With a start, he realized that Brother Mascoli was in the church—was coming towards him—
Was coming at him.
Jesu! Has the man eyes like a cat?
“Marco, I need you,” the priest said, as Marco started to get up, to get away, before the man could confront him. Mascoli grabbed him by the arm before Marco could protest, or even think of anything to say. “Don’t argue with me, boy. I need you. They need you, and they asked for you by name.”
“Who did?” Marco squeaked.
“You’ll see,” Brother Mascoli said, and dragged him up to the altar, around to his own quarters, and out a tiny back door.
It was, as it transpired, a water-door, which let onto a mere thread of a canal. Handy for poor canal-folk to bring in their sick and injured by night? Handy, too for smuggling—
In this case, handy for something else entirely, for something that was the last thing Marco would have expected. He stared down at the three faces in the water. Three pale green faces, looking up at him and the priest, their fishy eyes reflecting the light from a torch set up in a sconce on the wall, their emerald-green hair like water-weeds streaming and waving in the water around them. And it reflected upon a fourth face, so pale there was hardly any green to it, eyes closed, webbed fingers clasped over a hideous wound in its—her—stomach.
Marco turned on Brother Mascoli. “Those are undines!” he said accusingly.
“And this—if you will notice—is enclosed within the church walls,” he replied, waving at what Marco had taken to be a canal. It wasn’t. Now that the priest had drawn his attention to it, he saw that it was part of the church proper, beneath the roof, a crucifix mounted on the back with another Presence-Light beneath it on a shelf that served for an altar. A sort of watery chapel, apparently.
“Technically, since I bless this place three times daily, this is Holy Water,” Brother Mascoli continued. “They may not be human, but they’ve passed the test of faith. And they asked for you by name. I can’t heal her, but they think you can.”
“Me?” Marco’s voice went up another octave.
“You,” said a sibilant voice from below. “We have seen you with our brother, among the reeds. You have the light and the power. We cannot reach him in time—you must heal our sister!”
He couldn’t help himself; he knelt down on the water-stair and looked at the terrible gash that crossed the undine’s torso from left nipple to the top of her right hip, and a spasm of sympathetic pain closed around his throat. How could anyone heal that? How could the poor thing still be alive?
The wounded undine’s eyes opened, and he was caught in her gaze. She moaned pitifully, and held out webbed fingers to him. “Please,” came the faintest of whispers.
Blessed Maria— It was more than a spasm of sympathy now; he swallowed down actual tears.
“But—” he directed, not a protest, but a plea of his own to Brother Mascoli. “I don’t know how—”
“They’re magic creatures, Marco. You probably couldn’t heal a human slashed like that, but they’re as much spirit as flesh—” Brother Mascoli began, then shook his head. “Just do what I do.” He looked down at one of the uninjured undines. “Little sister, you’re going to have to help. I may need you to act as a catalyst; the boy’s never done magic as far as he knows.”
One of the undines separated herself from the injured one, leaving the other two to support their sister in the water. “I am ready,” she said, undulating over to Marco, and sliding up onto the water-step beside his feet. He couldn’t help noticing when she spoke that she had long, sharp claws on those graceful green hands—and a mouth full of sharklike teeth. Looking at those teeth . . .
Marco almost shuddered. The “our brother” the undine had referred to could only be Chiano. He’d always known old Chiano had a special relationship with the undines in the Jesolo. The marsh locos had always been afraid of Chiano. Marco had thought it was only because of some vague fear of Chiano’s magic, but now—looking at those teeth—he suspected that at least marsh locos had learned the hard way not to fool around with a friend of the undines.