In her gold-tiled bathroom, Jane stands before the mirror above the sink, Jasper at her feet.
When it comes down to it, there’s little to see: just the old, familiar Jane. I take my face for granted, she thinks, noticing, remembering, that she shares Aunt Magnolia’s cheekbones, her nose. She runs a gentle finger along them. If Aunt Magnolia saw Jane wearing that other face, would she even recognize her? If the people who love you can’t recognize you, are you you?
Jasper follows her into the morning room. The brown-and-gold self-defense umbrella she’s been working on holds no interest for her now. How can she defend herself against herself?
Jasper is quiet beside Jane as she stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by her creations. He seems determined not to desert her today. She wonders if maybe it’s making her claustrophobic. Would it hurt his feelings if she asked him for some time to herself?
“Jasper,” she says, then realizes, when he twists his neck up to look at her with an eager expression, that she doesn’t want him to go. He’s the only one who gets what she’s going through.
Jane makes a frustrated noise. “You recognized me as your person the day I arrived at Tu Reviens, looking like this,” she says. “Right?”
Solemnly, he nods.
“Did you recognize me as your person in the other form too?” Jane asks. “Once we were inside the painting? Did I look . . . right to you?”
Again, he nods.
Jasper, at least, knows who she is.
A bubble of laughter rises into her throat. Once she starts laughing, a growing hysteria propels her to continue laughing, finally so hard that tears stream down her face. Jasper watches her with his front paws held primly together and his head cocked quizzically. She doesn’t speak it aloud for fear of hurting his feelings, and she hopes he can’t read her thoughts: that she will allow her shaky sense of self to be held together by the faith of a dog.
“Except,” Jane says, wiping tears from her face, “you’re not a dog, are you, Jasper? You’re a Zorsteddan strayhound.”
She drops to her knees. Jasper rests his head on her thigh.
“You’re my Zorsteddan strayhound,” Jane says with wonderment, “whatever that means. And I’m your person.”
Jasper sighs happily.
After a few minutes of scratching him behind the ears, Jane rises and begins to search her fabrics for reds and greens that match the umbrella that sits on the floor inside the painting. She wants to work. And this is the only umbrella design she feels capable of focusing on.
*
Work helps.
The umbrella inside the painting, Jane recalls, has six ribs, rather than the standard eight, and the ribs are straight, rather than curved. She’s never built an umbrella like that; she’ll have to figure out how. Color is also a challenge. She wishes she could reach for the umbrella in the painting, pull it out, bring it up here, and see how the colors look in this light, but she expects there would be an outcry in the house if someone noticed that the painting had lost its umbrella. They would assume—quite rationally—that it was an art heist; that someone had stolen the original painting and replaced it with a sloppy, unconvincing forgery. People would start poking at the painting and falling through, the FBI would come, it would be like a real-life version of The X-Files, and Zorsted would be swarming with confused, disoriented, gun-toting invaders.
“Where did the painting come from?” Jane asks Jasper.
He’s lying on the floor. At the question, he lowers his chin to his crossed paws. It doesn’t feel like a yes or a no. Jane gets the sense that this is his way of saying he doesn’t know.
“Does anyone else in the house know it’s possible to enter the painting?”
He shakes his head.
“Why not? How has no one ever discovered it?”
Jasper’s head pops up at this, then he labors to his feet and runs into her bedroom. Jane hears him whimpering. When she pokes her head in after him, he’s at her bedroom door, looking at her over his shoulder and whining.
“You know the answer,” Jane says, “but you can’t tell me unless we’re inside the painting, where you can talk?”
He nods.
“No way,” she says firmly.
Jasper stomps his two front feet, as if he’s kneading bread dough, but madder. With a grim shake of the head, Jane returns to her work, because it’s not happening. After a moment, he rejoins her in the morning room.
“Something else,” Jane says. “You’re from Zorsted, right? You were born there? It’s home? And I was born here?”
He nods. He’s plopped himself on the floor again, this time with his chin propped on one paw.
“How can I be your person if we’re not even from the same side of the painting? How can you be my strayhound if people where I’m from don’t have strayhounds?”
He whines again, looking at the doorway. That question will have to wait.
“Does anyone else in this house know that you understand human speech?” Jane asks.
He shakes his head.
“Does anyone else in Zorsted know it’s possible to step through the hanging into Tu Reviens?”
He pauses, then thumps his tail on the floor once.
“One other person in Zorsted knows?”
A vigorous nod of the head.
Jane has an alarming thought. “Is someone in this house actually Zorsteddan?!”
Jasper shakes his head. This is a relief. She doesn’t like to imagine the people around her being so dramatically different from what they pretend.
Returning to her worktable, Jane slices fabric and sews gores together, breathing through the work of her hands. After a moment, she notices the carvings on the table: whales and sharks, peacefully swimming. Ivy made this table, then. She traces a shark baby with her finger, breathing. Then she gets back to work.
*
She’s just thinking it’s time to take a break when the shouting begins. It’s coming from some distant part of the house, far enough away that it takes a moment for her to be certain it’s a person noise rather than a house noise.
“What’s that about?” Jane asks Jasper as she examines her six-part canopy.
He looks back at her evenly. Jane susses that he knows but can’t tell her.
“Is it about us,” Jane asks, “or anything to do with Zorsted?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay,” Jane says. “Then I don’t really care. But how are you doing? Don’t dogs need to go outside now and then? Want to go stretch our legs?”
He jumps up and runs for the door.
As they walk down the corridor together, the volume of the yelling increases, sounding like it’s coming from the house’s center. It’s Ravi’s voice.
By the time Jane and Jasper reach the stairs, Ravi’s yelling has become sufficiently interesting that Jane can’t help her curiosity. She descends one level and walks onto the second-story bridge. Jasper follows.
In the receiving hall below, Ravi is having a temper tantrum while Mrs. Vanders tries to calm him down with words like proper authorities and in due time. Practically the entire household is standing in the room with them. The stairs and bridges are lined with gala staff. Lucy St. George hugs a small wooden pedestal with a mirrored top to her chest, looking ill. Jane gathers from the hullabaloo that the sculpture of a fish has been stolen. She remembers Ravi asking Octavian about it last night in the courtyard, some Brancusi sculpture that was missing.
Whatever. Jasper seems to be crossing the bridge to the west side of the house. “Jasper,” Jane whispers, skipping to catch up, “why aren’t we going downstairs? What do you do, pee off the balcony into the courtyard?”