"It's not that impressive," Tanner protested, but his words rang hollow as Bella steered them up a steep road along which ran a stone wall twice the height of a man. Juele touched it as she walked, and felt a tingle of power race along her nerve endings from her fingertips. Of all the important buildings in Mnemosyne, here was the most important. She was nearly out of breath with excitement when they got to the top of the slope, where the featureless wall gave way to pillars with a high arch between them. Spread out like the wings of a book were twin gates of fancifully wrought iron. Guards stood to either side. They were clad in uniforms that made them look extra brave: red tunics buttoned up high under the chin, black trousers with a gold-and-red stripe up the outer seam, and shiny black boots. They clasped silver-tipped lances that rested on the ground at their side. Their metal-and-leather caps were shiny as glass, and they stared straight ahead from under the dark visors, daring all foes to try to pass. Juele felt a thrill as she walked between them to behold the Castle of Dreams.
Juele caught her breath. Before her, the great keep rose many stories into the air. The walls were of stone as white as salt with glittering diamond windows sparkling at intervals. The top edge of the building was cut in heavy square battlements. At each corner were mighty towers broader at the base than the top, as if they had melted slightly under their own weight. Pennants at the peak of each tower house flew proudly in the wind. The castle had an air of having been in the same spot forever, ponderous but not unapproachable. I will protect you, the keep said. It was secure and serene in its own strength.
Between her and the keep, however, the castle grounds were lively. The main entrance of the castle, double doors of mahogany twenty feet high, stood wide open. People were coming and going freely through a courtyard busy with carriages and cars. Dozens of small buildings had been built against the inner side of the curtain wall, and in every one Juele saw the tools of a different trade: weavers at their looms, tanners cutting strips of leather, telephone repair men bent over their receivers, a blacksmith hammering red-hot metal, and in one shed hung with mystic-looking draperies a woman in a turban leaning avidly over a glowing crystal ball. Men with wide-brimmed hats, bandannas tied around their necks, and blue jeans walked up and down exercising bicycles, horses, and other steeds. A skittish tricycle broke free of its handler and started racing toward the path, scattering people as it went. A bicycle let out an alarmed squeak and rolled hastily after it. The pair was pursued by a couple of the ostlers, waving ropes.
Juele heard strains of music and peered around her for the source. It would seem the king was fond of all styles. She watched musicians in full tuxedos wheeling odd-shaped instruments in and out of the main entrance, a string quartet sawing away in a knot garden beside a fountain, a harpist on a lawn at the side in front of a pair of French doors, and a T-shirted man with long hair striking the strings of an electric guitar under the curve of a balcony. The harpist, a small blond lady in a long dress, swept her arms back and back, brushing the strings, tossing off arpeggios in handfuls and sending showers of song everywhere. Heaps of discarded notes lay around her, still sweetly singing. Juele was delighted.
"There's so much going on here," she said. "Such . . . such variation."
"Oh, well, you'd expect it, wouldn't you," Erbatu said, raising her eyes to the sky and shaking her head. Though she pretended to be bored like the others, Juele was thrilled. She stared as intently as any tourist would at a party of men in felt pillbox hats decorated with long pheasant feathers, colored hose, and short, gorgeously embroidered tunics with long furred sleeves that nearly brushed the ground. The shoes were of red leather, narrow, twice as long as their feet and curled over at the tips into ram's horns. A few of them had codpieces to match. She and the others peered out of the corners of their eyes and giggled.
"Renaissance," Sondra said, tossing an airy gesture toward them. They were walking with a short, thin man in a black broad-brimmed hat and long coat with a four-in-hand tie looped under his bearded chin. "La Belle Epoque." Behind them was a man in a translucent tunic with starched pleats. "Seventeenth dynasty."
Pedestals and easels had been set up about the handsomely kept grounds with works of art very much in progress. Most of the places were unoccupied at present. Juele stared at a sculpture consisting almost entirely of mannequin arms and wondered what it meant. She was delighted by a pile of soap bubbles crowning a big ball of water perched on a marble plinth. Their slight pink sheen glistened with rainbows in the sun. The blow-wand and bottle on the grass nearby suggested that the artist had been called away hastily.
"There he is," Bella said, distracting Juele with a tap on the arm. Purposefully, Bella led the others down into a corner of the garden that sloped into the corner of the curtain wall opposite the front gate. There, beyond a narrow clock tower, a high brick wall about four meters wide curved partway around one of the pedestals. A crowd had gathered on the other side, and were hopping up, trying to see over it. A young man in a mustard-yellow smock stood behind his easel on the other side, scooping handfuls of matter from one part of the mass on his table and slapping them onto other parts. He stroked his chin with his fingers, then picked up a long, sharp tool with a fork on the end.
"Davney!" Bella called, when they drew closer. The young man turned around. He palmed back long, light-brown hair and grinned at them. He had a long, thin chin and very square, white teeth.
"Bella, come and see," he called back, waving the chisel. Bella minced daintily down the slope, careful not to catch the heel of her high-buttoned shoes in the grass. Juele trotted after her, followed by the rest of the group.
"Juele, this is Davney Farfetch," Bella said, holding out her hand to the young man. "Davney, Juele started yesterday. They've taken an interest in her."
Davney raised an eyebrow, and Juele caught a glint in his eye. "How do you do?" he said.
Juele started to reply, but Erbatu clutched Davney's arm and turned him toward his work. Juele closed her mouth on her greeting, and kept the protest she felt from coming out. "Darling, it's going marvelously. It was twice as big yesterday."
"I'm beginning to get it distilled down to the essence," Davney said, crossing his arms and tapping his chin with the end of the chisel. "I'd like to get it reduced to a mere concept, but that's not what they want. Or so they keep telling me." Juele studied the mass on the table. It was an untidy, multicolored heap of matter that began to shift shape as she looked at it, but not into any configuration that she recognized.
"It's not illusion," she said.
"No," Davney said, watching her curiously. "No, the customer asked for nebulosity, and the customer is right when the bread is right." He jingled a few coins in the pocket of his smock. "And the bread is very right, indeed. Of course I'd rather be working in illusion, not getting my hands dirty."
"Who is the customer?"
"Why, the Crown," Davney said, raising his eyebrows into his hairline. Juele watched with interest as they settled back in place one at a time. "Public sculpture, for edification of the masses."
Daline looked at Juele as if pitying her for asking a stupid question. "Don't humor the child, Davney. She should have been paying attention."
"Well, it could be an endowment," Davney said, with a grin and a shrug. "Or I could be a nuisance."
"You are a nuisance," Bella said fondly. The artist went back to work as he chatted with them. He gave the matter on his table a slap, and it straightened up, quivering, and assumed a shiny, translucent texture like marble. Juele realized the shape was meant to be a kind of a bird. It had a long neck and a sharp beak. Its tail stood up in a huge fan, and the eyes at the end of the blue-green feathers winked at her. As she watched Davney manipulate the nebulosity, the peacock seemed to shift to catch the best light. It was really very pretty, though she wasn't sure she dared say so, remembering Daline's sneer about representational art.
"Do you like working in the castle?" Juele asked, when Davney paused to contemplate his work.
"I'm pestered half to death with people coming by all day to look at my work. Don't put me in it, they say," Davney said, painting a quick illusion over himself of a double-chinned man in black. "I don't know art, but I know what I like," he sneered, in the guise of a rail-thin woman with a long face. He dropped the illusion and grimaced at his friends with his own face. "I'll say they don't know art," he said bitterly, slapping a double handful down on the back of his sculpture, where it spread out into scale-shaped feathers. "Oh, they say they like it, but they don't understand. That's why I put the wall there."
"It's an illusion?" Juele asked. The crowd of people was still there. She could hear their voices and occasionally see the top of someone's head as they leaped up and down.
"Of course, child," Soma said, with her superior smirk.
"I had to," Davney said, giving her an apologetic grin. Juele decided she liked him. "I wasn't getting anything done. They think the peacock represents a peacock." He looked amused at that. His friendliness was for other art students only. Juele was glad she could be included in his regard. Though she was curious, she didn't intend to ask what the peacock represented and look like a fool again in front of the clique, but he was so kind, she felt bold enough to ask the next question that popped into her head.
"Why a peacock?"
"Why, it's the perfect symbol of self-deception," Davney said, with a grin. "Even if the peacock looks around, it can never see the truth, only the gaudy illusion. It shows the futility of the physical world, how all appearance is merely a surface illusion, and one has to strive to maintain the illusion, whether of beauty, strength, control . . . or dignity." He beckoned her around to the back of the pedestal and showed her the ridiculous fluffy underfeathers beneath the magnificent tail. "As you can see, I am putting all of them in it." Juele laughed.
"Have you had any time to work on your piece for the exhibition?" Sondra asked.
"No, not yet," Davney said, with a shrug. "I'd work on them both at once, but I don't want commercial taint in my own exhibit. I've got the thing roughed out in my room. Nothing to it," he assured them, slapping another handful of nebulosity onto the base of his design. He raked at it deeply with the hand tool and the matter spread out to became peacock toes. "I have plenty of time. I'll just finish it when I'm through with this. Shouldn't be more than another few days on configuration."
"Have a look at this, Dav," Tanner said. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and stretched out a hank of light. It was brilliant with rainbow glints. "Just something I picked up in town. Pretty, isn't it?"
"Very," Davney said, admiringly. Juele looked at it. She recognized the crystalline reflection and bit her lip angrily. That was the bit of light she had been playing with outside the sweet shop. He had stolen that, after the policeman had told her it was wrong to take it. Then, Tanner looked up at her under his lashes while he was talking to Davney. At her? Did he want her to say something nice about his find? No! Juele realized, with dawning shock. Tanner had made the illusion of the policeman to drive her away. She stepped up to him, her anger making her tall enough to look him right in the eye.
"You tricked me," she said.
"Who, me?" Tanner asked, dangling the little rainbow from one hand to another. He didn't like having his prank exposed, but he was enjoying his audience. Juele was not. Daline and Cal looked amused and the others seemed bored. "But you believed it! What are you going to do about it?" He held out the strands, sharp and beautiful as when she'd first seen them. That diamond bright light attracted her, and she nearly reached for it, but didn't, knowing he'd snatch it away if she put her hand out. Instead, she closed her hands into fists.
"I'm not going to let you get away with it again, that's what." Juele felt very bold, and wondered whether she ought to say more, when Bella came up and touched her on the shoulder.
"It's just before noon. If you want to get to shadow on time, foolish child, you'd better run."
Juele looked up at the clock. A quarter to. She turned to Bella. "Thank you," she said. "Thanks for letting me come along today. I had a good time, and I learned a lot."
Bella was startled, but looked pleased. Daline wore a blank look for a moment, then pursed her lips ironically.
"Gracious, you must be easily amused," she said.
"Well, thank you anyway," Juele said, doggedly. She walked away, her back pricked for the sound of derisive laughter behind her. It didn't come, but she kept feeling as if it might. When she was out of sight of the group, she started running. She was still fifteen and a newcomer. This wasn't her world yet.
"Heavens above, girl, not so dense! You'll obscure the detail. Now, mix in some white light."
Juele sat at a bench up to the elbows in yellow illusion. It was as thick as mustard, and she couldn't see her hands through the mass. She was mixing it with her fingers, trying to feel the difference between this color and any other. She couldn't. It felt like light, insubstantial and faintly warm.
Unlike Mr. Lightlow, Mr. Cachet tried to impress his information upon them by pure volume. If a student didn't understand him, he increased the size of his voice until she did. His barrel chest was good for resonance, and he made full use of it. The very rafters shook when he shouted.
Trying not to lose the brilliance of the color, Juele shook it off her right hand and reached into the bar of blinding white light shining down on the far edge of the table for a handful. The moment she drew it into the yellow mass it lightened, but the tone changed. With a groan of impatience, Juele concentrated on changing it back again. Mr. Cachet boomed an order at someone nearby, and she jumped, scattering light everywhere. She gathered it back up and kept mixing. The white light thinned down the mixture enough that her hands appeared in the midst, the plump fingers she had at this moment stirring and flipping the insubstantial color as though they were not quite attached to her, but not enough to make the hue completely translucent. There, she thought, pleased. Yellow!
"Very good!" Mr. Cachet shouted close to her ear. "All right, you can put that away! Stand up! We're going to work on ensemble coloration. Did everyone bring the pastels we made last week?"
Gretred, who was also in this class, nodded and held up a neatly bundled mass of pink. Juele worried that she would be held responsible for not having pastels, since she hadn't been at the previous class session, but quite a few of the eight students looked guilty and shook their heads. With a growl, Mr. Cachet threw open the big cabinet at the front of the studio and started tossing hanks of color at each of them. Juele put up her hands and caught a cluster of blue that ranged from sky blue to deepest midnight. She felt a tingle in her palms as she handled it and realized that blue felt slightly different than yellow. She digested this information with pleasure as Mr. Cachet ordered them to stand in a circle.
"The benefit of ensemble work is not only to show how your vision works in connection with other artists, but to strengthen the parts of your own work that are unique to you," he said. "You learn to complement one another."
"But . . ." began a young man with a goatee who was standing near Juele.
"But, what?" Cachet asked, rounding on him.
"We can't combine illusions, can we? It's like influence," the young man stammered. "You can only use your own." Juele nodded. That's what she had always believed.
"Of course you bloody can! This isn't combination, but collaboration," Cachet boomed. "Know the difference! Were you asleep last week, Sangweiler?"
"I . . . I think so," the young man admitted, sheepishly.
"Hmph. I hope that you gleaned as much from your dreams as the rest of your classmates did from my lecture. Do I make myself clear, eh?" He peered around at all of them. "Right. I'll set the design."
With one hand, he began to draw on the air. He made great sweeping motions, leaving behind black outlines of a house, with a rolling field and a pond in the foreground, and a broad sky with fluffy clouds in the background.
"Just a little prosaic, eh?" Cachet chortled, to the groans of his students. "You can play with nonrepresentational art when you can respectably produce representational. You need to know how to draw a plain image. Do you understand why?" Juele nodded hastily along with the others, but he pointed at her. "All right, Juele! Tell us why!"
"Uh," she said. She knew so well instinctively, but could she put it into words? "So someone looking at art knows what they're getting feelings about?"
"A little incoherent, but fundamentally correct! It's the bones of the illusion—the bones! If you don't know what's at the basis of your images, if you can't inform your fancies with your knowledge of the plain, how the nightmare do you expect anyone else to comprehend a higher chord? Eh? You need a grounding in the classics. So, give your best efforts to this very ordinary image, if you please."
Awkwardly at first, but gradually with more gusto, the students drew out sheets of color and placed them where Mr. Cachet directed. The boy with green began by outlining the foundations of the house and barn and circling the pond in bright emerald. At the teacher's order, he left a thin wash across the pond's basin and a trace in the ivy around the farmhouse door. Next, the girl with black thinned it to pale gray, with which she painted the barn and silo, and swept a light haze in the lower sky. The effect was quite interesting. Juele could see gaps between the gray and green where not enough light had been used to fill in. Gretred stepped forward to paint the house in pink. She dotted the grass with flowers. Juele was next. She spread blue across the sky, filling in as best she could over the buildings, but not overrunning the outlines of clouds waiting for Sangweiler, the student with the goatee, who held the white light.
"Now, the pond," Cachet said, pointing. "I want to see some good layering here. Gives luminescence."
It was meant to reflect the sky. Juele filled in the irregular outline very carefully, even drawing her finger through to show where the edge of the cloud would be. Maybe the student with gray could limn the shape and make it look more real.
"No, more blue!" Cachet shouted. "That's light blue, girl. I want darker."
Juele's hands shook as she tried to change the shade. As the blue deepened, the area it covered seemed to contract. She had to stretch out the edges to fit again, and it lapped over onto the green of the grass. She was nervous, having the teacher shouting at her while she was trying to concentrate. Making clowns, unicorns, and balloons for toddlers' birthday parties was easy compared with this!
"No, darker! Darker! Good night, girl, you'll never amount to anything if you can't follow a simple instruction like that. What a pathetic effort. I'm sorry to be in the same room with it. Are you sure you ought to be here, and not at some provincial center of learning for the colorblind?"
Shamed, Juele spread out a fresh sheaf of blue. She was so embarrassed that it was an effort to raise the color to its place. It was a dark blue this time, dark, dismal, sad, sorry blue to suit her state of mind.
"Not so dark, girl," Mr. Cachet said in a much gentler voice, thoughtfully studying it as she tacked it into place. Juele hastened to lighten the pond slightly. "That's more like it. Now, do you see what you're capable of doing? You can imbue even the most ordinary thing with your emotions. Even if it took shock treatment. Good job."
Juele brightened at his praise, and the pond glowed with her mood.
"No!" he shouted. "Think of what you're doing! Separate your work from your personality. Project less of yourself into your art." Juele corrected the image, to Mr. Cachet's approving nod. She stepped back, thankful to be finished, as Sangweiler stepped forward with his hands full of white light.
"But, isn't art a personal expression?" Gretred asked, as they watched the student install highlights and clouds.
"Yes, but you can explore many ways of being. Any Dreamlander changes, but through illusion you can appear to change without actually doing so, or appear in ways different from the manner in which you have really changed. There's your art, and your personal expression to boot. Next time," he shouted, as a siren sounded the end of class and Juele gathered up her box, "I want you to bring in two-toned light. And I don't want to see a roomful of sky-blue-pink, do you hear me?"