The Water Mirror

by Kai Meyer

  Their leader, Serafin, was nowhere to be seen. Merle realized with surprise that she’d involuntarily been watching for him and was almost disappointed not to see him.

  Junipa, on the other hand, was a completely changed girl. She couldn’t get over her amazement. She kept whispering to Merle, “See him over there?” and “Oh, look at her!” and giggling and laughing, occasionally so loudly that some people turned around and looked at them in surprise and were especially interested at the sight of her dark glasses. Only the rich dandies usually wore such things, and they rarely mixed with the common people. On the other hand, Junipa’s worn dress left no doubt about the fact that she had never seen the inside of a palazzo.

  The two girls stood at the left end of the bridge and sipped at their juice, which had been watered down too much. On the other side a fiddler was striking up a dance; soon a flute player joined in. The dresses of the young girls whirled like colored tops.

  “You’re so quiet,” Junipa declared, not knowing where to look next. Merle had never seen her so animated. She was glad, for she’d been afraid all the hurly-burly might make Junipa anxious.

  “You’re looking for that boy.” Junipa gave her a silvery look over the top of her glasses. “Serafin.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “I was blind for thirteen years. I know people. When people know you don’t see, they get careless. They mix up blindness with deafness. You just have to listen and they tell you everything about themselves.”

  “And what have I betrayed about myself?” Merle asked, frowning.

  Junipa laughed. “I can see you now, and that’s enough. You’re looking in all directions all the time. And who could you be looking for except Serafin?”

  “You’re just imagining that.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are so.”

  Junipa’s laugh rang bright and clear. “I’m your friend, Merle. Girls talk about a thing like that.”

  Merle made a move as if to hit her, and Junipa giggled like a child. “Oh, leave me alone,” cried Merle, laughing.

  Junipa looked up. “There he is, over there.”

  “Where?”

  “There, on the other side.”

  Junipa was right. Serafin was sitting a little back from the edge of the pavement and letting his legs dangle over the canal. The soles of his shoes were dangerously close to the water.

  “Now, go on over to him,” Junipa said.

  “Not on your life.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “He is a weaver apprentice, after all. One of our enemies, or have you forgotten already? I can’t just . . . it’s bad manners.”

  “It’s even worse manners to act as if you’re listening to a friend when in fact your thoughts are somewhere else entirely.”

  “Can you also read thoughts with those eyes of yours?” asked Merle with amusement.

  Junipa shook her head earnestly, as if she’d actually taken the possibility into consideration. “A person just has to look at you.”

  “You really think I should talk to him?”

  “Certainly.” Junipa grinned. “Or are you a little afraid?”

  “Nonsense. I really just want to ask him how long he’s worked for Umberto,” Merle said.

  “Very poor excuse!”

  “Ninny!—No, you aren’t. You’re a treasure!” And with that Merle grabbed Junipa around the neck, hugged her briefly, and then ran across the bridge to the other side. As she went, she looked back over her shoulder and saw Junipa looking after her with a gentle smile.

  “Hello.”

  Shocked, Merle stopped in her tracks. Serafin must have seen her, for suddenly he was standing directly in front of her.

  “Hello,” she replied, sounding as though she’d just swallowed a fruit pit. “You here too?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I thought you were probably home hatching plans for splashing paint in other people’s faces.”

  “Oh, that. . . .” He grinned. “We don’t do that every day. Would you like something to drink?”

  She’d left her cup beside Junipa, so she nodded. “Juice. Please.”

  Serafin turned and walked to a stand. Merle watched him from the back. He was a handsbreadth taller than she, somewhat thin, perhaps, but so were they all. After all, anyone born during siege conditions never had the embarrassment of having to worry about his weight. Unless you were rich, of course. Or, she thought cynically, you were named Ruggiero and secretly ate up half the orphanage kitchen.

  Serafin came back and handed her a wooden cup. “Apple juice,” he said. “I hope you like it.”

  To be polite, she immediately took a sip. “Yes, very much, in fact.”

  “You’re new at Arcimboldo’s, aren’t you?”

  “You know that very well.” She immediately regretted her words. Why was she being so snippy? Couldn’t she give him a normal answer? “Since a few weeks ago,” she added.

  “Were you and your friend in the same orphanage?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

  “Arcimboldo did something to her eyes.”

  “She was blind. Now Junipa can see.”

  “Then it’s true, what Master Umberto said.”

  “And that was?”

  “He said Arcimboldo knows his way around magic.”

  “That’s what others say about Umberto.”

  Serafin grinned. “I’ve now been in his house for more than two years, and he’s never showed me a single magic trick.”

  “I think Arcimboldo will keep that to himself till the bitter end too.”

  They laughed a little nervously, not because they’d discovered their first thing in common, but because neither one knew quite how to take the conversation further.

  “Shall we walk on a little bit?” Serafin pointed down the canal where the crowds of people were thinner and the lanterns shone on empty water.

  Merle grinned mischievously. “It’s a good thing we don’t belong to fine society. Otherwise it would be improper, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t give a hoot about fine society.”

  “Thing in common number two.”

  Close beside each other, but without touching, they ambled along the canal. The music became softer and soon was left behind them. The water lapped rhythmically against the dark walls. Somewhere over them pigeons cooed in the niches and carvings of the houses. They turned a corner and left the light of the shoals of lanterns.

  “Have you had to chase mirror spirits yet?” Serafin asked after a while.

  “Spirits? Do you think it’s spirits living in the mirrors?”

  “Master Umberto said it’s the spirits of all the people Arcimboldo’s cheated.”

  Merle laughed. “And you believe that?”

  “No,” Serafin replied seriously, “because I know better.”

  “But you’re a weaver, not a mirror maker.”

  “I’ve only been a weaver for two years. Before, I was sometimes here, sometimes there, all over Venice.”

  “Have you still got parents?”

  “Not that I know of. At least they’ve never introduced themselves to me.”

  “But you weren’t in an orphanage too?”

  “No. I lived on the street. As I said, sometimes here, sometimes there. And during that time I picked up a lot of stuff. Things that not everybody knows.”

  “Like how to clean a rat before you eat it?” she asked derisively.

  He made a face. “That, too, yes. But I didn’t mean that.”

  A black cat whisked past them, then made a turn and came back. Without warning it leaped onto Serafin. But it wasn’t an attack. Instead it landed purposefully on Serafin’s shoulder and purred. Serafin didn’t even jump but raised his hand and began to stroke the animal.

  “You’re a thief!” Merle burst out. “Only thieves are so friendly with cats.”

  “Strays together,” he confirmed with a smile. “Thieves and cats have much in com
mon. And share so much with each other.” He sighed. “But you’re right. I grew up among thieves. At five I became a member of the Guild, then later one of its masters.”

  “A master thief!” Merle was dumbfounded. The master thieves of the Guild were the most skillful pilferers in Venice. “But you aren’t more than fifteen years old!”

  He nodded. “At thirteen I left the Guild and went into the service of Umberto. He could well use someone like me. Someone who can climb through ladies’ windows on the sly at night and deliver them the goods they’ve ordered. You probably know that most husbands aren’t happy to see their wives doing business with Umberto. His reputation is—”

  “Bad?”

  “Oh, well, more or less. But his clothes make them slender. And very few women want their husbands to learn how much plumper they actually are. Umberto’s reputation may not be the best, but his business is doing better than ever.”

  “The husbands will find out the truth, at least when their wives . . .” Merle blushed. “When they get undressed.”

  “Oh, there are tricks and dodges there, too. They turn off the light, or they make their husbands drunk. Women are cleverer than you think.”

  “I am a woman!”

  “In a few years, maybe.”

  She stopped indignantly. “Serafin Master Thief, I don’t think that you know enough about women—aside from where they hide their purses—to express yourself about such things.”

  The black cat on Serafin’s shoulder spat at Merle, but she didn’t care about that. Serafin whispered something into the cat’s ear and it calmed down at once.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you.” He seemed quite taken aback by Merle’s outburst. “Really, I didn’t.”

  She gave him a piercing look. “Well, then I’ll excuse you this one time.”

  He bowed, so that the cat had to dig her claws firmly into his shirt. “My most humble thanks, madam.”

  Merle looked away quickly to hide her smile. When she looked at him again, the cat had vanished. Spots of red blood showed through the fabric of Serafin’s shirt where its claws had dug into his shoulder.

  “That must hurt,” she said with concern.

  “Which is more painful? Being scratched by an animal or by a human?”

  She chose not to answer that. Instead she walked on, and again Serafin was right next to her.

  “You were going to tell me something about the mirror phantoms,” she said.

  “Was I?”

  “You ought not to have started about it otherwise.”

  Serafin nodded. “You’re right. It’s only—” He stopped speaking suddenly, stood still, and listened into the night.

  “What is it?”

  “Shh,” he said, and gently laid a finger on her lips.

  She strained to hear in the darkness. In the narrow alleys and canals of Venice you often heard the strangest noises. The close spacing between houses distorted sounds beyond recognition. The twisting labyrinths of alleyways were empty after dark because most people preferred to use busier main ways. Robbers and assassins made many districts unsafe, and usually cries, whimpers, or rushing footsteps rebounded from the old walls and were transmitted as echoes to places that lay far from the source of the sound. If Serafin had in fact heard something to arouse concern, it might mean everything or nothing: The danger could be lurking around the next corner, but it also might be many hundreds of yards away.

  “Soldiers!” he hissed. He grabbed the surprised Merle by the arm and pulled her into one of the narrow tunnels that ran between many houses in the city, built-over alleyways in which utter darkness reigned at night.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered very close to his cheek, and she felt him nod.

  “Two men on lions. Around the corner.”

  At that moment they saw the two of them, in uniform, with sword and rifle, riding on gray basalt lions. The lions bore their riders past the mouth of the passageway with majestic steps. It was astonishing with what grace the lions moved. Their bodies were of massive stone and nevertheless they glided like lithe house cats. Their claws, sharp as daggers, scraped over the pavement and left deep furrows.

  When the patrol was far enough away, Serafin whispered, “Some of them know my face. So I’m not keen to meet them.”

  “Anyone who was already a master thief at thirteen certainly has reason for that.”

  He smiled, flattered. “Could be.”

  “Why did you leave the Guild?”

  “The older masters couldn’t stand it that I made bigger hauls than they did. They spread lies about me and tried to get me thrown out of the Guild. So I chose to leave voluntarily.” He walked out of the passageway into the pale shine of a gas lantern. “But come on—I promised to tell you more about the mirror phantoms. To do that, I have to show you something first.”

  5

  MERLE AND SERAFIN WALKED FARTHER THROUGH THE maze of narrow alleys and passages, here turning right, there left, crossing bridges over still canals, and going through gateways and along under clotheslines that stretched between the houses like a march of pale ghost sheets. They did not meet one single person along the way, another characteristic of this strangest of old cities: You could walk for miles without seeing a soul, only cats and rats on their hunt for prey in the garbage.

  Before them the alley ended at the very edge of a canal. There was no sidewalk along its banks, the walls of the houses reached right down into the water. There wasn’t a bridge to be seen.

  “A dead end,” Merle grumbled. “We have to go back again.”

  Serafin shook his head. “We’re exactly where I wanted to be.” He bent over the edge a bit and looked up at the sky. Then he looked across the water. “See that?”

  Merle walked up next to him. Her eyes followed his index finger to the gently swelling surface. The brackish smell of the canal rose into her nose, but she hardly noticed it. Strands of algae were drifting about, far more than usual.

  An illuminated window was reflected in the water, the only one far and wide. It was in the second floor of a house on the other side of the canal. The opposite bank was about fifty feet away.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “See the light in that window?”

  “Sure.”

  Serafin pulled out a silver pocket watch, a valuable piece that probably came from his thieving days. He snapped open the lid. “Ten after twelve. We’re on time.”

  “So?”

  He grinned. “I’ll explain. You see the reflection on the water, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Now look at the house over it and show me the window that’s reflected there. The one that’s lit.”

  Merle looked up at the dark house front. All the windows were dark, not a single one lit. She looked down at the water again. The reflection remained unchanged: In one of the reflected windows a light was burning. When she looked up at the house again, that rectangle in the wall was dark.

  “How can that be?” she asked, perplexed. “In the reflection the window is lit, but in reality it’s pitch-black.”

  Serafin’s grin got even wider. “Well, well.”

  “Magic?”

  “Not entirely. Or maybe yes. Depending on how you look at it.”

  Her face darkened. “Couldn’t you express yourself a little more clearly?”

  “It happens in the hour after midnight. Between twelve and one at night the same phenomenon appears at several places in the city. Very few know about them, and even I don’t know many of these places, but it’s true: During this hour, a few houses cast a reflection on the water that doesn’t tally with the reality. There are only tiny differences—lighted windows, sometimes another door, or people walking along in front of the houses while in reality there’s nobody there.”

  “And what does it mean?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. But there are rumors.” He lowered his voice and acted very mysterious. “Stories about a second Venice.”

/>   “A second Venice?”

  “One that only exists in the reflection in the water. Or at least lies so far away from us that it can’t be reached, even with the fastest ship. Not even with the Empire’s sunbarks. People say that it’s in another world, which is so like ours and yet entirely different. And around midnight the border between the two cities becomes porous, perhaps just because it’s so old and has gotten worn over the centuries, like a worn-out carpet.”

  Merle stared at him, her eyes wide. “You mean, that window with the light . . . you mean, it actually exists—only not here?”

  “It gets even better. There was an old beggar who sat at this spot for years and watched day and night. He told me that sometimes men and women from this other Venice managed to cross the wall between the worlds. What they don’t know, though, is that they’re no longer human beings when they arrive here. They’re only phantoms then, and they’re caught forever in the mirrors of the city. Some of them manage to jump from mirror to mirror, and so every now and then they also stray into your master’s workshop and into his magic mirrors.”

  Merle considered whether Serafin might perhaps be playing a joke on her. “You aren’t just trying to put something over on me, are you?”

  Serafin flashed a phony smile. “Do I really look as though I could swindle anyone?”

  “Of course not, top-notch master thief.”

  “Believe me, I’ve actually heard this story. How much of it’s the truth, I can’t really say.” He pointed to the illuminated window in the water. “However, some things support it.”

  “But that would mean that I was catching human beings in that glass ball the other day!”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen Arcimboldo throw them into the canal. They get out again somehow there.”

  “And now I understand what he meant when he said that the phantoms could settle into the reflections on the water.” Merle gasped. “Arcimboldo knows! He knows the truth!”

  “What are you going to do now? Ask him about it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?” She didn’t have a chance to pursue the thought further, for suddenly there was a movement on the water. As they looked down more attentively, a silhouette slid over the surface of the canal toward them.