The Eternal City

by Paula Morris

  “The Internet place,” Maia said slowly, her face a blank. “This afternoon.”

  “Yes,” said Laura, wondering why Maia was speaking in this odd, drawly way.

  “After the earthquake?”

  Before Laura could reply, a sound outside the door caught her attention—soft steps, and then the door handle turning, as though someone was about to come in. Sofie always thudded around, so it didn’t sound like her. And anyway, the door didn’t open: whoever was turning the handle let it spring back into place.

  “Hello?” Laura called. Maybe it was Dan or one of the other boys, looking for them. But still, the door didn’t open. She heard a click, and then footsteps running away down the hallway.

  It sounded to Laura as though someone was locking them in. Maia must have been thinking the same thing, because she was on her feet, rattling the door handle.

  “Locked,” she announced.

  “Here,” Laura said. She scrambled up and dug in her bag pocket for the room key, dangling from its wooden block, their room number scrawled on it with black marker. “We can just unlock it.”

  But though her key unlocked the latch the way it always did, the door didn’t budge.

  “What?” she said, jerking the door handle up and down in irritation.

  “Look.” Maia pointed to another lock, one they never used, lower down the door. “Try that one.”

  The lower lock needed a different key. Laura’s key wouldn’t turn either direction; it barely fit in the lock at all.

  Someone had locked them in.

  “Did Sofie do it?” Laura asked, frowning at the locked door.

  “I don’t think she would,” said Maia, and Laura saw the logic in that. Sofie had the same key they all did, not this extra, special key. And although Sofie could be aloof and occasionally petulant, she didn’t seem that spiteful—or organized.

  Laura’s heart was beating fast again; she didn’t like this at all. Something like dread was churning up her stomach, a sensation that was more and more familiar every day she was stuck here in Rome. Rattling the door achieved nothing, nor did banging and shouting for help, though she and Maia did both.

  “Maybe it’s the boys playing a joke.” Laura didn’t really believe this, but she said it anyway, mainly to calm herself down. From the grim look on Maia’s face, she could tell that Maia didn’t buy that, either.

  “It must be someone who has access to the second key,” Maia said, peering at the low lock. “Someone who works here, maybe.”

  “Why would they lock us in?” Laura squeaked. She wanted her heart to stop racing, and for something practical and rational to spring into her feverish brain. It was hard to concentrate with the sound of a seagull shrieking right outside the window.

  “The star sapphires,” Maia announced in her most matter-of-fact voice. She stomped back to her bed and sat down.

  “What?” Laura wished the stupid bird would stop flying up and down outside, making a racket.

  “They’re the problem, of course,” said Maia, sounding almost bored with the obviousness of it. “You were carrying them in your bag when you were attacked at the Mouth of Truth. Sofie had one when she was attacked at the church. The man at the tortoise fountain tried to steal them from you. And …” Maia paused and bit her lip. The seagull flew past the window at top speed, so close its wing brushed the glass.

  “What?” said Laura. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized it had been hours since they’d eaten.

  “You had the two stones in your hand when the earthquake happened.”

  Laura nodded. Maia had obviously made the same connection as Dan. But Maia didn’t know the rest of it. Laura already felt guilty enough about that. You have the eyes of Minerva, stolen from her sacred temple …

  “The thing is,” she said to Maia’s back; Maia had walked to the window to peer out at the noisy gull, “I didn’t want that stupid second stone. I threw it down a drain, remember? Sofie was the one who took it off the windowsill.”

  Laura knew she was sounding whiny, but she couldn’t help it. If only she’d left her bracelet back at home, in Indiana! She could have come to Rome without setting off some kind of ancient-god alarm.

  Rain was falling now, a soft drizzle pattering onto the sill. It was still only early in the evening, but it already seemed dark outside. The seagull’s cry sounded more distant. Laura’s stomach rumbled again, so loud she was sure that Maia could hear. If they weren’t locked in right now, she would leave to go get food.

  “Sofie had to take the stone off the windowsill,” Maia said quietly. “If she hadn’t taken it, someone else would have.”

  Laura stared at her.

  “What?” she asked. Maia didn’t meet her eye.

  “You were saying something about the guy who let us out at the Internet place,” Maia prompted, running a hand across her sleek dark head. “The one you were talking to.”

  “You saw that?” Laura was still confused about Maia’s earlier comment. If she hadn’t taken it, someone else would have.

  “Oh yes,” said Maia, as though it were no big deal. Laura leaned back against the window, trying to ignore the cawing seagull.

  “I saw him before, in the Pantheon,” Laura said, wanting to get it all out now, before Maia could interrupt or contradict her. “I talked to him there, too. And I know this sounds crazy, but I think he had wings on his heels.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. I mean, I saw them. And they weren’t, like, novelty sneakers. They were these small wings, feathery and black. On his heels.”

  Laura felt her face prickle with heat. It was almost embarrassing to say this out loud.

  “Wings on the heels,” said Maia, her voice steady, betraying no emotion.

  “Like Mercury,” Laura said. “As in, the messenger god.”

  “And,” Maia continued, still with the same measured tone, “you’re thinking it’s the same guy who opened the door for us at the Internet place.”

  “I’m absolutely certain of it,” Laura said, the relief of a confession washing through her. “Like I said, he spoke to me both times. In English. But I guess gods can speak whatever they want. I mean, they don’t just walk around speaking Latin.”

  Until yesterday, Laura hadn’t thought gods walked around at all, but this was a different Rome from the one she’d expected, with very different rules. Maia said nothing.

  Something thumped against the window and instinctively Laura jumped away, flashing to the time back home when a cardinal flew into the glass doors that led onto the patio. It sounded exactly the same.

  “Seagull,” Maia told her, perched on the edge of her bed.

  Laura peered out the window, trying to make sense of the ashy, rainy twilight. The seagull was swooping up and down the lane, followed—chased?—by what had to be a crow. They were moving so fast it was hard to see more than a flurry of shapes, the wild flapping of wings. It was like the aerial fight in the Protestant Cemetery all over again, except this time it looked more frantic, more violent, and there wasn’t any stone Cupid to intervene.

  Someone out in the hallway was rattling the door handle and banging on the door. Laura nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Hallo?” It was Sofie, sounding annoyed. “Why did you lock the door?”

  “We didn’t lock it,” Maia called back, not bothering to get up. “Someone locked us in. Was it you?”

  “No!” Now Sofie was indignant. “My key is in the room. Let me in, please.”

  “We can’t,” Laura shouted. “Someone locked the bottom lock.”

  She could hear Sofie muttering and complaining in German. The door handle jiggled a few more times.

  “Who locked this?” Sofie demanded.

  “We don’t know,” Maia said, scribbling something in her little book, as though being locked in was no longer of any interest or concern at all.

  “Was there anyone downstairs?” Laura called.

  “I don’t know,” said Sofie, her voice muffl
ed. “I was upstairs talking to the boys. Kasper wants to look for some food.”

  Laura’s stomach rumbled again on cue.

  “Go downstairs,” Maia ordered. “Look around the front desk for the second key.”

  “Okay.” Sofie let out a long-suffering sigh. “I find ice and a key.”

  Thumping footsteps declared Sofie’s retreat. Laura wondered why Maia was ordering her around this way, and why Sofie was doing Maia’s bidding without protest. They’d only known each other for five minutes.

  “So,” said Maia, gazing at Laura. “What did he say to you?”

  Laura was relieved that Maia wasn’t questioning her sanity.

  “He talked about Minerva,” Laura said. “He said he was bringing a message from her.”

  “He’s the messenger god, and Minerva outranks him in the pantheon,” said Maia. “That’s why she doesn’t need to come herself.”

  “I know,” Laura said, hoping she wasn’t in for another of Maia’s lectures. Of course Mercury was the messenger god; of course Minerva outranked him. She’d known all that when she was eight years old. She didn’t need Maia to explain rudimentary things about the ancient world to her.

  “He also looks after travelers,” Maia continued, oblivious to Laura’s tone. “He helps people crossing borders and boundaries.”

  A horrible thought struck Laura: Mercury also guided people from life to death. Was that why he was here—to usher Laura and her strange little group of non-friends to the underworld?

  “And people transgressing boundaries,” Maia continued. “You know what transgressing means? Breaking a—”

  “I know what transgressing means,” Laura interrupted. Transgression meant disobeying a law, breaking a rule. In Latin the word was transgredi, to step across a line. That’s what her grandfather had done, she supposed, when he took the star sapphire—the eye of Minerva—from wherever it was buried.

  A bird thumped against the window again, this time so hard and loud that Laura almost jumped out of her skin. She turned to the window to rap on it, the way she’d seen her mother rap on their patio doors to shoo away a raccoon that dared to venture too close to the house.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light outside. There was the seagull, screeching again, climbing in the air. The crow was there as well, gray-shouldered wings flapping, but this time it wasn’t chasing the seagull. It was dive-bombing the seagull from on high, slamming hard into its back, pecking at its head. The seagull was shaking off the hooded crow, circling back for an attack of its own. With a screech it launched itself at the crow and dove straight into the other bird’s head, so hard that the crow seemed to fall through the air.

  “What’s going on?” Maia asked, but all Laura could do was shake her head. The crow hadn’t fallen; it looped up again, driving its beak into the seagull’s white underbelly. The seagull screeched—a nasty, high-pitched sound like a child’s scream—and plummeted out of sight.

  The crow stayed aloft, circling. Laura watched it swoop back and forth outside the window: It was patrolling, she thought, like a feathered night watchman obscured by fog.

  She wondered if this was the crow who’d woken her up last night, tapping at the window, depositing the second star sapphire on her windowsill. Maybe it was Mercury himself, in bird form.

  “Birds were fighting outside,” she told Maia at last. “But it’s all over.”

  “Hallo!” Sofie was outside the door again, rattling the handle. “I have keys, many keys.”

  There was nothing for Laura and Maia to do but wait while Sofie tried one key after another, exclaiming and complaining in German. Finally something clicked, and there was Sofie, pushing the door open, a triumphant smile on her face. From one fist dangled a heavy-looking swag of keys.

  “Thanks,” Laura said, relieved that they weren’t trapped anymore. She was ravenous with hunger.

  “What did the girl at the desk say?” Maia asked. Sofie’s eyes widened.

  “At first she wasn’t there, so I found the keys,” Sofie announced, looking pleased with herself. “And then the girl walked in, from the street. Oh my god, she was bleeding! On her head! And holding herself here.”

  Sofie gripped her stomach and doubled over.

  “There was blood there, too. On her dress.”

  “Was she okay?” Laura asked. Sofie shrugged.

  “I don’t know. She looked angry. I just run up the stairs to let you out.”

  “Good,” said Maia, and Laura gazed from one to the other. Why were they both so cold and heartless? Serena, the girl in the white dress, wounded in the head, wounded in the belly, had staggered in from the street, and Sofie had just walked away? Now Maia was congratulating her? These were two of the strangest girls she’d ever met in her life.

  “So,” said Sofie, looking at Maia. “The crow defeats the seagull. This time, anyway.”

  “Sofie!” Maia shouted, and Laura started: She’d never heard Maia raise her voice, or show that much emotion. And why was Sofie talking about the bird fight? Had she seen it?

  “Oh.” Sofie glanced at Laura and made a face. “Sorry.”

  The crow defeats the seagull. Serena in her white dress, wounded in the head, wounded in the belly …

  Laura’s head swirled.

  “It’s time to go.” Maia slid her notebook into her bag, her voice calm again. “We have to leave here. Now.”

  Laura stared at Maia, not moving. She’d seen the seagull get pecked in its head and its belly, bleeding. Just like Serena. The nice girl at reception was … a seagull? An enemy of the crows? An enemy of Laura? What had Mercury told her? Other gods disagree, and they now prepare for battle. Was Serena another god? And did Maia and Sofie know this already, somehow?

  “We have to go,” Maia repeated. “Laura?”

  “Why does she stop talking?” Sofie asked, looking at Laura as though she was crazy. She turned back to Maia. “And, you know, Jack cannot go anywhere. He can’t walk. We must leave him here.”

  “Leave him?” Laura managed to squeak. Poor, injured Jack—they couldn’t just abandon him and run away. And run away where, exactly?

  “He’ll be fine,” said Maia. “We don’t need him, and he’s no worse off here than any of the kids who are sick. Sofie, go tell the boys to keep their door open. We don’t want them getting locked in, too.”

  “You forget,” said Sofie, jangling the bundle of keys. “I am die Schliesserin now. I open the doors to the jail.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without checking that the others are okay,” said Laura. Suddenly this seemed the most important thing in the world. If Serena was some otherworldly enemy, wasn’t everyone in the hostel at risk?

  “I’ll go with you.” Maia started pulling on her sneakers. When Laura hoisted her battered backpack onto one shoulder, Maia and Sofie shook their heads.

  “This bag is too easy to steal,” Sofie told her. “You must hide the stones somewhere else.”

  Although it was annoying to have both Maia and Sofie telling her what to do, Laura knew this was sensible. The next time someone grabbed the bag off her, bronze tortoises might not be on hand to attack. She unzipped the inside pocket and pulled out the broken bracelet, placing it on the bed. Then she retrieved the second stone, careful not to hold the two in her hand at the same time, just in case the ground below them starting rumbling again.

  “You could put them in your shoes,” Maia suggested. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  “No,” said Sofie, shrugging, and Laura realized that Maia was looking at Sofie, asking her opinion, not Laura’s. Suddenly they were BFFs!

  Laura managed to wedge the loose stone between her toes, but it felt so uncomfortable she didn’t think she could walk. She grabbed a hoodie from her bag and slipped the bracelet into the pocket, then zipped the hoodie on over her dress. Not ideal, but if would have to do for now.

  “We’ll meet you in the boys’ room in fifteen minutes,” Maia told Sofie. “If we don’t turn up,
come and look for us on the third floor. We’ll check on the other girls.”

  Sofie went ahead, and then Maia and Laura left their room, locking the door behind them.

  The third floor was dark, the hall’s one light so dim that the walls looked a pale apricot rather than their usual dire orange. Every door was closed. Laura and Maia weren’t heavy walkers like Sofie, but it still seemed to Laura that the floor creaked and complained with their every step. The silence was excruciating, she thought, and just plain wrong, given how many girls and teachers were staying on this floor. It was still early evening. Just two days since Morgan and so many of the others got sick; only one day since Woody, the last teacher standing, had left them outside the Pantheon. But surely someone was feeling better by now? Shouldn’t some people be up, laughing and talking?

  The room that POTUS and Woody were in was at the end of the corridor. Laura hesitated outside the room she’d shared with Morgan, Nicole, and Courtney.

  “I want to check on them,” she whispered to Maia.

  When Maia didn’t protest, Laura cracked open the unlocked door and peered in. The room was in darkness, curtains drawn, and she waited for her eyes to adjust to its gloom and for the familiar shapes of the bunk beds to emerge. Her bed was empty, covers drawn taut, but there were lumps in the three other beds. The only sound was the soft hum of regular breathing. She inched in, stubbing her toe on someone’s suitcase, and groped her way to the bunk where Morgan lay. Her friend was fast asleep.

  “Hey,” Laura whispered, hoisting herself up on the bottom bunk until her face was close to Morgan’s. POTUS would probably go nuts about her disregard for quarantine, but Laura didn’t care. Something was happening in Rome now that was worse than regular old sickness. “Hey, Morgan. It’s me. Are you awake?”

  Morgan murmured something incoherent. Her eyes stayed closed. A water bottle, at least half full, was tucked underneath her pillow.

  Maia walked over, stepping lightly. Morgan mumbled again and shifted in her sleep. Laura touched her friend’s forehead; it felt clammy.