Small Persons With Wings (20 page)

Fidius lay down on the table with his hat over his face.

I analyzed Degas' technique, what I'd read about it and heard my parents say. I'd never gotten to talk about this stuff before. Usually people would have walked away by now.

Timmo's eyes drooped and his chin hit his chest.

“Hey!” I said, whacking him on the arm. “I'm not talking for my health.”

Timmo's head jerked up. “Could've fooled me . . . hey! You're you! Nope, nope, you're the frog again.”

I hit him again. “Concentrate, dang it!”

“Are you allowed to say that?” (I hadn't actually said “dang it.”)

“Who cares, you moron?”

“There you are again . . . Nope, you're gone . . . Yup, there you are again . . . Nope, you're—”

I couldn't think of what else to do, so I pinched his arm.

“Ow. Okay, that does work for a second.”

“Try pinching yourself.”

He did it. “Yup, it works, but not for very long.”

“So think about what I'm really like. Stop your pea brain from flitting around.”

He screwed his face up like a prune. “That works. But I can't spend the entire day thinking about what a dork you are.”

“So I have to be nasty to you all day because you can't concentrate?”

“Be yourself, I guess.”

Durindana stood up, fussing with her layers of skirt. “I see you, warm dolt.”

“You see me? The real me?”

“Yes. You are grumpy but you feed me and you are respectful to me in front of Fidius.”

Fidius stirred at the sound of his name and snorted in his sleep. Durindana tiptoed over and tenderly settled his hat back over his face.

“Look up at Mellie now,” Timmo said. “Do you still see her?”

“Yes,” Durindana said. “There she is tired and
irata . . .
how you say this . . . irritated? Angry?”

“That sounds right,” Timmo said. “But I'm back to the drooling frog. I only see her when she's talking like a jerk.”

“Are you not able to smell her?”

Okay, this could get insulting. “I thought you people couldn't smell things,” I said.

“I smell very strong smells,” Durindana said. “For the same reason that I fall from flight—I resist the Magica Artificia.” She leaned forward with an air of imparting important information. “When we met, you and your
parentes
had a strong, sharp smell. I smelled it again when we hid in that smaller room”—she pointed to the broom closet—“and after that I have been able to see you.”

What had a strong, sharp . . . ah. “Bleach,” I said. “You smelled bleach.”

“What is this bleach?”

I rummaged around in the broom closet. The bleach bottle was bone-colored damask with a gold-plated cap, but it still had its distinctive shape. I took off the cap.

“Is that it?” I held the cap out to Durindana.

She sniffed delicately and gave a little squeal. “Ooooo, yes. Bad smell. This is the one.”

I turned to Timmo. “So what do I smell like to you?”

He looked appalled. “I don't go around smelling people. You don't smell like anything.”

I slammed the bleach bottle down on the table. Some of the contents slopped out.

Timmo blinked. “Whoa. There you are.”

I frowned. “Why would bleach work for you too? Something about bleach itself, or—”

Timmo held the cap under his nose. His face lit up. “The pool! Bleach smells like chlorine in a pool.”

“So?”

“So we were standing by the pool one time when you were seriously obnoxious to me. So this smell reminds me of that, and I guess somewhere in my head that's the real you.”

“The real me is obnoxious?”

“Well, yeah. What did you think?”

“So why are you hanging around, then, if I'm so terrible?”
Like I had to ask.

“Duh. You've got fairies.”

“Small Persons with Wings,” Durindana and I said in unison.
Yup. He's here for the Parvi.

Timmo sniffed the bleach, recoiled. “Gah. That smarts. Okay, I can see you. Now what?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know just what to do about you.”

I hustled out to the breakfast room, ripped the tape off the box, grabbed a nip bottle of Scotch. I didn't bother taping the box up again. Back in the kitchen, I fixed my eyes on the grandfather clock, opened the bottle, took a deep sniff, and gagged.
Grand-père's breath when Mom made me hug him. Bottles smashing on the sidewalk, leaking stale whiskey, while I huddled in the car.

The clock was still there. Why wasn't this working?
Think, warm dolt.
My mind kept shying away, seeing the clock because that seemed like reality. I'd spent five years of my life making sure I only saw what was in front of me. Now I
needed
my imagination to see what was real.

I sniffed the bottle again.
Grand-père's breath. Broken bottles
.
C'mon brain—work! Imagine what's real!
I sniffed again. And there he was, a scrawny old man. I shuddered, and there he wasn't—he was the clock again.

I took a deep sniff, almost puked.
Broken glass. Smelly sidewalk. Breath. Ew, do I have to hug him, Mom?

And he was back. “Give me that whiskey,” he said.

“Nope.” I sniffed again, held on to the memories.

“You're a little girl . . . well, a little amphibian. Too young for that stuff.”

“I'm not drinking it. I'm using it to remind me of my male progenitor's male progenitor. Besides, if being a clock makes you stop eating, it'll make you stop drinking this stuff too.”

“Nothing will do that.” Grand-père licked his lips, staring at the bottle. I tipped it on my finger so Durindana could sniff it and see Grand-père too. To my surprise, she wrinkled her nose. “Nectar is better,” she said. “Especially when hot.”

Fidius sat up. His hat fell off. “You are drooling,” he said to me.

“You must smell her,” Durindana said.

“Inepta. I can't.”

“Don't call her that,” I said automatically. Durindana got her mask-of-tragedy look on and flitted up to sit on the toaster.

I wished Fidius could see the real me, but I was doing pretty well for the first day of a curse. The tally of people who could see me was up to four, including my parents, five if Grand-père wore the moonstone ring.

Timmo dripped bleach on a paper towel, wadded it up, and stuck it in the pocket of his T-shirt, within sniffing distance. “Now what?”

“I guess we have to tell Rinaldo we're giving back the moonstone. But what if Gigi finds out? Who knows what she'll do then?”

“Hang on.” I got out my nip bottle so I could sniff it. Timmo put the moonstone ring back on so he could see Grand-père too. “Say that again, Grand-père.”

Grumpy eyes appeared behind the clock face. The clock mutated into his bony old shape. “I said, what can she do to us now? We know how to see through her illusions.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But only if we carry the right smells around with us. If she springs something on us, what then?”

“You can handle it,” Timmo said. “You've got guts.”

I didn't feel like I had guts. Not when I thought about facing that mannequin again, especially without my mom.

Plus ... “What about Dad?” I said.

Grand-père half closed his eyes like an old lizard. “What about him?”

“Well, maybe he doesn't want to give back the moonstone. He was talking about wearing it so he'd know if people were telling the truth, bankers and things.”

“This is not his decision,” Grand-père snapped. “The head of the family has decided.”

“The head of the family is a clock.”

“With a frog for a granddaughter.”

“That's all it takes?” Timmo asked. “One person decides for the whole family?”

“Of course,” Grand-père said.

“No,” Fidius and Durindana said in unison.

“The head of the Turpini returns the Gemma,” Fidius added. “But he must do so in the presence of all his living descendants. At midnight of the full moon.”

“Nobody said a word to me about this having to be a mob scene,” Grand-père said.

Fidius put his hands over his ears to muffle the bonging of the clock. “He says nobody told him that before,” I translated.

“So,” Timmo said, “you and your family turn up in the pub at midnight. No big deal.”

“Not if Dad doesn't agree to be there.”

“He will,” Grand-père said grimly. “He'll be himself again when the full moon rises, and we don't give the moonstone back until midnight. Believe me, after living with the elixir for a day or two he won't want any part of the Gemmaluna.”

“
You
kept it all these years,” I said.

“Yes, but I rarely used it. I'm scared of the thing. The elixir killed my father and it nearly killed me. And even now”—he swallowed hard—“I cannot forget what I learned about myself.”

I was dying to ask what he'd learned, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me.

“So what happens in this ceremony, anyway?” Timmo asked.

“Nobody's ever seen it,” I said.

“This is true, Turpina,” Durindana said, “but all Parvi know the ritual. This is important magic, and the knowledge is passed from every parent to every child.”

“As I understand it,” Grand-père said, “the timing is tricky: The moonstone has to drop into a bowl of water to make the elixir precisely at midnight, at which point the Parvi lose all their powers, even the power of flight. All the illusions vanish completely. They're without any magic at all until they drink the elixir and get their original powers back.”

Hands over his ears, Fidius had been contemplating the ceiling the way you do when you memorize lines for the school play. Now he lowered his hands, unfurled the glory of his wings, and began to recite:

“At the twenty-third hour on the night of the full moon, then shall gather the Parvi Pennati, Circulus and all. Not one may be absent or the spell fails. The Turpini shall enter in all the panoply of their state, the head of their house bearing the Gemmaluna on a bed of purple and leading those who are his seed, not one of whom may be absent. The gubernator of the Parvi Pennati shall ask the Turpini: ‘Will you part with the gem of insight, legacy of the Archbishop thy progenitor, dispelling the Obligatio Turpinorum for all time?' ”

Fidius paused for breath and Durindana took over, eyes closed, wings wide. “Each one answering ‘yea,' the gubernator shall ask of his people, ‘Parvi Pennati, descendants of the Larger Gods, will you take back the gem of insight, recapturing the powers of old?' And if the Parvi Pennati answer ‘yea' with no dissenting voice, the Gemmaluna is theirs. The gubernator shall create the elixir at the twenty-fourth hour, and the people shall drink.”

Fidius spoke again. “And the Parvi Pennati shall drink the elixir each full moon thereafter, replenishing their powers. And they shall be humble before the universe, making their way by native wit and power, until the earth does swallow them up and the world does end.”

I thought about Grand-père leading us into the pub in all our panoply. I wasn't sure what “panoply” was, but it sounded like I might have to wear a dress.

“What's ‘panoply'?” Timmo asked.

“A costume of gold,” Durindana said. “With emeralds and much lace.”

“Silk stockings of a whiteness to dazzle the eye,” Fidius said.

“Bunch of folderol,” Grand-père said. “Fancy duds, the moonstone on a purple cushion.”

“Turpini, all foofed up,” Durindana said.

Yup. A dress.

“FULL MOON IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, seventeen minutes,” Timmo said, handing back the ring at the street door an hour later.

I slipped it on my finger, trying to think of a way to ask him . . . something. I didn't know what, only that it would come out dweebish. “I wish I could talk to my parents,” I said instead. “What if Gigi finds out we're giving this thing back, and fools them into hurting themselves?”

“How can she fool them when they've drunk the elixir?”

“Okay, maybe she'll fool me. They wouldn't like that either. And when do I tell the Parvi we're giving it back? Gigi will know right away.”
Especially if she's Noctua.

This was impossible. How was I supposed to get through the next twenty-four hours and seventeen minutes without my parents? What if they jumped off something in the meantime?

I'd never felt so alone in my life.

“I'll come back in the morning,” Timmo said, “and . . . I dunno, help.”

To my surprise, this was good news. I rubbed the moonstone with my thumb for luck, and asked, “Why do you care what happens to me? Us, I mean.”

He shrugged. “You need help. And you've got fairies. And I've got nothing better to do.”

I chilled, but just slightly. Something wasn't quite the truth. I didn't need help? I didn't have fairies? He actually did have something better to do?

This truth-detecting thing probably worked better with yes or no questions.

Grand-père was alone when I returned to the kitchen, ring still on my finger. “I want to be in my bed,” he said.