The Undrowned Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

illustration, of another young girl operating a small hand-cranked printing machine. She was drawn only from the waist up. Above the engraving were some words about the book. The thing was, the book didn’t seem to think that it exactly was a book. Instead, it introduced itself as:
    The Key to the Secret City for the Children of Venice
    Below that was printed what must be the publishers’ name: the Seldom Seen Press.
    Teo cast a knowing eye over the engraving of the printing press. She liked everything to do with books. The best lessons at school this past term had been about Johannes Gutenberg, who had invented the printing press four hundred years before. The teacher had brought in a working model of Gutenberg’s machine. Then she had shown the children how to slot individual letters into wooden forms to “compose” a page, to brush ink over a metal plate, then run them through a heavy mangle … all this to produce a single shaky but real printed page.
    “Like magic!” Teo had marveled at the time.
    And there had been the added joy to it that when Maria had taken her turn at the press, her new mousseline de soie dress had been splattered by a slick of ink that had coursed off the roller while Teo turned it. Teo hadn’t meant to do it. It had just happened.
    Grinning at the memory, Teo turned to the next page of The Key to the Secret City. This was set in large type with many curly decorations. It was hard to understand, and Teo realized that the words were written not in Italian but in old Venetian dialect, which was more like Latin or French. This was a word game. Teo loved word games. And indeed, when she put half of her brain into Latin mode, and a quarter into French, leaving the rest for Italian, and squinted with one eye, reading aloud and hearing the sounds of the words—then she discovered that she could understand the Venetian dialect quite easily. Well, almost easily.
    The page said, We will show you our city, we will show you our heart.
    “Oh yes, please!” whispered Teo, feeling warm with pleasure.
    A strong smell of wet varnish filled the room. Teo glanced up as the window rattled violently. The storm was gathering force. Then she looked again, and a scream tore out of her throat. The Key to the Secret City slid to the floor as Teo leapt up and clutched her pillow in front of her.
    A dark figure stood hunched by the window. He had twice the bulk of an ordinary man. His bare arms were grooved with muscle and sinew. He was like some kind of monstrous joke, a crude sketch of a Blackamoor from a Penny Dreadful magazine: his skin was blacker than coal and his eyes bulged white in his broad, furious face. Broken chains dangled from his neck and legs.
    A groaning creak came from his joints and a thin stream of blood fell from his lips as he began to move towards her.
    around midnight, June 1, 1899
    “It’s a statue, you foolish child!” The nurse was shaking Teo harder than was really necessary. What harsh breath the woman had!
    The nurse had hurt her wrist wrenching the handle of the door that Teo had wedged with the tongs. And now the other children on the wards, woken by Teo’s screams, were wailing in a dismal chorus down every corridor.
    “But it moved! There was blood in its mouth! And I know it wasn’t here before.”
    “You know precisely nothing, young lady. You are indulging in an hysterical conniption.”
    Having supplied her own excuse, the nurse slapped Teo’s face for good measure. The doctor hurried in and gasped at the sight of the vast statue, “Dear God, not here too!”
    Teo, one hand on her smarting cheek, bellowed, “What not here too?”
    The nurse threw her a threatening look as the doctor sank into a chair. “Child, I hardly know. Someone is playing a very silly and sinister joke on Venice, just at a time when laughter is quite uncalled for. These statues have started appearing in people’s homes, in bakeries, and now in the hospital. The strange thing is, they’re very