The Undrowned Child

  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.

  “Nay! They’re scolopendre, hundred-leggers. We hates ’em like poison. They bites. And keep ye away from ’em, Undrowned Child. They likes ’oomans. Ye know where they likes to hide da best of all? Inside ’ooman clothes!”

  Teo and Maria hastily stepped backwards, away from the crawling walls.

  With a mighty blow upwards, the mermaid smashed her boot on three scolopendre at once.

  “Yoiks!” the mermaid shouted, as the dead insects dropped onto her beautiful curls. In seconds the cavern was full of mermaids beating the walls with their boots-on-sticks and shouting “Yoiks!” with every kill. Chissa armed herself with two boots and destroyed twice as many scolopendre as anyone else.

  Dead insects rained into the water. Mermaids from the printing press scooped up the brown corpses with nets and flung them on the fires that dried the paper sheets. The scolopendre writhed and crackled in the flames, sending out a nose-wrinklingly sour smell.

  Two minutes later the swarm of Mahogany Mice had been all but vanquished, and the storm of shouting had subsided to a quiet chorus of “Well, that one’s hung up his galoshes!” and “Take that, ye lingering beastie!”

  Lussa looked self-possessed as ever, but her face was set in tense lines. “Don’t let any escape!” she urged. “You must get them all.”

  Chissa growled, “Some say the scolopendre are the spies of Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

  She waved a barnacled boot at Maria. “This is how we deal with spies down here.”

  Maria pouted. “Teo, what’s she talking ab—”

  “Where do you get those old boots?” interrupted Teo quickly.

  Chissa looked down. “Well … er … shipwrecks happen, ye know.”

  Lussa gave Teo a glance that seemed to penetrate her skin. “Teodora, Something Compelling must have driven You to bring Maria amongst Us. Pray explain Yourself. I hope for all our Sakes that your Reason is surpassing Good.”

  With many “um’s” and “so’s,” Teo stammered out her idea. How feeble they appeared now, all the plans that had seemed so excellent back at the hotel. Her halting phrases sounded unconvincing even to herself. “… forced to take a wrong path … cruelly treated at home … truly eager to do better … shouldn’t she be allowed to have an opportunity to redeem herself?”

  She glanced from time to time at Maria, who stood with her mouth open.

  “It’s only fair,” Teo concluded lamely. “And Maria could help us, as a double agent. She could pretend to be friendly with Bajamonte Tiepolo and keep us informed of his plans, helping our cause at the same time.…”

  Her voice trailed away.

  “That Lubbery Dwarfess won’t help you, Undrowned Child!” shouted an aggressive-looking mermaid who wore an inky apron. “You might as well whistle psalms to a dead dog!”

  “Bilge-water!” jeered another.

  There was a simultaneous chorus of “Pigs’ Ribs!” and “Codswallop!”

  Lussa raised her voice. “Ladies! I entreat you to behave Yourselves before Folk.”

  She turned to Teo. “My young Colleagues rightfully, if inelegantly, express Doubt in your Idea. And what, may I ask, did Young Renzo make of It?”

  Teo hung her head and mumbled, “He doesn’t know. I didn’t ask him.”

  Lussa said pointedly, “Does That not tell You Something?”

  Desperately, Teo turned to Maria. “You could help, couldn’t you? Now you understand how serious this is? You understand that Bajamonte Tiepolo is not a nice young man. He’s a dangerous criminal. You understand I have to stay hidden for a while? So will you keep quiet about this, and me to my parents … to everyone?”

  One last scolopendra ran over Maria’s foot, pausing to dig its pincers into her ankle.

  “Ooow!” she wailed. Then her blank expression changed, as if she had just received a transfusion of fresh, sweet blood. She smiled from ear to ear. “Whatever you like, dear Teo. Why, certainly, I shall.”

  Teo looked down at a sea of angry mermaid faces and sternly crossed arms. The silence was worse than all the rowdy abuse. All eyes were fixed on Maria, with cynical expressions. So only Teo saw that last scolopendra sneak away behind Maria’s foot and crawl over the struts of the Seldom Seen Press. Finally it scuttled out of the cavern unmolested by a single boot.

  It was Chissa who finally broke the dreadful quiet. “Here’s the thing—what choice have ye left us, Undrowned Child? Now that Il Traditore’s scurvy dwarfy minion has seen us and knows where we dwell?”

  Lussa stated quietly, “You have been undone, Teodora, by your Soft Heart. And by the Perfume this Girl wafted on You. No Good will come of This. Maria is Cleverer than You think, or at least She is Manipulated by Someone Cleverer than Herself. She is merely pretending Meekness.”

  “Plank her, says I,” hollered someone else. “Be a kindness, really. If Il Traditore hears she’s with us, he’ll give her straight to the Butcher, don’t ye know.”

  Clearly Maria had no idea who or what the Butcher was. Her face was still suffused with the blank smile that had come over it when the scolopendra bit her. Now she strolled over to give Teo a big warm hug. Teo flinched away from the stink of the perfume. It made her feel vague again, and not quite steady on her feet.

  “Just tell me the plan, Teo, and I’ll help!” Once more Maria blinked like a doll.

  “What a lot of fanny nanny!” muttered the mermaid with the inky apron.

  “Do not trust her, O Undrowned Child! She’s hornswaggling ye, good and proper!”

  Maria’s perfume was suffocating. Teo pushed Maria away gently. Her hand, touching Maria’s chest, was shot through with a terrible pain as if darts pierced every one of her five fingers and sent fiery poison up to her own heart.

  Maria cooed, “Dear Teo, did you snag your finger on my crest brooch? So sorry!”

  Teo looked over Maria’s shoulder towards Lussa, hoping to see at least a small smile of acceptance. Lussa and Chissa were watching her with expressions of extreme disquiet. “Beware, Lettrice-del-cuore, Reader-of-Hearts, beware.”

  in the hotel dining room, early morning, June 9, 1899

  Teo’s mother looked deep into Maria’s eyes and spoke, “Dear, your parents here have been telling us something very serious. That you have seen our Teodora, and that she is hiding from us? Maria, is this true? Have you seen our daughter?”

  Maria’s dwarfish transformation, like Teo herself, was, of course, imperceptible to the adults. Since the girls had arrived back at the hotel, where they found both sets of parents just sitting down to breakfast, Maria’s sweetness had evaporated like dew. She now threw Teo a mocking glan
ce.

  Teo stood mutely watching her parents. It broke her heart to see how much thinner they had become. She was haunted by the dark circles under their eyes. She longed to rush to them and hug them, to be folded into their arms, to comfort them.

  Instead, Teo’s mother reached out a gentle arm towards Maria, and drew her close. Teo felt a stab of jealousy. Now Teo’s father pulled up a chair in front of Maria. His voice was incredulous. “You told your parents that Teodora has been stealing money and running around with a Venetian boy. Now, that just isn’t like Teodora, is it? Tell us it’s not true, Maria. No one will be angry with you.”

  Maria’s father snorted loudly; her mother sniffed.

  Teo’s mother coaxed, “Perhaps you have been a little confused, dear?”

  Confused? Teo hoped desperately that Maria would say something to defuse the explosive atmosphere.

  But Maria was smiling sarcastically. “Oh yes, Teo’s fine and well, and runnin’ all over Venice like a giddy goat! She told me it’s the best fun she’s had in years. Truth is that she’s tired of all your mollycoddling!”

  Teo’s parents stared at Maria as if she was a demon speaking in tongues. Teo yearned to put her hand over Maria’s lying mouth.

  “And as for the boy,” trilled Maria. “Oh yes, I’ve seen him. A perfectly foul street boy, who can barely speak proper Italian. We’ve just been playin’ cards with him—that’s why we were out all night. Teo’s a real wizard at gambling. She’s cleaned me out. I suppose an advance on my allowance is out of the question …?”

  Tommaso Naccaro turned purple and his slicked-down hair bristled up like a mane. Maria glanced round at the stony faces of the adults. Seemingly impervious to her father’s spluttering fury, she now gave a smile that made Teo’s teeth ache. “Now can I have some hot chocolate? … You know, when that book hit old Teo on the head it really made her brain go strange. You’ll see her, soon enough, when she feels like it. Next thing she’ll be telling you that she’s been for a swim with some mermaids! That would be a good laugh, ha ha ha!” Maria giggled hysterically. “If Teo was here right now, I just know she’d be laughin’ too!”

  Teo recoiled from the sight of her. Maria had betrayed her, just as Lussa warned she would. And not only that, but Maria had uttered all the most hurtful things that could possibly be said to Teo’s grieving parents. That pain in her fingers, when she touched Maria’s chest: she had read Maria’s heart, and she should have taken heed. And the writing above Maria’s head—of course it did not look like Maria’s childlike scrawl anymore; it looked like her master’s, like Bajamonte Tiepolo’s! All the signs had been there. Teo had simply failed—or refused—to take them in.

  Teo shouted, “Maria! The mermaids were right about you, you hunchbacked dwarf!”

  No one heard her, of course, except Maria herself, who turned to give Teo a slow smile of triumph. “Sticks and Stones …,” she sang. “La la la.”

  Then Teo’s mother raised her voice, something that almost never happened. “Maria! How can you be so cruel about your friend? And what about this boy? Is he older than you? What have you done with our daughter, you little minx?”

  Teo winced as she heard the anger and tears in her mother’s voice. She thrust her hands into her pockets, only to send three playing cards fluttering through the air. Maria must have planted them in her pinafore when she gave Teo that hug—that traitorous hug back at the mermaids’ cavern.

  Once they left Teo’s body, the cards ceased to be invisible. They tumbled to the floor, for all the world like tangible evidence of the truth of all Maria’s dreadful lies.

  In silence, everyone looked at the cards. One had fallen facedown … the back showed a crest that Teo recognized from somewhere, though in her misery she couldn’t work out where.

  Maria smirked and quietly backed out of the room.

  “Hey! Where d’you think you’re going?” shouted Teo, trying to grab her.

  But Maria had already been seized by her father’s strong hand. He hauled her shrieking up the stairs.

  Teo’s parents were holding each other and shaking with emotion.

  “Could it be true?” whispered her mother. “That Teodora’s alive?”

  “It is logically speaking possible,” mused her father. “They have not found a … a … body. Though the authorities already talk of a funeral. To ‘lay the matter to rest,’ as they put it. And the damnedest thing, Leonora: the police told me that the mayor insists on holding children’s funerals by night.”

  A funeral? Teo felt hot and cold all over.

  “What has logic to do with it?” wept Teo’s mother. “Do you mean that I should start wearing mourning now? No, I shall not do it! Oh Alberto, do you remember how Teodora begged to wear mourning for Nanny Giulia?”

  At this, even Teo’s father broke down.

  As Teo stumbled outside, half blinded with tears, she noticed something strange. The windows of the hotel had changed shape. They used to be neat rectangles—instead they had shambled into tall, rickety arches that looked as if they were perching on stilts. She could have sworn that the building seemed bigger today than it had been yesterday. The corridors seemed wider and the ceilings higher. And the outside of the building—it used to be a smooth creamy plaster. Now the paint was falling away like great scabs to show old stone underneath. The shabby walls were studded with round sculptures.

  She had seen those sculptures on walls all over Venice. The ones she remembered showed hawks carrying rabbits, and saints attacking dragons. But these sculptures were different. The rabbits had grown huge fangs and were biting hawks. In a strange reversal of all the biblical stories, the dragons were now winning in the battles with the saints. All over Venice, the forces of evil were conquering the forces of good. She shuddered, and tried not to look at them any more as she hurried to Renzo’s house.

  Her thoughts were as violent as the sculptures on the wall. Not only had Maria disgraced her in the mermaids’ eyes, and promptly betrayed her, she had made Teo forget the one true task that had been set for her: to find the Spell Almanac of Bajamonte Tiepolo. The Spell Almanac! Teo remembered with relief—that was one piece of information she had withheld from Maria, at least. She had to go to the Archives as quickly as possible, and accomplish the mission Lussa had set—that was the only way she could undo some of the harm she had done by foolishly trusting Maria.

  And she had one more unpalatable task too: to confess her stupidity to Renzo.

  “For once, I’ll deserve all his scorn,” she thought.

  By galloping through the streets, she managed to arrive just at the time when Renzo should be leaving the house to make his way to their usual rendezvous. But half an hour passed and Renzo still had not come out. No one came out at all. After two fruitless hours she abandoned her post. For the rest of the day she wandered around Venice, trying to work out what to do. Perhaps Renzo’s parents had caught him creeping back in during the early hours—and locked him in his room as punishment?

  Without the Spell Almanac to bring them, Teo couldn’t face going back to the mermaids: not to tell them that she had been completely wrong about Maria, and that she had jeopardized the one advantage they had over Bajamonte—secrecy. She thought of the one scolopendra that had escaped the cavern. Was that vile insect even now informing Bajamonte Tiepolo of the mermaids, the cavern and the Undrowned Child returned to Venice?

  That night Teo was as lonely as the dreadful days when she believed she was a ghost. She tossed and turned on her bed, tortured by a thousand wretched and guilty thoughts, each like a painful pinprick to keep her awake in the midst of her exhaustion.

  June 10, 1899

  Teo’s parents refused to go to the meeting the next day. They declared that they would spend the entire day looking for her. Her mother was dressed in defiant, hopeful yellow, with a flowered straw hat, ignoring the pitying looks of the other hotel guests.

  It was still very early in the morning when a desperate Teo followed them to the square of
San Marco, where the torture instruments still hung on the lampposts. Workmen had been despatched to remove them, but they had been unable to cut through the chains. Then the mayor had lit upon a happy idea. Posters were now affixed to each entrance to San Marco:

  NEW ATTRACTION!

  OPEN-AIR CHAMBER OF HORRORS.

  5 LIRE ENTRANCE FEE.

  Teo’s parents paused on the edge of the square to watch a workman fixing a newly painted sign to the wall. Teo read over her mother’s shoulder:

  INCREDIBLE NEW EXHIBITION BEGINS JUNE 15!

  “So what is this new show about?” Teo’s father asked the workman.

  “Something about some chap called Baja—Bargaminty Tiepolo,” the man answered. “Whoever he is.”

  “Whoever he was, presumably.” Teo’s father laughed. “Name like that, must have been some kind of clown.”

  Under the arches above the square an ice-cream trolley had set up for business.

  “Would you care for a gelato, Leonora?” asked Teo’s father.

  It was clear that Teo’s mother felt far too wretched to be hungry. But for her husband’s sake she exclaimed cheerfully, “Oh yes, lovely! Vanilla, please.”

  But it seemed that the vendor, a pallid human skeleton, had only one flavor to sell. The gelato was a vivid emerald green that glinted in the sun.

  “That looks refreshing,” said Teo’s father. “Mint flavor, I dare say.”

  “That sounds nice,” thought Teo, drawn to the strong sugary smell that came from the trolley. Pillowy mounds of cool green gelato were piled up in metal trays. Teo squeezed herself between the people queuing up to buy it under the beating sun. Some were coming back with empty paper cups for second helpings. They had an aggressive glint in their eyes.

  “I don’t think so, after all, Alberto,” her mother said, uneasily. “It’s too crowded. Let’s just go back.”