by Anne Nesbet
Her hair was dark enough to go along with the monochrome theme, too, though not as dark as Valko’s. It had grown out a bit since August, but hadn’t yet quite reached her shoulders. (Back home, of course, her friend Jenna would have been there, those bluebird-blue eyes of hers sharper than any doubt or worry, to help Maya be fearless in front of that mirror: Dude, not so bad!) No, she didn’t look a thing like Cinderella, and nothing she was wearing could pretend to be really chic, but all in all the effect was all right, she guessed. Then she caught a sweet whiff of anbar coming from the bookshelf and almost laughed. You’d think the stuff had a mind of its own, the way it was practically whistling her over. She pulled out the pretty case and twisted off the cover to take a look. About half the anbar hadn’t gone into the honey. It sat there in its red case like some unbelievably fancy lip balm.
Well, she wasn’t putting anbar on her lips. That seemed a little extreme. But she dabbed some behind her ears and rubbed the tip of her finger into her wrist the way old ladies do at department store perfume counters. Maybe that was a silly thing to do, but when the aroma of anbar wrapped itself around her, she felt, finally, dressed up. Not just dressed up, but, well, sophisticated.
And by then it was after eight and Valko was at the door, all in black except for bright white laces on his sneakers.
“Like the look?” he said, showing off his shoes. “All the best spies are wearing fluorescent laces this year. That’s what I hear.”
Outside it was clear but cold, a nice October night if you had enough layers on or were on your way to a party where the rooms would be heated. They walked at a good clip, with their hands in their coat pockets, and Maya had the oddest sensation that she was rising slightly above the ground, floating perhaps half a centimeter above the sidewalk toward the floodlit golden dome of the Invalides.
“Well, here we go,” said Valko as they approached the gate on the far side. “Good luck to us. Gather lots of data. You look totally beautiful, by the way.”
But maybe she had misheard that. Maybe she had just made that last sentence up. By the time she looked up from digging the invitation out of her pocket, Valko was focused entirely on the great carved door they were about to go through, where a couple of burly guys were checking invitations and letting people in.
Inside, everything was grand in every way. Through one archway Maya caught a glimpse of long tables covered with desserts and bottles of soda. Another led to a room full of endless rows of coatracks. The ceilings must have been thirty feet high, the ceilings of a palace, and enormous chandeliers lit the stone walls and set the great windows glittering. In another large room the lights were dimmer and people were dancing. Mirrors everywhere. Beyond another arch she caught a glimpse of what looked oddly like stalactites. That made her grab Valko by the elbow and drag him back to take another look.
“There’s a fake cave in this palace!” she said.
“Unbelievable,” said Valko. “This is really unbelievable. Let’s go dance. You know, to blend in, right?”
You can’t wade into a dance. You have to jump in. You have to be willing to splash about like a spluttering fool. Maya took a deep breath and let go. There were lots of people dancing now, anyway.
She hadn’t had a lot of good experiences, dancing, perhaps because worriers tend to get tangled up in knots when someone asks them to dance. But dancing with Valko wasn’t like that. He wasn’t worrying at all, for one thing. He was having a great time. And on his face was a friendly and conspiratorial grin, meant for Maya alone. We’re here together, said that grin. We’re on the same team, and that’s pretty great.
It caught her by surprise when a strange hand settled on her shoulder, weighing her down. She looked up and saw the Dolphin leaning toward her, an interested, questioning look in his eyes, his nose testing the air.
“You’re the américaine from school,” he said. “Come talk to me a moment. Viens, let’s get something to drink.”
Maya looked over at Valko, who made his dancing arms pantomime something that looked suspiciously like a person taking detailed notes in a cahier. She had to look away to keep her mouth from twitching at the corners, but the Dolphin’s eyes were resting most earnestly on her. It seemed safe to say he hadn’t noticed Valko at all. No, he was leading her—where else?—to the indoor cave, to a drinks table nestled between a pair of stalactites. He even poured out the soda for her, in a grave and aristocratic way. He was all attention.
“There’s something about you,” he said as Maya took a steadying sip of soda. “I noticed it at school one day. You’re not like the rest of them. Who are you, if I may ask?”
He was really quite a good-looking boy, this Eugène de Raousset-Boulbon, with his shock of fair hair and his light brown eyes. He had very clear skin, too, as if he worked away at it with a loofah sponge every morning. Clear and soft. Ordinarily you aren’t close enough to people to appreciate details like that. Maya took another hasty sip from her glass. Then something restless in her woke up and flicked its tail back and forth.
“Well, I’m Maya,” she said. “I’m something like the niece of Henri de Fourcroy. Or the cousin.”
She was surprised at herself, even as the words came out of her. They sounded almost proud, as if she were boasting. And a light came into Eugène’s eyes when she said that. She had impressed him.
“Ah, I thought you might be,” he said. Well, that made no sense. Why would anyone think she was related to anybody in particular, much less the purple-eyed man in the Salamander House?
“I’ve heard rumors,” he added, as if it explained something.
“Oh?” said Maya. “Rumors?”
“That the Lavirottes had returned. You’re a Lavirotte, I guess. And your brother.”
“My grandmother was.”
“So through her. Bon.”
He was turning the plastic cup around and around in his hands, thinking about something.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked. Maya jumped. She had been watching the soda swirl about in his glass. “It’s always the Lavirottes who change things. Les vraies sorcières. Well, and we need change, I’d say. They all say that.”
“Oh, um, why?” said Maya, already out of her depth.
“You know,” said the Dolphin. “The Old Man’s rebellion. That’s no good.”
Maya was still trying to remember what a “sorcière” was, and now there was this Old Man to worry about, too. The old Fourcroy, maybe, with his miniature worlds in his boxes? But rebellion seemed a very strong word. She decided it might be best to head in some other direction.
“Tell me more about the anbar,” she said, taking herself by surprise again. “Your mother said—I think I heard her say—it keeps her alive.”
The Dolphin turned his head away from her very fast, but not fast enough. She saw the misery wash over his face. It seemed very out of place, unhappiness, shadowing all that smooth golden skin.
“My mother is immortal,” he said.
She might have misheard that, too. She was always a couple of seconds behind in making sense of his French.
“Well, she’s certainly very beautiful,” she said.
“Yes,” said Eugène. “My father, too. Have you seen him?”
Maya thought back to that day at the door of the Salamander House and nodded.
“Both of them immortal. That’s very rare,” said Eugène.
What could he possibly mean by that? It was all so surreal: this artificial cavern inside a palace, the soda bottles looking out of place under the plaster stalactites and trembling slightly with the beat of the music, the chandeliers glittering in the mirror-walled room beyond the arch. Maya’s eyes flicked about her, resting for a single uncomfortable moment on Eugène’s golden, shadowed face, and then retreated to the safety of the ice in her glass.
“But the thing is, they did it so young. Imagine! It was right after I was born. And the Keeper was furious about it. He said they were too young. When he took their earths, he said they wo
uld be the last. Oh, your Uncle Fourcroy, the Directeur, he didn’t believe him at first, but ever since: no. So that’s when the rebellion began. There haven’t been any new immortals since them.”
He made a resentful sound.
“And then after that my parents couldn’t be bothered much with ordinary things, like babies. Which are so much dull work. You understand.”
Maya was pretty sure she was not understanding nearly enough.
“They couldn’t be bothered?”
“Everything is very small to immortals. So far beneath them. Uninteresting. Gray. Only anbar gives things flavor, said my mother once when I was little. It’s all she cares about these days. They should not have given their earths away so soon, I suppose. It’s tiresome for me while I’m still left behind like this, of course.”
“Ah,” said Maya.
“You Lavirottes can fix that, though,” he said. “Why can’t I be immortal, too? You could stop the rebellion. Your uncle says—”
He bent so close to her that she could see that even his eyelashes were flecked with gold.
“He says the old Keeper has gotten out of hand. He’s half-mad, apparently. And lives entirely in the past. That’s what I hear. Old and stubborn! Refusing to let new people in. Time for him to go. ‘Someone younger and more flexible’—that’s what your uncle said to my parents. And then he found you, the Lavirottes. Even if you had to come from far away. ‘The perfect arrangement,’ says your uncle.”
His breath was warm and slightly cinnamony. He was so close to her now; she could not help but breathe him in. Even the melting ice in her glass trembled a little, though she was trying so very, very hard not to let it show, the tremor that was rumbling about in her.
“I see it now. The Old Man will never take my earth, not as long as he is Keeper. I’ll never be immortal, if it’s left up to him. But you could help me, you and your brother. The Lavirotte in you. You even look like her tonight. I didn’t see it so much before.”
There were more of his crowd in the room now, casting curious glances in her direction.
“I look like who?” said Maya, as a couple of the burnished girls cut away from the crowd and headed in their direction. “Who are you talking about?”
“The first Lavirotte. The first sorcière. Over the door of your uncle’s building—”
And then the conversation changed because the girls were there, and there was more music, and more drinking and snacking, and from time to time she caught glimpses of Valko listening to people or chatting or bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. She was never alone; the whole evening someone was always looking at her, or asking her questions, or just breathing in the air around her. She was somebody other than herself that evening, for all of those glamorous partygoers in their expensive shoes. And at the end of the party they all kissed her cheeks, in the cool French way. She hardly knew what to make of it.
“How’d you do?” said Valko as they went to look for their coats.
“Well,” said Maya. “Let’s see. Eugène’s parents are apparently immortal, and he keeps insisting I’m a sorcière. I couldn’t even remember what that meant at first, but then I did: a witch.”
And the Old Man has rebelled—he won’t put any more bottles in the Cabinet, she thought. But she couldn’t say that aloud.
“It’s that weird perfume you’re wearing tonight,” said Valko. “It’s warping their minds or something. They were all buzzing around you like bees.”
“Perfume?” said Maya, indignant for a moment—but then she remembered the anbar and stopped in her tracks. “Oh, right. It’s that strong?”
“Overpowering,” said Valko. “Apparently. Doesn’t bother me too much, though, now I’m used to it. There’s something in it that kind of fuzzes up a person’s brain. You didn’t ask me how my research went.”
“How’d it go?”
He gave a wry little shrug.
“Not very well,” he said. “Nobody could tell me a thing about the mysterious Society. I am still in the dark. Their parents have appointments there. Or attend lectures. Basically I drew a blank. Did the Dolphin even mention the place? Or do we have to call him ‘Eugène’ now?”
“He wants to be immortal, too,” said Maya, and was caught by surprise by a giggle. “Apparently I’m the one who could help him with that.”
“Since you’re a witch and all,” said Valko.
“Yes, well,” said Maya. “So I’m told.”
And it was a strange thing, too: As the moonlight drifted down onto everything around them (the sidewalk, her hand, the surprisingly white laces of Valko’s sneakers), she felt certain, somehow, that if that peculiar old camera were to take a picture of her just then, it would capture a different Maya than the usual one, an ever-so-slightly shinier Maya, a Maya all a-shimmer, for once, with light and depth.
Chapter 11
What Cabinet-Keepers Keep
The shimmer wore off, but the worry remained. Glass bottles and salamanders and phoenixes began appearing in the margins of Maya’s math homework when she hadn’t even known she was doodling. But almost as soon as the pictures had taken shape in her notebooks, she would be required, by whatever force it was that made her think of these things but forbade speaking of them aloud, to hunt through her pencil case for the big eraser, and remove all traces of bird, beast, or bottle. Clearly, the little cabinet was losing its patience.
But finally there came a Wednesday when Cousin Louise felt it made more sense to stay home and nurse her cold than come over to drill Maya on her French grammar.
“Well,” said Maya’s mother as she hung up the phone. “That’s too bad.”
Then she had to pause and cough for a moment: The cold was going around.
But Maya had already slipped into her room and was packing the little cabinet into a shoe box.
“Maya?”
Thwap! Down went the cover onto the shoe box, snug and tight, and secured for extra measure by a couple of pieces of tape.
“Maya?”
Her mother’s head poked into the room.
“What are you up to? Did you hear? That was Cousin Louise. She can’t come—”
“Okay. I’ll be back pretty soon,” said Maya, heading down the hall. “Got some errands. Sorry, Mom, I’m kind of in a rush.”
She really was. She felt as though she must hurry, hurry, hurry, now that the chance was here. She ran all the way to the métro station, and tapped her fingers against the side of the shoe box while waiting for the train, and ran again from the Odéon station to the round green door on the rue du Four, and pushed the buzzer like someone crossing the finish line at the end of a very long race.
“Oui? said that quavery voice, and then when Maya went into her explanation, her words tripping over each other as if they, too, were in some terrible hurry, the voice broke into the audible form of a smile.
“But of course!” it said. “The little cousin from California! Please, come in!”
He was already standing in the open doorway when she came jogging into the second courtyard. The old Fourcroy was even smaller and older than she remembered; as she hurried forward to his doorway, she saw him run one trembling hand through his thin gray hair. The Old Man, that’s what Eugène had called him. She could see why, and it made her feel a little protective of him, even now as she rushed forward those last few paces to where he stood waiting.
“The little cousin!” he said again, when she finally reached him and stood there, gasping for breath as she held her shoe box close to her chest. “Maya is the name, am I right? Come in, come in, my girl. I did hope you might come back.”
“I wanted to show you something,” said Maya, still fairly breathless after all that hurry. “Something I made.”
They were in the studio now, and light came whispering in through all the windows, and the hundreds of little figures in their elaborate boxes seemed to lean forward to watch. Maya put the box on the table, undid the tape, and tugged at the lid.
�
�I made it,” she said again.
There was a moment of utter hush as the old Fourcroy bent his head over her shoe box and lifted out from it the little cabinet with careful, tender hands.
“Ahhhh,” he said, more an exhalation than a word. “How beautiful it is. My dear girl! Practically perfect, is it not? Your clever fingers! Oh!”
But it was strange: There was a struggle going on in that face. It was awash with awe—and it was so very sad. Sad!
“I tried to get it right,” said Maya, suddenly feeling shy. “Do you think—is it right?”
And her eyes wandered over to that other door, the one in the back wall. The Cabinet was there: very close. Impatience welled up in her again, just like that.
“Please, I really need to know if I got it right. Can we go see now?”
He looked at the little cabinet in his hands, and he looked at her with his oddly tender and grief-stricken eyes.
“It is true, then,” said the old Fourcroy. “I thought it might be. It wants you, ma cousine. It has brought you a long way already. And here you are!”
He showed no signs of moving toward that door, Maya noticed. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting.
“You have made a most beautiful thing, my dear,” he said. “The call must be very strong in you, to have made something as lovely as this. And you look so much like my grandmother. That I saw right away, yes! But you are very young.”