And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again

[rolanni]

Yeah, been listening to folk music again.  It'll pass.

We've been busy here on a very near-end deadline -- lots of sticky-tabs involved.  Tomorrow, I have an early doctor's appointment, and errands in town.  Then, I really ought to get with plotting (for values of "plotting" that includes staring moodily out the window, but does not include creating a 130-page outline) Carousel Seas.

Over on Facebook, this image surfaced:

This is a piece of artwork, somewhere.
It came to me with no attribution.
The ever-resourceful pedanther allows
me to know that the piece above is entitled
"The Long Awaited," by Patricia Piccinini

The plot of the story as I remember it is:  a woman becomes acquainted with an extremely disagreeable family -- mother, sister, and boy in wheelchair. The boy in the wheelchair is beautiful, but there seems to be no one home. The mother mistreats -- or at least is not very kind to him. Perhaps the whole cast of characters is  vacationing at the seaside. Our viewpoint is infatuated with the boy because of his beauty and wishes to stand between him and his mother's spite. At some point, it occurs to her that he seems less... lethargic... around water and she takes him down to the sea, whence he escapes his wheelchair.

...that's all I've got.



Anybody recognize this story?

Hope everybody who was in the path of stormy weather over the last couple of days is warm and dry.

Comments

[pedanther]

The sculpture is "The Long Awaited", by Patricia Piccinini.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

One mystery solved! Thank you; I'll make the attribution.

Story for Carousel Seas

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

I don't recognize this particular story ...I have heard the silky stories of Scotland.

there was a Scottish folk song that went "I am a man upon the land,
I am a silky on the sea.".

the young lad would seem to be one of those. Usually we dont' hear about these creatures in New England. But obviously you've found out that the Native peoples do have stories about these types of creatures too.

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

I have read that short story. I believe the young fellow becomes a hippocampus. I will ask this community, or you can, if you like.

http://whatwasthatbook.livejournal.com/

Watch this space

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

I have made a request here, let's see whether anyone else remembers it.

http://whatwasthatbook.livejournal.com/2449839.html

Short story found?

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

The community has put forth the suggestion that the story sounds a lot like a Tanith Lee short story called "Magritte's secret agent".

Is that it?

Re: Short story found?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Well...I can't say. The title doesn't ring a bell, and I have no Tanith Lee in the house, though certainly I've read her.

Thank the community for their efforts on my behalf. And thank you!

Re: Short story found?

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

No problem. The story they describes sounds very like it, and I know I've read it. The title is also not familiar to me. I have read quite a bit of Tanith Lee, but I'm wondering whether it might be in a short story anthology.


But on doing some research I find only It only occurs in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, May 1981 and The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales and Dreams of Dark and Light both of which are Tanith Lee collections.

Is it possible you read it in The Twilight Zone Mag?

I can only find one quote from the story, at least I think it's a quote, it's from someone quoting a description of the painting in the story.

"
This one… The head, neck, breast of a white horse, which is also a chess piece, which is also a girl. A girl’s eyes, and hair that’s a mane, and yet still hair. And she —it— is lovely. She’s in a room, by a window that faces out over heathland under a crescent moon, but she doesn’t look at it. There are a few of the inevitable Magritte tricks — for example, the curtain hanging outside the window-frame, instead of in, that type of thing. But there’s also this other thing. I don’t know how I can quite explain it. I think I sensed it from the first, or maybe I only read it into the picture afterwards. Or it’s just the idea of white horses and the foam that comes in on a breaker: white horses, or mythological Kelpies that can take the shape of a horse. Somehow, the window ought to show the sea, and it doesn’t. It shows the land under the horned moon, not a trace of water anywhere. And her face that’s a woman’s, even though it’s the face of a chess-piece horse. And the title. The Secret Agent, which maybe isn’t meant to mean anything. And yet —Sometimes I wonder if Magritte— if he ever—"

Anyway, let us know if it is the one, I'll be looking out for Tanith at the library to find out myself.