I wrote this story more than a year ago for a collection, but didn't end up putting it in. Recently someone asked me why it wasn't on my web page, and I couldn't remember. This is dedicated to DRush, my favorite Pre-Raphaelite artist, with a bow to Paramount, owner of the universe. The entire lengthy text of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"--as well as copies of Hunt's, Meteyard's, and Waterhouse's paintings from that tale--can be found at http://www.oocities.org/Paris/Parc/8788/art/shalotts.htm.

SHALOTT
by Your Cruise Director

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"You're doing it again, Kathryn." Chakotay said sharply. His tone surprised the captain out of her reverie; it was rare for him to raise his voice to her. "You're not even reading that padd," he accused. "You're just using the crew reports as an excuse to hide in your quarters instead of making contact with the crew."

Looking a bit too tired to turn a full glare upon her first officer, Kathryn settled for raising an eyebrow. "If I spend the evening socializing, it's going to take me several days to get caught up on all these reports," she explained rationally. "I'm keeping in touch with the crew in the way that matters most."

"Not true. You're burying yourself behind formality to keep contact to a minimum." She waved a hand at him, but he continued, "You might want to dismiss me, but don't think I'm the only one who's noticed. You've done this before - right after we were attacked by those macroviruses. It's not good for you and it's not good for us. Most of the people on this ship don't have the luxury of using rank as an excuse to avoid interacting with one another."

Kathryn regarded him from beneath lowered lids, apparently trying to decide whether it was worth arguing at this point. Sometimes Chakotay got an urge to pontificate, but once he'd had his say, he usually became acquiescent, letting her explain herself. "I'm surprised at you, Chakotay," she said finally. "I'm not using rank to avoid anything. I am simply fulfilling the responsibilities that go with that rank. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get these finished before it gets any later. I'm reading about Lieutenant Hargrove's botanical experiments..."

"Why don't you come with me to the party? You can ask him about his experiments. And ask Seven about the new particle oscillator, and ask Harry about the concerto he's been composing. You didn't know that, did you? Not everything makes it into a crew report."

"I also have access to their logs and all the public recordings on this ship. I'm very well-informed, Chakotay, don't underestimate me." She glared at him directly. "I even know about that argument you and Tom had in the mess yesterday."

Chakotay pursed his lips and regarded the floor, momentarily silenced. Then he shifted his stance, planting his legs farther apart as he crossed his arms over his chest. Posturing usually didn't make any difference with her, but at least she would have to notice that he wasn't going anywhere. Kathryn leaned back on her couch, touching the petals of one of the flowers in the vase on the end table. In the dim light of the room, out of uniform, for a moment she looked like a bored princess trapped in an opulent palace. That image reminded him of a painting, and the painting reminded him of the poem upon which it was based.

"Lady of Shalott," he said accusingly. Kathryn cocked her head at him.

"What?"

"It's a story--a narrative poem by Alfred Tennyson. Nineteenth century Earth. I'm surprised you don't know it."

"I love Tennyson. 'For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,/Saw the vision of the World, and all the wonder that would be,'" she recited. The lines were on the plaque which named the builders and designers of Voyager at the entrance to the bridge; at this point, they were recognizable to everyone on the ship. Chakotay smiled a bit. "I'm not the one who picked the quote," Kathryn added quickly. "Someone at Starfleet did that, before I was named Voyager's captain. What's 'Lady of Shalott' about?"

"A woman who's cursed to remain in a tower and watch the world through reflections in a mirror. She's weaving a magnificent tapestry of everything she sees--it's her life's work."

"So the Lady of Shalott is an artist. That doesn't sound so terrible." Kathryn tilted her head toward a small round sculpture which sat beside the flowers on her table. Something she had made in Da Vinci's studio, perhaps...except that she used holographic materials, which couldn't leave the holodeck. Chakotay realized that Kathryn always seemed happy when he saw her inside the studio, ignoring the birds and the river outside her window when she was engrossed in a project. The first officer used the holodeck for outdoor pursuits like skiing, but the captain preferred even her exercise indoors, choosing to play Velocity over running or swimming.

"It's not her choice to be an artist. She's supposed to weave day and night, and never look away from her own image of the world. One day she decides to get up and look out the window. That triggers the curse."

"What happens to her?"

"Her mirror cracks and the tapestry comes unraveled. Her life's work is destroyed. Then she goes down to the river, gets into a boat, and dies on her way to Camelot. No one ever even sees the tapestry."

"A sad story. But it sounds like it has a moral--a committed artist shouldn't interrupt her devotion to her duty to indulge in the ways of the world."

Chakotay blinked. Leave it to Kathryn to see it in those terms. "I never thought of it that way. It's a very sad story. The only joy she ever experiences is vicarious, and when she lets herself get swept up in one real moment, it destroys her."

"What does she see in the mirror, that makes her get up from her weaving?"

"Oh, well, that..." Kathryn's posture straightened as Chakotay looked at the floor. "Sir Lancelot, swimming in the river," he admitted sheepishly. Heat suffused his features as he felt his mouth twisting in a grin.

"I see." Both of the captain's eyebrows shot up. "So this is really a cautionary tale about letting romance distract one from one's duties. Thank you, Chakotay, that was very edifying." She waggled a finger at him. "And now if you would kindly hand me the next padd." As he glanced up at her, she let the corner of her mouth turn up; then the smile burst across her face, knocking aside her exaggerated scowl. They laughed together.

"Well, it is a Victorian poem. But I don't think preaching abstinence was really the point."

"No? I think I need to read this poem for myself." Kathryn rose, joints popping in protest as she pushed herself to her feet. She stretched, neck and back arching, both arms over her head, the contortion pulling her t-shirt tightly across her chest. When she dropped down from her tiptoes and opened her eyes, Chakotay wasn't quite successful at pretending that he hadn't been looking. Smirking, she motioned with her head to follow as she headed for her computer terminal.

"Computer, access library database. Earth, nineteenth century, English poetry, Tennyson." Chakotay stood a fraction closer to her than was absolutely necessary as he read over her shoulder, wondering belatedly how she would feel about him comparing her to such a yearning, tragic figure - it said more about himself than it did about her. The first several stanzas were lyrical and touching, recounting the events at Camelot which the Lady could never witness. But Kathryn began to laugh as she reached the dramatic center of the poem. "This doesn't say anything about the hazards of isolating oneself. Sounds to me like she did well in resisting the temptations of all the delights of the court, then got in trouble for looking at Sir Lancelot's forbidden fruit."

"Well, maybe his forbidden fruit was particularly impressive. Tennyson did compare Lancelot to a bearded meteor."

"That's pornographic." They were both laughing again. "'She saw the water-lily bloom,/She saw the helmet and the plume'? You tell me what she was looking at."

"You have a dirty mind, Kathryn. I think you need to get out more often."

She swatted at him, looking from the corner of her eye. "Like some bold se'er in a trance,/Seeing all his own mischance/With a glassy countenance/Did she look to Camelot," she read in an ominous tone. Still playing, or warning him? He couldn't see her face to decide because she was focused on the computer. "The Lady of Shalott" was cross-referenced with several works of art, so Kathryn called one to the screen. Instantly forgetting his concerns, Chakotay let out a low whistle.

"She looks like you."

"She does not." The painting was undeniably romantic, a beautiful young woman with a tragic expression sitting in a boat. The resemblance was more of a type than feature-for-feature, and Chakotay knew he was thinking of Kathryn not as she looked now, but as she had looked many months earlier--on New Earth, with her hair down like the red-bronze tresses of the woman in the painting, in a gauzy dress, sitting in a boat like the one he had planned to build. He felt a pang of identification.

Kathryn touched a control, and the picture changed. Another Lady of Shalott appeared, this one trapped in a flying web of color at the moment her mirror cracked. The green and gold of Camelot gleamed outside her window. It was the image which had first reminded Chakotay of Kathryn that evening. The curves of the room in the painting made him think of her in her ready room with the ship in orbit around a planet--a blue-green orb shining like a jewel outside the viewport while she hunched over her desk, forced to ignore the brightness beyond as she studied one-dimensional readings on her monitor.

The screen changed again, to a painting of a woman slouched oppressively in a blue room as she worked on her tapestry. The style was more Neoclassical than the Pre-Raphaelite lushness of the previous two, but it conveyed the same mood. Then came a painting of a woman leaning back in a chair, arms over her head as if she were stretching like Kathryn had done herself a few moments earlier. "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," said the caption. The captain nodded.

The final painting caught Chakotay's attention in much the same manner as the first. This Lady of Shalott was shown head-on at her moment of transgression, skeins of yarn falling from her hands as she peered out at the world. She wore an expression he knew well: it was the same Kathryn's when she was on the verge of discovery, at the moment she chose to put risk aside and pursue her goals. The woman in this painting resembled her as well, with her high cheekbones and prominent chin. "J.W. Waterhouse," said Kathryn, reading the data about the artist. "That's his third painting of her. I wonder what caught his attention about this story?"

"Maybe he liked her rebellion." Chakotay realized that he had inadvertently lifted his hand toward her hair, and quickly pulled his arm down. "Kathryn. Come to the party. Just for a few minutes. Your padds won't crack."

She turned toward him, a little too close, so that he had to step back because the proximity was just too tempting at a moment like this. No matter how many times he told himself that he no longer felt about her the way he had on New Earth--and before, and for a long while afterwards--always an instant like this one would arrive when he would realize he'd been deluding himself about having moved on. He might be prone to notice attractive aliens now who once would have failed even to register, but his feelings for Kathryn were still right where he'd buried them, under a cloak of friendship and the protocols of command. It surprised him that he felt joy rather than sorrow at that recognition.

"I think you've got the analogy wrong, Chakotay."

"In what sense?" He sometimes wondered whether Kathryn took their professional disagreements personally because she knew of the feelings lay beneath his relationship to his captain. Maybe, despite everything, she didn't want to let that go. But that line of thought made him wonder what she hid under her own veil of friendship and professional respect for him--a veil which he had realized long ago was impenetrable. Safer to look away, at its reflection. He lowered his eyes as she spoke.

"I'm not the solitary lady holed up in my tower. It's more like this ship is Shalott, and we're all embowered here, looking out the window as the rest of the universe goes about its business. We can't even see Camelot from this far away. And I'm responsible for making sure the tapestry doesn't come unraveled, and that we don't forget what it's supposed to look like."

"We won't forget."

"No? When we're moving at impulse, we're seeing how stars that are ten light years away looked ten years ago. It's not a mirror, exactly, but it's not a live image. If we could see Earth from here, we'd be seeing light reflected from it more than 50,000 years ago. Maybe the rest of you can afford to look out that window; I can't."

"Come here." Chakotay held out a hand to her, expecting her to step around the desk to follow him, but she surprised him by pressing her palm to his. He led her to the viewport, pointing out at the stars. "What do you see?"

"Stellar systems. Gas clouds. Dust," Kathryn replied. "And our reflections. I don't see anything 'like to some branch of stars we see/Hung in the golden Galaxy,' if that's what you're looking for." Chakotay glanced at their mirror images on the transparent aluminum surface, holding hands against a backdrop of stars. It was a sight that appealed to him, real or not. Following his eyes, Kathryn added, "Those are less distorted than what's outside." She nodded at their doubles.

"Then make what's inside count. Come help us keep the tapestry together."

She turned to him, still a little too close, and pulled his hand slightly to draw him with her as she walked back to her computer. Moving through the index of Tennyson's poetry, she stopped at "Ulysses." Smiling, she confessed, "I used to read this in the early days of this mission."

Chakotay leaned past Kathryn to get a better view of the screen, reading aloud:

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"That could be us near the end of this journey," she said with apology in her voice. "I know it sounds a little bombastic..."

"No, it doesn't. This is how I like to think of you, Kathryn. This is how I DO think of you, except when you lock yourself away like this. Come with me to the party."

She hesitated, regarding him appraisingly, then turned her head back to the screen and bowed it. "All right. Just remember that you stand to inherit this tangled web, and my cracked mirror." He decided he could risk a grin.

"Kathryn, you take your poetry too seriously."

"My poetry? You brought it up! The next time you compare me with an English literary heroine, it had better be someone more like Jane Eyre."

"Jane Eyre!" he pounced, remembering a glimpse of her from years back on the way to the holodeck in a broad skirt and drooping ringlets. "Isn't she the one who fell in love with that overbearing lord who kept his wife locked in the attic? Kathryn, I expected you to have better taste! Do you know how many bad holo-romances have been based on that?" He swore that Kathryn blushed as she jabbed her screen with a finger, ending the library search. "I see that you do. At least the Lady of Shalott was an artist!"

"Who ended up as an objet d'art," she protested. "Something pretty and dead for Lancelot to admire. I still think she would have been better off ignoring him, and continuing with her work...then, when she was dead, he could have admired her tapestry, and it would have lasted forever."

"And no one would have written a poem about her, or done a bunch of paintings. C'mon, Kathryn, admit it," he pointed at her. "You want to be the subject of an epic someday..."

Hands on her hips, she tossed her hair back. "And I suppose you're going to write it?"

"I could. Storytelling's one of my specialties."

"Good. Then make sure you emphasize my goodness and virtue." She flashed him a wicked grin as she went to retrieve her jacket, pulling it on to follow him to Neelix's party.