Free The Undrowned Child by Michelle Lovric

monkey made a hole in the wall.…
    There were maps that came to life when she turned the page, with all the streets glowing in sequence to show her how to get to her destination. The Key to the Secret City had torn pieces of paper stuck inside it too, and fingerprints from small hands. There were old faded sweet wrappings and yellowed advertisements carefully cut out of newspapers.
    “At least one Venetian child’s already made good use of this book,” Teo supposed. The girl on the cover smiled before lowering her eyes discreetly.
    The Key to the Secret City seemed to be able to read Teo’s mind. She had only to think, “I wonder where Marco Polo lived?” and a quick secret route to the Corte del Milion would be illustrated on the page. If she felt hungry The Key to the Secret City showed her the way to the nearest pasticceria, and helpfully puffed out the delicious smell of its special cake, with a picture and a caption, so she knew what to grab and pocket.
    “Not stealing,” Teo told herself when the baker scratched his head at a sudden vacancy in his oven dish. “More like learning.”
    But in the bakery at San Barnaba, the baker’s young apprentice shouted at Teo when she lifted a hot sugared bun from his tray, “Oi, you! Drop it!”
    “You can see me!” Teo gasped.
    “I see a thief,” the boy grumbled.
    “Are you … a ghost too?” asked Teo.
    “And are you mad?” he retorted, reaching out to grab her arm.
    The baker loomed up behind his apprentice. “Talking to yourself again, scamp?” He boxed the boy’s ears.
    Teo had run away with a lesson learnt. Children could see her. And they didn’t seem to see any difference between her and themselves.
    Another thought crossed Teo’s mind. Perhaps it was only Venetian children who could see her? Now, that was something she could test on Maria. And if Maria could see her, well, then Teo could ask her to explain to her parents what had happened, insofar as she could explain it.
    Then it struck Teo that in all the time since her … “accident” … she had never once laid eyes on Maria. What was Maria up to? Was she with the young man with the too-perfect face?
    Teo sighed. Would Maria be any use, anyway? She might as well ask a pig to do algebra. “Can’t” and “shan’t” were Maria’s favorite words, unless it was some little thing she could do to ingratiate herself with the fashionable crowd. Teo turned back to the book and its comforting distractions.
    All day she’d been soaking up dialect as fast as she could. She eavesdropped shamelessly. Having no one else to talk to, she spoke to herself in dialect all the time. Her trick with Latin and French was working well, and soon she found that it was relatively easy to talk and think in Venetian.
    But when she helped herself to a little dictionary in a bookshop, she was put back in her place with a shock. The same fair-haired boy whom she had seen in the old bookshop at Miracoli suddenly materialized beside her. So she had not imagined him after all! He looked hard at the bulge in her pocket that marked the stolen dictionary, and muttered, “What can you expect from a foreigner?”
    He was as smartly dressed as before, with a different linen waistcoat, shining boots and a crisp white shirt. At least the Venetian boy did not denounce her to the storekeeper. And his reaction proved her theory—children did not see her as a ghost, but as one of them, an inferior specimen, to be sure, but nothing to remark upon.
    Outside the bookshop she winced at the sight of another of the LOST GIRL posters on a lamppost beside the canal. Her eyes slid to her reflection in the bookshop window. She was by now quite unrecognizable as the tidy little person in the posters. She looked more like an urchin who had been dragged by wolves through a forest.
    “Don’t ye fret, young Teodora, yer a credit to yesself,” said a hoarse voice comfortingly. Teo turned, but all there was to see was a ripple spreading in the