by Anne Nesbet
At least they were kind enough to seat her next to Valko at the huge dining table in the next room. She could keep an eye on which fork he was using, and she figured that might just save her etiquette-challenged neck.
On her other side was an older man, older than her father. He introduced himself, very politely, as a historian.
“What kind of history?” asked Maya, equally politely.
“At the moment, mademoiselle,” said the old man, “I am completing a very important project on the history of yogurt.”
“Yogurt!” said Maya. That surprised her, all right, but she kept her expression as much under wraps as possible.
“Yogurt, but yes, absolutely!” said the old man. “The crowning glory of Bulgarian, as it were, culture. That’s a pun, my dear.”
Maya blinked, not knowing what to say.
“Why, even the vaunted Greeks use our cultures! Read the labels on their cartons, if you don’t believe me, child. Bulgarian cultures everywhere: L. bulgaricus, humble conqueror of the Western world. You, mademoiselle, I sense, are neither French nor Bulgarian.”
“American,” said Maya.
“Ah,” said the historian of yogurt, making a very horrified face. “Where, I have heard, they serve yogurt frozen! And with—what do you call them?—toppings!”
Maya risked a quick glance at Valko on her other side. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“And now you have met our favorite crusty historian. But you are harmless, aren’t you, Professor Stoyanov?”
The old man chuckled into his napkin.
“Oh, yes, yes, young Valko. Sad to say. Harmless, harmless. They need not hide me down here at the children’s end of the table. I have given up breaking plates.”
And that was when the dining-room doors flew open. All heads at the table looked up and around. A woman had paused with one foot through the doorway—almost, you might say, striking a pose under the elegant arch. She was wearing a tailored black skirt and a rather showy jacket (floral brocade with threads of gold!), but everything was slightly askew. Her blouse was untucked on one side. You could see that her hair had started off combed sleekly back into a ponytail, but had then rebelled. And down one side of that disobedient hair was a streak of surprising, blinding white.
“Madame Blakely!” exclaimed Valko’s unflappable mother. “How pleased we all are that you have arrived!”
“I’m afraid I’m late,” said Madame Blakely, in plainly American English, her face twitching into a foolish smile. “I am late, aren’t I? I arrived just outside, and then the lights went off, and then . . .”
She moved her hands about hopelessly, describing something she was obviously in no condition to describe.
“The carnival downstairs,” she said. “There’s a carnival, yes? And then suddenly, you know, I was singing!”
She laughed.
“Of all people: me, singing!”
Everyone else at the table sat as if stunned.
“Well, the adventure ends happily, madame,” said Valko’s mother, with professional courtesy. “You have found your way to our table, and before the soup! Please do take a seat. . . .”
Indeed, as the men at the table remembered their advanced manners and rose in greeting, members of the embassy staff were already guiding Madame Blakely to the empty chair across the table from Maya and Valko.
“Pernithia Jane Blakely is this year’s winner of the Bulgarian Cultural Foundation’s works-in-progress grant,” said Valko’s father to the table at large, “for artists whose works engage deeply and profoundly with Bulgarian culture. We are very happy Madame Blakely could attend our dinner this evening. It is an honor for us, I’m sure.”
The soup had the tastiest little meatballs in it. Maya realized by the second spoonful that part of the funny feeling in her stomach had been plain, old-fashioned hunger. She was glad to have something to do with herself, too: she knew how to eat soup.
“Bulgarian culture!” said the historian of yogurt, setting his spoon down in his empty bowl. “So your writing engages with Bulgarian culture, Madame Blakely? May I ask, what aspect of Bulgarian culture has attracted your interest?”
“Oh, yes!” said Pernithia Jane Blakely. “Vampires!”
Was it Maya’s imagination, or did several people at that table stiffen slightly? Pernithia Jane Blakely, ignoring her soup, had jumped into a description of the book she was planning to write, Love with Long Teeth, in which, apparently, a beautiful girl was going to run her European rental car off the road and be rescued by a handsome and mysterious man with mechanical skills and a reluctance to share his name. Then they were going to go to his family mansion, in the hostile, barren Bulgarian hills, and one night the man would bare his sexy chest and reveal a set of surprisingly sharp eyeteeth, and she —
“Excuse me,” said the historian. “But no. No!”
“Professor Stoyanov!” said Valko’s mother, her voice chilly. But he waved her reproof away, while a crew of waiters replaced the soup bowls with plates containing little gourmet mounds of chopped salad, garnished with walnuts and—what was that? Maya’s heart contracted. For a moment she thought the strangeness had affected the embassy’s kitchen. Then she realized that what she was seeing was a radish carved—by hand, not by magic—to look exactly like a rose.
She relaxed again, but only for a second. Professor Stoyanov, historian of yogurt, was in the middle of a long lecture on the figure of the vampir in Bulgaria, and whenever he got to a particularly important point, he whacked his fork against his plate for emphasis.
“Not sexy!” (Whack!) “Not sexy at all! I am sorry, but I am fatigued by this nonsense.” (Whack!) “Do you even know what creates them, vampiri? A bad death, someone dies and the funeral is not done properly. An evil man who dies badly—that can make the poor, unhappy vampir. And then, is it sexy, is it handsome? No!” (Whack!) “It is a hungry shadow—some say a bag of blood. The opposite of sexy!” (Whack!) “For forty days, the shadow wanders. If it can feast enough, madame, on the living, it can, on the fortieth day, return to life itself. That’s what it hungers to do. Eat someone’s heart, and live. That is all. No bare chests and romance. No! Not a Bulgarian vampire!”
A final couple of whacks for emphasis, and then the servers swooped in and took all their salad plates away. Professor Stoyanov, disarmed, glowered across the table at the American writer, who seemed to be taking the diatribe quite well.
“I am just simply asking you, madame,” said the historian of yogurt. “Where you are getting your false information, about Bulgarian vampires?”
“It’s not false information,” said the writer in surprise. “It’s fiction. I mean, I made it all up, of course. And anyway, vampires have to be sexy. Everyone knows that. Otherwise, what’s even the point?”
The historian huffed with impatience, and, in any case, Maya was hardly listening anymore. The salad had been replaced by the gourmet version of stuffed peppers (tiny, beautiful peppers arranged on a plate and drizzled with bright swirls of some kind of sauce). But Maya looked at her plate and saw hungry shadows, wandering the streets for forty days.
“Forty days!”
That was Valko’s quiet voice on her left side. So he had heard it, too. Of course he had.
“Valko—,” she said.
He squeezed her hand quickly, under the table. They couldn’t talk here. She knew that. This wasn’t the place.
“Well, young lady, how do you like the pulneni chushki?” said the historian, on Maya’s other side. “They’ve fancied it up, of course, for the French taste. And do American taste buds agree?”
“It’s very good, thank you,” said Maya, although to tell the truth, worry had taken most of the flavor away.
“That’s a yogurt sauce there, on the side,” he said. “That’s traditional. Your hand is shaking, young lady. Have you had too much wine?”
Maya shook her head. She didn’t drink wine! But when she raised her eyes a little, she was disconcerted to find Pernithia Bl
akely, the writer, staring squarely at her.
“You’re an American girl,” said the writer. “Where are you from? What’s your name?”
Maya shook her head, and then realized that made no sense and nodded instead.
“I’m . . . I’m from California,” she said. “I’m a friend of Valko’s. That’s why I’m here.”
“What’s your name?” said the writer. “I could send you a book, sometime. Are you a big reader?”
Maya nodded.
The writer was still waiting.
“I’m Maya Davidson,” said Maya, almost under her breath.
The writer passed a hand over her eyes, and Maya saw something change in her face.
“Maya?” she said. “Maya?”
Oh, no.
That telltale stripe of white in her hair. She had been caught up in a “carnival” outside? She had found herself singing?
“Oh, Valko, help,” Maya whispered again.
“I know, I know,” murmured Valko, and, being the sort of person who takes direct action right away when direct action is needed, he knocked his water glass over immediately. Water rushed across the table and onto Maya’s lap.
“I’m so sorry!” he said aloud, leaping to his feet and making a big show of dabbing at the table with napkins. “I’ve made an awful mess! You’ll have to get all cleaned up.”
His parents were half displeased (his mother) and half amused (his father).
“Oh, Valko!” said his mother. “Clumsy child—help the poor girl!”
“Excuse me,” said Valko to everybody around that table, and he bowed his head for a second, took Maya by the elbow (she grabbed her backpack from under her chair), and guided her safely out.
She wasn’t even that awfully drenched, when they surveyed the damage in the next room.
“You heard what that woman said,” said Maya. “I mean, how she said it. And she’s got that streak in her hair. She said she was singing!”
“It’s not good,” said Valko, shaking his head. “Not to mention her book sounds horrible.”
“Well, it could be okay,” said Maya, who was willing to read anything. “Just because she’s been turned into a ravenous samo-whatsit doesn’t mean she’s a bad writer. Necessarily.”
Valko made a face.
“We’ll just have to hide out here until the dinner’s over,” he said with regret. “Too bad. I happen to know that dessert’s going to be those warm chocolate cakes with melty middles.”
They didn’t go back in until the guests were saying their farewells and departing, and even then they were careful to hang back in the corners, while the writer, puzzled, kept looking around as if she had lost something and couldn’t quite remember what that something was. Every time she caught sight of Maya, her eyes would light up again and she would lunge forward, but Maya and Valko were quicker on their feet. And finally even Pernithia Jane Blakely was ushered out the door by the Dr. Nikolovs and their efficient staff.
“And that leaves only the esteemed junior guests,” said Valko’s father, nodding to Maya and Valko.
“Poor girl,” said Valko’s mother. “Sometimes our son lives up to his name, I’m afraid. Wild wolfling, our Valko. Did you suffer very much?”
She had put a fond arm around Valko’s shoulders while she said that, though. Maya found herself filled, suddenly, with determination; she shivered a little as she opened her mouth.
“It was so kind of you to invite me,” she said (remembering to be very, very polite). “It was really kind. Thank you. I just wish—”
It was as if she had entered a fairy tale: you battle your way through to the castle where the king and queen of the fairies live, and you always end up (if you live) with the chance for a wish. Don’t you?
“I just wish so much Valko could stay in Paris,” she said.
There was a silence.
Valko’s mother’s eyes had snapped back into sharp focus; you could almost see the chess pieces being moved about in her mind as she raised her eyebrows at Maya.
“He has made a friend here, I see,” said Dr. Nikolova finally, and with the faintest ghost of a smile. “That, of course, is a good thing—yes, even I know that. You’ll see Maya safely home now, Valko? Without spilling anything more on her?”
And so, after tucking themselves into sweaters and jackets, Maya and Valko were dismissed into the cold, strange November night.
13
SAMODIVI AFTER DINNER
It was much colder now than it had been on the way in. Maya wrapped her scarf an extra time around her neck and hunched the backpack more securely onto her shoulder. Valko was looking at her, she could tell.
“All right, I’m sorry!” she said finally. She couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ve messed everything up, of course. First I let the gargoyles tackle you, and then there your parents were, and I opened my mouth that way like a total idiot. I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t thinking any of that,” said Valko. “I’m not even sure what happened on the roof, but I think you rescued me from that . . . thing, whatever it was. And my mother—well, she almost prefers people to be unpredictable.”
“But it’s not going to help.”
Valko shrugged.
“I am appreciative,” he said. “Even if I’m packed up and gagged and sent in a suitcase back to Bulgaria, I will always remember that you tried bravely to save me.”
He was teasing her, but he was teasing her nicely. Maya shook her head at him, but just then she tripped over a rough spot in the sidewalk, and the backpack swung around and knocked the back of her elbow quite hard.
“You all right?” said Valko, and he looked down to see what it was she had tripped on. “Whoa, look at this.”
Her first thought was that an old iron pipe had somehow broken through the pavement. But then she saw the roughness of the thing, the way it had thrust its way up through the sidewalk and slithered along for a while, before diving back down under the surface.
“Valko, what is this? It wasn’t here before, was it?”
She backed up so hastily she ran right into a man passing by.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I fell—the pipe—what is it?”
Valko was steadying her with one hand by now. The man smiled politely and dusted himself off where she had bowled into him.
“You are not from here, I see, mademoiselle,” he said, and in the light of the streetlamps his eyes had the most unsettling sheen of vagueness to them. “They are, of course, the roots of the Tower, the racines d’Eiffel. In this neighborhood we know: the Tower’s roots can be treacherous at night. Attention! Be careful! Beware!”
They watched him walk on down the sidewalk, his legs expertly dodging the racines d’Eiffel wherever they had lurched through the smooth surface of the sidewalk.
“That’s not possible,” said Valko finally. He dropped to his knees and rapped his knuckles on the thick length of iron that had tripped up Maya’s toes. “It’s not possible. What did he say? The roots of the Tower! Towers don’t have roots.”
“It’s the strangeness again,” said Maya, rubbing her elbow. “It’s the loophole spreading. Only it’s changing things more now. It’s getting worse and worse, every time. You heard what the gargoyles said—the loophole thing. Stuff becoming what it possibly could be, instead of what it already is.”
“And gargoyles don’t talk, either,” said Valko. For a moment he sounded a little lost. But then he shook his head and became himself again.
“Oh, well,” he said. “What did you do to your elbow?”
“The egg whacked it when I tripped,” said Maya. That turned some little light on in her head. “Oh, how stupid! The egg! I totally forgot!”
She unzipped the backpack to show him: the gargoyles’ egg, a little chilly after all those hours of neglect, but still pockmarked with words she didn’t recognize. It glittered a little under the streetlight.
“What’s it saying there, Valko? Don’t be mad at me about this egg. The whole reason
I brought it along was to ask you.”
Valko studied the egg for a moment with distaste.
“There’s that forty all over the place,” he said. “Forty, forty, forty. Can’t we throw this thing into the river?”
“No, we can’t,” said Maya. “But maybe it’s like what the man said at the table: forty days for a Bulgarian vampire to—”
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” said Valko. “Oh, don’t look at me that way! There’s really not.”
His breath was making little clouds in the air as he studied the egg.
“‘Keep me safe’—we saw that before. And your name. That’s in several places. And ‘zmey.’ I don’t remember that being there. Here it is again: ‘heart of a zmey. Life, life, in the heart of a zmey, Maya, zmey, Maya—’”
“Zzzzzmey,” sang out another voice, not far away.
Maya and Valko jumped, and Maya’s hands fumbled so badly that she very nearly dropped the egg right onto the iron root, which would surely have been the end of it. When the egg was back safe in the crook of her arm, she saw that Valko had frozen still, right beside her.
“Maya,” he said quietly. “Behind us—look.”
Maya looked up and around, and for a moment she, too, was unable to move or speak.
How had they not noticed them before? A group of women in business suits had begun to gather on the sidewalk behind them.
“Oh, no. Let’s leave,” she said, but when they turned to go the other way, they saw that another handful of women, swaying slightly and humming, had wandered around the corner ahead and were waiting there. And threading among them was a deeper column of shadow.
“Okay,” said Valko. “This is where we move fast and stay calm. Here we go.”
He put his arm around her, which did help, and they moved fast down the street. Fast and quiet, with their eyes on the ground, to avoid sudden iron roots. All around them, however, the humming grew and grew. And became shriller. And arms were now jostling them. Arms and shoulders and gracefully moving hands.
The samodivi were on every side of them now.
They were beginning to sing.
Maya caught a glimpse of shadow curling along on her left side. She had the distinct impression the shadow might actually be staring at her, from shadowy, formerly purple eyes. She clenched her hands more tightly around the gargoyles’ egg and kept walking.
