Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  “It’s not the same.” She pressed the blade to his neck.

  “It’s not?” Nico didn’t resist her. “Does it matter that an offense happened many years ago? Does time diminish a crime?”

  “Giovanni didn’t kill anyone.”

  The squall of black rain pelted the cabin, a sulfurous choking in the air. The cabin rattled as the ground rolled from side to side. Before Jess’s eyes, the other side of the valley slipped, fell into the churning black below in a roaring rush.

  “Ask him why he was in Antarctica when his father died,” Nico snarled. “Sons answer for the sins of their fathers.”

  There was no time for this. If she let him go, he’d kill her, take the boy. He’d never stop. Jess gritted her teeth.

  Nico laughed, his body going limp. “The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go. Hell is no punishment, but a freeing of the soul. I’m not scared of dying, Jessica. If you’re frightened of dying, you’ll see devils tearing your life away at death, but if you’ve made peace—”

  “Then you’ll see angels freeing you,” Jess whispered, completing his sentence. Where had she heard that before? Jess’s grip slackened.

  “Yes, you see?” Nico lifted one hand and tried to pull the dagger into his throat. “I’ve paid my demons, now release me.”

  Jess pushed back, now using every ounce of her strength to keep the blade from his neck. Looking down, little Hector stood in front of them, staring, the whites of his eyes almost glowing. The little boy’s face disappeared into the blackness.

  Vengeance had filled Jess’s life. The desire to get even. The need to punish for past sins.

  Enough.

  Jess wrenched the dagger away, but held Nico close. “I forgive you,” she whispered into his ear and put the dagger in her right pocket.

  Stepping around him, she took Hector’s hand, and backed away to the cable car door on the left, the one open to a hundred feet of empty blackness to the sharp rocks below.

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” Jess whispered. She picked up Hector and held him close. Standing at the edge of the open door, she leaned forward and hit the clutch mechanism.

  The cable car shuddered and released. It started sliding down across the valley.

  Jess stepped back toward the open door, crossed her arms around Hector and fell backward into blackness.

  39

  CHIANTI, ITALY

  WEIGHTLESS, JESS FELL backward through empty space, clutching Hector in her arms. The cable car disappeared upward and away against a maelstrom of black and crimson clouds. Nico’s face stared at her as it receded into the distance.

  She hoped she got this just right. Clenching her teeth, she gripped Hector with every ounce of her strength.

  The cord bit into her waist and armpits, savagely ripping at her body. She’d wrapped a length of the cord around Hector, and she cradled him, did her best to shield him as she felt the cord stretch behind her, the wind whistling as they swung in a downward arc. Her right foot slammed into the ground, dragged through the grass for an instant before they swung up and away.

  Two seconds later they reached the top of the arc, and began to swing back. When she ran up here, through the castle, she arrived before Nico and grabbed the improvised rope swing she’d set up a few days before.

  Spinning, holding Hector with her left arm, she pulled the dagger from her right pocket. Lifting it above her head against the cord, she pressed the blade into it, forcing it back with all her might as she felt her leg graze the ground again. The blade cut through and they tumbled through space, landing hard in a tangled heap on the grass. She kept the blade high, felt pain lancing through her shoulder as they crunched into the earth.

  Jess spat out a mouthful of dirt and grass and rolled to one side. “Hector,” she groaned, “are you okay?”

  It was dark, and Jess struggled to look at Hector. Tangled underneath her, he didn’t move. Panic flooded her veins. “Hector!?”

  Coughing, he pulled himself from under her. Trembling, he smiled at Jess. “Che figata!”

  Jess laughed, squeezing him into her. “You liked that?”

  His eyes darted up, and Jess followed them, craning her neck around. The cable car was still visible, halfway across the valley, illuminated by the glow of Monterufoli. Nico’s pale face was a dot of white against black. Booming thunder. The ground trembled again, a thick cloud of ash swirling over the top of the cliffs.

  As Jess watched, the cables swung up and down, vibrating with the ground. A cable jumped its guide, and in slow motion, the cable car hopped up and then down, spinning, tumbling from the sky. It fell hundreds of feet into the surging sludge below.

  The cloud of ash enveloped them.

  “Hector, which way?” Jess coughed.

  She knew there was a doorway from the ledge, a tunnel leading into the caves. They used it when Giovanni showed her around, when they first came out there. Sitting upright, she cut away the improvised harness she’d tied around herself.

  Wiping dirt and ash from his eyes, Hector stood, looked to his left, then right. He pointed.

  “Good boy.” Jess pulled the last of the rope from her body and staggered to her feet.

  A blast of hot wind brought with it a soup of ash, fine particles and thick flakes. Jess pulled Hector’s torn t-shirt up around his mouth, doing the same for herself. Holding his hand, she followed him into the swirling black soup, scrambling over rocks. They reached the vertical cliff face, but she could only see for a few feet. Her eyes stung, watered, and she tried to wipe them but that only made it worse.

  Hector stood bolt upright, shaking. He wiped his eyes, smearing them black, tears streaming down his face. Cracking thunder boomed, the ground shuddered. Pebbles showered onto them from the cliffs above.

  “It’s okay.” Jess held him to her, holding up one hand to shelter them. “Come on.”

  She grabbed his hand, pulled him to the left, wiping her eyes. They picked their way through the jumbled rocks, searching for an opening, but they reached a yawning edge of blackness.

  Jess swore under her breath. They must have missed it. She didn’t remember this edge. The ground was disappearing from beneath their feet, the cliffs shearing off into the valley. Another blast of hot air enveloped them, the soup of ash swirled thick and acrid. Cradling Hector, she crouched in the rocks by the wall. “We’ll stop for a minute and let this pass.”

  But she didn’t know if it would.

  The ground pitched sideways in an ear-splitting roar.

  “It’ll be okay.” Jess held Hector’s face to her neck, his arms around her, his body stiff with fear. “It’ll be okay.”

  She pressed her stinging eyes closed.

  Something grabbed her shirt. Opening her eyes, a face loomed out of the darkness, fly-away white hair streaming from a slick scalp.

  “Come,” growled Leone, the old groundskeeper.

  He wrapped his calloused hands around Jess’s waist and lifted her and Hector up, cradled them in his arms. He ran forward, stepping through the rocks. A sharp left, then downward.

  The air cleared and Jess took in a deep lungful of clear air, coughing and spitting. She leaned against the jagged rock wall of a tunnel, illuminated by an emergency light stuck to the ceiling. Leone pulled the heavy door shut behind them, forcing it shut.

  With a thud, the door closed.

  Panting, Jess looked at the door. She wiped ash from her face. The tunnel rattled in a violent thunder.

  Leone shoved past her, still with Hector in his arms. He turned to Jess. “Nico?”

  “Dead.” Jess doubled over and gagged. A wheezing cough strained from her chest.

  Leone nodded, and without saying another word, he led the way down. Jess took one last look at the door, feeling the oppressive weight of the mountain around her, and followed him into the labyrinth.

  The ancient tunnel wound its way through the rock. After fifty yards it opened into the wine cavern that Giovanni had showed her aroun
d. Except now it wasn’t filled with ten-foot high barrels standing shoulder to shoulder. The crates had been disassembled, their ribs collected against the rough-hewn rock walls. They were replaced by piled wooden crates, cardboard boxes and plastic bags that stretched the length of the thirty foot cave. Fifteen feet overhead, the harsh white of six emergency lights beamed down.

  Two young men knelt at the side of the cavern, busy putting together a table. Jess recognized them. Lucca and Raffael, the teenage brothers who worked for Leone. She’d watched them play soccer with Hector in the gardens. Their faces lit up when they saw Jess, and they dropped their tools when they saw Hector in Leone’s arms. They jumped up to greet them, gesturing wildly and whooping with excitement.

  But Jess hardly saw them. Her eyes locked onto something almost unbelievable. Beside Lucca and Raffael, in the center of it all, stood Jess’s mother and father. Kissing. Their arms were wrapped around each other.

  Jess hadn’t seen them kiss in years, hadn’t seen them hold each other, not since she was a child. She brought a hand to her mouth, tears coming again to her still-stinging eyes. Her scalp tingled. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to breath, for fear of breaking the spell.

  From the corner of her eye, Celeste saw Jess and pushed away from Ben. “Jess! Oh my God!”

  Pushing past the knot of Leone wrapped up with Raffael and Lucca, with Hector sandwiched between them, Celeste ran straight at Jess. Her arms spread wide, she almost knocked Jess over, gripped her so tight Jess felt the air squeeze from her lungs. Ben wrapped his arms around the two of them, his body wracked with convulsing sobs.

  “We sent Leone to find you.” Celeste wept, tears flowing, crushed between Ben and Jess. “Ben was running around the walls, looking everywhere. You didn’t tell us where you were going.”

  Jess laughed through her tears. “I’m sorry.”

  The ground swayed and almost knocked them from their feet. Rocks crashed from the ceiling onto the packing crates. An emergency light tumbled from the ceiling and smashed against the rock floor. Jess gripped her mother and father. Even here, there might not be much time. The mountain itself was coming apart. Deafening booms echoed through the caves from the bombardment overhead.

  Jess gritted her teeth and pressed her eyes closed, and saw, for the millionth time, the image of the small face disappearing into the black hole. “I’m sorry,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Baby, what are you sorry for?” Celeste kissed her daughter’s forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. “We’re all together, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “No.” Hot tears streamed down Jess’s face.

  She stared at her mother. She’d never told anyone before, had kept this terrible secret for twenty years. It was the demon that tore at her soul. Jess needed to be free.

  “I’m sorry about Billy. It was my fault.” Jess gasped in a lungful of air before blurting, “I told him to go out on the ice.”

  Time stopped for an instant, the booming above receded. Hurt blossomed in her mother’s eyes. The dam inside burst, twenty years of pressure releasing. Jess crumbled. Her knees buckled, her body wracked by heaving sobs.

  Celeste and Ben grabbed Jess together, held her limp body up while tears streamed down her face.

  “That wasn’t your fault.” Celeste’s voice was a ragged whisper.

  “It was.” Jess heaved air in and sobbed, her head turned away. “I was mad at you.”

  The dam broken, memories of that long ago day flooded Jess’s mind: When she was six, and her little brother Billy just four, back at the cottage in the Catskills mountains. Her mother had just scolded her for taking the big blocks from Billy; but they were hers, Jess had squealed. Go outside and play, her mother had said, and take Billy.

  But make sure he doesn’t go on the ice.

  Jess wouldn’t have folded so easily, wouldn’t have let her mother win, but she decided to teach her a lesson. So she went outside, walked down through the snow to the creek, and told Billy it was okay to go on the ice. She hadn’t meant to hurt him; she didn’t even know it was dangerous, not really. She thought he might fall in, get wet, scream and cry until their mother came out. That would teach her mother a lesson.

  And her father took her and Billy across the ice all the time, to sled on the opposite bank.

  She just didn’t know, at six, that it was a warm week.

  That the ice was thin.

  She had heard the crack. She saw Billy slip and squeal, his terrified eyes locked onto hers. As if pulled by an invisible hand, he slid under, and Jess had stood transfixed. Terrified. She’d watched her little brother’s face disappear into the black hole, ringed in white, his eyes on her.

  Afterward, Jess ran back into the house, screaming, crying, saying that Billy was gone.

  But she’d never admitted that she told him to go on the ice.

  In revenge. She killed him. She killed her little brother. All these years, she’d kept the secret and been punishing herself for it. Her family was never the same. She never saw her mother and father embrace again. Not until now.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jess cried, her body trembling for air, her eyes shut tight, her fingers gripping her mother and father. “Everything was my fault.”

  The ground tilted to one side, vibrated, and then titled back. They stumbled sideways as a unit and crashed into the cave wall.

  Celeste took Jess’s chin and pulled her head up. Jess opened her eyes, gathered the courage to look at her mother again, but the shock and hurt in Celeste’s eyes had been replaced with gentle warmth.

  “It’s not your fault,” Ben said softly, laying a hand on his daughter’s head to stroke her hair. “You were a child. You didn’t know. It was my fault. I should never have taken the two of you across the ice to play. It was irresponsible. It was my fault.”

  Another massive tremor rocked the cave. The lights flickered. A stack of crates crashed from the wall onto the floor behind them.

  “No, no, it was my fault.” Celeste wiped her tears with the back of one hand. “I was trying to write my research grant paper. I was annoyed. I told you to go outside, but I didn’t watch. I should have been watching.”

  Sobbing, Celeste gripped Jess’s neck, and all three of them came together again. It felt like little Billy was standing in the middle of them. Jess had never admitted it before, never told anyone the truth. The demon eating at her soul disappeared into the cracks in the cave walls.

  “Dove è Giovanni?” said a small voice.

  Jess looked down into Hector’s blackened face, his eyes wide. Leone stood behind him protectively. Hector reached for Jess’s hand. Leaning down, she scooped him into her arms, felt his tiny body against hers. “Oh, sweetheart.” How to tell him that Giovanni was dead? “I’m sorry, but—”

  “He’s alive.” Ben pointed to an opening at the end of the cave. “In the next room.”

  “Go, go,” Celeste urged, letting go of Jess. She sobbed, new tears streaming down her face. “Take Hector. Go and see him. We can talk again in a minute.”

  Ben nodded and let go as well.

  Glancing at both of them, Jess gripped Hector and hobbled through the fallen crates. The lights flickered again. Around the corner, another smaller cave. The struts of the disassembled barrels were laid out on the floor as an improvised bed, and there, in the middle, swaddled in blankets, was Giovanni, his head propped up on a cardboard box.

  Jess ran. “Giovanni! I have Hector!”

  The ground rumbled and she almost fell into him. Giovanni lifted himself up on one elbow. Kneeling on the wooden floor, she pulled back the blanket, revealing his chest covered in bandages soaked in blood.

  “It looks worse than it is,” Giovanni croaked, his face still swollen and battered. “The bullet grazed my side, straight through, mostly soft—”

  Jess kissed him, deep and hard.

  Giovanni kissed her back, but flinched and sucked in air.

  “Sorry, sorry, did I hurt you?” Jess retre
ated.

  Giovanni managed to chuckle. “A little, but then that’s to be expected with you, no?”

  Jess pointed at the crates and boxes. “When did you do all this?”

  “When you told me disaster was coming. I didn’t entirely believe you, but what is that expression? Better safe than sorry? I had workmen clear out the caves and brought in supplies. Why not? More useful than wine.”

  Hector rushed in to hug his uncle, and Giovanni did his best to wrap one arm and hold him tight. Tears rolling down his cheeks. Jess didn’t think she had any crying left in her, but more spilled out.

  Only then did she notice Roger, propped up on his right arm in a cot on the opposite wall. He stared at her. His left shoulder was a mass of bloody bandages from where she shot him with the arrow. He said nothing, but his eyes said it all.

  How could someone be jealous at a time like this? “Roger, my God, I didn’t see you there. I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

  “I’m glad you’re safe.” Roger grunted, swung his feet off the cot and got up. “I’m going to help Lucca and Raffa.”

  Jess sat back on her haunches. “Roger, wait.” She held up one hand. “Why did you come here, what happened?”

  Roger balanced himself as another tremor jolted the ground. “I came for you, Jess.” He glanced at Giovanni, back at Jess, then turned and stalked away.

  40

  CHIANTI, ITALY

  BEN LEANED DOWN to pick up the edge of a fallen crate. He strained to lift it back into place. Celeste jammed her body beside his. Together, they pushed the crate back against the rock wall.

  They slumped into each other and sat against it.

  “See, we can do anything together,” Ben laughed, putting his arm around his wife.

  He’d been a fool, pushing her away, hiding his own pain. His own guilt.

  “Well, we made Jess, didn’t we?” Celeste laughed and kissed her husband.

  The ceiling rumbled, detonations spraying them in a mist of falling pebbles and dust.