“Why is Emil here, then, and not off hunting or working?”
“You might’ve noticed that Roma aren’t exactly the most popular people around. Some people don’t like our color, some people don’t like our ways, and some people … well, we’ve got to have enough warrior types around at all times. Emil isn’t the friendliest sort you’ll come across, but he’s got brains and is good with a sword and dagger. He’s always had a problem with Sadie, though, and that’s a hard thing to figure. You’ve seen her: she’s as sweet as an apple. I can’t figure why he doesn’t like her.”
“What if,” Petra suggested, listening to the hammer and anvil, “he likes her too much?”
Neel stared at her as if she had just hopped on a fast horse bound for the madhouse. He started to speak, stopped, and finally just muttered something in Romany. He looked at the wagon Sadie had disappeared into and said, “Sadie’s been talking to our ma a long time.”
“Maybe I should’ve stayed in the city.”
“Don’t feel sorry about being here. We wanted you to come. Emil likes to stir up trouble. And my ma and sis got other stuff to talk about than you.” He scuffed his foot in the dirt. “We’re in something of a fix here.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Our horses caught some plaguey thing. Most of them died. And we can’t move the wagons without horses.”
“So you’re stuck here?”
“Like flies in honey. Except it might actually be nice to get stuck in honey. Instead, we’re in Prague.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Although Petra thought parts of Prague were stinking and dirty, she was enjoying her first day in the city. After all, one could find delicious pastries, overhear fascinating gossip, and meet interesting people.
“One, there don’t seem to be any Ursari in the area, so we can’t sway them into loaning us some horses. And we can’t afford to buy more from the gadje. Two”—he was ticking off the reasons on his fingers —“we should be heading south by now to escape the worst of the winter. This part of Bohemia heaps up snow right quick, and then the roads get blocked as good as a sick kid’s nose. Three, we happen to be sitting in the prince’s hunting grounds. Which isn’t exactly law-abiding of us. This means that just about any money we make goes to bribing the prince’s gamekeeper not to tell all and sundry that we’re here. We pay him to tell the prince that if he wants to shoot deer, they’re real thick in a part of the forest miles from here. So we not only don’t have any horses, but it also looks like we won’t be buying any anytime soon. Unless some miracle happens, like Ursari trooping through Prague when we know they’re already heading south toward Spain, we’re well and truly trapped.”
Sadie opened the door to her family wagon. “Neel? Petra? Ma wants to talk to you.”
Neel and Petra walked up the three hanging steps to the wagon door. When they were inside, Neel took off his shoes and set them on a straw mat. Petra did the same. The wagon was about the size of a large room. Two round, glassless windows let in light, which flickered over a raised platform covered with bright cloths and silk cushions. Beneath an iron lantern was a woman with a stern face, sitting cross-legged.
Neel, Sadie, and Petra sat down on the cloths around her. Sadie resembled her mother, but the older woman’s face was narrow, her chin pointed, and her skin dark and lined. “Petra,” Sadie began, “this is our mother, Damara. She would like to hear whatever you were going to tell us about the spider, if you don’t mind.”
Petra gently took Astrophil out of her shirt pocket. The other three leaned closer. Astrophil, she thought. The ticklish sensation in the back of her mind was faint, but it was there.
The spider continued to slumber.
ASTROPHIL.
His green eyes blinked and stared at Petra. How strange. He didn’t seem to notice that he and Petra had company. I was just completing a painting. It was a landscape, and I was using oil paints that were coming out of the tips of my legs, one color for each leg. But where has it gone? It was a masterpiece.
Astrophil, you were dreaming.
That is absurd. To dream you need to sleep, and I never sleep. By the way, where are we? And how did we get here? And—He finally turned around and saw Neel, Sadie, and their mother. What exactly is going on, Petra?
Well, we went with Neel to meet Sadie and then you fell asleep. You fell out of my hair and they saw you. Then they invited us to come to their home for lunch and I decided that was a good idea.
I am starting to believe that I have been sleeping. Because if I had been conscious, I would never have allowed you to do something so extraordinarily foolish.
“This is Astrophil,” Petra introduced the spider. “He was made by my father.” Then she took a deep breath and began to tell them why she had come to Prague.
13
The Hour Strikes
AS PETRA SPOKE, Sadie translated. Damara didn’t ask any questions, but listened thoughtfully. Standing on Petra’s palm, Astrophil was stiff with disapproval. Neel interrupted only once to say, “Your father designed the clock in Staro Square? Really? Prague celebrated its unveiling about a month ago. It’s the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen! And the crowd was so transfixed you can bet they weren’t looking at their purses. Got a good haul that day.”
Petra told them almost everything, except about the clock’s hidden powers. She had promised her father to keep that a secret. And Astrophil might have had a spider’s equivalent of a heart attack if she broke that promise.
She concluded, “So now you see why I want to get a job at the castle. I have to figure out how to get my father’s eyes back. They don’t belong to the prince. He stole them. My father loved his work, and the prince stole his happiness.”
Sadie translated for her mother. Then she said, “Don’t worry, Petra. I’m sure I can find a job for you. The castle employs hundreds of people, and the head housekeeper is constantly looking for someone to do one job or another. They think well of me there. I’ll introduce you to the housekeeper.”
Then Damara asked something. Sadie said, “My mother says that you will be risking your life to find your father’s eyes. She wonders if your father would not prefer blindness.”
“My father has done everything for me. Now it is my turn to do something for him.”
After Damara listened to Sadie she frowned. Then, with the slowness of someone choosing her words carefully, she said that she understood how Petra felt, but that she could not believe her father would agree.
“Why not?” Petra replied. “Neel could get hanged for picking pockets, but you let him do it to bring in money. Why is this any different?”
Neel scratched his head. “Uh, Sadie, maybe you better not put that bit into Romany.”
Sadie looked at Petra, who said, “Tell her.” Sadie shrugged and did.
Damara’s black eyes snapped and she spoke fiercely, glaring at Neel.
“She says that a green fairy must have sucked Neel’s brains out of his ear when he was a baby, because she certainly didn’t raise him to be so stupid.” Neel rolled his eyes. “Come on, Neel. She’s right. You may think stealing is a game, but—”
“I don’t! We need the money! Don’t tell me we don’t need the money!”
Sadie started to say something but Damara cut into the conversation, this time in a gentler voice. Her children fell silent. Sadie translated, “Ma says that she knows Neel is trying to help. And there’s nothing she can do to stop him.”
“Darn right,” he muttered.
“She has always had confidence that he wouldn’t be caught. His ghost fingers make that impossible. Or, at least, we thought it was impossible. But she points out that you, Petra, don’t have the Gift of Danior’s Fingers. How can you hope to succeed?”
Petra felt the glow of a sudden idea. “What if Neel were to help me? If the prince doesn’t value my father’s eyes, he’ll keep them someplace where they’d be easy to steal, and I could do that on my own. But he wouldn’t have gone through th
e trouble of taking them if he didn’t think they were special, so he probably keeps them someplace hard to break into. If that’s the case, then I’m sure he locks them up with other valuable things. If Neel helped me, he could take some of those things and sell them. Then you would have enough money to buy your horses.”
Her proposal was met with silence. Astrophil stared with incredulous green eyes. Sadie crossed her arms. “I’m not translating that.”
“If you won’t, I will!” Neel began to speak excitedly to his mother in Romany. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking it for help. She shouted something that Petra was willing to bet anything meant “Even if I was in my grave I’d rise out of it to tell you no, never, not in a million years!” Or something to that effect. Damara pounded her first against the cloth-covered floor. Their voices grew louder and louder. Finally Sadie shouted, “Dosta!”
Damara exhaled one long breath. When she spoke, her voice was calmer but strong.
Sadie said, “My mother says that if you want to risk your neck, Petra, that’s your business. She respects your decision if not your sense of self-preservation. But her son will not take part in your plan. She says you’re welcome to stay here for the midday meal, and to return anytime you wish. But you will no longer be welcome if you try to drag Neel into your plan.” She glared at her brother. “And I, for one, agree.”
“And I, for one—” Neel stopped. He shrugged. “Well, I can’t argue against the both of you, can I?”
Sadie looked relieved but a little suspicious. “All right, then. Let’s eat.”
• • •
AT LUNCH, Petra found herself the center of attention. Emil and a few others gave her disgusted looks, but most of the Lovari were kindly curious. Ethelenda, the woman who had been roasting the meat when they arrived, gave Petra a thick slice.
One of the little girls pointed to Petra and asked Neel a question, wrinkling her nose. He laughed. “She wants to know why your clothes are so ugly.”
“Are they?”
“Well, brown and brown aren’t exactly the liveliest colors. Makes me think of pinecones. Burned porridge. Rags after scrubbing down a muddy wagon. And horse droppings.”
“I like pinecones,” Petra said defensively.
Ethelenda offered to pierce her ears. “Um, no thanks,” Petra said.
“You might actually want to dress more like a girl,” Sadie said. Coming from Lucie, this advice always made Petra grit her teeth, but she listened to Sadie. “I can see why you wanted to walk around Prague in trousers. No one thinks twice about a boy being alone in the streets. But there’s no point trying to convince people at the castle that you’re a boy. In fact, I’d advise against it. The job that the housekeeper is always looking to fill only goes to boys, and you don’t want it.”
“What is it?”
“Cleaning out the privies.”
“Oh. I see. Maybe skirts aren’t so bad after all.” Petra sighed. “So much for my short-lived disguise.”
“It didn’t work that well anyway,” said Neel.
After lunch, a young man set up a wooden board one hundred paces away from the campfire. The target was a painted red circle the size of a melon, with a walnut-sized black dot marking its center. Damara slipped a dagger from her tall boot and was the first to throw, thwacking the blade’s point into where the black spot met the red circle’s border. Everyone clapped. Then the young people began taking their turns. Many of them missed the board entirely (everyone groaned) or just hit the plain wood. Two of them threw the blade respectably into the red. A girl complained that she couldn’t even see the black spot at this distance. At that, Emil stood up and said he would show them how this game was done. With the grace of a snake rearing its head to bite, Emil leaned back and then threw, the shiny blade spinning from his fingers. He scored a direct hit on the black. Someone whistled admiringly. One woman shook her hand as if she had touched something hot. Emil grinned. Sadie rolled her eyes.
Then Emil said something to Petra that she didn’t understand. His voice was friendly, but he smirked.
Neel said, “Do you want to throw?”
Now, Petra had only ever used knives for chopping vegetables, cutting meat, carving bits of wood into horses, and, most recently, cutting her hair. So she didn’t have high hopes for her chances at hitting a target at one hundred paces. But Emil’s attitude irritated her. If she refused, he would be pleased. If she missed, he would be pleased. If she managed to at least hit the board, she could walk away from the Lovari with her pride. She said she would give the dagger game a try.
“Ever done this before?” Neel asked.
“No.”
“Let me show you a couple things.” He pulled out his knife. “Now, if you start out like this,” he said and cocked his hand, “you’re liable to throw it so that the handle hits the board, not the blade. Watch.” He threw, and the knife clattered against the wood and fell. The group made hooting calls.
Neel retorted in Romany, explaining (Petra assumed) that he had meant to do that. The onlookers laughed, shaking their heads in disbelief. They flapped their hands at him. He shrugged and seemed to say that they could believe what they wanted. He went to pick up the fallen knife and walked back to the campfire. The dagger floated below his hand. He was carrying it by the blade with Danior’s Fingers. “Now, I can hold it like this.” The knife lifted, hovering about a foot above his hand, the iron tip pointing at the board. Neel threw the dagger. It sang in the air and thwacked straight into the black.
The Roma were not nearly as impressed as Petra was. They had seen this many times before. One of Emil’s friends said that Neel had used an unfair advantage.
“Unfair!” Neel muttered to Petra. “Even if you got the ghosts, you still got to learn how to use them. Danior did. It’s not like I don’t practice to be able to do that.” Huffily, he fetched the knife for a third throw.
“You should hold it like this.” He gripped the knife normally and tilted his wrist. He glanced at Petra to see if she could tell the difference between how he was holding it now and how he had held it the first time. To her surprise, she could. She nodded. He threw, and the knife went into the red.
Now it was her turn. When she held the knife, she was curious to find that it felt very natural. She seemed to sense the knife in her mind, like a tiny needle that pricked gently. She knew how she should hold her fingers, and how to angle her arm, her wrist, and the metal blade. It seemed as simple as adding grain to a scale until you could see the needle flicker to the exact weight you wanted. Petra squinted. The black center was about as big as a freckle. But when she threw, she knew the blade would hit the black. And it did.
Neel whistled and clapped Petra hard on the back. The rest of the Lovari had different ways of responding. Everyone looked at least a little taken aback. Sadie and a few others applauded, and many began speaking among themselves. Petra heard one word repeated: petali.
“What’s petali?” she asked Neel.
“It means ‘lucky.’ They’re saying you’ve got beginner’s luck.”
“Really?” Petra replied archly, and walked to pluck the steel dagger from the board. She liked this game. This time she didn’t take so long finding the right position for the throw. She confidently let the blade spin from her fingers. She hit the black mark again.
She turned to Neel with a grin. “My family has always had a way with metal.”
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, Petra said she had to go back to her inn. She and Sadie agreed to meet in the morning at eight o’clock in the castle stables. Petra shouldered her pack. “I’ll walk you home,” Neel said.
They set out through the trees together, heading for the center of town. They talked the whole way. Petra told him about the differences between Okno and Prague. She described her family and Tomik. Neel’s voice painted vibrant images of the different places he had lived in, like Spain, Portugal, Hungary, and North Africa.
Once they crossed Karlov Bridge into the older part of town,
Petra thought they would retrace their steps back to the Shorn Lamb and the market, but Neel led her in a different direction. “I want to show you something.”
He brought her to a square that was flanked by soaring towers that prickled with spires. In the center of the square, people were massed around a tall, slender building with a pointed roof. They seemed to be waiting for something. Petra could see only the back of the building, but she guessed what it was even before Neel shouted, “Hurry up! It’s almost time for the hour to strike!” They ran into the crowd and jostled for a good view.
Petra gazed in awe. The clock was even more beautiful than she had imagined. As her father said, the clock’s face showed a brassica field rippling in the breeze. Golden Roman numerals ringed the dial. Signs of the zodiac, also in gold, flashed in a constant circle as a flat, blue plate made from lapis lazuli spun below the face. Tiny green copper dragons peered down from the pointed roof above the clock’s face. Their twisted tails were streaked with gold.
Then the silver minute hand and the gold hour hand reached the number five together. Jets of water sprang up in the air on either side of the clock, in the form of dripping lilies of the valley. Small children splashed in the water below. Melodious chimes rang. Above the clock’s face, blue double doors folded open. Small statues appeared in one door. They turned to face the audience. Then they disappeared behind the second door. It was a parade of good and evil. First came the devil, then an angel, then a miser clinking his money bag, then a woman scattering brassica seeds, then Death as a skeleton. Last came Life, a young girl who looked like Petra. She slipped behind the second door. The blue doors shut. The wings of the copper dragons fluttered like leaves, and a red rooster statue at the top of the tower crowed.
Petra was speechless. The clock was unbelievably lovely, and must have been very difficult to design.
The Cabinet of Wonders Page 10
