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“THIS GETS really screwed up...I mean, strange, Romaso. I ran from my friend Enta’s house to Edgar’s horse and buggy. When I tried to escape, I found the horse disconnected from the buggy, so I took the horse and rode it here by myself.”
Romaso’s eyes narrowed again. He rowed into an area that was more populated with other gondolas, his eyes focused on me the entire time. I still hadn’t really answered his question, which made it more difficult to tell whether he would believe me when I did. Future clothes were apparently not a problem for Romaso, but not providing direct answers to pointed questions was definitely not acceptable.
I cleared my throat. “So, anyway, I have these glasses.” I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. “I stole them from Valcas, actually...to escape”
“He chases you because you are a thief?” gasped a very shocked Romaso.
This really was not going well. Flustered now, I begged, “Romaso, please let me finish! It’s not like that—I had no choice. There’s more. He wanted me to pretend that I was going to marry him. He needed to marry to get to the throne. I...I couldn’t get away any other way. I tried!”
I had to stop and get a grip on things. This was a lot more difficult than I’d thought it would be. I had enough problems talking to my twenty-first-century peers about everyday things, and here I was clamming up in front of a teenager from hundreds of years ago, trying to tell him about a method of time travel that I still didn’t even fully understand. I blinked back tears of embarrassment and frustration.
Romaso nodded, his large eyes demanding further explanation.
“Anyway, back to the glasses.” I opened my backpack and unrolled the glasses from my T-shirt, lifting them up so that Romaso could see. “These help me to travel farther and faster than the horse alone. These glasses are what helped Valcas find me even though we lived worlds apart. I wish these glasses were never invented, but I need them now to find Shirlyn. I am from twenty-first-century America, Romaso. While riding the horse, a black mare, I put on these glasses and appeared here in a black gondola. I asked the glasses to bring me to you, here in Venice in the seventeenth century.”
Romaso’s face twisted in an unreadable puzzle of emotion. His lips quivered.
“Wait, before you say anything—please. I have one more thing to show you.” Out of my bag, I pulled out the red journal that I knew Romaso would instantly recognize. “Se vedemo,” I read to him from the cover. “Romaso, I need you to travel with me to England, to see Shirlyn again.”
“How do we get to England by gondola?”
Romaso’s response worried me, but at least he was off of the topic of where I’d found the gondola. He wasn’t really getting the role the travel glasses played in all of this, though.
I explained that in order to reach Southern England we would not need to guide the gondola down through the Mediterranean and around Spain. Our route would be much more direct because I would be using the glasses. The part that I should have thought out better involved something Shirlyn never told Romaso, at least as far as I could tell from her journal entries. This detail was far more significant than the geographical distance that Romaso was concerned about. The Folkestone that Shirlyn described in her journal was not from the seventeenth century, but from a much later era. I wasn’t sure how Romaso would react to this news, so I let it go, not having any idea what the effects of that would be.
I also let Romaso take a better look at the journal he’d given Shirlyn as a gift. He smoothed his hand across the pages indented by Shirlyn’s pen. Romaso, being illiterate to the language, was unable to read any of it. He was nevertheless thrilled that her souvenir had been so well used even though, from his perspective, he’d given it to Shirlyn earlier that same day.
I was also grateful that the journal was well used, but what really mattered to me was what the journal did not say. To continue with my plan, I still needed the details for my next search, the whole reason I’d come to Venice to seek Romaso’s help. I had no idea what Shirlyn looked like, and even though she mentioned Edgar in her diary, I couldn’t bring myself to ask Edgar because I knew that it would only bring up past grief that would make him sad and withdrawn. When I was convinced that Romaso had calmed down again, I asked him to describe Shirlyn to me.
“Ah, my Shirlyn...so beautiful! A blonde.” He beamed, “With eyes like spice.”
“Huh? Which spice?” I asked warily, hoping that gathering information about Shirlyn wouldn’t take as long as explaining how I showed up in Venice.
“You know, the one for bread and cake. The spice—”
“Nutmeg?”
“No, no, that’s too dark. The spice you use with sugar to make—”
“Cinnamon?”
“Yes, eyes soft and brown like cinnamon spice.”
“Okay, good.” I nodded encouragingly. “Is she tall...or short like me?”
“Something in the middle, I think.” Romaso wrinkled his brows together.
“Thin or thick?” I tried opening my arms in gestures to get us moving along.
“Thin, like you only more thin. She needs to eat some more I think.”
I laughed. “What else? Tell me about her skin, her face.”
“Ah, that. Thin again, very light with the small cinnamons on the nose.”
“She has freckles? Oh, she sounds so pretty!”
Romaso’s smile grew so wide that I almost didn’t notice that he was actually blushing.
“What is her voice like, Romaso?”
“It ring-a like the bells in summertime!” he sang out as he steered us around a bend in the canal.
Ugh, he really couldn’t sing. I rolled my eyes. I was happy for Romaso and Shirlyn for whatever feelings they had between them, but the way Romaso gushed over her was, well, embarrassing. I really hoped Shirlyn was as charming in person. I needed all the help I could get.
Since I had enough details to search for Shirlyn based on her name, when and where she lived and what she looked like, I attempted to walk Romaso through our travel plans. The thought crossed my mind that I could have traveled on my own without Romaso now that I had enough information, but he really was excited about seeing Shirlyn again, and I knew from Shirlyn’s diary that she’d like to see him too. Not to mention the fact that Romaso was still perched on my gondola.
The sun began to descend from the sky, taking its warmth along with it. I offered to row since I’d be wearing the travel glasses, but Romaso was adamant that he would command the boat because he was a gondolier. This worried me for obvious reasons. He would insist on rowing while standing because that was how it was done. I tried to warn him that it wouldn’t take long before he would be blinded by bright white light, but that didn’t seem to bother him.
It was clear that he wouldn’t really be able to understand what I was talking about until it happened. So we agreed that he would row as long as he could and that as soon as the light got too bright for him to see, he would close his eyes and stop rowing. We also borrowed a second oar so that, if necessary, I could continue to paddle from my seat.
With that plan finally in place, Romaso and I left Venice without delay. I reread Shirlyn’s description of Folkestone Harbour as it appeared in the 1930s when her family returned from their extended holiday. The Halls’ estate was, she explained, within walking distance from the harbor. Romaso whistled as he deftly guided the gondola forward. Once we were steadily moving, I slipped on the glasses and focused on the next destination.