by Julie Berry
He answered in a repentant whisper. “Our bailiff, he’s drunk most nights. The headmaster, he’s a mean old goat, but he sleeps downstairs, clear on the other side of the building. I have a secret way out through the garret and off the roof. It’s not hard for me to get in and out when I want.”
“And what about the other boys?” I said. “Do they come and go as much?”
Tom shook his head. “Some, but not as much. They’re afraid of getting whipped.”
I thought of Mr. Treazleton’s driver and his whip. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” Tom said, a little too quickly. “No, I’m not afraid.”
Alice watched Tom thoughtfully. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I suppose I should change my clothes, shouldn’t I, if we’re going on an adventure? Where are we going?”
I took a deep breath. Was I really going through with my plan? Should I wait for something better? Then again, some people waited their lives away. I, Maeve Merritt, wasn’t one of them. I had a plan, and I knew just the place for it.
“I know where we are going,” I said, “but I don’t know where we’ll arrive.”
Alice’s face grew pale. “Oh, Maeve… I don’t like the sound of this…”
“Put on your everyday school clothes,” I instructed, “and a hat and coat. Do you see my hat in the closet?”
Alice passed out the hats, and then Tom sat facing a far corner—a quite unnecessary precaution—while Alice dressed inside our closet, in the dark, with the door shut.
I instructed her not to put her shoes on, and she nearly abandoned the expedition for that scandal alone. She would not venture to parts unknown without shoes. And for a young man to see her stockinged feet!
“You must have had one gargoyle of a governess growing up, Alice,” I whispered. “You worry about far too many things. Bring your shoes along—see, Tom and I are carrying ours. We’re just tiptoeing down the hall to go outside. I don’t dare summon Mermeros in here. I don’t trust him not to wake the other girls.”
“Mermeros?” Tom’s eyes gleamed. “Is that the djinni’s name?”
I gripped the pouch tied to my belt a little tighter. “It’s only a name,” I said. “It’d make no difference if he was Bill.”
Alice insisted on tiptoeing behind me, with me following Tom, as we crept down the hallway, hugging the wall where the less-squeaky floorboards were. Tom didn’t know his way around the building, but at least he would be less able to turn around and spy her immodest feet. I adored Alice, but, at times like this, I could throttle her.
The floors still squeaked more than I’d have liked, but we made it down the back stairs and into the kitchen. This, I knew, was risky, for Mrs. Gruboil was fond of her midnight sandwich and cider. Though probably not at four in the morning. Still, she always believed the students were determined to rob her larder. We saw no lights and risked a passage through. I reached for the latch to the kitchen door, but Tom put out a blockading arm and stopped me. From inside his sack, he retrieved a small flask, the kind some men use to keep liquor in their pockets. I sincerely hoped this wild orphan boy wasn’t a very young drunk. He unstoppered the flask and dripped a few drops of liquid onto the door’s hinges, and another drop onto the latch.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“Oil,” he replied. “An escapist never travels without it.”
I was impressed. An escapist! It paid to have friends with professional skills. I did wonder, though, where a poor orphan boy came across such useful tools.
After a few experimental wiggles back and forth, Tom swung open the kitchen door soundlessly, and the night’s chill air shocked our faces. We pulled the door shut and listened for the latch to click. Then, ducking low, we stuffed our feet into our shoes and fled away on the balls of our feet, until Miss Salamanca’s School for Upright Young Ladies was far behind us.
In no time, we reached the rear of the shuttered mansion behind us on our city block. The towering old pile had always fascinated me, from the moment I arrived at school. What secrets must it hold? I’d never been, but I’d long ago decided I needed to explore it. Tonight, it would be our hideaway.
By what lamplight there was to guide us, it was plain to see that this once-grand home had suffered greatly from neglect. Paint chipped off the windowsills and trim. Pavement stones were missing from the walks to the kitchen door, and dead, frozen weeds poked through.
Tom waved us toward a window. Gingerly, he loosened a glass pane that dangled in its trim, just enough to snake his fingers in and slide open the sash lock. He hoisted the window up and beckoned for me to climb inside.
Alice scanned the perimeter fretfully, but no constables appeared to thwart us.
I landed in the gloomy kitchen and beckoned for Alice to follow. She clambered her way in with Tom’s help and mine, then Tom vaulted in after us and pulled the window shut.
He lit his candle and led us through a maze of spooky corridors and cobwebs to a grand gallery. Footsteps echoed differently here, reverberating back from far away and high above. Tom’s speck of candlelight spread thinly through the giant space, but he moved quickly from one wall sconce to the next, lighting candles that illuminated the room, section by section.
Dusty red velvet drapes obscured the floor-to-ceiling windows and hid our presence from prying eyes outside. A checkerboard of vast black-and-white marble floor tiles stretched before us down the long, vaulted gallery. The ceilings and pillars were encrusted with plaster moldings of angels and fruits and flowers, and lining the walls were drab, dusty rectangles where huge portraits and paintings once had hung. It felt magical and grand, and terribly sad, all at the same time.
“Why have you brought us here?” Alice whispered.
“Oh, I go everywhere,” Tom said. “Explore everything. An empty place like this? It’s my palace, now. And it seemed like the right sort of place to begin a high adventure, don’t you think?” He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. “Right, then. Maeve, let’s see your djinni.”
My pulse quickened and my stomach flopped. Time to unveil Mermeros and spend Wish Number Two. I hoped I’d get it right.
I pulled the Sultana’s Exotic Sardines tin from my makeshift pouch and held it, trying to rehearse to myself the best way to phrase my wish. The can leaped and quivered in my palm.
“That’s it?” Tom cried. “Your djinni lives in a sardine can?”
“What, don’t you believe me?” I said. “You’ve seen him yourself.”
I tugged the key off the tin, fitted it over the tab, and cranked with a vengeance, and Mermeros ballooned into life on a spume of foul, mustard vapor. I took great satisfaction in watching Tom gape at him. And cough at his stench.
Mermeros rolled his eyes at the sight of me.
“Still you?” he said.
“Lucky for us both,” I said.
He swam through the air, looming close to Tom, then Alice. For Alice’s benefit, he bared his vicious teeth and bulged his eyes out gruesomely.
Alice screamed and darted behind a pillar.
“You stop that!” I cried. “If you want to pick on someone, pick on me.”
“Don’t tempt me, Hatchling Girl,” he said. “Well, well.” He took a lazy look around the mansion gallery. “So, it’s to be a party for the babies, and I’m invited? I can’t remember when I’ve been so favored. Will there be sugared dates?”
Tom stared at me in complete bewilderment. “What does he mean?” he whispered. “Babies? Sugared dates?”
“Never mind him,” I told Tom. “He’s a shark in sardine’s clothing. Alice, it’s all right. Mermeros won’t hurt you. Come out.”
Alice didn’t budge.
“Come back,” I pleaded. “Look at him some more. He’s an ugly old fish, but once you get used to the sight of him, you won’t be afraid.”
From somewhere inside his vest, Mermeros pro
duced a long, thin, silver blade with an elaborate handle. He rolled back his fishy lips and began picking at the gaps in his teeth with the sinister blade. At the very moment, Alice peeked her head around the pillar: there he was, with his great head thrown back, razor fangs bared, performing surgery on his back molars with his gleaming narrow knife and making a revolting gargling sound.
Alice squealed and hid behind the pillar once more. That reprobate watched her disappear. He put away his knife, smacked his lips, smirked, and turned to me.
“There you have it, Eggspawn,” he said. “You’ve shown your new toy to your playmates. Since we both know you haven’t the spleen to demand a wish of me, why don’t you all go home now, so your mamas can tuck you into bed, and let poor old Mermeros have his rest?”
“‘Poor old Mermeros’ indeed,” I said. “You’re a brute and a bully. And you’re wrong. I have come to demand a wish of you, so listen well.”
Tom snapped to attention. So did Mermeros. The djinni’s green eyes pulsated beneath his shaggy white brows. He flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles, and then his neck and spine. Miss Rosewater, our fluffy-headed deportment and etiquette teacher, would have been horrified.
“I am all attention, Hatchling,” the fraud practically purred. “Speak your wish, and it shall be done.”
Last-minute doubts flickered through my mind like moths around a lantern post. I swatted them away, took a deep breath, and looked up into his treacherous eyes.
“Mermeros, hear me well. My wish is for you to convey my friends and me to an empire of such splendor and majesty that a common female hatchling like me could never imagine it. Take us three to the palace of your father, with all its treasures, in the heart of his domain, and let us meet him, and your brothers.”
Chapter 13
Mermeros didn’t move.
His stare bored into me. I matched his stare with my chin held high.
He was the first to blink.
Alice ventured out from behind her column. “Maeve,” she whispered, “are you sure we should ask for this?”
Still Mermeros hung suspended in air.
“Some djinni this is,” Tom muttered. “I thought you made your wish and then, poof! It happened.”
Mermeros scowled, but didn’t take up Tom’s taunt. I had the feeling his mind was racing, searching for a solution to some problem I couldn’t guess.
“This is a mistake, Girl Hatchling,” he finally said. His voice was flat, neither sneering nor booming. “This will not offer you the rewards you hope.”
Something about this wish had stumped the old blowhard.
“How do you know what I hope?” For once, I really felt I had the upper hand with Mermeros. He really seemed afraid. “Come on, Mermeros. I thought you were dying to see me burn through my wishes.”
“Maeve,” Alice said, “I think we should listen to the djinni. He would know best, wouldn’t he?”
Mermeros bowed deeply to Alice. “A damsel of wisdom and beauty. I am enchanted.”
Oh, for the love of heaven. After all his Female Eggspawn comments for my benefit, this beautiful damsel business was cutting things rather thick.
“An empire of splendor and majesty.” Tom sounded like a boy in a trance. “We have to go there. I should have brought bigger bags to haul back all the loot. Maybe there’s something here we could take…”
“There are other places on earth of equal splendor,” said Mermeros. “Places lost to mankind, places unknown to your people in this kingdom. Let me take you on a tour of many splendid sites, ancient temples…”
The more he resisted, the more I needed to see this place.
“I have spoken my wish, Mermeros,” I said. “I am the master, and you must obey.”
He backed away from me, seeming to shrink in the process. He pressed his fingertips together and closed his eyes. Crystals on the shrouded chandeliers above began to tinkle.
Tom’s eyes lit with excitement. “Here we go!” he cried, and grabbed my hand.
Air moved through the room, stirring the drapes, sweeping up dust and dead spiders.
“Maeve!” wailed Alice. I seized her hand and held on to both my friends.
The moving air was now a rushing gale. It snuffed out the candles in a blink. I bowed my head and closed my eyes. The floor fell out from underneath our feet. The wind spun us in circles, lifting us up, up, and up, then flinging us through the air like a cannonball.
I risked opening my eyes and saw London flash by below us. How did we manage to clear the ceiling and the roof?
Such a wonder spread below me that I forgot that question. The clouds had lifted, swept away on cold night breezes, revealing a sight no living person—except aeronauts in hot-gas balloons—had ever before seen. Only the seagulls. The clouds had lifted, and now the moon illuminated the shining curves of the Thames, ribbed with bridges. Lamplight dotted London Bridge and the high peaks of Tower Bridge. The massive palace at Westminster stood out like a mighty ship in a dark ocean, and, gleaming on its high mast, like Morris the owl’s round eyes, were two clocks in the great clock tower where Big Ben chimed. There was the great dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the ribbon of water of the Serpentine at Hyde Park…
What a city London was!
Tom squeezed my hand. He saw it, too. His wide eyes drank it in.
“Open your eyes, Alice,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.” The wind snatched my voice away.
And now London was gone, fading in the distance, while up ahead we raced, gathering speed at a terrifying rate, hurtling along the Thames to the Channel, where cold ocean spray slapped our faces. Alice finally opened her eyes just in time to see land charging at us. She squealed and threw her free arm over her head.
“We must be in France,” Tom called through the roar of rushing air. “Halloo, Frenchies!”
“Not exactly in it,” I bellowed back. “Look! Up ahead!”
Another blossom of small lights greeted us. A massive city spread out before us like a giant wheel. Punching through the night sky, lit by a million bulbs so it shone like polished gold, was the tower—La Tour Eiffel, the tallest structure in the world. I’d read about it, and seen pictures in newspapers, but never dreamed I’d one day fly by such a marvel, high enough to reach out my hand and touch its steel pinnacle.
“Alice, look!” I cried. “It’s beautiful!”
And Paris was gone.
Faster and faster we roared across endless miles of countryside. Mermeros leaned into the wind exactly like a merman on the prow of a ship. Only there was no ship, save the pocket of air that surrounded us four; and no wake, but the billowing winds that followed us.
Now the mighty Alps loomed into view. Their snowy peaks glittered with diamonds of light from a sky full of stars. Mermeros skirted around them to the south, but still the smell of cold mountain air and snow filled our lungs. Another city passed beneath us, rimmed by mountains and a great lake. Geneva, Switzerland. Or so I thought. Thank goodness for Miss Nerquist’s geography class. Learning about exotic places in the world made hers the one class at Salamanca School to capture my attention.
Soon the air changed, and became warm and green and full of fruity smells.
“Where are we now?” bawled Tom.
“Italy,” I bawled right back.
City after city flew beneath our feet, mountains and lakes and rivers. Wherever we went, the moon followed us in its own mad race across the sky. It felt like those times when the moon seems to fly because swiftly moving clouds are gliding by it—but this time it wasn’t clouds that moved the moon. It was our mad sprint across the world.
We followed Italy’s boot for some time, then leaned out across the Adriatic Sea. And still, less than fifteen minutes had passed since we left the forsaken London gallery! Had mortals ever traveled at such speeds before? Only those with djinnis.
Alice
kept a corpse’s grip on my hand. Her eyes were still clenched shut.
The moon was far behind us now. Notwithstanding our breakneck speed, a change started so slowly that, at first, I doubted my eyes. But there, at about ten o’clock as we faced forward, a soft glow appeared low in the sky. Not a city, as I first supposed, but morning! A silvery-gray glow on the horizon—the pale precursor to the rising sun. It steadily grew until the first lip of the sun burst forth, searing and brilliant.
“Alice, open your eyes, please,” I begged. “I can’t bear for you to miss this.”
Now the entire eastern sky was bathed in rosy, gentle light. Below us, sunlight twinkled off the isles of Greece like stars in a dark, watery heaven.
“Oh!”
It was Alice. She’d opened her eyes just in time for sunrise over the Aegean Sea.
As the sun rose, the vivid blue of the sea dazzled my eyes. Achilles and Agamemnon sailed here, I thought. Helen sailed to Troy with Paris, in graceful, oared ships that plied these dark-blue waters.
We plied the skies faster than I could think of it, and soon we were rushing over a sprawling city, smelling of clay and fruits and spices and donkeys.
“Constantinople!” I called. “We’re in Asia Minor!”
The city gave way to a vast expanse of land, white beaches yielding to lush green orchards and farms, then craggy hills, and a rough brown plateau. By morning light, we could see every detail, every tree and fence we passed over, and it only made our pace seem more frantically fast. We were tearing over the world. The Ottoman Empire! Where was Troy? Did we fly in seconds over the ruins of the ancient city? If only we could go a bit more slowly! We were leaving behind so very much I wished to see.
Then and there, dangling in the sky, I made a vow. I will travel the world someday, I promised myself. Like Miss Isabella Bird. I will visit every country, every climate, every desert and mountain and jungle, and I will never rest till I’ve seen it all.
“Maeve, look!”
Alice’s voice drew me out of my thoughts. She pointed to the ground below. In the midst of great valleys of rock carved out from within tall mountain peaks stood an astonishing marvel. Towering columns of pale rock rose from the ground like bleached tree trunks, but ever so much larger. Some were jagged at the top like ferocious teeth. Others were topped by a thick slab of darker rock, nearly black upon the pale rock below. These columns were everywhere, of varying sizes, yet many of them had the same thickness of darker rock astride them, for all the world like thick chocolate frosting on top of impossibly tall slabs of butter cake.
