Church of Marvels: A Novel by Parry Leslie

Author:Parry, Leslie [Parry, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

THE ROOM WAS DARKER than the burrows of the Frog and Toe, the air pungent and flowery. Little boys sat clustered around a table. Their hands were small and fast; they took apart the opium pipes—bowls, saddles, and stems—with reverence and precision, as if they were tending to the instruments of an orchestra. A boy with a paper mask looked up as Odile and Pigeon walked in. He smiled.

“Sniff!” Pigeon cried. She ran over and nudged him with her shoulder—a squeak of the iron socket, a grin on her face—then lined up her flowers on the table.

“I thought you were my best girl!” said the boy, thumping a sticky-looking cake with his fist. “What took you forever?”

Pigeon pointed to Odile, then leaned in and whispered to him about the man who’d been picking around the mats, but the boy shook his head and said they’d missed him—he’d only just left.

“What does he look like?” Odile said. “Quick.”

“Gypsy fellow. Ruffy beard, brownish hat.”

“A Gypsy?” She could only picture the actors that night on the beach—men with golden earrings and gossamer scarves—barefoot, moustachioed, dancing through the sand with dulcimers and lutes.

“He gypped the weepy fellow, I saw—took his coat,” the boy went on. “The one with the black sash on the sleeve. He’s a fighter, you can see. His face!”

“Which way?”

He pointed down the hallway; Odile thanked him and ran. Through the tattered pongee curtains, out to a gloomy foyer, past an empty chair with a dime novel tented on the arm (A Bride for a Day—she’d loved that one). She ran out the door, up the stairs, knocking a golden bell as she went. The light was bright on the street—she had to stop for a moment, dizzy in the glare. She could smell the meat from a butcher shop, the vinegar stink from olive barrels across the way. Still, she breathed in the wind, cooler, sweet with the traces of bread flour and thyme. Then farther down she saw it—a felt hat, the color of sand. A man, moving away through the marketplace. She thought of Belle, bringing her little dagger all the way to the city, Mother’s old book of poems. She began weaving through the chicken coops and potato wagons, past the fluttering ivory leaves on a stationer’s cart. Just ahead of her—a tall man with dark curls, wearing a band on his jacket sleeve.

He turned down an alleyway, beneath an arrowed sign that read MILK. She paused for a moment by a cobbler’s bench, matching her breaths to the easy plink of the hammer. Then she gripped the dagger and followed him around the turn.

He stood in the middle of the alley, alone in a wedge of light, counting out coins in the palm of his hand. She drew the dagger from its sheath, held it low at her side. It had been so long since she’d done anything of the sort—just a girl, standing behind the Church of Marvels, practicing her throws against the corkboard, Mack hemming and clucking as she missed.

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