The Undrowned Child (19 page)

Maria whined, “Everyone’s got these crests, Pa. You ain’t interested in fashion. You only care about the laboratory! But there is a life outside, with pretty clothes, and boys, and … lots of lovely things. You just never see it!”

Teo flinched as Tommaso Naccaro stated coldly, “We’ve never been impressed with you as a daughter. Now you have proved what a worthless child you are.”

“Poor Maria,” Teo thought. But her compassion evaporated the next minute.

For now Maria whimpered that it was Teo who had given her the money for her finery! “It was a bribe so she could run around in secret with a dirty Venetian boy. No, I don’t know where Teo got the money! Probably stole it. You know Teo, Ma, Pa! She ain’t got any friends. She’d do anythin’ for attention. That’s why she’s run away. She’s perfectly well—just havin’ a good laugh at everyone else’s expense.”

“You’ve seen Teodora! You nasty, nasty child, why didn’t you tell anyone before?”

Teo heard the sound of teeth rattling. Maria’s mother must have been shaking her.

“Leave me alone!” shouted Maria. “I only saw her last night. I was going to tell you but you started on about the clothes. You didn’t give me a chance to speak!”

Teo heard a face being slapped, and a storm of tears from Maria.

How badly Maria’s parents must be thinking of Teo herself now! And soon her own parents would be thinking the same thing. And if Maria could betray Teo to her parents, she was perfectly capable of running to Bajamonte Tiepolo.

Then Maria’s father harrumphed, “We’ll not upset Teodora’s parents with the lies of a malicious little girl! We won’t tell them one word, unless we can verify that it is the truth, miss.”

“Yes!” snuffled Maria. “You do that, why don’t you?”

After a few more harsh words they left their daughter sobbing into her pillow. Teo watched as they swept out of the room, stiff with indignation. Maria turned the lock ostentatiously from the inside. Teo darted out and beat on Maria’s door without mercy.

“It’s me!” she hissed through the keyhole.

“No! Leave me alone!”

Teo thought quickly. Adults could not see or hear her, but Maria probably didn’t realize that. She bluffed, “Shall I tell your parents my side of the story? On past record, whom are they more likely to believe—you or me, Maria? Let me in!”

A snuffling noise approached the door. A red-eyed Maria opened it a crack. Teo briskly pushed her way in. Maria’s swollen eyes glowed hotly with tears. Her clothes were all crushed. She seemed bedraggled, small and vulnerable, afraid of Teo, even. And that frightful perfume smelled stale and sordid.

Maria took Teo’s hard words without protest. And they were very hard; after all her reading, Teo was equipped with a vocabulary that could cut rocks. Maria seemed abjectly sorry. When she finally spoke, it was in a tiny, tearstained voice. “Teo, what was I thinking of? I just panicked. I humbly beg your pardon. I said all the wrong things. I’m not smart, you know. You must hate me.”

Maria’s words appeared above her head to Teo as usual, but the strange thing was that they were not written out in Maria’s usual babyish handwriting. They looked older, somehow, as if Maria had aged by hundreds of years as a result of her parents’ cruel scolding. Teo could not stay angry with someone who was so clearly in such awful trouble. Maria must be tired and lonely from all that sneaking around. Teo knew from her own recent experience how simply exhausting it was to have secrets and to be forced to protect them. “No, of course not,” Teo reassured her. “I don’t hate you.”

Maria mumbled, “That’s very decent of you, Teo. Aren’t parents beastly? How’s a young person to do anything without getting shouted at and insulted?”

“You’ve been up to some things that worry yours,” Teo reminded her gently, uncomfortably aware that she was in no position to criticize.

“A few new clothes? That isn’t it. It’s because they just despise me.” Maria was so cast down that she forgot her fashionable slang. “I never knew you were so nice, Teo!” she pronounced wonderingly. “I always thought you were stuck-up. And that you thought I was a cretin. All this time we’ve known each other, we should have been friends. I know I’m not brilliant like you and Renzo, but couldn’t we be friends now? Please, Teo.”

Maria was behaving so sweetly and persuasively that Teo felt the remnants of her old dislike melting away. And the more her dislike crumbled, the more her fear for Maria grew. Lussa had been categoric: anyone who befriended Il Traditore would have to be … sacrificed.

“But Maria did it in all innocence,” Teo thought.

Maria edged closer to her. The smell of that musky perfume flew right up Teo’s nose. Maria chattered on, dwelling on affectionate memories of their joint childhood. Teo kept a simultaneous monologue going inside her own head. Maria really had had the worst luck! Utterly rotten parents! When they were not ignoring their daughter, they were criticizing her. No wonder Maria needed to get boys to smile at her. Now, driven straight into Il Traditore’s clutches by outright mistreatment, Maria faced death as his hoodwinked accomplice. The poor girl did not even have the wit to know she had made a dangerous mistake.

Maria’s hand inserted itself through the crook in Teo’s elbow. Maria had linked arms with her! The way the girls in the fashionable crowd walked around together!

Renzo and the mermaids had been so quick to dismiss Maria, and abandon her to a terrible fate. But they hadn’t known her for years, had no conception of what a troubled creature she was. They were not being fair. Maria should be given a chance to redeem herself before it was too late.

“I know,” Teo thought, “I’m supposed to go to the Archives, but …” Maria’s perfume really was very strong. It was quite impossible for Teo to think clearly with that over-sweet scent flooding all her senses and making her feel positively dizzy.

What if Maria changed sides? Given the girl’s friendship with Il Traditore’s spirit, Maria was in a perfect position to find out his plans. If Maria truly understood the situation, then of course she would want to help the forces of good. Why, Maria might even be the key and not the obstacle to everything!

Lussa had said, “We have always needed Children as Ambassadors.”

Surely three ambassadors would be better than two in the present danger?

And of course, if Maria was on the right side, then she would never dream of hurting Teo’s adoptive parents with the story that their daughter was alive and well, and simply hiding from them.

Teo turned to Maria with a confidence-inspiring smile. “Get dressed—we’re going for a little walk.”

Maria’s eyes sparkled. “Of course, Teo,” she spoke brightly. “Whatever you suggest. Wonderful!”

Maria complained a little about walking through the dark. She insisted on wearing her high-heeled boots. She kept looking behind her and grimacing, then hurrying forward a few steps as if something was chasing her.

Teo had a good stare behind them each time this happened. There was no sign of the Butcher, or indeed any human. But she caught a glimpse of something small and dark with many legs scurrying furtively along the wall beside them.

Beetles! She shuddered. The insects had gone over to the enemy.

The strange thing was that even in the high heels Maria seemed to be shrinking, and her shoulders were sticking out at an unnatural angle. The moonlight further distorted her shadow to a curious squat shape. She kept a fast grip on Teo’s elbow. Walking alongside her, Teo had to turn her head to avoid breathing in the waves of perfume that billowed off Maria’s skin.

At the House of the Spirits, they clambered over the boats and scaled the wall, Maria with many squeals and “ouches.” In the garden the ghosts remained both invisible and silent. Teo couldn’t help taking the ghosts’ sullen silence as a bad sign, even though it was something of a relief to not have everyone beseeching her like last time.

At the chapel, the key failed to jump out of The Key to the Secret City.

“The book doesn’t want to bring Maria here either,” Teo realized guiltily.

But she and Renzo had not locked it last time. They’d been too dazed by what they had discovered down below. The door was even heavier than she recalled. An uncomfortable idea crossed her mind: perhaps it too was trying to keep Maria out. Teo grunted, strained and finally wrenched it open.

“Come,” she urged an apparently dumbstruck Maria. At least the girl was not whining or protesting. She really did seem to be making an effort to behave better.

She led Maria down the stairs towards the mosaic pool of the mermaids. With every step down, Teo’s misgivings rose. She wasn’t looking forward to this encounter. Not only was she revealing the mermaids to a person known to associate with Venice’s worst enemy, but she was arriving in the company of the one person they had told her to avoid at all costs.

“Wait here,” she told Maria as they neared the bottom of the steps. “It will be better if I come and get you after I’ve explained.”

late at night, June 8th, 1899

Teo had not picked a good time to visit the mermaids. They were gathered around coral tables, eating greedily. Interrupting mermaids at feed always tends to produce somewhat snappy results.

“Who goes there?” thundered a disgruntled voice.

“ ’Tis da Undrowned Child!” called out one of the mermaids indistinctly, as she had a rather full mouth. “Make way for da Undrowned Child, Lord love ’er heart!”

“Teodora Gasperin!” exclaimed Lussa. “Come and join Us.”

Chissa held out a chair. Teo sat down, feeling dreadfully awkward. Would the mermaids be so hospitable if they knew whose little helper was waiting around the corner?

A mermaid in a white chef’s hat piled fragrant parcels of food onto a scalloped plate in front of her.

“What is it?” Teo asked, just in case, though her fork was already impaling a fragment. She had not eaten a thing for more than a day.

“Coriander Pea Cakes in Coconut Curry. Twice-Fried Chili-Cucumber in a Pool of Amber Sauce. Perfectly toothsome.”

Delicious as it was, Teo could not force more than a mouthful down. How would Renzo handle this? she wondered. Then it struck her, hard and horribly, that she hadn’t even consulted him about her plan to save Maria. Now that she was a few feet away from Maria’s perfume, everything seemed sharper and clearer. She was starting to feel not just guilty but also a little sick.

“Are ye not hungry, Undrowned Child?” asked Chissa. “Do ye have a rumpus in your chitterlins? Eat up and tell us about the Archives!”

Teo stammered, “I—I have taken the liberty … I have brought … someone to see you.”

“Yoiks, can you smell somethin’ proper ’orrible?” asked one of the mermaids, sniffing disgustedly.

“ ’Orrible, ’orrible, ’orrible,” chorused the parrots. It was not necessary to explain any further because at that moment Maria herself appeared at the threshold of the cavern, staring at the assembled mermaids with more distaste than surprise.

“I got bored,” she whined at Teo. “And here you are fillin’ yourself with food. Did you forget about me?”

The whole chorus of mermaids turned as one to look at her. Someone cried, “What in da name of curried samphire is that?”

“Teodora, is This Who I think It is?” asked Lussa in a voice quiet but menacing.

Teo nodded miserably. The mermaids erupted in salty expressions of disgust.

Lussa spoke over the hubbub in a voice heavy with disappointment. “Teodora, We expressly ordered You to Keep away from that Girl. We had our Reasons for It.”

“Yo-ho, Undrowned Child, why did Ye bring dat hunchback dwarf in here?” a very young mermaid shouted.

“Hunchback? Dwarf?” screamed Maria. “Are you talking about me?”

Chissa spoke out now, “And who else, pray?”

“Yer got it on the nob, girlie!” someone hissed.

Other mermaids hubbubbed, “That’s a plain piece of goods! Look at that forehead—narrow as an eel’s bed, not much room in there for a brain!”

“Aye! This girlie is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot. Drown da brute, say I! At least give her a good pinching! She’s got no business here!”

The mermaids lashed their tails at Maria, and bared their teeth and looked more like sharks than beautiful girls for a moment. Lussa swam into the middle of them, and calmed them with a few sharp words. But when she turned to Teo, her lovely face too was distorted with anger.

“Do You not remember,” Lussa demanded, glaring at Teo, and pointing at Maria, “that Bajamonte Tiepolo’s familiar was a Dwarf Who carried his Flag? Don’t You see that He’s turning this Foolish Little Girl into his Old Accomplice? Look at that suppurating Hole in her Ear! Ready for Him to lead Her along with a Chain! Dwarves are known for their Weakness for Precious Metals & Jewelry,” Lussa added contemptuously, “so ’Tis easy to lure Them with a Bit of Fool’s Gold.”

Chissa screwed up her face, “And that repulsive stench of musk—’tis no doubt the potion he has employed to effect her transformation.”

“And deprave the Brain of our Undrowned Child, I fear,” added Lussa.

One of the mermaids held up a turtleshell to Maria, and its surface dissolved into a cruelly clear mirror. Suddenly it was obvious even to Maria what was happening to her. She was shrinking to the size of a dwarf, with a definite hunchback as well.

Maria launched into noisy hysterics. Lussa spoke with a reluctant touch of kindness, “Quieten Yourself, Child. Most Humanfolk will not notice. Magical Transformations are invisible to Adults, for Example.”

Teo cleared her throat. “I have had … an idea.”

All faces turned to her.

At that moment came a shriek from the back of the cave. “Sufferin’ seahorses! It’s the Mahogany Mice agin! All hands to deck! Fetch the noggin’ boots!”

Teo spun around, expecting to see small furry—or even wooden—creatures scampering around the cavern. Instead, the golden walls were suddenly dark with extremely nasty-looking brown beetles, of an appearance halfway between the largest cockroach Teo had ever seen and a centipede. All over the cavern mermaids were seizing strange weapons—long sticks, each with an old boot mounted at one end.

“They’re not mice, then?” Teo asked one mermaid rushing past her.