A Box of Gargoyles (14 page)

And she giggled a little, which sounded strange coming from someone in the extremely buttoned-down wardrobe of a bank executive.

“But it is the
inspiration
that matters, is it not? We are, how do you call it,
samodivi
,” she said, but in her very French accent the word sounded like this:
samodeeeeev
.

Maya raised her eyebrows in Valko's direction: What did that mean? Maybe she even said that out loud.

“Oh, well then,” said Valko. “Thank you so very much. Come on, Maya.”

“
Maya
,” said the woman with the pearls. She rolled it around in her mouth as if it was a word she was not tasting for the first time. “
Maya
.”

The woman next to her turned around to look, too. But that was odd: her hair had that surprising streak in it as well.

“
Maya?
” she said. Something shadowy in her voice. And indeed over there in the thickest knot of singing, swaying ladies, the shadows were coalescing into a
shape
, and the shape was turning the top of its shadowy self in their direction—

“Oh, ugh,” said Valko to Maya. “Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Gash!
”

Which was not as polite as Valko usually was. But by then they were around the corner and halfway down the next block.

“Blech,” said Maya in an unhappy gasp when they stopped again to try to breathe. “Makes me never ever want to hear my name ever again.”

“No kidding,” said Valko, and then a different, more miserable expression came into his eyes. “Oh, rats, I forgot for a moment. The thing I have to tell you. It's a bit of a problem.”

“What?” said Maya. What could be more of a problem than crazed women with streaks of lightning in their hair hissing your name?

“It's my grandmother-with-a-mole. She's threatening to come from Bulgaria and descend upon us in person. To see for herself how I'm doing and then probably drag me away by my hair.”

There was a pause then, while Maya tried to remember how it had felt, a week ago, when it had just been beginning to be all right, being in Paris. But oh, if Valko
went away
—

That awful, awful thought was interrupted by an urgent murmur from Valko.

“Dang. That thing is still following us. Come on.”

Her blurry eyes could hardly see the pavement before her, much less shadows half a block away. Valko was half dragging her along the sidewalk, and her numb feet complied.

“Look! Here's that bizarro edge in the air again,” said Valko, pulling Maya right through it. “Farther away than last time, I think. I'll just mark it really fast. And did you see what's happening to that bench back there? Sheesh. Not to mention, we're pretty late for your Cousin Louise.”

He paused, that interested look lighting up his eyes a bit as he studied the street behind them.

“It really can't get through,” he said thoughtfully. “See that?”

Maya did see: the shadow leaning against that invisible wall in the air; trying, trying to writhe its way through. It made her feel a little sick.

“Like a fish tank for shadows,” said Valko. “But let's go, or your Cousin Louise will pop us into an aquarium of her own.”

Pauline Vian was already ensconced in the backseat of Cousin Louise's fluorescent-green Peugeot when it pulled up in front of the Davidsons' building. Cousin Louise leaped out of the driver's seat with all the showmanship of one of those people on old TV shows revealing the gorgeous dining set You Can Win.

“My goodness,” said Maya's mother as she leaned a little against the nearest wall. She had come down to see them off, and to see for herself Cousin Louise's new and astonishing car. “What an extraordinary color.”

“
Allons-y!
” said Cousin Louise, pleased as punch. “Packages and picnics into the trunk! Children into the car! Castles await!”

It was a bit of a squish in the backseat, and Maya ended up in the middle, so that Pauline and James could have windows to look out, which meant that Maya spent the next hour or so catching mere glimpses of tall buildings and busy intersections and edges of roadways, all while trying very hard not to think about the things going slightly wrong back there in the part of the universe nearest to the Bulgarian embassy—or about how carsick she was beginning to feel.

“Wow! The needle really jumps around when we turn corners,” said James on her left. “Look.”

Maya shook her head. Even opening her eyes was beginning to be a chore, but closing them wasn't good, either.

“Whatever is that?” said Pauline from Maya's other side. “Oh, the little compass toy!”

“We're going to find the—what pole did you say, Valko? It was fancier than the one where the penguins live.”

“South-Southeast,” said Valko, looking back from the front seat. “Maya, are you all right?”

“Fine,” said Maya, spitting the word out as quickly as she could so that she could clamp her lips shut again.

“That sounds like a girl in urgent need of a
pastille au citron
,” said Cousin Louise, as she veered left into traffic. “Be so kind, Valko, as to open the little compartment just in front of you—you'll see a small tin. Lemon drops.
Voilà
.”

“Okay, Maya, try this,” said Valko, pressing a small, round candy into Maya's hand.

It did help a little, the sour sweetness of the lemon. She could open her eyes after a minute or two. And as Cousin Louise's car whipped past the peripheries of Paris, the road became a huge, flowing highway, and that helped, too.

“Ooh, look at the needle now,” said James, his eyes glued to the compass. He had clearly inherited his inner ear from some more robust side of the family. “It's pointing straight ahead. Are we going to get there soon? I've never seen a South-Southeast Pole.”

“Let's be more precise:
nobody
has ever seen a South-Southeast Pole,” said Pauline Vian. It was scary how much she could sound like an adult, sometimes. “Even the poles that do exist, nobody has ever seen them. They are a concept, not a thing like a stick for people to
see
.”

“Scientists have seen poles,” said James stubbornly. “They go there on big sleds. Right, Maya?”

“Ah, Pauline, what a lovely idea I've just had,” said Cousin Louise. “You are excellent in
histoire
, are you not? Why don't you tell us a little about the history of the château de Fontainebleau while we drive. . . .”

Little stifled groans from various passengers in the car, and then Maya let herself fall into polite oblivion for a while (punctuated by lemon drops), while Pauline recited what must have been whole chapters from some history textbook called
Fontainebleau, the Renaissance Château
.

(King François I.

Artists from Italy.

Catherine de Médicis.

François II.

Charles IX.

Henri IV.

Sixteenth century.

Seventeenth century.

Eighteenth . . . )

Boy, these poor French kids sure had a lot of names and dates to memorize, thought Maya, her eyes shut again, the latest lemon drop melting tangily on the tip of her tongue.

And then they were there, piling creakily out of Cousin Louise's jewel-green machine, breathing the cold, cold air of a brand-new November, and being shepherded across acres of cobblestones to the entrance and the ticket office.

“Wow, look at this! It's a great big huge SIDEWAYS CASTLE,” said James, looking at the staircases, the cobblestones, the long, long lines of windows everywhere. “I thought it would be going up in the air like the Disneyland one.”

“But
non
,” said Pauline. “Since the castle of Disneyland is not, as far as I know, originally from the Renaissance.”

Maya was still having trouble telling whether Pauline had no sense of humor at all or some very dry, very French sense of humor that you had to be an excellent student and a native speaker of the language to appreciate properly. She thought probably the latter, but she was paying close attention until she knew for sure.

“Keep up, please, children,” said Cousin Louise, who apparently believed in brisk visits. “I will be most displeased if anyone turns up lost. It is a vast place, Fontainebleau.”

“I'm hungry,” said James in an informative tone of voice, as they trotted up the entrance stairs.

He said it again in the long gallery of François I, but mostly he was counting carved and painted salamanders.

Salamanders! They were everywhere! Not to mention many, many golden
F
s.

“The emblem of
le roi François
,” said Cousin Louise, whose sharp eyes did not miss a single flinch. “No need to look so concerned, Maya! An appropriate symbol for the Renaissance, in fact: the salamander is unscorched by the flames. Birth and rebirth.”

Maya's hand had gone right to the Cabinet glass at her neck. There was an itty-bitty salamander in there, too—a tiny, magical echo of the bronze salamander guarding the Salamander House's door. Salamanders lived in more than one world at once. That was why they were the symbol of her mother's magical and amphibious family, the Lavirottes.

So: birth and rebirth. That was what
renaissance
meant: “rebirth.” She shivered a little.

“Maybe our compass used to belong to the king,” said James. “It has a salamander on it, too—see, there it is, sitting on a rock—and an
F
. You have to look close to see it, though.”

“Different
F
,” said Maya, biting her lip.

Why had they come here? That's what she was thinking. Why did the whole world seem to be conspiring to remind her of her troubles all the time?

“And NOW the South-Southeast Pole is THAT way,” said James, looking up from the compass and pointing out the great windows.

Valko did that little shoulder-turning dance people do when they're trying to figure out which direction lies where.

“I don't think so,” he said. “That's got to be west, not south. Let me see that thing.”

He took the little compass from James and for a while kept looking at it and then up out those windows again, perplexed.

“That's definitely not south-southeast anymore,” he said. “Strange.”

“Keep moving, children! Did you see that statue of Diana?
Remarquable!
”

“Cousin Louise,” said James, jogging a little to catch up with her. “We're going to find the pole, after the castle, right?”

“We're going to have our
pique-nique
in the local
forêt
,” said Cousin Louise, pausing for a millisecond to admire another detailed painting of a mythological scene. “It's a cold day, but not damp. The woods will be refreshing. And you said you were hungry, I believe.”

“We'll eat at the pole,” said James.

“If your pole is in a pleasant place for a picnic, then certainly,” said Cousin Louise. “Why not?”

They emerged from the castle after having seen only twenty or so of its fifteen hundred rooms, but they staggered out into the world rather stunned by the sheer castleness of the whole place: the height of the ceilings, the gilt decorations on the walls, the paintings and inlaid floors and tapestries and statues of goddesses and salamanders. It was all too much, somehow. It was a relief to be back out in the cold air and bickering pleasantly among themselves about the best place to eat their bread and cheese (and buttery, flaky
vines
and
flowers
).

Finally James put his foot down: Cousin Louise had promised they could have their picnic at the pole, and he wasn't budging until they all agreed.

“Very well,” said Cousin Louise. “But you have to tell us how to get to this pole of yours, young man.”

“We can just get in the car and follow the needle,” said James.

“But not as far as Tunisia, please,” said Pauline Vian.

“No,” agreed Cousin Louise. “We follow your needle only in these woods here, and only for a little while. And when I say it is time for us to stop for our
pique-nique
, pole or no pole, then we cheerfully exit the car and eat our baguettes, yes?”

James accepted these terms quite graciously, for someone who was only five, but Maya could see he wasn't paying much attention. He was
sure
the compass would lead them right where they wanted to go. Probably (thought Maya) he did think the pole would turn out to be a long thin stick, stuck right into the ground.

The search for the Mysterious Pole turned out to be quite a lot of fun (for everyone with tougher stomachs than Maya's, anyway). Valko held the compass up in front of him, and as he pointed out the direction the needle was showing, Cousin Louise made daring swoops and turns. The riders in the backseat (the ones who weren't Maya) grinned and shrieked and held on tight, and Maya chomped down on lemon drop after lemon drop and was overwhelmed by a combination of excitement and worry.

Was it wise to be following the needle of old Fourcroy's own compass? Maya couldn't really see any way of answering that question that sounded anything like “yes!” It was not wise.

But on the other hand, she was curious—very curious—about as curious as a person can be without actually flushing red from eagerness—about what that compass needle had in mind. And if they were going to thwart that shadowy Fourcroy in his resurrection plans, they needed to know as much as possible about those plans, didn't they? Didn't they?

Even if finding these things out
was
part of his plan?

And why had the strangeness returned this morning, anyway? (Remembering that brought the carsick feeling back.)

It was all dominoes falling, perhaps: she had
had
to find the writing desk, and now she
had
to follow the compass. But the trick was finding the—what had her mother called it?—wiggle room. She had left the letter behind in the writing desk, despite its important splotch of blood. Right? So that was what she would obviously have to keep doing. It meant being very clever and very careful. It was trying to fool the whole universe somehow, if the universe was really just a gazillion little rows of dominoes falling, one after the other after the other after the next.