by Anne Nesbet
The shadow was leaning against her now, small and trusting. For a moment Maya was reminded of James, but that thought wrenched her heart, so she had to take another breath before she could go on.
“Only you can’t just eat it up, you know,” she said. “Things get ruined when you eat them up. Your mother knew that. But you forgot.”
She thought about it.
“So what you have to do is, I think, you have to let the memory swallow you. If you want to be whole.”
Total silence for a minute. The dragon was very still under her left arm, the child-shadow very still under her other hand. The gargoyles were as still as only stone knows how to be. The mist was lifting, and the air was quiet, still, and cold. Somewhere deep inside the zmey, it glowed with all the light of summer, and a little boy was flying the dragon kite that his mother had made for him with scissors and paper and so much love.
The tiniest shadowy finger traced the edges of that picture on the dragon’s side.
“Again!” said the shadow.
And the images came rising up from inside the zmey, flowed right up the shadow-child’s finger, flowed golden and warm into all that waiting darkness, until the shadow was hardly shadow at all, was a shining glowing ball of light balanced in the gargoyles’ paws. You could see the boy running through the grass; his head was thrown back, and he was laughing, and the sphere in which he ran was only the size of an orange now—it was shrinking, it was shrinking, it was traveling away—it was a spark hidden in the gargoyles’ paws, which had come together as the shadow shrank. The gargoyles, paws clasped, looked at each other and then up at Maya again.
“How odd you quick-living people are,” said Bonnet-Head, with a great stone yawn. “How tiring everything always is! But well done, dearr. An effective translation. Yes. And now we really must have a nice rest.”
“Yess,” said Beak-Face. “To be stone again, finally.”
They turned their faces to the zmey and said something rockslidish to it, and the dragon slithered lovingly in and around them, a bright figure eight of living rock, before springing into the air and flying off with another one of its beautiful trumpeting cries. All that lasted only a moment: the gargoyles, their paws still clasped together around the glowing kernel of memory that had once been the shadow of Henri de Fourcroy, gave Maya a last nod and somehow leaped, all at once, right into the stone monument of Antoine François Fourcroy, dived right into the stone as if it were a vertical pool of water and disappeared.
Silence. Followed by the odd clatter of something small and metallic rolling across the stones. A happy shout from Valko: it was his long-lost barometer.
“You do realize,” he said (but he was giving Maya an enormous triumphant bear hug as he said it), “that we’re going to be in the worst trouble ever, when we finally get home. We’re locked in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, and it’s four whole hours after closing time.”
But Pauline Vian just shook her head with wonder as she packed her violin carefully away.
“They danced to my music!” she said, her frown not quite back to its regular strength. “And, mon Dieu, how beautiful that dragon was. But what you did with that awful shadow, that I could not entirely understand.”
The night was ordinary again. Ordinarily dark and ordinarily cold. It was almost unsettling, how unstrange everything was—the tombs just tombs, the trees just trees, the heaps of chaos left in the shadow’s wake already on their way back to being earth and stone and grass. The world unbreaking.
I will not cry, said Maya sternly to herself. It had been her choice. She had chosen to pass the magic on. (And then she thought: to my sister?)
Well, salamanders live in more worlds than one, and every time they leave one world for the next, their hearts must break a little. But they are strong, salamanders, and they keep moving, all the same.
“Ha! Look at his nose,” said Valko, pointing to the old bust of Antoine François Fourcroy. “That’s what happened when the zmey swung its tail.”
Maya took a closer look. A chunk of marble had been knocked off one side of his nose, it was true. But the bust kept smiling its half smile over their heads, nonetheless.
As Maya’s mother might have said, “the merest scratch.”
The thought of her mother did the trick: Maya shook herself and woke up. It was late, right?
Time for all salamanders to gather up their things and go home.
22
INTO THE REGULAR OLD UNKNOWN
When the bells of Saint-Peter-of-the-Big-Pebble rang the hour of two the following Wednesday, a girl and a boy stopped in their tracks on the avenue Rapp and raised their capped and mufflered heads to look at each other. They remained standing that way for five minutes or so, despite the discouraging iciness of the weather, despite having places they were really supposed to be, despite everything. Passersby with their heads more sensibly lowered against the wind kept not seeing them until the last possible minute and then having to swerve so as not to plow into them: it was not the sort of afternoon when normal people would ever stand stock-still on the sidewalk, just staring at each other, almost as if they were bracing themselves for an explosion or a shock. But once some significant length of time had passed, the boy checked his watch again and grinned.
“Aaaaaaand we’re good!” he said. “One hundred thirty-seven hours, come and gone.”
The girl cheered; the boy squeezed the girl’s hands, and then, because that wasn’t nearly enough, they hugged each other and twirled about for a while like fools.
“What’s happened, you young people?” said an old man passing by.
“Nothing!” they sang out. “Nothing! Nothing! Rien!”
“Bon!” said the old man, and he stopped and tapped the sidewalk with his cane. “Then, mes enfants, may your lives be always as happy for as little reason as they are at this minute!”
It was a very good blessing.
Maya carried her happiness right over to the embassy wall, where a hole in the stone (now mostly forgotten by everyone in the neighborhood) had been plugged by a salamander-like dragon of stone and light—a zmey—that had come plummeting out of the sky. You could see its long, sinuous form in the wall, if you looked very hard. Maya put her hand on the stones and said a silent hello and thank-you, the way she always did when she walked by.
All those awful loopholes, closed. That was truly something to be glad about. There were still places where the roots of the Eiffel Tower had broken up the sidewalk, and Maya had seen a few vines and flowers for sale in the bakery the other day, but for the most part, all the strange business of the last few weeks was fading, not just from the streets of Paris, but from all memories and all minds. Human brains were just not built to register strangeness; really, they weren’t. That sort of memory was unlikely, in the end, to stick.
“Too bad and unfair,” said Valko. “They’ll never know what a hero you are, Maya Davidson!”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Maya. “Without Pauline, that shadow might never have even shown up. Not to mention it was you guys who got us out of the cemetery afterward. That was pretty heroic.”
It had involved waking up the night watchman and telling him some sad story about having missed the shutting of the gates by half an hour and then having wandered and wandered without ever seeing a soul. Pauline had surpassed herself by looking very young and weeping the most amazingly realistic crocodile tears; the tears had disarmed the gardien and saved them all a lecture.
She might have no talent for music, but that Pauline Vian was astonishingly competent at absolutely everything else.
“No, Maya,” said Valko. “You can’t dodge this one. You saved Paris, and, what’s more, you saved me, and everyone else may have forgotten it all, but I never, ever will.”
He did a diplomat’s bow, very fancy, and pinned an invisible medal on Maya’s jacket.
“It’s the Cross of Saint George. For defeating my grandmother, who is much worse than any dragon.”
“No, she’s
not,” said Maya. “She’s just a little crusty, that’s all. I like your grandmother.”
Here’s what had happened with Valko’s grandmother-with-the-mole: once she had heard their accounts of samodivi, vampiri, and the zmey, she had packed up her bags in very good humor and gone back home—without her grandson—to Bulgaria. “He seems to be pretty sufficiently Bulgarian,” as she said to Valko’s parents at the airport, “even without much help from me. Though if that nice girl Maya starts forcing baseball on him? Then I’ll be coming back quick-step.”
So that was all right, too. At least for this year, Maya was not going to be left in Paris alone. It almost surprised her, how happy she was about that, how happy and glad and relieved.
“Oh, Maya, what sweet little pictures she drew!” said Maya’s mother. “This is a treasure, this story. And it’s really some grandmother of ours who made this?”
She and Maya were huddled comfortably under a quilt on the sofa, turning the pages of Henri’s little book.
“Not a grandmother,” said Maya. “A great-great-great-aunt—well, I’m not sure exactly how many greats. A couple. You know what? I think she must be the same one who sent your mother the opal bracelet. She was a Lavirotte, and she didn’t have any daughters of her own to give it to.”
And I said, “my sister”! thought Maya, letting her fingers rest, for a moment, on that mysterious bracelet. Someday, those girls had said, its magic would have to be used. . . . It was a comfortable sort of wondering, though, so warm and so cozy, with her mother right there beside her, studying that other mother’s drawings from so long ago.
“Just this sweet little Henri here, with his wide eyes and his sailor suit. You can tell from the pictures how much she must have doted on him, can’t you? Cute boy. Reminds me a little of James.”
Maya winced.
“Ugh, don’t say that! That Henri didn’t turn out to be a very nice person.”
Maya’s mother shook her head.
“Really? I don’t believe it. Look at his face! That face could not possibly belong to someone who wasn’t a nice person. Unless something absolutely awful happened to him at some point, poor boy.”
“Something did happen,” said Maya. “His mother had another baby.”
As soon as Maya said that, she realized how terrible it sounded, but before she could get all knotted up inside about it, her mother surprised her by breaking into an outright laugh.
“Oh, Maya!” she said, actually dabbing at tears of laughter in the corners of her eyes. “Am I about to ruin James’s life with this baby, is that what you think? No, no, don’t get offended. I remember when James was born, how guilty I felt about you. You’d had all our attention for all those years! It didn’t seem very fair, bringing this demanding little new person into the picture. But you came to like him pretty well, eventually.”
“I love James,” said Maya, slightly indignant.
“Of course you do,” said her mother. “James is remarkably lovable. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard for you when he first appeared.”
Maya wasn’t sure how to respond, so she just turned the next page of Henri’s little book.
“‘Life is too short,’” said her mother thoughtfully, her finger running very gently over the words. “Isn’t that funny—my mother used to say that, too. And then she would let me have more ice cream, or take me to the lake to feed the ducks.”
“But it’s such a gloomy thing to say,” said Maya. She thought of Henri de Fourcroy, his hungry shadow, so greedy and so cold. Life had always been too short for him. He had wanted more and more and more. Until the very end, he had been willing to mess up the whole world, just to grab himself some more life.
“Really?” said her mother, shifting a little on the couch to make her belly more comfortable. “I don’t know—doesn’t seem so gloomy to me. Life seems too short, because it’s just so interesting and so mysterious. There’s so much to do! There’s so much we don’t know!”
“Oh, Mom,” said Maya. That was one thing she had in common with that little Henri, after all: she loved her crazy, wonderful mother so much that sometimes it hurt. “Just promise me you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay, right? And the baby, too? No matter what?”
“Maya, sweetheart,” said her mother, wrapping her arms right around Maya as if she were as little as the boy in the pictures. “I haven’t got any of this figured out. One thing I’m pretty sure of, though: as long as there are people in this world who love each other as much as I love you and James or you love me, everything—no matter what happens—is okay. Deeply, deeply okay. A thousand miles deep.”
That wasn’t exactly the promise Maya wanted, but in the great uncertain universes there are little havens here and there, where a person can relax for a moment and be at home, and this was one of those.
Maya closed her eyes and curled up next to her mother like a comfortable question mark—like a salamander—and outside the window, where so much was so unknown, all of Paris hushed: the sky became white and tingly, a sky made of fog and opal (because magic, like love, passes on and on and on), and it began, for the first time that year, to snow.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As I keep learning again and again from Rosemary Brosnan, it takes plenty of science and magic to turn a story into a real book. Thank you so much, Rosemary! Heartfelt gratitude also to Andrea Martin and the whole HarperCollins team. I am in awe of the talents of Iacopo Bruno. Andrea Brown and Taryn Fagerness keep things humming on the West Coast.
I am lucky to have true friends who are also good writers. Roo Hooke, Sharon Inkelas, and Will Waters kept me cheerful and afloat. Jayne Williams and Isa Helfgott hauled me over the rough patches. Linda Williams and Leslie Reagan supplied encouragement. Mark Sandberg shared great stories while walking uphill. Marguerite Holloway made everything seem possible.
The Apocalypsies, the members of SCBWI, and the writers who congregate at the Enchanted Inkpot taught me everything I might ever need to know, and then some. Special thanks to Lena Goldfinch, Pedro de Alcantara, Tioka Tokedira, Ann Jacobus Kordahl, Regan Orillac, and Rachel Grinti for being such thoughtful early readers. My writer-neighbors Mike Jung and Malinda Lo inspire me. So do Cindy Pon and Sarah Prineas, who live slightly farther away.
I traveled up and down the West Coast with a wonderful bunch of writers in 2012—Marissa Burt, J. Anderson Coats, Jenny Lundquist, Jenn Reese, and Laurisa Reyes. Jenn and Jillian made Los Angeles and Seattle feel like home. Thank you!
My gratitude and affection also go out to the Archer-Axelson clan, to the incredible Berkeley Marina Dog-Walking Society, and to the kind people of Berkeley Friends Meeting; particular thanks to Biliana Stremska, for her infectious enthusiasm about all things Bulgarian.
I am truly grateful for the love and support of my very extended family. The New York nieces and nephew wow me with their talents; so do Caroline in Florida and Ruby and David in Wyoming! Bob Naiman traipsed around French forests. Kathryn Anderson made granola. Lenny Helfgott, whose heart is bigger than any banjo, led the bluegrass jams.
Thera Naiman, Eleanor Naiman, and Ada Naiman are the best readers anyone could have. And this book is dedicated, with love, to Eric Naiman, who wanted a story about East Berlin, but was forced, again, to settle for Paris.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gregory Freidin
ANNE NESBET is the author of The Cabinet of Earths, which was praised by The Horn Book for being “a-shimmer with magic” and “an impressive achievement.” Anne teaches Russian literature and the history of film at UC Berkeley. She lives near San Francisco with her husband, several daughters, and one irrepressible dog. You can visit her online at www.annenesbet.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.
BACK AD
Also by Anne Nesbet
The Cabinet of Earths
CREDITS
Cover art and lettering © 2013 by Iacopo Bruno
COPYRIGHT
A BOX OF GARGOYLES. Copyright © 2013 by Anne Nesbet.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-06-210425-0
EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062104281
* * *
13 14 15 16 17 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk