Read Online The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) by Connie Shelton - Free Book Online

a little clarity. Surely Señora Borega had not experienced anything
mystical about the box; she would not have so casually given it away if that
were the case. In some way, however, the priest knew more about it than he had
voiced the night before. The way he looked at the box—there on the art
table—that was pure greed. If he concocted a reason to search Sophia’s room,
there was no safe hiding place.
    Nor could she carry it with her
at all times, awkwardly trying to tidy the rooms and dust the furniture with
the object tucked under one arm.
    In the end she decided the safest
way might be to use it exactly as she had claimed, to store her father’s most
valuable pigments and keep the box with his art things. The Boregas would stand
up to the priest if he tried to disrupt the artist at his work. She carried the
box to the studio and picked up the chunks of lapis and cinnabar. During the
day her father would let no one bother it; at night she would find ways to
bring it to her room and keep it safe.
    For three days the plan worked.
Each evening Sophia carried the box to her room where she opened the lid to be
sure no one had disturbed it. Each time, a new picture revealed itself to her.
The first time it had been a porthole window in the cabin of a sailing vessel.
Then she saw a man dressed in the quality robes of a wealthy merchant; he was
handing the box to a beautiful woman who sat at a dressing table filled with
trinkets and jewelry. The woman gazed at the box until the man left the room,
then she set it aside and turned back to arranging combs in her light yellow
hair.
    The next night Sophia saw the box
inside a palace formed of many buildings in concentric squares, a place with
blue roofs that tilted upward at the corners. Women with pale, smooth skin and
dark eyes that appeared half shut wore garments made of long pieces of brightly
colored silk that they wrapped elaborately around themselves. Soft-spoken male
servants lived among these quiet women who, it seemed, all belonged to one man.
This emperor spent very little time with the young woman who held the box to
her chest at night. In another scene this woman had apparently died, a male
servant handed the carved box off to a trader and told him to take it far away
from the forbidden city. Sophia tried to imagine where in the world that might
be.
    The next time, Sophia saw the box
inside an elaborate white marble hall. The dark eyes of the women in this place
were rimmed with black and each lady had a dot of red centered on her forehead.
The carved box held spices of some sort. For a tiny moment Sophia caught the
scent of them, foreign and exotic. Someone carried the box to a cooking area
where an old woman in white took small pinches of the spice and sprinkled it
into a flat pan that bubbled with some sort of sauce.
    After that, Sophia observed a
dusty city where camels roamed the streets, then a crowded bazaar with men in
turbans arguing loudly over the prices of everything from cloth to vegetables.
The box had become the object of one such discussion. After that, it sat in a
tea shop in Venice. Sophia recognized the city from a description one of
Abran’s artist friends had given—a magical place of canals and palaces and narrow
alleys and many bridges, and the boats! Oh, the boats! She came to treasure
those few minutes before she fell asleep each night with the box resting snugly
against her, a time when she felt as if she were in another world.

 
    *
* *

 
    Abran was stroking tiny lines of
nearly white paint onto the yellow curls of Simón Borega’s youthful image when
Sophia edged quietly into the studio.
    “I’m out of linseed oil,” her
father said, not taking his eyes or his brush from the canvas. “Please stop in
at Madrigo’s shop this morning and get some.”
    Sophia thought of the four
bedrooms in which the beds were still unmade, changes of clothing left lying
about. Certainly Maria Borega would want those attended to before Sophia