The Undrowned Child Read online

  “June Fifteenth, 1888,” said Renzo gently. “All Venetians know that date, Teo. That was the night of a terrible ferry accident in this very part of the lagoon. A vaporetto rammed a gondola accidentally in the fog. Ten people died. The captain of the vaporetto didn’t see a thing—he was set upon and murdered by a flock of seagulls that had gone mad in the mist. None of his passengers saw a thing either. So the accident was not reported straightaway. It was too long before anyone realized what had happened. It was also odd because the gondola sank to the bottom of the water—normally the wreckage would float. The fog didn’t lift for ages. And then it was a day before the bodies were washed ashore. They were all Venetians. It was one of the worst accidents of modern times.”

  He spoke again, after a few seconds. “From what I remember about it, an entire family, several generations, died in that accident.”

  He parted the nearby bushes, shining the brand on graves to the left and the right—more Gasperins, all with different ages but the same date of death. “The infant daughter, Teodora,” had lost her grandparents, her aunt, her uncle and two cousins.

  “I am not an orphan. I come from a large family!” whispered Teo, with a sudden exhilaration. But that little flame of happiness was directly extinguished by a rush of sadness.

  “No,” she thought. “My family lives in the Bone Orchard! I am still an orphan, just lots of times over. Maybe even just the ghost of an orphan. Nothing. Less than nothing.”

  She had to ask, “So what happened to me, Renzo? How did I survive?”

  Renzo’s lips were set in a tight line. There was something he did not want to tell her. “The thing is, Teo, nobody thought that the baby did survive. They found all the bodies except hers. For days people said that she was so small that … that …”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘the baby’ and ‘her’? Why don’t you say ‘you’?” demanded Teo. “It’s perfectly obvious that I am that child.”

  “It’s difficult, Teo. You see, the thing is … they said that the bab—you … had been eaten by fishes.”

  “Eaten by fishes?”

  “I’m sorry, Teo, that’s what people always said. If that baby was you, I don’t know how you survived or how you ended up in Naples. I don’t remember anyone ever talking about it. Look at how this gravestone is tucked away in a far corner of the graveyard. Hidden in the thick bushes. It looks as if someone planted them deliberately, if you ask me. No one comes here. I don’t know.…”

  Reading his thoughtful face, Teo urged, “But I think you have an idea?”

  “Well, I can take a guess. Say, you were so little and light—after the shipwreck you floated away to safety and someone found you. Perhaps whoever found you didn’t know who you were. Or, if they did, well, I’d lay money on it that the mayor rushed through your adoption to get you out of the city.… He wouldn’t want you here in Venice, attracting the attention of the papers, with anniversary stories every year to remind his beloved tourists of the tragedy. That’s not the type of publicity he likes. If my guess is right, then no one in Venice even knew that you survived.”

  Given what Teo had read in the papers, and in the absence of any other theory, Renzo’s sounded all too plausible. The mayor was ruthless with the truth. He would do anything to keep the image of Venice bright and shiny. Teo imagined herself passed from hand to hand and out of Venice, her birthplace. Her life had been decided on the whim of the mayor. She’d been inconvenient, and for that reason he had sent her away. A little baby, she’d had no rights.

  A hot red haze descended over Teo’s brain.

  Renzo did not see the dangerous look in Teo’s eyes. He was musing, “And it’s probably why your adoptive parents didn’t want to bring you here. Didn’t you tell me that it took years to persuade them? They must have been afraid you would find out.”

  Teo tried to breathe more slowly, but her blood was raging around her body. So many questions—including questions she’d not even asked—were answered by this sorrowful little gravestone. Teo remembered the poem in The Key to the Secret City, the one that had written itself on the page when she saw Maria together with the perfect young man who had turned out to be none other than Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  “Renzo! There was something the book told me, before I met you. It was a poem about this place, about a secret hidden in the old Bone Orchard.”

  “Can’t you remember it? Aren’t you supposed to be able to remember everything?” Renzo challenged. “You know, like a camera.”

  Teo knelt down and closed her eyes. She focused all her thoughts on the poem that had printed itself inside The Key to the Secret City. Single words and lines tugged at her memory. Then her photographic memory framed the whole page, and she could read it as if it was written out in front of her. With her eyes still closed, she recited the poem to Renzo, faultlessly, including all the rats, the wells, the lions, the plague spores, the Butcher, concluding triumphantly:

  Where’s our Studious Son? Who’s our Lost Daughter,

  Our Undrowned Child plucked from the water,

  Who shall save us from a Traitor’s tortures?

  That secret’s hidden in the old Bone Orchard.

  Teo repeated the lines: “Who’s our Lost Daughter, our Undrowned Child plucked from the water?”

  Renzo whispered with a stunned expression, “Where’s our Studious Son?”

  There was a new softness in his voice. Renzo knelt down beside Teo and awkwardly put his wet arm around her. Instead of his usual lemony, soapy scent, he smelt of the sea and of smoke from the brands. He said quietly, “Poor Teo, you’ve had the most enormous shock.”

  Teo pushed his arm away. “I see, now that you know I am a Venetian like you, it’s fine to be nice to me. Before, I wasn’t good enough to tie your shoelaces! Is that it? I suppose now you think it’s all right for me to have the book?”

  Renzo stared at her, frozen with confusion and embarrassment. Teo stormed off towards the far end of the cemetery. Her heart was pounding, full of a thousand emotions, about her unknown dead parents, about the crafty mayor. And about Renzo, who suddenly liked her, just because she was a Venetian!

  She pulled up short, sobbing, at the end of the cemetery garden, by the edge of the lagoon. She saw Venice just a little way off, and suddenly she just wanted to be alone, to walk the streets of this city that did indeed belong to her. No matter that she was dripping wet, crying and furious.

  “Teo Gasperin. That’s who I am,” she thought. “Or was.”

  Gasperin: she was sure she’d seen that name on doorbells. She was going to run around Venice, ringing the doorbells of any Gasperins, to ask if they were distantly related to her. She would find her real parents’ house! She could not be totally forgotten in Venice! She’d show that smug mustachioed mayor! And his minister for tourism and decorum! She would not let the city forget her or her dead parents! The mermaids were waiting for her and Renzo at the main entrance to the cemetery, but she wasn’t accountable to them! Really, she couldn’t start too soon!

  She stared at the restless water that lay between her and Venice. As a baby she must have been able to breathe underwater to survive when everyone else around her drowned.

  “I think I’ll try that again!” she said to herself wildly, and dived into the black waves of the lagoon.

  The warm water embraced her body. It was easy to hold her breath. Under the waves, she didn’t hear Renzo running and shouting after her. At the edge of the cemetery, he hesitated a moment, and then threw himself into the water. Renzo’s swimming was even weaker than he’d admitted. He trailed far behind Teo, who was still skimming under the surface at a furious pace. When she finally came up for air, the first thing she saw was Renzo, flailing his arms, fifty yards away. The sound of the waves drowned out his voice, but the moonlight fell starkly on his terrified face.

  He mouthed the word “SHARK!”

  Behind him, and cutting through the waves much faster than Renzo, the tip of a shark’s jagged fin appeared in dark
silhouette.

  Too late, Teo remembered the sharks. Absurdly, it flashed through her mind—Crafty as Cuttles! She had been not crafty but just about as stupid as she could be. As Renzo panted to her side, the sharks surrounded the two children, milling in circles.

  A long gray form pushed between them, gashing their legs with its serrated hide. It was the most agonizing pain Teo had ever felt, as if her skin was being branded by hot tongs. And the sharks had not even used their teeth yet—teeth that curved visibly backwards inside their open jaws, ready to tear. From those jaws came an overpowering stench of rotten meat. Teo thought of the tourists gone missing since the lights went out in Venice.

  One shark tugged experimentally at the sash of Teo’s pinafore and then ripped it right off. Immediately other sharks challenged it: in seconds the white sash was reduced to fragments of thread churning in the water. The same shark closed in on the cuff of Teo’s sleeve. She snatched it back and wrapped her arms around herself, frantically treading water. Another shark was butting Renzo’s shoulder, pushing him under the water. A third wrenched the caul off his neck.…

  “Does it prove that I am not a ghost—if I am edible?” wondered Teo. And then, “But even if I’m alive I soon shall be a ghost, a mangled, eaten one.”

  “I’m sorry, Teo,” sobbed Renzo. “I was horrible to you. A snob. So uncivil! Forgive me.… You deserve better.…”

  “No,” gasped Teo. “I am sorry I lost my temper. You were my good friend. I would have loved to have seen the Archives with you. It would have been a pleasure.”

  Were. Would have been.

  The sharks jostled around the children, nudging them further away from the meeting point where the waiting mermaids might see them. One of the sharks ripped the seaweed bandage off Teo’s knee. Her wound was bleeding again. The smell of her blood seemed to rouse the sharks to an even more terrifying level of excitement. A gray monster snapped the caul off Teo’s neck and tossed it down its gaping throat. It appeared to find the caul appetizing, for it immediately loomed in closer again.

  “I am meeting the same Fate as my parents,” thought Teo. “I shall die in the water of the Venetian lagoon. Though in a different way. A worse way.”

  A shudder ran through her whole body, like an electric shock. What were the sharks waiting for? Why had they fallen so still? She almost wished they would just get on with it, so that it could be over. She turned to give one last look to Renzo, too numb to cry, just wanting a familiar human face to be the last thing she ever saw.

  just before dawn, June 8, 1899

  It was another face Teo saw. Not Renzo’s, and not the gray snout and cold eyes of a shark. No, a beautiful face. Ten foaming, crashing, screaming minutes later, Teo and Renzo were back in the underwater cave in the House of the Spirits. Teo was bleeding profusely from the shark scratches. Renzo was holding his shoulder, and grimacing with pain. Neither of them could quite bear to look at the other, remembering what they had said out there in the water, when they had believed they were about to die.

  In moments Chissa was applying fermented chili jelly to their wounds with a gentle hand, while Lussa explained what had happened. “I grew Suspicious when You did not return after Twenty of your Human Minutes. So I sent out a Patrol. My Scouts sighted the Dog-Fish gliding towards Teodora and summoned Reinforcements from the Cavern.”

  “What happened then?” asked Teo.

  “A Hundred of my best Warrior-Mermaids closed around the Sharks, even as the Sharks were closing around You. They sang at the Tops of their Voices to stun the Beasts into a deep Trance.”

  Chissa continued, “That’s when we moved in amongst them to take ye in our arms. I myself had the honor of reaching ye first, Undrowned Child, ye’ll remember.”

  “The sharks didn’t wake when you swam among them?”

  Lussa laughed. “Contrariwise, They were dreaming. Indeed, Some of Them were snoring in a most Unattractive & Chortling Manner.”

  “But I remember splashing. And shouting.”

  “Unfortunately, Some of the Hungrier Sharks lurched back to Life just as Their Supper was being taken away from Them.”

  Chissa described how it had come to blows between the mermaids and the monstrous fish. The mermaids had thrashed with their vast tails, making a great white wedding cake of waves in the lagoon. Under cover of this she and Lussa had carried the children back to the secret submarine tunnel under the House of the Spirits.

  “Are the other mermaids safe?” asked Teo, reaching for The Key to the Secret City on the moss cushion where she had left it. She hugged it to her chest.

  “Oh Yar, all accounted for,” affirmed Lussa cheerfully. “ ’Tis, in True Fact, a Relief of Sorts to meet the Enemy’s Vassals in Open Conflict.”

  Renzo frowned. “But won’t they tell Bajamonte Tiepolo that they were attacked by mermaids? Won’t that alert him to your existence? And where you are?”

  “Fortunately, Sharks think only of Food. It would not enter their Brute Heads to ponder on subtle Matters like Revenge, or even to calculate what robbed Them of their little Feast. They will already have forgotten about Us, and be warring among Themselves over some Scrap of Seagull or Fish. Il Traditore keeps Them only for the Crudest of Work. If He wants some Spying performed, He sends up One of the magòghe. Or an Insect. Or a Bat. They are always up for Improperness.”

  Mermaids brought the children dry towels and delicious hot drinks, salty and sweet and very spicy at the same time, served in beautiful Venetian glass goblets, and then, in bowls made out of scallop shells, a thick creamy soup, with crunchy croutons floating in it, and some soft bready cakes, dusted with a white powder.

  “Down the hatch!” urged Chissa. “Do ye good.”

  Teo and Renzo gulped and munched and held out their scallop shells for more.

  “What is this?” Renzo asked. “It is absolutely delicious!”

  “You are drinking Seaweed Cocoa with Cayenne Pepper. The Soup is Curried Lagoon Samphire, of course. And those are Deep-Fried Algae Croutons. The Bread is stuffed with River-Ripened Sea Semolina and the Savory Powder is Stone-Ground Mud Myrrh.” Lussa licked her pretty lips.

  “I wish you hadn’t told us that.” Teo put her scallop shell down. It immediately fell off the table. “I don’t think I eat most of those things.”

  “Perhaps you have not been Fortunate enough to taste Them prepared properly before.” Lussa looked proud. “As You see, Mermaids dine well. We are known for being Uncommonly Fussy & Exceptionally Greedy.”

  “So,” wheedled Chissa. “Undrowned Child, shall ye not partake of a little Potted Duff? With a snattock o’ Beetle Bait?”

  “Really, I couldn’t manage another morsel,” said Teo politely. “Also, I don’t eat fish.”

  “But Nor do We!” cried Lussa. “What did You think We dined upon—raw Barracuda Hearts & Cod Liver? Nay, We do not eat our fellow Sea Creatures. That would be what You Humanfolk call Cannibalism. Chissa uses a Sea Expression for Steamed Pudding and Jam. In our Case, served with Cumin Custard.”

  Chissa held out the platter so the smell wafted over to the children. Potted Duff had a delightful sweet fragrance. But Renzo and Teo were really not hungry anymore. Now that they felt warm and safe again, their minds had started to return to the subject of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  Teo blurted out what she had been thinking ever since she saw the graves of her parents and relatives. “My mother and father … Was it really an accident?”

  Chissa’s eyelids dropped down. Lussa stated, “Sadly, nay, ’Twas no Accident. It had been a decidedly Hot Summer that Year. A Pipe broke at a coastal Manufactory. A Tide of Filth & Poison swept into the Lagoon. The mayor tried to keep It hushed.”

  At the mention of the mayor, a mermaid shouted, “Scoundrelly rectum!”

  Lussa threw the parrots a warning glance, and continued, “But the Water of the Lagoon waxed warm and the Creature started to stir. We were not able to pacify It completely, no Matter what We did. It may have been the first Time t
hat the Spirit of Bajamonte Tiepolo tried to harness the little Creatures that make up the bigger One, because It had never killed Humanfolk before.”

  “But why did my parents have to die that night?”

  “Let Us just say that Bajamonte Tiepolo has always sought to kill Gasperins when He could get Them. That night They were taking You to your Christening by their Family Priest on the Island of Murano.”

  “Why Gasperins?”

  Lussa continued as if she had not heard. “By the time We arrived There it was too late to save the Adults: They were already drowned. There was No one left to save except You, Teodora, the Undrowned Child of the old Prophecy. You alone, by a Miracle, were able to survive some Time under the Waves. Of course, being the Daughter of Such Parents had left You with some Particular Talents. I understand that You are a Vedeparole, for Example.”

  “A what?”

  “A Vedeparole, meaning that You see Spoken Words as Written upon Air. By which You can learn much about Him or Her who utters Them. And furthermore, You are a Lettricedel-cuore, are You not? You can read People’s Hearts by touching their Chests.”

  Teo remembered what she had felt when she had put her hand on the stone chest of Signor Rioba. She wondered, “Does that mean that I can do it with anyone?”

  Aloud, she asked, “But how did I survive?”

  “We suspect the Fish helped You.”

  “The … fish?”

  “It would be just like Them. Such slandered Little Beasts. Humanfolk think Them mere Swimming Machines. I understand You Humanfolk even have an Expression ‘as cold as a fish.’ Never was Anything more Untrue. Fish are verily the Kindest-Hearted Things in the Sea. Particularly the Branzino and the Sgombro …”

  “But how …?”

  “One day We shall perhaps know the Entire Story. For now All We can tell is This: the Fish came Here to warn Us of your Plight, all by Signs & Motion, being Mute. Somehow—We know not How—They kept You alive until We reached You. We hastened to fetch You to the House of the Spirits, and made Sure that the Nuns found You. And Those Ladies looked after You here until a new Home was found for You by the mayor.”