A Box of Gargoyles (35 page)

“Too bad and unfair,” said Valko. “They'll never know what a hero you are, Maya Davidson!”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Maya. “Without Pauline, that shadow might never have even shown up. Not to mention it was you guys who got us out of the cemetery afterward. That was pretty heroic.”

It had involved waking up the night watchman and telling him some sad story about having missed the shutting of the gates by half an hour and then having wandered and wandered without ever seeing a soul. Pauline had surpassed herself by looking very young and weeping the most amazingly realistic crocodile tears; the tears had disarmed the
gardien
and saved them all a lecture.

She might have no talent for music, but that Pauline Vian was astonishingly competent at absolutely everything else.

“No, Maya,” said Valko. “You can't dodge this one. You saved Paris, and, what's more, you saved me, and everyone else may have forgotten it all, but I never, ever will.”

He did a diplomat's bow, very fancy, and pinned an invisible medal on Maya's jacket.

“It's the Cross of Saint George. For defeating my grandmother, who is much worse than any dragon.”

“No, she's not,” said Maya. “She's just a little crusty, that's all. I like your grandmother.”

Here's what had happened with Valko's grandmother-with-the-mole: once she had heard their accounts of
samodivi
,
vampiri
, and the
zmey
, she had packed up her bags in very good humor and gone back home—without her grandson—to Bulgaria. “He seems to be pretty sufficiently Bulgarian,” as she said to Valko's parents at the airport, “even without much help from me. Though if that nice girl Maya starts forcing baseball on him? Then I'll be coming back quick-step.”

So that was all right, too. At least for this year, Maya was not going to be left in Paris alone. It almost surprised her, how happy she was about that, how happy and glad and relieved.

“Oh, Maya, what sweet little pictures she drew!” said Maya's mother. “This is a treasure, this story. And it's really some grandmother of ours who made this?”

She and Maya were huddled comfortably under a quilt on the sofa, turning the pages of Henri's little book.

“Not a grandmother,” said Maya. “A great-great-great-aunt—well, I'm not sure exactly how many
great
s. A couple. You know what? I think she must be the same one who sent your mother the opal bracelet. She was a Lavirotte, and she didn't have any daughters of her own to give it to.”

And I said, “my sister”!
thought Maya, letting her fingers rest, for a moment, on that mysterious bracelet. Someday, those girls had said, its magic would have to be used. . . . It was a comfortable sort of wondering, though, so warm and so cozy, with her mother right there beside her, studying that other mother's drawings from so long ago.

“Just this sweet little Henri here, with his wide eyes and his sailor suit. You can tell from the pictures how much she must have doted on him, can't you? Cute boy. Reminds me a little of James.”

Maya winced.

“Ugh, don't say that! That Henri didn't turn out to be a very nice person.”

Maya's mother shook her head.

“Really? I don't believe it. Look at his face! That face could not possibly belong to someone who wasn't a nice person. Unless something absolutely awful happened to him at some point, poor boy.”

“Something did happen,” said Maya. “His mother had another baby.”

As soon as Maya said that, she realized how terrible it sounded, but before she could get all knotted up inside about it, her mother surprised her by breaking into an outright laugh.

“Oh, Maya!” she said, actually dabbing at tears of laughter in the corners of her eyes. “Am I about to ruin James's life with this baby, is that what you think? No, no, don't get offended. I remember when James was born, how guilty I felt about you. You'd had all our attention for all those years! It didn't seem very fair, bringing this demanding little new person into the picture. But you came to like him pretty well, eventually.”

“I love James,” said Maya, slightly indignant.

“Of course you do,” said her mother. “James is remarkably lovable. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard for you when he first appeared.”

Maya wasn't sure how to respond, so she just turned the next page of Henri's little book.

“‘Life is too short,'” said her mother thoughtfully, her finger running very gently over the words. “Isn't that funny—my mother used to say that, too. And then she would let me have more ice cream, or take me to the lake to feed the ducks.”

“But it's such a gloomy thing to say,” said Maya. She thought of Henri de Fourcroy, his hungry shadow, so greedy and so cold. Life had always been too short for him. He had wanted more and more and more. Until the very end, he had been willing to mess up the whole world, just to grab himself some more life.

“Really?” said her mother, shifting a little on the couch to make her belly more comfortable. “I don't know—doesn't seem so gloomy to me. Life seems too short, because it's just so interesting and so mysterious. There's so much to do! There's so much we don't know!”

“Oh, Mom,” said Maya. That was one thing she had in common with that little Henri, after all: she loved her crazy, wonderful mother so much that sometimes it hurt. “Just promise me you'll be okay. You'll be okay, right? And the baby, too? No matter what?”

“Maya, sweetheart,” said her mother, wrapping her arms right around Maya as if she were as little as the boy in the pictures. “I haven't got any of this figured out. One thing I'm pretty sure of, though: as long as there are people in this world who love each other as much as I love you and James or you love me,
everything
—no matter what happens—is okay. Deeply, deeply okay. A thousand miles deep.”

That wasn't exactly the promise Maya wanted, but in the great uncertain universes there are little havens here and there, where a person can relax for a moment and be at home, and this was one of those.

Maya closed her eyes and curled up next to her mother like a comfortable question mark—like a salamander—and outside the window, where so much was so unknown, all of Paris hushed: the sky became white and tingly, a sky made of fog and opal (because magic, like love, passes on and on and on), and it began, for the first time that year, to snow.

   

A
s I keep learning again and again from Rosemary Brosnan, it takes plenty of science and magic to turn a story into a real book. Thank you so much, Rosemary! Heartfelt gratitude also to Andrea Martin and the whole HarperCollins team. I am in awe of the talents of Iacopo Bruno. Andrea Brown and Taryn Fagerness keep things humming on the West Coast.

I am lucky to have true friends who are also good writers. Roo Hooke, Sharon Inkelas, and Will Waters kept me cheerful and afloat. Jayne Williams and Isa Helfgott hauled me over the rough patches. Linda Williams and Leslie Reagan supplied encouragement. Mark Sandberg shared great stories while walking uphill. Marguerite Holloway made everything seem possible.

The Apocalypsies, the members of SCBWI, and the writers who congregate at the Enchanted Inkpot taught me everything I might ever need to know, and then some. Special thanks to Lena Goldfinch, Pedro de Alcantara, Tioka Tokedira, Ann Jacobus Kordahl, Regan Orillac, and Rachel Grinti for being such thoughtful early readers. My writer-neighbors Mike Jung and Malinda Lo inspire me. So do Cindy Pon and Sarah Prineas, who live slightly farther away.

I traveled up and down the West Coast with a wonderful bunch of writers in 2012—Marissa Burt, J. Anderson Coats, Jenny Lundquist, Jenn Reese, and Laurisa Reyes. Jenn and Jillian made Los Angeles and Seattle feel like home. Thank you!

My gratitude and affection also go out to the Archer-Axelson clan, to the incredible Berkeley Marina Dog-Walking Society, and to the kind people of Berkeley Friends Meeting; particular thanks to Biliana Stremska, for her infectious enthusiasm about all things Bulgarian.

I am truly grateful for the love and support of my very extended family. The New York nieces and nephew wow me with their talents; so do Caroline in Florida and Ruby and David in Wyoming! Bob Naiman traipsed around French forests. Kathryn Anderson made granola. Lenny Helfgott, whose heart is bigger than any banjo, led the bluegrass jams.

Thera Naiman, Eleanor Naiman, and Ada Naiman are the best readers anyone could have. And this book is dedicated, with love, to Eric Naiman, who wanted a story about East Berlin, but was forced, again, to settle for Paris.

Gregory Freidin

ANNE NESBET
is the author of
The Cabinet of Earths
, which was praised by
The Horn Book
for being “a-shimmer with magic” and “an impressive achievement.” Anne teaches Russian literature and the history of film at UC Berkeley. She lives near San Francisco with her husband, several daughters, and one irrepressible dog. You can visit her online at www.annenesbet.com.

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