In the Arms of Immortals

by Ginger Garrett

  It moved through the fog, scraping over the rocks just beneath the waterline. The ship would not be able to make its return journey, not without repairs and weeks spent in the harbour. Had this captain never sailed into Sicily before? Why was there no crew, only this man with a lamp? It was impossible that he had made the journey alone in that ship.

  A greater answer there could not be. This would have the whole village swarming. Her father would smell the money in the air. Strange affairs made excited people, and excited people spent more. Her father would be too busy making money to finish the marriage contract he had begun with her enemy.

  Panthea wished again for her mother, the second time today. Her mother would know what to do. Her mother would have secured a better marriage.

  Her father believed she would be utterly lost unless she submitted to a man. To Armando. Panthea bit her lip, hard, to stop those thoughts. If God had crafted her, He should understand. The alliance was not fit. Panthea was not what Armando hoped for. Worse, Armando was not what she hoped for.

  Fidato stopped.

  Swinging his head from side to side, he flung the red tassels draped across his neck in all directions, and Panthea fell to the ground. He stepped over her, caging her in with his legs. Snorting, twisting his head, and biting at the air as if he were chasing a fly, he kept her there.

  Panthea panicked. Fidato had never lost his mind before. He was a proper horse for a baron’s daughter, a gentleman and a smart one at that. But now he was rearing back on two legs and clawing at the air. His two hooves on the ground danced to keep his balance; he almost stepped on her. Panthea searched wildly but could see nothing on the path to fear—no snakes, no sharp stones, no angry sea birds. The little rabbits were all gone by now, and had not Fidato seen enough of those, nibbling the straw in his stable? He didn’t mind them.

  A hoof smashed down, missing her by a finger’s width. Scrambling out on all fours from under him, she tried to escape. He swung around, turning on her, biting her on the ankles. He wouldn’t let her stand up without getting bitten; he advanced too quickly. She scrambled backward like a crab into the crevice of the rocks behind her. He nipped at her until there was nothing of her outside the hiding place. She crushed herself into the hole, her legs so closely drawn to her chest that it was hard to breathe.

  Fidato turned and screamed, blocking her from escape.

  “What have you eaten, Fidato?” she yelled at him. “Something drives you mad!” A sound from lower down the path made her seal her mouth with tight lips.

  It wasn’t Fidato she was afraid of now. It was him. He was tearing up the path.

  Chapter Four

  Gio picked her way down the devil’s ladder, a prickly, steep path under the belly of the volcano. Mists were the only thing that sprang from the black ashes and glass rocks up here. Long ago, the Greeks had believed it to be the workshop of Vulcan, the god of fire. Vulcan punished them when he was angry. Gio understood their superstition; she had not finished her work but had to abandon the effort before she was singed by falling ash. She was angry to be interrupted and wished she could blame someone, too, even if it was superstition.

  She would not sleep well now. The singes would be forgotten, but that old hunger would find her in her bed, dead asleep, compelling her to rise and work again. How she envied Lazarus, who had been raised only once. This was the curse of her kind: Hunger for her work was relentless. Few would understand how that hunger could hurt, how resistance to it made panic rise in her throat, fearing that one day it would call, and she would be too old to obey. When she had still had the courage to attend Mass, ignoring the whispers and stares, she had heard the great church painters of Europe called blessed with talent. She did not think they felt that way, but she would never know. Men avoided speaking to her, and men of the Church most of all. Gio had once wept at the thought, but today she kept moving down the path.

  Planting her feet in the mist, Gio knew just where to step. She knew this mountain better than she had ever known a man. She knew how it settled and rose, the soft crevices where green things grew hidden and the stubborn rock outposts that jutted onto the path without regard for anyone else. She knew how to pick around those, how to press and dig and find its secrets. The villagers feared the volcano, its red fire and the spirits it loosed among them. Gio was content that the people stayed away. Up here, she was as far away as the moon.

  Others, the Romans who had been here before, had built great temples to the volcano, honouring it as a god. Their worship was just as silly as the peasants’ fear, she thought. Not everything green was noble. The roiling sulfur clouds, the rivers of mud, and the glass shards that belched forth were proof of nature’s obscenities.

  But below the volcano, Sicily had the sea and trees that were like stout women with big bosoms, making everyone smile just to look upon them. Children snuggled beneath those trees in summer and peeled oranges, and old women stopped for a rest under them while walking home from the market. Sicily was in every way a woman like them. She gave the fishermen big lusty catches that danced in the nets and flashed silver-sparkled fins each morning; her trees gathered the weary to her bosom when sleepiness and heat overcame them; her stones and earth kept them warm at night with silent compassion. Women and Sicily understood each other.

  Sicily seemed the origin of all things good, and all things life, and all things worth tasting, whether from glass, plate, or lips. Sicily had her passions, her turns of thought as sudden as storms that swept in from the sea with no warning, untraceable to any event or misplaced word. She could rage from the volcano, singeing them all, or she could push her wide, fleshy arm through the sea and sweep it up into the village, splashing cold water onto their delicate pastries and oak barrels of vinegar.

  But everyone loved her. Sicily charmed the men and gave herself to no one. She was Europe’s most savage and beautiful courtier. All who came here by land or sea pledged their love at once to her. Other Italians loved her, too, but the women knew the others were jealous. Sicily was the sister who had a certain magic. She was Italian, true, but not all Italians were Sicilians.

  Gio’s sack cut into her shoulder; she readjusted it, wincing at the weight of the stones. She spied a cluster of wild garlic, the last that would grow here until spring. She could not come down empty-handed. Nature had her cycles, and so did shame. Shame was followed by secrets, and secrets were followed always by more lies—lies that bloomed into hollow days.

  No one in town would break bread with her. Even those who sought her help drew a deep breath before crossing her threshold. Many nights she sat outside, hoping to hear the sounds of the town below. She listened for laughter or arguments over beer or impatient mothers and their squawking children. Gio’s heart twisted and stung most when she heard the sounds of family. She would never have one herself.

  “Not for you! Not for you!”

  Her hand already extended to yank the garlic bulbs up, she saw the Old Man just as she heard his screech. That was his name—the Old Man, a wanderer (some whispered an infidel or Turk) and he had long found work and shelter in the town.

  “Did Lazarro send you to raid my garden again?” she yelled back, yanking the bulbs up and stuffing them in her sack.

  He scowled and she saw how his eyes never opened now at all, even to reveal the spoiled, filmy irises, and how his whiskers grew more coarse and longer every month. Either his razor had dulled beyond repair, or his hand was now unsteady.

  “As if Sicily could belong to one woman, signora!” he shouted.

  “Get along, Old Man. The garlic is mine.”

  He raised his walking stick in her direction and swung. “I will bash your head in, you witch! No one would blame the blind Old Man!”

  She jumped out of his way and continued down the path, making way for him to stagger up to her former spot.

  “Buona fortuna!” she ca
lled behind her. “I see a patch of purslane your crooked old nose missed! My soup bowl will be full tonight! And lamb besides, and new wine, and bread! How good my dinner will be after a long walk on my mountain!”

  She hoped he would find the garlic bulbs she had left. They were the best ones and a pity if wasted.

  The sound of his riding was unmistakable. He wore heavy boots with iron spurs, lodged into iron stirrups. Great gold clasps held the blue velvet blanket on his horse; the blanket was trimmed in black velvet ravens with a thick black stripe down the side and Panthea’s father’s matching coat of arms on the neck. The man wore black leggings, reinforced at the knee with black leather patches, a blue velvet cloak draped across his shoulders, and an iron belt with his sword sheathed inside. It made a slight clank as he rode.

  His horse’s shoes were quite different from Fidato’s. They covered the hoof and extended in gilded bullions up the sides so the legs appeared to flash as he rode. Panthea’s father had insisted on spending a sickening sum on this finery. The finery was a waste, but Panthea knew women were wiser than men in this, too. Women wanted to live on their money, men wanted to live through it. Foolishness, she thought.

  Still, the horse, Nero, was one of the finest she had known, a magnificent black charger, one of the best bred horses for the knights of conquest.

  “Fidato?”

  The knight Armando recognized her horse’s call. He got down with a fluid swing, grasping Fidato’s harness. Stroking his muzzle, Armando calmed the animal and placed his hands along its neck. “Your heart is beating so fast, Fidato! What has scared you? Where is Panthea?”

  Fidato began sauntering to the castle, leaving Panthea exposed. She stood and brushed herself off, refusing to look at Armando.

  “I was resting,” she said and began walking home.

  “Of course,” he replied, following her. “I, too, sleep here, sitting in the rocks. I find more comforts here than in the straw bed your father provides me in the root cellar.”

  “There are other accommodations in the village,” Panthea replied. “Why, you could even marry. Isn’t that a lovely idea? Some poor wench with horsey eyes would think herself blessed.”

  “Don’t hope for so much,” he said.

  “Aye, that’s what I’d tell her, too!”

  “Panthea,” he said.

  She kept walking.

  “Panthea!” he yelled.

  She turned and raised an eyebrow.

  “Take Nero,” he said. “I’ll lead Fidato in and look over him. He must have had a fright.”

  “Yes, you were upwind.”

  “Panthea.” He sounded disappointed.

  She resumed her walk.

  “Take Nero,” he said, “or take me.”

  She walked back, glaring at his open palm extended to help her onto the horse. She would not move until he backed away. He sighed, stepping back, and she mounted the horse. It was good, she thought. Fidato would get groomed, and she would have a chance to ride the magnificent charger. Best of all, Armando would be delayed coming inside to the feast.

  “Did you know a ship has arrived?” she asked. “Perhaps it brings a new suitor for me, one with great fortunes and many servants.”

  “I am your servant, Panthea. I do the work of a hundred men for you.”

  She dug her heels into his horse, which lurched up the path. She hoped it kicked plenty of dust upon him.

  He was so wrong about her. They all were.

  Gio added the purslane to her soup kettle hung over the fire. Pulling down a rough-edged plate from a shelf, she ripped apart the coarse bread and set the largest hunk on the plate. Scooping a ladle of wine from the crock, she indulged herself in a taste before pouring it into a bowl next to the plate. Stacked stones on the outer edges of the fire were keeping a thin slab of roasted lamb warm. She pulled some free. It was the last addition to the meal. Gio marveled at her good fortune. She had such food in a time when women like her—indeed, any woman without a family—knew daily hunger. Invalids, or the very old, starved to death.

  As if in proof, skeletons hung above her from the rafters, surrounded by greasy tapers hanging by their fraying wicks, plus her collection of shark jaws, bulbs of drying garlic, amulets, beads, and dried viper flesh to protect against the evil eye and jealous lovers.

  Her hut, thatched together with stone, timber, and mud—all of it bartered for or offered as gifts by peasants—was like a wild animal’s den. It had her scent, the smell of the trees and smoke, herbs and old leather satchels. No one was welcome inside, unless the person was too sick to remember afterward. This sanctuary was immodest in its way. It told too much of her story, too many of her tales.

  Gio pulled out a copy of a religious tract, written in useless Latin, and ran her fingers along the brown woodcut images, finding the telltale splinter marks in each where the artist had moved his chisel too fast as he got near the delicate center. Edges, the beginning of a work, were easy to do for anyone. Few could draw near the heart of a matter, whether in image or in life, and remain composed.

  Gio fished around for her magnifying glass, which she suspected had been stolen by the peasant who offered it to her as payment. She loved it anyway, and her hand seized on it somewhere under a pile of gemstones she meant to grind later. After looking at woodcuts, she loved to look at her map and dream of other lives she might have lived. With her glass, she could follow her world until it faded along the bottom of the scroll into an unknown land called Antarcta. It was a Greek map, of a round world no less, a world where the sea led you south, and south again, until you found a new land called Antarctos. In Antarctos, you lived upside down, and all natural laws were reversed.

  She would like to visit such a world.

  Sighing, she pulled a stick from her hair, dropping her black braids down. She brushed them out, weaving her spider-quick fingers through them to undo the pattern. Her hair felt like cool water running down her neck and shoulders. This was pleasure even the poorest woman in Sicily could have. Saint Paul had been right when he said long hair was a woman’s splendore. He had not known that for some it would be the only one.

  She brushed away snarls and entanglements, brushing until each strand lay peacefully against the next. Lying down on her pile of sheepskins, feeling her hair fall away from her shoulders, she tucked her hands under her head for a pillow. She wished she could lie here for hours.

  Looking up, she admired her collections. There were rows of tinctures, herbs, and spices, all manner of strange talismans and teeth, but on the top shelf, pushed back into the darkness, were her best treasures.

  Every holy man in all of Italy knew she had the pigments. No one knew the land like Gio, no one had colours like hers. Bishops sent their monks here for them. First came the plaintive entreaty that these must be given in the name of the Lord, to further His work here on earth. She always refused. Next came the subtle turn, the set of the mouth, the implication that forgiveness would not come easily on her next confession if she didn’t sell. Their mouths fell open when she said she didn’t go to confession anymore.

  Some blushed and apologized, emptying their purses on her threshold, probably as worried about her soul as their mission. She liked them, but she would not sell to them.

  Some grew red with anger, demanding that she sell or be beaten. She would open the door a touch, letting them see the dead men swinging inside. Those buyers fled, leaving curses and threats behind.

  Precious few would ask to see them, just because they loved them as she did. For these, she would sell, but at a high price.

  The money was needed for her other work, caring for the fiume perse, the Lost River. They streamed to her door, in winter more than other seasons, needing relief for an abscessed tooth (cumin packed tight into the tooth until it could be pulled), babies who grew thin whose mothers had no milk (fenugreek t
hree times a day, and a stout wine no more than once), or coughs that shook a child until his ribs hurt (mustard plasters and keep him near the fire). Few of these people could afford the priest and his blessing, and few were certain God even saw them, except for judgment. Indeed, His judgment already rested heavily upon them, for they worked until their backs gave out and still starved through the winter.

  She did not have to look beyond her door to see the suffering of the world. It was a river, and no man could find its beginning or its end. It simply flowed on, sweeping the weak in, roaring in the ears of those who stood out of reach.

  The poor never seemed to fight it. They were born to be dashed to bits. Their children died, their homes burned. Only one thing could stir them to rage: one word that was never spoken, one word that could cause the banks to overflow and their rage to drown the world. Gio had no remedy for the poison it loosed. The poor never questioned why—why some were born to die starving, and why some born to lives troubled only by gluttony and boredom.

  She stretched her feet out near the fire and wiggled her dirty toes. They looked like roots, gnarled and clinging to dirt after so many travels up and down the mountain. She did not mind. She was almost thirty, but there was no one to admire her beauty or mention the lack of it. She felt her big stomach pressing up against her breasts. It, too, had lost its maiden shape, but she liked its warmth, liked the feeling of being rounded and soft, of taking up space in this world. She felt undeniable. She knew people saw her. They had to step out of the way to make room for her to pass.

  She had been tiny and thin once. Then they had pushed her aside.

  She loved the warmth and spread of her body now, the way it was full and pleasing to her alone. Men no longer took liberties with their eyes. She was able to move among them without lewd regard. She found great peace in getting fat. With the silencing of lewd remarks, she heard the voice of wisdom more clearly. She ran her hands down her thick thighs. They were marvelous.