As he rode by the hospital now, Arturo saw a girl about his own age leaning out of the window. She was emptying a bedpan, but the sight of Arturo on his bicycle left her slack-jawed and gaping. Arturo was used to that. Bicycles were rare in Cahul, especially among kids. He was only allowed to have one because his parents couldn’t make the deliveries themselves.
Not wanting the lamb to spoil, Arturo decided it was time to stop dawdling. As always, the Ionescus’ sprawling brick house took his breath away. Arturo left his bicycle on the sidewalk and went to knock on their door.
“Arturo, good morning,” said Mrs. Ionescu. “Come in. Would you like a candy?”
“Yes, please,” Arturo said, and she smiled. It was always easier to show good manners when he wasn’t around his own family. He followed Mrs. Ionescu inside with a brown paper package in each hand.
“Dimitri is just getting up, but I’m sure he would be happy to see you as well. He was just asking me yesterday when you were coming again …”
When Arturo left the house nearly a half hour later, already wondering when he would get to come back, he saw right away that his bicycle was gone. How could he have been so stupid! Of course someone had taken it. Wouldn’t he have done the same thing?
After he’d searched the whole block, Arturo finally gave up. He’d just have to make the deliveries on foot. Either that, or his family would starve.
About a week or so later, after Arturo had endured punishment from his father, two calloused feet from his deliveries, and one insufferable day of gloating from Alec and Nadia, a girl appeared at their door. She had his bicycle in tow.
“I found it near my house,” she said, looking Arturo right in the face. “I could tell from the shirt that it must belong to you.” She handed him a brown paper package with a shirt tucked inside.
“You found me from one cotton shirt?” Arturo said.
“It’s not many people who deliver cotton in butcher paper.”
Arturo wrapped his fingers around his handlebars, recalling the wonderful feeling of power and speed. But the girl hadn’t let go yet.
“Why do I feel like I’ve seen you before?” Arturo asked.
“Because you did see me. I didn’t think you’d remember, though. I work at the hospital with my mom. She’s a proper nurse. I just clean the rooms and keep people company.”
“Well, thanks for bringing my bicycle back. You don’t know how much I needed this.”
“Yes,” the girl said, picking at a hole in the sleeve of her threadbare dress, “I do.”
That was the day Arturo and Esmerelda became friends. It was years before Esmerelda admitted she hadn’t found the bicycle at all. In fact, she’d stolen it, and returned it only when she heard from Nadia Marandici that the Antonescu boy had lost his bicycle and been punished for it.
They rode their bicycles to the mineral springs for months, ignoring the swiftly changing tides of the world. It wasn’t until Esmerelda’s tire caught on a rock one day that they discovered the cave.
“Your knee is bleeding,” Arturo said, running over to help her back to her feet.
“It’s just a scratch,” Esmerelda said, taking his hand.
Once again, they’d been going too fast. That’s what happened when Arturo let Esmerelda get in front. Seventeen years old, and still she was no closer to acting like a young lady than she had been when they met. Now her front wheel was bent beyond function, and they were stranded on the far side of the lake just as raindrops were starting to fall. It would take them many hours to walk home.
“Let’s take cover in there,” Arturo said, pointing to an opening in the rock beside them. Ferns and grass grew almost completely over the entrance, as if no one had been in the cave for a long time.
“How far back do you think it goes?” Esmerelda asked, leading them in without waiting for his answer.
Fortunately, the cave wasn’t very deep at all. They could still see by the light trickling in from outside when they reached the back. And what they saw there was surprising indeed. Uniforms, weapons, wooden chests of supplies — all of it buried under a thick layer of cobwebs. It looked like they’d found a military outpost.
“Do you think these are from this war, or the last one?” Esmerelda said, brushing away a web and picking up a sword that still looked sharp.
“Neither one,” Arturo said, though he suspected she’d been joking. “I think this is all much older. Just look at this map.” He angled the crumbling parchment in his hands so that she could see it over his shoulder. The map depicted the Ottoman Empire, a place Arturo only knew about from history class.
“How are we ever going to get it all back?”
“Back? You mean, you want to take this stuff? I guess once a thief, always a thief.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry about that?” Esmerelda asked. She didn’t sound very sorry anymore.
“I just worry about what will happen when the owners of this stuff come looking for it. What if they’re pirates? Or killers? That’s how it would go in a story.”
“Well, this isn’t a story. And no one has been here in ages, clearly. Unless you count the spiders.”
Arturo wasn’t convinced.
“Fine. What if we each just take one thing?” she said.
“One thing?”
“Just one. I already know what I’m picking.”
Esmerelda grabbed a necklace with a purple stone pendant and placed it over her head. The necklace looked stunning on her.
“All right, then. You win, as usual,” Arturo said, laughing. “What about this?” He grabbed an old officer’s coat from one of the chests. When he pushed his arms through the sleeves, he was amazed to discover that it was a perfect fit.
“You were meant to find it,” Esmerelda said.
Arturo smiled. The past few months had been so full of uncertainty, it was wonderful for something to feel like it made sense.
“Now come on,” she said. “The rain has stopped, and I can ride back on your handlebars. We’ll come back here later with a tool to fix my bicycle.”
They left the cave then, giddy with their discoveries. But they would never see this cave, or Esmerelda’s bicycle, again.
A few nights later, in the quiet of his room, Arturo put on his coat once more, imagining that he really was a storied officer and not a boy about to become a pawn — either for the Germans or for the Russians, it hardly seemed to matter.
He felt a knot poking him in the ribs, and at first, he thought it must be a stray button. But when there was no button in sight, Arturo realized there must be something inside the lining of the coat. Knowing that his mother could always sew it back up, Arturo retrieved a knife from the kitchen and cut into the fabric. Inside, he discovered a hidden pocket made from a fine, white silk that seemed awfully extravagant for something not meant to be seen. He turned the pocket over.
Two rings fell into his hand.
They were rings unlike any Arturo had ever seen. In place of jewels, each ring had a large, lifelike spider. One had long, thin legs and a kind of plate armor on its back; the other had tiny legs but a large glass body.
Arturo couldn’t imagine why these rings had been hidden away in the secret pocket of this coat. He finally decided it was so that he could discover them — that just like the coat itself, he had been meant to find them.