The Water Mirror Read Online Free PDF

tiny chamber, in which a round shaft in
     the floor ran straight down to the canal, was on the fourth floor too. Merle
     hadn’t thought to look there, and now she cursed herself for it. She’d
     forgotten the most obviousthing—perhaps because in the
     orphanage it was always a bad sign when one of the children disappeared from his or her
     bed at night. Only a few of them ever reappeared again.
    She was about to turn around to look, when the hissing started again. It
     sounded even more artificial, machinelike, and the tone made her shudder.
    She thought she heard something else, too, very briefly only, soft in the
     background of the hissing.
    A sob.
    Junipa!
    Merle tried to make out something in the dark stairwell. The area was
     pitch-black, only a touch of moonlight falling through a high window beside her, a vague
     suggestion of light that scarcely sufficed to make out the steps under her feet. In the
     hallway to her left ticked a grandfather clock, alone in the shadows, a monstrous
     outline like a coffin that someone had leaned against the wall.
    Meanwhile she was certain: The hissing and the sobbing were coming from
     the interior of the house. From farther below. From the workshop on the second
     floor.
    Merle hastened down the steps. The corridor that branched off from the
     staircase had a high, arching ceiling. She followed it, as softly and quickly as she
     could. Her throat was tight. Her breathing sounded as loud to her as the wheezing of one
     of the steamboats on the Grand Canal. What if she and Junipa had jumped out of the
     frying paninto the fire? If Arcimboldo had planned some horror
     similar to that of the old glassblower on Murano?
    She recoiled as she perceived a movement next to her. But it was only her
     own reflection, flitting across the innumerable mirrors on the walls.
    The hissing was coming more often now, and sounded nearer. Eft
     hadn’t shown them exactly where the entrance to the workshop was. She’d
     merely mentioned that it was on the second floor. But here there were several doors, and
     all were high and dark and closed. There was nothing for Merle to do but follow the
     sounds. The soft sobbing had not been repeated. The thought of Junipa being helplessly
     delivered to an unknown danger brought tears to Merle’s eyes.
    One thing was certain in any case: She would not let anything happen to
     her new friend, even if it meant both of them being sent back to the orphanage. Of the
     worst she didn’t want to think at all. Nevertheless, the bad thoughts stole into
     her mind like the buzzing of small gnats:
    It’s nighttime. And dark. Many people have
     disappeared into the canals already. No one would care about two girls. Two fewer
     mouths to feed, nothing more.
    The corridor made a bend to the right. At its end glowed the outline of
     arched double doors. The crack between the two doors shimmered golden like wire that has
     been held in a candle flame. A strong fire must beburning inside
     the workshop—the coal boiler of the machine that was uttering the primeval hissing
     and snorting.
    When Merle approached the door on tiptoe, she saw that a layer of smoke
     lay over the stone flags of the corridor like a fine ground fog. The smoke was coming
     from under the door, emerging in a fiery shimmer.
    What if a fire had broken out in the workshop? You have
     to remain calm, Merle kept drumming into herself. Very,
     very calm.
    Her feet stirred the smoke on the floor, conjuring up the outlines of
     foggy ghosts in the darkness, many times enlarged and distorted as shadows on the walls.
     The only light was the glow of the crack around the doors.
    Darkness, fog, and the glowing doors directly in front of her—it
     seemed to Merle like the entrance to Hell, so unreal, so oppressive.
    The acrid odor that she’d noticed in the upper stairwell was even
     more penetrating here. The lubricating oil stench was also stronger. It was rumored that