Set in Stone, Chapter 5.

Her father was in the library after dinner, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that he appeared to have been reading the same page for the better part of twenty minutes.

Elizabeth had been watching from the doorway. He had turned the page once, early on, and then his hand had simply stopped moving. The book remained open on his lap. His eyes were directed toward it. Whether he was actually reading it was another question entirely.

She came in and sat in the chair opposite.

He looked up, registered her presence with a small nod, and returned his attention to the book. Or to the appearance of the book. Elizabeth was increasingly certain there was a difference.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Ovid,” he said. “The Metamorphoses. I find it soothing.”

“Do you.”

“Monsters and transformations,” he said. “Heroes and unintended consequences. One feels less alone in one’s difficulties when reminded that the classical world was also considerably inconvenient.”

She smiled slightly. “I hadn’t realized we were experiencing difficulties.”

“Haven’t you?”

The question was mild. His gaze had returned to the book, which meant he was not actually asking her to answer. That was considerate of him. She did not have an answer prepared.

“I wondered,” she said after a moment, “whether there had been any word from Mother.”

“Ah.” He turned a page. She was almost certain he had not read it. “Not as yet. The shopping expedition is evidently a substantial one. Your mother does not do these things by halves.”

“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “She does not.”

They sat in silence. The fire crackled pleasantly. Outside, the evening was drawing in. It was summer, so the light lingered, but there was a quality to it now that suggested the day was coming to a close. Somewhere in another room, Mary was playing the organ. The music was appropriately Gothic and not at all appropriate for after dinner, but no one had gone to stop her.

“I thought,” Elizabeth said carefully, “that she might have written. Or that we might have heard something.”

“Prague is not so very far,” her father said, “but it is far enough that correspondence takes time. I expect we shall hear when there is something to hear.”

“And if there isn’t?”

He looked up at that. His expression was not neutral, but calm. There was a distinction, and Elizabeth knew it. Neutrality was the absence of feeling. Calm was feeling carefully managed. Her father had always been good at managing his feelings, but she could usually tell when he was doing it.

He was doing it now.

“Then I expect,” he said, “we shall continue as we are. Dr. Darcy has been very accommodating. The house is comfortable. Your sisters are reasonably well entertained. And I have Ovid.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “You have Ovid.”

“Do you know the story of Perseus?” he asked.

The question was sudden enough that she blinked. “A little. He killed the Medusa, didn’t he?”

“He did. A monster so terrible that to look upon her was to be turned to stone. He solved the problem with a mirror — looked at her reflection rather than meeting her gaze directly, and so was able to approach without being petrified.” He tapped the page in front of him. “Athena’s counsel. Perseus would have been considerably worse off without it.”

“It sounds like a practical solution,” Elizabeth said.

“It was. Though one does wonder,” her father continued, without particular emphasis, “what it must have been like for the Medusa herself. To know that she was dangerous. To know that anyone who looked at her would come to harm. Ovid does not spend much time on her perspective, but then Ovid rarely does. He is more interested in the mechanics of transformation than in what one does afterward.”

Elizabeth studied him. His tone was light, conversational. He might have been discussing the weather. He was not discussing the weather.

“Do you think,” she said slowly, “that the Medusa knew what she was?”

“I couldn’t say. Ovid does not tell us. But if she did know—” He paused, turning the book slightly as though to catch the firelight better on the page. “—then one imagines it must have been rather lonely. To be aware of one’s danger to others. To be unable to change it. To be dependent on someone else’s knowledge of mirrors.”

The fire crackled again. Mary’s organ music had stopped, or perhaps Elizabeth had simply stopped hearing it.

“That sounds,” she said quietly, “like a very bleak sort of existence.”

“Oh, myths generally are,” her father said. “Bleak existences producing instructive conclusions. Though I confess I have always thought the instruction in this particular case was rather one-sided. Perseus learns to use mirrors. The Medusa learns nothing, because the Medusa is dead. A tidy resolution for everyone except the monster.”

He said monster without inflection. As though it were simply a word. As though it did not mean anything in particular.

Elizabeth’s hands were folded in her lap. She had not noticed folding them. “Father,” she said.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Is Mother really in Prague?”

He looked at her for a long moment. She could not read his expression. She thought perhaps that was deliberate.

“Your mother,” he said at last, “is not in any immediate danger. Dr. Darcy is doing everything that can be done. And you are not to worry yourself into a state over things you cannot presently change.”

It was not an answer. Or rather, it was an answer that confirmed she should not have needed to ask.

“You might have told me,” she said.

“I might have,” he agreed. “And yet here we are.”

“Here we are,” she repeated. “In a house full of mirrors.”

“Yes. Dr. Darcy is very fond of mirrors. I believe he finds them useful.”

She wanted to press him further. She wanted to ask what, exactly, Dr. Darcy found them useful for, and why her mother required a specialist physician at all, and what any of this had to do with Perseus and monsters and things too dangerous to look at directly. She wanted to ask why her father was reading Ovid as though it were a manual rather than a poem.

She did not ask any of these things.

Her father returned his attention to his book. After a moment, he said, “Athena also gave Perseus a warning. That the Gorgons—there were three of them, you know, though only Medusa was mortal—could not be faced directly. That attempting to do so was fatal. Perseus listened. It is one of the reasons he survived.”

“And the other reasons?” Elizabeth asked.

“Oh, the usual. Divine assistance. Supernatural weapons. A certain amount of luck.” He smiled faintly. “And Athena’s shield, polished to a mirror sheen. The gods are sometimes helpful, when they feel like it. Though one cannot rely on them.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t suppose one can.”

He turned another page. She thought he might actually have read this one.

“Elizabeth,” he said, without looking up.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Darcy knows what he is doing. Your mother is as well as she can be under the circumstances. And you are quite safe, as long as you follow the instructions you are given. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said, “that you have not actually told me what the circumstances are.”

“No,” he said. “I have not.”

“But you will. Eventually.”

“Eventually,” he agreed. “When there is a reason to. At present, the less you worry over things that are being managed, the better for everyone. Including you.”

She stood. The conversation was clearly over, or as over as it was going to be. Her father was watching her now, and there was something in his gaze: concern, perhaps, or sorrow, or simply the exhaustion of a man who had been pretending things were well when they were not.

“Goodnight, Father,” she said.

“Goodnight, Elizabeth. Sleep well.”

She left him there with his Ovid and his firelight and his carefully managed calm. As she closed the door, she glanced back. He had returned to the book. His hand rested on the page, motionless.

She thought of mirrors and monsters and men who coped with impossible situations by reading about other men who had done the same. She thought of her mother, who was not in Prague. She thought of Dr. Darcy, who had looked everywhere but at her face during their consultation, and who apparently found mirrors useful. She did not yet know what it meant. But she was beginning to suspect that when she did know, she would not particularly like the answer.

Upstairs, Mary had resumed her organ practice. The music drifted through the house, minor-key and Gothic and strangely appropriate for a household that was pretending, with diminishing success, that nothing was wrong.