life. The shrill trumpeting of Antonio seemed to tear his ears apart. Behind him, Paolo knew that the elephant was stark, staring mad, trampling this way and that among terrified Montanas. Lucia ran past him, carrying Lena clutched backwards against her front. Paolo grabbed little Bernardo by one arm and ran with him, wincing at the horrible brazen, braying squeal from his father.
Elephants are afraid of mice, horribly afraid. And there are very few people who can shift shape without taking the nature of the shape they shift to. It seemed that Guido Petrocchi had not only won, but got most of the Montanas trampled to death into the bargain.
But when Paolo next looked, Elizabeth was standing in the elephant’s path, staring up at its wild little eyes. “Antonio!” she shouted. “Antonio, control yourself!” She looked so tiny and the elephant was coming so fast that Paolo shut his eyes.
He opened them in time to see the elephant in the act of swinging his mother up on its back. Tears of relief so clouded Paolo’s eyes that he almost failed to see Guido’s next attack. He was simply aware of a shattering noise, a horrible smell, and a sort of moving tower. He saw the elephant swing round, and Elizabeth crouch down on its back. It was now being confronted by a vast iron machine, even larger than itself, throbbing with mechanical power and filling the Corso with nasty blue smoke. This thing ground slowly towards Antonio on huge moving tracks. As it came, a gun in its front swung down to aim between the elephant’s eyes.
On the spur of the moment, Antonio became another machine. He was in such a hurry, and he knew so little about machines, that it was a very bizarre machine indeed. It was pale duck-egg blue, with enormous rubber wheels. In fact, it was probably made of rubber all through, because the bullet from Guido’s machine bounced off it and crashed into the steps of the Arsenal. Most people threw themselves flat.
“Mother’s inside that thing!” Lucia screamed to Paolo, above the noise.
Paolo realised she must be. Antonio had had no time to put Elizabeth down. And now he was barging recklessly at Guido, bang-bounce, bang-bounce. It must have been horrible for Elizabeth. Luckily, it only lasted a second. Elizabeth and Antonio suddenly appeared in their own shapes, almost under the mighty tracks of the Guido-machine. Elizabeth ran – Paolo had not known she could run so fast – like the wind towards the Arsenal. And it may have been Petrocchi viciousness, or perhaps simple confusion, but the great Guido-tank swung its gun down to point at Elizabeth.
Antonio called Guido a very bad name, and threw the tomato he still had in his hand. The red fruit hit, and splashed, and ran down the iron side. Paolo was just wondering what use that was, when the tank was not there any more. Nor was Guido. In his place was a giant tomato. It was about the size of a pumpkin. And it simply sat in the road and did not move.
That was the winning stroke. Paolo could tell it was from the look on Antonio’s face as he walked up to the tomato. Disgusted and weary, Antonio bent down to pick up the tomato. There were scattered groans from the Petrocchis, and cheers, not quite certain and even more scattered, from the Montanas.
Then somebody cast yet another spell.
This time, it was a thick wet fog. No doubt, at the beginning, it would not have seemed so terrible, but, after all the rest, just when the fight was over, Paolo felt it was the last straw. All he could see, in front of his eyes, was thick whiteness. After he had taken a breath or so, he was coughing.
He could hear coughing all round, and far off into the distance, which was the only thing which showed him he was not entirely alone. He turned his head from trying to see who else was coughing, and found he could not see Lucia. Nor could he find Bernardo, and he knew he had been holding Bernardo’s arm a second before. As soon as he realised that, he found he had lost his sense of direction too. He was all alone, coughing and shivering, in cold white emptiness.
“I am not going to lose my head,” Paolo told himself sternly. “My father didn’t, and so I shan’t. I shall find somewhere to shelter until this beastly spell is over. Then I shall go home. I don’t care if Tonino is still missing—” He stopped then, because a thought came to him, like an astonishing discovery. “We’re never going to find Tonino this way, anyway,” he said. And he knew it was true.
With his hands stretched out in front of him and his eyes spread very wide in hopes of seeing something – which was unlikely, since they were streaming from the fog, and so was his nose – Paolo coughed and sniffed and shuffled his way forward until his toes came up against stone. Paolo looked down, but he could not see what it was. He tried lifting one foot, with his toes scraping against the obstruction. And, after a few inches, the obstruction stopped and his foot shot forward. It was a ledge, then. Probably the kerb. He had been near the edge of the road when he ran away from the elephant. He got both feet on the kerb and shuffled forward six inches – then he fell upstairs over what seemed to be a body.
It gave Paolo such a shock that he dared not move at first. But he soon realised the body beneath him was shivering, as he was, and trying to cough and mutter at the same time. “Holy Mary—” Paolo heard, in a hoarse blurred voice. Very puzzled, Paolo put out a careful hand and felt the body. His fingers met cold metal buttons, uniform braid, and, a little above that, a warm face – which gave a croak as Paolo’s cold hand met its mouth – and a large furry moustache beneath the nose.
Angel of Caprona! Paolo thought. It’s the Chief of Police!
Paolo got himself to his knees on what must be the steps of the Art Gallery. There was no one around he could ask, but it did not seem fair to leave someone lying helpless in the fog. It was bad enough if you could move. So hoping he was doing the right thing, Paolo knelt and sang, very softly, the most general cancel-spell he could think of. It had no effect on the fog – that was evidently very strong magic – but he heard the Chief of Police roll over on his side and groan. Boots scraped as he tested his legs. “Mamma mia!” Paolo heard him moan.
He sounded as if he wanted to be alone. Paolo left him and crawled his way up the Gallery steps. He had no idea he had reached the top, until he hit his elbow on a pillar and drove his head into Lucia’s stomach at the same moment. Both of them said some extremely unpleasant things.
“When you’ve quite finished swearing,” Lucia said at length, “you can get between these pillars with me and keep me warm.” She coughed and shivered. “Isn’t this awful? Who did it?” She coughed again. The fog had made her hoarse.
“It wasn’t us,” said Paolo. “We’d have known. Ow, my elbow!” He took hold of her for a guide and wedged himself down beside her. He felt better like that.
“The pigs,” said Lucia. “I call this a mean trick. It’s funny – you spend your life being told what pigs they are, and thinking they can’t be, really. Then you meet them, and they’re worse than you were told. Was it you singing just now?”
“I fell over the Chief of Police on the steps,” said Paolo.
Lucia laughed. “I fell over the other one. I sang a cancel-spell too. He was lying on all the corners of the stairs and it must have bruised him all over when I fell on him.”
“It’s bad enough when you can move,” Paolo agreed. “Like being blind.”
“Horrible,” said Lucia. “That blind beggar in the Via Sant’ Angelo – I shall give him some money tomorrow.”
“The one with white eyes?” said Paolo. “Yes, so shall I. And I never want to see another spell.”
“To tell you the truth,” said
