Small Persons With Wings (22 page)

“No way. I'm not going near that plastic lady. Look what she did to me the last time!”

Durindana cooed soothingly in my ear.

“I'll go with you,” Timmo offered.

“Yes, yes, you will have Timothy Oliver as your squire,” Rinaldo said. “And Fidius reports that you have learned to fight her Magica. You may resist her now.”

“No,” Fidius said. “The Turpina is only a child and as usual you are an imbecile, Rinaldo. I know what she did yesterday to resist illusions.
I
will find the Circulus and rescue them from this walking
pupa
.” He raised his hand to me in farewell, and flitted out the mail slot.

“Fidius!” I yelled. “Wait! We don't even know where she is!” I ran outside, Durindana clinging desperately to my shoulder, but he had disappeared. I went back in, feeling terrible.
Sheesh
.
He scolds me and then he sacrifices himself.

“Has he learned to see through the Magica Artificia?” I asked Durindana.

“I do not know.”

I turned to Rinaldo. “You can't let him do this alone. I can teach you how to see through the Magica Artificia, even the Magica Mala. I can teach all of you.”

“There is not enough time.” Rinaldo was flatly final. “As you say, Fidius cannot succeed alone. You and Timothy Oliver must go now so we have our Circulus back by the twenty-third hour.” He made a dismissive gesture and fluttered away to the bar.

“I'm not doing this!” I yelled after him. “I won't go!”

“Sure you will,” Timmo said. “We'll be fine.”

I rounded on him. “Shut up. Just shut up. You're nuts. This could be awful and it's not your fight. I'm the Turpina here, not you.”

“Geez, I was only offering to help.”

“Well, stop butting in, okay?”

He was boiling red. “Okay. Know what? You can have all this. It's cool and all, but I don't need any more meanness in my life, you know? There's plenty enough of it at my house. And I'm going back there now. Have a nice life.”

Great.
Now
he learns to stand up for himself.

Timmo slapped the moonstone ring into my hand and stalked out, slamming the door. At which point I was even more alone than I had been five minutes before.
Nice one, Mellie.

Alone, that is, except for Timmo's voice, floating in through the mail slot. “My sister told me all about you, by the way.

“Fairy Fat.”

TWO DAYS BEFORE, I WOULD HAVE BEEN HORRIFIED that Fairy Fat and the Tampon Incident had followed me from Boston. Now it almost didn't matter.

I went upstairs to figure out how to (a) find Gigi Kramer before she hurt Fidius, (b) help Fidius rescue the Circulus, (c) organize returning the moonstone without Gigi hurting us worse than she already had, and (d) regain my former youth and beauty, ha-ha-ha.

I peeked in on my parents. They were snoring. I went into my room, took off my gloves, put on the ring, and opened the closet door so I could stare at Normal Mellie in the mirror. Maybe it would make me braver. On the other hand, I hadn't seen Mellie the Frog since that first rush of horror down in the pub.
How bad can it be, really?

I took off the ring. There was the frog face, waxy, green, my brown eyes on either side of a pair of nose holes. As I watched, the mouth opened slightly and drooled.

My stomach clenched like a fist. I shut my eyes, fumbled for the ring.

No! Who's the boss here, anyway?
I shut my eyes tighter and thought about Degas and
The Glass of Absinthe,
how I loved my parents and what dorks they could be, the times when I'd played “naked Venus” in front of the mirror back in Boston. How I won Best of Show at Science Fair.

My imagination tried to slink away from me, refusing to see anything except a green face with nose holes. But I wasn't having that. I was imaginative, yet firm.
I'm the boss.

I opened my eyes and there was the real me: Melissa Angelica Toogh-peh, descendant of a paladin of Charlemagne. Time to stiffen the spine. Who was that female warrior Lady Noctua talked about? Bradamante. Time to be Bradamante.

I looked closer. I
did
have cheekbones.

Durindana wobbled in, her purple gown frayed around the hem. She tumbled onto my bed.

“Durindana, I'm going to help Fidius get the Circulus back. You have to keep an eye on my parents and make sure they don't jump off a bridge.”

“That old man can watch the Turpini.” One of her hairdo feathers disintegrated. “I am going with Melissa Angelica Turpin.”

“No! Can't you do what I say this once? Somebody has to watch out for my parents.”

She struggled into the air, bobbed in front of my nose. “Somebody must be watching out for Melissa Angelica Turpin. She and Fidius must not face danger without a friend.” She patted the end of my nose, quick enough not to freeze me, and plummeted back onto the bed.

A friend.

My eyes fogged. Hey, I was tired. I blinked them clear. “I'll be fine. I'll have the Gemmaluna on. You would be in more danger than I will be.”

“You are forgetting, Melissa Angelica Turpin. Sometimes I too see through the works of this
pupa magna
. Right now I am seeing you as Turpina, not as . . . how you say this ... frog-face.”

“That's great. But—”

“Fidius and Melissa Angelica Turpin will not battle this bad Parva all alone. If you do not take me with you, I will follow you. This is my final word.”

I couldn't imagine how she'd help, but somehow I did feel braver. “
Merci
, Durindana.” I wished I knew how to say it in Latin.

She curtsied. “
Ça ne fait rien,
Melissa Angelica Turpin. It is nothing.” A cluster of silk flowers vanished from her gown.

“Now,” I said. “Where do you suppose this Gigi Kramer creature is living?”

“I do not know.”

“Is there some way you can tell where the Circulus is? Sense it, somehow?”

“I do not know.”

“Could Rinaldo tell us?”

“I do not know.”

I sighed and put on the moonstone ring. “Well, maybe Grand-père can help us out.”

He'd made it upstairs to a guest bed, where he was flat on his back. I shook him.

“What now?” He didn't open his eyes.

“Get up. You have to watch Mom and Dad and make sure they don't jump off a bridge. Gigi Kramer's kidnapped the Circulus, so Durindana and I are going to get it back.”

“Oh yeah? Where you going to find Gigi Kramer?”

My heart sank. “I was hoping you'd know.”

“The youth of today, always expecting their elders to know things.”

“You're the grown-up—why
don't
you know?”

“Top of Great Misery Hill, overlooking the ocean.” Timmo walked in like a friend of the family. “Everybody's talking about it, Mom said. This nasty old mansion suddenly looks like Versailles. That was the palace of the French kings from 1682 to 1789.”

“I knew that.” I stood there, thinking I should say something else, but with no idea what that would be.

The silence got awkward.

“The youth of today,” Grand-père said, “have no conversational skills.”

“I came back,” Timmo said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I'm coming with you. I don't care how rude you are.”

“Durindana's coming too.”

“Apology accepted.”

I almost said “What apology?” but then I didn't. I wanted to ask something else, a yes or no question, but I couldn't make myself do it.

“I won't tell anybody,” Timmo said. “About that stuff in Boston.”

He was telling the truth. But... “Eileen will,” I said.

“I'll shut her up.” He frowned. “Somehow.”

“What stuff in Boston?” Grand-père demanded.

I ignored him. “I guess you know where this place is,” I said to Timmo.

“Yup. Used to be a really cool haunted house. When are we going?”

I was tempted to say, “Tomorrow, when I have parents.” But we couldn't put it off—the full moon wouldn't wait. “Right now. Soon as this old man gets up and starts assuming some responsibility around here.”

“Are you planning to walk through town like that?” Timmo asked.

“Like what?” I looked down at myself. Jeans. Sneakers. Sweatshirt. Moonstone ring on finger.

“I think the boy means, like a giant drooling amphibian,” Grand-père said.

Oh. That.

“It'll be like the movies,” Timmo said. “Panic in the streets. With drool.”

I handed him the moonstone, took a whiff of Scotch. The three of us discussed putting me in a wheelbarrow with a tarp over me, so Timmo could wheel me through town. We thought about me wearing my Ugly Monster mask and fake hands. I have to admit, it was Grand-père who thought of the best plan: that
Timmo
would wear the mask and the gnarled monster hands that went with it.

We'd pretend we were a pair of goofy kids who couldn't wait for Halloween. Instead of a pair of goofy kids who had Halloween happening all the time.

We moved Grand-père downstairs to my mattress outside my parents' room. “Don't leave and don't fall asleep,” I said.

“The youth of today—”

“Stuff it, old man.”

The Halloween plan had its first test as we headed up Oak Street, Timmo under the monster mask, Durindana hiding in the pocket of his jean jacket with the moonstone ring. A lady came out of the community center and laughed at us. “What's the occasion, kids?”

“Only a hundred twenty-six shopping days until Halloween,” Timmo said, muffled under his mask. I nodded vigorously. I had to avoid talking so no one would notice that my jaw really moved.

The lady looked at me and gave a big fake shudder. “Ew. That's the ugliest face I've ever seen. Where on earth did you get that?”

I shrugged. “A friend gave it to her,” Timmo said. “She doesn't know where it came from.”

“And who's that under there?” The lady reached for Timmo's mask. “Is that Timmo?”

“Nope.” Timmo backed away from her. “This is my real face.”

The lady laughed like a grown-up. “Okay, okay. Have fun, kids.” She headed for a red Saab parked at the curb.

As we scuttled up the street, Timmo started playing around, waving at cars and walking with an Igor limp. I tried to look like I was having a good time. “Lighten up,” Timmo muttered. “Act like a kid for a change.” So I waved at an electric company guy, and he waved back, grinning. I growled at a little kid until he squealed and ran away. I waddled like I had a wet diaper, and a car tooted its horn at us. I danced around like an ape for the next one, and it honked too.

I forgot that my parents were in bed with pillows over their faces. I ignored the fact that I was round with no friends. I pretended Timmo was my friend, to see what it felt like.
So sue me.

“We're like the Ghost Head Nebula,” Timmo said. “It looks like a ghost, with eyes and everything, but it's really gas and space-dust.”

I told him about the Degas family wanting to be called de Gas. He blew a fart noise under his mask and cracked up.

A parade of little kids started following us. “This could be a problem,” I whispered. Timmo nodded. We started to run. The kids hooted and ran after us. A couple of bigger kids yelled, “Hey, who's that? Catch 'em!” We pelted around a corner and through a hedge and under somebody's porch, and they gave up. My heart was pounding. I loved it.

We followed Hale Street toward the sea. The neat houses with neat yards gave way to bigger houses with fields and woods around them. Tall fences and hedges and crumbly walls protected them from street noise, which right now consisted of running footsteps and a Parva-voice griping about what Timmo's pocket was doing to her hairdo.

Finally we came to a potholed dirt driveway flanked by chipped concrete lions. “Here we are,” Timmo said.

I thought the lions' eyes followed us as we passed. “Get hold of yourself,” I muttered.

We followed the driveway steeply uphill into the woods. It twisted a lot but tended toward the ocean, which we could hear pounding against a cliff as we neared the top.

“What's this place like?” I asked Timmo.

“Big. Rotting.”

We came out of the woods onto a cliff top with a 180-degree view of the water. Timmo led me around one more sharp curve and went
unh
, as if he'd been punched in the stomach.

“Oooo.” Durindana peeked out of his pocket under a mass of disheveled hair. “Pretty, pretty
domus
.”

This was anything but a haunted house. It did, in fact, look like a mini-Versailles, all granite and marble and tall windows and ornate columns. It was a false front, though—a few yards down the side, the house turned back into a grungy old mansion.

“Guess she's only got enough power to change the front,” I said. That was encouraging.

A path of polished pink granite led to a pair of double doors three times my height. We stood in front of them getting our courage up.

“Maybe they're locked.” Timmo shucked his monster duds. I could tell he was hoping the doors wouldn't open. So was I.

“Warm dolts,” Durindana observed. “Standing here will not make a rescue.”