Bookweird (15 page)

 

The Gypsies' Talent

A
s the little flotilla of barges sailed deeper and deeper into the forest, the river split again and again into smaller branches. The channels became increasingly narrow through the day. More often now Feliz, Varnat and the other men had to jump out to manipulate the boats into some side channel. The channel mouths were well hidden by stands of reeds and low-hanging willows. If you didn't know they were there, you would never have found them.

A mist hung over the river like a ceiling. The sun was just a yellow blur above it. Norman felt as if the whole world was closing in. They moved slowly along the winding water paths, and time seemed to slow down with them. Norman sat on the deck and sulked, feeling sorry for himself. Every hour that passed took them farther away from the farm and made it less likely that Amelie and her friends would find him and the gypsies. They did not even suspect that Serendipity was still alive and that they could save him. These thoughts seemed to make the gloomy mist descend lower and the hisses and barks of the creatures skulking in the weeds and on the muddy banks seem more ominous.

The eerie animal calls didn't seem to bother Leni. She sang cheerfully to herself all day and, whether she knew it or not,
responded to the occasional animal call with an imitative reply. They had left Norman on the same boat with Leni. Though released from the hold and allowed the freedom of the deck, he was no less a prisoner. His prison was just a few metres wider and longer. The marshland was forbidding enough to dispel any thought of escape. He would have no chance of finding his way out of this maze of backwaters, riverlets and soggy islets. Who knew what was skulking about onshore or lurking patiently beneath the surface of the iron grey water?

Boredom, more than anything else, broke his silence. You could stare at ripples in the water and wonder what the gypsies were up to for only so long before you started to drive yourself crazy. Yesterday it had been simple. They had killed the pony and they had to be found. Now it was more complicated. They hadn't killed the foal, but they had stolen it. Did that still make them the enemy? Were they really trying to protect the horse, or was that just a ruse?

Everything he had thought from the start was wrong. The attack in the stable had been his own fault. He had somehow unleashed the wolves from Undergrowth. He had let them into Amelie's world and made this horrible mess, and since his arrival he'd only made things worse. He was doing nothing to help in the pages of Dora's book. It made him wonder if he knew what was best after all. He wanted to make it right and do everything he could to get Amelie her horse back, but when he thought of the look of manic terror in the horse's eyes and his own role in it, he wondered if he should just stay out of it.

To distract himself from these circular thoughts, Norman rose and shuffled carefully to the other side of the boat, where Leni sat cross-legged, concentrating on something in her lap. She tried not to let him see at first, pulling her arms close to her body to hide something. Norman could tell it was a notebook of some sort. Maybe it was her journal. Maybe that's why she was so embarrassed.

“C'mon, let me see,” he persisted. “What am I going to do? Who am I going to tell?”

Reluctantly Leni lowered her arms, holding the spiral notebook
open flat on her lap. Norman was surprised to see she actually blushed, but more surprised to see that what she had been doing in her book was not writing a journal or drawing pictures of flowers or some other girly pastime. Across the page were dozens of arithmetic problems.

“They're probably all wrong,” she muttered, making an excuse before he even said anything. “Feliz doesn't have any time to teach me.”

“No,” Norman assured her quietly, “they look pretty good.”

He scanned the rows of jagged numbers she had written. “The addition and subtraction are all right. It's just the multiplication and division that need work.”

It seemed to Norman that no one had actually ever taught Leni arithmetic, and that she was trying to figure it out herself. She seemed to know that multiplication made things bigger and division made them smaller, but not to know exactly how. It reminded him of Dora: she always wanted to figure things out for herself and hated when Norman gave her the answer. To be honest, he was never very much concerned with teaching Dora anything, just proving that he was smarter. With Leni, he softened his voice and pointed to the first multiplication problem she had set herself: five times five.

“You'll probably get it right away if you think of it in real terms, like if five people each have five apples, then how ma—”

“Twenty-five,” Leni answered quickly, before Norman could finish the question. “I get it now,” she insisted, shushing him as she raced back through her multiplications and set down the correct answers. It was the same with the division. As soon as Norman taught her the rule, she got it immediately and applied it to her questions.

“Okay, now you make some for me,” she demanded, impatiently handing Norman the notebook and pencil.

She wasn't all that different from Dora, Norman realized. She seemed to look up to him, even if she hated to show it, and Norman was feeling too guilty to dismiss her offhand as he might
normally do his sister. He spent the rest of the day making tests for Leni. She dangled her feet over the side of the boat and chattered while he wrote math questions.

“Will the French girl miss her horse?” she asked.

“I guess so.” As if he too was preoccupied with the math, Norman's reply was bored and brusque, the way he would answer Dora. It was just the right tone to keep Leni talking.

“Can't she get another one?”

Norman paid more attention now. If he could convince Leni that the horse should be returned, maybe she would convince her father. “Probably not,” he said, pretending it no longer mattered. “This horse was special. It…” He tried to sound disinterested, but really he was thinking of the right way to express it. “He connects her to her mother somehow.”

Norman handed over the sheet of math questions. “Here,” he said, “try these.”

He became bored with the arithmetic long before she did, so he taught her some geometry, and gave her some tests on determining the circumference and area of various shapes. She loved that too and kept asking for harder and harder ones.

“You must be pretty good at school,” he told her finally. “You're better than a lot of the kids in my class.”

Leni's face brightened at the compliment, then clouded. “There are no schools on the river,” she muttered, then added more bitterly, “I have to go make dinner now.” She paused, handing the notebook to Norman before heading down below to the galley. “Make some really hard ones this time.”

While Leni made dinner, Norman filled a page with word problems—trains going in different directions, how to measure water in buckets, the hardest things he could remember from math challenges and tests. When he had finished setting the test, he could still hear Leni banging pots in the galley. It hardly seemed right that a kid Dora's age should be making dinner by herself, but all the adults were busy with the boats. The flotilla seemed smaller than yesterday, and the gypsies who remained were in constant motion,
poling the boats forward when they could, jumping off and pulling with ropes when they had to. No words were ever exchanged. Everyone seemed to know what was needed and went about it in a furious silence. Wherever they were going, they wanted to get there quickly and quietly.

Norman thought he might as well as lend Leni a hand. He felt guilty sitting there on the deck while everyone else laboured. Besides, he was developing an appetite for gypsy vegetarian soup. Leni had decided he was harmless and let him use a sharp kitchen knife to chop up carrots while she added them to a boiling pot on the gas hob. It reminded him again of the almost total lack of adult supervision. He hadn't seen Leni's father since the previous night's conversation. Feliz and Varnat seemed to be the only men in the whole flotilla.

“Where is everybody else?” Norman asked. “There were more people last night at the feast.”

“They've gone to hunt the other wolf,” Leni answered in a low voice.

“Oh,” Norman said. He had reminded her why she didn't like him. He thought of the look of terror in Amelie's eyes and her bright red blood on the white cotton of her sleeve. “I should be with them,” he said, sounding braver than he felt.

“No, you shouldn't,” the little girl said firmly.

That was the end of that conversation.

For the rest of the day they followed some invisible gypsy path through the twists and bends of the river. At one point Norman felt sure that they had hit a dead end. The channels had become so shallow that everyone had to get out in order to float the boats over them. This was the only time that Norman ever saw Serendipity. To lighten the load on the boat, Feliz and Varnat led the foal off the deck onto the shore. The horse looked healthy and unharmed but was still skittish. Even untethered on an island hillock, he pranced nervously, as if afraid to touch the ground. His eyes rolled wildly and his head bucked every time his wide nostrils caught some scent on the breeze. Could he smell the wolves? Norman
wondered. Just the thought of it made him imagine that he could smell them himself.

Leni followed her cousins onto the island. Norman watched her bring the horse an armful of wild apples. Serendipity at first refused to look at her, but the little girl seemed to be whispering something as she approached. The horse backed away, more slowly with every step. Finally he turned his head and looked into Leni's eyes. They held each other's gaze for a moment as Leni continued to speak. Then the horse bowed his big head and ate from her hands, calm again for a while. She too seemed to have that gift of her father's for calming the horse. As long as Leni stood with him and whispered, he seemed fine, his legs still, his nostrils not flared, his eyes quiet, but it would not last. You could tell that he was on the edge of panic, ready to burst at any moment. Though Serendipity seemed to trust his new owners, there was something new in him. Leni's father was right. The wolves had uncovered a deep wildness in him.

As he stood on the bank with one eye on the foal grazing nearby, the other on the boats, Norman realized the trick that the gypsies were playing. There was another channel parallel to the one they now travelled. The waterway beyond was much wider than any they had seen for days. Climbing the little rise of muddy land that separated the two channels, he saw a full, wide river, like the one they had left—exactly like the one they had left, in fact. They were on a narrow island in the middle of the river.

Gradually, Norman recognized the hills, and the church spire poking up behind them. They weren't far from the Saint-Saens farm—he had seen that same white church spire from the barn. The gypsies had doubled back and were going in the opposite direction. If the farmers were still looking for the horse murderers, they would be looking the wrong way.

It dawned on Norman suddenly that he could make a run for it. He could find the farm from here. He could swim the distance from the island to the shore easily. He cast his head around furtively to see if the gypsies were still occupied with the foal. The sharp
black eyes of Varnat stared back at him from lower down the embankment. They knew. Long before Norman had realized, his captors had known this was his best chance to escape.

Norman leaned against a tree trunk and looked out toward the river beyond. A path followed the riverbank on the other side of the little island. In the dried mud, Norman could see dozens of hoof prints. These could be the searchers' horses. This trail might even lead right the farm. But if so, it was no use to him. He couldn't outswim or outrun Varnat. Norman slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looked out at the river, trying to look casual but taking careful note of the direction of the spire. It might be important later. A landmark would help.

Norman had been out of sight too long. His keepers would suspect something. He scrambled back up the bank to the crest between the two channels.

Varnat met him there.

“What were you doing down there?” he asked, accusingly.

Norman scrunched up his face and looked at him as if offended. “Going to the bathroom. Do you mind?”

Varnat didn't answer. As Norman brushed past, the gypsy stayed on the edge of the ridge looking down at the river.

 

Norman's Test

S
oon after leaving the island, Leni's family's barge split off from the rest of the flotilla, taking a small, slow-moving branch of the river while the rest of the boats continued in the main channel. Only Varnat, Leni and her father remained on the boat with Norman. Norman watched disconsolately as the other barges disappeared. That would be the last he'd see of the foal, he thought. He had missed his opportunity. Back there on the island he had been so close to the Saint-Saens farm—he should have just made a run for it.

No one seemed to take much notice of Norman's mood. He sat at the bow of the boat, ignored by Varnat and by Leni's father, who busied themselves with navigating the narrow stream. Only Leni paid him any attention, and it was not welcome. She nagged him for more “homework,” as she called the math problems he created for her. He did so reluctantly and slowly, so that she had lots of time to prattle on about her twisted dream of what it would be like to live in a real house and go to school. Amelie had no idea how lucky she was, she said. Leni told him that she had been watching Amelie for weeks. Leni was sure “the French girl,” as Leni called her, had seen her too, and was convinced that the two would be friends. Norman had finally had enough when Leni's idle prattle became totally ridiculous.

“Do you think that she'd let me stay with them?” she asked idly. “I could help look after the horses and go to school with the French girl.”

Norman actually snorted. How could she be so silly? “Are you crazy? You stole her horse. Of course she won't let you stay with her.” While she stared back in disbelief, he tried to think of something even more spiteful. “When they arrest your father for horse theft, you'll probably have to live in a juvenile delinquent's institution and go to school there.”

The gypsy girl's eyes widened only momentarily before hardening. She didn't say a word, just rose and turned away, disappearing down into the galley. Norman was a little shocked at his own cruelty, or that his cruelty could be so effective. It wasn't like he meant it. Dora would have known he didn't mean it. She would have just done something else equally as annoying back. Leni's leaving like that without retaliating almost made him regret having said it.

He was still angry with her for taking it so badly when the clouds rolled in, obscuring the descending sun. Norman hoped it wouldn't rain. He didn't like the thought of having to take refuge below with Leni. The clouds accelerated the setting of the sun. It was almost completely dark when the boat came to rest beside a dock. In the gloom of the evening, Norman could just make out the source of an odd sloshing and creaking sound: a rickety wooden water wheel, just upstream from the dock, where the stream was blocked by a ramshackle dam. Beyond it the stream was clogged with rocks and broken logs. So they had reached the end of the road. Norman watched the gypsies tie up the barge, but did not offer to help. They knew how to ask. But when they all began to wander off down a path into the woods behind the dock, he was quick to jump from the boat and follow them.

The path ended at a small wooden shack. Surrounded by ferns and tucked underneath the boughs of ancient trees, it would have been impossible to pick out of the forest had its two windows not been lit from inside by the warm yellow glow of a fire or oil lamps.
As they approached, a small figure emerged and stopped silhouetted in the doorway.

“Aida,” Leni cried, rushing up to the old woman who emerged in the dim light. The girl wrapped her skinny arms around the woman's apron.

“Wild one,” the old woman said affectionately. “Come in. Let's see what strange thing you've brought me this time.” The old crone held the door for Leni to enter. Her father and Varnat followed her, kissing the old woman affectionately and respectfully on each cheek before ducking inside.

Norman drew near but hesitated before stepping past the old woman.

“Tut, tut, tut,” she muttered, shaking her grey-haired head. “You are a strange one. Strange—strange indeed. You had better come in.”

Norman ducked past and smiled feebly. Inside, the three gypsies were already seated by the fire. They stopped chatting as he entered and turned to stare, watching not him, but the old woman's reaction to him. The way that Aida bustled around him, looking him up and down, you'd think she was buying him at a garage sale. Norman wanted to just yell “What?” but there was something about this house, this silence, that he didn't dare to break.

“Well, well, well. I'm not sure what to do with you,” Aida clucked. She looked genuinely bemused, like she was seeing something that she'd only ever heard of in books. “Likely there's only one thing for it.” She turned and began rummaging through a small wooden chest in the corner of her little hut. It was an unimpressive little chest—battered, painted and repainted in the same gaudy purples, greens and oranges as the gypsy barges. Even its brass latches were painted over with a few thick coats. The old lady stuck her tongue out, curled it up toward her nose and rolled her eyes ridiculously as she reached deeper into the chest. She even, at one point, stomped a boot in frustration on the planked floor. Had it been anyone else, Norman would have suggested that she remove some things from the chest, but he wasn't about to speak up and call attention to himself.

“Aha, there it is,” Aida announced triumphantly. Her blue-veined hand emerged clutching a small book. It was bound in red cloth and appeared to have no title on either the spine or the front cover. “I got it. This,” she declared, pausing to peer down her nose at Norman with a half-open eye, “was given to me by the
second
strangest creature I've ever met. Now, then, what would work?” she asked herself as she thumbed the pages. She squinted and moved the book back and forth to bring it into focus, reading at a few spots, tutting impatiently to herself, then continuing further. Finally she seemed to find the passage that she was looking for. “Yes, this should do the trick. Come on, then,” she said, waving everyone over to the kitchen table.

Norman stepped forward to take his test. Varnat, Leni and her father huddled around the table to watch. If it was just a book, Norman thought, he was fine. If it was some sort of riddle or a puzzle, he could handle it. But the old woman did not hand the book to him. Instead she turned and held it open in front of Varnat. She kept her back to Norman and held her body in such as way as to shield the book from him. She obviously did not want him to see, and he thought it best not to try.

“Can you read what's written here?” she asked Varnat. The big gypsy blinked and looked confused. He bit his lip, squinted and concentrated, then looked up blankly as if requesting help from the others.

“Do as the lore keeper says,” Leni's father urged him.

Varnat stared some more and shook his head. He avoided the old lady's inscrutable eyes and tried to hand it back.

Aida wouldn't take it from his hands. “How about you, wild one, can you read it?” she asked Leni.

Leni snatched the red book from her dumbfounded cousin, glanced at it, then brought it closer to her face. “There nothing in it, just blank paper,” she said with surprise and handed it to Aida disdainfully.

The old woman turned finally to Norman, holding the book open on the table so everyone could see it.

“How about you, boy?” she said slyly. “Can you read it?”

Norman glanced quickly at the open page then looked up again suddenly into the eyes of the old woman, a frown across his forehead. The page wasn't blank at all. It was covered with small uneven type. The woman's eyes gave him no answer. “Well, can you read it?”

Norman moved closer, put his hand on the page and read silently to himself.

 

Amelie stood silently by the beech tree. Was it possible that the little girl didn't see her? Or was it that she saw her and didn't care anymore—that her curiosity had finally overcome her fear? Amelie took a step from out behind the beech tree. The gypsy girl must surely see her now, yet still she didn't run. Their eyes met momentarily, but the younger girl averted them shyly and glanced behind her, perhaps pondering another quick escape.

“What's your name?” Amelie asked as gently as she could.

The gypsy girl looked up again but didn't answer immediately. She peered down at her dusty shoes and whispered in the quietest of voices.

“I can talk to your horse.”

Amelie grasped a branch and lowered herself a few steps down the embankment. “You can what?” she asked gently.

The younger girl raised her head and called out more boldly, “I can talk to your horse. I can teach you, too.”

Amelie wanted to reply that it was not her horse, that it would never, despite her desperate wish for it, be her horse. “My name is Amelie,” she said instead. “What's your name?”

“My name is Leni. I can talk to your horse. I saw what happened with the snake, how he got spooked. I can teach you—”

There was such a look of desperate earnestness in this strange little girl's eyes. Amelie had tried for months to speak with Leni, and now she had finally stayed instead of turning to flee. But how did Leni know about the snake, about Serendipity getting spooked? And what did she mean by “talking” to a horse?

Amelie smiled broadly at the young girl, flashing her bright white teeth, and brushed her long bangs out of her squinting eyes. She did not ask Leni how she knew about the snake. She did not ask her where she came from.

“Would you like to come and see him? His name is Serendipity,” she said, as if this was the most natural thing to do. Still holding the branch with one hand, she offered the other to Leni. The gypsy girl waited for just one more moment, then all her reserve burst like water from a balloon, and with a wide, eager grin on her face, she scrambled nimbly up the riverbank.

 

The old woman interrupted his reading. “Well, can you read it?” she snapped. Norman peered into her face. Could she give him a clue? Her face told him nothing, nor did Leni's. Had Leni really not seen her name there on the page? Was he really the only one who could see the writing in this book? It was
Fortune's Foal,
the real
Fortune's Foal,
the version Dora had read and knew by heart. So Leni and Amelie were supposed to meet on the riverbank. They were supposed to be friends. Leni was supposed to teach her the gypsy trick of horse whispering, and there definitely weren't supposed to be wolves in the barn. Norman was shocked to see just how much he had messed up this book. If Leni
had
been able to read that page, she would surely not have been able to hide her surprise.

“Well…,” Aida repeated. Something in her voice was like a warning. Norman stared intently at her for a further clue.

“No,” he said slowly, hesitantly. “There's nothing there. It's completely blank.”

The old woman raised both eyebrows, her eye twitching momentarily. Was that a wink? Norman was sure that it was. “This will be for you, then,” she said. With a surprisingly quick movement of her hand, she tugged at the open page. It came away with sharp ripping sound, like the sound of a bandage being removed.

Handing the page to Norman, she said, “You obviously know how to dispose of this. Mind you chose the right time, and
bon appétit.
”

With that, she snapped the book shut and returned it to the box. Norman stood staring at the page—the page that was supposed to be blank but clearly wasn't. The old crone's words were just sinking in. Had she really just said “
bon appétit
”?

Aida interrupted his ruminations. “All right, then, I've had enough of you. Get out of here.” She put the red book away in her bag and shooed them all away with her hands. Varnat and Leni were already at the door. Norman was still staring incredulously. The old woman stared right back and gave him her final piece of advice.

“I don't think you know what you've gotten yourself into, boy.” She tutted and shook her head. “There's many a weird in these wide worlds, but yours is perhaps the deepest.
I
wouldn't trust a feather such as you with it, but it's your weird now, so I'll bid you good luck. You'll surely have need of more than your share of it.”

Maybe Norman's face reacted to this unintended insult. The thought that he was in over his head had occurred to him more and more. The old lady's face shifted—maybe not softened, but perhaps the many frown wrinkles relaxed just slightly.

“Never mind,” she said. “What's written is written, and what's ripped is ripped. Just mind your grammar. And look after those girls.”

It was perhaps the kindest thing she could have said. Only afterward, when he played it back in his memory, was he surprised by that last part. She had said “girls.” Look after the “girls.” She meant Leni and Amelie, of course. She wanted him to do something to help Amelie. But Norman couldn't help thinking of Dora, too.