Tessie climbed one tier higher and accidentally knocked off a jar of pickles, which shattered, attracting the attention of Aunt Mimi, who was unfortunately not deaf. The old lady shrieked down the stairs, “Piquietta!” That was Ninysh for “little devil girl,” the Belgiosos’ usual epithet for Tessie. “Get back here!”
“I’m looking for the cabbages, Auntie,” Tessie hollered back.
“They’re at the bottom of the stairs, you monster,” shouted Mimi. “I can see them from here. If it weren’t for my knees, I could get one myself.”
“I don’t see them,” cried Tessie.
“Liar! You’re playing down there, closer to your friend the devil. If you love the basement so much, fine.”
The light waned; Mimi was closing the door.
“Let’s see how long your lamp lasts, and how you like it after that.” She barred the door with a heavy thump.
Tessie’s heart leaped. She could not have asked for better. Aunt Mimi would assume she was contained and forget about her. Tess could do what she liked.
“You don’t imagine, you old behemoth, that there’s only one way into the basement?” Tessie muttered, squeezing through a forest of spare chairs toward the back of the room where a passageway connected to the old tunnels under the city. Before Queen Lavonda’s peace with dragonkind, the citizens of Lavondaville used to hide in those tunnels to escape dragon fire.
The passages were in ill repair, but they hadn’t been filled in. Tess had done enough exploring—even at six and a half—that she’d come this way before. A short spur led to a bigger tunnel under the street, and then a narrow vent opened behind St. Siucre’s shrine down the block. She’d escape that way, come into the house at the back, sneak upstairs, and play with Jeanne—assuming Jeanne had been sensible enough to drag out her own chore and hadn’t obediently returned to the kitchen by now.
You never knew about Jeanne; she was often reflexively well behaved. Tessie loved her for it, but it could be inconvenient at times.
“Damned inconvenient,” she said aloud, relishing the freedom to curse.
She was heading for the tunnel when a spooky sound stopped her short. It came from the darkness ahead, a kind of eeh-eeh-eeh, and then a k-k-k-khhhee, and then a thoo-eee-thoo-eee-thaaaah, most perplexing and uncanny.
Tessie pressed herself against the back wall of the cellar and inched toward the doorway, wishing she dared extinguish her light. The creature would see her approaching.
What would Dozerius do?
Tessie counted to three and then leaped into the doorway, brandishing the broomstick and crying, “Yah-ha!”
Curled on the floor in front of her, shivering uncontrollably, a small quigutl had made a makeshift nest of rags, leaves, paper, and (Tessie noted with interest) a shredded cabbage. The creature had already laid a clutch of eggs—seven whole, one broken—but there was one more egg bulging half in, half out of its body. Tessie stared unabashedly; a neighbor kept hens, so she’d seen eggs laid before, but never such large ones.
The quigutl hissed at her. Tessie came no closer, so it arched its back and carried on with its business. It strained and groaned and growled, but the egg didn’t budge.
Tessie got tired of standing, so she squatted to watch. Did it usually take so much time to lay an egg?
“That must hurt,” she said, not expecting the beast to understand her. It whipped its head around to face her, however, and…was she imagining things? It nodded.
It buckled under the strain of another contraction and shrieked eerily. The egg was making no progress. Something was wrong.
“Do you need help?” asked Tessie. Her lamp was dimming; she’d be no help in the dark.
The quigutl chittered, clearly panicked, and Tessie’s heart quickened. She had to do something—the egg was going to tear the poor creature in two.
“I don’t understand you,” she said, trying to keep her voice soothing, “but my sister can. I’m going to get her, and we’ll help you. I’ll be right back.”
She edged around the nest and then sprinted toward the larger tunnel, up the winding stair to St. Siucre’s shrine and then toward home. Tessie didn’t bother with the back door—no time—but burst through the front. She bolted upstairs and into Seraphina’s room without knocking.
Seraphina barely glanced up from her book. “What is it, Rudeness?”
“Quigutl…dying in the basement…talk to it…” Tessie was out of breath. “Please.”
Seraphina frowned. “Better tell Papa. It’ll stink up the whole house if it dies. He’ll hire somebody to remove it.”
“You don’t understand!” wailed Tessie. “It doesn’t have to die. We can save it.”
Seraphina rolled her eyes, marked her place in the book with a ribbon, and followed Tessie downstairs. Tess paused in the parlor for more lamp oil, then led Seraphina outside, toward the shrine of St. Siucre. If Seraphina thought this was a peculiar way to get into the basement, she gave no sign; indeed, she’d opened her book again and was reading as she walked.
The quigutl lay where Tessie had left it, panting and doubled up in pain. Silver streaked the half-laid egg now, the quigutl’s blood. It didn’t look gory to Tess, but Seraphina recoiled.
“Ask what we can do to help,” said Tess, yanking her sister’s arm to pull her closer.
“You just asked,” said Seraphina, wrinkling her nose. “It understands Goreddi.”
“Fine,” cried Tess impatiently. “What does it need?”
Seraphina’s brow crumpled in concentration as she listened to the creature’s jabbering. “Oil,” she translated. “Cooking oil, not lamp oil. And hot water.”
“Argh, those are in the kitchen,” cried Tess, stamping. “Aunt Mimi barred the door.”
Seraphina sighed loudly and handed Tess her book to hold. “I’ll handle her, but all the quigutl midwifery falls to you. I didn’t sign on to stick my arm up anyone’s cloaca.”
“Thank you,” said Tessie. “Only hurry!”
Seraphina took the lamp, leaving Tess and the quigutl in the dark. The creature moaned and thrashed its tail. “Poor thing,” said Tessie. “Don’t fret, little beastie. She’ll be back straightaway.”
Tess reached out, thinking to comfort the poor creature by petting it, but the quigutl didn’t want to be touched. It scuttled out of reach and growled at her.
“Oh! Sorry,” said Tessie. She didn’t take it personally; the creature was hurting.
She rummaged in the pocket of her apron, where she sometimes squirreled away snacks for later, and came up with a lump of damp, crumbling cheese.
“Are you hungry? You’re working hard.”
She held her hand as close as she dared and soon felt a snuffle of hot breath as it cautiously approached her again. A rough tongue, like autumn leaves, swept the cheese into an unseen mouth. Tess laughed in amazement.
Seraphina, who’d taken her merry time sauntering across the basement, was now banging on the door and shouting, “It’s Seraphina! You’ve locked me in….No, Tessie isn’t here. You must have been mistaken. I always read in the cellar. Just open up, would you?”
It seemed an eternity, waiting helplessly while the quigutl groaned and grunted its agony, but Seraphina returned with a second lamp and some expensive Porphyrian olive oil, and then with a pot of steaming water and some thick woolen bandages, lunessas, like Mama used for her monthlies when she wasn’t pregnant.
The quigutl jabbered urgently and Seraphina nodded.
“Take it by turns rubbing the egg with oil and applying a warm compress to the skin around the opening. Watch the blood—it’s poisonous,” said Seraphina. “Also, hand me back my book. Thank you.”
Seraphina settled in to squint at her book. The toil fell to Tess, but she didn’t begrudge a minute of it. She calmly wiped blood off the egg, wrung out the bandages, dabbed and stanched. There was a piercing smell, like hot, metallic sewage, that made her stomach turn, but she got around this by imagining herself a battlefield surgeon, or a heroic farmer saving sheep…scaly, stinky, snappy sheep.
The quigutl would occasionally chirrup, and Seraphina would translate without looking up: “More to the right with that compress,” or “Now press on its belly just below the sternum.”