The Water Mirror Read Free

FOR GOOD AND
     WICKED STEPMOTHERS, FOR BEAUTIFUL AND UGLY WITCHES, AND EVERY SORT OF HONEST
     PURPOSE .
    â€œWe’re there,” Merle said to Junipa, as her eye traveled
     over the words a second time. “Arcimboldo’s magic mirror
     workshop.”
    â€œHow does it look?” Junipa asked.
    Merle hesitated. It wasn’t easy to describe her first impression.
     The house was dark, certainly, like the whole canal and its surroundings, but next to
     the door stood atub of colorful flowers, a friendly spot in the
     gray twilight. Only at the second look did she realize that the flowers were made of
     glass.
    â€œBetter than the orphanage,” she said somewhat
     uncertainly.
    The steps leading up to the walk from the water surface were slippery. The
     gondolier helped them both climb out. He had already been paid when he picked the girls
     up. He wished them both luck before he slowly glided away in his gondola.
    They stood there a little lost, each with a half-full bundle in her hand,
     just under the sign offering magic mirrors for wicked stepmothers. Merle wasn’t
     sure whether she should consider this a good or a bad introduction to her
     apprenticeship. Probably the truth lay somewhere in between.
    Behind a window of the weaver’s workshop on the other bank, a face
     whisked past, then a second. Curious apprentices, Merle guessed, who were looking over
     the new arrivals. Enemy apprentices, if you believed the
     rumors.
    Arcimboldo and Umberto had never liked each other, that was no secret, and
     even their simultaneous expulsion from the trade guilds had changed nothing. Each one
     blamed the other. “What? Throw me out and not that crazy mirror maker?”
     Umberto was said to have asked loudly. The weaver asserted, on the other hand, thatArcimboldo had cried at his own expulsion, “I’ll go,
     but you’d do well to bring charges against that thread picker, too.” Which
     of these accusations matched the truth, no one knew with utter certainty. It was clear
     only that they had both been expelled from the guilds because of forbidden trafficking
     with magic.
    A magician, Merle thought excitedly, though she
     had been thinking of scarcely anything else for days. Arcimboldo is a
     real magician!
    With a grating sound, the door of the mirror workshop was opened, and an
     odd-looking woman appeared on the pavement. Her long hair was piled up into a knot. She
     wore leather trousers, which emphasized her slender legs. Over these fluttered a white
     blouse, shot through with silver threads—Merle might have expected such a fine
     item in the weaver’s workshop on the opposite bank of the canal, but not in the
     house of Arcimboldo.
    But the most unusual thing was the mask behind which the woman hid a part
     of her face. The last Carnival of Venice—at one time famous the world
     over—had taken place over four decades ago. That had been 1854, three years after
     the Pharaoh Amenophis had been awakened to a new life in the stepped pyramid of
     Amun-Ka-Re. Today, in time of war, distress, and siege, there was no occasion to dress
     up.
    And yet the woman was wearing a mask, formed of paper, enameled, and
     artfully decorated, doubtless thework of a Venetian artist. It
     covered the lower half of her face right up to her nostrils. Its surface was snow white
     and shone like porcelain. The mask maker had painted a small, finely curved mouth with
     dark red lips on it.
    â€œEft,” the woman said, and then, with a barely noticeable
     lisp, “that’s my name.”
    â€œMerle. And this is Junipa. We’re the new
     apprentices.”
    â€œOf course, who else?” Only Eft’s eyes betrayed that she
     was smiling. Merle wondered whether the woman’s face could have been disfigured by
     illness.
    Eft ushered the girls in. Beyond the door was a broad entrance hall, as in
     most of the houses of the city. It was only sparely furnished, the