Small Persons With Wings (28 page)

“Spare us,” Grand-père said.

“Maybe you could wait until ten seconds before,” Mom said.

We all fell silent as Timmo hunched over his wrist, shoulders tense. He was taking his responsibility seriously.
Four days ago I didn't even know this kid,
I thought.
Now our whole future depends on whether he set his watch right.
I couldn't believe I hadn't remembered to bring my own watch.

The Parvi began to murmur, worried. At my feet, a little lady burst into tears from the tension. “Isn't it time yet?” I asked.

“Twenty-five,” Timmo said. “Twenty-three. Twenty.”

Rinaldo shifted his grip on the moonstone ring. “
Miseria!
” a tinny voice cried. Misery
.

“Ten,” Timmo said. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two . . .”

One. Right on time, Rinaldo dropped the moonstone ring into the water without even a splash. “
Cupimus videre
,” he said. We want to see
.

A vapor rose from the water, as it had when Mom made the elixir. Once again, it clarified all it touched. The pub returned to the way it was when I first saw it—greasy, moldy, and cobwebby—and yet for a moment it seemed like a beautiful truth, the essence of Pub.

With a wail, the hovering Parvi fell to the floor, wings flapping but not holding them up. Rinaldo, Noctua, and Durindana plummeted into the water bowl, now a red plastic dog dish.

The floor was a mass of struggling little creatures, each dirtier and raggedier than the one before.

Considering that they hadn't had a bath or any new clothes for thirteen hundred years, I guess they looked pretty good. The thought crossed my mind—thanks to the vapor—that this was the way they were supposed to look. Essence of Parvi Pennati.

Rinaldo hauled himself out of the water bowl and stood on the greasy bar, dripping and wiping his mouth on the tattered rag he wore as a toga. “Parvi Pennati!” he shouted. “Magica Vera is in the elixir—drink, drink, and you will fly! See! See!” He waved his hands at Noctua and Durindana, who fluttered into the air.

Noctua gathered cobwebs, and then landed at the end of the bar. “Durindana,” she called sharply. “
Veni
.” That's “come here” in Latin. It didn't sound all that polite.

She draped the cobwebs over Durindana and stood back, cocking her head like an artist assessing a painting. She scraped the cobwebs off, laid them on the bar, and plunged her hands into them. It was hard to see, because she was so small and the light so bad, but she seemed to be working at the cobwebs with her fingers. She was humming, a one-woman Circulus.

Everybody—warm and cold alike—watched in fascination. It was clear Noctua didn't know what she was doing: The cobwebs kept sticking to her hands so she'd have to scrape them off and start over. But before long the gummy stuff began to form itself into something like a dress.

A very ugly dress—colorless and shapeless, and gooey to boot. Noctua held it out to Durindana. “
Vestem sume
.” Clothe yourself.

Durindana hesitated, took the dress. She didn't put it on, though. Instead, she laid it down on the bar and began moving her own hands over it, sculpting it almost. It smoothed out, acquired a waist, lost its stickiness. You wouldn't have caught the old Durindana wearing it, but at least it looked like clothing.

She ducked behind a dusty napkin dispenser and came out wearing the dress. She looked cute, like a fairy in a kids' book, tendrils of cobweb wafting around her bare arms and ankles.

When Durindana had started working on the dress, Noctua had stiffened as if insulted. She was accustomed to being the best. But she got interested in the process, and before long she was leaning in to see how Durindana moved her hands. When Durindana came out in the dress, Noctua swept her a haughty curtsy, which Durindana returned with equal haughtiness.

I was feeling pretty good about Durindana's future.

The other Parvi were climbing the bar. Mom and Dad and Timmo and I used our hands as elevators for some of them—I could fit four or five at a time, with my sleeve pulled over my hand to ward off frostbite.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar. There I was—round, pink, and curly-haired, not a speck of drool. I squinted. Hey! Cheekbones!

“Welcome back, sweetie.” Mom shook the chill off her hand before picking up some more Small Persons with Wings.

I looked for Grand-père, and there he was too, slumped on the grungy bench. When I waved at him, he nodded back as if he were Charlemagne instead of a scrawny old man in a moldy pub.

“Our thanks to you, Turpini.” Rinaldo was standing on the bar, supporting himself on a swizzle stick. His mangled wings dangled limply from his shoulders.

“Your poor wings,” I said. “Can you fix them?”

“They will grow. But they will never more be beauties.”

“That's terrible,” Mom said.

He drew himself up straight. “One pays the price for one's people.”

“You are a good leader, Rinaldo,” Dad said.

“Yes, yes. And now the Parvi Pennati will be fixing this inn for you, the Turpini.”

“Are you sure you know how?” Dad asked. I could see his point. Lady Noctua flew by, wobbly and weeping, her second attempt at a cobweb dress having turned into a sticky blob. She looked like one of those chewed-up balls you find in a dog exercise park.

“We are learning,” Rinaldo said. Nearby on the floor, Durindana bustled among Small Persons with Cobwebs—the stuff was plastered all over their hands, hair, and feet. Durindana smoothed and sculpted, smoothed and sculpted, increasingly harried.

“Durindana is very good at all this,” I said.

Rinaldo shrugged. “She is among those whose bodies resisted the Magica Artificia. This naturally will mean she regains her native skills before the rest of us.”

“I know.” I couldn't help myself. “Now aren't you sorry you called her Inepta?”

Rinaldo gave me a disdainful look and stalked off to the other end of the bar, where a cluster of Parvi was contemplating a couple of dead slugs and a pile of crickets. One little guy was trying to start a fire.

“Hey!” Dad said. “Not right on the bar! Sheesh!” He grabbed a metal ashtray from a nearby table and hustled over to avert disaster.

The last gentleman thrust his face into the elixir and emerged snorting and choking and flexing his wings. Timmo gave a jaw-cracker of a yawn.

Mom grabbed his wrist and looked at his watch. “It's almost one in the morning, and we never ate. Let's go upstairs, think about how to get Timmo home without waking up his mother.”

“I could stay here and go home early,” Timmo said. “I get up before they do anyways.”

“Wearing your Dracula outfit?” I said.

“It's happened.”

We'd settled down around the kitchen table when Durindana flew in and landed gracefully on the toaster. She
was
a lot more together now that the Magica Artificia was gone. “I shall rest with the Turpini. The Parvi Pennati are
inepti
.” She smirked. I didn't blame her a bit.

Mom gave Durindana a Proud Mother smile, but then her face collapsed. She dropped her cheese and cracker on the table, plunged her face into her hands. “Fidius! He tried to kill us!”

“He stayed with me for a while,” Grand-père said. “I never liked him. Something false about him—I could tell if I put on the moonstone ring—so I sent him to you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Dad said. “Your own granddaughter.”

“He never did anything bad to me,” I said.

“He frostbit your nose,” Mom said from behind her hands.

“He was scared. He thought I was going to take him to school and they'd put him in a jar. That happened to him once. I think it's what made him go bad.”

“I can't believe you're defending him,” Timmo said. “He called you . . . you know.”

“Fairy Fat,” Grand-père said. “Not inaccurate, if I may say so.”

“You can keep a civil tongue in your head when you refer to my daughter,” Dad said, jutting out his chin. I actually thought Dad was being a bit harsh. Grand-père's a nasty old coot, but he did save our lives. I felt sorry for him. I handed him a cracker and cheese.

“I don't need your sympathy,” Grand-père said. But he ate the cracker. When Dad handed him another, he ate that one too.

Mom decreed that Timmo had to go home rather than spend the night. I walked him down the back stairs and through the yard to the fence.

It was like daytime, the moon was so bright. The whole world was silver and black-green, except for one spot of red: the plastic dog dish with the last of the elixir in it.

“Evaporating,” I said. “Which means—”

“Becoming one with the air,” Timmo said in a dreamy voice.

We leaned against the fence, contemplating stuff.

“I have to admit,” Timmo said, “you're pretty brave.”

“Thanks.”

“Smarter than most of the girls I know.”

“You're the only smart boy I know.”

“You're sort of obnoxious sometimes.”

I started to say “You too,” but I had to acknowledge he really wasn't. “Yeah.”

I could feel his breath on my cheek. I turned my head to see what the heck he thought he was doing, and was surprised to find that his face was inches from mine, his eyes closed. His breath smelled like cheese.

I panicked and backed up. He got interested in his shoes.

“Uh,” I said. “It's just that—”

“Experiment,” he muttered.

Something splashed, over by the dog dish. A tinny voice said something in French.

“Fidius,” I whispered.

His moonlit shape rose from the dog dish, wings glowing silver. He wiped his mouth and shook himself, drops of elixir shimmering as they fell. Then, faster than a thought, he was hovering before me, hand outstretched as if he was going to frostbite my nose again. “Turpina.”

“You tried to kill my parents. You turned me into a frog.”

“I did not wish the Turpini to die. I wished them out of the way, so there would be no ceremony.”

“They would've died.”

“I would have been sad then. And I would have turned you back into yourself once I had the Gemma.”

“You had the Gemma yesterday,” Timmo said. “And you didn't fix her then.”

“Stay out of this, boy. I saw you try to kiss my Turpina.”

You can't tell if someone's blushing by moonlight. “I'm not your Turpina,” I said.

“No? Good-bye then.” With a mighty flap of his gorgeous wings, Fidius rocketed out of sight over the inn roof.

I wasn't sad to see him go. Not. At. All.

WE ARE TRESPASSING, BUT TIMMO SAYS the landowners will never know.

It's a Saturday in October, almost four months after I first met Durindana—one of those fall days that make you think summer is overrated. The sky is so blue you wouldn't believe it if you saw it in a painting. The air is warm and sweet, smelling like dead leaves and the good kind of mold, the kind that stays outdoors.

Timmo and I are walking a path along the edge of a low cliff, woods on one side, rocks and ocean on the other. Moss is everywhere, deadening our footfalls, the only sound the slapping of the tide against the rocks below.

Except, when we round the bend by the fallen oak, for a tinny voice raised in song. Humming, with no words I can distinguish.

Durindana and the other Parvi still have work to do at the inn, but the major renovation is done. They have to work at night now, so the guests won't see them. Today, though, they are working on their own houses, Durindana having stressed to everyone the need to get ready for winter. “We must button up our
domicilia
,” she said.
Domicilia
means “houses.”

And there she is, buttoning up. Or, more precisely, driving her herd of slugs underground through a hole she's made in the moss. She hovers over them, humming, wings flapping, while she prods them with a stick.

When she sees us she flutters to a deck paved in sea glass by her front door, halfway up a five-foot-tall bank of moss on the landward side of the path. She flops into an easy chair of sticks and moss, keeping half an eye on the slugs. They continue to ooze into the hole she made for them. We sit down on a couple of boulders she's set up for visiting Gigantes.

Durindana thinks of everything.

I'd give a lot to see her
domicilium
on the inside, because the outside is gorgeous. Her bank of moss faces south, taking advantage of the sun peeking through the trees. She either made holes in it or took advantage of existing ones, framing them with scraps of wood and closing them in with five-inch-tall driftwood doors that open without a creak.

From the deck in front of the main door, mussel-shell steps lead to another small porch, this one with a roof on it in case of inclement weather. (The steps are for show—why do you need steps when you can fly?) Other doors below the main entrance lead to storage rooms and workrooms of various types. Durindana has plaited sticks and seaweed into windscreens, which she's set up on the ocean side of every door.

She is looking very nice today, in a dress woven from various colors and textures of moss, silky yet nubbly. The hem's raggedy, but that's deliberate. Her brown hair is loose and flowing down her shoulders. Lounging there on her sea glass deck, she looks like a pre-Raphaelite heroine. (The pre-Raphaelites were nineteenth-century painters who liked fairy tales and King Arthur and women with a lot of hair. I can tell you more if you . . . Okay, no.)