She pictured herself cutting into the silk, and shrank from the thought. Surely her mother would be home before it came to that.
Gia leaned on the table, eyes closed. What she needed was a snack and maybe a shower. She folded the silk again, careful to get it as neat as possible, and put it back in the bag.
-oOo-
Eating helped to wake her up, but the shower did not calm her as much as she hoped. It reminded her too much of her mother. Thinking of her mother reminded her of the way the ivory woman had spoken about Saraswati.
As Gia turned her face up into the stream of hot water, she tried to remember exactly what the woman had said. She had spoken as if she knew Saraswati. Before she’d realised that Gia was adopted, she’d said that she was surprised that Gia was so normal.
Normal.
She’d said that word with an ironic twist, the way she’d used the words “crooks and straights.”
Blood.
That was another word that kept coming up. She’d said that Nico was the way he was because he was Saraswati and Karel’s son.
Our blood does not mix well with humans.
Did she mean that Karel was human, and Saraswati was— not?
What is she then, if she’s not human?
Again she remembered Saraswati looking up at the full moon.
All at once, it became unbearable. There was so much she did not know. So many secrets, so many things that she’d always just known she should not ask about.
No more. I want to know.
She dried herself and dressed quickly. This was her chance, now, before anyone came back.
In her parents’ bedroom, she hesitated, looking around. If there was anything to be found, it would be here. She opened one of the small drawers in the dressing table.
Jewellery. Makeup.
It felt wrong, scratching through her mother’s private things, but she pushed aside her doubt.
I want to know.
Other drawers revealed photographs, but they were all pictures Gia had seen many times. Her mother holding a baby Nico. Herself in her first school uniform. Her father’s brother, whom she’d never met. A wedding photograph, Karel and Saraswati, young and smiling. There was nothing else worth looking at. No secret drawer, no diary, no cache of letters.
As she closed the last drawer, a memory that had been niggling at her for some time finally came to the surface. That day when the furniture had arrived, there had been a chest. A metal trunk that she’d not seen before the move, and had certainly not seen since.
A locked metal trunk.
She remembered Saraswati’s reaction when she’d asked about it. The startled glance, the way her face had closed, and she’d turned from it. A thing that large would not be easy to hide.
She looked in all the obvious places. Under her parents’ bed. In the cupboards. On top of the cupboards. She searched the living room, the kitchen, Nico’s room, everywhere that anything that size could possibly be hidden. Then she went down to the studio and looked everywhere she could think of.
At last she was back in her parents’ room, looking in the cupboards, and under the bed again.
“Lost something?”
Gia knocked her head on the bottom of the bed, and sat back with a hand to her forehead. Paddavis was on the headboard, his little legs dangling down.
“Where did you come from?”
“Me?” He shrugged. “I’m always here. What are you looking for?”
Gia thought about asking him why he’d not come when she called him, but thought better of it. She did not want to antagonise the little creature now.
“It’s a metal box. Like a trunk. About this big.” She gestured with her hands.
“Why do you want it?”
She shrugged. “I need to look inside it. Don’t you know where it is, then?”
Paddavis scratched himself. “I might. What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
That caught his interest. “Really? I thought it must be important, for your father to hide it like that.”
“You saw him hide it?”
Paddavis slid down the headboard and bounced on the bed. “Want to see?” Then he gave another bounce and scampered out the door.
“Wait!” Gia was just in time to see him disappear into the kitchen.
“Hey! Wait up!”
She caught up with him in the pantry. He was hopping up and down in front of one of the lower cupboards.
“I’ve already looked in there. It’s empty. Look.”
“False back,” said Paddavis.
“What?” But Gia had already seen what he meant. The cupboard was far too shallow. Why had she not noticed that before?
She got down on her knees and reached inside, running her fingers along the back panel’s edges. It fit too tightly to get her fingernails in there.
“Get me a knife,” she said, still head and shoulders inside the cupboard.
She heard a clatter of cutlery from the kitchen, and Paddavis was back, holding out a table knife.
“Thanks.”
The knife slid easily between the panel and the cupboard wall. She moved it up and down, working carefully so as not to leave any marks. She could already feel the panel moving under her hands. A moment later, it was loose and she pulled it free.
There it was. The metal trunk, just as she’d remembered it. A little dented here and there, with some of its paint flaked off. She grabbed the handle and pulled. It was lighter than she’d expected, and it rumbled as it came.
“Open it!” said Paddavis.
Gia jiggled the lid, wondering if she could force it. But she did not want to leave any marks on the trunk. No one must know she’d opened it. “In a moment,” she said.
Ignoring Paddavis’s impatience, she first put the panel back in the cupboard so that it looked as it had before. Then she picked up the trunk.
“Out of the way, Paddavis,” she said. And then, “Can you open that trapdoor for me?”
Paddavis scampered up the stairs and slid open the trapdoor to Gia’s room. Getting the trunk up the stairs was trickier than she’d thought, but at last she dumped it next to her bed and stood there, rubbing her hands. The edges had dug cruelly into her fingers.
“You going to open it now?” Paddavis was almost dancing with impatience.
“It’s locked.” Gia jiggled the lid to show him.
“Oh. Don’t you have the key?”
“Of course I don’t. But I’ve got a plan. Here.” She gave him the kettle. “Go put some water in this. Don’t fill it up, just a cup or two.”
He frowned, but took the kettle and was off down the stairs. He was back faster than she’d have thought possible, with the right amount of water.
She plugged the kettle in and switched it on. Then she dragged the cardboard box out from next to the shelf. Paddavis clearly recognised it at once, and understood its significance too.
“Oh!” he said, grinning. “Clever, clever. Which one are you going to use?”
She lifted out the box of rosehip tea.
“This is the only one I’ve tried so far,” she said.
“That’s a good one,” said Paddavis. “Some of the others are useless, really. They just want somebody to complain at. But Maarouf’s not bad.”
The fancy teacup was still among the more ordinary mugs. She took a pinch of tea, and once the water boiled, poured it into the cup, closely watched by Paddavis.
Would it work?
She was just beginning to wonder if she’d done something wrong, when the steam started rising from the cup and forming the plump little figure.
“Good afternoon,” said the genie. “It is afternoon, is it not? So hard to keep track of time.”
Then he noticed Paddavis and his expression tightened. “Oh. You.”
Paddavis smirked at the genie.
“I’ve got some honey here,” said Gia, reaching for the pot she kept with her other tea things.
“Oh?” The genie los
t his frosty tone. “How delightful. Could you by any chance—?”
“Of course,” said Gia. “But I do have a favour to ask of you.”
“Indeed,” said the genie. “How can I be of service?”
Gia tapped the trunk. It boomed hollowly under her finger. “Can you open this for me?”
He closed his eyes and frowned. Then he gave a nod. “Old locks. Stiff. But not outside my range.”
“Fantastic. Here.” She scooped a fat teaspoon of honey into his cup. “Is that enough?”
“Marvellous. Marvellous.”
“Don’t give him too much. It just makes him giggly,” said Paddavis.
The genie shot him a cold look. “I’m quite capable of controlling myself. Unlike some people I might mention. Now. The locks.”
Flushed with colour from the honey, he clasped his hands and closed his eyes.
Gia held her breath. She sat with her hands on the trunk, not sure what to expect.
The genie frowned and bowed forward on his plume of steam. Just as Gia thought nothing was going to happen, there was a double click and she felt the trunk vibrate as if somebody had given it a slap.
“There!” said the genie. “A little stiffer than I’d anticipated.”
Gia looked down at the trunk. It looked just as it had before.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” said Paddavis. His whiskers nearly brushed the trunk in his eagerness to see inside. The genie, too, was craning curiously.
Now that it came to it, Gia felt reluctant.
Probably nothing important. She shook off her nerves, took hold of the lid, and lifted.
It was stiff, and at first it opened only a little way, enough to slide a hand inside, but not enough to reveal the contents. She could smell something. A scent poured out of the trunk. A resiny perfume, frankincense and jasmine, far too strong to be anything but magical. She shifted her grip and pulled the lid all the way up, ignoring the creaking groan.
Then she sat staring down at its contents.
Feathers.
The trunk was full of white feathers.
“Don’t touch!” said Paddavis, just as the genie’s “No!” stopped her from reaching inside.
It wasn’t just feathers. She could see the outline of a wing, the long, crisp pinion feathers arranged one overlapping the other like the scales of a fish. It must be a skin, with the feathers still attached. There was not enough space in the trunk for an entire bird.
“Gia!”
For a moment longer she looked at the open trunk, trying to make sense of what she saw. Then the new sounds registered. There were steps down below, and somebody had called her name.
“Gia?”
Her father.
As quietly as she could, she shut the trunk, then pushed it back far from the trapdoor, wincing at the noise. She’d have to hide it properly later.
She noticed that Paddavis was already gone. The genie floated on top of its little cloud of steam, looking quite astonished.
“Coming, Dad!”
There had been something in his voice. He had sounded almost—
“Gia?”
“Mom?”
She nearly fell down the stairs.
A moment later she was in the kitchen, and there was Saraswati, and there was her father, holding Nico.
“Mom!”
Saraswati turned and gathered Gia into her arms.
Feathers
That afternoon and the evening that followed had an unreal quality. Saraswati and Nico were home again, but nothing was said about where they’d been or why they had left.
Karel had spent the day searching from hospital to morgue, and returned home to find them coming down the street, hand in hand. Gia expected him to interrogate her mother, to demand answers, but he said nothing.
It was as though everyone were holding their breath, avoiding the thin ice.
The closest Gia came to breaking the spell was at Nico’s bedtime. The last time she’d seen him was wet and bedraggled in Saraswati’s arms. Now he was back to normal, and demanding his bedtime story.
Gia and Saraswati stood in the door watching as Karel read to him.
“How has Nico been?” Gia asked softly. “It must have been difficult with him.”
Saraswati shook her head. She’d just had a shower, and was combing out her hair in long slow strokes.
“No,” she said. “The caretaker was there all the time. Keeping him working on that sculpture of his. That man is amazing.”
She swept her hair back over her shoulders and took a deep, calm breath.
“When Nico’s with him, it’s like he’s a different boy.”
-oOo-
Later, up in her room, Gia looked at the trunk. She no longer wanted to know its secrets. She’d wait until everyone was out of the house, and then she’d put it back where she’d found it. In the meantime she pushed it against the wall furthest from the trapdoor, where it was half hidden by her milk crate bookshelf.
There was no sign of Paddavis, and the genie had drifted away, leaving behind a cup of cold tea.
The next day, Monday, was a normal school day, and Gia kept remembering that it was one of her last. No more school, soon.
A few more days and she’d be leaving for Valkenberg. Sonella got some of the story out of her, about her mother’s disappearance and return, but she told no one about the bargain she’d struck with the old ones. The closest she’d come to thinking about it was when she found the button that she’d pulled off her guard’s sleeve, still in her pocket.
It did not give away any secrets.
A plain button, rather scratched, made of some kind of brassy metal with a black stone set into it. Unusual, but there was nothing about it that told her who its owner was, or where he might be found.
That afternoon Saraswati unpacked the toile, and smiled at Gia’s over-precise notes.
“It’s good to be careful,” she’d said. “Now, you show me how to lay it out.”
It was quite different, throwing the silk out over the cutting table under her mother’s watchful eye. Whenever she was uncertain of the next step, Saraswati was there— never telling her what to do, but guiding her to find the right question.
“You have to have confidence,” Saraswati told her at one point. “If you keep telling yourself ‘this is difficult’ or ‘I’m going to do this wrong’ then you will never get things right. You must pretend you know what you’re doing, and your hands will know what to do.”
Karel did not speak much. He and Saraswati kept touching one another. Karel would take Saraswati’s hand as he was explaining something about a client, and she’d stroke his arm. Then Saraswati would turn aside from what she was doing to bury her face in Karel’s shoulder. Just for a moment, and then they would go on with their work.
The calm spell lasted until that evening over supper, when Saraswati at last turned to her and said, “Gia, does Karel know?”
Gia put down her fork.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the glass vase again. The fracture lines spreading, but the glass was not yet broken. The pieces still held together for a few moments more.
She avoided her mother’s eyes, aware that her father, too, had stopped eating.
“Gia?” said her mother.
Gia shook her head, then swallowed. Her throat had gone very tight.
“Do you mean about the— about the bargain? With—” She could not get the words out.
“That’s right.”
There was a silence.
“Gia?” said Karel.
When she did not answer, he turned to Saraswati. “Sari? What’s this?”
“I think it’s better if Gia tells you.”
“It’s about the Belle Gente,” said Gia. It came out as a whisper. “I made a bargain with them. So they would not take Nico.”
She looked up at her father. “That’s why Mom came back.”
From then on, things came apart.
She made a mess of explaining, telling
things in the wrong order. Ochre’s arrival to fetch Nico. Her signing up for First Exit with Special Branch. The late-night trip, the blindfold, the conversation with the ivory woman and the man who’d looked inside her head. By the time half of it was told her father was up and pacing.
He refused to believe it at first, and she had to fetch the paperwork, the documents she’d signed with Special Branch, and the new revised contract with the Belle Gente. Then he tried to find a way out.
He’d phone Special Branch. He would speak to the headmaster of the school. He’d take the contract to a lawyer. He’d contact Captain Witbooi.
Gia watched him pace, and tried to answer his increasingly angry questions. It was like a horrible dream that would not stop. At last Saraswati, who’d been silent, spoke again. “Karel. It’s done.”
He turned on her and for a moment Gia thought that he would shout, but all he said was, “So you knew about this. And you let it happen.”
He looked tired and defeated, but Saraswati shook her head.
“No. I would have stopped her if I could. But I was not here to stop her.”
Mother and daughter looked at one another.
“Gia is no longer a child, Karel. She made this bargain, and she has to stand by it. I don’t like it any more than you do. But this is what she did, and she did it to save Nico.”
Saraswati reached across the table and took Gia’s hand. “It was bravely done. And it’s too late to stop it now.”
-oOo-
Although Karel let the subject drop, Gia soon saw that he was far from accepting Saraswati’s words. He was convinced that there must be some way to reverse the First Exit commitment she’d made.
Over the next few days, to Gia’s embarrassment, he phoned the headmaster, and went so far as to arrange a meeting with him, that Gia had to attend. It soon became clear that there was no way to back out of joining Special Branch, not without Gia’s consent. Mr Peterson made that perfectly clear.
According to the law, as long as the First Exit criteria were met, Gia was of age to make that decision for herself and there was nothing her father could do to stop her.
While she was relieved to hear this confirmed, Gia hated the patronising way Mr Peterson spoke to her father. The headmaster was all concerned sympathy, nodding earnestly as he listened to Karel, but he had the manner of an adult patiently listening to an unreasonable and sulky child.
Crooks and Straights Page 28
