Small Persons With Wings (15 page)

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Authors: Ellen Booraem

BOOK: Small Persons With Wings
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“
Tiens,
why is this Giganteus to be coming here?” Lady Noctua asked. Parvi crowded around to listen.
Dad explained about ordinances, occupancy permits, and building safety codes, the inn's various structural problems, and our need to fix it up before we sold it.
“If we have the Gemma, we can be fixing up your inn,” Rinaldo said. “Without the Gemma we can only make it pretty.”
“So we understand,” Dad said. “But—”
Lady Noctua gave her husband a good shove. “Rinaldo! It is not being your place to make such an offer all by yourself. Those of us with taste and intellect wish to retain the Magica Artificia for all time.”
Rinaldo took his hat off. “This will not be possible, my love. We are losing our senses.”
“
Zut
. We have lost no further senses for a hundred years. I have studied this, and—”
“Excuse me,” Dad said. “There's still the problem of the building inspector, who will be here in”—he looked at his watch—“two hours.”
“Pah.” Noctua dismissed Dad with an airy gesture. “Do not worry, Roland Turpin. We shall hide ourselves cleverly when this Giganteus comes. I lived among the Turpini in my youth, and know well how to be outsmarting Gigantes. But we are not to be undoing our beauties.”
“You will explain our beauties to this Giganteus,” Rinaldo said.
“Really?” Dad said. “How?”
Rinaldo bowed, feathered hat in hand, and ushered Lady Noctua away to watch a minuet.
“At least I have my skin back,” Dad said as we trudged back upstairs.
“We should tidy up,” Mom said, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “Make the place look as nice as we can before the inspector gets here.”
“We cleaned three days ago,” I said.
“Is your bed made?”
She had me there.
Timmo went home before the tidying started, demonstrating that he did have a brain. We Turpini made our beds and put our underwear in the laundry hamper. We tried to come up with explanations for a dingy old pub turning into an eighteenth-century pleasure palace. Not to mention why anyone would redecorate
before
a massive renovation.
“We did it so our daughter wouldn't be homesick,” Dad said. “She has exquisite taste.”
“We did it because a real estate lady told Dad the inn would sell better that way,” I said.
“Ogier did it before he died, because he'd gone nuts,” Mom said.
We chose that one. Then we went down to the kitchen to eat lunch.
Correction: We went down to the silk-lined boudoir we once called the kitchen.
Our first glimpse of the problem was on the stairs from the family quarters, which now were marble. Correction: The bottom half was marble. As we stood at the top, stunned, the marbleizing crept toward us, tread by tread. The stairwell was papered in ivory-colored damask with candles flickering in sconces.
“This can't be good,” Dad said.
“Be careful going down,” Mom said. “Marble can be very slippery.”
The kitchen still had all its appliances, but they were covered in marble, ebony, crystal, and gold filigree. The room looked like a tent because of the rose-colored silk draped from a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling.
The kitchen table was marble, as were the front desk out in the reception area and the tables in the breakfast room, which had gold place settings. The walls were varying shades of rose-colored damask, with cream-colored moldings and more candles in sconces.
The new decor was too much for us. Dad sank into a gilt chair at the kitchen table and stared straight ahead. Moving like a robot, Mom got cold cuts out of the refrigerator, ignoring the gold-filigree door handle. She made sandwiches on the marble countertop and served them to us on golden plates from silk-lined cupboards.
“Can we still say Grand-père did this?” I asked.
“I don't see what else we
can
say at this point,” Mom said.
Durindana flitted in. “Ooooo,” she said, making for the chandelier. “Look what the Parvi Pennati are making for the Turpini, from the goodness of our inner selves.”
“Thank you,” Dad said in the voice he used when Mom gave him socks for Christmas.
“I thought you couldn't see this stuff,” I said.
Her little back stiffened. “I am seeing it most of the time, warm dolt.”
We offered her cold cuts, but she said she preferred slugs. She settled down in the middle of the table to watch us eat.
“So,” Dad said, “where are you all going to hide when the building inspector comes?”
Durindana tittered. “This will be a big surprise for the Turpini.” Her mouth turned down ever so slightly. “Lady Noctua says I may not participate. I must hide in my bed.”
“Why is that?” Mom asked, Mother Swan wings rustling.
“The Circulus will stop while your Giganteus is here.” Durindana unfurled her beautiful wings, I guess to console herself. “I cannot hold an illusion under such circumstances.”
“And the rest of them can?” Dad said.
“Yes, yes,” Durindana said irritably. “Some can store the power of the Circulus in themselves. But even they begin to lose their power after a time. The Turpini must not dawdle with this inspector.”
“Interesting,” Dad said. “The Circulus is like a power generator.”
“And the better you are at the Magica Artificia, the farther away you can tap the power,” I said. “Right, Durindana? Fidius could use it miles away in Boston, and you were right here in town and couldn't . . . um . . .”
Durindana's mouth quivered. Before any of us could say another word, she flitted out of the room. We heard her wailing as she flew down the stairs.
“Nice, Mellie,” Mom said. I did feel bad, in spite of being a warm dolt.
“Never mind,” Dad said. “Let's do the dishes.” The tap water turned out to be champagne, but Dad washed the dishes anyway, figuring alcohol was at least cleaner than mayonnaise. I tried to dry them, but the dish towels were silk and didn't absorb much. Fortunately alcohol dries fast when you wave a plate around in the air.
“Going to be interesting brushing our teeth,” Dad muttered.
The building inspector was a doofus. His name was Bruce McCarthy. He was really skinny, hunched over at the shoulders, with thick glasses, grayish skin, and chin stubble. His hair was greasy. His teeth were bad. He kept tripping over bare marble, and when you talked to him he didn't seem to be listening with his entire brain.
The oddest thing about him was that he didn't see anything odd about us. He walked into the kitchen, said, “Ooo, nice,” and just stared around. I didn't know what he was supposed to inspect, but it seemed like his main concern was that we met the gold filigree requirement.
He had this blond-haired lady with him. She had on a ton of makeup and a black linen pantsuit, which she wore with green gloves and stiletto heels that sounded like tap shoes.
“This is . . . uh,” Bruce McCarthy said.
“Gigi Kramer,” she said in that far-end-of-the-tunnel voice. “
Moi
, I am the plumbing inspector.”
You probably saw that coming. I didn't. Even though I completely remembered her visit in the pub that day and completely remembered her name, she didn't look familiar to me.
Dad, of course, had forgotten her all over again. “Plumbing inspector? Dressed like that?”
She looked deep into his eyes. His face went soft like cheese in a microwave. “Whatever you say,” he murmured. “Whatever you say.”
“We shall start in the cellar,” she purred.
“We shall start in the cellar,” Bruce McCarthy said.
“Let's start in the cellar,” Dad said. “Watch your step.” He was a zombie again. I figured I'd better stay close to him so he didn't give the inn away or promise anybody my college fund.
Bruce McCarthy jostled with Dad for the privilege of opening the door at the bottom of the stairs for Gigi Kramer. Dad lost that encounter but got to the pub door first. Now, if it had been me, I would have opened it a crack and peeked in to make sure the coast was clear. Dad threw the door open and stepped back to let Gigi Kramer sweep past him.
“
Zut alors
,” she said. “What a lovely collection.”
Mom and I hustled past Dad. The pub was freezing cold and still decked out like Versailles, the palace of the French kings. But it wasn't the temperature or the furniture you noticed first.
What you saw first was that the place was knickknack heaven. Every single surface had china figurines on it. There were hundreds of them, some in court clothes, others dressed as milkmaids or shepherds and shepherdesses. None of them had wings, and each had the same stupid smirk, nothing like real Parvi.
But just like my little china guy upstairs.
Chapter Thirteen
The Frog
MOM NUDGED ME. “Why is the plumbing inspector inspecting the liquor bottles?”
This was a good question. I didn't know where the plumbing was, but my guess would have been in the ceiling or walls. Definitely not in a bottle of whiskey.
At first I was afraid Gigi Kramer was eyeing the bottles because she knew about Grand-père's note. But then I realized she was patting her hair and admiring herself in the mirror
behind
the bottles. She really enjoyed being Gigi Kramer, plumbing inspector.
She noticed Mom and me staring at her and rolled her dead-looking eyes at us. I thought about that drop of water turning into ice on her skin. The tiny yet shouting voice. Durindana saying she was really a Small Person with Wings inside a doll.
Enough fooling around. I wanted answers.
“Mom,” I whispered, “I'm going upstairs for a minute. Don't look Gigi Kramer in the eye.”
Time to give the moonstone a real test. And while I was at it, see if my china guy really was china.
Thanks to Mom's shopping trip, the freezer was crammed full of food and the sack of coffee was buried. I was so intent on finding it and digging for the ring, I never heard the slow footsteps on the stairs.
I put the ring on. I turned around. I dang near fainted.
The moonstone was working. To my eyes, the kitchen was back to normal—no more pink silk tent, no more gold filigree or damask. Standing in the doorway, however, was . . . well, it was dressed like Gigi Kramer the plumbing inspector. But it was no longer a she. It was an it.
To be precise, it was a department store mannequin with a cheap yellow nylon wig. She—it, I mean—had seen better days. Its fiberglass skin was pitted and peeling, with a spiderweb of cracks where the head attached to the neck.
The face was frozen in a Mona Lisa smile, the shark-like eyes painted on. Each eye had a hole in the middle, so somebody could peek out.
“
Tiens
, you wear the Gemma,” the mannequin's left eye shouted. “By the expression of your face, I believe you see me as I am.”
I couldn't think of anything to say. I mean, what could you say? “Love the neck cracks”?
“Do not be concerned, Turpina,” the mannequin said. “I cannot hurt you while you wear the Gemma. Illusions are my weapon. At this moment you have none.”
I went frigid, goose bumps rising. There was a lie out there somewhere. But what was it? I had no idea.
Gee, thanks for the help, Gemmaluna.
The mannequin teetered to the kitchen table, used both hands to pull out a chair because its fingers wouldn't bend. It sat down, creaking, and pulled one leg up, bent stiffly so it could cross over the other. It waggled its foot in a flirty way, painted eyes staring.
I needed to hear my own voice. “Who are you?”
“I have told you. I am Gigi Kramer, plumbing inspector.” Somebody tittered behind the frozen Mona Lisa face.
“Who's that inside there? Are you a fair—. . . a Small Person with Wings?”
“This is not being your beeswax. Do not change the subject.”
“We don't have a subject.”
“Yes, yes, we do have a subject. You wear it on your great gigantic finger.”
Has to be a Parva
.
Who else would call a human finger great and gigantic?
“Durindana?”
“Puh. Our good lady Inepta. No indeed.”
“Why are you riding around in a fiberglass dummy?”
“Do not call me a dummy,
moi
. Why do you suppose? I want the Gemmaluna.”
That didn't make any sense. “We're probably going to give it back to you. Give us a chance to discuss it some more and then—”
“You misunderstand,” the mannequin said. “I do not wish that you will give back the Gemma, at least not to Rinaldo. I wish that you will give it to me.”
I made a fist so the ring wouldn't slide off my finger. “What good would it do you all by yourself? I thought the Parvi had to get together and drink the elixir.”
“This is what I do not wish. If I have got the Gemma, Rinaldo has not got it. All stays as it is. Give me that ring.”
I tightened my fist. “Why should I?”
“I could make you pretty,” the voice said, wheedling. “Beautiful, I could make you.”
I'm smart. That's enough.
But . . .
“Would I be thin?”
“As if you starved. With long, shiny hair of any color you desire. And a figure . . . how do you say this? . . . a figure to die for.”
I went warm. She was telling the truth.
I'll be prettier than Janine. I'll wear a push-up bra, and so what if Timmo knows about Fairy Fat. She won't exist anymore.
“What will you do with the moonstone?”

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