Small Persons With Wings (29 page)

“So,” I say as Timmo and I settle down, “how are Rinaldo and Noctua doing?”

“Come see.” Durindana darts down to give the rearmost slug one last prod, then flits off down the path.

It's hard to follow a flitting Parva through shadowy woods. If you try to keep up with her, you'll trip over a root and fall head over Nikes into the ocean. You just have to take your time, mind your step, and put up with this little winged lady zigzagging back to you crying, “Keep up, keep up, warm dolts!”

Rinaldo and Noctua's
domicilium
is about a hundred yards away, right beside the path.

It's lame.

They made—or, more likely, found—a hole at the base of a rotting tree stump. A sad excuse for a door hangs there, lopsided. When we arrive, Rinaldo is trying to tighten it with blue twine that floated ashore from a lobster boat. Noctua is seated daintily uphill on a tuft of moss, making herself a necklace out of straw and shards of sea glass. Her cobweb dress has some shape but is littered with pine needles and twigs—she hasn't solved the stickiness problem.

Durindana hovers, watching, then shakes her head and lands next to Rinaldo. “
Desiste. Ego id faciam
.” That means, “Stop. I will do it.”

He stands back and watches her while she fiddles with the door. Sometimes she seems to be doing what anyone would do, shoving the doorjamb upright and weaving the twine through it. But she's humming the whole time and sometimes she's just laying hands on the wood.

Whatever. By the time she's through, Rinaldo and Noctua have a door that will withstand a gale. As it will have to at some point.

Noctua makes her way down the hill, wearing her new necklace. Durindana, hands on hips, says in English, “Winter is coming, my lady. This is no time to make a necklace. You must be herding your slugs.”

Noctua's chin trembles, and Rinaldo intervenes. “My Lady Noctua tended the crickets all day yesterday. She deserves a day of beauty.”

Durindana shrugs. “This is your choice. But the snow will not wait for you.” She rises into the air and leads us back to her house.

Durindana is happy.

In spite of their door problems, Rinaldo and Noctua seem happy.

Even I am a little bit happy, despite the fact that Eileen did tell everyone about Fairy Fat and the Tampon Incident.

Timmo told me as soon as it happened. I told Mom. Mom did not tell Dad or Grand-père. Instead, she sat me down and gave me a grandeur lesson.

As a result, the first day Timmo and I joined his friends at the beach, I had a tampon pinned to my T-shirt like a brooch. I thought I'd die walking through town like that, and an old lady called me a “little tart.” But the other kids thought it was hysterical.

Timmo called me Fairy Fat in front of everyone. I called him Fairly Flat. Everybody thought that was funny too. Then he called me “Smellie,” which I thought was too much.

Anyway. Grandeur rocks.

I'm still round. I don't wear eye makeup. I like words with lots of syllables. So sue me.

Timmo's happiness is a work in progress.

As Noctua predicted, Eileen and Chief Wright didn't say one word about seeing the Parvi the night of the full moon. Eileen said only that she'd had a “wacked-out dream.” When Timmo experimented, describing the antics of the parakeets I was raising in the pub, they pretended they hadn't heard him.

Encouraged, Timmo wrote away for a space camp brochure and handed it to his father at supper one night in early July when I was there for moral support.

Chief Wright turned the brochure over and over in his hands. “What's this?” he asked.

Timmo looked him right in the eye. “It's for space camp. I'd do it instead of basketball camp. It's more expensive, but I'll mow the lawn for free this summer and—”

Chief Wright gave his brains a shake. “Have I seen this before? Seems like I've seen it before.”

“Uh. I don't know. Maybe.”

“Somebody said something.” Chief Wright furrowed his brow. “Can't remember . . . something about sailing to the stars.” Apparently, Magica Mala had a universal translator.

Timmo was barely breathing. “So . . . what do you think?”

“Heroes.” Chief Wright set the brochure down beside his napkin, lined it up with the table edge. “This person said astronauts are heroes.”

“Sounds like a yes,” Eileen said. “But don't anybody think
I'm
going to police academy.”

The next day, Timmo and his dad went fishing. His dad called him Spaceshot all day and said basketball's a real game whereas baseball's for sissies. He sent the check in for space camp, though.

My parents don't own the inn anymore, but we decided to stick around and run it for Grand-père as long as the Parvi could fix it up without us having to borrow a lot of money. Dad managed to swing a part-time teaching job that will keep us in spaghetti and Roland's Big-Time Teriyaki Chicken until the inn makes a profit.

Everyone agrees that my college fund is out of bounds.

Everyone agrees that my parents will be allowed time to paint.

Nobody listens when Grand-père says the inn should have a Versailles theme.

We don't keep whiskey in the house anymore. Grand-père goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a condition of us sticking around, but sometimes he comes home drunk. The dang-it factor is pretty high on those occasions. But I think we're staying anyway.

The inn renovation began in August, once Durindana felt that the Parvi were good enough at Magica Vera. This was a legitimate concern. In early July, her first attempt at slugs in truffle sauce turned into an oozy mess so disgusting I had to take it outside and dump it for her. The practice house she built out of tree bark and moss (collected by Timmo) caved in on itself after a couple of days. Everybody's cobweb clothing fell apart in the rain.

The Parvi's sense of taste came back in the middle of July, and they discovered that slugs in truffle sauce tasted like . . . well, slugs in truffle sauce. Durindana and a couple of others figured out how to make it taste more like chicken.

On August third, Dad suggested that the Parvi test their renovation skills by repairing the pub's oaken floor, which was all cracked and splintery with board ends poking up everywhere. When I walked in the next morning, the place looked like one of those pictures you see of monarch butterflies swarming in South America. The floor was a mass of fluttering wings and little prostrate, cobweb-clad bodies, Durindana flitting overhead giving instructions. The Parvi seemed to be stroking the floor with their hands, kicking at it with their bare feet.

I wanted to look closer, but I was afraid of stepping on somebody. So I left.

The morning after that, the floor looked new. Also turquoise, which is a funny color for oak, but Mom thought it was cheery-looking, so we didn't complain.

Mom and Dad had their own aesthetic problems to worry about.

As soon as we'd decided to stick around, they each claimed one of the guest rooms for a studio. It took a full month to set up the studios to their liking. The first day of actual painting, Mom worked for two hours, burst into tears, and shut herself in her bedroom for the rest of the day. Dad went out for a long walk.

“If it's that painful, why do they bother?” Timmo asked, smearing organic peanut butter on a slice of whole wheat bread, slapping it together with a jelly-smeared slice, and handing the sandwich to Grand-père.

“Idiot boy.” At first I thought Grand-père was objecting to the PB&J, but then he said, “Painting is one of the grand arts. Once it is begun, one does not simply drop it.”

“You did,” I said.

“Not without considerable effort,” he said haughtily. I handed him a glass of milk, which he shut up and drank.

I was worried that my parents would turn into Grand père—unhappy and unsettled and hard to live with—because of having drunk the elixir and found out terrible things about themselves. But they didn't. On their second painting day, Mom got up and went into her studio and shut the door. Dad did the same. They came out for meals and to check on the Parvi's progress and to impress the building inspector. (He has his brains back now, so we have to pretend we're the ones doing the renovation work.)

After three weeks, Mom had finished a painting and Dad was close. Mom didn't like hers, but she said she could see what was wrong and what to do next time. She almost looked happy.

“That's my idea of courage,” Mr. Watkins said the next day in art class. He likes to use my parents as an example of real, live artists who aren't too weird. Unlike Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), who wrote a poem about a family eating a human head for dinner.

Mr. Watkins lets me share interesting facts about artists as long as I don't monopolize the whole class. On the other end of the spectrum is Ms. Tally, the science teacher, who likes me best with zipped lips.

I'd been looking forward to science class. I wanted to learn about light waves and how the brain interprets information it receives from the eye, such as a gold filigree refrigerator door handle. But October in the eighth grade is when the Baker's Village school learns about phyla, subphyla, and other biological classifications, and Ms. Tally couldn't care less if you already memorized half of them by fourth grade.

“Fairy Fat must've memorized the whole encyclopedia by now,” Janine said. “That's what you do when you don't have any friends.”

Yup. You read that right—Janine.

Turns out she's the friend's cousin who told Eileen about Fairy Fat and the Tampon Incident. And her parents moved out from Boston the end of August so they could be near family and away from bullies in the schools.

“You're lucky you even memorized your own name,” Timmo said. “Teen Queen Janine.” The rest of the class hooted, and a new nickname was born.

“Spaceshot,” Janine said, but everyone had been hearing that one for years. “Snooze alarm,” somebody said.

“Settle down,” Ms. Tally said. “Who remembers the Latin classification for the green frog?”

Timmo squinched up his face. “Amphibia Anura—”

“Drool-idae,” I said.

He and I cracked up. Everybody looked at us like we were nuts.

“How come Janine hates you?” Akira Manning asked me at recess. Akira is a Shakespeare fanatic who eats two desserts every day, trying to expand into her excessive height and stick legs.

“Janine had a bad birthday in kindergarten,” I said. “She blames me.”

“Geez,” said Annie De Luca, who makes jewelry out of sea glass. “She should get over herself.”

They might be my friends. I'm not counting on anything, though.

That afternoon was one of the bad ones, when the heat's on too much and the sun's streaming in the windows and the teacher's droning on and on and all you want to do is put your head down on your desk. I was staring dully out at the golden trees when Durindana rose into the air—right outside the window!—wings beating furiously, clutching a sheaf of the fancy tall grass that grows next to the building. She likes it for weaving.

Durindana peered in the window and waved at me, then flitted away. Somebody behind me made a choking sound.

Janine, white as new slush.

“Is something wrong, Janine?” I asked, in the most syrupy, sympathetic voice you ever heard.

Her glassy eyes met mine. She knew that a real, live fairy had waved at me, and we both knew she'd look like an absolute dork if she said anything.

Grandeur.

DURINDANA FIRST TOPPLED FROM her chandelier online, in the madcap company of the Leaky Marauders. Contributing to her character development were: Sue Barnowski, Connie Paragas Bolinsky, Georgiana Daniel, Anne Ehrenberger, Meg Ford, Craig Graham, Andrew Grimwade, Verena Grützun, Dorothy Hiser, Belinda Hobbs, Laura Holland, Donna Hosie, Connie House, Monica Hultin, Ruth Meyer, Liesl Muller, Michele Myers, Sarah Parsons, Katy Powers, Marie-Lyne Pratt, Lily Prudhomme, Matthew Roberts, Martje Ross, John Sanchez, Dianne Suzuki, Christine Bosworth Watkins, Christopher Watkins, Mike Weinstein, and Sandi Young.

Nobody would have toppled from anything anywhere if not for Kathy Dawson, genius editor, whose diagnostic skills and sense of character are astounding. Kate Schafer Testerman truly is a super-agent, and Shelly Perron is a goddess of language and logic. Sosha Sullivan was an early and astute reader. Mellie benefited from the insight and support of Lisa Heldke and Peg O'Connor. Lauren Curtis gave expert advice on Latin and French, and understood why I had to ignore it in places. (Any mistakes are mine, of course.)

Deepest thanks, admiration, and affection to my writers' group: Deborah Brewster, Maggie Davis, Ann Logan, Becky McCall, Gail Page, Kim Ridley, and Susa Wuorinen.