Small Persons With Wings (27 page)

The Parvi screamed, and Noctua buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Rinaldo didn't make a sound, just swayed in place, eyes closed.

But I knew who it was, and Timmo did too. “Mellie,” he said. I didn't reply, because talking about it would make it real.

I stepped toward Gigi. “Stop this. Please.”

She raised her hand. “Mind your own business, Fairy Fat.”

But her hand was shiny. My own hand was a fainter shade of green. I squinted at Gigi. Was that a neck crack?

Durindana, Timmo, and I must have had the same thought at the same time. Without exchanging even a glance, the three of us charged, Durindana tumbling into Gigi's forehead while Timmo and I hurled ourselves at her torso, shoving her hard.

“No!” Gigi shrieked. She fell, her head hitting the bar with a sickening crack. She sat up immediately, but her head hung off her shoulders like a hood.

I managed not to puke by reminding myself that this was a mannequin, not an actual person.

The outside door banged open: Timmo's dad and his sister, Eileen. “What the frig is going on in here?” Chief Wright shouted. He did not actually say “frig.”

They saw me, a human-sized frog who might or might not be growing a nose. They saw Timmo—out of bed at midnight, dressed like Dracula, surrounded by five hundred Small Persons with Wings and Grand-père, who had grown human legs but still had a clock face.

Chief Wright sagged onto Eileen, whose face twisted with annoyance. Then Eileen noticed Gigi Kramer sitting on the floor with her head hanging backward, and that was too much even for a blonde with perfect makeup. Eileen's eyes slid back into her head.

“They're fainting!” Dad and Mom got there just in time—he caught Chief Wright while Mom got Eileen. They managed to lower father and daughter to the floor.

Timmo was rooted in place. The expression on his face reminded me of
The Scream,
painted in 1893 by Edvard Munch, who . . . Yeah, never mind. Anyway. Timmo looked horrified. “What'll we do?” he moaned. “They saw everything.”

Dad was chewing his lip, sometimes a sign of brain activity. “Magica Mala,” he said. “It's the only way.”

“No. No,” Rinaldo said weakly, struggling to sit up on the bar. Noctua supported him, cooing. The Parvi launched into an agitated murmur. Gigi Kramer fell over sideways and lay on the floor, inert and increasingly plastic.

Mom slipped the moonstone ring off the mannequin‘s finger and held it clenched in her fist.

“I know it's forbidden, Rinaldo,” Dad said. “But these Gigantes can't know about you—they'll put you in a zoo or something.”

“A glass jar,” I said. “Like Fidius.” All around me, Parvi sucked in their breath.

Durindana joined Rinaldo and Noctua on the bar for a spirited Latin debate. At last, Noctua rose majestically into the air. “I will do this thing. My morals may withstand such an onslaught.”

I wasn't standing all that close, but I was pretty sure Durindana rolled her eyes.

“Uh,” Timmo said. “I'm sorry, but won't the Magica Mala wear off without a Circulus? Like, by tomorrow?”

Lady Noctua looked down her nose at him. “
Tiens
. It is simple, Timothy Oliver. The Circulus shall begin again, long enough to enchant the minds of the Gigantes and send them to their beds. When they wake tomorrow they will believe they dreamed us.” She gestured, and a handful of Circulus members began whirring around for one last power-surge.

Timmo didn't look convinced. “It'll be fine,” I whispered. “You said your dad only believes what he already thinks. He'll
want
to believe he dreamed us.”

And then I was struck by a blisteringly brilliant idea.
It might even work.
I whispered it to Durindana, who consulted Lady Noctua and gave me an encouraging nod.

We Gigantes scuttled the Wrights into their moonlit backyard, draped them in deck chairs by the pool. Noctua hovered at Eileen's nose, snapped her fingers. “
Vigila!
” Eileen's eyes opened, unfocused. Noctua hovered close, staring into her right eye. She murmured in Latin. I heard “
oblivium
,” which sounded like it had to do with forgetting.

“How about making Eileen forget the whole Fairy Fat thing?” Timmo whispered.

Wow. Great idea
. I opened my mouth to ask, but then I remembered that I was a Stoic descended from a warrior archbishop. “Nah,” I whispered back. “I'll deal with it.”

Eileen got up and walked like a zombie toward the sliding glass door. Noctua moved on to Chief Wright, again muttering in Latin I couldn't catch. Except toward the end, when the stream of words slowed down, I thought I heard “
filius
” and “
nauta ad stellas
.”

“Son,” I found out later. And “sailor to the stars.”
Cool. My idea turned into Latin.

Chief Wright followed his daughter into the house. When he woke up, he'd think he dreamed about fairies. And about the heroic astronaut who was his son.

GIGI KRAMER WAS RIGHT WHERE WE LEFT HER. I couldn't stop myself—I prodded her head with my toe. “Mellie,” Mom said warningly.

The head twitched. A bump appeared under the nylon wig, traveling south. And then he crawled out from behind Gigi's ear, his velvet coat already burlap, his black hair ribbon gone, his hair in disarray. He sat down on Gigi's nose, exhausted, rubbing his head where he'd banged it in the mannequin's fall.

Fidius, my imaginary friend.

Bad enough that he had turned me into a frog. Sick, sick, sick that he had made Rinaldo destroy his own wings. And he'd tried to kill my parents. Kill them! My parents!

But what really, really hurt me, made my eyes sting just thinking about it, was Fidius calling me “Fairy Fat.”

“
Mendax
!” Durindana shrieked at him, Lady Noctua holding her back by the skirt. “
Proditor
!”

“Liar. Traitor,” Mom translated.

Durindana burst into tears and dove back to my shoulder, where she huddled against my turtleneck. I couldn't offer comfort without freezing me or squishing her. Plus, if I moved at all I'd find myself picking Fidius up and drop-kicking him like a football.

I must have looked upset, because Timmo put an arm around me and gave me a quick squeeze, careful not to crush Durindana. Unlike Benny in Boston, he meant it. I didn't need the moonstone to tell me that.

The Parvi were so quiet you could hear their wings beating. A thousand beady little eyes homed in on Fidius—some of the faces frowned slightly, already recovering from the Magica Artificia.

Rinaldo struggled to his feet and broke the silence, speaking in Latin. Durindana pulled herself together and translated into my ear: “Gubernator Rinaldo says, because the Parvi Pennati must not harm others, and must not use the Magica Mala for unnatural control of persons and objects, Fidius is no longer one of the Parvi Pennati. He must leave this place. We will never see him again.”

Fidius's pretty mouth took on the hint of a sneer. “I survived exile before, I will again,” he said in English. “I need no one.”

Rinaldo switched to English too. “Yes, Fidius? Do you not require magic to fly? Where is this magic to come from, if there is no Circulus and you do not drink the elixir with us?”

“Pah! You forget, you
magi
, how long I have pursued the Magica Mala. For years I sought power to protect us all, small against large, Parvi against Gigantes. But then you drove me away, and I studied merely to protect myself from all of you. Melissa Angelica Turpin will tell you of my experiments, miles away from the Circulus.”
A galloping My Little Pony. Swaying palm trees on my wall.
“I will find a way. Always.”

“You deceive yourself,” Rinaldo said. “As we have seen this very night, the Magica Mala fades without the power of the Circulus.”

Fidius shrugged and said nothing.

Rinaldo reverted to Latin, and Durindana took up the translation again. “Gubernator Rinaldo says we are not murderers. He says we will make the elixir at midnight of each full moon, and when we have drunk of it ourselves we will leave it under the sky to become one with the air as ritual requires. If Fidius wishes to drink of it then, no one will stop him. Thus may he fly and care for himself in the world.”

Wings fluttering, Lady Noctua allowed herself to drift toward Fidius. She stretched out a hand to him, spoke in Latin. “Twice in recent days, Fidius has befuddled her with Magica Mala, keeping her from her place among the Parvi,” Durindana said, “but still the Lady Noctua is very sad. Fidius showed promise, and his parents were beloved members of the Parvi Pennati.”

Fidius unfurled his beautiful wings, flapped up to confront Noctua. “
Tiens
,” he said—and he did sound exactly like her. “
Zut, zut, zut
. If that was love, I prefer hate.”

He pivoted toward my parents and me, raised his hand in farewell. “Turpini.” He flew through the mail slot, but then poked his head back in. “I give you the Gemma, by the way. You did not think of that, Rinaldo, did you?” And he was gone.

“Sheesh,” Dad said. “He's right. He was still the owner.”

Durindana stroked my hair. I felt numb.

A clump of flowers dropped from a nearby lady's gown, fizzled into nothing. My hands were normal color. Soon, it would be as if Fidius never existed.

“I . . .
bong, bong . . .
hate to intrude,” Ogier said, his mouth visible under the big hand. “But anybody got a . . .
bong . . .
watch?”

“Eleven forty-seven,” Timmo said. “I set my watch by the U.S. Navy online.”

I had a watch too, but it was upstairs in the top drawer of my bureau. I wasn't sure it was set right.
We need a computer. I don't care what Dad thinks.

“We better get this show on the road,” Dad said.

Mom put the moonstone ring on the bar next to Rinaldo. The gubernator flapped his poor, ruined half-wings and rose four inches from the bar, but crashed down again. Noctua fluttered over to support him. “Rest your poor wings, consort.”

Rinaldo straightened his shoulders, stepped away from her. Standing on the bar, he lifted the moonstone ring high, showed it to the Parvi. “
Magi
.
Venite
,” he said.

“He asks the
magi
to join him,” Durindana translated.

Ten or so ladies and gentlemen fluttered out of the crowd, a couple of them from Noctua's crew, still huddled at the far end of the bar. They weren't dressed in any special way, but they all had one thing in common—while buttons and plumes disappeared from the other Parvi, the
magi's
clothing was unchanged. They were the best of the lot when it came to the Magica Artificia.

Which meant they had the most to lose.

“Will Lady Noctua agree to take back the moonstone?” I whispered to Durindana.

“No one knows what she and her followers will do. If they say no, the ceremony fails.”

Rinaldo raised the moonstone, spoke in Latin. “You, Parvi Pennati,” Durindana whispered, “descendants of the Larger Gods, will you take back the gem of insight, recapturing the powers of old?”

Silence. All over the room, Small Persons with Wings fluffed the lace at their wrists and rearranged their skirts, even as flounces fell off, jewels disintegrated, silks faded back into rags.

Lady Noctua unfurled her wings in all their glory. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she stood straight and tall. “I have been by the sea this day, as yesterday, watching the Gigantes. They fling their arms up, face to the sun, and say, ‘Smell that air!' I wish to smell the air. I will live alone with my Rinaldo by the sea, even without my silks and jewels.”

She turned to her people at the end of the bar. “Therefore, although I wished to prevent this day from coming, I say before you all . . . Yea!”

“Yea!” Rinaldo and the other
magi
shouted.

“Yea!” Durindana called from my shoulder, waving her arms. “Yea!”

The crowd was silent.

“Freedom, my Parvi Pennati,” Rinaldo said softly. “The taste of food, the scent of the earth. No longer the elbows bumping, the Circulus humming in the night. Silence and stars, solitude, the Magica Vera shaping the real.”

Rinaldo raised his arm like a band leader. “Now, my Parvi Pennati. We shall work magic together, one more time.”

Here and there, a little lady straightened her shoulders, a little gentleman set his jaw. They stopped fawning over their clothes. Everyone, in the air and on the bar, watched Rinaldo's hand, raised above his head.

He swept it down.

“Yea!” they cried, in one tinny voice.

Everyone looked at everyone else, but nothing changed except the gentle fraying of lace.

“What time is it?” Grand-père's face was almost back to normal except for a 12 on his forehead and the stubborn pair of clock hands at the end of his nose. They said four twenty-eight.

“Three minutes to twelve,” Timmo said.

“
Aqua!
” Noctua squealed. Water.

“
Vide
, see!” Durindana called, pointing to a large porcelain bowl. “Quickly! Quickly!”

Durindana took one of Rinaldo's arms, Noctua the other. They hauled him into the air, moonstone ring in his hands. His people stayed where they were, eyes fixed on that moonstone.

“Give us a countdown, Timmo,” Dad said.

“Two minutes, five seconds,” Timmo said, intent on his watch. “One minute, fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-four. Forty-nine. Forty—”