Free City of Masks by Mary Hoffman Page A

Arianna, roaming the streets and bridges of the wonderful city. The only worry he had was remembering to keep out of full sunlight in case anyone saw that he didn’t have a shadow.
    In his waking life, he read everything he could get hold of about Venice. His dad was really pleased with this new interest and brought him volumes from the library and bought others from the local bookshop.
    ‘You’ll be quite an expert when you get back to school,’ he said. ‘Should help with history and geography.’
    But the more Lucien learned about Venice, the more Luciano knew it was different from his Bellezza. For a start, in Bellezza it was silver that was valued, way above gold, which was considered an inferior material. All the domes and mosaics of the great cathedral were made of silver in Bellezza. When he pointed this out to Arianna, she gave her characteristic snort.
    ‘Of course, what do you expect? Gold tarnishes. You know, goes black. It’s the ‘morte d’oro’. Doesn’t that happen in your world?’
    ‘No,’ said Lucien. ‘It’s silver that goes black if you don’t clean it. Gold never needs cleaning.’
    ‘We don’t clean silver here,’ said Arianna. ‘Just polish it sometimes.’
    Lucien began to wonder what would happen if he took some gold, which was readily available and cheap in Bellezza, back to his world.
    ‘Now you are beginning to think like a di Chimici,’ said Rodolfo, when he asked him about it.
    Lucien was horrified but realized it was quite true. ‘So it works both ways?’ he asked. ‘I mustn’t take anything back from here?’
    ‘Only the book you brought with you,’ said Rodolfo. ‘And, much later on, when you are an adept, you might be chosen to take another talisman, some object which would help a future Stravagante make the journey from your world to ours.’
    ‘Like you taking the book?’
    Rodolfo nodded. Lucien sighed. He couldn’t imagine ever being as much of an adept as Rodolfo. The lessons were hard. There was a lot about matter and geology but that was as close to what Lucien might have described as science as they got. Mostly it was more like meditation. Rodolfo was very keen to develop Lucien’s powers of concentration.
    ‘Empty your mind,’ he would say, which Lucien found impossible. ‘Now focus on a point in the city. Visualize it. Describe it to me. Colours, smells, sounds, textures.’
    This was an exercise which Lucien got better at over time, thanks to his afternoon wanderings with Arianna. There came a day when he was as familiar with the calles and campos and sotoportegos of Bellezza as he was with the streets and parks and alleys of his bit of North London. But it never lost its strangeness for him.
    The city was like a net. Its hundreds of little waterways were what held it together. The odd-shaped patches of land, linked to one another by a myriad of little bridges, of wood or stone, were packed with tall thin houses, some grand and palatial, others poorer and more functional. Every tiny square had its own well, the natural meeting-place for all the locals. And much more of life was lived outdoors than in Lucien’s London.
    He had to remind himself that this city was functioning more than four hundred years in his past. There were no motor-boats on the canals, no electric lights, no proper toilets. He got very used to hanging on till he got back to his own world, rather than tangle with the Bellezzans’ primitive plumbing. He knew that however fascinating he found the city, he was a tourist, in time and space.
    One thing that convinced him of how long ago it was in Bellezza was the newness of some of the grand buildings. And everywhere in the city there were new buildings going up; mandolas and barges carrying blocks of stone thronged the waterways. Arianna’s world was a busy one, full of new schemes.
    ‘You don’t say!’ was her perpetual exclamation when he tried to tell her about his world. ‘Everyone has a box with moving pictures in it in