The Eternal City

by Paula Morris

  “Sorry, Grandpa,” she whispered. She thought of her grandfather’s eyes, and his smile—things she’d always carry with her, in her heart, whether she had the stone or not. “I have to let it go.”

  Mercury held out his right hand, and she dropped the bracelet into it.

  “The goodwill of Minerva goes with you,” he said, twitching his head at her in one of his jerky bows. Then he stepped into the whorl of rain and stared straight up at the oculus, silvery water beating onto his upturned face.

  Did the gods see him? Laura wondered. Was this ancient oculus still their eye on the world? Just because Romans have deserted their gods doesn’t mean that the gods have deserted Rome.

  This time when Mercury’s feet left the ground, he didn’t turn into a bird. He remained as he was, a boy soaring through the air, arms at his sides, drawn through that waterfall of rain to that unknown place where he and Minerva and the other ancient gods roamed. He was taking the star sapphires, Minerva’s eyes, away from this world, to a place where they could no longer be stolen. Laura wondered if the stones would simply dissolve into dust, or if Minerva would cast them into the sky as a new constellation of stars.

  In the blur of rain thundering through the Pantheon’s oculus, Mercury disappeared. The last thing Laura saw of him was the feathered wings on his heels, jet black and glistening, soaring up to the world beyond the sky and beyond the stars, the sphere that no mortal would ever see.

  When a sudden strong wind from the east blew the ash cloud into the sea, the people of Rome returned to their homes and businesses. Everyone began putting the city back together again. The earthquakes that had followed the volcano’s eruption had damaged many of churches, palazzos, and ancient ruins. Outside the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the stone elephant still stood on its plinth, but the ancient obelisk that had once stood on its back now lay in a hundred shattered pieces.

  One of the strangest discoveries was the fragments of many of Rome’s fountains and monuments, scattered across the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Bees from the Fontana delle Api, dolphins from the Fontana del Tritone, nymphs from the Fontana delle Naiadi, mermaids from the Fontana del Nettuno—shards and smashed chunks of these were found all over the great avenue that ran the length of the ancient Forums of Rome. The horses from the Trevi Fountain were discovered near the Column of Trajan, lying on their sides, as though they were sleeping in a field.

  Nobody had any idea how any of these figures were ripped from their stone moorings, or how they ended up so far away from their original homes. The police and firefighters and medics, the soldiers who’d patrolled Rome after the volcanic eruption—none of them remembered anything. The city had been under a spell, some people said. The ash cloud descended and then it disappeared, and now Rome seemed to be waking up from a very bad dream.

  The Fiumicino International Airport was jammed with tourists eager, after the cancellation of three days of flights, to leave. Not long after the volcano erupted, many visitors to the city had come down with a mystery virus, sleeping through the earthquakes and whatever had taken place in their violent aftermath. Everyone was recovering now, and they were eager to make their way home to their own countries, their own towns, and their own families. They crowded the airport terminals with long, snaking lines and heaped baggage carts.

  The Riverside High School group was there as well. Curious observers might have noticed that some of the students herded by the three dazed-looking teachers bore the scars and bruises of recent injuries. One boy was limping so badly he could barely walk. Another boy had a black eye. And one of the girls had bandages on her arms and legs.

  The girl was Laura Martin, and she was crying. Not from the pain of her injuries—things stung and ached, but everything would heal quickly, she was sure. Jack and Dan would be okay as well. She was thinking of what had happened earlier that day, their last in Rome.

  She and Dan, along with Kasper, Sofie, and Maia, had crept out of the hostel as soon as the sun rose. The sky was blue, with no trace of ash cloud or rain.

  This morning they had decided to make one final pilgrimage as a group to the Trevi Fountain, to throw coins into its pale blue waters, and make the wish all travelers made there: to one day return to Rome.

  Maia had been skeptical, of course.

  “It’s just a superstition,” she pointed out on the walk there, and Laura couldn’t help laughing out loud: It was kind of rich for Maia to talk about “superstition” when she and Sofie were two of the Pleiades, seven sisters who were mythological beings rather than actual human girls. Or, at least, they were human but were also—what was it Sofie had said? Daughters of a titan?

  At the fountain they lined up, five in a row, with their backs to the burbling water. As they’d approached, Laura stared hard at the fountain, to make sure nothing was moving this morning, but all of its beings and creatures, shells and seaweed, looked reassuringly frozen and carved. Several other tourists were there as well, posing for pictures, throwing coins. An old man sat on one of the broad steps, drinking coffee and squinting into the sunshine. Maybe he was happy to see the sun out again at last, Laura thought. He reminded her of her grandfather, drinking his morning coffee on the back steps of his house, smiling face raised to the sky.

  The water was a serene blue, the sun glinting off the coins scattered below the surface. Two policemen patrolled, reprimanding a boy when he started climbing onto the fountain’s lip, as though he were planning to jump in. That was all the police had to worry about now, Laura realized, smiling again: Someone climbing into the Trevi Fountain.

  Dan squeezed in next to her, nudging Kasper out of the way.

  “You think he’s going to kidnap me and take me back to Denmark?” she whispered to Dan.

  “I can fight harpies,” Dan murmured back. “I can take him no problem.”

  “I will count to three and then we will all throw,” said Sofie. She was on the other side of Kasper, of course.

  “Should we sing the song?” said Maia, in what almost sounded like an impersonation of Woody, and Laura burst out laughing. She was laughing so much she didn’t even hear Sofie’s countdown, and only threw her coin when she saw Dan chuck his.

  Maia was right, of course. It was just superstition. Throwing a coin into a fountain was a symbolic gesture. Laura realized she might not return to Rome until she was older; she might never return at all. Maybe none of them would.

  Kasper was about to rejoin his school group and fly to Copenhagen. Though he kept telling Laura and Dan to visit him, and to bring Jack along as well, Laura suspected they wouldn’t see each other any time soon. Sofie was going back to Germany, she said, and maybe she would see them again, maybe not.

  “Maybe I come to America on holiday,” she said, looking as though she had no intention of doing any such thing. “Maybe I get sent there, when one of my sisters needs help.”

  Maia raised an eyebrow.

  “So, you’re not coming to our school this fall, are you?” Laura asked her, and Maia shook her head. “Was that just a … I don’t know what you call it. A cover story?”

  “You should hope you don’t see me again,” said Maia. “You should hope you don’t see either of us. When one of us turns up, it usually means there’s some kind of trouble to deal with.”

  “But Denmark is very close to Germany,” Sofie hurried to tell Kasper, flashing him her most winsome smile. “I can go there on the train, any time.”

  Back at the hostel, when they’d all brought their bags down to the lobby and handed their keys to Agent Orange, who looked grumpy about being back at work, Sofie said her good-byes. She kissed Dan and Laura good-bye, once on each cheek, and she kissed a bemused Kasper at least six times, and made him write down his address for her. Maia didn’t kiss anyone. She waited until POTUS had talked to her parents—her real parents? Laura wondered—on the lobby phone, then walked outside to a car with tinted windows that had reversed down the narrow lane. It would take her to Naples, she said, where her par
ents would collect her.

  Laura wanted to ask her if that was really going to happen, or if she’d been summoned for another mission. But there was no time to ask anything. Maia nodded her head at Laura, in a sort of brisk dismissal, and opened the car door.

  “Maia!” Laura called from the doorway. “Good-bye and—thank you!”

  Maia paused, one foot inside the car. She looked puzzled. Maybe nobody had ever thanked her.

  “I hope I do see you again,” Laura said. She would miss Maia, and her odd, know-it-all, capable ways. They could have been friends at Riverside High. They could have been weird together. “Anytime you need a hand, you know. Get in touch.”

  The beginnings of a rare smile flickered on Maia’s face. “Okay,” she said. “I just might do that.”

  Laura stood in the doorway while the car drove away, until Dan told her the rest of the kids from their school were on their way downstairs with all their bags.

  “I asked Kasper to go up and help Jack,” he said. “If he’s the Son of Odin or whatever, he can carry Jack down with one hand.”

  “You are so ridiculous,” Laura told him, rolling her eyes, but she didn’t mind when Dan grabbed her hand and didn’t let go.

  She didn’t cry when Sofie left, or when Maia left, or when Kasper left. But at the airport, with BOARD NOW flashing by their flight number, and Morgan dumbstruck when she saw Dan—OMG, Dan Sinclair!—holding Laura’s hand, Laura felt a sudden gush of emotion, impossible to repress.

  In Rome she’d met one of the ancient gods, Mercury—that crosser of boundaries, the lord of transgression and of travelers, the god of dreams. He’d called her by name, watched over her, tried to protect her. As long as she lived, Laura would never forget him—just as she would never forget her grandfather, who had done just the same, really, in a different life, a different world.

  And what her teenaged grandfather had begun in Rome all those years ago, she’d finished in Rome, returning the star sapphire he’d taken, making things right again. If he were still alive, he’d know it was the right thing to do. Wherever he was now, she hoped he was watching, and that he knew that she’d always love him, even if she had to give his precious last gift away.

  Laura boarded the plane as though she were walking in a dream, thinking of Sofie and Maia and Kasper off on their own adventures, and Dan staying close to her. Wherever the future took them, Laura knew they would never forget one another. How could she ever forget the past few days in Rome, when the gods raged, birds fought one another in the sky, and stone creatures came to life to do battle? After all these years of studying the ancient world, Laura had learned more than any class or book could ever teach her. At last, she thought, she knew what it meant to step into an eternal city, beyond any limits of world or time, an empire without end.

  Many thanks to my editor, Aimee Friedman, for her patience, guidance, and good sense. I’m very grateful to Rebecca Hill for sharing the details of her own school Classics trip (especially the orange hostel), and to Maia Churichkova for answering all my nosy questions. For style advice, I would have been lost without the generous and detailed suggestions of Anise Aiello and Will MacDonald.

  Particular thanks to Lindsey Jones and Tony Pigou for their hospitality in Rome; Trev Broughton, for lending me a peaceful place to write in the Lake District; and to Kirsten Skou, Max Nicolaisen, and the board of the Brecht House in Svendborg, Denmark, for my very happy and productive residency there.

  I’m also immensely grateful for the practical support of Creative New Zealand; and for all the help and encouragement of my agent, Richard Abate; and my family, especially Lynn-Elisabeth and Stephen Hill, and Tom Moody.

  There are many great books on Rome, ancient and modern, but two that I found particularly gripping were A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela and The Secrets of Rome: Love and Death in the Eternal City by Corrado Augias.

  PAULA MORRIS is the author of Ruined, Unbroken, Dark Souls, and several award-winning novels for adults in her native New Zealand. She now lives in England with her husband. Please visit her online at www.paula-morris.com.

  ALSO BY PAULA MORRIS

  Ruined: A Novel

  Unbroken: A Ruined Novel

  Dark Souls

  Copyright © 2015 by Paula Morris

  All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Morris, Paula, author.

  The eternal city / Paula Morris.

  pages cm

  Summary: Laura Martin is on a class trip to Rome when Mercury, a dark-eyed boy with wings on his heels, appears to give her a message, and Laura soon realizes that she is at the center of a brewing battle between the gods and goddesses—and only she and her friends can unravel the mystery behind what is happening.

  ISBN 978-0-545-25133-4 (jacketed hardcover) —

  ISBN 0-545-25133-8 (jacketed hardcover)

  1. Mercury (Roman deity)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Gods, Roman—Juvenile fiction. 3. Goddesses, Roman—Juvenile fiction. 4. School field trips—Juvenile literature. 5. Friendship—Juvenile literature. 6. Rome (Italy)—Juvenile fiction. 7. Detective and mystery stories. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Mercury (Roman deity)—Fiction. 3. Gods, Roman—Fiction. 4. Goddesses, Roman—Fiction. 5. Mythology, Roman—Fiction. 6. School field trips—Fiction. 7. Friendship—Fiction. 8. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. 9. Italy—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M82845Et 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014033962

  First edition, June 2015

  Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll

  Cover illustration © 2015 by Cliff Nielsen

  Author photo by Robert Trathen

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-66294-9

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