” she said, and curtsied again.
“Sweeter than honey,” said the man in the violet waistcoat. “But like all bees, she has a sting in her tail.”
I glared at him in annoyance. But he merely smirked obnoxiously. Then he snapped his fingers and vanished, just like that. I turned back to the maid and forgot him entirely.
“Melissa,” I said, rather astonishing myself with my own forwardness, “there are more pastries here than I can possibly eat by myself. Would you care to join me?”
“I’d be delighted,” she said, smiling. “The pink glazed ones are the best.”
We’d devoured half the platter before I nerved myself up enough to ask her anything more. There was only the one teacup, so I shared it with her, and when it occurred to me my lips were touching the same china rim as hers, I felt a moment of unexpected warmth. You might have thought after so quickly coming to an understanding about the earl’s tastes that I would have realized the nature of my feelings for her— but those were them, and this was me, and until now I hadn’t even suspected.... There was, perhaps, a dawning self-awareness, but I was suppressing it for the moment.
“Melissa,” I said, at last, “these paintings... they’re most unusual, wouldn’t you say?”
“They’re certainly vivid.”
“What I mean is, these paintings have an extraordinary quality, different from all other paintings I’ve seen. Or at least that one does. You must know what I’m talking about, Melissa; do admit it!”
She nodded slowly, and I felt as if I’d passed some kind of test by pressing her on the subject.
“Oh, yes,” said Melissa. “They’re quite magical, aren’t they? A bit samey, though.”
“What?”
“Here,” she said, “I’ll show you.”
All the paintings turned out to be superficially innocent depictions of classical themes. This one depicted Ganymede on Mount Ida, a second, Theseus in the labyrinth, and a third, Patroclus fetching Achilles’ arms and armor. And yet, with a moment’s concentration one fell into the painting, which became quite real-seeming. And after another moment another figure entered the scene: Zeus, the Minotaur, and Achilles respectively. In each case one of the characters bore a distinct resemblance to the earl — it seemed he identified equally with gods, monsters, and heroic warriors — and in each case, the pair engaged in the most explicit, lascivious behavior imaginable.
“Wish fulfillment,” said Melissa. “In more ways than one.”
“How—” I couldn’t express myself properly because I was so embarrassed at sharing these uncanny moving images with her.
“How does he do it?”
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