"What will we do tomorrow?" she asked, finally.
So they became lovers. For the first few days they did little but eat and swim and embrace and devour the intoxicating fruit of the dwikka-tree. He ceased to fear, as he had at the beginning, that she would disappear as suddenly as she had corne to him. Her flood of questions subsided, after a time, but even so he chose not to take his turn, preferring to leave her mysteries unpierced.
He could not shake his obsession with the idea that she was a Metamorph. The thought chilled him — that her beauty was a lie, that behind it she was alien and grotesque — especially when he ran his hands over the cool sweet smoothness of her thighs or breasts. He had constantly to fight away his suspicions. But they would not leave him. There were no human outposts in this part of Zimroel and it was too implausible that this girl — for that was all she was, a girl — had elected, as he had, to take up a hermit's life here. Far more likely, Nismile thought, that she was native to this place, one of the unknown number of Shapeshifters who slipped like phantoms through these humid groves. When she slept he sometimes watched her by faint starlight to see if she began to lose human form. Always she remained as she was; and even so, he suspected her.
And yet, and yet, it was not in the nature of Metamorphs to seek human company or to show warmth toward them. To most people of Majipoor the Metamorphs were ghosts of a former era, revenants, unreal, legendary. Why would one seek him out in his seclusion, offer itself to him in so convincing a counterfeit of love, strive with such zeal to brighten his days and enliven his nights? In a moment of paranoia he imagined Sarise reverting in the darkness to her true shape and rising above him as he slept to plunge a gleaming dirk into his throat: revenge for the crimes of his ancestors. But what folly such fantasies were! If the Metamorphs here wanted to murder him, they had no need of such elaborate charades.
It was almost as absurd to believe that she was a Metamorph as to believe that she was not.
To put these matters from his mind he resolved to take up his art again. On an unusually clear and sunny day he set out with Sarise for the rock of the red succulents, carrying a raw canvas. She watched, fascinated, as he prepared everything.
"You do the painting entirely with your mind?" she asked.
"Entirely. I fix the scene in my soul, I transform and rearrange and heighten, and then — you'll see."
"It's all right if I watch? I won't spoil it?"
"Of course not."
"But if someone else's mind gets into the painting—"
"It can't happen. The canvases are tuned to me." He squinted, made frames with his fingers, moved a few feet this way and that. His throat was dry and his hands were quivering. So many years since last he had done this: would he still have the gift? And the technique? He aligned the canvas and touched it in a preliminary way with his mind. The scene was a good one, vivid, bizarre, the color contrasts powerful ones, the compositional aspects challenging, that massive rock, those weird meaty red plants, the tiny yellow floral bracts at their tips, the forest-dappled sunlight — yes, yes, it would work, it would amply serve as the vehicle through which he could convey the texture of this dense tangled jungle, this place of shapeshifting—
He closed his eyes. He entered trance. He hurled the picture to the canvas.
Sarise uttered a small surprised cry.
Nismile felt sweat break out all over; he staggered and fought for breath; after a moment he regained control and looked toward the canvas.
"How beautiful!" Sarise murmured.
But he was shaken by what he saw. Those dizzying diagonals- — the blurred and streaked colors — the heavy greasy sky, hanging in sullen loops from the horizon — it looked nothing like the scene he had tried to capture, and, far more troublesome, nothing like the work of Therion Nismile. It was a dark and anguished painting, corrupted by unintended discords.
"You don't like it?" she asked.
"It isn't what I had in mind."
"Even so — how wonderful, to make the picture come out of the canvas like that — and such a lovely thing—"
"You think it's lovely?"
"Yes, of course! Don't you?"
He stared at her. This? Lovely? Was she flattering him, or merely ignorant of prevailing tastes, or did she genuinely admire what he had done? This strange tormented painting, this somber and alien work — Alien.
"You don't like it," she said, not a question this time.
"I haven't painted in almost four years. Maybe I need to go about it slowly, to get the way of it right again"
"I spoiled your painting," Sarise said.
"You? Don't be silly."
"My mind got into it. My way of seeing things."
"I told you that the canvases are tuned to me alone. I could be in the midst of a thousand people and nothing of them would affect the painting."
"But perhaps I distracted you, I swerved your mind somehow."
"Nonsense."
"I'll go for a walk. Paint another one while I'm gone."
"No, Sarise. This one is splendid. The more I look at it, the more pleased I am. Come: let's go home, let's swim and eat some dwikka and make love. Yes?"
He took the canvas from its mount and rolled it. But what she had said affected him more than he would admit. Some kind of strangeness had entered the painting, no doubt of it. What if she had managed somehow to taint it, her bidden Metamorph soul radiating its essence into his spirit, coloring the impulses of his mind with an alien hue—
They walked downstream in silence. When they reached the meadow of the mud-lilies where Nismile had seen his first Metamorph, he heard himself blurt, "Sarise, I have to ask you something."
"Yes?"
He could not halt himself. "You aren't human, are you? You're really a Metamorph, right?"
She stared at him wide-eyed, color rising in her cheeks. "Are you serious?" He nodded.
"Me a Metamorph?" She laughed, not very convincingly. "What a wild idea!"
"Answer me, Sarise. Look into my eyes and answer me."
"It's too foolish, Therion."
"Please. Answer me."
"You want me to prove I'm human? How could I?"
"I want you to tell me that you're human. Or that you're something else."
"I'm human," she said.
"Can I believe that?"
"I don't know. Can you? I've given you your answer." Her eyes flashed with mirth. "Don't I feel human? Don't I act human? Do I seem like an imitation?"
"Perhaps I'm unable to tell the difference."