The Secret Janara

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  And—and—they are cheering. For Rosa? She caught the boar!

  She won.

  Primo feels his heart sink.

  The loudest cheering of all is coming from Poppa, standing right next to Primo. He’s whooping and whistling.

  “Why are you cheering like that for her?”

  “Because I bet half the town a scudo she’d win!” Poppa says. “We’re rich!”

  “You bet against me?” Primo says.

  “Son, I love you with all my heart,” Poppa says, still clapping. “But let’s be serious—you’re not half as strong or as fast as Rosa!”

  3

  THE HEAD OF DIANA

  IT’S late and Primo is home, sitting in the dark, staring at the head of Diana. Not that he can see her. Although the moon is full, only its glow seeps through the clouds covering the night sky.

  His costume is dirty and torn, and Primo himself is filthy and scraped up. The only wound he feels, however, is from losing.

  Off in the distance, he can hear the noise of the feast. Primo couldn’t take being at the party, what with everyone celebrating Rosa. How many times could they toast a person? And how many times could she tell the same stupid story about tying up the boar? Didn’t they realize it was only because the boar was tired that she was able to nab it? Primo would’ve caught that boar twice as fast as her if he’d gotten a second chance!

  That dirty rotten Rosa, always stealing his glory. She shouldn’t even have been in the contest in the first place! It was for boys, not girls. And why were they making such a big deal out of her winning, anyway? Didn’t they know she already won every race? Every feat of strength? Big deal if she won this, too!

  As usual, Isidora wanted to leave the party early, and for once Primo went with her. Everyone else is now asleep except Poppa, and who knows when he will make it home, if he makes it home at all.

  Poppa! Primo is the maddest at him. What father bets against his own son?

  Even his magic ring betrayed Primo. It may have once saved him from a Manalonga, but it sure didn’t help today!

  All of a sudden, the room floods with light, as the clouds part away from the moon like a curtain. A beam of pale light hits the head of Diana, and now Primo can see her marble face.

  And he notices something.

  Diana’s face—it’s different. She isn’t looking down. She’s looking up.

  That’s weird! Primo thinks. How could that have happened? He touches the statue fragment and pushes at it. It’s loose.

  Loose?

  He puts both hands on the head and rocks it back and forth. He then draws the stone out of its resting place—CREEEAK!—and almost drops it to the floor. It’s heavy!

  He stares at the hole where the head had been. With the moonlight shining, he can see that there’s something inside. Is it just a rock?

  He sticks his hand in. It’s not a rock.

  What he pulls out is a jar. A small clay jar. It is plugged up by a cork and has some kind of liquid inside. Primo pulls out the cork and is hit by a smell. Skeevo!

  It’s so foul he stoppers the jar right back up again. What could it possibly be?

  Then he realizes.

  It’s a jar of magic oil. Witch oil.

  Unguento!

  His heart skips a beat.

  He knows who the Janara lives with.

  The Janara lives with HIM!

  4

  TO TRAP A WITCH

  “WAKE UP!”

  Primo brings his head bolt upright. “I’m awake! I’m awake!”

  “What is wrong with you, toad!” Isidora says. “Why did you sleep on a barrel?”

  “I was tired,” Primo says, rubbing his eyes.

  “Yeah, I guess getting chased around by a boar will wear you out.”

  She smiles meanly.

  He hates Isidora! Maybe if she were nicer Primo would let her in on the big secret. But she is the last person he’d tell about the unguento. She’d blab to the adults and make all kinds of trouble.

  No, this secret is only for his cousins.

  And he can’t wait to tell them!

  Primo had thought about running back to the party and bringing the jar for them to see. But what if the Janara came to use it and found the jar missing? That’d ruin any chance Primo had of catching them in the act, so he stayed up all night waiting for them. (Or tried to.)

  At breakfast, Maria Beppina asks Primo how he’s doing.

  “I’m great!” Primo says.

  “Oh good! I thought you might be upset about losing,” she says. “To Rosa.”

  Primo leans over to whisper to Maria Beppina. “I found out something that more than makes up for it!” he says. “Meet me at the stand with the Twins and I’ll tell you!”

  Poppa never made it home last night, so Primo has to go in search of him. He finds him asleep on the pageant stage, still in costume, his mouth wide open in a snore. It’s all Primo can do to drag him to the stand.

  Opening up, Poppa is grumpy about being back at work after having spent such a glorious week working on the stage.

  Not that he stays long. Before all the tomatoes are even laid out, he mumbles that he has to go do something.

  “Official business,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

  But Primo knows he won’t.

  Maria Beppina arrives before the Twins, and Primo tells her to wait there.

  “I have to go grab something!” he says. “If the Twins come, don’t let them leave!”

  “What if a customer comes?” she calls after him.

  “Don’t let them leave either!”

  Back at home, Isidora is outside weaving. Primo sneaks past her and—after checking to make sure Momma isn’t around—grabs hold of the head of Diana and, twist, CREEEAK, grab, he has the jar. He puts the head back in place and returns to the stand as fast as he can.

  By the time he gets there, the Twins have arrived.

  Perfect.

  Rosa comes at him all gloating, and Primo relishes ruining her moment.

  He tells them what he found, and what it means.

  “The Janara lives . . . with ME!”

  He waits for them to be blown away.

  But they are not.

  “So where is this Janara oil, then?” Rosa says.

  “It’s right here!” Primo says, holding up the jar.

  “Skeevo!” Rosa says after Primo uncorks it. “It stinks!”

  “I know whose it is, too!” Primo says. “Nonna Jovanna’s!”

  “How do you know?” Emilio says.

  “I just do!” Primo says. “It’s gotta be hers!”

  “Even if it is,” Maria Beppina says, “it might just be one of her remedies. For growing hair or removing warts or something.”

  “Well, why would she hide it, then?” Primo says, putting on a sour face.

  “That jar might not have been hidden by anyone we know,” Emilio says. “It could’ve been in there for hundreds of years. Thousands even.”

  “Then how did the head of Diana get turned the wrong way?” Primo says, explaining how he found it. “Someone had to have just moved it!”

  “Are you sure about that, donkey brains?” Rosa says. “Maybe you just forgot which way it was facing.”

  “Look, why can’t you all just accept it? This is witch oil and someone in my family is a Janara!” Primo says. “And I know how to prove it!”

  * * *

  Primo’s plan is simple.

  Whoever put that jar in the wall also put the head of Diana back wrong. When Primo points out this mistake, the shocked and flustered look on the guilty person’s face will tell him that that is who the Janara is.

  “What head?” Nonna Jovanna says. “Of who?”

  “That head of Diana right there,” Primo says, poin
ting.

  “Oh, look at that!” his grandmother says. “Why, I never noticed that before! Is it new?”

  Primo asks Momma next. “What is this stupid nonsense?” she says. “It’s the same as it’s ever been!”

  Poppa is even more emphatic.

  “I’ve lived in this house my entire life and I promise you that that head has always been facing up!”

  He crosses his arms to show that that’s the end of it.

  Has she always been facing up? Primo wonders. He starts to doubt himself.

  But his parents never notice anything, and whoever the Janara is must also be a great liar, otherwise how could they have kept the secret all this time? And that liar has to be Nonna Jovanna!

  Her whole I-never-noticed-that-before must be an act. Primo decides to ask her directly. Probably she won’t even mind Primo finding out. Maybe she’ll be happy! Primo is her favorite grandchild, after all. (It sure isn’t Isidora.) Maybe she’ll even show him some real spells!

  “Look, Nonna,” Primo says the next time he can get her alone. “I know.”

  “What?” she says, practically shouting.

  “I know,” he repeats, with a wink.

  “You know what?”

  “That you’re a . . .” Primo looks around. And whispers: “Janara.”

  “A tomato?” Nonna Jovanna says. “Why yes, I’d love a tomato, thank you!”

  She then stirs some salt into the coffee she’s making.

  Maybe it’s not her.

  But who then?

  It can’t be Momma, Primo thinks. It just wouldn’t be right for mothers to be Janara.

  (Besides, the last time Primo tried asking her if she was a Janara, Momma chased him around with a frying pan trying to brain him .)

  No, it makes much more sense that the Janara is Poppa.

  After all, Poppa does act suspicious. He’s never at the stand, and he’s always getting Primo to lie to Momma for him. And just where does he go all the time? He always claims it’s related to business, but Primo knows that’s never true either.

  The only way to find out is to secretly follow him.

  Maria Beppina wants no part of it, and not Emilio either. Rosa, however, is game.

  The next morning they meet early. When Poppa goes off, Primo and Rosa sneak after him, leaving Maria Beppina in charge of the stand.

  Poppa claimed to be going to Vipera to settle his account with the oil presser, but he doesn’t even turn down the street that leads to the arch. Instead, he doubles back around and returns to the Triggio, ending up at Renzo the Barber’s.

  Poppa sits down for a shave and then he and Renzo switch places, with the barber playing the mandolin in the chair while Poppa rubs Renzo’s bald head and sings.

  That done, Poppa heads out in the direction of the Twins’, stopping at the Tavern at the Fork. He buys some lotto tickets and sits down for a few rounds of the Game of the Goose with the old men who always hang around there.

  Next, Poppa heads out back to play bocce in the dusty courtyard. After three games, he walks farther on down the lane to the winemaker’s, where he has a couple of glasses of rosolio, lies down under a fig tree, and takes a nap.

  “Okay,” Rosa says to Primo as they walk back to the stand. “The Janara is definitely not your dad.”

  * * *

  That night, Poppa brings home eel for dinner. When Momma starts to complain, Poppa tells her how much money he won from betting on Rosa. Momma actually throws her arms around Poppa and kisses him.

  Skeevo.

  “Let that be a lesson to you, son,” Poppa says to Primo. “Never underestimate a girl.”

  “Yeah, little brother,” Isidora says. “Especially one who always kicks your butt!”

  Primo is grumpy beyond grumpy.

  “If only you knew what I know,” Primo says under his breath.

  “What did you say, toad?”

  “Nothing,” Primo grumbles.

  It’s hot and miserable in the kitchen, which just adds to the misery Primo feels inside, so he gobbles down the eel and excuses himself to bed.

  The worst part is that Primo is starting to think that Emilio and Maria Beppina are right. Maybe that jar has been in that wall for a thousand years. Or maybe it’s not unguento at all. None of his family could possibly be a Janara. They’re all just too . . . themselves. He bangs his head against the pillow, thinking that nothing amazing is ever going to happen to him.

  But he’s wrong.

  Something amazing is about to happen to him. Right now.

  Are you ready for it?

  It may be the steamy July heat that keeps Primo from sleeping soundly, or maybe that sound would wake him up no matter what.

  CREEEAK.

  He sits up with a start. He knows that noise.

  The head of Diana is being moved!

  Is anyone missing from the bed? It’s too dark to tell.

  He himself gets out of the bed, quietly.

  He creeps along the dirt floor, quietly.

  In the kitchen, someone is carefully placing the head of Diana down on the ground.

  They are reaching into the wall.

  They are pulling out the jar.

  The cork pops, and the smell of the unguento reaches Primo from across the room.

  The person turns to the moonlight to see what they are doing.

  And Primo sees their face.

  5

  THE JANARA IS . . .

  “ISIDORA!”

  She looks just as shocked as her brother.

  “You! You’re the Janara!” Primo says. “I can’t believe it!”

  “What? No!” Isidora says.

  “Then why are you holding that jar of witch oil?” Primo says.

  “This? This isn’t witch oil! This is just medicine that Nonna Jovanna gave me,” Isidora says. “For when I can’t sleep!”

  “I have to say, you’re a lot cooler than I thought, being a Janara and all,” Primo says. “And the way you kept it a secret! Wow! I can’t wait to tell everyone!”

  A look of terror comes to Isidora’s face

  “You can’t!” she says. “You can’t tell anyone!”

  “A-ha!” Primo says. “So you admit it! You are a Janara!”

  Primo grabs her by the hair.

  “OW!” Isidora says, playing tug-of-war with her own braids. “What are you doing!?”

  “I grabbed a Janara by the hair!” Primo says. “Now you have to do whatever I say!”

  “No, I don’t, you toad!” she says, and slugs him in the stomach. He lets go. “That’s just an old wives’ tale!”

  Isidora’s whole attitude changes. She turns angry and points a finger in Primo’s face.

  “Now, you listen to me, little brother,” she says threateningly. “You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, not even the cousins. If you do, I’ll turn you into a real toad!” She steps in closer, so their faces almost touch. “And don’t think I can’t!”

  Primo tries to fake a brave smile, but he can’t quite muster it. After all, his sister has beaten him up plenty, so he knows she doesn’t mind doing it. And if she starts doing it with magic—Janara magic!—he could really be in trouble.

  “What are you two doing!”

  Primo and Isidora turn to see Momma.

  “Did you hear what we were talking about?” Primo asks.

  “What you were talking about?” Momma says. “Why are you two talking at all! It’s the middle of the night! Go back to bed and BE QUIET!”

  “Yes,” Isidora says, leaning into Primo. “Be quiet!”

  She draws down her lower eyelid and follows Momma back to bed.

  Primo, however, is too excited for sleep.

  A Janara! His own sister is a real live Janara!

  6

>   WHO’S THE DONKEY BRAINS NOW?

  AT breakfast this morning, Primo is dying to ask Isidora some questions! Isidora, however, seems less than excited to talk to Primo. In fact, when their eyes meet, Isidora’s are burning. With anger.

  After Momma complains about their being up in the middle of the night, Maria Beppina asks why. Primo looks over into Isidora’s furious eyes and mumbles some excuse.

  At the stand, the Twins come to make their deliveries, and Rosa is talking about how maybe the Janara is Uncle Tommaso. Oh, how Primo wants to tell her the truth—tell both of them!—but he can’t.

  So he shrugs and mumbles again.

  “Well, we’ll see you later,” Emilio says, climbing into the ox-cart. “Our uncle Zino is taking us to play bocce this afternoon if you want to come. . . .”

  Alone, Primo’s head spins with thoughts. Nervous thoughts, thrilled thoughts. And questions for Isidora! So many questions.

  Like:

  WHEN did you become a Janara?

  HOW did you become a Janara?

  WHAT are your powers?

  WHERE is the Tree of the Janara?

  WHO goes there at night?

  Oh, Primo is just bursting with questions!

  And then he sees her—Isidora! Walking up to the stand.

  There are a couple of customers milling about, old ladies who take forever to shop, squeezing everything three times before buying anything. Isidora says she’s there to help and is all smiles with the ancient women. But the moment they’re gone, she turns ornery.

  “I need you to promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut, little brother,” she says. “Promise!”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Primo says, and launches into his questions. WHEN—HOW—WHAT—WHERE? he asks, not even leaving time for her to answer.

  Not that she is going to answer him. The only thing she’s going to do is lose her temper.