Chapter VIII.

Esmeralda And Djali And...Fishing

That night, after we had all returned to our home in the catacombs, Clopin decided to hold a meeting, that was mandatory for all the gypsies to attend. It was about Esmeralda.

"Esmeralda!" Clopin said, when we had all gathered around him. Our meeting place in the Court of Miracles, was on an island in the middle of an underground lake in the catacombs. There was a rough wooden bridge connecting the island to the shore.

"Esmeralda!" Clopin repeated when no one answered.

"What?" she finally answered, standing up. She was medium height with long, wavy black hair, like a raven, and with olive colored skin. Her eyes were dark blue and she wore large gold hoop earngs. In truth, she looked a lot like all the other gypsies in the Court of Miracles, yet there was something that I couldn't place my finger on, that seemed different about her. She was also very beautiful.

"Esmeralda, what were you thinking? Correction, you WEREN'T thinking!" Clopin raged at her. "I don't care how much you hate that man, in fact I can assure you that I do to, but if you ever do anything like that again, you will be banished from the Court of Miracle! Do I make myself clear?"

Esmeralda sighed, but reluctantly responded by saying, "yes, Clopin." She seemed to know that she had no other choice.

Clopin sighed as well. "Look, Esmeralda. I didn't mean to be so harsh. But you know as well as anybody else, that Claude Frollo hates us. He hates gypsies and everything about them. He thinks we practice witchcraft, and that we are dirty, and do dirty things. He just doesn't understand, I guess, but the minute he has an excuse to dispose of us, you know he'll do it, and what you did tonight was definantly something he might use against us."

"Did you see what he was doing to the poor hunchback?" Esmeralda cried. "I know Quasimodo is the ugliest thing that walked the Earth since Goliath, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be treated the way he is."

Clopin sighed again. "You always were the most caring one of us," he said. "And I agree that what Frollo did was wrong, but it's not in our power to do anything about it. Love it or hate it, we just aren't high enough in society to make a difference in this city without being beheaded."

Esmeralda nodded, but we could all tell that she wasn't sincere. Not that I blamed her. What Frollo had done to the poor bell ringer was unimaginably cruel.

Clopin closed the meeting by warning us not to get in trouble at Notre Dame with the archdeacon, or it would be the end of the Court of Miracles as we knew it.

"Hey, Julian," said Marcel as we were walking back across the wooden bridge towards our sleeping quarters. "Let's hurry so we can get a few card games in before everyone goes to sleep." (After midnight all the candles used to light the catacombs were blown out so everyone could get to sleep. Unless it was a special occasion like New Year's Eve in which case the candles were let out to burn all night).

"Uh, ok," I said half heartedly, for I was barely paying attention. I was trying to see through everyone else, where Esmeralda was. It turned out that she was the last to leave the island.

"Come on Djali," she called to her pet goat, who was eating scraps of food on the floor that the other gypsies had left. It was a pygmy goat, smaller than Carmen, and was white with black ears, legs, and gray patches around the eyes.

"His name's Djali?" I asked.

She looked at me, giving me a funny face. "Um, yah. I notice you and your sisters and brother also have a goat though, right?"

"Yep, we do," I said." Her name is Carmen."

"Carmen? I knew somebody named Carmen before," Esmeralda said. "It was a long time ago, before I came to Paris, when I still lived in Spain. She was a friend of my mother's, but she was trampled to death by a herd of bulls."

"Wow," I said. "Our mom was also called Carmen. She was from Spain too. She…she died just before we came here with you people."

Esmeralda nodded, but didn't ask any questions about how or why our mother had died. I was grateful for that. I was still painful to think about our parents and probably always would be.

"Anyway," Esmeralda said, interrupting the awkward silence, "I have to go off to bed, so I'll see you and everyone else in the morning." She smiled, and then picked up Djali in her arms and carried him away with her.

When I returned to our sleeping quarters, a section of the catacombs, where myself, Marcel, Henri, Jasmine, and Heidi lived (Ramus and Anisa had their own separate place) Marcel was there grinning at me.

"You were hitting on here, weren't you," he said, smiling.

"What? No!"

Marcel just gave me one of those looks. "Do you think I'm an idiot? It's ok, Esmeralda's not a bad choice, though she is a bit older than you, so I wouldn't get your hopes up."

I sighed. It was probably true. And it was also true that Esmeralda was a few years older, at least seventeen or eighteen, while at this point in time, I was only fourteen. (I had turned fourteen on the way from Romania to France).

"Cheer up," Marcel advised. "One of these days you'll meet that person. Just be lucky that you weren't forced into marriage like your brother and my sister."

I laughed a little at that. Not to be mean, but because of the irony of their marriage. It was a plus that Anisa and Ramus were slowly becoming great friends. One day, they would probably truly love each other.

"Anyway, to take your mind off all that sappy love goo, let's play a game. What do you want to play?"

I didn't care, and after a round of Spoons, we hit the hay.


Early the next morning, I was awoken by Wolfen licking my face, my face completely smothered with dog slobber.

Gross, I thought to myself as I rubbed my eyes open.

Marcel, Henri, Jasmine, and Heidi were already up, munching on their breakfast of bread and…wormy apples. That was one of the downs of living in the Court of Miracles. We were basicly outlaws, and since we had no real jobs, we didn't have money, so we had to settle for whatever we were offered. Most of the money we got was for playing music and dancing in the streets.

Fighting the gag reflex, I picked up one of the apples. After taking one munch out of the mealy green fruit, I almost barfed.

"What happened to all that good food yesterday at the festival?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. That was a special occasion.

"That was a special occasion," Marcel replied, echoing my thoughts.

"You know what would make this place better?" I said. "Real food. Not garbage. It's not like we're hyenas or something. We should eat stuff that normal people eat. Back in Turkey, we ate fish all that time, and we didn't have to pay for it, because we caught it. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to teach you all how to fish today. There's got to be stuff swimming in the river that flows through this city."

"You know how to fish?" Marcel asked. "Ok, why not?"

So, that's exactly what we did. We snapped off a few branches from an oak tree that was growing near the river and strung an entire spool of string around them. We now had fishing poles, all we needed was bait. And hooks.

"We're going to need something to lure the fish with I told Marcel. (We were going to use nails that were lying in the street as hooks).

"How about some bread?"

"Nah, that works for minnows, but really big fish like meat," I told him.

"How about some from the butcher?"

"Do you have money?"

"Why use money when you could steal?" Marcel said to me, grinning.

"Are you serious? Steal?"

"Yah, you're in the Court of Miracles now, aren't you?" Marcel asked.

"Yah, but-"

"No buts. Look, don't stress out about it, I'll teach you how to be an expert thief."

"Well," I mumbled. But then I realized that I probably wouldn't get my way out of this one anyway. Marcel had a peculiar way of getting what he wanted, I was beginning to realize.

"Ok," I finally agreed.