Beware the Clopper! Read online

  She just stops!

  Maria Beppina stands in the middle of the wide open Theater, alone. The sound of clopping gets louder for a few steps. Then the clopping stops.

  There is now only the sound of her own heavy breathing. And someone else’s. Maria Beppina takes her deepest breath . . .

  . . . and

  turns

  around.

  Maria Beppina stands face to face with the Clopper.

  The Clopper is much shorter than she expected—only her own height— and Maria Beppina finds herself staring straight into her eyes. These eyes are blinking, foggy, and don’t seem to see very well. Or maybe they just can’t believe what they do see.

  A long time passes—as long as the time between lightning flashing and thunder clapping.

  The Clopper rubs her chin, looking like she’s lost something. “I’m not sure,” she says, and begins to walk toward the walls of the Theater.

  She stops and turns back.

  “Well, aren’t you coming?” the Clopper says, holding out her hand to Maria Beppina.

  Maria Beppina looks across the Theater to her friends, trying to catch their breath. She could run. Just run and join them, and never worry about the Clopper again. She looks back at the Clopper’s hand.

  Maria Beppina decides to take it.

  9

  THE HOME OF THE CLOPPER

  LEADING Maria Beppina to a partly buried arch of the Theater, the Clopper unlocks a rickety door of roughly nailed together boards. The passage is so low that even Maria Beppina has to duck to go through.

  The Clopper leads Maria Beppina down a pitch-black set of stone stairs, her wooden shoe clopping louder than ever, echoing off the walls.

  “What is your name, dear?” the Clopper says, pressing Maria Beppina’s hand a little more tightly between her bony fingers.

  “Maria Beppina,” Maria Beppina says.

  At the bottom of the steps, the Clopper lights a candle, revealing a secret world.

  “Do you like chamomile tea, Maria Beppina?” the Clopper says, setting the candle to some twigs in the fireplace and hanging a kettle there.

  Maria Beppina nods yes.

  What happens next is odd. The Clopper sets a table with two normal-sized cups and three small ones. At once, a bat, an owl, and a rat emerge from the shadows to join them at table.

  “These are my friends, Sigismondo, Bruno, and Rafaella,” the Clopper says.

  The three of them chatter and hoot, almost like they were talking in a real language.

  “Are they demons?” Maria Beppina asks. The chattering and hooting stops. “Not to offend you!”

  “Oh, they aren’t offended, sweetie,” the Clopper says, pouring them each some tea. The bat and rat each skillfully use their wings and front paws to put a lump of sugar in their cups, while Sigismondo the owl drops two in with his beak.

  “Owls like their tea very sweet,” the Clopper says. “And demons too.”

  “Do they know the black rooster who lives in the alley behind the blacksmith’s house? He always attacks my father,” Maria Beppina says. “Daddy is sure he’s a demon.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask them?”

  Maria Beppina does, strange as it seems. The animals confer with one another, gesturing with their paws and wings and shrugging. They shake their heads no to her.

  Rafaella, the bat, squeaks something. “There are so many demons here you can’t know every one of them,” the Clopper says, translating.

  “But don’t you all meet around the Tree of the Janara?”

  At this, the three smallest guests laugh. Maria Beppina didn’t know animals could laugh.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “Oh, you don’t need to, dear!” the Clopper says, patting her hand. “It is so nice to have a child come to visit!” she says. “Can I get you something to eat, dear?”

  “Sure,” Maria Beppina says.

  The Clopper moves around, looking in old pots and crocks, but can’t find anything. The rat, Bruno, helpfully scurries down from his perch into a

  hole in the wall and comes back holding a half-eaten cookie in his mouth. He lays it in front of Maria Beppina.

  Maria Beppina smiles, politely pretending to nibble on it.

  “I’m sure I had food somewhere,” the Clopper says, clopping around with her one wooden clog.

  “What happened to your other shoe?” Maria Beppina asks.

  “My other shoe?” The Clopper looks down, surprised to see one of her feet is bare. “That’s strange. Where is my other shoe?”

  The animals all chitter and hoot and laugh again.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters, dear?” the Clopper asks.

  “No,” Maria Beppina says. “My mom died after she had me.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie,” the Clopper says. The animals look down into their cups of tea, also sorrowful.

  “It’s okay,” Maria Beppina says. “I mean, I never knew her. And it’s kind of like I have brothers and sisters, because we live upstairs from my cousins. It’s just, well, I’m not sure whether or not they like me.”

  “NONSENSE, dear!” the Clopper says. “How could anyone not love you!”

  The ceiling rumbles, and from the world above comes the sound of kids screaming as they run across the Theater. Maria Beppina points up. “Don’t you have to do something about that?” she asks.

  The Clopper looks puzzled.

  “You know, chase them,” Maria Beppina says.

  “Oh, no,” the Clopper says. “I hardly ever run after children anymore. They hear my footsteps even when I’m not there. They scare themselves.” She chuckles into her teacup. The animals laugh too, and so does Maria Beppina.

  Maria Beppina thinks about asking the Clopper why she started chasing after children in the first place. There are so many things she wants to ask her about—the Janara, the Manalonga, the ring—but the Clopper is doing something better than answering questions. She’s listening.

  So Maria Beppina just talks to the Clopper. She talks about her father, and her downstairs neighbors, and her friends, but mostly just about herself. The Clopper laughs pleasantly at everything Maria Beppina says, and so do her demon friends.

  Another pot of tea and many cubes of sugar later, the Clopper leads Maria Beppina back up the dark stairs. The door opens with a creak, the sun pours in, and the old witch blinks.

  “So I guess this is what I do when I catch someone,” she says to Maria Beppina, patting her hand. “I have them in for tea.”

  10

  THE TALE OF MARIA BEPPINA

  MARIA Beppina wanders home in a daze. She snaps out of it when she turns the corner and finds all the other kids gathered around the foot of her stairs. They seem to be waiting for someone. Are they waiting for me?

  When they catch sight of Maria Beppina, the kids rush to surround and hug her.

  “What happened? What happened?” they say again and again.

  Maria Beppina is confused. It didn’t occur to her that the others would think anything at all had happened to her. But they’ve been worried about her—really worried!

  “What happened? What happened?” they keep repeating.

  “It was . . .” Maria Beppina starts to say, but what is she going to say? Her first instinct is to lie—to say she was hiding in an arch of the Theater, or that she never tried to cross the Theater at all. But why would she lie? Maria Beppina hates to lie!

  “It was the Clopper!” she blurts out. “She got me!”

  “NO!”

  “Wow!”

  “Unreal!”

  “How?”

  Maria Beppina again wants to lie, and isn’t sure why. She goes to say something, then doesn’t, then starts to say something else, then doesn’t again.

  “I stopped!�
�� she says at last, forcing herself to tell the truth.

  “You stopped?” Rosa says.

  “On purpose?” Emilio says.

  “That’s the bravest thing I ever heard of!” Sergio says.

  “Why would you stop?” Primo asks.

  “To see what happened,” Maria Beppina says. “And what happened was . . .”

  Maria Beppina looks at the faces of her friends—they all want to be a part of her adventure. It makes her realize why she doesn’t want to tell them the truth. Because if she does, then Primo and Rosa and Emilio will all want to go meet the Clopper and her three demons. And if they do, then Sigismondo, Bruno, Rafaella, and the Clopper will become their friends too, and it will be about the other kids, like always, and not about her.

  Maria Beppina wants to stay the only child the Clopper ever caught.

  So Maria Beppina tells a fib.

  “It was terrible!”

  The wide-open eyes of her friends open WIDER. They want to hear more, and Maria Beppina’s fib turns into a giant, whopping lie.

  “The Clopper grabbed me and dragged me down to her underground lair! And then she locked me in a rusty cage and started a fire under a giant pot. There were three hideous demons helping her and they were all starving hungry! They talked this crazy language that I couldn’t understand, but I could tell they were going to boil me!”

  Maria Beppina has hardly ever lied in her life, but once she starts, it feels good. And the more the other kids hang on her every word, the more it gets her to telling bigger lies.

  The words are no longer in her control— it’s like someone else is telling the story, and Maria Beppina is watching it happen in front of her eyes.

  The epic struggle of the wicked Clopper and her minions against the heroic girl. The girl who dared to stop!

  “The Clopper kept laughing this horrible laugh and calling me dearie and sweetie and telling me how nice it was to have a child to eat after all these years,” Maria Beppina says.

  “This is amazing!” Emilio says.

  “Amazing!” Sergio says.

  “It’s not just amazing,” Rosa says. “It’s the MOST AMAZING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED!”

  Maria Beppina basks in the glow of amazingness. Then comes the question: “How did you escape?”

  How did I escape? Maria Beppina wonders. How did I escape?

  All at once the words stop flowing, and the more Maria Beppina tries to think about how she escaped, the more she can’t think of what to make up. How exactly can a girl locked in a cage escape from a vile witch and her three vicious demons just as they are about to boil and eat her?

  The real trap she’s in, Maria Beppina realizes, is her lie!

  “It was the ring!” Primo shouts. “Don’t you guys see? The ring protected her from the Clopper!”

  “Is it true?” the other kids say.

  All eyes turn on Maria Beppina. What should she say? She can stop lying and tell them the truth and go back to being the same old Maria Beppina everyone ignores. Or she can say what she does say.

  “Yes. Yes, it is true. The ring even started to glow.”

  The other kids get even more caught up in the tale, and Maria Beppina keeps going.

  The ring, she says, blinded and seemed almost to burn the Clopper, so much so that the witch opened the cage and begged Maria Beppina to take the ring far away from her.

  “I actually felt kind of bad for her as I left,” Maria Beppina says.

  And so the tale of Maria Beppina and the Clopper ends. Everyone loves it! Everyone is thrilled!

  Everyone, that is, except Primo.

  What happens next happens so suddenly Maria Beppina isn’t even sure what is going on.

  All at once, no one is listening to her. Instead, they are all following Primo—herself, the Twins, Sergio, and even Isidora—as he marches them all the way through the city gate to the foot of the bridge that leads to the Twins’ farm.

  “The ring,” Primo says to Maria Beppina. “Give me the ring!”

  She twists the ring off her finger and hands it over without a word.

  Then Primo tells them his plan.“I’m going to walk up the bridge and I’m going to stay on the bridge,” he says. “And I’m going to talk to a Manalonga.”

  “Don’t be stupid, little brother!” Isidora says, but Primo is already walking up the ramp of the bridge. All the other kids yell at him to come back.

  This is all my fault! Maria Beppina thinks. It was the lies—her lies! Her story convinced Primo that the ring is as magical as he thought, because it protected her from the Clopper. But the Clopper is just nice! And now if Primo gets snatched, it will be because of her!

  “Primo, no!” she yells, joining in a chorus with the other kids. But it is all happening so fast!

  Already at the peak of the bridge, Primo takes one step toward the edge, and another.

  “Primo! It’s not true!” Maria Beppina yells. “The whole story was a—”

  Maria Beppina never gets to finish her sentence.

  She is being struck by something—something falling from the sky. Isidora grabs Primo and pulls him down the bridge. As they run back toward town, Maria Beppina slips and falls on her butt. There are balls of ice everywhere, and now more and more, hitting her in the head, rolling down the bridge. It’s a hail storm!

  She slips again getting up, and the other kids are far ahead of her, running into the old watchtower in the city walls to take cover.

  Maria Beppina comes last, as usual, although she hardly cares. She’s just relieved that nothing had happened to Primo! She can't believe he actually went to talk with a Manalonga! That’s the bravest thing she’s ever heard of!

  Maria Beppina arrives in the watchtower to hear the echo of a loud slap, and sees Primo rubbing his red face and Isidora yelling at him for being so stupid.

  “If bravery equaled smarts,” Emilio says, “then you’d be a genius.”

  “Bravery is genius,” Maria Beppina says, throwing her arms around her cousin. “And so are you, Primo!”

  She’s not even sure what she’s saying or what it means—at the moment, she would defend Primo against anything or anybody in the whole world. She’s just so happy he’s alive!

  Everyone has to yell over the sound of the hail hitting the stone tower, but everyone would probably have been yelling anyway.

  All the attention is back on Primo, and Maria Beppina is relieved. And happy, for once, to be a little bit invisible.

  11

  PARTY TIME

  “YOUR dad is always doing something fun,” Maria Beppina says to Isidora.

  The two cousins are sweeping up the downstairs, which is empty. All the furniture has been moved out into the street to make way for the dancing.

  Uncle Mimì has hired a band of musicians to come play at the house tonight. Everyone is excited. (Well, everyone except Aunt Zufia.) Nonna Jovanna in particular loves a party and has been singing old songs all day.

  “Girls, come and help me with the food!” she happily calls Isidora and Maria Beppina.

  As they cut vegetables for the soup, Maria Beppina’s dad comes in.

  “Is it true?” he says. “Is there really a band of musicians from Naples coming here tonight?”

  Daddy loves music, but he loves Naples even more. He always talks about moving back there, and whenever anyone from Naples comes to Benevento he corners them and talks their ear off.

  While the adults speak, Isidora takes a rest from chopping, and moves some limp hair out from in front of her eyes. Her face is pale. She hasn’t seemed well for days—since the hail storm, basically.

  “Are you okay, Isidora?” Maria Beppina asks.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” she says, like she got caught doing something she didn’t want anyone to see. She quickly goes back to chopping. “How about y
ou?” Isidora looks sideways at Maria Beppina. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” Maria Beppina says, surprised by the question. “Why?”

  “Well, after your terrifying escape from the Clopper, I’d expect you to be exhausted!” Isidora says with a big smile on her face.

  Embarrassed and afraid of getting caught in her lies, Maria Beppina stares down at the carrot she’s chopping and doesn’t say anything.

  Isidora looks like she feels bad for what she said. She moves closer to Maria Beppina.

  “All the witches aren’t as harmless as the Clopper, you know,” Isidora says quietly. “Be careful.”

  How does Isidora know the Clopper is harmless? Maria Beppina wonders. But she isn’t going to ask—Maria Beppina just wants the conversation to end. She is too afraid of her lie being found out, because then what would the other kids think of her? What would Primo think of her?

  It has been an all-new Primo the last few days. He actually seems happy to have Maria Beppina living upstairs. For the first time, she feels like a part of the family.

  The band starts to play, and Primo’s poppa pulls his momma into the center to dance, and even Aunt Zufia can’t help but enjoy herself. Maria Beppina likes watching everyone do the tarantella, but she definitely doesn’t want to try it herself. She has no choice, however, when Uncle Mimì pulls her into the middle.

  She dances with Emilio, doing the best she can to copy what she’s seen, and then Primo grabs her and he starts doing the tarantella with her.

  Now it’s just the two of them dancing, with everyone else clapping and stomping along. Primo smiles. He leans into her