Panthea closed her eyes, and Damiano descended closer to the bed, like a spider letting out a line of webbing.
“Panthea, your heart is like flint. Stop it! Take this mercy offered! You are only a woman, after all! We are only women! We must take mercy however it is offered!”
At this, Panthea sat up with a snarl, not knowing where the power came from, except that it was somewhere deep beneath her stomach, something she had felt stabbing her all her days. She was only a woman. And that had not been enough. Not for her.
She threw Gio on the ground with a sharp whip of her arms.
Nothing God gave me was ever enough, Panthea said in her heart.
She fell back on the bed as Damiano spun down, hanging inches from her face, his cold skin making her frightened. This was not what she wanted. But she would not accept pitiful, cheap mercy. Not when it was offered by a medicine woman who had never known power. Not when it was offered by a God who asked for nothing in return.
“Stop this!” Gio screamed.
A flash of lightning splintered outside the window, making Panthea wince from the piercing blue light. Dark shapes began to pour in from between the stones, all gathering to Panthea’s bed like purse strings being cinched tight around her.
Gio crawled on hands and knees to a corner of the room, shrinking her body into the space.
Damiano spread out his hands as if addressing a crowd. “My bride has spread a wedding feast, and we have all been invited!”
Panthea’s mouth was forced open, and the dark shapes rushed in, taking her last breath, the last beat of her heart. Her eyes rolled up to look at Damiano as she died.
“Truly I tell you, my darling,” he said, “tonight you will be with me in hell.”
Chapter Nineteen
Gio was aware of an itch. Her scalp itched. It had been itching for an hour perhaps. She didn’t really know. It bothered her, but only from a distance, as if she had not quite returned to her body but regarded it. To scratch it would mean she was back.
Gio wasn’t sure she was ready to be back.
Panthea lay on the bed, her eyes open and jaw bent to one side. She had been dead for hours.
Gio felt the burning itch on her scalp. It demanded attention.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. From outside the window, she heard the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. It carried the scent of a fir tree into the room. Gio liked firs. They were always green, in constant agreement with the world and each other. The firs of Sicily did not change, even when the volcano and the waters raged.
She reached up and scratched her scalp, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She was back now. She had to move.
Her legs were stiff, and she was cautious as she rose, putting her weight on them. Lifting one leg, setting it down, lifting the other … this is what she focused on. The door seemed a long way off. A noise struck her as odd—a choking sniffling. Her cheeks felt wet, and Gio realized she was crying. Odd, she thought, that my body would express emotion when I feel nothing. Nothing except the buzz of my leg muscles stirring awake and the air on my cheeks.
She kept doing that, lifting one leg and setting it down, then lifting the other, until she was out of the manor, standing in the late afternoon sunlight. She should be shooing the last of the fiume perse away, back to their own homes, and making sure the Old Man had not eaten so much that there would be no dinner for her.
But the fiume perse had grown too wide, spilling its banks and swallowing the whole world. All were lost. And the Old Man was dead. What would she do now, with no one to heal?
She blessed her legs, her thick, full, strong legs, that were carrying her down the path, and then away, up into the difficult way. Her legs were taking her home, and she reached out to hold back the branches, keeping them from brushing or scratching her face. The wood and leaves felt so good in her hands. God had used a rare alchemy to make a tree. Man, he made from dust. Man was born to be trampled underfoot. But a tree: born to stretch and rise to the heavens, sinking its roots deep into the earth, drawing from it water and life. Trees were His language. He had sent trees as witnesses. Yet when He grew angry, He sent storms and lightning that swept clean all He had written with His heavy hand and began the page again.
How many of His stories have we missed? Gio thought, running past these trees, never pausing to consider what they might tell of Him? Why did God need so many languages, so many words, to describe Himself? Everywhere she looked there were different trees, or flowers, dense crinkled moss, and the footprints of animals, who made His words their refuge.
I have only now begun to listen, she thought.
Gio felt the stillness of the world around her as she picked her way up, stepping over bare roots and smooth rocks, the sunlight coming in greater patches now.
Gio heard grunting and curses, and the dull echoes of blows. She moved quickly, jumping over the roots and rocks, ascending and running into the clearing ahead. Her home was just beyond her and she saw them, a mass of young men circling around Del Grasso, hitting and kicking, darting in and upon him. Del Grasso looked calm and steady. He was not giving them anything, not pleading or jerking away in fear. Gio knew this expression he wore on his face too well. It was the same steady look a big animal had as it was led into Del Grasso’s butchering room. He was not afraid to die, but neither would he forgive and go in peace. His face was a smooth, unmoving accusation.
More men were streaming out of her house, their arms full.
One emerged, holding her painting of the adulteress standing before Jesus. He said something to the men hurting Del Grasso, and they laughed. Del Grasso looked and saw what was in the man’s hand. He lunged through the men, grasping for the painting. The youths shouted, carrying her treasures off. They ran in the direction of the next town.
These boys would be richer than they had ever dared imagine by nightfall. Most would be dead by morning.
Gio ran to Del Grasso, who was on all fours, panting. Her hands were so small and insignificant on his big arms as she helped him to sit and wiped his brow. She would have to run for help. There was no way she could get him down the path into the village.
“How badly were you beaten?” she asked, keeping her voice soft and gentle, the way she spoke to children in pain.
Del Grasso smiled, then his mouth dropped back into a grimace. “They are weak and foolish. They did not hurt me with their fists.”
Gio exhaled and pressed her face against his shoulder. His skin felt so good. She had been cold and alone for hours. He was warm.
He shifted his weight and looked at her. “It is over for us.”
“The plague?”
“No, I do not mean that.”
“What? What else is there?” Gio asked.
“Secrets. All has come into the light. We have seen all men for who they are.”
“Do not give in, Del Grasso. Do not die. We must rebuild.” Gio felt stupid saying that. There was nothing to rebuild. The houses all stood.
“No! You will not!” He grimaced again.
They must have landed a strong blow to his abdomen, she thought. He was in pain.
“You must never rebuild,” he said. “You must begin something new.”
“Why?” Gio asked, tears wrenching through her abdomen so hard she thought she was going to be sick. “Why did it happen? Why to us?”
“Make me one promise. With your life,” he said. She could see him fading.
“Anything,” she answered.
“Never ask that again,” he said. “Only ask how. How, then, will you live?”
Gio saw a red, wet mark spreading across his belly. She ripped open his shirt and saw an ugly, ripped flap of skin, blood pouring out. They had stabbed him.
“That life is over, Gio. No time for why. Only how. As
k how.”
He grabbed his belly, hunching over it with a deep exhale. He would die without making a sound, she realized.
Lifting his head to her face, she pressed her lips against his. He couldn’t hold his weight up. His body pressed down on her, and she struggled to keep him sitting up.
“Del Grasso, I was wrong about you. We all were.”
She pressed her lips against his forehead, cradling his head as his body slid down onto the ground.
He was dead.
She saw her painting in the dirt, the door to her home torn off its cheap hinges. Crocks lay overturned near its entrance. Ashes from the fire and from the burning bones were tracked out and back. Inside she could see nothing. Truly nothing, she thought. It was all destroyed, all her paintings gazed at by unclean men who cared nothing for them and tossed them at their feet. All her secrets were broken open and left in the dirt, covered in ash.
The fire had a red heart. She could see it burning under the destruction.
Del Grasso was slumped over in the sparse grass. His face was covered in dirt, the dust attracted to his sweaty forehead. There was another boy lying inside her home. She assumed he was dead. The Old Man’s body had been dragged off. She could see his feet under some scrub brush not far away.
Movement in the brush did not surprise her. She knew the wolves favoured her house. People who were very weak as they left Gio sometimes didn’t make it home. The wolves patiently waited.
Gio looked around, wondering where to begin. If there had been time, she would have gone into the village to see if any man was able to assist her, in God’s name. But the wolves were already near, and she could not leave the bodies alone. The Church taught that the bodies must be given a sacred Christian burial, under the earth, or the souls would be punished.
Gio had to work fast. She had little strength to cut a trench for one man, no less two. The robber she would let rot. But the sun would fall in a few hours, and then the wolves would come, not caring if she beat them with sticks.
Gio needed fire.
She forced herself to look at her home, and the paintings made vulgar by rough hands that had tossed them out into the dirt. If she did this, there would be no going back. She exhaled, and prepared to burn them all.
She picked her way inside her home and found a hand trowel. It worked well for harvesting onions and breaking up hard clumps of earth that stood in her way when she needed a root. She glanced back outside at the bodies and back at the trowel. It would be a long night. She would have to build the fire high. It had to hold.
She tossed the trowel out of the door and moved to the shelves that once held her herbs. The herbs were gone, most of them in Panthea’s cellar. Gio tore at the shelves, and they popped away from the plaster, their thin nails not strong.
She tossed the wood outside.
In the corner were more paintings, the stories of her lonely nights and the things she had witnessed on the mountain. These paintings were what she thought she had learned from her life, the words she had thought God had once spoken over her. On her worst nights, these were all that had kept her alive.
She tossed them in groups of two and three onto the fire, unwilling to study them any longer. The past was gone. It was not important that she leave a record of it. All that mattered now was tomorrow. Everyone in Sicily had a past. She did not know of many who would have a tomorrow. She would keep only the blank papers, the ones that had not yet been written. Those she would save for another—another woman, perhaps, who would take up the story after Gio died.
Gio continued through her home, tossing out blankets and her thick wool robe, her chair and the straw from her mattress. When she finished and came out to stand in the afternoon sun, there was more outside her house than in it. If there was any chance the stones would burn, she would have used them, too.
Gio stooped over, picking up the refuse and placing it around her. Over and over she bent, lifting and carrying and putting the debris down in place, until she had a wide circle with both of the bodies in its center.
Near the body of the robber was her original fire, the one that had kept food warm for the Old Man and bones drying for the painters, and stones heated for her water in the winter. That fire still burned, but only just a little. Gio picked at the upper branches and rocks the robbers had placed over it, one last indignity before they fled. It should have gone out, but it hadn’t … not fully. Gio didn’t know if that might ever count as a miracle. There was no one to witness it except her, and miracles were not performed for women like her. She thought of her last painting, buried in the pile. Jesus had forgiven the sinful woman. He had stopped justice from demanding her life. Was that not a miracle, at least to her? Maybe God was the miracle. To lost women, His gentle disposition was nothing less.
Gio found her leather glove and reached into the red fire, pulling out a branch, touching it to the top of the pile, waiting for it to catch. The fire did not catch. Gio heard another noise from the brush beyond her home. This had to catch. Again, she pressed it to the debris of the circle. This time a little smoke rose, but she could not see where a flame was started. She was starting to panic. She didn’t have patience or faith at this moment. The plague had left her stripped and exhausted, too weak to bear a small setback.
She crouched down, still holding the branch to the debris, and then got down onto her knees, stretching out, still pressing the branch into the circle. Gio was lying down then, the branch near her face. Its heat and glow made her face burn.
With a soft exhale, Gio blew into the fire. Its red embers grew white, and she repeated this. She breathed into the debris that had been her life, willing it to burn with the touch of her breath. It was an intimate good-bye.
Beautiful.
It was a word she once coveted, hoping someone would use it when describing her. A small word, really. It fell short in describing what angels looked like. Mariskka watched them walking in the streets, leading children from empty houses, carrying old women who gazed up at them like infants. Peace wrapped around her when one came near. Life was infinitely more dangerous, and more beautiful, than she had ever imagined.
They are not of this world, she thought.
Mbube stood beside her. “Yes, yes. They are.”
“I never knew,” Mariskka said.
“You never look,” Mbube replied. “Not with your heart. Look now. See.”
Mariskka could see again, but she saw nothing the same way. The streets were illuminated, though it was dark, late into the night. She could see thousands of them in every direction. Only when she squinted did she see the dark spirits. There were few of them now, and they did not like the light. They tried snapping their teeth at Mariskka. A man of light walking by saw this and tweaked the spirit on the nose, making Mariskka laugh. The dark thing spread its wings until it rose above them all. But it did not scare her. Not when she was surrounded by these men of light.
“There are so many of them,” Mariskka murmured.
“Yes,” Mbube said. “Much goodness in this world.”
Mbube picked her up in his arms. He felt good, like a big pillow that Mariskka could curl onto and be safe. She was glad it was her time to die.
“Thank you, Mbube,” she said. “Thank you for what I became here. Thank you for fighting for me. I’m ready.”
“No die, not today,” Mbube said. He was carrying her inside the church, not away into the night like the others.
Mariskka tried to push against him and sit up. “What do you mean? I don’t want to go back now!”
“You go back. Not my idea,” Mbube said.
“I don’t want that life anymore. I don’t want the money, or the fame, or even that stupid shower! I have belonged in only one place my whole life, and it was here. I was a real nurse here.”
“You save no one,” Mbube said.
&
nbsp; “I was not brought here to save anyone except myself,” she said, surprising herself. It was true, though. “I was brought here to fight.”
“Did you?” Mbube asked. “Did you save self?”
“No. God did.” Mariskka motioned to the people, some lost, some in pain and dying, some darting between houses and looting.
“When I reached out to heal them, healing came to me, too. I had to open my arms before I could open my heart.”
“You talk much,” he said.
“I understand now, Mbube. I couldn’t accept grace because I refused to show it to anyone else,” Mariskka said. “I’m ready to die.”
“You not ready,” Mbube said. They were inside the church now, the air feeling cold and dry, the candles at the altar brilliant in the darkness. Mbube laid her on the steps of the altar and took her hands in his.
“I don’t want to go back, Mbube. I’ve seen too much here to be happy again in that other life. Just let me go.”
Mbube let go of her hands and began to back away.
“There is no one for me there, nothing! I can’t go back to nursing—I’m a celebrity. I can’t go on as an author—I don’t know how to write. I can barely fill out a check.”
“God does not want you there for what you do, Mariskka. He want you there for what you are.”
“Why? Why, Mbube? Why does it have to be me?”
“You do not have the language for those answers. I cannot give them.”
“Why? What’s going to happen, Mbube?”
The candles on the altar rose up, their light blinding her as Mbube became part of the darkness. The hard, cold stone steps under her back softened, becoming like down feathers. She saw the stones of the altar growing higher and then arcing back down, burying her in softness and light.
Gio was drowning in tears. The waters rose up from within, and she struggled for breath. Her breaths were shallow and cold. Her body shook, and she could not get warm.
In the Arms of Immortals Page 22
