Small Persons With Wings (12 page)

“Oh, man,” Timmo said.

“Timmo!” Sharp footsteps marched up the stairs. Mrs. Wright appeared, cardboard plane in hand. “What did I say about flying these things in the house?”

Timmo stared at his white socks.

“What did I say?” his mother persisted. I couldn't believe she was doing this in front of me. She was treating him like he was ten.

Timmo muttered something.

“I am a woman of my word,” Mrs. Wright said. She marched past us into a room at the front of the house, rumbled around in there a bit, returned, snapped the door shut. “That plane is no longer yours.”

After she left I didn't know where to look. Not that it mattered, because Timmo appeared to be counting the threads in the carpet.

Eileen stood in her doorway, watching her brother. She tiptoed past us into the front room and came back with the plane in her hands. “Here. Take it.”

Timmo took it. “What're you, nuts?”

“I keep telling you, she puts the stuff in her closet and she forgets about it. I took back my curling iron and she never said a word.”

“Eileen melted the shower curtain,” Timmo said. He looked uncertain.

“C'mon.” Eileen gave Timmo a smirk that was pure mischief. I wanted to tell him not to do anything she said. “She doesn't even know what this thing looks like. It's the same as any other stupid plane.”

“That's how much you know,” Timmo said. He shoved past me, went into his room with his plane, and shut the door, leaving me out in the hall with Eileen and no chance to ask him about the blond lady.

“Little wimp,” Eileen said. She kicked Timmo's door and stalked back into her room as if I didn't exist, which I was perfectly happy not to.

I'd had it. And I wasn't the only one, judging by the way my parents jumped up as soon as they saw me downstairs. They thanked Mrs. Wright very much for the lovely cup of coffee, and we beat it the heck out of there.

Dad retrieved his rake on our way back to our yard, but once we got there he leaned it up against the house. “I could use a break,” he said.

“You can sing that in three-part harmony,” Mom said.

And we still hadn't found the moonstone.

WE HAD LEFTOVER SPAGHETTI FOR LUNCH. There was a ton of it and we ate it all, and Mom said not one word about how food should be for sustenance rather than for comfort.

No sign of Durindana. Maybe she went back downstairs.

“Well, that was filling.” Dad unbuttoned his waistband. “Wish we had decent coffee.”

Mom got the Turkish coffee out of the freezer and plopped it in front of Dad. “Live it up.”

Dad started water boiling and got down Grand-père's French press. He opened the sack and inhaled. “Ah. Ambrosia.” He came over and made Mom and me sniff it too.

“I guess I'll have some after all,” Mom said.

We all heard the coffee scoop hit something that crinkled. Dad froze as if the coffee was talking to him. “That crazy old jackass.” He dug his fingers in and hauled out a plastic bag with a piece of paper in it. “Anybody could have found this.”

“Took us a day and a half and we live here,” Mom said. “We're lucky I didn't throw that out.”

Dad fished the note out of the plastic bag. Something fell, clanged onto the counter. We all stared at it like dummies.

A small gold ring. Set with an oval, milky stone.

The moonstone, the Gemmaluna. Created by sorcery, a millennium and a half ago. It probably knew Charlemagne and half the kings of France. And here it was in our freezer.

I slipped the ring on my forefinger. I didn't feel a thing. The gold was worked into a laurel wreath, so fine you yearned for a microscope. I held my hand up to the light and the stone went translucent, shot with reds and blues and greens.

If I'd had this on, would I have known that Mina Cardoza wasn't my best friend? That a hug from Benny didn't mean anything?

That my parents knew Fidius was real.

“Hey, lie to me,” I said.

“Get that off, Mellie,” Mom said. She was watching Dad unfold the note.

“Roland,”
Dad read aloud. “
You are a blot on the name of Turpin, you with your little apartment and your little job and your little life with that little yet overbearing woman.”
He stopped reading.

“You're ten times the man he was, Roly,” my mom said.

“I'm fine,” Dad said, although anyone could see he wasn't. “To continue:
You have no sense of grandeur, no sense of style, no joie de vivre, as the common phrase would have it. You have abandoned your talent in order to teach ruffians—this I never will forgive.”

“Says the drunken innkeeper,” Mom said. “Did you know he started out as a painter, Mellie?”

Dad kept reading: “
Be that as it may, you are my heir. You and your plump sparrow of a daughter. So I leave you the inn and our family treasure, our Gemmaluna. Guard it well and never forget the Obligatio Turpinorum, the Duty of the Turpins.

“Why would it be complicated?” I asked.

“He's probably making that up,” Mom said.

“
A father's blessing on you
,
by which I mean something weak, mean, and abandoned by all. I leave no . . .”
Dad stopped reading and slapped the letter down on the table. “Well, no point in reading the rest.”

Mom gave the note a once-over, and laughed. “
I leave no message to Veronique, and the child is too dim-witted to understand anyway. Ogier.
” She patted my hand. “Coming from the right place, sweetie, an insult is as good as a compliment.”

“Yeah, I know.” It was bad enough being called a plump sparrow. But dim-witted? “I'm glad he's dead.”

Dad grabbed my shoulders. “Don't ever be glad of a death, honey. Even a nasty-minded old drunk has a right to live out his life.”

“I know, I know.” Of course I knew that. Couldn't a person say anything off the top of her head without another person having a hissy about it? I shrugged his hands off my shoulders.

“She knows that, Roly, calm down,” Mom said. “Mellie, get that ring off your hand until we're sure what it does.”

“Lie to me first,” I said.

“Take it off.”

“Give it to me, Mellie,” Dad said. “I'll put it in my pocket for safekeeping.”

Mom and I looked at each other. We didn't want to insult him right now but, honestly, he could lose a small hippo in those pockets.

“I'll get that silver chain Gramma gave me and hang it around my neck,” I said, meaning my mom's mother, the normal side of the family. “I can wear it under my T-shirt.”

“I don't think anyone should have it on them,” Mom said. “We don't know what the Parvi will do if we walk in there with it on. Let's hide it again.”

So we reburied the ring in the coffee and stuck it all back into the freezer. Dad got out one of the other sacks of Turkish coffee, slamming the freezer door shut as if Grand-père were in there.

Mom picked up Grand-père's note. “Appreciate art. Look beyond the end of Ogier's nose. Is there a portrait of him somewhere?”

“Not that I remember,” Dad said. “Who'd want it around?”

“What does ‘act like your elders and betters' mean?” I asked. “Does he mean himself? What did he act like, anyway? He
was
a painter once, right?”

“A long time ago, before I was born,” Dad said. “Anyone seen any painting supplies?” None of us had.

“Durindana might know something,” I said. “She saw him after we did.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Where is she, anyhow?”

She turned out to be sound asleep on one of the guest beds upstairs, nestled into the pillow with a washcloth for a blanket. Next to her was a half-empty nip bottle of bourbon.

“Where'd she get that?” Mom asked.

“I found a box of those tweensy bottles in that closet over there,” I said. “I forgot.”

“This has to stop,” Dad said. “She could have nectar downstairs now.”

“Would you go down there, if you were her?” I said.

We left her to sleep it off. Dad carried the box of nip bottles down to the dining room and sealed it with about a hundred layers of duct tape.

“I don't know if duct tape will stop someone who can turn a vent into a double door,” I said.

“I'm moving it down here so we can keep an eye on it,” Dad said. “To be honest, the tape's more for me than for her. I've never wanted a drink so much in my entire life.”

After a brief silence so we could all forget he'd said that, Mom announced that it was high time we got on with Real Life and she would go food shopping. She probably wanted to get away from the inn and have a think, which she finds easier when Dad and I aren't around.

Dad said he'd go to Town Hall and see what we had to do to get a building inspection.

“A building inspection?” Mom said. “Why do we need that now?”

“You will be needing a building inspection first, of course,” Dad said. Which (a) didn't answer Mom's question and (b) was a direct quote from Gigi Kramer, the fake real estate lady.

“Where'd you hear that?” Mom said.

“Everybody knows it.” Dad sounded vague.

“By the way,” I said, “what are we using for money to fix this place up?”

That changed the subject. Mom and Dad traded a Deeply Significant Look. “We'll try for a loan,” Dad said. “And if we can't get one ... well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“We're not using my college fund,” I said.

“No,” Dad said. “Of course not. Although—”

“Of course not, sweetie,” Mom said.

I was not reassured.

They left on their errands and I went up to my room to unpack some more. I was filling my last bureau drawer when a weird, guttural cry floated in through the open window, followed by a door slam. I poked my head out and saw Timmo down on the sidewalk, hugging himself. He was right outside the door to the pub.

I scrambled down two flights of stairs and burst through the outside door to see that Timmo had cracked open the pub door again. He was tense and poised to run. Music tinkled out.

“Hey!” I said. Timmo jumped a foot and I ran out of things to say. What
can
you say when someone opens your cellar door and finds five hundred Small Persons with Wings?

“Hey,” he said weakly.

“You're probably wondering.”

“Yeah.”

The door swung open on the breeze. The music got louder. Rinaldo fluttered out and opened his arms wide. “Melissa Angelica Turpin! Come in! And be bringing your friend!”

“It's wearing clothes,” Timmo said. “It knows your name.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess you'd better be going now. See you around.”

“See me around? Are you nuts? You think I'm going to walk away from this? This is huge.”

“You can't say anything to anyone,” I said.

“Says who?”

A car turned the corner. Rinaldo hovered between us, politely following the conversation. The music sparkled and danced.

“Get inside.” I pulled Timmo into the pub, Rinaldo fluttering behind. I slammed the door and locked it. Timmo squeaked like a sneaker on floor tile, but I figured,
Hey, you got yourself into this, neighbor boy.
Maybe I'd have to lock him in there. I didn't know what to do.

With much bowing and fluttering, Rinaldo ushered us over to the bar, where we got up on stools. The air, of course, was freezing. I looked at Timmo and found out that freckles don't fade even when someone has gone pasty white and is shaking like a paint mixer.

“Rinaldo, Lady Noctua,” I said, when she fluttered over. “This is Timothy Oliver Wright. Timmo, Rinaldo is gubernator of the Parvi Pennati. That's a diminutive of the Latin for Small Persons with Wings. A diminutive means a shorter, sort of affectionate version of a longer—”

“I know what a diminutive is,” Timmo said shakily. He nodded to Rinaldo and to Lady Noctua, who curtsied haughtily.

Rinaldo swept off his hat and bowed. “Oliver is a name of lineage. Are you of lineage, dear sir?”

Timmo swallowed hard. “I don't think so.”

I remembered what I kept forgetting to ask. “Excuse me, Rinaldo, but when you say ‘of lineage,' what exactly do you mean?”

Rinaldo shook his finger at me. “Ogier has not been telling this to you?”

“I barely knew Ogier.”

Rinaldo shook his head, disgusted by human families. “The lineage does extend from the glorious king Charlemagne and his aides, called paladins. Turpin was one such, and his descendents take their names from the old tales. Roland was another, of bravery unmatched upon his heroic death at Roncevaux. Oliver was his cousin and friend, of equal valor upon that bloody field.”

“I'm named after my uncle Ollie,” Timmo said. “He's an insurance adjuster.”

“Why are my names of lineage?” I asked. “Durindana's too. I can't see them letting a girl be one of these paladins, somehow.”