The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer Read Free Book Online Page A

difficulty.
    So Merle was caught completely unprepared when the students from the other
     side brought the quarrel forcefully to mind. As she later learned, it had been a
     tradition for years among the apprentices of both houses to play tricks on each other,
     which not infrequently ended with broken glass, cursing masters, bruises, and abrasions.
     The last of these attacks had been three weeks before and was credited to Dario, Boro,
     and Tiziano. The weaver boys’ retaliation was long overdue after that.
    Merle didn’t find out why they’d chosen this morning,and she was also not sure how they’d succeeded in getting
     inside the house—although later it was suspected they’d laid a board across
     the canal from one balcony railing to the other and so had balanced their way to the
     mirror maker’s side. That they did all this in broad daylight, and during working
     hours, was a sign that it had been done with Umberto’s blessing, just as earlier
     trespasses by Dario and the others had taken place with Arcimboldo’s
     agreement.
    Merle was just about to begin gluing the wooden frame of a mirror when
     there was a clatter at the entrance to the workshop. Alarmed, she looked up. She was
     afraid Junipa had stumbled over a tool.
    But it wasn’t Junipa. A small figure had slipped on a screwdriver
     and was staggering, fighting for balance. Its face was hidden behind a bear mask of
     enameled paper. With one hand it flailed wildly in the air, while the bag of paint it
     had held in the other burst on the tiles in a blue star.
    â€œWeavers!” Tiziano bellowed,
     dropping his work and jumping up.
    â€œWeavers! Weavers!” Boro, in another corner of the workshop,
     took up his friend’s cry, and soon Dario also thundered in.
    Merle got up from her place in irritation. Her eyes traveled uncertainly
     around the room. She didn’t understand what was going on, ignorant of the
     competition among the apprentices.
    The masked boy at the entrance slipped on his own
     paint and crashed on the seat of his pants. Before Dario and the others could laugh at
     him or even go for him, three other boys appeared in the corridor, all wearing colorful
     paper masks. One in particular caught Merle’s eye: It was the visage of a splendid
     fabulous beast, half man, half bird. The long, curving beak was lacquered golden, and
     tiny glass gems glittered in the painted eyebrows.
    Merle didn’t have a chance to look at the other masks, for already a
     whole squadron of paint bags was flying in her direction. One burst at her feet and
     sprayed sticky red, another hit her shoulder and bounced off without bursting. It rolled
     away, over to Junipa, who’d been standing there with a gigantic broom in her hand,
     not quite knowing what was happening all around her. But now she grasped the situation
     and quickly bent, grabbed the paint bag, and flung it back at the invaders. The boy with
     the bear mask sprang to one side, and the missile hit the bird face behind him. The bag
     burst on the point of the bill and covered its owner with green paint.
    Dario cheered, and Tiziano thumped Junipa encouragingly on the shoulder.
     Then the second wave of attacks followed. This time they didn’t get off so
     lightly. Boro, Tiziano, and Merle were hit and spotted over and over with paint. Out of
     the corner of her eye, Merle saw Arcimboldo, cursing, close the door of the mirror
     storeroom and bar itfrom inside. His students might break heads, so
     long as the finished mirrors remained unharmed.
    The apprentices were left to their own devices. Four against four. Really
     even five against four, if you counted Junipa—after all, in spite of her weak
     eyes, she’d scored the first hit for the mirror makers.
    â€œIt’s the student weavers from the other bank,” Boro
     called to Merle as he grabbed a broom, wielding it like a sword with both hands.
     “No matter what