Dark Shimmer by Donna Jo Napoli Read Free Book Online

six things most important in the world? Bread, wine…”
    “Oil, salt,” I chant with her, “something to go with the bread, and soap.”
    She laughs. “So your kingdom has the same saying?”
    “Maybe they have the same saying everywhere.”
    “I doubt it. Papà says the world is full of scoundrels and fools. He’s educated.”
    “Are you?”
    “I’m a girl.” She pushes my head up, and my sopping hair hangs in my face. “Are you educated? Do girls have tutors in your kingdom?”
    “No,” I say, though I can form letters. I’ve sat in front of inscriptions on the sides of buildings and copied the letters in the dirt with a stick.
    “Oh.” She rinses the soap from my hair and offers me a white linen towel. “I’m glad you don’t strip your hair with lye and color it all red or yellow. Aunt Agnola does that. She wishes she were pretty. She likes rhubarb best. She thinks it makes her look like a flower, all pink-red.”
    I towel my hair roughly.
    “Mamma had black hair like yours.”
    “You mean like yours,” I say.
    “Yes, but really like yours. With black curls. Papà likes your kind of hair.”
    I stare at her.
    But she’s rinsing the soap off her hands. “Let me comb it?” She turns to me with a shy smile.
    “Why do you even ask, after all the other things you’ve done for me?”
    “Aunt Agnola says combing hair is an act of love. Family love. She combs mine. She won’t let anyone else do it.”
    “Is she your mamma’s sister?”
    “Mamma’s dead.”
    “I’m sorry.” I sigh. “My mamma died yesterday.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry, too.”
    I nod and we look at each other.
    Finally Bianca says, “Aunt Agnola is Papà’s sister. She should have gone to a convent long ago, long before I was born. Like my aunt Teresa and all unmarried women. But I’m lucky she didn’t, because when Mamma died, she was there to take care of me. Now look.” She pulls a comb from the pouch that hangs at her waist and puts it in my hands. “This is my comb.”
    The two rows of bone spines are joined in the middle by a carving of birds with curved beaks and plants with red buds. “It’s glorious.”
    “I know. It was Mamma’s. All her best things were saved for me.”
    “You must be rich.”
    “We don’t have princesses in Venezia, but we do have nobles.”
    I feel woozy. I take a deep breath.
    “You have to eat before you nap. The tray of food will be right outside the door. You can eat while I comb your hair, and then we can nap together. In my room.”
    “All right.”
    She fetches the tray and sets it on the table. “Go on.”
    I take a bite of bread, a bite of fig. It’s sour bread, crusty outside and soft inside. The fig is at its ripest. I chew each bite tens of times, savoring every morsel.
    Bianca takes the comb and stands behind me. She teases apart knots expertly, like Mamma did. And now she combs.
    I wince. “You comb hard.”
    “My mamma said hard combing makes hair glossy. Aunt Agnola combs hard too. You have to press till the scalp wakes up.” She finishes, then unfolds the pile of black cloth at the foot of the mattress. “This is a clean monk’s robe. They don’t have clothes for women at the monastery.”
    I slip on the faded robe. It smells of sunshine, and hangs so long it crumples around my feet. Clothing that is too long for me. Will marvels never cease? I roll up the sleeves. Inside this robe I feel shrunken, a shadow of myself.
    Bianca laughs. “You look silly. I wish I could show you, but they have no mirrors here. Monks don’t care what they look like. Some monks don’t even talk. We visited ones near Monti Sibillini who used only their hands to understand each other, and I got to see snow on the mountaintops. Have you seen snow?”
    “A dusting. But only rarely.”
    “That’s how Venezia is, too. I wish it would snow more. I love snow. My mamma loved snow. She saw snow in the Dolomiti mountains, right before she gave birth to me. That’s where my name came