Orion gave us a whole month to complete our projects, but we waste no time getting started. An opportunity to dedicate our days to the arts we love has been rare in the Hospital, and none of us is taking that that time for granted. Kayleigh works outside—she’s using metal and a blowtorch to make . . . something, but only she knows what. Harley has decided that he needs to work outside too, to keep his fresco wet, and the two of them have set up spaces near the koi pond Kayleigh likes to swim in.
Bartie tags along wherever Victria goes, and Victria wanders through the fields and to the City, scribbling in the little leather-bound book that Orion gave her after she told him her idea for a collection of poetry. It almost seems as if Bartie’s taking his assignment too literally—he’s following the object of his affection blindly no matter where she leads him. Still, I suspect Bartie would be devastated to discover what her notebook actually contains—my guess is that more than half her poems are in fact dedicated to Orion.
And Luthor and I? We meet each other every morning, before the solar lamp clicks on, and sneak into our little makeshift studio together.
“I’m glad you didn’t decide to work with Bartie,” he says after the first week.
“Why would I work with Bartie?” I ask innocently, even though that’s what I’d thought I wanted before. I focus on typing notes on my floppy so he doesn’t notice my blush.
Luthor smirks at me and turns his attention back to his own floppy. Orion has ordered clay for him, manufactured chemically in the labs on the Shipper Level, but when it arrives, he’ll have to work quickly to finish his sculpture before it dries out. For that reason, Orion’s insisted that he come up with a design before he actually starts sculpting.
“Seriously, Luthor,” I say, “I’m really glad we’re working together.”
He mumbles something.
“What?” I ask.
“Luthe. You could call me Luthe. My friends do.”
I wonder whom he means by “friends.” Bartie? Probably, even though if you asked Bartie, I’m sure he wouldn’t have applied the term “friend” to Luthor. Luthor has been living at the Hospital as long as anyone—in fact, I think he was one of the first Doc selected to move in. Even so, he’s always been stand-offish at best.
I shoot him a quick smile. “I’m glad to be your friend,” I say. “Would it be okay if I still call you Luthor, though? It—suits you.”
He turns back to his floppy, but he can’t hide his smile.
***
At the end of the second week, Victria taps on my bedroom door. It zips open before I have a chance to get up from my desk and answer her knock.
“Don’t just come in!” I say, jumping up.
Victria rolls her eyes and plops down on my unmade bed.
There are no locks on Godspeed. We don’t need them. The ship is so small that everyone respects privacy. On Sol-Earth, people had to worry about things like theft, but not here. Godspeed is perfectly safe.
Except from Victria when she wants to talk.
“Seleeeeene,” she draws out my name.
“Whaaaat?” I mimic her whine.
She crashes into my pillows dramatically. “I’m bored.”
I shove aside the sheet music I’d been working on. “Where’s Kayleigh?” I ask.
“With Harley.” Her voice drips with disdain, as if even his name disgusts her.
I glance to the window. “It’s nearly time for the solar lamp to go dark. They’re still working on their projects?”
Victria props herself up on her elbows. “I am certain that the one thing they’re not doing is working on their projects.”
I let her words sink in. “Oh!”
“Yeah.”
“Well . . .” I pause, careful about which words I use. “What about you and, uh, Bartie?”
“He’s annoying,” she snaps, sitting up and tossing my pillow up in the air. She catches it, then stares at me. “What about you and Luthor?”
I shrug, not meeting her eyes.
“You’ve been working with him in the Recorder Hall a lot,” she adds, leaning forward.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Listen, be careful with him.” She doesn’t meet my eyes; her whole demeanor has changed. She sets the pillow back on my bed, carefully smoothing it out and pretending like the simple task deserves her full focus.
“Luthor’s harmless.” Even as I say it, I can hear the doubt in my own voice, the question seeking confirmation.
“He’s . . . creepy,” Victria says. “I just . . . I worry.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I say as I shove her off my bed. “It’s Kayleigh you should keep your eye on!”
But the concern wrinkling Victria’s brow doesn’t fade as she leaves.
***
Someone knocks on my door before the solar lamp clicks on the next day. “Who is it?” I call, yawning. I pull my cotton tank top over the waist of my soft knit shorts and stagger blearily to the door. At least I know it’s not Victria; she’d have just barreled in before I had a chance to get up.
Luthor’s waiting on the other side, looking excited.
“I know what I want to sculpt,” he says, stepping into the room.
“What?” After the door zips closed behind him, I push the large button in my wall and soon the room is filled with the scent of breakfast. Wall food isn’t that great—we could go to the caf instead and get something a little better—but it is convenient. I pull out the warm meat pasty from the cavity built into my wall and break it apart, offering half to Luthor.
He takes it, a flicker of surprise on his face. “Thanks,” he mumbles.
“So,” I say, spraying bread crumbs before I think to swallow. “What’re you going to make?”
“You.”
“What?”
“You.” Luthor sets his half of breakfast down on the desk. He’s too excited; he needs both hands to fly around as he speaks. “I read more about the Pig-guy.”
“Pygmalion,” I say, smiling. I know the name better than he does.
“Yeah. And he made a sculpture of what he thought the ideal woman would be like. That’s the whole point of his story, that he created this perfect woman with his art. And that’s what I want to do. I want to make the perfect woman.”
“And you want . . . me?”
Luthor pauses in his flurried excitement, really looking at me, taking in my disheveled hair, wrinkled clothes, and sleep-encrusted eyes. “Of course you,” he says simply, and my heart fills with song.
***
I stand perfectly still in our little studio as Luthor sketches me. He wants to make the statue in a “classical” pose, as he says it, and he keeps telling me to rearrange my arms, or hunch my back more, or hold up one hand.
“No, no, no,” he says, frustrated. I’m not offended—he’s frustrated with my posing in the same way that I get frustrated with my voice when I can’t reach a note. “Like this.”
He strides across the floor and pulls my arms down. He runs both his hands down my arms, making my elbows straighten and pulling my hands slightly behind my hips. I glance down at him; he doesn’t see me as a person in this moment—I’m not Selene, I’m a model.
Luthor slips behind me, pushing one hand into my spine so my back curves inward, making my chest jut forward.
Slowly, he walks around, inspecting me and my pose, stopping when he faces me. “Up,” he says gently, tapping my chin. I lift my face toward the ceiling, the warm light from the high windows cascading down my cheeks.
“Perfect,” he whispers. “You’re perfect.”
I glance down at him, careful not to move my body or my face. When he looks at me now, I know he’s seeing past my skin, into the very heart of who I am.
***
Orion approves Luthor’s design quickly, and if he thought there was something odd about his selection of me as a model, he doesn’t say anything. After lunch, workers from the Feeder Level bring a huge pillar of brown clay, and Luthor tells them to drop it right there, in the center of the floor, where the light from the windows hits it just right.
He brings in buckets of water and lays out his tools in a neat arc next to the clay.
“We could go down to the pond with Kayleigh and Harley,” I suggest.
Luthor shakes his head, his attention focused on lining up each tool correctly. They look almost like Doc’s medical instruments: a dull-bladed knife, tiny needlelike picks, a scalpel.
“I want to work here,” Luthor says. “With you. Alone.”
As if on cue, Victria barges into the studio. “So,” she says loudly, her voice bouncing off the walls, “this is where you two have been hiding.”
Bartie trails behind Victria. He carries his guitar on a strap across his shoulders, one hand unconsciously stroking the strings.
“We’re working,” Luthor says pointedly.
“So are we. Looking for inspiration and all that.” Victria ignores him and heads straight over to me. There’s something almost protective in her stance.
“Look for inspiration somewhere else,” Luthor growls, and I can’t blame him. He was just about to get started on the sculpture he’s planned for two weeks; Victria and Bartie’s interruption could not have come at a worse time.
“I need Selene.” Victria lifts one shoulder, as if she’s helpless in the face of her whimsical muse.
“So do I.” Luthor hasn’t moved away from his clay, but his hands are motionless, his body stiff.
Victria leans over. “You’ve got a sketch.” Her words are casual, but she touches my arm, pressing into my skin as if trying to convey a message to me through my flesh. Bartie shifts nervously by the door.
“But I’ll still need her.”
Before the two of them can dissolve into a real fight, I speak up. “Why do you need me, Victria?”
“I need a song. Music.”
“You have Bartie.” I hope none of the others notice the bitterness in my voice. She does have Bartie, all of him, even if she doesn’t appear to want him the way I used to.
“But I need singing.”
“Yeah,” Bartie says, looking up for the first time. “You’re the Siren, remember. Sing us a song that’ll make us want to drown.”
Victria and Bartie chuckle at the jab, but Luthor just scowls. “Will you leave if she sings?” he says.
Victria hesitates, but Bartie says, “Yes.”
“Just get rid of them,” Luthor says, waving his hand as if he’s sacrificing something to let me sing.
“I . . . I don’t know what to sing,” I say, suddenly shy.
“Sing one of the songs you’ve been working on for Orion’s project.”
My hand moves unconsciously to the loose papers scattered on my makeshift desk. “They’re not ready.”
Victria rolls her eyes. “Just sing.”
***
And so I sing.
I start with a long note—a high E—and I hold it as long as I can, letting the strength of my voice lift the sound to the ceiling. I tilt my head back and shut my eyes, letting myself forget about Luthor and whatever it is about him that makes Victria nervous, forget about the way Bartie’s presence fills me with regret, forget everything but the sound.
I hold the note until my breath gives out, and I collapse a little on myself as I suck in more air, but I don’t open my eyes.
I know the notes I want, the words that will go with them.
I start softly, a contrast to the opening of the song.
I sing of being afraid, and of finding friendship. Of love and longing.Very softly, Bartie picks up the tune, adding simple chords in key with my voice. His guitar sounds hesitant at first, but as my voice rises, the chords grow stronger. My voice falters a bit, a little sad at the way we can make such beautiful music together, despite the fact that Bartie will never love me the way I had wanted him to. Then I glance at Luthor, and my song surges in my throat.
I sing about the ocean I’ve never seen in real life. I sing about loneliness. I make the Siren into something sympathetic. She doesn’t mean to kill what she loves. She just can’t help it.
Silence wraps around me, and I fill it with my voice. I sing of everything that’s wrong, and everything that’s right, of hope and death. I sing of infinite wonder, of how everything must end.
When I open my eyes, my chest is heaving, my head thrown back, my arms cast behind me. I’ve unconsciously formed myself into Luthor’s Pygmalion tribute. And even though I sang a love song, my eyes go not to Bartie, who stills his guitar string with one shaking hand, but to Luthor, who’s snatched up his notebook and is resketching me, trying to capture the moment of my singing onto paper so he can carve it out of clay.
“Thanks,” Victria whispers.
“Was that what you were looking for?” I ask. There’s a sheen of sweat on my brow.
“Yeah,” she says slowly.
“I’m not finished.” I’m suddenly self conscious, aware of the way my voice cracked in the second verse, the cluttered lyrics I rushed through in the third. “I mean, I’m still working on the lyrics and the rhythm.”
“It’s good.”
“It’s really sad,” Bartie says.
I laugh. “It’s not sad! It’s a love song!”
Bartie stands, slinging his guitar onto his back. “Love songs can still be sad.”
“Come on,” Victria says, putting one hand on Bartie’s elbow. “Let’s leave these two alone to work.”
She nods to me as she leaves, and although she still sidesteps around Luthor and avoids his gaze, there must have been something in my song to make her know that he’s no threat and that our greatest focus now is on our art.
As if to prove it, Luthor picks up a long-bladed tool and starts to saw at the clay. “I’ve got the perfect idea,” he says without stopping. “I know exactly how to make this work.” He glances up at me now. “But—would you mind singing while I sculpt? You could practice some more for your presentation.”
I’d intended to present Orion with a series of songs, an entire opera, but I only had pieces of each song done here and there. I hated to start singing something incomplete; the love song was bad enough, but at least it was mostly done.
Still, there’s something in the way Luthor’s hands slide over the clay, in the silence of his work, that makes me want to fill the studio with music once more.
I open my mouth and sing.
***
Luthor works fast, not breaking for meals. The clay Orion ordered is chemically produced not to dry completely until Luthor applies a glaze to the outside, but the more he handles it, the more difficult it is to work with, becoming less pliable and more prone to crumbling.
I don’t even think about leaving. How could I? Still, my voice cracks and, despite drinking copious amounts of water, I slowly succumb to silence. I’ve done more work on my songs today than on any day of the previous two weeks, and I know that a large part of that is because Luthor’s infectious need to sculpt has influenced my need to sing.
The gallery’s overhead lights click on when the solar lamp clicks off. Luthor growls at the change in light, but barely pauses.
I move behind him, inspecting the work he’s done.
The sculpture is beautiful, far more beautiful than me. The clay version of me is smooth and lithe, more graceful in her stillness than I could ever be when I move.
“Can you—” he starts, then gets distracted by his sculpture, smoothing down a ridge in the clay. I watch as his hands run over the surface. He must be nearly finished—the sculpture looks so real now, as if this perfect earthen copy of me will lift her feet up and step from the narrow base.
Luthor’s hands move to her forehead, four fingers on each hand swirling across the sculpture’s brow, over her closed, delicate eyelids, along her cheeks, down the hollows of her neck, straining with a silent song, lingering on her collarbone and trailing, finally, finally, coming to rest on her clay breasts.
I take a shaky breath.
“I like to make the lines smooth,” Luthor says, his attention still on his sculpture. “Everything has to blend together.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say, my voice softer than I’d intended.
He pauses now, and turns to look at me. “You’re beautiful,” he says.
He lifts his mud-coated hands toward me, then stops. I lean forward. He touches me on my forehead, just as he touched his sculpture, and I close my eyes, pressing my face into his hand. I ignore the clay he leaves on my skin, relishing the feel of his gentle finger trailing over my face, down my neck, across my collarbone . . . but he stops. I open my eyes.
He pulls me closer to him.
And the kiss we share makes me glad that I’m not just an empty, clay girl.