Small Persons With Wings (8 page)

“Never hold a Parva by the wings, Mellie,” she said. “We don't wish to harm her, no matter how uncouth she may be.”

“Uncouth!” Durindana lapsed into French. I caught the word
chien,
which I think means “dog.” I didn't know which of us she was talking about.

“Now hear this,” Dad said, louder and sterner than I've ever heard him. Durindana stopped wriggling. “You hurt my daughter again—hurt any of us, in fact—and we don't feed you.”

“You must care for me,” Durindana said, quite haughty for someone dangling by her skirt. “Fail to honor the Obligatio and your lives are cursed.”

“I don't care,” Dad said, although you could tell he had doubts.

“A Small Person pulling your child's hair out counts as a curse in my book,” Mom said.

That stiffened Dad's backbone all over again. “Do we have an agreement?”

Durindana dangled there, thinking. She nodded. Mom let go of her skirt without any warning, and Durindana almost hit the floor before her wings kicked in. She flitted up to the chandelier and disappeared into her pink slipper.

I wondered if I really wanted a Parva around. This one was a cross between Janine and . . . well, me. One of me was enough, and none of Janine was just fine, thanks.

“What did you do to tick her off?” Mom asked.

“She wanted bourbon. I was coming upstairs to see if it was okay.”

“It's not good for her,” Dad said.

“Who are we to decide?” Mom said. “She's not a pet, after—” A wail from the chandelier cut her off. “Oh dear.”

Durindana was sobbing and talking to herself. I couldn't understand what she was saying, probably because it was in French but also because she was crying so hard.

“Aw,” Mom said, in one of her typically bizarre turnarounds. She hates wasps, but she never squishes one when it gets into the house—she captures it in a glass and takes it outside. She says they have an important place in nature, just not in our house. She's a cockroach killer, though, and they have a place in nature too. Sometimes it's better not to look for logic.

Durindana obviously was in the wasp category. “Roly,” Mom said. “Get a ladder.”

Dad hauled a dusty, rickety stepladder out of a storeroom behind the bar. Mom climbed up until she was eye-to-slipper. “Hello, dear.”

“Go away.”

“We can't go away, we live here. And we're perfectly happy to have you live here too. For . . . you know . . . for a while.”

“I am in a nasty hole all by my suh-suh-suh-self.” A new round of sobbing commenced.

“It
is
nasty,” Mom said. “I'm sure it's not what you're used to. We'll fix it up eventually, although I'm afraid the cellar isn't our first—”

“I want to go ho-ho-home.”

“Can't you?”

“No.”

“Would you prefer to move upstairs with us?”

“No. I am uncomfortable sleeping aboveground.”

“Fidius slept with us,” I piped up. “We were on the fifth floor.”

A disheveled head peeked over the side of the slipper. “I am not Fidius.”

“Whatever you say, dear.” The ladder gave a serious wobble. Mom started down.

Durindana craned her neck to watch Mom's progress. “If I drank more of the nectar of Ogier Turpin, I would feel better.”

“It's not good for you,” Dad said again. “You couldn't even fly yesterday.”

“Flying is not everything.”

“Perhaps if you drank just a little,” Mom said, reaching the floor. “And sipped it slowly.”

“Yes, yes, this I will do.”

Mom looked at Dad. Dad's forehead wrinkled up. “I don't know. I'm not sure where my responsibilities lie.”

“Sometimes you have to let people be what they are,” Mom said.

He gave her a sharp look through his wire rims. “You're right, of course.” He went behind the bar and peered at the bottles. He blew the dust off of one, opened it, and dribbled some brown stuff into last night's water bottle.

Durindana swooped to the bar before he finished dribbling.

“Hey, take it easy there,” Dad said when she grabbed her bottle and took a swig. “You said you'd sip it.”

She curtsied to us, bottle in her arms. “I thank you, Turpini.” She swooped back to her slipper with the bottle.

“I don't think this was a good idea,” Dad said.

“We'll take it as it comes,” Mom said. “Think it over. Ponder the wisdom of our actions. Come on, we have work to do.” She loaded Durindana's used dishes onto the palm of her hand and headed upstairs, shutting the door behind her with a crisp
thunk
that said she was already developing the chore list in her head.

Dad gave a heavy sigh and stared up at the ceiling, hands in pockets, pondering Life the way he does sometimes.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. “What happens if we give back the moonstone? Do we become Parva-free?”

“Probably we can't give it back. Where magic is concerned, I bet what's done is done.”

“The Turpini can give back the Gemmaluna,” a tinny voice called from the pink slipper. “But all Parvi Pennati and all Turpini must be present for the ceremony.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I am educated.” Durindana began to sing to herself in French.

“I suspect the chances of us getting all the Parvi together are pretty slim,” Dad said. Durindana giggled, then hiccupped. “Let's find the thing first, then weigh our choices.”

“We'll want to use it on the lawyer, anyway.” I was looking forward to us being super truth-detectors.

The door opened and an elegant blond lady stuck her head into the pub. “Hello-o,” she trilled at Dad. “You are being the new Mr. Turpin?” She said it the French way, which told me she probably had known the old Mr. Turpin. She sounded foreign herself.

She had the most bizarre voice I'd ever heard—strained, sort of, like she was shouting at us from the far end of a tunnel. From the chandelier, Durindana gave a cry that almost pierced my eardrum. I hoped the lady hadn't noticed and that Durindana would shut up now.

The lady minced down the steps on these really high heels and handed Dad a card. “Gigi Kramer, real estate,” she called out, head swiveling back and forth, looking the place over. “I welcome you. You prepare to sell, I believe.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dad said. “We need to fix it up first.”

She leaned forward, staring into his eyes. “
Tiens
,
monsieur
, where will you locate the money for this renovation? You will seek a loan from a bank?”

I thought she was pretty nosy. I also thought it was rude not to acknowledge that I was standing there. The third thing I thought was that I'd never seen anyone wearing elbow-length green cotton gloves at the end of June. They looked nice with her fancy black suit, but still.

Oddly, Dad didn't mind that a stranger was asking him such personal questions. He looked as if someone had hit him over the head with a dusty bourbon bottle. “We've got money set aside,” he said, eager to please. “We can invest that in renovations. We'll make it back, maybe double it.”

This was the first I'd heard of using money we'd set aside. The only set-aside money I knew about was my college fund. “Hey, wait a minute.”

The lady whipped around and gazed into
my
eyes this time. Hers were absolutely dead, like a shark's. I thought briefly that this was even more bizarre than the gloves. But it was only a flash of a thought, followed by the absolute knowledge that she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and that I would do anything in my power to please her. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Bourbon?”

“
Zut
, what an adorable child. No, I thank you, my dear.” She turned back to my dad, causing me great sorrow. “You will be making the renovations yourself?”

“Mostly ourselves.” Dad slurred his words. “Unless you think it's best to hire someone.”

“No, no. You will be wise to keep such things inside the family. And on such a project you must work slowly and carefully. Haste is making the waste.” She gave a hollow laugh . . . literally hollow, with a slight echo. “You will be needing a building inspection first, of course.”

My head cleared and I saw that the lady was staring past Dad to the bar, where today's tiny bottle of sugar water was still sitting. I got all tingly, the way you feel (a) jumping into an ice-cold sea. Or (b) when you've knocked over an easel with someone's wet painting on it. Or (c) when a lady with dead eyes might find out about a Small Person with Wings. “Oh!” I said, hustling to the bar. “There's my dolly's bottle.”

I hadn't had a doll since I was six, and even then we all called her what it said on the box: Female Anatomical Model, Fully Articulated. FAMFA. Fammie, for short. Mom used her for a figure model when she painted. We shared her.

“Adorable,” the lady said. She narrowed her shark eyes at me as I rejoined her and Dad. I didn't want to leave Dad alone with her. He was looking stupider by the minute.

“My dolly gets very thirsty,” I said, waving the bottle. A drop of water flew out and hit the lady on the cheek. She didn't notice. It didn't dribble off.

As she returned her attention to Dad I stepped closer. The water stayed on her cheek, dull rather than shiny, not running, not even flattening out. As she talked—I don't remember about what—it fell off her cheek as if it were solid.

She and Dad headed for the door. Her heels sounded like tap shoes. I poked at the water droplet, still intact on the floor. It actually was solid.

In fact, it was ice.

“THIS IS A COMMUNITY OF MUCH LOVELINESS,” Gigi Kramer was saying when I joined her and Dad on the sidewalk. “You will be happy here.”

“Loveliness,” Dad said. “Happy.”

She smiled at him and you could see his knees buckle. “Be keeping me informed of your progress. I shall be most enchanted to advise you as the renovation proceeds.”

Dad stared after her as she sashayed her high heels to a fancy black car with tinted windows. She got in and took off, hanging a left to drive up Oak Street.

“Think that's the lady the kid next door saw?” I asked as Dad opened the door to go upstairs. “She is one weird lady.”

“What lady?”

“Dad. You've got her card in your hand.”

“Oh. Huh.” He put the card in his pocket.

By the time we got up to the kitchen, Dad was his regular self again, apparently not bothered by the fact that some lady with shark eyes seemed to be stalking us.
I'll talk to that kid again,
I thought.
Maybe he can tell me more about her when his dad isn't around.

“So,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together as if he'd never been reduced to a zombie by a real estate lady. “Let's start looking for that moonstone.”

“And the note,” I said. “Let's hope there's a note telling us how to use it.”

You'd be surprised at all the hiding places a pair of shop teachers can come up with, and they never even made it up to the guest rooms.

Mom unscrewed the covers from the electrical outlets and took down the wall sconces and ceiling lights, shining a flashlight into the maze of wires to see if anything sparkled. She looked for letters taped in, on, and behind the plumbing. She turned the water off so she could gross me out by searching the toilet tanks.

Dad took up every floorboard that seemed loose or had newish nails in it. He took apart every picture frame on the walls and made me shake out every single book in the family quarters.

They took the top off the stove. Took the back off the refrigerator. Took apart Grand-père's ancient television set.

Frankly, I couldn't see Grand-père going to that much trouble to hide something. So once I'd finished the books I decided to start in the guest rooms on the fourth floor and work my way down, checking more obvious places. I poked into every closet, ran my finger across the top of the doorjambs, looked under carpets and mattresses. I found a whole box of whiskey nip bottles in one closet and held every bottle up to the light. Nothing.

Being up there by myself creeped me out. I kept feeling I
wasn't
by myself. Somebody was breathing the same air, but I couldn't hear or see or smell who it might be.

I got through the two floors of guest rooms anyway. The mattresses needed to be explored further, but I decided I'd leave that to my parents since they were so good at taking things apart.

I made the same decision about the bonging grandfather clock, which turned out to be on the third-floor landing. I couldn't figure out how to open the clock face, and the door looked to me to be fake, painted on. It looked like something the artist Vanessa Bell would have done in 1917—she painted on everything, including chairs and people's walls.

She went to a party once and danced so hard her dress fell off.

I must have jostled the clock, because the thing went nuts.
Bong
, it said.
Bong, bong, bong, bong . . .
It went on and on and on and I couldn't see any way to stop it. Finally I gave it a good whack and yelled, “Cut it out!” It wheezed, gave one more unhappy
bong,
and shut up.

Stupid thing. It said four o'clock and it was only one in the afternoon.

I was starving. I went downstairs to find my parents sitting in the kitchen like a pair of depressed trash bags, eating cheese and crackers.