by Kai Meyer
“You’re right,” said Arcimboldo after a while. “It’s no longer safe for you here. Not anywhere in Venice. But in you the Flowing Queen can leave the lagoon, for you were born here and so are a part of her.”
“You know more about her than you’ve ever told us,” she declared.
He smiled sadly. “A little. She was always an important part of my work. Without her there can be no more magic mirrors.”
“But that will mean that . . .”
“That sooner or later I must close the workshop. So it is. The water of the lagoon is a component of my art. Without the breath of the Flowing Queen that goes into every mirror, all my talents are useless.”
Apprehension closed around Merle’s heart. “What about the others? Junipa and Boro and . . .” There was a lump in her throat. “Must they go back to the orphanages?”
Arcimboldo thought briefly about it, then shook his head. “No, not that. But who knows what will happen when the Egyptians invade? No one can say ahead of time. There will perhaps be fighting. Then the boys will certainly want to fight on the side of the defenders.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “As if that would do any good.”
Merle wished that the Flowing Queen would give her an answer to that. A few reassuring words, something or other! But the voice inside her kept silent, and she herself didn’t know how she could have cheered the mirror maker.
“You must keep on taking care of Junipa,” she said. “That you must promise me.”
“Certainly.” But his agreement didn’t sound quite as convincing as Merle wanted it to be.
“Do you think she’s in danger from the Egyptians? Because of her eyes?”
“No matter where the Empire has invaded, the first to suffer under them have always been the sick, the wounded, and the weak. The Pharaoh puts healthy men and women into his factories, but the rest . . . I can give you no answer about that, Merle.”
“But nothing must happen to Junipa!” Merle could no longer understand how she’d thought of going away without saying good-bye to Junipa. She had to see her, as quickly as possible. Perhaps she could even take her with her. . . .
“No,” the Flowing Queen weighed in. “That is impossible.”
“Why not?” Merle asked rebelliously. Arcimboldo looked up, since he assumed she was speaking to him. But when he realized that her look was directed inward, he knew whom she was addressing.
“The way we must go is hard enough for one alone. The old man has promised to take care of your friend.”
“But I—”
“It will not work.”
“Don’t interrupt me!”
“You must believe me. Here she is safe. There, outside, she will only bring you into unnecessary danger. Both of you.”
“Both of us?” retorted Merle acidly. “You, you mean!”
“Merle!” Arcimboldo had stood up and taken her by the shoulders. “If you are really speaking with the Flowing Queen, you should adopt a different tone.”
“Bah!” She took a step back. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “What do you know anyway? Junipa is my friend. I can’t just run out on her!”
She took another step and rubbed angrily at her eyes. She didn’t want to cry. Not here, not now.
“You aren’t running out on me,” said a voice behind her, very gently, very softly. Merle whirled around.
“Junipa!”
In the dark of the open door the silvery eyes were sparkling like a pair of stars that had just wandered there from heaven. Junipa walked forward. The yellow flames of the stove fire flickered over her thin features. She was wearing her white nightgown, with a red shawl over it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was worried about you. Eft came to me and said that I’d find you here.”
Dear, good Eft, thought Merle gratefully. She’d never show it openly, but she knows exactly what’s going on in each of us.
Relieved, she hugged Junipa. It felt good to see her friend and to hear her voice. It seemed as though they had been separated for weeks, although she’d left Junipa at the festival just a few hours before.
When Merle let go, she looked Junipa straight in the eyes. They unsettled her no longer; she’d seen worse in the meantime.
“I listened at the door,” Junipa confessed with a shadow of a smile. “Eft showed me the best way to do it.” She pointed over her shoulder, and there, in the dark of the corridor, stood Eft, who raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Merle couldn’t help it: She laughed, although it wasn’t at all how she was feeling. She no longer had herself under control, just laughed and laughed. . . .
“You heard everything,” she chortled finally. “Both of you?”
Junipa nodded, while Eft’s eyes suggested a smile, but otherwise she remained stock-still.
“Then you certainly think I’m crazy.”
“No,” said Junipa earnestly. And Eft said softly, “The one touched has come home to take leave. The way of the hero takes its beginning.”
Merle didn’t feel like a hero, and that this all might be the beginning of something . . . she didn’t want to think about that at all. But in her heart she of course knew that Eft was right. A leave-taking, a beginning, and then a journey. Her journey.
Junipa grasped her hand and held it fast. “I’m staying here with Arcimboldo and Eft. You go wherever you must go.”
“Junipa, do you remember what you told me, on the very first night?”
“That I was always just a millstone around people’s necks?”
Merle nodded. “But you most certainly are not! And you wouldn’t be either, if you’d come with me!”
Junipa’s smile outshone the cool silver of her eyes. “I know. Much has changed since that night. Arcimboldo can use my help, especially if it really should come to a fight of Venetians against Egyptians. The boys would be the first to join the resistance.”
“You have to stop them.”
“You know Dario,” Arcimboldo said with a sigh. “He won’t let anyone keep him out of an ordinary scrap.”
“But a war isn’t a scrap!”
“He won’t see it that way. And Boro and Tiziano will go with him.” The mirror maker looked very old and gray, as if the admission of his powerlessness cost him great strength. “Junipa will be a valuable help to us. In all things.”
Merle wondered if Arcimboldo perhaps loved Eft the way a man can love a woman. Did he see in Junipa the daughter he and the mermaid would never have?
But who was she anyway that she was trying to evaluate the feelings of another? She’d never had a family, didn’t know what it was like to have a father and a mother. Perhaps Junipa would find that out anyhow, if she gave Arcimboldo and Eft a chance.
It was right to go alone. Only she and the Flowing Queen. Junipa’s place was here, in this house, with these people.
She pressed her friend to her once more, then embraced Arcimboldo, and finally also Eft. “Farewell,” she said. “We’ll all see each other again, sometime.”
“Do you know the way?” Junipa asked.
“I will show her,” said Eft, before Merle could answer at all. Arcimboldo agreed with a nod.
Merle and the mermaid exchanged a look. Eft’s eyes gleamed, but perhaps that was only due to the hard contrast with the shadow that the edge of the mask cast over her features.
Junipa grasped Merle’s hands one last time. “Good luck,” she said, her voice thick. “Take good care of yourself.”
“The Flowing Queen is with me.” The words were out before Merle could even form the thought of speaking them. She wondered if perhaps the Queen had helped to reassure Junipa.
“Come now,” Eft said, and she led the way down the corridor with quick steps.
After a few yards Merle looked around once, back to the door of the workshop. There stood Junipa, beside Arcimboldo. For an irritating moment Merle saw herself standing there at the side of the mirror maker, his arm on her shoulder. But then her likeness turned back into the
girl with the mirror eyes, dark hair became blond, her stature still smaller, more vulnerable.
Eft led her out to the inner courtyard, led her straight over to the well, led her down into the depths.
The inside of the well felt like something living, and in spite of the coolness of the stone it grew warm around Merle, and she thought: Yes, this is how it can begin. This is how it can truly begin.
7
MERMAIDS! A THRONG OF MERMAIDS!
In the gray-green darkness, a silvery twinkle shone from their tails like the flickering of fireflies on a summer night. Two of them were holding Merle by the hands and pulling her along with them through the canals.
Eft had climbed down into the well along with her. Only very gradually had it become clear to Merle that the gentle murmur around her legs did not come from the water itself. Something was moving around her in the water, whirling rapidly, touching her with featherlight fingers, more delicately even than a dog’s nose sniffing a stranger, very carefully, very lightly. She had the feeling the touches reached deep under her skin, as if someone were reading her spirit.
Eft spoke a few words in the strange language of the merfolk. Alien and mysterious, they echoed from the walls of the well shaft, penetrating deep below the surface to the ears of those who understood and knew what was to be done.
A pale hand appeared out of the water in front of Merle and handed her a globe of veined glass. It appeared to be a kind of helmet. Eft helped her to invert it over her head and to fasten the little leather band firmly around her neck. Merle wasn’t at all afraid anymore, not in this place, not among these creatures.
“I am with you,” said the Flowing Queen. For her this was a homecoming to her kingdom, imprisoned in Merle’s body and yet protected by it from the Egyptian sorcerers’ poison.
Eft had remained behind in the well, and now Merle was swimming underwater in a swarm of mermaids through the canals. Where were they taking her? Why was she able to breathe inside the glass globe? And why did the mermaids give off a comfortable warmth so that Merle didn’t freeze in the icy water?
Questions upon questions, and new ones kept adding to them, an army of doubts forming in her head.
“I can give you answers to some,” said the Flowing Queen.
Merle didn’t dare speak, for fear of using up the air in the glass helmet.
“You do not have to say it for me to hear it,” said the Flowing Queen in Merle’s innermost self. “I thought you had understood that much already.”
Merle took pains to formulate her thoughts into clear sentences.
“How long can I breathe under this thing?”
“As long as you want.”
“Does Eft use it too when she climbs down into the well at night?”
“Yes. But it was not created for her. It comes from a time when the merfolk still commanded some of the old knowledge, from ancient times when the water was everywhere and the multiplicity of life in the oceans was immeasurable. Some of that knowledge has remained, buried in the old cities under the sea, in deep trenches and folds on the sea bottom. In those days, countless years ago, expeditions were sent out from the cities from time to time, and sometimes they returned with treasures like this helmet.”
“Is it technology or magic?”
“What is magic but technology that most men do not understand—not yet or no longer?” The Queen seemed to be amused at her own words for a moment, then became serious again. “But you are not entirely wrong. From your point of view it is a work of magic rather than technology. What looks to you like glass is in reality hardened water.”
“Arcimboldo said that he used the water of the lagoon for producing his magic mirrors. And that he can only work it when you are contained in it.”
“He uses a similar process. Externally his mirrors look as if they consisted of ordinary glass. But in truth their surface is an alloy of hardened water. Centuries ago, in the era of the suboceanic kingdoms, craftsmen worked with water the way you humans today work with wood and metal. Another time, another knowledge! Arcimboldo is one of the few who know how to handle it today—even though his cunning is only a shadow of the suboceanic craftsmen’s. And Arcimboldo spoke the truth: It was my presence that made the waters of the lagoon what they were. Without me they will not harden.”
Merle nodded thoughtfully. All the Flowing Queen’s explanations led to one thing. She hesitated before she directed the thought to the Queen: “Are you a suboceaner? One of the old people under the sea?”
The Queen was silent for a long time, while the shimmering fish tails of the mermaids danced around Merle in the darkness.
“I am old,” she said at last. “Infinitely older than all the life under the sea.”
There was something in the Flowing Queen’s tone that made Merle doubt her words. What she said was certainly no lie—but was it the whole truth? Merle knew that the Queen at this moment was reading her thoughts and so also knew her doubt. But for some reason the Queen didn’t address it. Instead she changed the subject:
“Before, you wanted to know where the mermaids are taking us.”
“Out of the lagoon?”
“No, that they cannot do. The danger would be too great. If an Egyptian lookout were to discover a whole swarm of them under the surface, he would follow them. We cannot risk that. Too many merfolk have died at the hands of men already—I will not ask them to now give their lives for their oppressors as well.”
Fascinated, Merle’s eyes followed the slender bodies swarming around them and safely guiding them through the deep canals. A reassuring warmth came from the hands of the two mermaids who were gently pulling her through the water.
“They are taking us to the Piazza San Marco,” said the Queen.
“But that’s—”
“The center of the city. I know.”
“And there we’ll run straight into the arms of the Guard!”
“Not if I can prevent it.”
“It’s my body, don’t forget! I’m the one who has to run away. And be tortured. And killed.”
“There is no other way. There is only one way by which we can leave the city. And to do that, someone must help us.”
“In the Piazza San Marco, of all places?”
“We have no other choice, Merle. We can only meet him there. There he is . . . well, he is being held prisoner.”
Merle choked on her own breath. Right beside the Piazza San Marco lay the old Doge’s palace, the former residence of the Venetian princes and today the domicile of the city councillors. The dungeon of the palace was notorious, as was the one under its lead roofs, and the extensive prison on the other side of the canal, too, which could only be entered from the palace, over the Bridge of Sighs. Whoever crossed that bridge never saw daylight again.
“In all seriousness, you intend to free a prisoner from the Doge’s dungeon so that he can help us leave Venice? We might just as well jump from the nearest high tower!”
“That is closer to the truth than you think, Merle. Because the one who will help us is not imprisoned in the dungeon but in the Campanile.”
“The highest tower in the city!”
“Indeed.”
The Campanile stood on the Piazza San Marco and towered over all of Venice. Merle still did not understand what the Queen was driving at.
“But there’s no prison in there!”
“Not for ordinary criminals. Do you remember the legend?”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Vermithrax. But you know him rather as the—”
“The Ancient Traitor!”
“The same.”
“But that’s only a story! An old wives’ tale. Vermithrax never really lived.”
“I think he would be of another opinion.”
Merle closed her eyes for a few seconds. She had to concentrate, make no mistakes now. Her life depended on it.
Vermithrax, the Ancient Traitor! He was a figure of myth and sayings; people used his name as a
curse. But a living, breathing creature—never! Magic spells and mermaids, all that was reality, a part of her everyday world. But Vermithrax? That was as if someone told her he’d had lunch with God.
Or drunk the Flowing Queen.
“All right,” said Merle in her thoughts with a sigh, “you’re saying, then, that the Ancient Traitor is being held prisoner in the Campanile on the Piazza San Marco, right?”
“My word on it.”
“And we’re simply going to go to him, free him, and . . . then what?”
“That you will see when we are with him. He still owes me a favor.”
“Vermithrax owes you something?”
“A long time ago I helped him.”
“That obviously brought him far—straight into prison!”
“Your mockery, my dear, is superfluous.”
Merle shook her head in resignation. One of the mermaids looked over to make sure everything was all right. Merle gave her a brief smile. The woman returned it with her shark’s smile and turned her eyes forward again.
“If he’s been held there all these years, how come no one knows about it?”
“Oh, everyone knows it.”
“But they think it’s a legend!”
“Because they want it that way. Perhaps many tales and myths would turn out to be true if only anyone had the courage to look in a well for a golden ball or cut the thorn hedge around a castle.”
Merle thought it over. “He’s really up there?”
“That he is.”
“How do you intend to free him? He’ll certainly be heavily guarded.”
“With a little luck,” the Queen replied.
Merle was just about to start an answer when she sensed that the mermaids were rising toward the surface. Above her, Merle could make out the keels of gondolas, rocking gently on the waves; they lay next to each other lined up in rows. Merle knew where they were. This was the gondola landing area at the Piazza San Marco.
The water around the gondolas had taken on an orange glow. Daybreak, Merle thought with relief. Sunrise. Her mood rose a little, even though the light would make their way to the Campanile more difficult.
