The Undrowned Child

  “Be safe, children,” she mewed. “And fassst. So much dependsss on you two now.”

  nearly midnight, June 11, 1899

  Outside the Archives, Teo put her hand on Renzo’s arm. “I know,” he agreed. “We need to tell the mermaids about the Gray Lady. And the Baja-Menta ice-cream. And the plague.”

  They set off at a fast trot towards the House of the Spirits. It was not long to midnight and the next day’s newspapers were arriving in the newsstands. The children paused in their tracks when they saw the headlines in the Gazzettino: THE WINGED LIONS, DRAMATIC CHANGE. There were photographs of before and after.

  All over Venice, while Teo and Renzo had lain on their beds the previous afternoon, the sculptures of the winged lions had suddenly changed shape. No one saw it happen, but by teatime a general transformation had taken place. The tamest, sweetest lions now bore the fiercest expressions. The ones who had always been fierce were now opening their mouths to roar. The winged lions all had one thing in common. The books on which they rested their paws no longer stood open, showing the words of God to Saint Mark, Peace to you, Mark my Evangelist. Instead, in every case, the book had snapped shut, showing just a blank stone cover.

  In old times, the newspapers explained, this meant that Venice was at war.

  “At war?” exclaimed Teo.

  Yes, at war! thundered Signor Rioba in his daily missive, reproduced in full on the front page of the Gazzettino. Ye aren’t worth a pitcher of drowned fleas if ye don’t see it, Venetians! Your mayor’s brain has died of overwork with all the lies—don’t ye heed his ravings on this subject.

  For, of course, the mayor himself was interviewed about the phenomenon. Renzo snorted, reading how the mayor was reminding the city that Venice’s famous art Biennale was just about to start. “It’s a practical joke. There’s one every Biennale. This one’s a great deal less vulgar than the diamond-studded skull on top of the Campanile in 1895 and far more artistic than the mummified camel in formaldehyde in 1897. Please enjoy your cultural visit to Venice, everyone.”

  Renzo turned to Teo. “I don’t think that is going to be possible anymore.” He pointed to the wall of the church in front of them. In dark shadow picked out of white moonlight, were the words from the prophecy:

  When the books close under Lions’ claws.

  A fuzzy brown shadow scampered over Teo’s foot.

  “Ugh! A pantegana!” grimaced Renzo. “A rat!”

  The pantegana paused, looking at the writing on the wall. Then it jumped straight up in the air with a squeal, promptly disappearing down a hole in the pavement.

  “Where did it go?” Renzo peered down through the crack.

  So he did not see a bloodstained, hairy stump of a wrist reach around Teo’s shoulder. Nor did he hear Teo’s muffled cry of fear.

  By the time Renzo straightened up, the Butcher Biasio had dragged his quarry into a dark alcove at the edge of the square, and had clamped his huge arm over her mouth and nose. It was not just that Teo couldn’t scream.

  She couldn’t breathe either.

  “Teo?”

  Silence, except for the sound of a rat’s paws drumming in the distance.

  “Teodora? This is hardly the time for hide-and-seek.”

  Trapped under the stinking armpit of the Butcher Biasio, her face rasping against the dried blood on his apron, Teo heard Renzo’s voice. But she was suffocating now. Her eyes were closing; her legs were weakening beneath her. Renzo, silhouetted in the moonlight, stood tantalizingly close.

  Looking down, Teo saw a white pebble by her left foot. Swiftly, she kicked it out of the alcove into the square.

  The slight rattle of the pebble was enough. Renzo spun around to see Teo blockaded in the alcove by the Butcher, who was taking deep appreciative sniffs of his next feed. His hot, greasy hair stuck to Teo’s bare arm, the most repulsive thing she’d ever felt. His severed hands dangled on chains in front of her terrified eyes.

  “Porco can!” Renzo shouted. “Pig-dog of a coward! Leave her be!”

  The Butcher’s hideous head was, as ever, under his arm. He now used one wrist to turn that head towards Renzo. His body still had its back to the square, with his back-to-front feet sticking out of the alcove. The Butcher stared at Renzo impassively.

  Teo forced herself to bite the wrist held fast against her mouth. It was a disgusting thing to do, but it was that or die from asphyxiation.

  “Biting a cannibal! What does that make me?” Teo wondered as she sank her teeth into the hard, salty skin of the Butcher’s wrist. She made little impression on the leathery stump, but it was enough to make the Butcher grunt and hold his arm slightly away from her mouth. She sucked in air, quietly filling her lungs.

  In the gap, she saw that Renzo had pulled a penknife out of his waistcoat pocket. It was a tiny, elegant knife, with a handle shaped like the ferro of a gondola: a little curve like a wave, and six struts like the teeth of a comb. It was a beautiful thing. It did not look very dangerous.

  But Renzo did. Teo had never seen Renzo like this before. His eyes glittered. His elegant clothes now hung on his tense body like the tunic of a gladiator. Instead of his usual lecturing voice, he spoke in a low, threatening tone, and threw out vile insults in pure Venetian that Teo had no trouble understanding.

  “You stink like a corpse,” he hissed at the Butcher.

  “No, Renzo!” she implored silently. “Don’t provoke him!”

  From the Butcher’s grim letterbox of a mouth came a long, low growl, a bubbling noise that was barely recognizable as speech.

  Teo twisted her mouth free of the Butcher’s arm. “Renzo! What does …?”

  Renzo snarled, “He’s offering to scrape out my eyes and eat them in broth. Look at him dribbling at the thought!”

  A river of slobber fell out of the Butcher’s mouth and spattered on the ground. He stared at Renzo greedily.

  “Nice plump boy,” he drooled, clutching Teo tighter.

  “By my ancestors, what a dribbling dog!!” responded Renzo. “And maybe he did eat some of my ancestors. His butchery shop was in our part of Venice.”

  He brandished his gondola knife in front of the Butcher, shouting, “I’ll open your head and put your brain in your pocket!”

  The Butcher tightened his grip. Renzo moved in half-circles around the alcove, jabbing towards the Butcher with his penknife. Then Renzo rolled up his sleeve. “Look, Greedy Guts, a nice little cut of boy-steak!” he taunted. “Lean, good meat.”

  “What are you doing, Renzo?” thought Teo. “You’ll drive him mad.”

  But that, it seemed, was just what Renzo wanted. He rolled up the leg of his trousers and showed a strong calf to the Butcher. “Fine chewy piece here,” he boasted temptingly.

  The Butcher howled with hunger and frustration.

  “Enough, Uncle Dog!” jeered Renzo dismissively.

  To Teo, Renzo hissed urgently under his breath, “Do you remember the fable of the dog and his reflection?”

  Teo conjured up the page in her own battered copy of Aesop’s Fables back in Naples. A dog had a piece of meat and was carrying it in his mouth across a bridge. Looking down, he saw his reflection in the water. Thinking it was another dog, with another piece of meat, he greedily decided to attack the other dog and get both pieces for himself. He jumped in the river, losing not just the reflection of the piece of meat, but the one he already had: it dropped out of his mouth and floated away.

  “The Butcher wants to eat us both, and he doesn’t know how to do it,” realized Teo. She whispered back. “But Renzo, this is too risky!”

  Renzo circled ever closer to the Butcher. “Why eat one child, Uncle Dog,” he taunted, “when you could have two?”

  The Butcher worked his lips silently, racking his dim, brutal brain for a solution to his horrible dilemma. He needed one arm to hold his head. If he was to grab Renzo, he’d have to let go of Teo. Renzo was indeed more of a meal than Teo, but Teo was the meal in hand.

  A conclusion c
ame to the Butcher Biasio, and a horrible smile split his filthy face. Of course, if he put down his head, he’d have two arms free, one for each of these delicious children! Simple! He made subhuman sounds of rejoicing.

  Pinioning Teo against the wall of the alcove with his massive weight, he swiftly bent towards the ground, put his head down, straightened up and lunged. Renzo stepped deftly out of his way.

  “Teo, get the head! Turn it against the wall!”

  Touching the head of the Butcher Biasio was the worst thing that Teo could imagine. Actually taking it in her hands made her sick to the core of her stomach. Gingerly, she lifted the thing by its ears, trying not to look at the black hairs sprouting from them. She swiveled the head away from Renzo and dropped it back on the ground. The Butcher staggered, his arms reaching out blindly. Renzo leapt in close, kicked the head right across the square like a football and at the same time pulled Teo out from behind the flailing body of her captor.

  The Butcher dropped to his knees and began to crawl in the direction of his head.

  “Here! Here!” it keened.

  It had landed at the foot of a well, and was creating considerable interest among a pack of stray dogs. Renzo dropped his ferro penknife back into his waistcoat pocket.

  “That’s really elegant,” said Teo with admiration.

  “I carved the handle myself,” Renzo was starting to say when a scream echoed through the square: “Pirates!”

  Herds of people came running, babbling and shrieking, some still in their pajamas. “Run for your lives! They’ve got swords!”

  A plump disheveled tourist from Rome stopped to catch his breath alongside Teo and Renzo. Between gasps, he told Renzo what had happened.

  An ancient four-rig galleon had sailed in from the lagoon and thrown down its anchor in front of the Danieli Hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Thereupon a hundred pirates, all dressed in antique costumes, had rushed into the luxurious hotel, where they kicked down the doors, looted the rooms, held all the guests at sword-point and stripped them of their jewelry.

  The Roman panted, “We thought it was some kind of Venetian folkloric event at first, you know, like the historic regatta or something, with actors, and we couldn’t understand their dialect anyway. But then we got a sniff of them … terrible! Like men who hadn’t washed for a year. And those clothes … they weren’t costumes. They were real. So were the swords. That boat didn’t have a steam motor. I haven’t seen my wife since they pulled us apart. I have to find her!” He lurched off, weeping.

  “And we have to find Lussa!” exclaimed Renzo, pulling Teo by her wrist.

  Fifteen breathless minutes later, Teo and Renzo were lifting the door in the floor of the chapel in the House of the Spirits.

  The heartrending sound of tears and screams flooded up through the well of the illuminated staircase.

  midnight, June 11, 1899

  Down, down, down the children walked, their hearts sinking. The sound of weeping grew louder. Teo recognized Lussa’s sobs among the rest, with a small shudder of relief. At least that meant Lussa was alive.

  Chissa was not.

  The first thing Teo saw as she entered the arch was Chissa’s red hair trailing in the water. The mermaid’s body was laid out on a cushion of flowering seaweed in a floating bier. Her skin was unnaturally white, her features frozen in an expression of terror. Around the bier, weeping mermaids held up candelabra dripping black wax.

  Catching sight of Teo, one of them shrieked, “Behold your handiwork, Undrowned Child! Better ye had drownded your own self than bring da Vampire Eels among us. Chissa saved ye from the sharks, and this was her reward?”

  The mermaid laid a tender hand on Chissa’s white neck where two punctures still dripped with blood. Then she pointed further back into the cavern. A dozen floating biers, each bearing a still white body, were surrounded by grieving mermaids.

  Lussa’s voice rose unseen above the sad clamor: “We were attacked in the Night. Chissa”—Lussa herself broke into a sob—“& her Patrol swam out for Duty by the Lagoon Entrance to the Cavern. The Vampire Eels took Them by Surprise.”

  “ ’Twere all up with ’em in the snatch of a moment,” moaned one of the mermaids.

  “Because of me,” Teo whispered. “Because I showed Maria how to get here.”

  The parrots, who had been hunched on their perches, took up Teo’s words. “Because of me, because of me, because of me …” echoed around the cavern.

  Hundreds of green eyes were fixed on her. No one said a word to contradict Teo. Renzo joined the ranks of her accusers, fixing on her a long, unforgiving stare.

  “Lussa …,” she appealed, and then realized that she had nothing to say in her own defense.

  Still invisible in the shadows of the cavern, Lussa’s voice rang out somberly: “Maria brought the Scolopendre. At least One must have escaped our Boots. The Insects led the Vampire Eels to lurk at the Entrance of our Cavern. My Mermaids battled bravely but They were outnumbered Two to One. We fought off the Eels in the End, killed Eight of their Number, but Chissa & her Patrol gave their Lives to keep the Rest of Us Safe.”

  A hundred slender arms with coral-tipped fingernails rose from the water and pointed at a stinking mass of yellowy-white flesh piled up at the side of the walkway.

  “Our Enemy,” observed Lussa. The real Vampire Eels were larger and even in death more terrifying than they had appeared in the turtle screen. Their long teeth hung out of gaping mouths. Their white fins sprawled open, tangled together and impaled on the forked tails of their comrades. Their coral gills glistened bright red.

  Those gills were full of the blood of Chissa and the other dead mermaids. Teo turned away, her eyes awash with tears.

  Lussa came forward now, accompanied by a group of grim-faced mermaids. They carried tritons of gold and coral. All were wearing military breastplates, each decorated with a mortar-and-pestle picked out in gold and rubies. In a corner of the cavern, other mermaids were practicing their archery against a board painted with the crest of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  “We are at War,” stated Lussa with simple dignity. “We have sent Seashells with the Morning Tide to all our Allies in London & beyond.”

  Renzo declared in a shaking voice, “Then we are at war too.”

  One of the mermaids shouted, “Don’t much look like it. Dressed for a tea party more like. Ye want to get your fightin’ duds in order, stripling!”

  Lussa asked pointedly, “So How have You Two passed these last Three Days? Has Maria, in between her own Missions for our Enemy, proved a Worthy & Useful Double Agent? And meantime, have You brought Us the Spell Almanac?”

  Teo stammered, “M-Maria …” The words dried up inside her mouth.

  Lussa nodded. “It was as I feared. Bajamonte Tiepolo had already found her Weakness for Gold & Silks and bound Her to Him with That. And via her Earring, he dripped his Thoughts into her Ear so She could no longer hear Sense. She was a Double Agent, indeed, but for Him.”

  As Teo quailed under these words, Renzo seemed to move a little closer to her. His expression had softened. “You couldn’t have guessed all that,” he whispered.

  One of the mermaids shouted, “Loose-lipped little dwarfess has scuppered da lot of us. Should of flogged ’er raw when we had a chance.”

  The parrots took up “flogged ’er raw” with relish.

  “Rude Sailors,” reproved Lussa, “speak like that. We do not speak like That down Here, Ladies. Birds, desist, if You please. Or We shall be forced to look for more polite Pets.”

  “Can you curry parrot?” wondered one mermaid aloud. She was shouted down.

  Renzo offered, over the din, “We have other news.”

  “He’s distracting them from me,” Teo realized gratefully. She stood passively as Renzo explained the Butcher, the pirates, the Baja-Menta ice-cream and the Gray Lady—she was impressed that he had somehow learnt to be more economical with words, even while he wove a rattling tale. Although she’d lived through it all with hi
m, she listened, fascinated, as if to a story.

  In the midst of all the tragedy, Lussa was overjoyed to hear of their ally. “We Mermaids think very highly of Cats. Even Human Sailors entertain Admiration for Them. There’s a Superstition among Them that They must keep the Ship’s Cat Happy & Well Fed—’Tis thought that Cats store Magic in their Tails, and that a lashing Tail can bring on a Storm. Mind you, the same Foolish Sailors believe that the Sighting of a Mermaid indicates a Storm coming on to blow.…”

  “Sometimes it do,” observed one mermaid cheekily.

  Lussa ignored that. “So, the Spell Almanac is Safe, then. We still have that One Advantage. And about the Baja-Menta ice-cream, there is a little Something We can do. We have our Echo!”

  “Your echo?” asked Teo.

  “The renowned Echo of the Garden of the House of the Spirits.” Lussa smiled. “Now, where’s our Choir & Fufu Band?”

  Eight young mermaids swam forward and bowed to the children. Another group tuned up their instruments: a little flute, a pig-bladder drum, an oyster-keyed xylophone and a paper-and-comb. Lussa wrote some words on a piece of pearly paper, swiftly annotating them with musical notes.

  One mermaid, apparently the choirmistress, pinned the paper to a lectern and lifted a coral baton in her hand. The mouths of the mermaids opened in unison. They took a deep breath and began.

  Teo and Renzo heard not one single note.

  “It’s too high for us to hear?” Teo asked.

  Lussa nodded, tapping her fingers to the inaudible words. “But I’ll wager You know the Melody. Humanfolk sing of a Drunken Sailor to this Tune. But our Song warns the Venetians to desist from eating the Baja-Menta ice-cream, it will disagree with Them. Violently. Consult your Book for the Lyrics.”

  Teo opened The Key to the Secret City. The words of the song immediately spilled out across the page.

  Oh, what shall we do with the Baja-Menta?

  What shall we do with the Baja-Menta?