Classics Mutilated (14 page)

Matthew's depleted bank balance told him exactly how Anne had still been of use to the company, but it was her naiveté that fascinated him the most, not the reason why she had been sold.

The journey home was filled with more discoveries for them both, the android talking non-stop and the man appreciating the fact that she didn't expect him to talk too. 

"You and I are going to get along just fine, Mr. Cuthbert." 

"Call me Matthew."

"I'm not sure why I know this, or why I know I belong at Green Gables, but I've always thought there was more...."

The android stopped mid-sentence, her crystal green eyes going wide as her eyes fixed on the sky in front of her. For a moment Matthew couldn't take his eyes away from Anne's face, struck by how the sense of wonder really bought her features to life. But her attention didn't waver, so he drew his gaze away from her striking features to look up and see an airship sailing gently through the sky, the golden light of the setting sun lapping against the hull as it gently surfed the clouds.

It was barely perceptible to Matthew, but he was sure that Anne could hear the whir of the enormous steam engine at work, pumping hot air into an enormous canvas balloon that the old seafaring ship was now suspended from. 

"What a wondrous invention!" the android breathed in amazement.

Matthew looked back at her in surprise. "How so?"

She turned to him with bright eyes. "This machine gives you the ability to fly, which would be one of the most incredible experiences. Imagine being able to look down at the world! It would create such a sense of freedom, don't you think?" 

He nodded. He'd never thought of it that way before.

"Have you ever considered flying in one of those machines?"

"No, I can't say as I have," he replied, intrigued by her child-like curiosity.

"Oh, Matthew, how much you miss out on!" They both looked back up at the airship in shared silence for a long minute.

Matthew glanced at Anne out of the corner of his eye, amazed that such a sophisticated machine could be in such awe of an old seafaring ship that had clearly seen better days. It had been hobbled to a simple canvas balloon and operated by the most cumbersome steam engine he had ever encountered, simply so its owner could maximize his resources and try to keep at the cutting edge of the transport industry. He supposed the idea was ingenious, but the execution didn't strike him as being very safe or too elegant.

"I have worked with many machines," the android said quietly, her gaze still on the airship as it disappeared slowly over the horizon, "but I have never seen one that was so beautiful."

"I have," Matthew responded in his quiet, shy manner. "
You.
"

She turned to him, her eyes now wide. "But I'm just a girl."

The innocence in her statement went straight to his heart. Matthew had never been one to talk much, but now he was literally speechless.

She didn't see herself as a machine!

Although he didn't realize it at the time, that was the moment
he
stopped seeing her as one too.   

cd                                cd

Anne discovered that being accepted by her classmates at school wasn't something she could learn from an instruction manual. When she queried Matthew about how to secure a Bosom Friend, he simply told her to "Be yourself," which puzzled her as she couldn't physically be anyone other than herself anyway. When she asked his wife the same question, however, her curt response was "Forget that nonsense! If you prove your worth, friendships will seek you out. Be kind, considerate, and above all, bite that tongue and mind your manners!"

"Biting my tongue will help facilitate friendships?" Anne asked, perplexed.

"You do beat all, girl! Of course not," Marilla replied, frustrated. "It's an expression—a human expression. But then, I suppose you shouldn't be expected to know that."

The old lady sighed, looking at the android. Ever since Matthew had bought Anne home, the peace and order at Green Gables had been thrown into disarray. 

"We have to send her back," she had told him the very first hour he'd returned home with the android.

"But she's such a sweet little thing," he had replied softly as he watched Anne walk around the house for the first time, reaching out her hand to touch the most random of things in fascination: the intricate embroidery on the tablecloth, the leaves of a plant, or the polished wood of the rocking chair. She had never seen such diverse textures before. 

"Matthew Cuthbert, the entire reason for buying an android in the first place was so you can have help on the farm. It's unseemly to put a girl to work in the fields, even if she is android in form. And we're both too old to be nursemaids to a flawed machine."

"She's not flawed—just different." Matthew paused. "Give her a chance, Marilla."

"We'd have to put her through school, simply so she can learn the basics of interacting in society."

"So she'll go to school."

"But what is the point of buying an android if we can't get our money's worth out of her? There is still the matter of you needing help on the farm."

"I'll hire Barry's boy out for a couple of hours during the day, and Anne can help me before and after school." He held up his hand to forestall Marilla's next protest. "We can't afford to buy a normal android. And the simple fact is: I like her." He looked at his wife. "I don't ask for much, but I'm asking for this."

Marilla harrumphed, more to cover her shock than out of any deep need to protest. This was the first time her husband had ever stood up to her and held his ground. This machine must have really gotten under his skin. "The android can stay," she stated finally, "but strictly on a trial basis. We have a three-month warranty, don't we?"

"Yes."

"Then if I'm not impressed by that time, we are returning her for a full refund. And I want no protests, Matthew. That is my condition for letting her stay now."

Matthew nodded, satisfied. He knew that despite the condition, he'd just won a great concession from his wife.

And so every morning Matthew came downstairs to the library at five to find Anne engrossed in one of his books, looking more like the child she appeared to be as she acted out the plays with enthusiasm, the dying light of the fire dancing about in her copper hair. They would talk about her latest literary discoveries of the previous night while Matthew ate his breakfast, and then their day would start, the android helping Matthew milk the cows, muck out the stables, and carry out all the hay for the animals until it was time for her to leave for school.

Within a week they had developed a comfortable routine, and Matthew was surprised to discover that for the first time in a decade he actually enjoyed getting up before the birds awoke. However, it soon became clear after a few weeks of school that Anne hadn't been able to make as favorable an impression on her classmates, who were quick to point out how different she was.

"People don't often like that which they don't understand," Marilla had told the android matter-of-factly. 

But Anne had read about "kindred spirits" and how true bosom friends are accepting of all differences, and as Marilla had said, she just had to prove she was worthy of being a perfect friend. 

So every day she went to school and tried to prove herself by excelling in her classwork. She had much to learn, having only known factory life before Green Gables, but it didn't take long until she was tied with Gilbert Blythe for first honors.

And still the classmates' attitude towards her didn't noticeably thaw. The android couldn't understand why. Wasn't she doing everything right?

"You think you are better than us, don't you, Miss Anne-
droid
?" was Josie Pye's snide comment after Anne won her first spelling bee. She twisted around at her desk to look directly at Anne. "Can you spell
machine?"

Anne looked at her in puzzlement.
Is this another test?
"M-A-C-H-I—"

"Do you always have an answer for
everything
?" Josie interrupted, frustrated that she could never get a rise out of the copper-haired girl.

"Isn't the correct response to a question an answer?" she asked, still puzzled.

Josie glared at her and faced forward again, not speaking to her until their extracurricular painting class that evening. "I'm sure you are perfect at that too," she muttered.

"I don't know," the android replied. "I've never painted before."

The class set up outside to capture the majesty of the rolling fields of Avonlea on canvas. Nestled in the tree line along the horizon, Anne could see the roof of Green Gables, and so she painted that first, her strokes precise and her measurements exact. 

Then she moved to the fields, taking care to note the exact hue of the grass and blending the appropriate golden-hued green. Within fifteen minutes the field was done, complete with fences drawn to scale. 

While Anne was busy duplicating the trees on her canvas, the teacher went up to each student in turn to ascertain their progress and study what their diverse depictions of the one view told him about their personalities. 

When he approached Anne, his eyebrows raised at the quality of the painting. Then they furrowed. "Well, it's technically perfect," he said, and he sat down to start his painting.

Diana Berry looked up from her canvas as Anne was starting to outline the clouds. The raven-haired beauty glanced at Anne's painting, her blue eyes going wide. "Oh Anne! I wish I could paint half as good as you do!"

"Honey, you don't need to be talented with looks like yours," Gilbert Blythe quipped from somewhere behind them. The other students snickered and the light disappeared out of Diana's eyes. She returned them to her painting.

Anne looked up from her masterpiece to discover the clouds had moved. Quickly she started painting their new position over the clouds she had already started to form. 

Then she noticed that the sun had changed position. Its lower angle threw a deeper amber cast onto the field. Frantically she started to mix up a different shade of green to replace the grass she'd painted earlier. 

Then she noticed that the new position of the sun meant that Green Gables was completely in shadow, rendering the cottage almost invisible to the naked eye. So Anne painstakingly painted it into a silhouette. 

Then she looked up to see salmon pink was starting to outline the bottom of the clouds, and a peach was spreading across the horizon. The sun was setting. 

Her efforts to keep up with the changing colors of encroaching night meant her painting strokes increased to inhuman speed—and she
still
couldn't keep up. Every time she looked up, her painting was no longer accurate. The trees were now completely black along the horizon, and the fences cast long shadows across the field. 

She stopped, at a loss for what to do. As a result of changing the colors in the sky so often and so quickly in a blur of hand and brush, the layers didn't have enough time to dry, resulting in the salmon pink blending with the earlier lighter blue shades. Her sky was now a mauve color. It was a restful shade, throwing a slightly romantic mood over the painting, but all Anne could see was that it wasn't an accurate depiction. 

Josie snickered. "It looks like Anne can't do everything right after all."

"Don't listen to her," Diana said, a little pointedly. "Josie doesn't think of anyone but herself." She looked at Anne's painting. "Why did you keep changing the colors? Not that it looks bad," she added hastily, "but your painting looked perfectly fine before."

"The colors are all wrong."

Gilbert appeared over her shoulder, his usual nonchalant stance dissipating in his interest. "In what way?" he asked.

"We were told to paint this view." Anne gestured in front of her. "But the colors keep changing. This painting is no longer accurate."

"A painting doesn't have to be technically accurate for it to be considered a masterpiece," the teacher interjected, only his blond hair visible at the top of his canvas as he continued to paint. "It's how you interpret the view that brings the painting to life."

"I don't understand," said Anne.

"Take a look at mine," Diana offered, a little shyly.

Anne stood up and walked over, studying the painting for a long moment. "The clouds are the wrong shape."

"Not the
wrong
shape, Anne. Just a
different
shape," she replied. "It's a matter of perspective. Take a closer look."

The android tilted her head to the side, as she always did when she was thinking, and considered the clouds Diana had painted. They were perhaps a little too white. Also the strokes she used to define the texture of the clouds were too coarse to depict the lightness of the gossamer structures.

"Pretend they aren't clouds," Gilbert interrupted her thoughts. "What else do you see?"

Anne considered the shapes of the clouds and nothing else, and automatically started comparing them to images in her memory banks. "They're animals!" she blurted out suddenly, Diana laughing as the android's eyes darted up to the sky. Sure enough, she could see the remnants of some of the clouds Diana had painted. If she looked closely enough, she could see what looked like a rabbit bounding over the horizon. "How did you know to do this?" she asked finally.

"I just used my imagination," Diana replied, blushing delicately at the attention.

"But androids
don't have an imagination, do they, Gilbert?" Josie pointed out, twirling her hair around her finger.

"Knock it off, Josie." Gilbert replied. "Nobody's perfect. She just had to know how to look."

Anne didn't hear them. She was still trying to process what she had just learned. "So Diana's painting is better than mine, even though mine is technically more accurate."

The teacher leaned around his easel. "
Better
is not the right word. It's a more
realized
painting." He paused, trying to work out how to explain it. "Your painting shows us how you—or anyone here—physically sees the fields, but nothing more. It doesn't show us anything about
you.
"