The Eternal City

by Paula Morris

  “Is Dan okay?” Laura asked Jack, who was limping over to the fountain to fill a plastic bottle with water, and he nodded.

  “He’ll have a black eye,” observed Kasper, “but he should be fine.”

  When Jack poured the water over Dan’s bleeding leg, Dan lay back on the ground, as though he was too exhausted even to sit up anymore. They were all exhausted, Laura knew. Exhausted, beaten, confused—and still nowhere near the hostel.

  “Here,” said Sofie, straightening up. She handed over Laura’s soggy sandals. “Sorry there is blood.”

  “That’s okay.” Laura felt too tired to smile. “Thanks. For everything.”

  “We should keep walking,” Maia announced. Jack groaned, and Kasper offered to go back to the first piazza, to see if he could find a paramedic to take a look at Dan’s nose. The others propped themselves up around the fountain, now serene and stony again.

  “That lump looks painful,” Laura said, noticing the grimace on Maia’s face when she stroked the side of her temple.

  “Could be worse.” Maia sounded her usual unruffled self. “If my head had hit the rim of the fountain, I’d be concussed. Or dead, probably. I’d have drowned in the water. But that didn’t happen, so …”

  “So—good.” It really was incredible, Laura thought, that Maia could be so cool about something like that. Nearby, Sofie’s long legs were shaking, even though she was sitting down. Laura was huddled, clutching her knees and shivering. Rome was falling apart—the world was falling apart—around them, and Laura wished she could take all this in stride, the way Maia seemed to. She needed to think of something else, talk about something else, to pull herself together.

  “Hey,” she said, nudging Maia with one shoulder. “I know you said that owls were associated with Minerva. But what about tortoises? Could they have something to do with her as well?”

  “Not with Minerva,” Maia said firmly. “But remember how I was telling Dan that Minerva invented the flute? Well, Mercury invented the lyre. That’s like a harp.”

  “Yeah, I know.” The mention of Mercury’s name sizzled through Laura like an electric current. “What does that have to do with tortoises?”

  “Mercury used a tortoiseshell to make the first lyre,” Maia reported. “So the tortoise is one of his creatures.”

  Tortoises are Mercury’s creatures, Laura repeated to herself, trying to steady her breathing. Maybe that’s why the tortoises had all come to life when the hooded crow brushed them with its wings. Maybe that’s why they tried to help her, to guard her bag and its precious, dangerous, mysterious cargo.

  And maybe that’s what Mercury had meant when he said, She has sent us here to watch over you.

  The trouble was, Laura thought, that dangers seemed to lurk everywhere. A dart-wielding cherub on a tomb. The Mouth of Truth. The walls of a fresco. The woman at the Trevi Fountain and the man here at the tortoise fountain. Stone horses that moved, painted snakes that slithered, bronze tortoises that crawled and snapped and bared their teeth. Rome was alive with danger, seen and unseen, real and artificial. How could she believe anyone when they told her not to be afraid?

  It took a lot of effort from Maia to get them moving again. Nobody wanted to get up, let alone start the long trudge back to the hostel. It was possible, Laura thought, creaking to a standing position and discovering that the back of her shorts were still wet as well as incredibly dirty, that Jack was actually asleep on the ground.

  Although Kasper hadn’t managed to find anyone to help—the paramedic team was gone, he said, and the nearest policeman he could find just shouted at him to keep walking—Laura was relieved to see an injured Dan clamber to his feet. He was holding a balled-up wet T-shirt against his swelling eye.

  “Kasper’s,” he told her when she approached.

  “So, he’s not so bad after all, right?”

  “Yeah, well,” said Dan. “Now he gets to walk around shirtless, like a rock star.”

  He managed a rueful smile, and Laura smiled, too. But she was worried about Dan. He’d really taken a beating from the mugger. She almost wanted to hug him, but she didn’t dare. There was still some kind of tension between them.

  “You need to rest,” she told him, in a tone that sounded more offhand than she intended. “When we get back to the hostel.”

  Dan reached out for her, his fingers brushing her bare forearm.

  “Sorry I couldn’t stop him,” he said, his voice gruff. “I mean, the guy who tried to steal your bag. After he punched me in the face I just … I couldn’t do anything. I’m glad the others helped.”

  “You don’t have to apologize!” Dan’s hand still rested on her arm, and Laura’s skin tingled. She wished he didn’t have that effect on her. “He would have escaped if you hadn’t tackled him. I’m just really sorry about your eye, and your leg, and everything. You were really brave.”

  Dan shrugged, staring down at the ground. His hand was still on her arm, his fingers cool against her burning skin.

  “At least you got your bag back,” he said. “That’s the main thing.”

  “Yeah, but only after—you know.”

  “What? Did Kasper come to the rescue?” Dan sounded disappointed. Maybe he thought he’d been trumped, yet again, by the Viking. Dan was used to being the golden boy at Riverside High, Laura knew.

  “It was Maia and Sofie,” she said. “And a crow. And the tortoises.”

  “The tortoises?” Dan seemed genuinely confused.

  “You didn’t see them?”

  “After that punch in the face, I couldn’t see anything. I still can’t open my left eye. You mean the tortoises on the fountain?”

  Laura nodded, not sure what to say, or whether Dan would believe her.

  “I know this sounds ridiculous, but they came to life. Ask the others,” she added, in case Dan thought she was imagining things again. “They were like guard dogs, biting at that guy’s hand until he ran away. All of a sudden, the whole fountain just came to life. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but everyone saw, I promise you.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly, and Laura wasn’t sure if that meant he believed her or if he just wasn’t in the mood for another argument. Dan pulled the wet T-shirt away from his face and she winced: The skin around his left eye was dark and puffy, his eye could barely open, and there was a livid gash just above his eyebrow.

  The sight of Dan’s beaten face was awful, but hopefully the worst was over, as long as they could get back to the hostel safely. The teachers might be feeling better by now; they’d know what to do. Maybe the ash cloud would lift tomorrow and they could all go home. At the very least, she and Maia and Sofie could hunker down in their room, and everyone could treat their wounds with ice and antiseptics. When they got back to the hostel, everything would be fine.

  Nobody could walk very quickly, and nobody had much energy to speak. Laura wondered if what they’d just seen—most of them, anyway—was too fantastical, too hard to process. Maybe nobody wanted to be the first to mention that the fountain had sprung to life, in case they thought the others would call them crazy.

  A shirtless Kasper, lithe and tanned, his blond hair crusted with dirt and dust, led the way, helping poor limping Jack. Maia and Sofie flanked Laura, and Dan insisted on walking right behind her, to make sure nobody tried to steal her backpack again. Every time she slowed down he bumped into her, and after the first five times they stopped apologizing to each other.

  By the time they stumbled down the lane toward the hostel’s front door, they were all even more tired and dirty and aching. At least their clothes were dry, though Laura’s sandals still felt gritty and damp. She’d never been so pleased to see the hostel’s glass sliding door, still miraculously intact, though they had to step over smashed flowerpots from some high-up windowsill or roof terrace.

  “Everyone!” Kasper swung around to face them all and stopped just shy of the door. He waited until they’d all ambled up, everyone sweaty and breathing heavily, and when he spoke
again his voice was low. “This is all earthquake, okay?”

  At first Laura didn’t get what he was talking about, until she followed his gaze from Dan to Maia and back.

  “It’s too complicated to explain,” said Kasper.

  “What?” asked Jack, clearly dead on his feet. He swayed where he stood.

  “To our teachers,” Maia said, brisk as ever, one hand massaging her temple. “If we start talking about men attacking us, painted or otherwise, or about creatures on a fountain coming to life, they’ll never let us outside again.”

  “I don’t want to go outside ever again,” groaned Jack.

  “So all of this happened in the Internet place, right?” said Dan. Kasper nodded, his hands on his hips. Really, Laura knew that lying—or at least not telling all the truth, exactly—was the best thing to do. There was too much they couldn’t explain to themselves, let alone other people, and adults tended to go crazy if words like “attack” or “mugger” entered the conversation. But when she glanced at Dan and caught his eye, she could guess what he was thinking. Why was Kasper so eager to keep what had happened on the down low?

  “So we are agreed?” Kasper asked.

  “Sure,” said Dan, and everyone else mumbled assent. All Laura really wanted right now was a shower and clean clothes.

  A hooded crow fluttered onto the flapping green awning above the door and cawed at them—just once, but enough to unnerve her. By the way everyone hurried inside, Laura suspected she wasn’t the only one wondering if the crow was trying to warn them again.

  * * *

  The hostel was quiet—maybe too quiet, but at first that was a relief. Instead of answering questions, the girls could take lukewarm showers, get changed, and use their stash of first aid supplies to patch themselves up. Sofie’s neck was still red and raw from the strangling hands of her fresco attacker, and Maia studied the bump on her head in the mirror with a detached, almost medical interest.

  Above her knee Laura discovered an impressive bruise from where someone—either Dan or his attacker—had kicked her during the fight in the piazza; her knees were sore, and her wrist still ached from her tangle with the Mouth of Truth the day before.

  When it was her turn to use the shower, Laura carried with her a change of clothes, along with her backpack. She needed to keep the star sapphires close by. The eyes of Minerva, stolen from her sacred temple … It is her wish that you have both eyes, and take them with you, away from Rome …

  Before she turned the shower on, Laura checked that the door was locked and that the small frosted window was secure as well. But still, she didn’t dare close the mold-spotted shower curtain, or even to turn her back on the bag for more than a second or two. Everyone in Rome—everyone and everything—seemed to want to get their hands on those star sapphires. Other gods disagree, and they now prepare for battle …

  Laura didn’t want to know what that meant. There was no better feeling right now than the gush of water over her head, washing away all the dust and dirt, and the clean, minty smell of her shampoo, which reminded her of home. She wished she were home now, a breeze wafting the curtains of her bedroom, the cat leaping onto her creaky old wicker chair, a stack of books waiting on the painted stool that served as a bedside table. As long as she could remember, Laura had thought of her life as ordinary—a little too quiet, a little too calm, with everything always the same.

  Everyone in the house had their hobbies and obsessions, of course, and for the past few years hers had been the Classical world, the long-ago past of the Greeks, Egyptians, Etruscans, Romans, Mesopotamians. She had a map of the ancient world tacked up over her desk, along with pictures torn from magazines, of things she could only dream of seeing—an artist’s impression of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, both gone forever—and things that she really could see in person, like the rooms of Nero’s long-buried Golden House, the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey, or La Primavera of Pompeii, a patch of fresco that somehow survived the eruption of Vesuvius.

  Two Christmases ago, before Laura was even old enough to take Classics at school, her parents had given her a cast-marble replica bust of Thalia, the muse of comedy. Thalia—complete with stone braids and a chipped nose—sat on Laura’s desk, eyes downcast, oblivious to any pranks by annoying little brothers who liked to decorate her for Halloween.

  Every week for the past two semesters, Laura had turned the pages of her book on Roman rulers—kings, tyrants, usurpers, emperors—memorizing the names of each one in turn, even though Morgan—usually slumped in the wicker chair, leafing through a magazine—would complain that it wasn’t necessary to learn them all. As she kept reminding Laura, they wouldn’t be tested on it.

  But Laura had wanted to learn everything, to see everything, to know everything, whether it came up in a class test or not. Other people might think it was boring and weird to be so interested in long-ago lost civilizations, but Laura thought they were much more interesting than the fantasy worlds of her brothers’ video games. She couldn’t wait for this school trip, to tour ancient sites in Turkey and Greece and Italy, and to see the remnants of the past for herself.

  But this wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind, Laura thought, rinsing the suds out of her hair. Not Mercury taking the form of a boy with wings on his heels, telling her she’d unwittingly gotten herself entangled in some kind of god war …

  Water coursed down her face, a combination of the shower and a sudden gush of tears. Free for a few moments from worrying about who could see or hear her, Laura gave in to her tears, her body shaking with sobs. She was tired and confused and shaken; she missed home, its calm and its comforts. She missed her ordinary life—a lucky life, Laura realized now, in that she’d never really been afraid before.

  When the water turned from lukewarm to cold, Laura knew it was time to get out of the shower. Part of the problem, she thought, drying her hair with one of the hostel’s sandpaper-quality towels, was not having anyone to talk to. Maybe Morgan was feeling better; maybe the quarantine would be lifted by now. But trying to explain today’s events alone to Morgan … well, where to begin?

  Laura pulled on her red vintage dress, the one she’d been planning to wear to the final-night dinner; it wasn’t clean exactly, but it felt fresh and soft compared to the gritty, damp T-shirt and shorts she’d been wearing all day.

  She could try talking to Maia again, she thought. Or maybe even Sofie. Unlike Dan, they’d seen the biting tortoises. Maybe they’d seen her talking to Mercury in the street—although, weirdly, no one had mentioned this to her at all. And why was Kasper so eager to keep everything a secret from their teachers? Where was he when the girls were all fighting off the mugger in the fountain? Maybe Dan was right not to trust him.

  Or maybe Dan’s paranoia was getting to her.

  She had to talk to someone, she decided, shaking her damp hair. All these years she’d been fascinated with ancient worlds; she’d seen their drama, violence, and passions as stories, their beliefs as myths. Everything, bad and good, was at a safe distance, long ago. But now that it was vivid and real and happening around her, it was terrifying.

  Laura padded down the empty corridor, her bare feet cool against the tiles, hair wrapped in a towel. Dan was like the Emperor Domitian—the emperor who was so paranoid he executed most of his senators and aides just in case they were conspiring against him. He killed so many people that his closest allies feared for their lives; they turned on him and stabbed him to death.

  Not that Dan was that bad. He wasn’t as arrogant as she’d thought earlier in the trip, when he’d just seemed smug and aloof. He looked out for her; he’d chased down that mugger by the fountain to get her bag back. Sure, he was bossy, but … she had to admit, she liked being around him, even if half the time they were bickering. And even with his battered face, he was still undeniably good-looking—if not quite Kasper-level handsome.

  Back in the room she found the others sitting on their bunk beds, Sofie wearing the big T-s
hirt she slept in and complaining about her sore neck.

  “I can’t lie down,” she was telling Maia. “It is all stiff.”

  “I could go and ask for some ice downstairs,” Laura offered, dumping her bag on her bed. There had been no one at reception when they’d arrived, but maybe the pretty girl in the white dress was there now. Even if she wasn’t, Laura had spotted a small fridge in the back room; maybe she could find some ice in there.

  “Yes, I think—yes,” Sofie said, managing to sound pouty rather than grateful, in Laura’s opinion. She might have stepped up in the fountain fight, but the German girl was still kind of sulky.

  Laura reached under her bed for a pair of flip-flops. If she was leaving the room, she should do something with her bracelet and the other star sapphire—but what? Hide them inside her pillowcase, or the inner pocket of her toilet bag?

  “I don’t think that Laura should go,” said Maia. “Sofie, you can go downstairs yourself.”

  Laura was taken aback by Maia’s tone: She was channeling Dan-level bossiness right now. But Sofie didn’t argue: She just looked offended and annoyed. She pulled on some denim shorts and slipped on her red Converse without bothering to tie the laces.

  “I will find the ice,” she announced in an overdramatic voice.

  “And maybe some cold drinks,” Maia suggested, “if you can …”

  But Sofie was already gone, slamming the door behind her. Laura shook off her flip-flops and settled on the bed. At least now the problem of hiding the star sapphires could be postponed. And this was the chance she’d been waiting for, to talk to Maia.

  “Did you see the guy who let us out of the Internet place?” she asked. Maia, curled up like a cat on the opposite bunk, cocked her head to one side. “Did you see me talking to him?”