The Key to Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  Leo’s father wasn’t home. He was on his way to speak at an interstate conference. Usually he complained about having to go to conferences, especially when he had to give a speech, but Leo suspected he wasn’t so unhappy about it this time. Home wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable with Mimi and Mutt around.

  He’d left for the airport early and this was fortunate, because he missed seeing Mutt and Einstein’s first meeting.

  Einstein appeared in the hall to greet the guests, his tail very upright. Mutt, who looked like a fluffy toy with teeth, burst into an explosion of ear-splitting yaps.

  Einstein arched his back and hissed. Every hair on his body stood up, so that he looked twice his normal size. Mimi screamed and shrank back against the wall, holding Mutt high as if Einstein was a ravening panther. Struggling to free himself and fly into the attack, Mutt began to make high, hysterical gargling sounds that were apparently supposed to be growls.

  ‘Leo! Put Einstein in the kitchen,’ Suzanne ordered distractedly. ‘Shut him in!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Suzanne,’ Mimi’s mother shouted over Mutt’s yaps and snarls as Leo scooped up the outraged Einstein and backed away with him. ‘I’m terribly sorry. This is so awkward for you, I do appreciate that. Mutt should have gone to a boarding kennel, but it was honestly just impossible with Mi – with things as they are. You know.’ She jerked her head in her daughter’s direction and rolled her eyes helplessly.

  By this time Mimi was visible to Leo only in flashes because Einstein’s tail was thrashing in front of his eyes like a fluffy windscreen wiper. Mimi was clutching her little dog tightly, her face absolutely rigid.

  She heard what Carol said, Leo thought. She saw Carol roll her eyes. But she doesn’t even look upset. She must be used to it.

  And suddenly, unwillingly, he wondered what it would be like to have grown used to your parents talking about you as if you were a problem no normal person could solve.

  Mutt saw Leo and Einstein looking at him and his yaps suddenly doubled in volume.

  ‘Mimi!’ Carol shrieked, scarlet with embarrassment. ‘This is ridiculous! He’s your dog! Make him stop!’

  ‘He’ll stop if you take that cat away,’ Mimi said flatly, and pressed her lips into a hard straight line.

  Suddenly furious, Leo turned on his heel and stomped towards the kitchen. Mutt went on yapping till Einstein was out of sight. Carol apologised some more.

  It wasn’t the best start to a visit that was going to last a whole month.

  After she’d wearily given Suzanne a long list of things that Mimi wouldn’t eat, a list of Mimi’s appointments for the next month and notes about all Mimi’s allergies, while Mimi stared silently at the huge, shabby sneakers that encased her feet, Carol went home to finish packing.

  Just before she left she became suddenly tearful and hugged Mimi tightly, murmuring things about ringing often and being back soon. Mimi, her face expressionless, said nothing except ‘Okay’ and ‘Yes, Mum’. As soon as the car had driven away, she turned and went upstairs to her bedroom with Mutt still clutched in her arms.

  She climbed the stairs, her head high and her back very straight. Her legs looked pitifully thin poking out of her pale pink shorts, which flapped hugely just above her knobbly knees.

  Leo didn’t usually notice people’s clothes much, but he couldn’t help thinking that Mimi Langlander was the last girl in the world who should wear shorts like that. The bright pink jacket with kittens and bows on it was a big mistake as well. Mimi wasn’t a kittens-and-bows sort of person.

  Mimi reached the top of the stairs and started along the short corridor that led to the bathroom and her and Leo’s rooms. Just before she disappeared from sight, Leo saw her duck her head and bury her face deeply in Mutt’s soft hair. Perhaps she was murmuring something, because the little dog licked her hand.

  Quickly Leo looked away. Instinctively he knew that Mimi would hate it if she thought she was being watched.

  The phone began to ring. Einstein yowled and scratched at the kitchen door.

  ‘Go up and have a word to Mimi, Leo,’ Suzanne whispered distractedly, heading down the hall. ‘Don’t make a big thing of it. But see if you can make her feel better.’

  The last thing Leo wanted to do was talk to Mimi Langlander. She was weird and stuck-up and her little dog was horrible. Besides, he knew that nothing he could say would make her feel better. She obviously didn’t like him any more than he liked her.

  Then his conscience got the better of him. He thought how bad he would feel if his parents had just left him in a strange house, with people he hardly knew. So on his way upstairs he rehearsed a few things he might say as he passed Mimi’s room on his way to his own. Something like, ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘Anything you need?’

  They all sounded lame, so he was relieved to find that Mimi’s door was shut. That was a clear sign that Mimi wanted to be left alone.

  He went to his own room and sat down at his desk with the vague intention of finishing his maths homework. He found himself staring at the music box instead.

  It was beautifully made. Leo ran his fingers over the smoothness of its shining black lid. He wondered how long it would take to learn to make something that fitted together so perfectly.

  He would have loved to try. He liked the idea of making things out of wood, though he didn’t talk about it much. His father and mother were bored by the very idea, none of his friends were interested, and there were no woodwork classes at school.

  Leo saw that his fingers had made smudges on the lid’s shining black surface. He wiped the marks away with his sleeve, and turned his attention to the painted parts of the box.

  The little figures on the front of the box fascinated him. The more he looked, the more of them he could see. It was like looking at stars in the sky. You saw the biggest, brightest ones first, then gradually you became aware of the thousands, the millions, of smaller, dimmer stars that studded the blackness beyond them.

  The front of the music box was like that. There were larger figures in the foreground, men, women and children walking down the cobbled main street, going in and out of shops and stopping at stalls. Beyond them there were others – hundreds of others, many so tiny that Leo could hardly see them.

  The artist must have used a magnifying glass to paint them, he thought, squinting at the box. Then he remembered that he had a magnifying glass himself – a strong one that his father had given him. He found it at the back of one of his desk drawers and peered through it at the box.

  Now he could see all sorts of details that he hadn’t been able to see before. He could see the expressions on some of the distant people’s faces, he could make out the goods on display in the shops, he could see cats sitting on windowsills, vegetables growing in kitchen gardens…

  And there was more – so much more.

  Leo shook his head in amazement, moving the magnifying glass slowly across the surface of the box. He couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken to paint a scene as detailed as this. Months – maybe years – using a brush so fine that it could paint in the green eyes of a cat as small as a freckle. Maybe it had even been painted in layers – one layer on top of another, and another…

  He was so absorbed that he jumped when his mother called his name, and Mimi’s, her voice echoing from the downstairs hallway. Leo left his room, went to the top of the stairs and peered down.

  Suzanne looked frazzled. She’d thrown on her coat, and was clutching the car keys and a large handbag. ‘Leo,’ she called, as soon as she saw him, ‘that was your father on the phone. He got all the way to the airport and found he’d left his speech behind. Can you believe it?’

  Yes, Leo could believe it. Easily. He grinned. ‘Are you going to take it to him?’ he asked, walking down the stairs.

  ‘I have to!’ Suzanne said. ‘He gives the speech tomorrow. And the copy on his laptop’s no good. He’s worked on the hard copy by hand – written all over it. You know.’

  Leo knew.
He’d seen his father’s speeches many times before. They were always covered with corrections. Sometimes whole paragraphs were crossed out, with arrows pointing to notes scribbled in the margins.

  ‘I’ll just make it if I leave now,’ his mother said. She glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror and pushed rapidly at her hair, making no difference to it that Leo could see. ‘The back door’s locked. Lock the front door after me. Where’s Mimi?’

  ‘In her room,’ Leo said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell her.’

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Suzanne gabbled. ‘Now, you be careful, and be –’

  Nice to Mimi. ‘Don’t worry,’ Leo repeated dutifully. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  He followed his mother to the door but didn’t wait to wave her off, because he knew by experience that she would prefer to see the door closed, and hear it locked, before she left.

  He heard the car start up and back out of the driveway as he began to walk up the stairs and back to his room. Suddenly the house seemed extremely quiet.

  The door of the spare room was still shut. He debated whether to knock and tell Mimi that his mother had gone out. Then he decided against it. Almost certainly, Mimi had heard Suzanne shouting up the stairs, and knew everything already. She just hadn’t bothered to come out and say goodbye.

  Leo went back into his room, sat down at his desk, picked up the magnifying glass and continued his examination of the music box.

  Soon he was fascinated once more. Everywhere he looked, there was something new to see. He was certain that Aunt Bethany had never looked at the box this closely. If she had, she’d have mentioned some of the things Leo was seeing now – and probably made everyone look for them, too.

  Here was a wedding party in the garden of what looked like a palace – guests were gathered around a long table and holding up glasses to toast the bride and groom, who were both wearing gold crowns. There a house was on fire, and firefighters were spraying the flames with hoses while other people ran to help with buckets of water.

  Leo turned the box and scanned the forest side. In fact, the forest only covered the bottom half of the scene. Above it was a brown road, thin as string, running from the front of the box to the back, where it ended at a little bridge. On the other side of the road was a winding river, surrounded at first by farms and tiny villages, then, closer to the bridge, by scattered groves of trees. Leo looked with appreciation at the largest farm – at the red-roofed house and barn, the haystacks, windmill, orchard and neat white fences.

  He was just about to turn the box again, to look at the back, when he noticed for the first time that narrow paths wound through the forest, and that every now and again there was a cottage nestled in a tiny clearing. Wondering afresh at the artist’s loving attention to detail, Leo peered closely at one of the cottages.

  It had a thatched roof, and red roses grew around its green-painted door. At the side, in the shade of an old apple tree, a young woman in a red dress sat on a tartan rug, playing with a black-haired baby.

  A man was stacking firewood nearby. He was looking over his shoulder and laughing, as if at something the woman had said. In the shadows of the trees beside him there was something grey. Leo peered at it. At first he thought it was a huge, shaggy dog. Then he realised that it was a crouching wolf. The wolf’s hungry yellow eyes were fixed on the baby.

  Feeling suddenly sick, Leo put down the magnifying glass.

  The baby was in danger. The wolf was stalking it, waiting patiently for its chance to spring. The moment the father finished stacking the wood and went to do something else… the moment the mother turned her back…

  Leo felt strangely angry and betrayed. Why had the painter put a horrible thing – a tragedy waiting to happen – in a scene that should have been only pleasant and happy?

  Then he shook his head. I’m being stupid, he thought. A house fire isn’t pleasant or happy. There are probably lots of things on the box that aren’t. Bad things sometimes happen in real life, so the artist painted bad things as well as good ones, to make the world he was painting seem as real as possible.

  But he still felt uneasy. Trying to put the memory of the wolf’s hungry eyes out of his mind, he lifted the box and turned the key three times. He put the box down again and opened the lid. The familiar music began, sweet and strange.

  He pulled his maths book towards him and began to work. Gradually the music box slowed, and finally stopped. He’d just picked the box up to wind it again when he heard a small sound behind him and turned quickly around.

  Mimi Langlander was standing just inside his door.

  Chapter 3

  Ugly Duckling

  ‘I heard you got that,’ Mimi said, pointing at the music box. ‘You got it because Aunt Bethany thought you looked like her Uncle Henry, and because at her place you were always so go-od.’

  The way she stretched out the word ‘good’ made her scorn very clear. Leo felt his face grow hot, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘The last time you played it, it stopped at the end of the tune, for once,’ Mimi said. ‘Next time, wind it four times. Then it’ll finish at the right place again. Otherwise it’s really irritating.’

  Leo shook his head and turned back to his maths problems, hoping she’d go away. But she didn’t. She moved further into the room and stood right behind him, so close that he could hear her breathing.

  ‘Dad got money, in the will,’ she said. ‘That’s why he and Mum can have a holiday in Greece. Your mum got money, too. All the nieces and nephews did.’

  Leo felt stupid sitting with his back to her. He twisted around in his chair again.

  Mimi blinked at him owlishly. Her eyes looked much too big for her thin, pale face. She’d unzipped her pink jacket and the frilly, lemon yellow shirt she was wearing underneath gave her a sickly look. Her mouse-brown hair was cut very short at the back and over her ears, but her fringe was so long that it reached her eyebrows.

  Leo couldn’t help thinking how different she looked from her brothers and sisters. They all had thick, glossy dark brown hair, and they were tall and healthy-looking. Also, their faces were sort of – open, and full of confidence. They were always talking or laughing. Mimi’s face was still and closed.

  ‘You don’t look like the rest of your family,’ Leo said, without thinking.

  Mimi’s expression didn’t change. ‘Everyone says that,’ she said. ‘I’m the ugly duckling.’

  Leo felt terrible. He hadn’t meant it that way – or maybe he had. Anyway, it had been a stupid thing to say. He racked his brains for a way of changing the subject.

  ‘What did Aunt Bethany leave you?’ he asked desperately. That was a safe question. His mother had told him that none of the great-nieces and nephews had been forgotten.

  Mimi shrugged. ‘The twins and I got a box of old jewellery,’ she said. ‘We were supposed to share it between us, but they got most of it.’

  She must have seen Leo’s face change, because she added quickly, ‘I only wanted one thing, anyway.’

  She pulled at a chain hanging around her neck and drew out a silver pendant that had been hidden beneath her shirt. ‘See?’ she said. ‘It’s an antique. It’s probably really valuable.’

  Leo looked at the pendant. Maybe it was valuable, but he thought it was quite ugly. It was a small oval of murky glass, thinly edged in silver. Beneath the glass, pressed against the pendant’s silver back, you could just see a little wisp of silky brown threads.

  ‘What’s that stuff inside it?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘It’s hair,’ said Mimi. ‘Probably the hair of someone who died.’

  She looked down at the pendant and touched the glass with the tip of her finger. ‘They used to do that in the olden days – put bits of a dead person’s hair in rings and brooches and things. That’s why I wanted this. It’s interesting. Maybe it’s lucky.’

  Interesting? Leo thought. Lucky? A pendant with a dead person’s hair in it? It’s gross. She’s so weird! And
just then, Mimi looked up and saw the expression on his face. She flushed pink, and turned away.

  ‘I didn’t –’ Leo began, feeling bad all over again.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said curtly. ‘You just go on playing with your pretty music box.’

  Suddenly Leo felt an overwhelming desire to shock her, as she’d shocked him.

  He picked up the magnifying glass. ‘It’s not all pretty,’ he snapped. ‘Look at this!’ He pointed at the small, blurry spot where he knew the wolf crouched among the forest trees.

  Mimi took the glass sullenly, but obviously she was curious. She peered at the spot Leo’s finger was pointing to, and frowned.

  ‘So what am I supposed to be seeing?’ she asked at last.

  ‘The wolf!’ said Leo impatiently. ‘The wolf, hiding in the bushes, watching the baby. Can’t you –?’

  Mimi sighed. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said, and rolled her eyes.

  Leo snatched the glass from her hand and looked at the clearing himself.

  There was the mother and the baby. There was the father, looking over his shoulder at them and laughing. And in the shadows beside him…

  Nothing. Nothing but leaves and earth and pale, bent blades of grass.

  Leo’s jaw dropped. ‘But – but it was there!’ he stammered. ‘Right there. A big grey wolf. I saw it!’ He pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up, shaking his head in angry confusion.

  Mimi smiled a superior smile. And at that moment, as if she’d been waiting her chance, she bent forward, picked up the music box, and quickly twisted the key. One, two, three, four.

  ‘Hey!’ Leo shouted furiously, as the music began to play.

  ‘See?’ squealed Mimi. She skipped out of his reach and ran to the door. ‘It was fine to wind it more than three times!’

  ‘Get out of my room!’ Leo shouted, beside himself with rage.

  Mimi screeched with laughter, and went.

  Leo heard her bedroom door shut. He strode to his own door and slammed it. Still gripping the doorknob, he pressed his hot forehead against the wood and just stood there, breathing hard.