The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer Page B

let
     it down. The wood scraped against the stone of the wall as it went. The sound
     reverberated in the depths and rose up distorted into the daylight. Except for Merle
     there was no one else in the courtyard. The scraping of the bucket was thrown back by
     the facades of the surrounding houses, and now it almost sounded like whispers murmuring
     down from the gaping windows of the buildings. The voices of all those who no longer
     lived here. Ghost whispers.
    Merle couldn’t see when the bucket reached the surface. It was too
     dark down there. But she did see that suddenly the reflection of the sky in the depths
     was set in motion; the bucket was probably just now dipping into the water. Only it was
     strange that she felt no slackening of the pull and also that the scraping of the bucket
     on the stone wall sounded unchanged. If it wasn’t the bucket that stirred the
     surface of the water, what was it?
    She’d scarcely framed the question when somethingappeared down there. A head. It was much too far away for her to be able to make
     out the details, and yet she was certain that dark eyes were looking up at her.
    In her fright Merle let go of the rope and took a step backward. The rope
     whizzed over the well wall into the depths. It would have been lost, together with the
     bucket, had not a hand unexpectedly grabbed it.
    Eft’s hand.
    Merle hadn’t noticed the housekeeper walking up to her in the
     courtyard. Eft had grabbed the end of the rope just in time and was now pulling the
     bucket up into the daylight.
    â€œThank you,” Merle stammered. “That was clumsy of
     me.”
    â€œWhat did you see?” asked Eft behind her half mask.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œPlease don’t lie to me.”
    Merle hesitated. Eft was still busy pulling up the bucket. Instinctively
     Merle had a fleeting impulse to turn around and run away. She would have done that a few
     weeks ago in the orphanage. Here, however, she was reluctant to demean herself. She had
     done nothing wrong or forbidden.
    â€œThere was something down there.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œA face.”
    The housekeeper pulled the full bucket over the edgeand placed it on the wall. Water sloshed over the edge and ran down on the
     grimacing faces of the stone reliefs.
    â€œSo, a face. And you are quite sure?” With a sigh Eft answered
     her own question. “Of course you are.”
    â€œI saw it.” Merle didn’t quite know how she should
     behave. The housekeeper seemed uncanny to her, but she felt no real fear of her. Rather,
     a kind of uneasiness at the way she looked over the edge of her mask and seemed to read
     Merle’s thoughts from each movement, each tiny hesitation.
    â€œYou’ve already seen something before, haven’t
     you?” Eft was leaning against the rim of the well. “The other night, for
     example.”
    There was no point in lying. “I heard the sound of the cover. And
     then I saw you climbing into the well.”
    â€œDid you tell anyone about it?”
    â€œNo,” she lied, in order not to draw Junipa into it.
    Eft ran her hand through her hair and sighed deeply. “Merle, I have
     to explain some things to you.”
    â€œIf you want to.”
    â€œYou aren’t like the other apprentices,” said the
     housekeeper. Was that a smile in her eyes? “Not like Dario. You can handle the
     truth.”
    Merle stepped closer to Eft, until she would only have needed to stretch
     out her hand to touch the mask with the red lips. “You want to trust me with a
     secret?”
    â€œIf you are ready for it.”
    â€œBut you don’t know me at all.”
    â€œPerhaps better than you think.”
    Merle didn’t understand what Eft meant by that. Her curiosity was
     awakened now, and she wondered if that wasn’t precisely what Eft intended. The
     more interested Merle was, the more deeply she would be drawn into the business,