The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer Read Free Book Online

into meanness. When they saw that the delegated work was
     getting to be too much, they readily helped, without being asked to. Junipa, on the
     other hand, they seemed to find uncanny, and Boro, especially, preferred to give her a
     wide berth. The boys accepted Dario as theirleader. They
     didn’t have the doglike devotion to him that Merle had sometimes seen with gangs
     in the orphanage, but they clearly looked up to him. Anyway, he’d been apprenticed
     to Arcimboldo a year longer than the two of them had.
    After about a week and a half, shortly before midnight, Merle saw Eft
     climbing down into the well a second time. She briefly considered waking Junipa but then
     decided against it. She stood motionless at the window for a while, staring at the well
     cover, then uneasily lay down in her bed again.
    She’d already told Junipa of her discovery on one of their first
     evenings in the house.
    â€œAnd she really climbed into the well?” Junipa had asked.
    â€œI just told you so!”
    â€œMaybe the rope had come off the water bucket.”
    â€œWould you climb down into a pitch-black well in the middle of the
     night just because some rope was broken? If it really had been that, she could have done
     it in the daytime. Besides, then she would have sent one of us.” Merle shook her
     head decidedly. “She didn’t even have a lamp with her.”
    Junipa’s mirror eyes reflected the moonlight that was shining in
     through their window that night. It looked as though they were glowing in the white, icy
     light. As so often, Merle had to repress a shudder. Sometimes at suchmoments she had the feeling that Junipa saw more with her new eyes than just the
     surface of people and things—almost as if she could look directly into
     Merle’s innermost thoughts.
    â€œAre you afraid of Eft?” Junipa asked.
    Merle thought about it briefly. “No. But you must admit that
     she’s strange.”
    â€œPerhaps we all would be, if we had to wear a mask.”
    â€œAnd why does she wear it, anyhow? No one except Arcimboldo seems to
     know. I even asked Dario.”
    â€œMaybe you should just ask her sometime.”
    â€œThat wouldn’t be polite, if it really is an
     illness.”
    â€œWhat else would it be?”
    Merle said nothing. She’d been asking herself these questions. She
     had a suspicion, only a very vague one; since it had come into her mind, she
     couldn’t get it out of her head. Nevertheless, she thought it was better not to
     tell Junipa about it.
    Merle and Junipa hadn’t spoken about Eft again since that evening.
     There were so many other things to talk about, so many new impressions, discoveries,
     challenges. Every day was a new adventure, especially for Junipa, whose vision was fast
     improving. Merle envied her a little for how easily she became enthusiastic about the
     smallest things; but at the same time she rejoiced with her over the unexpected
     cure.
    The morning after Merle saw Eft climb down into thewell the second time, something happened that once again turned her thoughts from
     the housekeeper’s secret activities: the first meeting with the apprentices on the
     other bank of the canal, the apprentices of Master Weaver Umberto.
    Merle had almost forgotten about the weaving workshop during the eleven
     days that she’d been living in the mirror maker’s house. There’d been
     no trace of the well-known quarrel between the two masters, which had once been the talk
     of all Venice. Merle hadn’t left the house at all during this period. Her entire
     day was spent mainly in the workshop, the adjoining storerooms, the dining room, and her
     room. Now and again one of the apprentices had to accompany Eft when she went to the
     vegetable market on Rio San Barnaba, but so far the housekeeper’s choice had
     always fallen on one of the boys; they were bigger and could carry the heavy crates
     without any