by Anne Nesbet
The magic still roiling through the air made her feel sick, but she hung on to the egg and kept running. She caught glimpses of things being made wrong by the strangeness—something peculiar going on with the trees in the park; the carousel spiraling up into the sky, as if some very powerful giant had snapped his fingers closed around the pretty flag at the top and pulled—but she had no time to stop and stare. Fear made her feet swift and powerful, all the way to the bridge, where a crowd of eager tourists leaning out over the bridge’s stone railing got in her way and slowed her down.
That was when the lack of air caught up with her. She let her hands fall to her knees for a moment (the gargoyle’s egg still very hot against her palm) and gasped a few times for breath.
Which was how she saw that little flowers were growing under her feet, stretching around the soles of her shoes to blossom—ping!—right there on the bridge. She was so itchy inside her skin! One moment more and she, too, would be pinging into something completely new. It was the strangest feeling.
A child turned her way and smiled.
“They’re doing tricks!”
“What?” said Maya. That was about all she could manage to say.
“You know: the big, big fish in the river. With their beautiful teeth!”
She stood up again and (on her toes) caught the merest glimpse of glittery creatures, almost too large to be fish, splashing about in the river.
Someone on the bridge threw a bright arc of sardines into the water, and the swimming things kicked up a deeper froth, and the fear came back into Maya’s feet.
She was running along the banks of the river when she heard someone calling her name, not in a raspy, samodiva voice, but the way ordinary unmagicked humans call out names of people they’re fond of: “Maya!”
She whirled around to look, the gargoyles’ egg cradled in her arms and her eyes all blurry from exhaustion and worry, and a moment later, Valko was there.
Valko!
Her relief was so enormous that she forgot to be afraid or angry or worried. All those emotions just fell away in one great swoosh.
“You didn’t come,” she said with her last bit of gasping breath.
“My Baba Silva had me under lock and key,” Valko said. “I’m so, so, so, so sorry. Are you okay? Some crazy stuff is happening out here. Did that writer try to eat you or something?”
“I ran away,” said Maya, and she was so tired, all of a sudden, that she just sort of melted down onto the pavement. Her head was ringing, her face felt as hot as a gargoyles’ egg, and little stars of light were prickling in her eyes.
She could feel Valko’s hand on her shoulder, steadying her, but she couldn’t find the energy to open her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again. “Please don’t faint. Huh, flowers. That’s weird. Here—get your head lower and keep breathing. Any better?”
The roaring, starry heat was, in fact, beginning to fade.
Valko waited for a couple of minutes, giving her encouraging pats on the shoulder from time to time, and then he gave her a hand up—carefully, so as not to squash all those baby pink-and-yellow blossoms welling up all around (“The gardeners have been busy!” said Valko, but you could tell he was uncertain about it)—and Maya was on her feet again, feeling woozy and embarrassed.
“Guess I ran too fast,” she said, and she gave Valko a shaky smile. “And you didn’t ask me about the egg.”
She held out her hands to show him. Valko whistled.
“Well, there you go,” he said, but he eyed it with distaste. “You got it back. You have superpowers, know that?”
Maya almost managed to laugh. “If I had superpowers, I’d be a better runner,” she said.
“Or you’d fly.”
“That’s more like it.”
They crossed the road that ran along the river. Now they were only a few feet away from the Bulgarian embassy. Getting pretty close to Maya’s own home—but apparently they weren’t going directly there. Valko was steering her toward that imposing door.
“Come in and catch your breath,” he said. “You’re still shaky, I can tell.”
That embassy had a lot of rooms she hadn’t seen, back when she had come to dinner. There were the big fancy kitchens somewhere that did the cooking for parties and awards dinners, and there was a very ordinary, smallish kitchen upstairs, all yellow linoleum, that the Nikolovs could use when they didn’t want to be fancy. There was a vine made of linoleum climbing up one of its walls, now, true, but that was just the strangeness making things fancy, not the Nikolovs. Her feet were behaving themselves, though (she took a quick look now and then just to check: no flowers). Valko poured her a glass of something very dark and sweet.
“It’s cherry juice,” he said. “I read somewhere that fruit juice is good when you’ve had a shock. Nothing’s much fruitier than cherry. Okay. Tell me what happened at the writer’s place.”
She had just gotten to the part where the writer started rasping crazy stuff about Maya being a dragon when she realized there was someone standing in the doorway of the kitchen: a stout woman with an eagle’s beak of a nose and the most extraordinary mole on her cheek. It was hard for Maya to take her eyes off that mole. It was mountainous.
The woman said something in Bulgarian to Valko, and Valko said a bunch of other things, also in Bulgarian.
Maya had scrambled to her feet very fast, but that made the room start spinning again, so that she had to grab the table with one hand.
“Watch out,” said Valko’s voice from Maya’s right—and from the other side, a strong, stub-fingered hand settled firmly on Maya’s arm.
“Sit down, sit down, child,” said Valko’s grandmother-with-a-mole. Her English had all sorts of jagged edges. “You fainted earlier, Valko says.”
She made a disapproving sound with her tongue.
“Strange weather this day. Odd things going on. Stay sitting. See? I’ll sit, too.”
Boom. She had pulled another chair to the table and sat down, facing Maya.
“Make me tea, Valko.”
Valko jumped up to fill the kettle.
“Now,” said the grandmother-with-a-mole. “Maya. That’s your name? Nice Bulgarian name.”
“I thought it was more like a Hindi name,” said Valko from the kitchen counter. “Or maybe Spanish.”
“Valko, tikho,” said the grandmother with a frown. You didn’t have to know any Bulgarian at all to know she was hushing Valko up. “I said: Bulgarian name. Where’s my tea?”
“Cooking, cooking,” said Valko.
“So, Maya,” said the grandmother-with-a-mole. “You are this American friend of my hooligan grandson.”
Maya nodded.
“Well, he already lived too long in America. It’s a problem. All he cares about now is baseball and Mickey Mouse and Hollywood films with cars exploding like fireworks.”
“Really?” said Maya. She had never heard Valko say anything about baseball.
“Yes, very bad,” said his grandmother.
“No, not really,” said Valko, leaning over to silence the teakettle.
“Am I talking to you?” said the grandmother-with-a-mole. “No. I am talking to this Maya here. So he is becoming practically an American boy. Then they move to France. I think, all right, something new. Variety. World travel. Then I hear: Valko has a new friend. From where? From America! So now we’re back to baseball and that Mickey Mouse. I think, time for Valko to come home. Now you understand. You are a sweet, nice American girl, I’m sure. But this boy needs to be Bulgarian.”
Valko made a growly sound and put a glass of very dark tea down in front of his grandmother.
“Sugar?” she said.
He brought a bowl of sugar and another little bowl of honey.
Maya was still trying to get her head around the news that it was because of her, the friend from America, that Valko’s grandmother-with-a-mole had suddenly decided to drag him off to Bulgaria. That was not a very nice thought. In fact, it made he
r somewhat cranky.
“Excuse me, Mrs., um . . .” Whoops. This was Valko’s mother’s mother, right? So what was her name exactly? Maya tried to catch Valko’s eye, but he was putting cups away in a cupboard behind them. Valko’s grandmother took a sip of her tea, eyeing Maya over the top of her glass all the while.
“Never mind that. Baba Silva will do,” she said finally, with a gruff little snort that made her mountainous mole tremble slightly. “Go ahead. Say what you want.”
“I think you have the wrong impression of Valko,” said Maya. “That’s what I was wanting to say . . . Baba Silva.”
“Oh! Well, do explain, then! He’s only my grandson. I guess I know him quite as well as anybody.”
Maya had that slightly sickening feeling she had often had in dreams, when there’s a big crowd and a stage and someone wanting you to turn cartwheels or play piano concertos or make a big speech on a subject you know nothing about. What do you do? You open your mouth, and you do your best to start speaking.
“The thing is—Baba Silva, how could you think Valko’s not very Bulgarian? That just seems like a mistake somehow. I mean, I’ve never heard him say anything, not the slightest thing ever, about baseball. Valko has been telling me about Bulgarian culture. He said to bring an odd number of flowers, and not chrysanthemums. I’ve learned a lot about the Bulgarianness of yogurt. . . .” (All right, that was a bit of a stretch, but sometimes in dreams you can get away with stuff like that.) “He’s been teaching me Bulgarian words. He explained what the crazy woman meant when she called me a zmey—”
Thwomp! Maya jumped in her chair, but it was just Baba Silva letting one of her massive, stubby-fingered hands drop—like a brick, like a book, like the heavy tail of a dragon—onto the cheerful yellow-and-red of the tablecloth.
“Pause!” said the grandmother-with-a-mole. “Explain about the zmey!”
“Baba!” said Valko, giving her a slightly nervous smile as he sat down at the table. “We’re trying to make her feel better, not frighten her to death.”
“I’m not frightened,” said Maya. Then she eyed the grandmother’s narrowed eyes and truly mountainous mole. “Not too frightened, anyway. The woman said I was a zmey because she was crazy.”
“Or because she’s right, maybe. Hmm? You, Maya—are you a zmey?”
“Noooo,” said Maya with some hesitation. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sure whether she was a dragon or not, but that she couldn’t tell where Baba Silva was heading, asking questions like that.
“No? You sure?”
Baba Silva leaned closer to Maya. At that distance she really was a little frightening.
“Very sure?”
“Baba, please be nice!” said Valko from the other side of the table.
Maya was remembering: eye contact! She looked that grandmother-with-a-mole right in the eye.
“How could I be a dragon and not know it?” she said. “I’m definitely not a zmey.”
“Ha!” said Valko’s grandmother, as if she’d just scored a major point. “Valko, explain to the girl about zmey.”
“I was going to ask you, actually,” said Valko.
“Ha!” said Baba Silva again. She settled back in her chair. “Well, then. What you don’t know about zmey: not like your silly-headed dragons, all simple like lizards. Bulgarian zmey—much more twisty and beautiful and complicated. Many things at once: flying bird and big snake, okay, and human being, too. Yes, Maya. A person can be a zmey. Why not? Changing shape all the time. Maybe your village has a secret cave nearby? Maybe the zmey lives there; maybe he’s kind and protects you, maybe he eats you. Maybe he comes to you like a beautiful boy or girl, and you fall in love with the beautiful zmey. Sad, sad story, love with zmey. Sweet songs, but death at the end, oh, yes.”
She looked like she got a good bit of satisfaction, that grandmother-with-a-mole, from the thought of sweet songs and death at the end.
“I’m still not a dragon, though,” said Maya.
“Good for you,” said Baba Silva. “Dangerous to love a zmey; dangerous to be a zmey. Human beings hunt them, you know. Not just old Saint Georgi with his horse and his sword. You know why they hunt the zmey?”
She leaned forward again.
“A man eats the heart of a zmey, and he gets strong, strong, strong. An already strong man becomes some great hero warrior. A sick, weak, dying man jumps up and lives again. You can see, Maya: not so good, huh, to be a zmey! Sweet songs are nice, but then death, and then someone cooks up your dragon heart all so tasty-delicious with garlic and rosemary—”
“Baba Silva!” said Valko reprovingly. It was true that for a moment there his grandmother-with-a-mole had just about been smacking her lips.
Maya looked at her own very human hands, which were pale and ordinary and so extremely undragonlike, and a tendril of fear sneaked itself down into her bones and took root. What had those gargoyles really done when they translated Fourcroy’s evil plans into Bulgarian? It wasn’t much good changing “Maya must sacrifice her life for mine” into “Life comes from eating the heart of the zmey” if crazy women were still going to come running after her, pointing with their crazy fingers and calling her dragon dragon dragon.
But that thought was enough to make Maya stubborn all over again. She was not a dragon. No. But she had a tough skin, didn’t she? And a sharp-clawed brain. And, for that matter, a spine.
And my heart, said Maya firmly to herself, is not tasty-delicious.
So there!
17
BONES AND SHADOWS, MISBEHAVING
“Honestly, though,” said Valko. “If anyone’s actually a dragon, it’s my grandmother, not you.”
They were sitting at Maya’s dining-room table, which was covered at the moment with maps, pencils, and Valko’s geometry paraphernalia (rulers, compasses). Dreadful, dreadful noises floated in from the other room: Pauline Vian had come over to practice her scales.
“No clenching!” Maya’s mother called from the kitchen. “Gently, gently, Pauline! Big, lovely tone!”
Valko had put a red dot on the map of Paris, right where the awful Fourcroy had made the embassy wall explode, and now he was using the compass to draw a series of circles expanding outward from that center, each circle labeled neatly with date and time.
“You know what?” said Maya. “She’s not actually as terrifying as I thought she was going to be, your Baba Silva.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Valko. “If you think she’s not terrifying, you just weren’t paying attention. Look, that’s the 3200-meter radius, coming up on Saturday.”
It was a pretty big circle he had just drawn: it stretched halfway across Paris. Maya and Valko stared at it for a while, feeling grim.
“The next one’s worse,” said Maya, since stating the obvious can be satisfying when disaster confronts you. “Wait, let me look at my chart—November twenty-ninth at nine p.m. Draw that one.”
Valko measured out a pretty impressive distance with the ruler and reached for the compass.
November 29.
There was something she should be noticing about that date. Maya was sure there was something about dates, about time. But what? The scritchy scales in the other room were making it hard for her to think.
Valko was tracing out a vast, vast circle now.
“And there goes Paris,” he said, as his compass pencil made its enormous circle on the map. “Everything from the Bois de Boulogne to the Père-Lachaise cemetery.”
“A cemetery,” said Maya. “Ugh. How weird will that be?”
“Stay far away, that’s my advice,” said Valko. He put the compass down and stood up to get a better view of the map as a whole. “But you know what? We’ll find out about cemeteries days before that. There are some other ones in the previous circle—see that there? That’s the cimetière du Montparnasse. And hospitals and stuff. It’s all bad.”
Maya looked at those expanding circles, spreading like ripples across the Paris pond, and the thought she had been missing came zippin
g back into her mind so quickly she slapped the table with the palm of her hand.
“But it won’t reach the Forest of Fontainebleau!” she said. It felt like a discovery.
“Will so,” said Valko. “You know it will, eventually. Not for a few weeks, though. That’s fifty kilometers away, at least.”
Maya was shaking her head. She was feeling something she was hardly used to these days: a surge of real, actual hope.
“No, look! The strangeness won’t get there in time,” said Maya. “See? That shadow has forty days to get itself a body again. Think about it: if the strangeness reached the Salamander Rock, where Fourcroy was born, where the Summer Box was hidden—well, then I bet the shadow would be able to magick itself back to life, no problem. That’s the Suitable Magical Place. But the shadow can’t go outside the strangeness, can it? You know, like a fish needing water to swim in. And the strangeness isn’t going to get there, not by November twenty-ninth! And November twenty-ninth is the fortieth day.”
Maya looked up at Valko.
“I wonder what happens after that, if we keep him from getting what he wants. You know, like the memory stone and that splotch of blood he left on the paper. Which is pretty gross. And me. If he can’t get me to sacrifice myself for him and we can just keep the things he needs out of his reach and somehow slow him down . . .”
Valko wiggled the compass back and forth, back and forth, as he considered the question.
“Well,” he said, “if the forty-days thing is true, then getting safely to November thirtieth is, like, one of our goals, right? But then even if the shadow guy doesn’t get his body, what about the strangeness spreading over the whole world? That’s still very bad—”
Pauline Vian’s head (that amazing hair!) poked through the doorway between the two rooms.
“Excuse me,” she said. “But you are talking about what, in here? Why the maps, and what is ‘strangeness’?”
Maya and Valko looked at each other. In fact, they had one of those rare mind-reading moments that happen from time to time. Each of them thought, at the very same time, Could she understand? Why not? Let’s try!