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The Strayhound, the Girl and the Painting
Jasper is now sprawled on his stomach in front of the tall painting, his chin on the floor, his expression bleak, like a basset hound who’s finally given in.
Jane decides.
“Kiran,” she says, “I’ll catch up with you soon, but first I’m going to try to help this dog, okay?”
“Yeah,” says Kiran, wrinkling her nose at Jasper, “what’s his problem?”
“I don’t know,” says Jane, “but I’ll see if I can find out.”
“It’s not your job,” says Kiran. “The staff feeds him.”
“I know,” says Jane. “I don’t mind.”
“Okay,” Kiran says, moving away. “I’ll be in the winter garden.”
Jane turns to face the dog. “Jasper,” she says, “dear Jasper.”
He jumps up eagerly, wagging his tail.
When she reaches the landing, there’s something of a face-off. She tries to move toward him, but he dodges her, circles her, then runs straight at her from behind.
“Jasper!” she says, trying an evasive maneuver. “How am I supposed to pet you if you’re running at me?” He shifts himself and slams into her calves.
It’s no use; her balance lost, Jane begins an inexorable topple into the tall umbrella painting. Literally into the umbrella painting: She doesn’t come up against its surface, it doesn’t stop her. She falls on through. Crashing onto a hard horizontal surface, she scrabbles around in bewilderment. She’s flat on a checkerboard floor, in a lantern-lit room, in what looks like a fancy house. An unusual umbrella of greens and reds is drying on the floor beside her.
Certain she’s just fallen through a crack in her own sanity, Jane scrambles to her feet and spins around to face the way she’s come. There’s a wall, on which hangs an enormous woven hanging. It shows the landing of a staircase in a big, grand house. A suit of armor, holding daffodils, stands on the landing, as does a basset hound. Across a great hall, another staircase is visible, rising from the ground to the third floor.
As Jane watches, the basset hound in the hanging moves toward her. Suddenly he comes stepping into the room with her, through the hanging, a real dog, but—no longer Jasper. He pants excitedly just like Jasper. But his ears are small and pointy, his snout pert, and his body more proportional to his legs. His markings are similar to Jasper’s, but the whites are whiter, the blacks blacker, the browns softer.
“Jasper,” Jane says, scaring herself when her voice comes out in a shriek.
“My real name is Steen,” the dog says to Jane, somehow conveying even the spelling to her, S-T-E-E-N, and causing her to fall backward onto the floor in utter confusion.
“I’m losing my mind!” Jane says to the ceiling, shaking her head from side to side.
“Not your mind,” he says, trotting around to her head. “Your narrow and fragile conception of the world. Oh, I’m so happy to have found you!” he says, hopping and jumping like a puppy experiencing snow for the first time.
“Dogs don’t talk,” Jane says to the ceiling.
“I’m not actually talking!” he says. “Pay more attention. You’re understanding me with your mind, not your ears.”
“What?” Jane says. “Do it again.”
I’m communing with your mind, he says. His mouth doesn’t move. No sounds come out of him.
“I guess that makes sense,” Jane says, then hears herself, and despairs of her reason.
We need to move out of this room, Jasper says, before someone in Tu Reviens notices a difference in the painting.
“What?” Jane says in her shrieky voice.
We need to move, Jasper says. Look. There’s someone coming.
And indeed, the hanging on the wall has changed again; not only has the basset hound disappeared, but there’s now a dark-haired person in a blue sweater, standing on the landing across the receiving hall, holding a small black box. It looks an awful lot like Ivy, with her camera.
“Ivy!” cries Jane.
Shh! She’ll hear you! Jasper says.
“Good! She can rescue me!”
Shhhhhh! She’ll see us in the painting if she bothers to look. Move. And stop thinking of me as Jasper! My name is Steen.
“Help!”
I’m going to bite you if you don’t move.
“Go ahead! None of this is real!”
Jasper takes her earlobe between his teeth, chomps down hard, and tugs in the direction of the doorway. The pain is real, and excruciating.
“Ow! Jasper!” Jane cries out, pushing him away and scrambling to her feet. She runs—past the umbrella, through the doorway, into another room, a dark room, where she crouches against a wall, shaking and weeping. Her ear is bleeding and hurts terribly. Would her ear be bleeding if this weren’t real?
Jasper comes beside her and leans against her. He’s warm and steady. Her arm goes around him. I know you’re inconsolable right now, he tells her. But I want you to know that I do know how you feel. The first time I went through the hanging from my world into your world, I felt the same way. And I was very young, and there was no one I could talk to. I had no idea where I was. I’m sorry about your ear. Are you okay?
She pulls him into her lap and grips the silky fur at his neck, petting it hard. “Is this real?” she whispers.
Yes, he says, snuggling against her happily.
“Can I go back?”
Anytime, he says, through the hanging. But only do it when no one’s in sight.
“Where are we?”
The land I come from, he says. It’s called Zorsted.
Jane understands the spelling of that one too, pronounced ZOR-sted.
We don’t actually have the same letters as you, he adds. I’m transliterating.
“You
can spell?” Jane says in her shrieky voice.
Is that so surprising, considering I can also commune with your mind?
“Dogs can’t spell,” Jane says weakly.
I’m not a dog. I’m a strayhound. I’m an excellent speller. I was first in my class, he says, what you would call the valedictorian. We don’t have to go anywhere today. We can sit here until you feel strong enough to go back through the hanging. You can think things over and not come back here until you’re ready.
“Ready for what?” Jane says. “Why are we here?”
I’m here because Zorsted is my homeland, he says. I brought you here because you’re my person.
“Your person?”
Every strayhound can commune with one person, he says. Some never find their person. I thought I never would. Then you came along. I knew you right away, even in your Other Land form. I could barely believe it. My person, in the Other Land! Did you recognize me?
“Recognize you as what? I’ve never heard of a—strayhound. I don’t recognize you now!”
You’re still in shock, he says. I’m going to stop asking you questions.
He curls into a tight ball and snuggles deeper in her lap. Jane closes her eyes, leans back against the wall, and tries to stop her spinning mind.
* * *
When she opens her eyes sometime later, she’s still in Zorsted with a strayhound in her lap, but now she’s come to a conclusion: Either this is real, or she’s having hallucinations. And if she’s having hallucinations, she might as well collect more information to bring back to her doctor, Doctor Gordon, who always asks for details.
She tries the name out cautiously. “Steen?”
Yes! he says. Very good.
“I’d like to go back,” Jane says. “But first, I’d like a small peek.”
At Zorsted?
“Yes. At Zorsted.”
All right, he says. Let’s find a window.
“Are we in someone’s house?”
We’re in the servants’ quarters of the duchess’s mansion. The duchess takes in strayhounds who haven’t found their person, he explains. Come along, he says, leading Jane to a different doorway from the one she came through. The room they pass into is also dimly lit, by candles.
