by Paula Morris
“You can say that again,” he said.
“Yeah, we’re in Rome,” Dan said, impatient. “So?”
“It’s an ancient place,” said Maia, not reacting to his tone. “Ancient forces are at work. Ancient powers. Something that can make a stone mouth bite, or a painted man attack.”
Or a statue shoot a bird, Laura thought. Or a boy in gray and black, the color of the Roman crows, step from the rain with feathers sprouting from his heels …
“This all sounds like superstition to me,” Dan said, wafting a dismissive hand in Maia’s direction.
“You’re the one who said we should throw away the bad-luck stone,” Kasper pointed out. “Isn’t that superstition as well?”
“Genau,” said Laura under her breath, and Sofie smiled at her.
“But maybe Dan is right,” said Kasper. “Perhaps we should throw away both stones. The one that Sofie found and the one that Laura has on the broken chain.”
Laura felt a pang of horror. “No!” she cried, startling everyone—including herself—with the vehemence of her reaction. “My grandfather gave me that! I’ve had it for years, and I’m not just throwing it away.”
“Do you know where he got it?” Maia asked, her voice almost sharp.
“No,” Laura admitted. “It was during World War II, when he was a teenager. He was in lots of different places. My mother thought that maybe he got it in North Africa. But he was also stationed in Rome, and my grandmother thinks he might have found it here.”
“I have an idea,” said Kasper. He took a step closer to Laura and she instinctively backed away; she didn’t want him grabbing the bracelet and throwing it away. “Let’s go and find a place to use a computer. We can email our families, and Laura can maybe get some more information, and we can read news in our own languages, and …”
“Yes,” said Dan. It was the first time Laura had heard him agree with anything Kasper had suggested.
“What if we’re locked in?” Jack asked, and panic rippled through their little group; Laura stuffed the bracelet into her bag, and they all hurried toward the double doors, as if running there could change anything.
Kasper reached the door first, and twisted the handle. The heavy bolt was open—they could see that—but the door didn’t move.
“No!” said Sofie. “We must get out!”
Kasper jiggled the handle again and shoved the door with his shoulder.
“Let me,” said Dan, pushing his way into position. Kasper stood back, with just the hint of a sidelong glance in Dan’s direction. Dan ignored the door that Kasper had tried, and twisted the other door’s handle. With a wheezy creak, it pushed open.
“We came in on the right,” Dan said, his voice neutral but his face twitching with a smile. Laura fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“Thank you, at last,” said Sofie, the first through the open door. When Kasper waved her ahead, Laura stepped past Dan, pointedly not thanking him: All he’d done was open a door, and she was still annoyed about his reaction to everything that had happened.
It was a relief to be outside, though, in what passed for fresh air on a day like this, in the ashy haze, the humidity settling around her bare legs like a heavy skirt.
Crows still lined the low-hanging branch of the tree outside. Lying in wait, Laura thought, glancing away. Was one of these birds her nighttime messenger, dropping the star sapphire on the windowsill and tapping incessantly until she got out of bed?
Laura turned her back on the hooded crows. She could hear the crunch of the gravel under her shoes, the sound of a distant car alarm, the faint hum of traffic. She heard the birds taking off in a flurry, their hysterical squawking overhead now. Leave us alone! she wanted to scream at them.
“Come on, Laura!” Kasper called. She hurried to join the others, who were already setting off down the hill.
“No child left behind,” said Dan sarcastically. She brushed past him, scampering to catch up with Maia. If Dan couldn’t be civil, she was going to keep as far away from him as possible. Like the crows soaring overhead, he was just another thing to be ignored.
* * *
They trudged in what felt like circles in the streets near the Colosseum and Forum, sweaty and ashy, with no Internet café in sight. Kasper insisted they make their way to one he half remembered, on a busy road near—or so he thought—Piazza Navona. No buses appeared to be running anymore, and when Dan tried to flag a taxi at the wildly chaotic traffic circle that was the Piazza Venezia, every cab zoomed past, either full or apparently uninterested in picking up a gaggle of disheveled teenagers.
“Everyone’s getting out of Dodge,” Jack observed, sounding less enthused with every pointless half hour spent wandering. “Maybe we should just go back to the hostel.”
A squabble followed about who wanted to go back and who wanted to keep looking, and who was in charge. Kasper finally held up a hand.
“We are all tired, I think,” he said. “But in another ten minutes we will be there, I promise you. Then we can all send an email home, to our families. We can tell them we’re okay.”
Kasper was right, Laura thought, when—almost exactly ten minutes later—Jack spotted an OPEN sign and shouted back to let them all know.
The place Kasper remembered wasn’t a café: It was a just a place to access the Internet, a small street-level office with big glass windows, white walls, and fluorescent lights. Laura could see five computer terminals—no, six—and she practically ran to the counter to hand over money. The guy sitting there, flicking through a magazine, seemed half asleep and almost annoyed to see customers. He muttered something in Italian and waved in the direction of the window.
“He is about to close,” Sofie translated, “because of …”
She waved a hand at the window as well, and they all knew what she meant: the volcano, the ash cloud, everything. Laura tensed when the guy starting speaking again, burbling and pointing, tapping at the laminated price list hanging on the wall.
“We can have five minutes only,” said Sofie. “And only four computers are working.”
“I don’t need to check email,” Maia said. “My parents are in Russia. They never get in touch with me when they go away.”
“I thought they were in Italy at a conference?” Laura asked.
“Yes,” Maia said quickly. “They were, in the north. But by now they’re back in Russia.”
“And won’t they be worried?” Laura asked her, thinking about her own parents. Her father would be glued to twenty-four-hour news right now, she knew, obsessing over every detail of the eruption.
“No.” Maia sounded unconcerned.
“I’ll use someone’s computer whenever they’re finished,” said Kasper, his blue eyes intent on Laura. “Really—you all go, quickly. Maia and I will pay the man.”
Not even Dan stopped to argue this one. Laura flung herself into the nearest seat, drumming her fingers on the desk while she waited for the right screen to open.
Beyond the smudged windows, ash swirled like dirty snow, covering the road with dusty flakes. People rushed by, brandishing umbrellas or holding their bags above their heads. Why was the guy at the desk taking so long?
The electronic stopwatch clicked into life on her screen. Laura couldn’t find Skype, but her email loaded right away, thank goodness.
Mom and Dad, she typed. Just letting you know that I’m fine here in Rome—lots of kids are sick with the flu, but I’m not. Ash is falling like snow. Weird. But we’re safe. Waiting to hear when we can fly home. Can’t get online at hostel, FYI. Love, Laura
She sent it right away, in case the desk jockey decided to throw them out early, then raced through the emails her parents had sent her over the past few days—they were worried, they were concerned, they’d tried calling the American embassy, the school knew nothing, all flights were canceled, the airline was being vague, the hostel wasn’t answering its phone … and so on.
Laura started typing a new email.
Mom, she
wrote. Everything still fine! Don’t worry. I know this is a weird question right now, but do you know if Grandpa found my star sapphire here in Rome? I may be able to check email again tomorrow. XO L.
Laura pressed SEND, and glanced around. Dan was typing a million miles a minute. Sofie was finished and was waving Kasper over, so he could send an email on her computer.
“Maia!” Laura called, leaning back in her chair. “Do you want to use this one to email your parents? I’ve sent two to mine.”
Maia, standing at the counter interrogating—in what language, Laura wasn’t sure—the guy sitting there, shook her head. So she wasn’t lying: Maia really was blasé about getting in touch with her family. She was weird—or maybe her whole family was like this.
A new email pinged into Laura’s in-box. Her mother! She probably had her laptop perched on the kitchen counter, anxiously checking for news.
Honey—so happy and relieved to hear from you. We are terribly worried. The boys told Dad he should fly to Paris, rent a car, and drive down to rescue you! They’ve offered all their camp money to help pay!!! But apparently it’s chaos everywhere in Europe right now. I hope this only goes on a couple more days. We miss you so much.
Not sure about your bracelet—yes, Grandpa was stationed in Rome. He told a story once about driving around in a jeep near a fountain with bees, but—
The window disappeared, swallowing her mom’s email, and Laura’s screen turned black.
No!” Laura howled, swiveling to plead with the guy behind the counter. He was standing up now, dropping euro coins into plastic bags and ignoring everyone’s protests and pleas. “Can I just have a few minutes more? I was halfway through reading an email from my mom.”
The guy barked something in Italian at Kasper, who shot them all an apologetic glance, shaking his head.
“We could come back tomorrow morning,” Jack suggested, but Kasper shook his head at this as well and explained: The man behind the counter was closing up shop for the foreseeable future; he was leaving Rome right away, and suggested that they do the same thing.
“Any luck?” Maia’s unsmiling face loomed over Laura’s computer terminal.
“No—well, maybe,” Laura told her. “My mother doesn’t know for sure but she remembers my grandfather talking about driving in a jeep past a fountain with bees on it or in it or buzzing nearby—I’m not sure.”
“We saw that last week, I think.” Kasper walked over and sat on the desk next to Laura, his handsome face tense with concentration. “My school group, I mean.”
“Is your school group like some Viking raiding party?” Dan called over, but Laura ignored him and Kasper seemed unfazed.
“Go on,” she told Kasper.
“Our first day in Rome,” he said slowly, “when we went to the Palazzo Barberini. Bees were the symbol of that family. So the fountain near their house was carved …”
“With bees?” Laura felt a thrill of excitement. She leafed through her guidebook while the guy behind the counter shouted at them in Italian. He wanted them out, Laura knew, but too bad. At least inside here they weren’t getting faces full of ash.
“Barberini, Barberini—here it is,” she said. “The Fontana delle Api. Fountain of the Bees. Late seventeenth century, at the end of Via Veneto.”
“Let’s go!” shouted Jack, who’d regained his high spirits. Maia frowned at him.
“Why?” she asked. “It’s not relevant, necessarily.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I mean,” she continued, gazing around them like a teacher surveying a particularly stupid class, “all its existence confirms is that Laura’s grandfather was in Rome at some point during the war and happened to see the Fountain of the Bees while he was driving around. It doesn’t mean that he got the star sapphire there.”
“No,” Laura said, deflated. Maia was right.
“The bee fountain sounds pretty cool,” mumbled Jack, his face red.
“There’s nothing to link the star sapphires with the bee fountain at all, is there?” Maia looked at Kasper. He shrugged.
“It was just a small fountain,” he said. “With a big shell, and little bees.”
“Do you remember seeing anything like my star sapphire?” Laura asked him. “Maybe some kind of decoration around the edge of the fountain?”
“Let me see the stones again,” Kasper said.
Laura hauled her bag onto her knees and felt around for the two stones—one, the original, with its broken chain dangling, as well as the interloper, as she thought of it: the sewer sapphire, the windowsill sapphire. She placed the two stones on the table, one at a time, and Kasper scrutinized them, one hand stroking his chin in an almost comical way, like some wise old philosopher. The stones were the exact same shape and size, both shot through with a feathery golden constellation. But Laura’s stone was definitely a bluish-gray, and the other stone was a little more green. The difference was very subtle; you had to stare at them really hard to see the difference.
“They kind of do look like eyes,” Dan observed. “Like Laura’s eyes.”
Laura felt herself become self-conscious. What did Dan mean by that?
“I think so,” Kasper agreed. “See? At first when I met you, I thought you have gray eyes, but when I looked again, I see that the left one is a little blue and the right one is a little green. Like these stones.”
Now Laura felt even more self-conscious, shifting in her chair.
“ ‘Mutant Girl,’ ” said Jack, fake-punching Laura’s arm. “Right? That’s why we all called you that.”
“I didn’t know you all called me that,” Laura said, irritation and embarrassment coursing through her.
“Not all of us,” Dan said quickly—too quickly, Laura thought, revealing his guilt. “Just … some stupid people.” He looked at Laura intently before dropping his eyes.
“Can we stay focused here, please?” Maia tapped the table with a fingernail. “Kasper, do you remember seeing either of these stones at the Fountain of the Bees?”
“No,” he said, sounding certain. “And anyway, the fountain is only a few hundred years old, not from ancient times. Didn’t you say, Maia, that this … this strangeness may have something to do with Rome being an ancient city?”
Laura thought of the Mercury boy she’d seen at the Pantheon. Could it really be Mercury? How was something like that possible?
Nobody even believed in those old gods anymore. Long ago, they’d meant something, Laura knew; there had been gods in Rome for everything, like doors and dogs and rainbows. But they were just figures of legend and myth, storybook archetypes like witches and goblins in fairy tales.
If Laura told anyone now about what she thought she’d seen in the Pantheon, they’d laugh at her.
“It’s just a thought,” Maia admitted. “I can’t … I can’t say for certain.”
They all fell silent. If Maia didn’t have any ideas, Laura thought, then they really were stuck.
“Ragazzi!” The counter guy was shouting now, gesticulating at them and the door. “Andatevene, subito!”
“He wants us to go,” Sofie explained, though it didn’t need explaining.
“Come on,” Laura said, and everyone scraped back their chairs and picked up their bags. They were all reluctant to leave, she sensed, as unsure as she was what they were going to do next. Find this fountain of bees, that may or may not be a clue to what was going on? Go back to the orange hostel? Wander the streets, bracing themselves for another weird encounter with an aggressive fresco?
Laura scooped up the two star sapphires, jangling them in her hand like marbles. Outside, something like thunder rumbled, except it sounded low in the ground rather than high in the sky.
“No!” Sofie gasped, and Laura grabbed the back of her chair with her free hand. It felt as though a train were passing underneath the floor of the shop, rattling through a submerged tunnel. But the subway isn’t running, Laura thought, just as the chair under her hand began rolling away.
“Earthquake!” Kasper said, and hurled himself at Jack, who looked as though he might be about to follow the Italian guy out the door. “Get down!”
The desks were moving, shaking back and forth. Laura threw her bag onto the floor and dropped to her knees. Everything was shaking and rattling. Heart racing, Laura crawled under her desk, grimacing with the pain in one knee from her fall in the Pantheon.
All she remembered from some long-ago earthquake drill at school was to get down, take cover. But why was Dan still standing there, frozen to the spot?
She reached out a hand and pulled his leg, tugging him down. When he dropped to his knees, Laura pulled at him again, almost dragging him under the desk.
“You don’t need to save me, okay?” he hissed.
“Well, don’t stand around like an idiot,” she hissed back, and they both recoiled as something heavy crashed onto the ground nearby and splintered—a computer, maybe, or one of the swinging light fixtures. The floor was still wobbling; Laura clung to a desk leg. She could taste plaster dust and hear nothing but a low growl, interrupted by crashes and something like glass breaking. She and Dan were huddled close together, their heads almost touching; his breath was soft and cool against her face. Laura had to resist the urge to cling to him.
“Laura,” Dan whispered, bracing himself against another of the desk’s legs. “Put the stones away.”
“What?”
“The stones. Put them in your bag.”
“Hold the desk leg—this one!” Laura waited while Dan leaned across her. The chair she’d been sitting on to send emails smacked onto the ground. Blindly she groped for her backpack and opened the zipper with her free hand.
As soon as the stones slithered out of her hand and dropped into her bag, the room stopped shaking. Laura realized she was out of breath and that her hands were trembling. Dan was still gripping the desk’s legs, intent on keeping it upright, one of his elbows wedged in her rib cage. Outside sirens pealed and car alarms were going off, the sounds discordant and incessant. Even from her restricted view, Laura could see ash dusting the floor. A window must be open, she thought, and then: A window must be broken.
