The Undrowned Child

by Michelle Lovric

  The soldiers thundered into their boats, or took to the air, their weapons clattering, and their rough matted hair streaming behind them. In two minutes they were gone, and there was silence. For just a second, you could imagine that it was a normal summer day in Venice, a quiet, sleepy day, the kind of day on which nothing much happens except a slight case of sunburn.

  At that moment, high up above Renzo and the cats, in the thick trunk of a tree, a door opened, and Teo’s anxious face appeared.

  “Renzo!” she shrieked, and burst into tears. Renzo peered up into the branches. Yes, it was really Teo, alive, though with a shortened skirt and strangely blue feet. And—as far as he could tell, for her cheeks were mottled with crying—her skin was still covered in the inscriptions of the Spell Almanac.

  “You see!” said the large golden tabby, in a tone that could not be described as anything but cat-got-the-cream smug.

  “You mean you can talk?” Renzo tried not to scream.

  “Oh my, His Numps is rather tetchy, is he not? Of course we can talk. When there is someone worth talking to and something worth saying. We assumed that your friend, if she was worth her salt, would find our passageway to the pantegana hunting grounds. As for you, young man, we wanted to keep you here long enough not to get hurt by some foolish act of pointless bravery.”

  Teo was struggling out of the tree. There was nowhere to put her feet, and she was reduced to sliding and slithering, all the while trying to wipe her eyes and her nose, and not blubber like a baby. It was all the more difficult under the cool eyes of the cats, which expressed a clear and open criticism of her lack of grace.

  Teo hesitated over the last drop. From now on down, the trunk was completely solid, with no knot-holes for her feet or branches to catch hold of.

  “Jump, Teo!” urged Renzo, holding out his arms. The two of them tumbled down together in the grass and lay holding one another in silence.

  “Are you all right?” Renzo was the first to ask.

  Teo buried her head against his shoulder. He was not much bigger than her, and he was covered with bird droppings, and he was shaking like a leaf in the wind. But Renzo’s arms felt like a place of perfect safety just then. She sobbed, “I stopped him, Renzo, he didn’t get all the spells. Just a couple of them …”

  Teo felt his eyes warm and sympathetic on her. He wiped the wetness off her face with a careful finger that still trembled a little. “I know, I can see the spells are still on your cheeks.”

  “And look at you! You’ve got a great stripe of blood right across your forehead.”

  “It’s nothing. It doesn’t hurt at all. Un bel niente.”

  Teo pulled a bottle out of Renzo’s pocket. She dabbed his forehead with a fingerful of the sticky Venetian Treacle. The wound disappeared.

  “I thought the magòghe had killed you,” she whispered.

  “I thought the same thing about you. I was in luck, the cats saved me. But how did you …?”

  “Those cats? They don’t look too friendly.”

  “They can be helpful when they want to be. I think they did it for the Gray Lady.”

  “Oh yes, they look like her, don’t they? Oh my, they’re Syrian cats, aren’t they? They’re gorgeous! Goodness, they’ve got wings!”

  Renzo’s arms were still around her. Teo stammered, “I’m sorry … for what I said back there, outside the Games Pavilion. I didn’t mean it. You’re the bravest person I know. You’re not …”

  Renzo did not let go of her. “You were upset. We were both terrified out of our wits. Anyway, I’ve forgotten it already. You know, we should get up.”

  “Yes, we should. You first.”

  “No, you.”

  “Come, the cats are watching.”

  At that moment Teo and Renzo heard a sound that made them tremble.

  Seven long groans from the High Water siren.

  They scrambled to their feet. This was the signal from the mermaids that the battle was about to begin. It was too late to find Lussa and show her the spells tattooed on Teo’s body. It was all very well that Teo had stopped Bajamonte Tiepolo from getting his hands on most of them, but unless the mermaids could make use of those that remained to give an advantage to the forces of good—then those spells were less than useless now.

  late afternoon, dusk and night, June 14, 1899

  From the headland at Sant’Elena, Teo and Renzo watched helplessly as an extraordinary procession wove out of the bacino of San Marco. It looked so delicate, so exquisite, compared with the tribe of horrors that had burst out of the pavilion and was now making its way across the lagoon like a dark stain in the water.

  The Key to the Secret City had squirmed like a cat about to give birth, finally delivering a pair of ornate opera glasses for Renzo and Teo.

  “Look!” breathed Teo, pointing. The boats of Il Traditore’s grim fleet had sinister black cages swinging from their masts: all made in the crude outlines of men, mermaids and cats.

  “For prisoners,” whispered Renzo in fury. “And out of cowardice! Because if our troops are in those cages, our people cannot fire at the enemy boats.”

  “I know it’s war, but it’s so beautiful,” breathed Teo, turning in the other direction to watch the mermaids’ silk standard, embroidered in vivid colors, waving above each group of fighters. The standard showed a mortar-and-pestle, the symbol of the ordinary Venetian baker’s wife who’d dared to destroy the hopes of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  The mermaids were leading the way. Some held flags out of the water to guide the forces. More of them were swimming underneath the gondolas and fishing boats, helping to speed them along. A gray cloud of pigeons followed in their wake, puffing out their breast-feathers with pride. Parrots, spotless white doves and Wild-but-Good Faeries swooped in and out among the sails, lighting on masts and rigging. Herons stalked through the shallows like important lawyers, with speckled pink squid pumping along in their slipstream and flying fish diving in and out of the water ahead. The fins of the bigger fish moved in disciplined formations. Swordfish and spotted rays glided just under the surface.

  The noble ghosts, in their gorgeous velvet and silk costumes from each of six centuries, sat upright in the gondolas, with their hands on their antique jeweled weapons. The gondoliers’ children rowed swiftly—the noble ghosts had no weight, even though they made a great deal of hot air, arguing with one another. Stacked in the boats were the children’s only weapons—croquet mallets and lawn tennis rackets.

  The gondolier children were whistling traditional Venetian boating songs. From the waves beneath them the mermaids added an encouraging harmony, though sometimes the words were not quite as refined as those of the original songs.

  And just as Lussa had said, above everyone floated the Cherubim, the sweet, winged angels with faces of children who had died of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s black death. Like butterflies, they soared on the wind, keeping safely between the pigeons and the lions.

  “And that looks like a …?” said Teo wonderingly.

  The Rioba brothers’ camel appeared, swimming lithely through the water with all three of his masters seated grandly on his hump. And at the back, behind the Riobas, was a slight figure that Teo recognized. He wore velvet breeches and a tweedy waistcoat. Professor Marìn, the old bookseller, waved his paperknife and smiled.

  Teo’s mind worked furiously. The bookseller was a thoroughly good man, a member of the Incogniti, a friend of her parents: he could not be a ghost requiring redemption. Therefore he must be alive! He had not been murdered … he had somehow escaped Il Traditore. He must have gone, Teo realized, between-the-Linings, as she had done, for his own protection. That was why Lussa had been so mysterious about him!

  “It will be wonderful to talk with him later,” Teo thought, “about my parents! And about how he cheated Bajamonte Tiepolo out of another death … if he survives the battle. If Venice does.”

  Through her opera glasses Teo glimpsed the handsome Signor Alicamoussa on the shore, fearlessly fastening b
reastplates and helmets to the winged lions.

  All the boats, even the gondolas, had rigged up white sails with a single blue eye painted on them. Renzo explained, “A sailors’ superstition—that a ship must not be blind—it must be able to see the enemy.”

  As they watched, the sky grew dark, and the battlefield was lit up with a curious white light. Now they saw legions of humble ghosts in-the-Cold, some of whom they recognized, walking through the water, each bearing a single, wavering candle, lighting up their tearstained faces. Street-cleaners, fishermen, water-carriers, lace-makers, bead-stringers, beggars—all their faces were illuminated with the same sad dignity.

  “Pedro-the-Crimp!” exclaimed Teo, catching sight of the snaggle toothed ghost. Pedro and his companions marched grimly through the water in their ragged clothes. Some, like Pedro, were leading horses, others dogs. Their only hope was to die a second time, but nobly, to redeem themselves. Whether they could save Venice at the same time—that was not up to them.

  As the Venetians rounded the point of Sant’Elena and headed towards the Bone Orchard, they confronted head-on all the forces of evil that were now filling up the lagoon with a deafening roar. Those wicked creatures that could fly soared up into the air. The wingless scudded along in their black boats. Tongues of flame licked up the gaunt masts and sinister black sails that hung limply as dead bats from the rigging.

  “The enemy boats are burning!” rejoiced Teo.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Renzo. “That’s Saint Elmo’s fire, crackling sparks, not real fire. Sailors say that it is sent by Saint Elmo to warn of storms.”

  “A storm? That’s all we need now.”

  “And remember what Lussa told us—insulting a mermaid will bring on a storm too. Listen to that filth!”

  The sound of violent abuse floated over the waves to them. Bajamonte Tiepolo’s forces were taunting the mermaids. “Fainthearted fishwives! Go make some lace, why don’t ye? Leave the war to men and proper beasts, dribbling girlies that ye are.…”

  “They want to bring on the storm,” realized Teo.

  But the mermaids were giving quite as good as they got. “Ye don’t have da brains of a jellyfish between ye, ye poxed cowardly swabs!” and “Ye bilge-sucking blaggards!”

  Faintly, over the waves, came the sound of Lussa remonstrating, “Belay, Pretty Ladies! Let Us have an Elegant Warfare Here!”

  “There’s a pantegana in your fore-chains,” screamed one of the dwarves. And indeed, a scurry of rats could be seen climbing up the mast of one of the boats that the mermaids were pushing through the lagoon.

  “Oh my!” worried Renzo. “That’s really the ultimate insult in old naval parlance. It means you run a dirty ship.”

  “Yes,” shouted Teo, with a broad grin, “but a rat! A rat is good! Rats only desert sinking ships. If the pantegane are coming back to Venice, it means they think that we can win.”

  Renzo nodded, a little flash of hope lighting his face as he looked at her. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see a pantegana! The forces look about equal in numbers, don’t they? Don’t they?”

  Then a clash of arms out in the water drew both their eyes. A wave of gray washed overhead; the masked falcons of the Lombards fell on the little Venetian pigeons with a terrifying ferocity. Roaring, the winged lions swooped down for their first kills.

  The battle had begun.

  The fight raged into the dusk. The combatants ranged over the lagoon, around all sides of the Bone Orchard island. Il Traditore’s creatures fought dirty, ganging up three to one upon each Venetian fighter. Coming up from the rear, the werewolves threw themselves into the thick of the battle, biting, ripping and devouring every warm-blooded thing in their path. The Venetian forces were trapped between the werewolves and the pirates. Vampire Eels repeatedly wrapped their long white bodies around mermaids and dragged them underwater.

  “No!” shouted Teo. “Look at that!”

  From the holds and over the decks of the enemy ships swarmed vast armies of scolopendre. They swam across the water and landed on the Venetians like a wriggling carpet. The mermaids, ghosts and animals all writhed in the water, trying to claw the Mahogany Mice from their eyes and mouths, crying out as the insects stung them again and again.

  From Il Traditore came the hoarse cry, “Your masks, gentlemen!”

  Back in their own boats, enemy soldiers immediately donned their masks. Teo recognized them at once: how many times had she seen them, heaped up on gondolas and in mask shops?—blank white masks each with a black mole, like their master’s, by the side of the nose. In those masks, the scolopendre crawling over their faces did not bother them at all. And the masks gave them another advantage. Suddenly Bajamonte Tiepolo’s shabby force appeared both efficient and enormous: instead of disparate clumps of ragged pirates, Serbs and dwarves, the Venetians now confronted a vast sea of uniform white faces, each with the same inhuman, heartless expression.

  The masked enemy threw themselves into battle with renewed viciousness. But Bajamonte Tiepolo himself did not fight. He floated around the battlefield, shrouded in his furred white cloak, showing only his one restored hand. When he touched anyone—ghost or living being—with his green ring, they crumpled up in agony. Some went mad, others doubled over with searing belly pain. All his victims wilted down into the water, floating helplessly among the waves, face-upwards, with glassy eyes. Here and there, sharks lunged up and yanked them below the water.

  And meanwhile the enemy’s cages filled up with weeping mermaids and gondolier children and some of the gibbet cages contained spitting cats beating their wings.

  Renzo cried out to the imprisoned gondolier children, “Augusto! Sergio!”

  “They can’t hear you out there,” Teo reminded him gently.

  “I should be with them,” whispered Renzo. A tear ran down his tense cheek.

  The mermaids fought like Amazons, brandishing their tridents and lashing with their powerful tails. The ghost Stallions swam beside them, rearing up over the enemy and crushing the Lombards and Genoans with their powerful legs. The Wild-but-Good Faeries seized the beards of the Serbs and poked their eyes with their long pointed fingers.

  The English Melusine each took on two enemy soldiers at once with their double tails. The London Sea-Monks and Sea-Bishops trailed their squid-tentacles around Il Traditore’s boats, dragging them below the waves. Gondolier children, armed with croquet mallets, swung at the dwarves and pirates and dislodged them from their boats for the spotted rays to sting with their barbs. The swordfish whirled around like clockwork creatures, decapitating low-flying magòghe and holing the sides of the black boats. The smaller lagoon fish bit the flailing ankles of the enemy, pretending to be piranhas, and doing quite a good job of it. The sharks took capsized dwarves and pirates too, not caring whose side they were on.

  And the South Sea dolphins had arrived at last, not a minute too soon. Astride the great blue fish were beautiful blond women armed with crystal spears. Teo cried, “Nereids! Lussa said they would come.”

  With their powerful beaks, the dolphins overturned more black boats and threw themselves in great hoops upon the ghouls and pirates. The Nereids showed unerring marksmanship with their spears.

  But despite these reinforcements, the mermaids and the ghosts had now lost so many to the enemy that they were severely outnumbered and starting to fall out of formation. The water of the lagoon was dark with Venetian blood. The Vampire Eels thrashed happily among the corpses.

  A flash of blue skimmed over the heads of the children and headed out to the lagoon.

  “Kingfishers!” shouted Renzo, with a wobbling smile on his face. “Like dolphins, a sign of good luck for sailors.”

  Through the thickening fog, Renzo and Teo dimly made out the kingfishers routing the Ottomans by the simple strategy of unwinding the linen of their turbans and wrapping the fabric around their eyes. Whereupon the mist closed over the scene completely. Renzo and Teo grimaced with frustration. The next thing they
heard was an urgent miaow.

  “The Gray Lady!” was Teo’s first, hopeful thought. “She’s come back!”

  But the cats who flew out of the mist and surrounded them were not as large or as grand as the Gray Lady. And they had cat faces, not human ones like hers. They were the winged Syrian cats from the gardens, the ones who had saved Renzo from the magòghe.

  “Ahoy! Good childrrren! We’ve come to carry you out to the battle. We need you to undo the fasteningsss of those cages on the gibbetsss!” mewed the largest cat.

  If a cat could ever look humble, that cat did so just then. “You see, we cannot do it with our pawsss. We need little human fingerrrs up in the futtock shrouds.”

  “Futtock shrouds?” asked Teo.

  “The lines joining the rigging of the lower and upper masts,” explained Renzo, resisting a strong temptation to give the cats a taste of their own silent treatment.

  “But we’re too heavy for you!” protested Teo.

  In answer, the cats nudged open with their noses a pair of rolled Persian rugs that they must have foraged from some noble palace.

  “Lie down on them!” the cats urged.

  The cats took a corner each of the rugs and lifted the children easily into the air.

  “Hold on! Grrrip with your clawsss!” mewed the cats, as they headed straight into the thickest part of the mist. Cold scraps of air brushed the children’s faces and flattened their hair against their shivering scalps.

  Just below her Teo glimpsed Doge Enrico Dandolo in mortal combat with an Ottoman commander. Shoulder-to-shoulder with Dandolo, Doge Marin Falier was getting the worst of an encounter with a Dalmatian pirate. The mist closed over them.

  Within moments Teo made out the sinister silhouettes of the enemy boats. Mermaids, children and cats crouched wretchedly inside their cages. At the sight of the children on their carpets, they leapt up, cheering.

  “Sssssssssh!” hissed the cats, pointing below, to where the enemy soldiers, oblivious, fought on. “We don’t want those villainsss climbing up to the crrrow’s-nests now! The Dark Elves are verrry handy in the rrrigging.”