A Box of Gargoyles (23 page)

She looked up and felt slightly sick: it was the writer, Pernithia Jane Blakely, swaying with the others, her hair completely wild now, and that streak of white glittering coldly in the lamplight.

“Are you coming to sing with us?” said Pernithia Blakely.

“I can't,” said Maya.

“You should leave,” said Valko to the writer. “Go home and rest.”

“But the shadow says this is
Maya
,” said the writer. “The shadow says—something about you not really being a little girl at all, little girl. Apparently you are a—”

“—
Zzzzmey
,” said the chorus of swaying women all around.

“Keep moving,” whispered Valko. “Keep pushing your way through.”

“I am
not
a dragon,” said Maya. It was really beginning to tick her off. But it was harder and harder to move, with the
samodivi
gathered so closely around them.

“Dragon, dragon,” said the writer, and she hummed a little tune to accompany the word. “The shadow needs you, you know. It needs a dragon like you—”

She leaned forward to whisper.

“It needs to eat up your heart for the magic. Hey, what's that you're carrying?”

Suddenly the gargoyles' egg seemed very naked in Maya's hands. The poor egg! She tried to tuck her coat around it. Trickles of ice were running down her spine. She didn't like being called a dragon, and she didn't like the sound of “juicy-hearted,” either. If this was the gargoyles' helpful translation of the spell into Bulgarian, she didn't think much of it so far.

“Something you
care about
?” hissed Pernithia Blakely. The column of shadow was so close: it seemed to pass right through the writer, passed through and came closer to Maya, a colder darkness within the ordinarily cold dark. “Something you'd follow to the ends of the earth? Something you'd
give anything
to protect, maybe, little dragon girl?”

And then, in one terrible, sudden gesture, the crazy writer reached in and snatched the egg right out of Maya's hands. Took the egg and held it over her head and gave an entirely inhuman shriek of triumph, while Maya shouted and jumped at her (no use) and Valko shouted and jumped after Maya, pulling her away. The
samodivi
laughed and sang and flowed around Maya and Valko and away, moving faster than real people should be able to move, in any version of the universe that made any kind of possible sense.

Sooner than eyeblinks, the street was empty, the horrible singing women just a fading echo, Maya sobbing for breath and sobbing with rage, and Valko very still and helpless and miserable next to her.

She had sworn to protect the gargoyles' egg, the gargoyles' beautiful, lovely, precious egg. She had sworn to protect it—and now it was gone.

 
14
 

I
t's one thing to have failed miserably at something, but another thing entirely when disaster strikes you, and
nobody knows
the terrible thing that has happened, or how awful you feel.

Losing the gargoyles' egg was like that for Maya. She had promised to keep the egg safe, to keep it far away from the shadowy Fourcroy, and instead one of the wild women with the streaks of madness in their hair had run right off with it. That was really, no matter how you looked at it, the opposite of keeping something safe.

Maya's mother was horrified to hear the egg had been stolen “by some unstable homeless woman,” which was how she interpreted the rest of the story, but after days went by and Maya was still slouching around after school, looking like all the beauty and hope had gone out of the world, her mother's sympathy began to mutate into the wrong kind of parental concern, and wasn't so helpful anymore.

“I know you feel terrible about losing that lovely egg, but Valko's been very good about it, hasn't he? It wasn't your fault, dear. Sometimes we just have to be brave and let things go.”

That did not sound like bravery to Maya.

Valko knew more about what the gargoyles' egg meant to her, but of course he had also been the one who wanted to smash it to bits or throw it into the river. Mostly he just seemed relieved to have one bit of strangeness out of the picture. Maya had sent a reluctant Valko up to his roof right away the next day, to break the bad news to the gargoyles (from a safe distance) and maybe to ask their advice, but Valko came back saying the gargoyles were gone. And again, there was that clear strain of relief in his voice when he said it.

He still wasn't comfortable living in a universe in which a person could be trying to have a conversation with gargoyles.

“What are we going to do, then?” said Maya, knowing all too well she was sounding exasperated and unhappy. “I have to keep that egg away from Fourcroy's shadow. It's one of the things he most wants, right? You heard the gargoyles say it. I have to keep it safe.”

“Keep it
safe
?” said Valko. “Phooey to that. We should have pitched it into the river—don't look at me that way!—when we had the chance. All right, sorry. But, anyway, the shadow doesn't have it. How could a shadow even hold anything that heavy? That awful writer has it. With the funny name.”

“Pernithia,” said Maya. “Pernithia Blakely.”

“I have a
slightly
funny name myself,” said Valko. They had walked across the river and into the cold, wintry Tuileries, where pigeons shivered on the manicured paths and the trees looked bare and severe. “Or so people tell me. But at least, thank goodness, mine's only two syllables. Hers sounds like a medicine or something.”

“Don't duck the question,” said Maya. “How do we get it back?”

“You're not making any sense, I hope you realize. If the egg is
his
memories, then it's bad. Seems simple to me. Rotten stone egg: not something to mess with.”

“It's not simple at all,” said Maya, feeling stubborn. Remembering how beautiful the poor stolen egg was, and how much it needed her help.

They were walking around the large round basin now, with the thin stream of its fountain playing in the middle and statues scattered around its edges. (The nearest statue was labeled
MISERY
.
Good choice
, thought Maya, considering how discouraged she felt.)

“It's the
gargoyles'
egg,” she said. Her explanations weren't getting anywhere. “They're not what you think they are. They're not evil. No, really, I'm sure they're not. Beak-Face thought you were coming at him with that knife, right? They're not bad. They're just trapped—like us, really. We're all trapped in Fourcroy's magic and trying to squirm out of it.”

“I'm not,” said Valko. “I have worse troubles. My grandmother-with-a-mole is coming to Paris any day now. So I'm just plain doomed.”

“Convince her you need to stay,” said Maya.

“Good luck to me with that,” said Valko. “I'd say chances are slim to none, just at the moment. She's stubborn, my grandmother. You know what, though?”

“What?” said Maya.

“About your stolen egg . . . ,” he said.

So he was at least thinking about it! That was comforting.

“Okay, here's the thing: maybe the crazy writer who ran off with the gargoyles' egg doesn't know exactly what it is. Doesn't know the shadowy guy needs it. Remember what she was saying when she grabbed it? Stuff about how important it probably was to
you
. How it could lure you anywhere, to rescue it. They want to use it as bait
for you
. Maybe they don't even realize the egg is something the shadow needs.”

“All they have to do is read the stuff written all over it.”

“They aren't all that smart, when they're being
samodivi
. Haven't you noticed that? And the shadow thing isn't smart, either. They don't know much about anything—just scraps of stuff. Shadows don't have much room for brains, you know.”

So maybe she and Valko were smarter than shadows. That was what Maya's mother called
clutching at straws
—but Maya reached out to that straw, and yes, she clutched. But she had heard what Valko had to say, about the egg being bait. Well, it was true: she had to rescue that egg. She admitted that. It was finding a way to do exactly what the shadow expected her to do, while still being able to wriggle out of the trap somehow at the last possible moment—
that
was the challenge for Maya.

Her mother was waiting for her when she got home. She had a perplexed expression.

“Maya,” she said. “Guess who called to talk to me? The Bulgarian embassy.”

Maya had a brief image of a building picking up a really enormous phone.

“I mean, your friend's mother. The diplomat. Dr. Milena Nikolova, who used to be Milena Todorova. Did you know she used to play chess?”

“She called? She told you about
playing chess
?”

Maya was taken aback.

“No, no,” said Maya's mother, laughing. “I mean, yes, she called, but I was the one who asked her about the chess, when she told me her name. She was semifamous, you know, when I was young. My mother cut out an article from a magazine about girls doing remarkable things all around the world and put it up on our wall as inspiration. And one of those girls was Milena Todorova. There was a picture of her, the most intense child you ever saw, looking right into the camera with a knight in her hand. She married young; I remember that, too. Ha! Now I've spoken to her on the phone!”

Maya went from being taken aback to being slightly horrified.

“What did she say? What was she calling about? And Mom, what if she'd been the wrong Milena Todorova?”

Maya's mother laughed again.

“She would have said, ‘No, I'm sorry, I never played chess,' and that would have been the end of it. Don't worry, Maya! I was polite and quite restrained. And she was perfectly friendly. I said you felt awful about what had happened, and she was very kind about it. She said no one had taken any offense, that these things happen, and they were simply glad Valko has found such a loyal friend here. I guess he didn't make so many close friends when they lived in New York.”

“Wait,” said Maya, that horrified feeling spreading very fast through all her limbs. “You said I felt awful? About what? What did you say I felt awful about? What were they not offended by? Mom, what exactly did you say to her?”

Maya's mother looked surprised.

“What do you think? That poor egg that was stolen, of course. I know how awful you've been feeling about it, such a lovely gift. And worried about what Valko's parents would think, too, that you'd been careless with it—don't look at me that way! I know it wasn't your fault! But anyway, as I said, she was very nice. I just said, ‘My poor girl has been feeling so bad about what happened after the lovely dinner you gave,' and she jumped right in, very reassuring.”

Oh!

“But that wasn't why she was calling, anyway. She called us because another guest at that party has been trying to contact you. The woman who writes books. Did you talk to her much, Maya? Anyway, apparently she was quite taken with you and was wondering whether you'd like to be a sort of advance reader or something for the book she's writing—”

“
What?
” said Maya.

“Don't look
so
shocked, Maya! I'd want you as a reader, if I wrote books for young people. You're a very good reader. So she needed our address, to send us whatever it is. The invitation or the book or something.”

“Oh, Mom, you didn't give her our address.”

“Of course I did. Why not? Dr. Nikolova did say this writer seems to be a little eccentric, but that seems par for the course for writers, doesn't it? Don't look so stricken! I think it's exciting.”

“But she's the one who—”

Maya stopped herself midsentence, because she could see she needed to think. Now the crazy writer knew where she lived. All right, that wasn't ideal. But on the other hand, she, Maya, had to get that egg away from the writer. And so, when you thought about it a little, maybe Maya should have been the one asking Valko's mother for the writer's address, not the other way around. She looked at her mother and tried to be truthful, in a neutral, not-showing-any-cards sort of way.