Move the Mountains

by Emily Conolan

  The fabric is wrapped so tightly around your wrists that your hands go numb. How can one man weigh so much? You struggle to pull until your muscles burn and tired sobs rise in your throat. Cat’s Mouth isn’t that far away, but your progress is painfully slow. Every so often you startle – was that the stamping boots of an approaching patrol? – but it always turns out to be a falling stone or a bird landing in a tree.

  The sun is beginning to warm the stones by the time you reach Cat’s Mouth. ‘The most dangerous bit is over,’ says Mario, hoisting the parachutist’s body over the pointy rocks at the entrance. You haul his legs over, and Mario leads the way down a clay bank that is the cat’s throat. The light dims to black as you slowly weave on, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine passages. You stumble along, trying not to let the parachutist’s back hit any rocks.

  Surely he’s dead by now, you think grimly. Occasionally you bang your head, or twist your ankle in a pothole full of freezing water, but Mario navigates these tunnels as easily as a bat. It’s as if he can see in the dark, but he’s probably explored down here so many times he knows it by heart.

  After a while, he stops. ‘This’ll do,’ he says. His voice echoes and you can hear a drip… drip… drip.

  You’re in some kind of cavern – you feel all around you for a wall or ceiling, your arms waving like antennae, but you can’t connect with anything. Shivers run over your skin as your sweat cools in the frigid air. You’ve never known blackness like this.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ you ask Mario. ‘We can’t just leave him here.’

  ‘We won’t,’ says Mario. ‘I’ll be back in a few hours with some food.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ you cry. You hear him leaving the cave and you scream, ‘Stop, Mario!’ The footsteps pause. ‘Don’t go …’ you say, feeling like a baby. Your mind is a blur of fears. You don’t even know if the parachutist is alive. You just want to be back home, not abandoned here in the cat’s guts.

  ‘Well, do you know your way out of the cave to go home and get help?’ Mario asks. ‘One of us has to wait here.’

  You try not to cry as his footsteps fade away.

  On hands and knees, so you can feel and balance better, you crawl back towards the parachutist. The floor is smooth and cold, mostly clay and puddles, with a few slabs of rock. The parachutist’s echoing breaths, and a constant drip, are the only sounds. You bump into his body, and cautiously pat it all over. He’s shivering slightly, and you are too. He’s not going to survive if you can’t keep him warm. Gingerly, you lie on the damp floor, press your body against his, and wrap the parachute around both of you as tightly as you can manage.

  Time seems to stretch. Your thoughts become vivid daydreams. Has Mario been gone an hour yet? Or longer? You wonder what will become of the parachutist if he recovers. Mamma says some of the southern parts of Italy are safe now – but to get there, he’d have to sneak past thousands of Germans.

  How can you possibly keep him here, though, without light or warmth? Surely it would send even the strongest person mad. You don’t want to stay here a minute longer yourself, and it’s only been an hour … or perhaps two?

  Suddenly the parachutist’s body jerks behind you. He splutters something in English, and you scramble to your knees as he swings his arms around wildly. You catch one of his arms as it knocks against you, holding it still, and he reaches out to touch your face.

  ‘Hello,’ you say to him. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Uh … hello,’ he replies in heavily accented Italian. ‘My eyes is … disappear? It is black.’ He’s speaking slowly, in a voice choked with pain.

  ‘Yes, because we’re in a cave,’ you tell him. ‘It’s all right, the Germans can’t find you here. My cousin Mario will be back soon. Your plane crashed, do you remember?’

  There’s silence. Maybe he couldn’t understand that much Italian, but you don’t know any English. He’s probably British, or American. Eventually he croaks, ‘You are … a little girl?’

  ‘Not that little,’ you tell him. ‘I’m eight.’

  ‘Eight,’ he says. ‘One, two, three, four, five, seven, eight.’

  ‘No.’ You laugh. ‘Five, six, seven, eight.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Sorry, six. I forget you.’ His voice is warm. It’s a relief not to feel so alone in the cat’s guts. He says something in English, as if to himself; then he lets out a long, shaky breath, and you feel so sad for him. He’s a long way from home, and even though he’s a grown-up man, he must wish he could just go home. His leg must be causing him agony, and he’s probably thinking about his missing companions from the plane.

  You find his hand and squeeze it. ‘I’ll be your friend,’ you tell him.

  ‘My friend,’ he replies, and you can hear the smile in his voice. ‘My very good friend, thank you.’

  Go to scene 4.

  It’s been six months since you and Mario found the navigator, Charlie, and hid him in the cat’s guts. His thigh bone still has a lump in it, and he’s bearded and as skinny as a shipwreck survivor, but you and your family have kept him alive all this time.

  ‘Off to school?’ Mamma asks, smiling as she sees you packing food rations, a candle and a pencil into your schoolbag. She sighs and ruffles your hair. ‘I’m proud of you, my tesoro – I just wish it wasn’t so cold in there.’

  ‘I have the best classroom, and the best teacher, in the world!’ you tell her. Although the village school closed at the start of the war, you and Mario have a class of two in the cat’s guts – with Charlie as your teacher. Except for an occasional patrol, the Germans rarely come up into these hills, so you can get in and out of the cave without arousing suspicion.

  ‘How does Charlie manage to teach you anything in the dark?’ Mamma laughs.

  ‘Oh, Mamma, it’s never dark in there, not really!’ you tell her. ‘Yesterday Charlie told us all about his home at Sandford’s Rise in Australia, and I could just feel the warm sun, and see the kangaroos bouncing by!’

  Your English is good enough now that you understood nearly every word Charlie said. Mario’s is too. You told Giulia, Tommaso and Alessandro all about Australia as their bedtime story last night, and they were entranced.

  ‘Just mind a German never follows you there,’ Mamma cautions. ‘And if they ever overhear you speaking English …’ She shudders.

  ‘I WISH THE Allies would hurry up and win,’ mutters Mario as you cross the hillside towards Cat’s Mouth. ‘If I were older, I’d join the Italian resistance and – ker-blam! – blow them all up. I’d be a hero.’

  ‘Charlie’s my hero,’ you reply.

  ‘You have to do stuff to be a hero,’ argues Mario. ‘Not just sit around talking and freezing your bum off. You have to rescue people.’

  You know that Charlie has already rescued you: he’s given your mind tools to help make it sharper and stronger. No woman in your family has ever studied past the age of twelve, but you know now that you’ll be the first. Charlie says so, and he knows nearly everything.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, when the candle’s burnt low in the cat’s guts after a long talk about the angles in a triangle (which always add up to one hundred and eighty), Charlie tells you: ‘You should think about being an engineer. You got the hang of that very quickly.’

  ‘What do engineers do?’ you ask.

  ‘They use science and maths to solve problems,’ Charlie says. ‘They can invent, design and build great things.’

  That’s what I want to do, you think immediately. I like solving problems, and I’m good at science and maths.

  ‘She’s only a girl,’ scoffs Mario.

  You bristle. ‘I’m smarter than you!’ you say.

  Charlie jabs his finger into Mario’s chest. ‘Only a girl?’ he repeats incredulously. ‘Where do you get stupid ideas like that from? Name one thing a man can do that a woman can’t.’

  ‘Easy,’ says Mario. ‘Fly a plane. Or wee standing up.’

  ‘There are women flying warplanes righ
t now,’ Charlie tells him, ignoring the second bit, and you tingle with awe and pride. ‘British women fly delivery planes. And Russian women are flying light little canvas planes and blasting the Germans’ planes to pieces. The Germans hate and fear them so much that they call them Night Witches.’

  Mario’s jaw has dropped open.

  Charlie feels in his pocket and brings out something circular that glows golden in the candlelight. He clicks the lid open to reveal a compass. A tiny green emerald sparkles at the centre, where the needle pivots.

  ‘This was my mother’s,’ he tells you and Mario.

  ‘See, it’s inscribed with the letters “C” and “D” inside the lid: that’s for me, Charles, and Desmond, my older brother.’ You can just make out a circle engraved inside the compass’s lid, with the two letters inside it. You’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

  ‘Now, Mario,’ says Charlie, ‘I’m so sure that your little girl cousin here can out-think you that I’ll give this compass to whoever can tell me first: How can you make ten plus six equal four?’

  ‘But …’ Mario puzzles, ‘… ten plus six is sixteen.’

  You have it! ‘It’s ten plus minus six!’ you shout.

  ‘Not fair, that was a trick question!’ Mario cries.

  Charlie smirks. ‘Good try, but wrong answer. There’s no sneaky negative number. Just ten plus six.’

  You both sit there racking your brains for ages, until Mario eventually shrugs and says to you in Italian, ‘Poor old Charlie’s finally gone bonkers. I’m hungry; let’s go home.’

  Reluctantly you say goodbye, but at the entrance to Cat’s Mouth, it strikes you. You go barrelling back down the tunnels, shouting, ‘I know, I know!’

  Mario chases you, yelling, ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Ten o’clock plus six hours makes four o’clock,’ you say, breathless and triumphant, and Charlie, who’d just blown out the candle, strikes another match. You see his pleased face in the little flare of light. He holds out the compass to you and nods, and you press it to your chest.

  ‘That was a trick question,’ grumbles Mario.

  ‘No trick,’ replies Charlie. ‘You just had to think creatively. Like an engineer would do.’ And he winks at you.

  You walk home slowly, examining the compass. You’ve never owned anything this precious. You want to give Charlie a present in return, but pretty much everything in your home is practical: pots, firewood, string.

  The next morning you remember the little altar above the hearth. Looped around a framed picture of Jesus, with his palms outstretched and his heart showing red through his pale-blue robe, is a necklace. It has a cornetto on it: a small golden good-luck charm in the shape of a bull’s horn. Mamma never wears it – it’s just there to give the altar some sparkle and make Jesus happy. Well, Jesus would be proud of how well you solved that puzzle yesterday, and you can almost hear him saying, Go ahead, my child, take it. So you do. It’s not like you to take something without asking Mamma, but she’s busy and you want to run to the cave before she asks you to help with yet another job.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asks Charlie as you give him the cornetto. ‘The compass was just a gift – you don’t owe me anything.’

  But you want him to have it, because he’s your friend and your hero. You skip home with your heart full of gladness. Then you see the German soldiers and you stop, your breath trapped in your throat. You shove the compass deep into your pocket. There are two army vehicles parked by your open front door. Men in uniform are moving back and forth between the cars and the house. The only sound is the crunch of their boots.

  Are they here because of Charlie? Should you go inside to try to find Mamma, or run back to warn Charlie?

  If you go inside to see what’s happening, go to scene 5.

  If you run back to warn Charlie, go to scene 6.

  To learn more, go to Fact File: Women in World War II, then return to this page to make your choice.

  Your heart hammering, you edge inside the house. There’s no sign of Mamma, Giulia, Tommaso or Alessandro, but there are eight soldiers inside. One of them, who has a thick black moustache, directs the other seven. Some are unpacking metal tripods near the window, then mounting long cylinders on top of them. One is unrolling a map so big it covers your dining room table, and another is unfolding camp beds in a row along the back wall, so it seems they’re planning to sleep here.

  You could be a sparrow for all the notice anyone’s taking of you. You want to scream, What have you done to my family? Instead you edge back out the doorway.

  You find Mamma by the woodpile, holding Giulia and Tommaso close, Alessandro tied to her back, asleep, and you feel a wave of relief. When she sees you, she gathers you in a tight hug. Her face is streaked with tears.

  ‘These men are dangerous,’ she says in a low, urgent voice. ‘They want to use our house because it has the best views over the valley and Lenola. So, our house is going to be crowded for a while, but’ – she pauses and takes a breath, and looks at each of your faces in turn – ‘what do I always tell you to do when you see a snake?’

  ‘No touch it,’ says Tommaso.

  ‘Leave it alone, because it’s dangerous,’ chants Giulia solemnly.

  ‘That’s right. Leave them alone and you’ll be safe. Understand? We’ll stay at Zia Rosa’s house as much as we can, although it’s too small for us to just move in. I don’t know how long they’ll stay – it could be until the end of the war. If they speak to you, answer politely, but that’s all. Okay?’

  ‘And do n’t mention Charlie,’ you add in a fierce whisper.

  ‘That’s right, do not say anything about Charlie,’ Mamma agrees. ‘And Rosa and Mario will have to take care of him from now on. I don’t want you going back there again. What if someone follows you?’

  ‘But—’ you start to protest.

  ‘Tarlie?’ says Tommaso.

  ‘No, no Charlie,’ says Mamma firmly. ‘He’s not there anymore, Tommaso.’

  ‘Tarlie’s gone away?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mamma says. ‘He’s gone home.’ There is a fire in her eyes.

  The next few weeks are terrible. You wish you could visit Charlie even just once, to explain, but Mamma tasks you with watching the little ones, who mustn’t roam around getting in the Germans’ way, every minute. It’s exhausting and frustrating.

  Until the end of the war? you think desperately. That much-promised day seems further away than ever. And if our house is full of Germans, doesn’t that make us a target? If the Allies bomb our house, they’ll kill eight Germans. They might not mind if we’re killed too.

  Some of the soldiers aren’t as bad as others. There’s one with a bit of a tummy who smiles at you occasionally, and once he took Alessandro from Mamma’s arms and bounced him on his knee while Mamma finished preparing dinner for them all. You could tell from his easy manner that he knew how to hold a baby; maybe he has children of his own at home.

  But Mamma suspects one of them of stealing her cornetto, and she’s frantic about it. You had no idea she’d notice it was gone, let alone be this upset about it, and you feel so guilty that you can’t bring yourself to confess.

  When you finally ask, ‘Is it really so important, Mamma?’ she explodes.

  ‘Important? That cornetto is a good-luck charm! It belonged to my great-great-grandfather, Domenico Franco! He was the one who bought this land, and his father gave him the cornetto to bless his home and family. It protects us from the evil eye. If we don’t get it back, our luck will go from bad to worse, mark my words.’

  The evil eye. You think of it like Satan’s eye, jealous and destructive, watching you everywhere you go. You know Mamma must be right, because the moment you took the cornetto away, the Germans moved in. You have to get it back. If only you’d realised sooner that it was so old and powerful.

  Mario still visits Charlie each day, so the next time you see him at his place, you give Mario the compass with the emerald and tell him to return it, apolo
gise, and get back Mamma’s cornetto. But when Mario returns, his face is stricken. He hands you back the compass and shakes his head. ‘He’s gone,’ he whispers. ‘Charlie’s not there.’

  Your heart sinks. ‘Gone? He can’t be! Do you think they found him?’

  ‘Well, last week he asked me to bring him a set of my papà’s old clothes, so I reckon he was planning his escape.’ Mario is whispering, even though there are no German soldiers living in his house.

  ‘But he didn’t even say goodbye,’ you murmur, a huge lump in your throat.

  ‘No note, nothing,’ Mario agrees. ‘His blanket, firewood – and the cornetto, of course – all vanished, like no one was ever there.’

  Oh Charlie, you think, hot tears pricking your eyes. He was your first adult friend, and the only person you’ve ever met from outside of Lenola. He taught you so much, and he told you that you could be anything you wanted, as good as any boy, or better. Now he’s gone – and he’s taken all your family’s good luck with him.

  Go to scene 7.

  You decide to run back and warn Charlie. If the Germans have heard there’s an enemy soldier hidden inside the cat’s guts, they’ll be coming for Charlie with torches and guns. Maybe you can help him find a really good hiding space: a hole near the ceiling, or a nook you can push a big rock in front of.

  You’ve never run so fast in your life – if you had wings, you’d probably lift off. Your stomach is clenching with fear, and with hatred for the Germans. I won’t let them shoot Charlie. They’ll have to shoot me first.

  Cat’s Mouth is just over the next hill when you hear a branch break. You whirl around and see a German soldier behind you. Your heart leaps into your mouth.

  ‘Why are you running?’ he asks in a heavy accent. His blue eyes regard you sternly. ‘I want to know… for why you are running when we come to your house.’