by Anne Nesbet
Maya lowered her head against the cold and led them in through the gates.
They were three kids sent by their professeur de musique to look for Chopin’s tomb—that was their line. But the man in the little office to the left of the gates didn’t ask them what they were up to, just handed them a map and tucked his chin back into his woolen muffler. It was a cold afternoon, and atmospheric wisps of mist had begun to gather in the tree branches farther away.
“Straight ahead,” said Maya. She was checking the beautiful old map against the bright new one. “Along this main street here, and then there should be stairs, I think, up the hill on the right. . . .”
Her voice petered out, swallowed whole by the cold, still air. One of her mother’s guidebooks had called Père-Lachaise cemetery a necropolis, which means a “city for the dead.” And the path they were on really did feel like a street—a broad, empty boulevard through some town in a universe far away. The tombs stood like elegant small houses on either side, with cold-looking trees in between them.
They even had sidewalks. Why did the dead need sidewalks?
Valko was walking close enough by her side that his jacket kept rustling against her arm; he didn’t like cemeteries, Maya suddenly remembered. It was inconsistent with his basically scientific view of the world, but inconsistency is what makes people people, and not just clever machines soaked in salt water.
“Good news is, Part One was a snap,” he said to Maya under his breath.
Part One of Maya’s plan was “get into Père-Lachaise before it closes.” That had actually involved a lot of running through métro stations, because school got out pretty late on Thursdays, and of course they had to drop their schoolbooks and pick up supplies at Maya’s apartment on the way—so having made Part One work was an achievement.
“Hope this map is still right,” said Maya, wiggling her fingers in her gloves. “Hope he’s still there.”
Part Two was “find tomb and hide.”
Once you left the main avenue, the topography of the place became more complicated. They kept stopping to look at the two maps, the bright and confident new one, and the lovely imaginary world of the old one. The paths up through the tombs on the old hillside were narrower and had more curves in them. Maya led them too far at first, to a grand circular intersection, the Rond-point Casimir Périer, where they turned their backs on the grand monument in the center and consulted the elegant metal street signs.
“Oh, I see where we are now,” said Maya, turning the map around. “Come this way. Eleventh Division—we just zigzag a little, and it’s over here.”
“Hiding’s going to be easy,” said Valko, looking around. “I was worried, down there by the entrance, but this is like a jungle, practically.”
The graves in this section were old, their cupids and urns worn down by year after year of rain and snow and human neglect. And trees everywhere, a great tangle of plants and graves all up and down that hillside.
The whole cemetery had been so quiet, so hushed all this time, that when they turned a corner and saw a pair of flesh-and-blood old ladies gazing up reverently at the statue of a marble muse weeping into a lyre, Maya felt rather shocked.
She stopped in her tracks, but Pauline clapped her hands.
“And there it is!” said Pauline. “The resting place of the great Chopin!”
The old ladies turned around and smiled. Clearly they were mistaking Pauline for an angelic and sensitive child.
“Minus his heart,” Pauline added.
The old ladies looked just the teeniest bit less certain about the angelic child.
“Shipped to Poland on its own,” said Pauline. “I’ve always wondered exactly how. Ice? Or was it—”
The old ladies crossed themselves and moved farther away.
“Pauline!” said Maya, giving her sleeve a firm tug. “Come on!”
Sheesh! The whole point of Part Two of the plan was Not To Be Noticed, Not To Be Seen.
It was in this section somewhere, the tomb of Fourcroy. Maya took a deep breath. They would scour the crowded hillside and leave no little pathway untrodden—there was still time—surely they would find it eventually—
“Hey, Maya,” called Valko from not so very far away. “Here’s your guy!”
And there he was.
Antoine François Fourcroy, his bust looking out with a little half smile from within a hollowed-out square pillar. His gaze went over Maya’s head, above the patch of browning weeds that had taken over his plot. The weeds suggested he was no Chopin. No little old ladies ever brought this statue bouquets of roses. Why, probably they themselves were the first people in years and years to come looking for Antoine François Fourcroy, tucked away in his neglected corner of Père-Lachaise.
“Good,” said Maya. “We’re here. Now we just need to find a place to hide.”
Valko looked around and shrugged. He had a point. They could basically walk a few feet in any direction and sit down, and who would ever find them?
So they did what heroes on a life-and-death adventure so frequently do: they sat down with their backs against the imposing block of the next tomb over and started rummaging through their backpacks for encouraging snacks. Pauline, for instance, had brought long sections of baguette with chocolate stuffed deep into its innards.
“It’s very traditional,” she said. “For the children to nibble on after school.”
Valko was happy enough about the chocolate, but Maya could feel his eyes scouting out the tombs all around them.
“Six o’clock,” he said. “Cemetery’s officially closed. Now we wait for three hours, right, General?”
“Right,” said Maya.
“Without freezing to death?” he said.
“That’s the idea.”
Valko snorted quietly.
“What have you got in that backpack, anyway? Bricks?” he said. “It looks heavy. Is that a magazine?”
“Hey, excuse me, I was thinking ahead,” said Maya. “That’s got the description in it of the movie we’re all supposedly out seeing.”
“What else?”
Maya showed him: a big fleecy shawl borrowed from her mother, food, the Summer Box, the gargoyles’ egg. . . .
It was dark already now, but she could feel Valko recoil.
“Are you nuts?” he said. “Are you kidding? Why’d you bring that box? And the stone? Isn’t that supposed to be the thing his brain’s hiding out in? Are you even thinking?”
He reached for the egg, but Maya’s hand got there first.
“Leave it alone,” she said. “It wanted to come.”
Pauline and Valko were both silent now, staring at Maya in the darkness. She had had to bring the egg, just as she had had to bring the Summer Box. There had been no choice about it. That was true. She admitted it. But Maya still hoped against hope there was some angle to the problem she wasn’t seeing. Something that went beyond Fourcroy’s plans and his bossy letter, beyond fate, beyond the clockwork path, beyond the clickety-clack of tumbling dominoes.
“Um, Maya,” said Valko, frowning at the egg. “This is a problem.”
“It’s what, that thing?” said Pauline, from the deep shadows on the other side of Maya. “A rock? How can a rock want something or not want something?”
“It’s not a rock,” said Maya, and she could feel the stiffness in her own voice as she said it. “It’s an egg. Actually, a gargoyles’ egg.”
“Look, Maya,” said Valko. “It is so a rock. Even if it’s a totally strange rock. Still.”
“Mon Dieu, but this is bizarre. Gargoyles don’t lay eggs,” said Pauline Vian.
“Ordinarily they don’t,” said Maya. “But this time they did. They wanted a safe place for his old memories, see? So they made the egg. I promised I’d take care of it.”
“And who is this ‘they’?” said Pauline. “The gargoyles again?”
Valko and Maya were too busy glaring at each other in the dark to try to explain.
“They wanted the
memories kept away from the shadow guy. And you are practically planning to hand the memory stone right back over to him!”
“No, I’m not,” said Maya. “I promised I’d take care of it. It wanted to come along. You keep thinking of it as entirely, totally evil—that’s unfair.”
“You’re bewitched,” said Valko. “You are. You’re under a spell, like the letter said. Whose side are you even on? Oh, gash, listen to me! We’re all crazy. Give me that rock!”
And this time his hand got there before Maya’s hand could intervene. He grabbed the egg right out of her backpack, put his arm back over his head, and, before Maya could move or squeak, he lobbed the egg right away from them, into the shadowy darkness of the cemetery.
Maya couldn’t help it. She gasped aloud in horror, a gasp that was very close to being a shriek. And then clamped her hand over her mouth, because there was a bright light swinging along, suddenly, not that far away. And the sound of someone humming.
She was so full of mad there was hardly room in her for fear, but the mad shoved over a little to make room, and her arms began to shiver.
The watchman had stopped, somewhere on the other side of the tomb. Had he heard the poor egg go flying through the air?
He would find them for sure. Oh, he would find them, right this minute, any second now, for absolute certain. He would shine that bright flashlight right into their faces, and shout at them and drag them away, and it would be awful. And then there would be no one left to stop the shadowy Fourcroy, or the strangeness he had let loose into the world. Everything would become stranger and stranger, and nobody would be safe anywhere anymore, nobody’s mother or brother or tiny still-completely-unknown little bean—
The watchman started up his hum again; the light began moving farther away.
“Bon,” said Pauline, very quietly. “He is going.”
That was when the enormous awful thought hit Maya all over again:
Valko Nikolov—her friend Valko, the person she had thought of as her true friend Valko—had just gone and thrown her gargoyles’ egg away.
The breath caught in her throat.
“How could you?” she said. The fury in her voice was startling. She had never heard herself sound like this, not in real life. And she was still trying to whisper, too. “I promised them I’d keep it safe. And you go and smash it!”
“Really,” said Pauline. “I am confused. Who is this ‘they’ and ‘them’? And Valko did not smash your rock, Maya.”
“You saw him yourself!”
“But there was no sound of smashing, Maya. Non. Hard to believe, in this so-stony place, but it must have landed on grass somewhere. The rock must be all right.”
It was true, Maya realized: there had been no great smithereening smack. If there had been, what’s more, the watchman would surely have heard it.
Valko had meant to smash it, though. It was still a betrayal. It was still absolutely awful in every way.
“But Maya,” said Valko, from quite close to her ear. His voice was miserable and loving and impatient—all those things at once. “You know I can’t let the stupid shadow have you. What kind of friend would I be? I’m telling you: no way.”
Maya was already crawling forward, however, feeling the ground with her hands. The egg had trusted her. And he had flung it off into the darkness.
“Bringing his memory here with you has got to be what he wants,” said Valko, still not very far away in the dark. “He thinks he’s got you, Maya. He hasn’t got you, has he?”
Maya opened the Summer Box, slipped some small thing from that box into her pocket, and stood up.
“No,” she said. “He hasn’t got me. I mean, I hope not. I mean, sort of he does, I know, all right, yes, but not all the way. I am doing my best. Help me find that egg, will you? I really did promise them I’d take care of it.”
“Them?” said Pauline, from back in the shadows.
“The gargoyles,” said Maya. “What time is it now?”
“Seven o’clock,” said Pauline. “How often do you two talk to gargoyles? Because honestly, if you had told me these things a week ago, I don’t think I would be here right now—”
“It’s too dark, Maya. Listen, I promise: I’ll come back tomorrow and find your egg. I promise I will. I just don’t want it controlling you.”
“Because honestly, the things you are saying now sound to me like the thoughts of lunatics—”
“All right,” said Maya suddenly, and she plopped back down on the ground. “All right. It’s too dark to go looking for it now. You’re right. We’ll have to come back.”
The poor egg, alone in this cold cemetery! She had to push that thought out of her way in order to stay focused. She was in danger of losing her focus. She was forgetting the next steps in the Plan.
“So we wait a little while longer,” said Maya, pulling herself together. “And then, around eight thirty or so, maybe a little after, you start to play that piece, right, Pauline? If your fingers can still move at all.”
Pauline made a cold, but willing, sound.
“And here’s the important thing,” Maya went on. “As soon as the shadow appears, I want you over here behind this big tomb. You stay hidden, both of you. Got that? You guys stay safe. The Fourcroy business is up to me.”
“Hm,” said Valko.
“I’m serious,” said Maya. “I’m the one he wants—that means I’m the one he’ll have to listen to. Don’t distract him. And Pauline’s younger than we are—”
“Chronological age,” said Pauline with a sniff.
“Exactly,” said Maya, paying no attention whatsoever to the sniff. “We’re responsible for keeping you safe, that’s all. As much as possible, anyway.”
It grew colder. The mist thickened. They huddled behind the tomb and regretted everything that had brought them to Père-Lachaise, at night at the end of November. When their misery became very large indeed, Valko checked his watch again and said it was well after eight.
Pauline popped the latches of her violin case.
“It’s not going to sound very nice,” she said, her voice a little doubtful in the cold dark. “My fingers are stiff like icicles.”
“It will be fine,” said Maya.
Pauline was attaching the shoulder rest and fixing her bow.
“Too, too cold,” she said. “Do you think it will still work if I do the playing with my gloves on?”
“Brr,” said Valko. “I say go ahead and give it a try.”
“And the gardien, will he come back?”
“He’s hiding away in his warm office,” said Maya. “Drinking cocoa, probably.”
Pauline shot one of her spear-like gazes in Maya’s direction.
“You know this is folie, what we are doing,” she said. “Madness, and all that.”
“I hope it’s not,” said Maya. “Let’s see.”
Pauline put the bow on the string to tune, but the violin was so cold it didn’t want her messing around with its pegs.
“I can’t tune it properly,” said Pauline. “Impossible.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Maya. She did not actually say aloud that Pauline was not likely to play in tune even on a well-tuned violin, but that thought did go through her mind.
Pauline narrowed her eyes and clenched her bow too tightly in her gloved right hand, and the bow went scraping across the strings. A cry like a dying cat, thought Maya. Not that she had ever heard a dying cat, and in any case, perhaps dying cats would find it insulting to be compared to Pauline Vian.
Maya had been worried about guards hearing the music and coming in droves to yell at them and snap handcuffs around their wrists, but the trees and the fog soaked up the sound of the violin like a chilly gray sponge.
If anything, the world around them became quieter as Pauline played.
It became more attentive.
Valko had come up and put his jacketed arms right around Maya, a friendly, comforting, comfortable hug that drowned out, for a long minute, al
l the cold and dark. Somewhere out there, beyond the tombs and the mist and the city of Paris, was a sky full of stars. Down here, where you could see no stars, Pauline’s violin was trying its best, all the same, to dance: one small, brave, out-of-tune voice against the enormous silence of Père-Lachaise.
“If that shadow gives you any trouble,” said Valko to Maya, “I’m jumping out and tackling him. Just so you know. And I’m sorry about your rock.”
He said it quietly, so as not to interfere with the music, or maybe just so that the looming trees and stone tombs could not hear.
Maya was not sure shadows were things that could be tackled, exactly, but she felt a little better, all the same. Though on the other hand, Valko had thrown the gargoyles’ egg into the darkness somewhere. He had wanted it broken.
Really, she didn’t know how she felt, just at that moment.
“I’ll be careful,” she said. “You be careful, too. And we both have to make sure Pauline’s okay.”
Rum tumty-tumty! Rum tumty-tumty! That was Pauline’s violin, sending its awkward signal out into the fog.
Valko was listening to it, too. He shook his head and smiled.
“That’s not really going to lure anyone anywhere, you know? I think we’re—”
And his mouth was just forming the word safe when the tide of strangeness came rolling over them, this time almost like a blow to the stomach, the sick-making tingle of magic was so strong—and the world around them folded itself away and began to change.
The sound of magic, it turned out, was a roaring sort of rumble: things growing and stretching under the ground, the sap running through surprised trees above the ground, the stone of all those cherubs and wreaths and weeping nymphs reshaping itself into shapes it wasn’t used to. The ground beneath their feet rippled. The violin behind them faltered, but only for a moment, and then Pauline launched into her Danse macabre all over again, with extra gusto. Maya stole a look at Pauline’s face in the misty gray light and was shaken to her core: nothing the strangeness was likely to do could be stranger than Pauline Vian, smiling.
“Are you all right?”
That was Valko, whose hand, Maya noticed now, was firmly on her arm, keeping her steady (or keeping himself steady—hard to say).