New Decameron One Hundred: Jo Walton (Patreon)

Not an Extract From Or What You Will

By Jo Walton

Tish is painting a fresco in a back room of the Palazzo Vecchio, a room by the stables used for mending saddles and harness and storing out of season riding boots. It smells of leather and oil and horses, and, right now, of drying plaster and the grassy, earthy smell of tempera paints. It's a warm day in September, and the sun is shining through the window, illuminating the wall where Tish is working. The design is of Orsino and Drusilla, on horseback, laughing, coming into the stableyard after a day of hunting. She has caught Drusilla's expression, and she is pleased with the angle of the head of the little white dog called Horse, but she is having difficulty with Orsino. You have to work fast, with fresco, do each day's work on the wet plaster, you can't go back and revise the way you can with oil. With oils you can tweedle about for ages changing your mind, as Titian often did, painting in a dog here and a fan there, changing your mind about the expression on a face. Fresco requires you to be bold. This painting isn't part of the Project, this is just a decorative work that Drusilla asked her to do for Viola's birthday, so it's recreation really, but Tish takes is just as seriously as all her art. She has been working on improving her art for more than a century now.

"Isn't he too big?" Dolly asks.

Tish spins around. "You're back!" she says, redundantly. "How was Xanadu? And no, he's not too big, that's perspective."

Dolly is sipping from a cup of coffee and looking at the painting with a critical eye. "I think the duke unbalances the composition."

"That's because I haven't finished it," Tish says, crossly. "Tomorrow I'm going to put the stables in, and a pheasant hanging down from the saddle-bow, and that will balance it." If she stops now, the plaster will dry and have to be laboriously scraped off and fresh plaster put on, so she turns back and keeps painting the horse's flank and legs. "Tell me about Xanadu."

"Xanadu was wonderful. As exciting as China would have been in our world, if not more so. Ficino was right about how amazing their art is, you should go and see it yourself when you have a chance. I've brought a few little things, I'll show you later. And I've brought two wizards to help with the Project."

"They came back with you? They're here already?" Tish asks, concentrating on the dappling of the legs.

"We only have twenty years left, we need to be getting on with it. And speaking of that, that's why I've come home. I need to talk to you, and to Ficino, and maybe the others too. I've been having some unsettling dreams."

"Again?" Tish asks. Dolly's dreams have been both inspiration and hindrance to the Project all along.

"This is something different," he says. "I wanted to talk to you first. It's a little girl, in our world. We need to rescue her, to get her here."

"Dolly," Tish says, and does not turn around. "Our world is full of children in bad situations, and adults too, we can't rescue all of them."

"I would if I could," he says, ruefully. "I always want to rescue everyone, and most especially kids who are stuck with horrible parents. Maya's been learning how to grow up and be better than them. She's great. She loves books. I just want to... oh Tish, I thought you'd be on my side."

"I've been here such a long time. I've almost forgotten our world. And it's full of unhappy people in terrible situations, and people dying -- dying of old age when they're still younger that we are now. Theoretically I'd like to help them all, practically, I don't see how we can, and it's just too horrible to think about and so I don't think about it." Tish concentrates on the horse's leg. Dolly watches for a while in silence.

"When you've finished that, meet me in Ficino's house," he says, and goes out, leaving Tish feeling oddly flat. She hadn't meant to be mean. Tish has grown up a lot more than Dolly has in the century they've both been in Illyria, and sometimes this is not an advantage. Dolly keeps his youthful enthusiasm, and sometimes that shows her up as complacent and too accepting of her comfortable life. She sighs, and goes to clean herself up in the room next door. Once she's mostly cleaned off the paint she goes to the palace kitchens for coffee. There's a miraculous coffee machine there, red and black, that hisses with steam and produces many kinds of amazing coffee. One of the cooks does nothing but tend it. It appeared by magic one day, about five years ago. Tish always gets coffee there, now, the machine uses the same beans, from Timbuktoo, that everyone else uses, but it makes the best coffee. The palace kitchens have a constant stream of people dropping in for coffee now, especially early in the morning. On the day it arrived, Ficino came to inspect it, and pronounced it a very good thing and a terrific omen for the Project. Then Viola and Sebastian spent a week getting it plumbed in and running.

Tish drinks her coffee and leaves. 

She expects to find a party in Ficino's house, so many people will want to see Dolly and talk to him about the Project. Instead, when the door lets her in to the tapestried entrance hall it's just Dolly, Ficino, and Miranda. Ficino seems to have acquired a cat from somewhere since she last visited, a brindled cat with rainbow irridescence in the stripes of his fur. He comes up to her boldly and twines around her legs. Ficino comes to greet her, small and wrinkled and bright eyed as ever.

They go up to the dining room to eat. First, of course, they invoke the gods, and then settle down to earthenware plates of fresh mozzarella cheese, little sweet tomatoes, and basil leaves, brightened with a dash of dark golden olive oil. This is followed by pasta with squash blossoms, and to finish off a big dish of figs, both black and green, with redcurrants draped over them. There is panna cotta, which Tish had, years ago when she was new to Illyria, mistaken for blancmange. They drink rich local wine, last year's excellent vintage. They talked a little about what Dolly had learned in Xanadu, and on the way, about the progress of the magic carpet and the music. 

"I have some news, before we get on to Dolly's issue," Tish says, when the last of the panna cotta has been scraped up. "I wanted to tell you first. I'm going to go back to women's attire. I'm planning to get married soon."

They all congratulate her, and Ficino gets out a bottle of sweet vin santo for them to have a celebratory toast. "Does the lucky man know it yet?" Miranda teases, as Ficino pours the amber wine into fresh glasses.

"Yes, and he knows I'm really a woman in disguise," Tish says. "He did have the good taste to pretend to be surprised when I told him."

"Who is he?" Dolly asks. 

"Elia Pardo. I met him in synogogue. He's from Malfi, but he's lived here for the last thirty years. He's a doctor."

"I know Elia," Ficino says, delightedly. "He's a really lovely man, kind, generous, thoughtful. We share knowledge about healing from time to time. His mother is a doctor too."

"Will you keep on painting?" Miranda asks.

"Yes. I may slow down a little when I have a baby, but that won't be until after the Project, of course," Tish says.

"To Tish and Elia, may they be very happy," Ficino says, raising his glass, and they all sip the wine, which tastes of excellent raisins. "Now, Dolly, what's so important?"

"I don't know if you'll think it's important at all," he says. "I've been having a lot of dreams about a girl, in the world Tish and I left, and I want to find a way to bring her here."

"To make her part of the Project?" Miranda asks. "Impossible."

"Merely very challenging," Ficino amends. His wrinkled face wrinkles further into a smile. "Certainly not impossible. Your dreams are usually oracular. Tell me about her, Dolly."

"Her name's Maya. Her parents -- it doesn't matter. She's very smart, she loves books, and reading, she's full of enthusiasm for that, but everything in the rest of her life is blighted because of her family situation. But she's been -- there's a plague. In Firenze. And they told everyone to stay inside, with their families, to avoid catching it. And she ran away, instead, she couldn't bear it, so she want to a library -- the Oblate monastery has become a library in her time, and she went there, and hid there, reading the books and eating food out of the stories. And I helped her, in my dreams, and now I want to bring her here."

"But --" Miranda objects.

"What's the problem?" Ficino asks gently, as always.

"It's going to be very hard adapting the ritual for three. And she's just a girl, not a god. She's not... but at least we know her name... how old will she be in 2018, Dolly?" Miranda is clearly doing calculations.

"That's the problem," Dolly says.

"What?" Tish asks. The cat rubs against Tish's legs, and she bends down to pet him behind his ears. He purrs.

"The plague hits in 2020," he says. "So --"

"No, that really is impossible," Miranda says. "It'll be too late. We have to open the way for them in 2018. It's very precisely calculated."

"Nonsense," Ficino says.

"No, I think Miranda's right," Tish says. "We can't delay it. Everything is set up for that one day. And Hekate might die before 2020."

"I wasn't going to suggest delaying the Project. And I don't think Dolly meant that, did you, Dolly?"

Dolly shakes his head. "I'm ready to do what I have to in 2018," he says. "And I have some ideas about how to repeat Pico's sacrifice now and make it work, which I want to discuss with you. But Maya's really such a great kid, and I've been dreaming that I've spent so much time with her, night after night all the way back from Elam, reading and talking and seeing her start to trust and grow. I can't bear to send her back to her parents to be stunted again, and I can't see any other alternative."

"It's fine," Ficino says. "It's easy."

They all stare at him.

"If all goes well with the Project, then by 2020 we'll be able to move between worlds easily."

Tish laughs, and then they are all laughing. "Of course," Miranda says.

"The only problem would be if she brings the disease with her," Ficino says.

"Not a problem," he says. "She's been in the library ten days, with no sign of any symptoms. And besides, I thought infectious disease doesn't work here?"

"None of the plagues of 1494 work here. I'm not sure about new plagues of 2020," Ficino says. "Probably it wouldn't, but I'm glad we don't need to risk it."

"I think the plague's over there. They rang the bells, like in 1348," Dolly says. "But she's moved away from the world, she's between somewhere now. I want to bring her here."

Miranda has been tracing a magical diagram in wine on her dessert plate, she looks up. "Did you ever see this library, Tish?"

"No," Tish says. "Or if I did I don't remember."

"It was a convent in our time, behind the Duomo, on the way to the San'Ambrogio market," Dolly says.

"Is there an equivalent in Thalia?" Ficino asks.

Dolly thinks. "No, I don't think so."

"Well, if you can describe it to Tish, and show her some buildings that are similar, then she can do a painting. After the Project, of course."

Tish nods. "I'll do that."

"And then we can use the picture to do a very simple magic and open a door, and the library can be in both worlds at once, and Maya can come through. But thereafter the library can stay in both worlds, and we can use it to go in and read books in that world," Ficino says. "It will be very convenient, now I come to think of it."

"It will," Dolly says. "I hate not having all the books I need!"

"And will we use it to go all the way into that world?" Tish asks. "Into that strange 2020 full of Progress and half-naked people with words on their clothes riding velocipedes?"

"It might be interesting sometimes," Miranda says. "But we have twenty years -- twenty-two years -- to think this through."

Dolly is looking down at Miranda's diagram, or perhaps just at the cloth.

"Don't worry. I'll see to it. I'll rescue the child, and see she has somewhere to live and lots of books and choices," Ficino says. He puts his hand on Dolly's.

"I'm going to die to open a gate, to change the world," Dolly says. "I think it's a good deal. I'm willing. But the closer it gets the more precious life seems to me."

"You will be here," Ficino says, tranquilly.

Dolly nods.

"And I'll take care of Maya," he goes on.

"And I will too, if she needs it," Tish says. "If it turns out she doesn't want to apprentice to a wizard. Though from what you say about her she probably will."

"She'll like it here," Dolly says. "I'm just sorry I won't be here to show it to her."

**********************************************

"But your name's not Dolly!" Maya says, as she looks up from the handwritten pages. Then she realises she is alone in the darkening library. Her voice echoes, as it has not echoed since she sang washing her hands on the first day. He isn't there. There are no books on the table, not even his book, which had been there before she started reading. He is gone, and she has no way to get him back. She looks around in the dusk for the cat, and can't see him. He seems to have gone ahead into the story. She needs to find a way to follow. But they'll all be strangers, Ficino, Tish, Miranda -- is she the Miranda from the Tempest? From the letters by Lauren Schiller? She doesn't quite seem to be, but she's definitely a wizard. And they think she'll want to be a wizard's apprentice? Well, she does want to be. Doesn't she? 

She stands up. She can cope, she can rely on herself. She can always come back if it doesn't work out. The library will lead both ways. She can go out into story and come in and read any time. And the food in that world is very very good. She smiles. Of course it is, it's his world. She was amused to spot the coffee machine. She picks up the Samian plates. The table looks very bare without the pile of books. She walks down the stairs, and the cat is ahead of her, a glimmer and a shimmer in the darkness, leading the way. She puts her hand on the door. Will it be Florence, or Thalia outside?  "Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end, me thinks it is no journey," she says, and her voice echoes. The cat's eyes glow, looking up at her, waiting. "I don't know how but we will." Whatever it is, it will be an adventure. Whatever it is, she's ready for it.

Maya opens the door and steps through.