The Mystery Of The Mona Lisa

• Loretta Pavone, Grade 4, Our Lady Of Mt Carmel Primary School
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

I was in the museum late at night. I saw the eyes of the Mona Lisa’s move slightly toward me. I was so frightened I almost fainted. No one had told me that would happen to me before I left Australia. “Something wrong madam?” asked a man in a strong French accent.
“No!” I say. “Just thought I saw something a bit weird.” The man looked curious about what actually had happened to me. Why is it doing that I say under my breath.
That next morning I ran straight to the library to do some research. I spoke and read French so that was not a problem but I still couldn’t find anything! I then asked the librarian if she could help me find something.
“Are you the chosen one?” she asked me “Only the chosen one can seek the mystery of the Mona Lisa. You will know if you were the chosen one if the eyes moved wherever you went around her”.
I was too stunned to speak.
“How, how do you know?” I stammered.
“Why would I not know anything about the spell that Leonardo Di Ser Piero Da Vinci put on the Mona Lisa - I work in a Library!” Come with me. She gestured her hand to a door that looked old and rickety. We walked in. The librarian took out a dusty brown book with embossed golden pages. It looked and smelled old.
“Keep it and make sure you do not miss any pages or you will not understand the spell properly.” I agreed and took it home to read.
The book told me that Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t put a spell on the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo did! He was so jealous that Leonardo painted something beyond incredible using such a thin brush that he cast a spell on it that said ‘only a woman of twenty-seven who lives in a country that will not be discovered until the late sixteenth century, born at five minutes to six o’clock, with one brother and two sisters will make the eyes move toward her. Only then will the spell be broken, history will change and then the world will finally wake up to the truth that I, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, am the true painter of the Mona Lisa!!!
“What has this got to do with me” I kept asking myself “Maybe I have to read on.” So that is what I did and I finally got to why I was so important.
I had a special birthmark that I never realised looked like the Mona Lisa. I would never had noticed its resemblance to the Mona Lisa until I read this book. It was on my right shoulder.
The truth will come out!
The ADVENTURE has just started…