by Ann Hood
“I suppose,” Clarice said slowly, considering this.
“For example, where we come from, women don’t dye their hair like you. At least, most women don’t. And they don’t pluck away all their hair here,” he added, touching his forehead.
“Really?” Clarice said, interested.
“And they also don’t put all that white stuff on their face.”
“But light skin is beautiful,” Clarice said. She glanced at Maisie. “I suppose if you’re born with it, you wouldn’t have to use face powder,” she said.
“We have very different ideas of what’s beautiful,” Felix said.
“Hmmm,” Clarice answered.
“We dress differently and—”
“What is the place called that you come from?” Clarice asked, surprising him so much that Felix answered honestly.
“The United States of America.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Clarice said, doubt crossing her face.
Of course you haven’t, Felix thought. It hasn’t been discovered yet.
Maisie was staring at him in disbelief.
“Did you just tell her we were from the United States?” she said.
“Shhh,” Felix ordered.
“Where is it?” Clarice was asking. “Near France? Or England?”
Felix shook his head.
“Much farther than that,” he said. “It’s across a big ocean.”
“But if you went across the ocean,” Clarice said, “you’d fall off the edge of the earth.”
“What? No,” Felix said.
“Yes,” Clarice said. “Everyone knows that. The world is flat, and if you go too far, you fall off.”
“The world isn’t flat,” Felix said. “It’s round.”
Clarice laughed.
“Either you’re teasing me or you’re crazy,” she said.
A vague thought came into Felix’s mind. Didn’t they kill people who they thought were witches? Didn’t they kill people who challenged what they believed to be true?
He forced a smile. “Of course I’m teasing you,” he said. “How silly! The world, round!”
She laughed, relieved.
“Are you from somewhere near India?” she asked.
Felix took a long hard look at Clarice.
“Yes,” he said. “Right near India.”
“Things are very different there,” Clarice said.
Felix nodded.
“How come you’re so quiet, Maisie?” Clarice asked, startling Maisie.
Before his sister could say anything, Felix said, “She has a sore throat.”
He pointed to Maisie’s neck and gave a little cough.
Clarice’s eyes widened.
“Did that happen last night when the Pazzis burst in?” she asked softly, one slender finger touching the two small dots on Maisie’s neck.
“Yes,” Felix said.
“That explains it,” Clarice said.
“Explains . . . ?”
“This,” Clarice said, and she opened a small purse around her waist and pulled out a long piece of thread.
Maisie grinned.
The shard hung from the center.
“Maisie’s necklace,” Felix said gratefully.
Clarice handed it to Maisie.
“I guess when that sword grazed her, it cut the thread,” Clarice said. “The maid found this under the table this morning.”
Maisie grinned even more.
She was holding the shard. And she understood everything that Clarice had just said.
CHAPTER 12
CARNIVAL!
The next day, Maisie and Felix were invited to walk in the Grand Procession. They would wear their masks and costumes—a black hat and coat for Felix, a long red velvet dress with lacing across the bodice for Maisie. Felix, of course, didn’t like his costume. At all.
“It’s scary!” he protested when he and Maisie went to retrieve the masks and clothes at Sandro’s studio. “You know I don’t like scary costumes.”
Maisie sighed in frustration.
“I don’t understand you, Felix,” she said. “A great Renaissance artist makes you a mask, and you’re complaining because it’s too scary.”
“It’s the Plague Doctor!” Felix said, exasperated.
“But it’s great,” Maisie insisted. “When will you ever get a costume like this again?”
“Well, I don’t understand you,” Felix said, putting the coat and hat on, the mask tucked under one arm.
“Fine,” Maisie said.
“Fine,” Felix said.
The streets were so crowded that it was hard for Maisie and Felix to stay together. People pushed between them and behind them, and more than once Felix lost sight of Maisie. Her blond hair made it easy for him to spot her, but as the crowd thickened it became more and more difficult.
This time, even on tiptoe he couldn’t find her.
“Maisie!” Felix called, to no avail. The sounds of the crowd combined with music and the clopping of horses’ hooves drowned out his voice.
He was walking along the Arno, still on tiptoe, when a strong hand clasped his shoulder, halting him.
Felix glanced back and up into the face of a red-robed priest scowling at him.
“It’s almost time for the vergognosi to begin,” the priest said, yanking Felix from the crowd.
Priests have a lot of power here, Felix thought as the crowd separated for them.
The priest kept a firm hand on Felix as he maneuvered through the streets. With a sinking feeling, Felix realized he and Maisie were getting separated again. At least this time they knew to meet Leonardo at the start of the procession.
“You weren’t even heading toward the Piazza degli Innocenti, were you?” the priest said when they reached a piazza.
“No,” Felix said, “actually my sister and I—”
Boom!
The priest slapped Felix on the side of the head.
“Don’t be impertinent!” he barked.
“Ouch!” Felix said, rubbing his head, which earned him another slap.
“Now join the others,” the priest said, giving Felix a shove.
The others appeared to be . . . boys. More boys than Felix had ever seen in one place, all of them lined up beneath flags, their hands joined together.
One of the boys made room for Felix to join them.
What else could he do?
Slowly, Felix took the spot the boy offered, taking the clammy hand of one boy and the rough hand of another.
They all faced a church with a statue of a saint or something in front of it.
The clammy-hand boy whispered, awed, “Our Lady of the Annunziata.”
The priest mumbled some prayers.
The boys repeated whatever he said.
A trumpet sounded, and as if that was their cue, all the boys got in formation and began to march.
They marched out of the piazza to the Arno River, crowds following them as they moved.
Felix tried to do exactly what the others did so as not to get another slap on the head. Still, he fell behind as he searched in vain for Maisie and had to scurry to catch up.
Finally, they arrived at San Marco cathedral.
Trumpets announced their arrival, and people threw flowers in their path. For an instant, Felix felt special, even though he had no idea why these boys were doing this, or why everyone had come out to see them.
Inside the packed cathedral, people reached out and began to give the boys things: silverware, veils, and coins. At first, Felix said, “No, thank you,” when someone tried to thrust something into his hands, but eventually, afraid to stand out, he, too, accepted their gifts.
The coins would at least come in handy, he decided as he jammed them into his
pockets. One of the problems with time traveling was never having any money. Now he and Maisie would be able to buy food if they got hungry. But he had no idea what he would do with the enormous silver candlestick or the elegantly carved spoons.
A voice cut through the racket.
“Felix?”
Felix turned toward it, and there stood Leonardo looking as puzzled as Felix felt.
When Leonardo stepped from the crowd to rescue Felix, a murmur spread through the cathedral. Already, Leonardo was considered an artist to pay attention to, someone whom the Medicis had taken under their wing. Even the priest allowed him to escort Felix from the group of boys and lead him out of the cathedral.
“Do you need that candlestick?” Leonardo teased.
“Uh, no,” Felix said, setting it down on the steps of San Marco.
“I see the cardinal thought you were one of the vergognosi,” Leonardo said as they walked through the cobblestone streets.
“That’s what he said!”
“Children collecting for the poor,” Leonardo explained, steering Felix down one alley and then quickly down another. “A few years ago these boys stood on the street corners throwing stones at the Carnival revelers. So this is an improvement.”
They had reached the piazza where everyone was meeting for the procession. There, at the edge of the crowd, stood Maisie and Sandro. In her red velvet dress and white-and-gold mask, her curls spilling down, Maisie looked so beautiful that Felix almost forgot how angry he was at her.
He opened his mouth to call to her, but Leonardo pulled him away.
“Before we join the others,” Leonardo said seriously, “I want to talk with you.”
“Okay,” Felix said, trying to keep an eye on Maisie before she vanished again.
“About the future,” Leonardo said. “About going there with you.”
“I would take you if I could,” Felix said. “But it doesn’t work that way.”
Leonardo nodded enthusiastically.
“Exactly,” he said. “If I must stay here, then please tell me how it does work. What makes it possible? How do you get here? How do you get back?”
“I don’t really know,” Felix admitted. “Maisie and I touch an object that our great-great-grandfather collected a hundred years ago, and we start to lift off the ground—”
“Wait!” Leonardo said.
He took one of his notebooks from a pocket and began to scribble in it.
“Then what?” he asked.
“Well, it’s hard to explain. But we kind of tumble . . . you know . . . do somersaults, and everything is black all around us. It’s windy, and the wind smells . . . it smells wonderful. Like all of our favorite things.”
Leonardo’s brow furrowed with concentration.
“And then, without warning, it all stops.”
Leonardo looked up from his notebook.
“It stops and—?”
“And for a second . . . no, less than a second . . . we are suspended, kind of.”
Felix paused.
“It’s hard to describe,” he said finally.
“Is it thrilling?”
Felix shook his head. “It’s scary. I don’t know, maybe Maisie thinks it’s thrilling.”
“And then what?”
“Then we drop and land, hard. In the ocean or in a barn or, well, in your studio.”
Leonardo looked wistful. “And then you have traveled backward in time.”
Felix nodded.
Leonardo didn’t say anything for what seemed a long while. Behind them, musicians had begun to play, and music filled the air.
“In rivers,” Leonardo said thoughtfully, “the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes. So it is with present time. I suppose I must be satisfied with this.”
Back when Maisie and Felix were little, their parents used to take them to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Maisie could remember getting up early on Thanksgiving morning, her father standing at the stove making Mexican hot chocolate for them, which was super rich and spicy. Her mother made the homemade whipped cream to put on top, adding just the right amount of vanilla as she whipped it. They’d have croissants from the French bakery down the street that her father had gone to get as soon as the bakery opened so that they were still a little warm by the time they sat down to eat. Felix and their mother liked the plain ones; but Maisie and her father liked almond.
Then, with the streets of their neighborhood still asleep, they walked the twenty blocks to find a good spot to watch the parade. Maisie could still remember how it felt to sit on her father’s shoulders as the first float rounded the corner. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel her fingers in his curly hair, feel the cold November air.
Those memories wrapped themselves around her now as the first float entered the piazza.
“I love this,” she said softly, to no one in particular.
But Sandro heard her and smiled.
“Let’s join the procession now, shall we?”
Maisie hesitated. She should wait for Felix, but once again he had gone off somewhere with Leonardo, even though they’d agreed to meet here. She didn’t understand him at all.
“Yes,” Maisie said firmly. “Let’s.”
They walked along the edge of the piazza to the point where they could enter the parade.
“Hello, Sandro,” a woman’s voice said.
Sandro halted.
“Simonetta,” he said in a hushed voice.
Maisie immediately recognized the name. Here was the woman whose window they had stood under the other night, Sandro hoping for a glimpse of her. Although it was hard to tell what she looked like beneath the silver-and-feathered mask she wore, Maisie saw Simonetta’s long blond hair and smooth alabaster skin.
“Happy Carnival,” Simonetta said, brushing close past Sandro as she hurried off.
Sandro stood, frozen in place, watching her.
“Come on,” Maisie said, tugging his sleeve.
With a sad sigh, he slowly moved forward again.
But he quickly looked less distracted as they were swept into the joyous procession, lost among the musicians, jesters, fellow participants, and floats, all moving out of the piazza and into the streets of Florence.
At last, Felix and Leonardo also joined the procession. Of course Maisie hadn’t waited for him. Again, Felix thought in frustration. But he didn’t want his sister to ruin the day, so he accepted the noisemaker someone thrust in his hand and shook up and down, adding to the cacophony.
Like a giant serpent, the procession snaked through the narrow streets until it reached the Arno River. There, it followed the curve of the river. Voices from a float covered in fresh lilies—the flower of Florence, Leonardo explained—called out to Leonardo and Felix.
“Join us!”
Leonardo grinned. “There’s your sister and Sandro Botticelli.”
Felix was about to protest, but Leonardo left the line to race toward them. Felix followed, reluctantly.
But once on the float, able to look down at the procession and across the river to the rooftops and hills of Florence, he was happy he had come.
Maisie, however, was scowling at him.
“You never showed up!” she said.
“You left me!” he reminded her. “And a priest grabbed me and—”
“Why can’t you just stick by my side?”
“Why can’t you stick by my side?”
They glared at each other.
“I don’t understand you anymore,” they both said at almost the exact same time.
“Ah!” Leonardo told them. “That is a problem. You must try harder to listen to each other. To understand each other’s point of view.”
Maisie shot him an angr
y look. “You have no idea all the things we are supposed to understand that don’t make sense. Why our parents aren’t together. Why our mother is with a dope named Bruce Fishbaum. Why—”
“Maisie,” Leonardo said, interrupting. “And Felix, too. The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
Leonardo’s words settled in Felix’s mind.
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Felix looked at Maisie, who was looking right back at him.
The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo had just given them the lesson they most needed to hear. But they were still on the float, the smell of lilies all around them, moving along the Arno River in Renaissance Florence.
“Why are we still here?” Felix whispered to her.
Maisie avoided his gaze.
“Maisie?”
“We haven’t given him the seal,” she muttered.
“That’s right!” Felix said. “I think it’s time, don’t you?”
Maisie didn’t answer.
“I don’t have it,” Felix reminded her.
Maisie turned toward him.
“Neither do I,” she said.
CHAPTER 13
AMY PICKWORTH’S MESSAGE
“You did what?” Felix gasped.
The procession had ended, and Maisie and Felix were heading with a large group to the Palazzo Medici for a banquet.
“It’s no big deal,” Maisie said. “I put it in one of those big urns. We’ll get it as soon as we arrive.”
“What if it’s not there?”
“Why do you have to worry so much?” Maisie asked, rhetorically.
“Why can’t you just do what you’re supposed to do?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to go back to Bruce Fishbaum, and Dad in a hotel, and everything upside down!” Maisie blurted.
“I don’t understand why you can’t accept . . .”
Felix stopped himself, Leonardo’s words ringing in his ears.
He took a deep breath.
“I don’t like Bruce Fishbaum much, either,” he told Maisie. “But Mom does.”
After all, Felix realized, they had to try to understand her as well.