Small Persons With Wings (19 page)

The footsteps stopped in the reception lounge. “Where the heck did all this fancy stuff come from?” Chief Wright said.

“Hi Dad.” Timmo looked as if he'd rather be anywhere else.

“Spaceshot? I thought you were cleaning the garage.”

Timmo backed up so I couldn't see him anymore. “Hi Dad,” he repeated.

I imagined Chief Wright standing in the kitchen doorway, taking in the pink tent and the gold filigree. “How the heck did they do this so fast? I was just up here this morning.”

“Fairies did it,” Timmo said.

“Don't sass me.”

“We are not fairies,” Durindana whispered in my ear. “We are—”

“Shhhh.”

“Geez.” Chief Wright stepped into the kitchen. “There's a freakin' grandfather clock sitting on a freakin' chair.” Which was when I realized Dad wasn't out of the woods as a murder suspect. As long as Grand-père looked like a clock, nothing would convince Chief Wright that he wasn't in an urn someplace.

“Mr. Turpin's trying to fix that clock,” Timmo said. “It bongs when it should
just shut up
.” This was clever of Timmo, I had to admit. To my surprise, Grand-père did shut up.

“Oh yeah? Where
is
Mr. Turpin? Where's everybody, for that matter?”

“They . . . went to the store,” Timmo said. “They needed milk.”

“All of them? And they left you here?”

“Somebody had to watch the corn.” Timmo came back into view, turned down the flame under Grand-père's fancy pot. “I'll do the garage tomorrow. I swear.”

Chief Wright swooped down on Timmo. I flinched, but all he did was grab Timmo's hand and hold it up. “What's this? A ring?”

Timmo pulled his hand away. “It's not mine. I only—”

“You only what? You sneak over here so you can wear RINGS?”

“I didn't sneak, Mom knows I'm here. I was trying it on—it was Mellie's grandfather's.”

“Oh, sharing the loot. Let me see that thing.”

Timmo hesitated. His father lunged for his hand again. Timmo gave up and handed over the ring. “
Servate me!”
Durindana whispered.

“Very pretty,” Chief Wright said. “You could wear it to police academy. Guys would be so impressed.” He stuck the ring on the end of his pinky.

He snatched it off again, pressing his hand to his heart.

The kitchen must have turned normal for an instant, with Grand-père sitting where the clock had been and a raggedy Small Person with Wings playing statue on the table.

Timmo, pasty white behind his freckles, got a knowing smirk on his face that made me wonder if he'd gone over the edge. “You okay, Dad? You looked like you saw a ghost.”

“Is there a drug on this thing?” Chief Wright whispered. “There must be a drug.”

“A drug on a ring? How could that be?” Timmo took the ring, put it on. “See? I'm fine.”

“Yeah, but . . . but I . . . all this stuff . . .”

“Yeah. Um. Here's the thing. Dad. It's just that ... the human mind can't take in too much pink, I read that online. Too much pink'll shut you down, especially when somebody's been working too hard, like you.”

“Pink,” Chief Wright said in a wispy voice. He let out a breath and sat down hard on a chair. I could see only his feet now. “I don't want you hanging around here, son. These people worry me. There's something strange going on and I don't want you mixed up in it.”

Timmo examined his shoes. “I like them. Mom said I could stay for supper.”

“I don't share your taste,” Chief Wright said. Timmo didn't respond. “Listen, Spaceshot, I know you can't see it now, but I only want what's best for you.”

“Dad,” Timmo said wearily. “I keep telling you, I don't want to be a cop.”

“I didn't think I did either. But now I wouldn't be anything else.”

“Can't Eileen be the cop?” Timmo's voice trembled. I hoped he wouldn't embarrass me.

“Eileen wants to be a doctor.”

“I want to be an astronaut.”

Chief Wright let out a long, slow breath. “That's a hard road, son. I want you to try something we know you can succeed at.”

“I'm good at math,” Timmo said in a small voice.

“I know you are, boy. That's why I think you'll make a great cop.” Chief Wright stood up, came back into view. “You coming home for supper?”

“I told you. Mom said I could eat here.”

Chief Wright peered around at all the foofiness, as if it could attack him. “Yeah. Well. Come home right after. And tomorrow let's do something, maybe go fishing. How about it?”

“I have to clean the garage.”

“Oh. That's right.” Chief Wright turned from his son and walked out of my sight. The floor creaked in the reception lounge. “Keep that ring off you, boy.” Heavy footsteps hit the stairs.

Timmo held up his hand and waggled his forefinger with the ring on it, almost a rude gesture.

I emerged from the broom closet, Durindana clinging to my sweatshirt. Some ancient, buried, nicer Mellie arose unexpectedly. “You were amazing. I freaked when he put the ring on and saw everything. That stuff you said about pink was brilliant.”

My face went hot. My body was not used to me giving people compliments.

But Timmo wasn't looking at me. “Dad only believes what he already thinks.”

Fidius turned back into himself. “To answer your question, Turpina, I will have slugs in truffle sauce.”

“Crickets with thistle seeds,” Durindana said dreamily.

“We have chicken and frozen corn,” I said.

While a silent Timmo helped me crumble chicken onto two tiny plates, Fidius gave Durindana a brief lecture on The Brilliance of the Gigantes. I remembered how much he used to love appliances, especially the DVD player.

“This thing we're sitting on,” he said to her rapt attention, “is called a toadster. The Gigantes mash grains into a large mound, bake it and slice it, and the toadster cooks it brown and crusty. This is Gigantes magic, Electricity, applied with Know-How and Can-Do Spirit.” He rapped on the toaster with his knuckles. “See? As real as rock, except now that the Parvi Pennati have covered it with freakin' gold filigree.”

“This object was very ugly before the Lady Noctua worked her magic,” Durindana said.

“But it makes real food,” Fidius said. “With a satisfying crunch.”

I handed him and Durindana each a plate of crumbled chicken with mashed corn and mashed grains, otherwise known as bread. The Parvi extracted golden utensils from the pouches hanging at their sides and settled down on the tabletop. Durindana held her tiny golden fork with her pinky up and dropped most of her chicken into her lap.

I took the ring back so I could talk to Grand-père. The kitchen unfoofed itself and the two Parvi went raggedy. Durindana had on a long tunic of filthy burlap. It was odd to see them simply keep eating, unconcerned about their change in appearance.

“Want to try some dinner?” I asked Grand-père.

“I wouldn't touch that offal you're serving.”

“You're welcome,” I said.

The chicken was a disappointment. It tasted dry and ... I dunno, unflylike. And I couldn't chew it—I had to take bits that were small enough to swallow whole.
But this is an illusion—why can't I eat? I'm still human underneath, right?

Timmo put his fork down. “Can I wear the ring again? The drooling puts me off.”

I started a new tally: (1) We were infested with Parvi, plus rampant gold filigree; (2) I was a frog; (3) My parents probably were contemplating suicide; (4) My grandfather was a clock; (5) Chief Wright thought my dad had murdered my grandfather, and I couldn't prove otherwise. (See item 4.)

And, at the center of it all, (6) Gigi Kramer, the fiberglass real estate lady/plumbing inspector. Who might really be Lady Noctua, but I didn't feel like bringing that up with the two Parvi there. It would be like bad-mouthing Santa Claus.

Something had to be done about it all, though.

“Right,” I said. Timmo looked up, chewing. “We have three choices: One, give the moonstone back to the Parvi; two, give it to Gigi Kramer; or three, keep it. If we give the ring to the Parvi they get their senses back and they fix up the inn, but Gigi Kramer keeps doing bad things to us. If we give it to Gigi Kramer, the Parvi keep losing their senses and probably die, but maybe she'll turn Grand-père and me back into ourselves.”

“But maybe she won't,” Timmo said.

“True. If we keep it, the Parvi keep decaying, my parents spend my college fund fixing up the inn, and Grand-père stays a clock and your dad arrests my dad for murdering him. Oh, and I keep eating flies. Which taste like sausage, by the way.”

“If you give us the Gemma back and we stop the Circulus,” Durindana said, “the bad Parva in the walking doll will lose the Magica Artificia along with the rest of us. And then the Turpini once again will look like Turpini.”

Sounded good to me. “Okay, so we have to give it back. But we can't give it back until the full moon, right? Which is . . .”—I jumped up and found the tide chart, beautifully done up in parchment and gold leaf—“. . . which is tomorrow night. Phew—that's not so bad. In the meantime, though, how do we keep Gigi Kramer from attacking us right and left?”

“She can't do anything real to you,” Timmo said. “She didn't turn you into an
actual
frog.”

“Yeah, but what if she makes some illusion that drives us nuts, forces us to do things? Jump off the roof or something?”

Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong.
“Translation?” I said.

“He says, don't forget Magica Mala. That mannequin, Gigi, shouldn't be able to move, and you shouldn't be eating flies. There's more going on here than Magica Artificia alone.”

“I wondered why he didn't have to pee for two months.”

“And,” Timmo translated, “whoever's driving the mannequin must be a powerful
maga
, because she visited here before the Parvi were downstairs. That means she was tapping the power of the Circulus at full strength from a distance.”

I thought about what a mess Durindana had been in the same circumstances. “How do we protect ourselves from somebody who can do that?”

Timmo hesitated. I raised my eyebrows at him. “Okay,” he said, “but remember I'm not the one saying this. Mr. Turpin says even an amphibian should be able to extrapolate. ‘Extrapolate' means using what you know to figure out what you don't know.”

“I know what it means.”

“Okay, so what do we know?”

I pondered the two Parvi, who had finished eating and were grooming their wings. “Well, we know Magica Artificia and Magica Mala create illusion, and the moonstone lets you see through that illusion. And if more than one person wants to see through it, they drink the moonstone elixir.”

“But then they get weirded out like your parents,” Timmo said.

“Yeah. I guess if we want to protect more than one human from Gigi Kramer, we have to do what the elixir does except without the elixir.”

Bong, bong, bong.
“He says you're not as dumb as you look,” Timmo said.

First nice thing Grand-père ever said to me. Too bad he was made of wood at the time and I didn't hear the words. I did hear the tone—those bongs sounded like Grand-père: raspy, brusque, ill-tempered. You could turn Grand-père into a succession of inanimate objects and he'd be the same cantankerous old man.

I looked at the clock, thinking about what a grump Grand-père always was, and for a second I thought the clock face had eyes. I blinked, looked again. Nope. Just a clock sitting on a chair.

Bong, bong, bong.
“Impossible to be as dumb as you look right now,” Timmo translated.

Hard to believe a clock's chime could sound so snide. Just like Grand-père. I contemplated the clock face, thought about the nasty notes he'd left us, whiskey bottles smashing on the sidewalk, the way Dad always said, “Ogier, sheesh.”

And it happened again, that fleeting glimpse of a human face behind the clock hands.

“Timmo,” I said. “Take the ring off a second. I've got an idea.”

TIMMO TOOK OFF THE RING, GRIMACING AS I turned back into Mellie the Frog.

“Listen,” I said. “Is there anything about me that hasn't changed? That reminds you of what I'm really like?”

He frowned. “Well, your voice, I guess. And what you say, what a grumphead you are sometimes—it's definitely you in there somewhere.”

Exactly what I'd thought about Grand-père, which was unsettling, but I couldn't let it distract me. “So keep looking at me and—”

“Do I have to? You're drooling again.”

“You know, nobody asked you to butt into all this. If you don't want to help, go home and let us solve our problems without the nosy neighbors, thank you very much. First you weasel your way in here, then you—”

“Hey!” Timmo said. “You were yourself for a second. You kind of flickered.”

The hair went up on my arms. My real arms, I mean—my waxy green ones didn't have hair. Anyway, I was excited. “Try to concentrate on who I am. I'm going to talk about Degas.”

It's not often I have such an attentive audience when discussing nineteenth-century French art. I talked about how Degas started losing his eyesight in his fifties and still kept working and working. And he painted a woman in a bath and sad people in bars and ballerinas and ballerinas and ballerinas, which he also made sculptures of when he was half-blind.