And then he stepped back from the easel, smiling, and the figure he had been painting turned to him and took him by the hand.
He had expected that, and he reached with his other arm embrace Her, but She continued to turn in his grasp, drawing him after her, faster and faster until the green meadow blurred around him.
'Wait! Where are we going? Beside the river there is a shady bower where we can lie, and -' Damn! If only She would stop and face him for a moment he would know Her name!
Clouds boiled around him with a roar of thunder. The difference between up and down was disappearing and the paintbrush was torn from his hand.
'Who are you?' he shouted. 'Where are you taking me?'
And then he was hurtling through winds that tore away his awareness until he knew nothing but the implacable grip that held his hand. The world had disintegrated into pain and darkness, but through the clouds that whirled around him he glimpsed brief images - the pretentious splendours of a great city where a beleaguered emperor's banner flew; armies crawling like lines of ants across the plains; mountains that shuddered with the struggles of men and mages, and here and there a pocket of greater darkness where forces worse than human strove for mastery.
And then he saw below him a familiar curve of harbour and a tangle of houses and a tarnished golden dome. and pain clapped great hands around him and he fell.
Lalo's mouth tasted like the midden of the Vulgar Unicorn and he felt as if the Stepsons had been practising manoeuvres on the inside of his skull. Except for an annoying throbbing in his arm, he could hardly feel his body at all.
And Gilla was calling him.
Holy Anen blast me if I ever touch that wine again! he thought muzzily, and perhaps presently he would remember just what wine it had been. But now that he considered, he could not remember anything about what must have been an epic binge, and that worried him. Gilla would be furious if she had had to drag him home, and from the taste in his mouth he must have been sick, too. He groaned, wishing fervently that he could pass out again.
'Lalo! Lalo my darling, you've got to wake up! You wretched man, I heard you open your eyes and look at me!'
Something wet ran down his neck and someone near him stifled a sob. Gilla? Gilla? But she would never weep over him after a drinking bout - a pail of cold water, maybe, but not tears. How long had he been unconscious, anyway?
As if he were trying to work an old lock with a rusty key, Lalo-opened his eyes.
He was lying on the pallet in his studio. Alfi and Latilla crouched at the foot of it, watching him with wide, awed eyes. Vanda was behind them, but her face held the look of one who has been suddenly released from fear. He turned his eyes - he did not yet trust himself to move his head - to the bedside, and saw Gilla. Her face was puffy and her eyes red from weeping, and as his gaze met hers they glistened with another tear.
Without thinking, he reached up and brushed it from her cheek: then he stared at his hand, pallid and veined and thin. And now that awareness of the rest of his body was returning, he realized that he felt curiously light, and his other hand clutched at the bedclothes as if to hold him there.
'Gilla, have I been ill?'
'Ill! You might call it that - and I'd rather not know what else it might be -' exploded Gilla, and Vanda got to her feet.
'Father, you've been lying in some kind of trance for almost three weeks now,' Vanda added.
Three weeks? But just this afternoon he had been ... painting... He had looked in the mirror and then ... Lalo began to tremble as memory came back to him. His eyes filled with tears for the beauty of the other world, but Gilla's hands closed on his shoulders. and she shook him back to her own reality.
Lalo stared at her, and through the veil of her swollen features he saw the face of the goddess who had brought him home. It took a kind of inner focussing, and he found that now he could see another face beneath his daughter's familiar mask of cheerfulness too. Only the two younger children remained essentially the same.
So, he thought, perhaps I will not need a paintbrush to do my seeing now. He lay back, trying to assimilate the truth of what had happened to him into his memory of the man he used to be.
'So, how do you feel? Is there anything you want me to get you now?' Gilla finished wiping her eyes and resolutely blew her nose on a corner other apron.
Lalo smiled. 'Well, I haven't eaten for three whole weeks -'
'Vanda, there's soup on the stove,' Gilla said sharply. 'Go heat it up, and you little ones go with her. You've seen him, and Father doesn't need you underfoot here. Everything will be all right now.'
Gilla bustled nervously about the room, smoothing the covers, heaping pillows behind Lalo so that he could sit, pushing a chair back against the wall. Lalo flexed his fingers, feeling them tingle as blood began to circulate freely once more, and wondered how he had gotten the scratch on his arm.
Beside the pallet were piled some scraps of paper and a piece of charcoal. Can I still draw? he wondered, and seeing that Gilla was not watching him, he pulled a piece of paper towards him, picked up the charcoal and drew a line, then another, then some shading, and the paper showed him a deftly drawn representation of a common Sanctuary dunghill fly. He stared at it for a moment with a question he dared not even put into words, but it remained unchanged before him - a drawing of a fly.
Lalo smiled a little wryly and set the charcoal down. What did I expect, here?
Gilla came back to him with the bowl of steaming soup in her hands, sat down beside the pallet, and dipped in the spoon. Lalo blew gently on his drawing to get rid of the charcoal dust and laid it aside. When Gilla held the spoon to his lips he opened his mouth obediently. / could do this myself, he thought, but he realized that feeding him fulfilled some need of Gilla's own. The hot liquid soothed his throat, and his body seemed to absorb the moisture like a sponge.
'That's enough for now,' said Gilla, taking it away.
'It was very good.' Lalo looked at her face, wondering how he had ever seen anything but the goddess there. Then he frowned. 'I was painting a picture, Gilla. What happened to it?'
She nodded towards the corner. 'It's over there. Do you want to see?' Before he could stop her she had gone to pick up the painting and brought it to him, leaning it against the wall.
He stared at it, reading it as he had read Gilla's face a moment ago, and knowing that he would never be able to forget the journey from which he had just returned. It would take some getting used to.
'A self-portrait,' said Gilla meditatively. 'Of course. I didn't really want to look at it before.'
After a moment he cleared his throat, knowing that in this knowledge, at least, they were equals now. 'Well?'
'Well,' she said slowly, 'you must know that this is the way you always look to me.'
Her hand moved to enfold his, and feeling suddenly light-headed. Lalo lay back against the pillows again. His ears were buzzing - no - it was only a fly circling in the middle of the room. He thought a moment, then, feeling a little foolish, glanced down at the piece of paper that still lay on the coverlet.
It was blank. Lalo looked up quickly and saw the fly spiral across to the mirror, for a moment hover there, then buzz purposefully through the window and away.