Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  “Rosa?”

  “A text message,” she said. “From my sister. From Zoe.”

  “What does it say?”

  “She probably just wants to tear me a new one.”

  “But you haven’t even read it yet.”

  Rosa got to her feet. “Wait here, okay?”

  Iole pointed to the security guard. “He’s not going to let us leave. When you bring someone to the hospital with a bullet in his head, they don’t let you go home just like that.”

  “I’ll only be a minute, okay?” Rosa left her on the plastic chair and strode down the white corridor. The security man in his dark blue uniform moved to intercept her, but Rosa pointed to the nearby door of the ladies’ room, and he nodded.

  She shut herself into one of the cubicles. The message was from Zoe’s number, no doubt about that. Reluctantly, she read the text.

  we need help, it said, but she had to read it three times before she could take it in. were captured went in car not sure where deep ravine. And finally: not too good but alone no guard ask alessandro he may know where come help us.

  As if dazed, she stared at the characters. The message looked like any other: black lettering on a white background.

  Had Cesare sent his men to intercept Zoe and Florinda on their way back from the tribunal? He would have to eliminate them to cover up for a breach of the concordat. And everyone who had known their whereabouts was very probably dead.

  She didn’t need Alessandro’s help to identify the place. The end of the unfinished expressway. Cesare must have planned for them to disappear inside one of the ancient Siculian cave tombs on the rock face of the canyon. If they were held captive in there, it would be next to impossible to find them. But if they were still out in the open, it wasn’t too late.

  She couldn’t wait for Quattrini. Couldn’t just sit there doing nothing.

  Taking care not to let anything show, she went past the security guard and back to her chair, where she talked quietly to Iole.

  Soon after that, the girl suddenly threw a fit of hysterics. Screaming, Iole flung open the door to surgery and raced along the corridor, calling Fundling’s name again and again.

  “Hey!” shouted the security man. Cursing, he gave chase.

  Rosa waited two or three seconds, then jumped up and hurried in the other direction, walking faster and faster until she was almost running.

  Two minutes later she was driving the black Jeep out of the parking lot, turned onto the A20 going west, and raced at top speed toward the end of the world.

  THE SECRET

  SHE HAD NEARLY REACHED Her Journey’s end when another text message came in.

  florinda dying come quick.

  Rosa tried to call Zoe back, but only got her voice mail.

  When she had passed the barricades and was turning onto the asphalt, the next message reached her.

  gagged only fingers free idiots forgot to take my cell

  phone

  Rosa tapped in an answer:

  can you read this?

  yes

  sure there’s no one with you?

  After a few nerve-racking moments of waiting:

  yes

  She briefly contemplated asking Quattrini for help after all. But the judge was likely to be unforgiving, now that Rosa had made herself scarce yet again.

  Suppose she tried Alessandro? As soon as the idea of him came to her, her mind was in turmoil, and she couldn’t think straight. But there was no use hesitating now.

  what’s wrong with Florinda? she texted Zoe back.

  injured came the answer, after an endless wait. bleeding to death

  Rosa’s arms felt too heavy to hold the wheel. Even driving straight ahead cost her an effort.

  It was midday now. Dense gray clouds were moving north, rolling over and over in the sky like smoke from a gigantic fire. As if all Africa were in flames on the other side of the Mediterranean. Storms were raging in the upper strata of the atmosphere, and strong gusts of wind buffeted the Jeep.

  with you soon, she typed, to reassure Zoe and herself. Only a couple of miles now. On her visits to the unfinished expressway with Alessandro, it had never seemed so long. Today it went on and on to the horizon.

  zoe?

  hurry

  Quattrini would have tried to stop her, so she called emergency services and asked them to send an ambulance. Asked how many injured people there were, she had to answer evasively. “Probably two. One seriously injured.” They wanted to know her name; she declined to give it. Was she sure, they asked, that this wasn’t some stupid hoax call? “No, goddammit, it’s not!” Then she must give her name. “Lilia Dionisi,” she said.

  When she broke the connection, she had a devastating feeling that she would wait in vain for help to arrive. She stared grimly ahead over the steering wheel, but she still couldn’t bring herself to call the judge. Not yet.

  A text message from Zoe arrived. can hear you

  And next moment, and see you

  Rosa slowed down as the horizon sank lower and lower, and the mountains on the other side of the ravine came into sight. The place where the road stopped short loomed ahead.

  A dark line at the edge of the abyss.

  Someone was lying on the asphalt a few feet from the drop.

  She trod on the gas once more. Everything was muted: her perception, her feelings.

  As she came closer, she could make out details. A woman’s slender body in a black skirt suit, torn pantyhose, no shoes.

  She was lying on her side, facing the abyss, with her back to Rosa. Her long blond hair fanned out over the ground. The cold winds from down below blew single strands in the air, making them dance around her head like golden snakes.

  Florinda, thought Rosa. But where was Zoe?

  As she braked she looked around. Builders’ rubble was piled on both sides of the road, and the remains of structures to consolidate the former bridge. The debris formed an irregular rampart, many feet high in some places, broken down in others. Walls of rock rose high beyond it, the edges of the track that had been blasted into the mountains to build the expressway.

  She stopped the Jeep only a few yards from the edge. Florinda lay three feet from the driver’s door, motionless. Rosa couldn’t see whether she was breathing.

  Before she got out, acting on a sudden impulse, she opened the glove compartment. She was driving a Mafia vehicle, so there should really be—

  No. Chewing gum. Tissues. But no gun.

  Now she did tap in Quattrini’s number after all, placed her thumb on enter, but didn’t press the key. She kept the cell phone clutched in her fist as she got out and went over to her aunt.

  “Florinda?”

  Even as she said the name she realized her mistake. The clothes were Florinda’s, yes, but it wasn’t her wearing them.

  “Zoe!”

  She fell to her knees with a cry. The cool winds coming up from the depths below tugged at her hair. She began to feel terribly cold.

  She let the cell phone drop and rolled Zoe over on her back. Blond strands spread over her sister’s face. Her eyes were closed. A rivulet of blood at the corner of her mouth had dried and cracked; red flakes of it were falling over her white throat.

  Her hands trembling, Rosa tried to feel Zoe’s pulse. She couldn’t find it.

  She threw her head back and let out a wail of agony. It echoed through the ravine like a chorus of ghosts replying from the ancient cave tombs in the rocks.

  Her fingers were shaking too much to search for the pulse again. Frantically, she tried once more. At Zoe’s throat. Her left wrist. Then her right wrist. Her sister’s skin was cold and white.

  Deep in her mind, doubts stirred, although pain and despair almost numbed them. There was no cell phone here. Zoe couldn’t have sent any text messages.

  “Good afternoon, Rosa.”

  She was taken by surprise, yet not truly shocked.

  Salvatore Pantaleone stepped out from the stones and rubble beside
the expressway. The old man’s white ponytail was tossed over one shoulder. His eye patch was like a black hole in his face, attracting far more attention than a good eye. This was the first time that Rosa had seen him by daylight, and he looked to her grayer, bowed down with worries, exhausted.

  He had Zoe’s cell phone in his right hand.

  “I’ve learned more about using this thing,” he said, looking at the little device as if he surprised himself, and after a moment he shrugged his shoulders. He swung his arm back, and then flung the phone with considerable force down into the abyss.

  “It was you.”

  “We had to meet somewhere you wouldn’t set your new friend the judge on me.”

  She had pushed one hand under Zoe’s head and was still keeping it off the asphalt. Now she laid it gently down on the road surface, stroked her sister’s cheek with her left hand, and struggled with her grief.

  But her body refused to obey her. It was as if it had been separated from her mind. She had to force herself to turn her attention back to him.

  “Did you kill Zoe?”

  “I did it for you. I regret it, but it was necessary.”

  Rosa tasted vomit rising in her throat, and swallowed it down. “Where’s Florinda?”

  “Not here.”

  “Is she dead, too?”

  “You are the new head of the Alcantara clan now. Just as I said you would be. We’ll work together as a team, you and I. It may take a little while for us to get accustomed to each other, but—”

  Every word, every breath was a struggle. “You know that I’ve informed on you to the judge. And you still want me to help you?”

  He nodded. “But first I will help you. You’ll be needing it. You’re only seventeen. Florinda’s advisers and business managers will soon be clustering around you like flies, trying to take advantage of you for their own purposes. There may be one or two of them who can be trusted, but the rest are a pack of bloodhounds without a shred of conscience.”

  “You fixed the whole thing. All of it.”

  The old man came closer, shaking his head. “Much of what Cesare Carnevare did has turned out to be useful in retrospect. But that had nothing to do with me. I merely took my chance when it presented itself. The fact that Remeo was there and could do what he did … well, sometimes you also need a little luck.”

  “Zoe and Florinda … were they at that tribunal at all? Or were they already … elsewhere when we met at the palazzo?”

  “A body dead for several hours doesn’t feel like that, my child. Of course they were there.” He nodded toward the lifeless Zoe. “I liked your sister. For a long time I thought she might be the one to … but she doesn’t have your edge, your tough mind, your determination. And then there was that business with the other girl. Unfortunate.”

  She had to force herself to go on asking questions as she looked for a way of killing him. Here and now. Even without a weapon. Slowly, she straightened up until they were facing each other over Zoe’s body.

  “And Florinda? What was it about her that didn’t suit you any longer?”

  “Her bitterness. Her uncontrollable rages. The way she assessed many deals—well, let’s say emotionally, thus wrecking them. Your father ought to have led the Alcantaras, but he insisted on leaving Sicily with your mother. Florinda was never fit for the position.”

  “Nor am I, any more than Florinda. And I don’t want it, either.” She could hardly open her lips. Her tongue felt cold and hard, as if frozen.

  He wagged his raised forefinger at her. “You just don’t yet know that you do want it. Or maybe you don’t want to admit it to yourself.” He took a step closer, and was now right in front of Zoe’s body, not six feet away from Rosa. “You and I have what it takes to stand up to the Hungry Man.”

  “Me!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Oh, sure!”

  “You and I,” he repeated. “You as my right hand. Because deep down you have moral standards that Florinda lacked. The reborn Lycaon can’t be fought with cruelty and brutality; he and his supporters have more than enough of that themselves. But conviction, and a kind of sense of justice that has nothing to do with the fatuous ideals of your friend the judge … those are valuable weapons to use against him.”

  “Nonsense,” she whispered, and let the wind carry the word over to him. She looked down at Zoe again, and welcomed the cold spreading through her body. By now she had no sensation at all in her arms and legs. That felt good.

  “TABULA,” she said quietly. “Maybe they have the right idea.”

  He smiled. “I’ll teach you things about them, too. And about the gaps in the crowd. There are answers to such questions, did you know that? The answers to everything lie deep down in the sea.”

  Have you ever wondered who’s in the gaps in the crowd? That was what Fundling had asked her, in the car on the way to the harbor where the yacht was moored.

  A voice whispered, “Rosa?”

  Zoe’s pale hand moved up Rosa’s calf. Her voice was so faint that the sound of the wind almost drowned it out. But it was her voice, too weak to give Rosa much hope, yet all the same—

  “Poor, persistent little thing,” said Pantaleone, drawing a pistol.

  “No!” Rosa leaped across her sister, charging at him. Even as she jumped, the cold overpowered her. Finally became one with her.

  Ice crystals ran through her blood vessels. Frost covered her eyes and then faded away again. After that, she was someone else.

  Pantaleone smiled.

  Only very briefly. Almost proudly.

  His eyes widened. Turned dark. The pistol fell to the ground. He was also changing.

  Then she was on him.

  TWO ANIMALS

  IF THERE HAD BEEN anyone else in this place at the end of the world, close to the precipitous drop of the deep ravine with the cave tombs on the far side of it, he would have been presented with an astonishing sight.

  Two animals lying motionless on dusty asphalt. They are not far from a jagged, broken edge where the road once led to a bridge. Today it ends in nothing, in a fall into a canyon of fissured rock.

  One of the creatures is a snake almost nine feet long, with a body as thick as a human thigh. Her scaly skin is the color of amber, patterned with brown and yellow and deep, dark red. Her head lies on one side, her eyes are wide-open—the slits of the pupils are a glacial blue, unusual for a reptile. She has two fangs, long, curved, sharp as daggers, and a forked tongue.

  The snake’s body winds in a spiral around the other animal, a mighty wild boar with a gray coat and only one eye. He lost the other long ago, and the eye socket gapes open like a knothole in the branch of a tree. He lies lifeless on the asphalt, legs slack, muzzle with its huge tusks open. His tongue lolls out, not delicate like the snake’s, but coarse and gray. His body is covered with old scars. Death has only just taken him, and the flies don’t yet dare to settle on the corpse. Several of his ribs broke when the snake wrapped herself more and more tightly around him, crushing the life out of his lungs. It took him a long time to die, but now it is over at last.

  And while three eyes stare at the stormy sky, a transformation suddenly begins. The shape of the boar distorts in the huge snake’s embrace. At the same time his coat disappears under his skin. His muzzle flattens, turning inward, and is smoothed out; his forelegs become arms. One of his broken ribs pierces his wrinkled chest, because human skin will not stretch enough to cover the splintered bone. His tongue retreats between split lips, the yellow tusks disappear. Soon no more of the boar can be seen.

  And now the snake’s own metamorphosis begins. Her body grows shorter, thickens in some places, becomes more slender in others. The eyes change shape, their glacially bright blue intensifies. The ends of the forked tongue merge, and the fangs disappear. Finally the scaly skin on the snake’s head divides into strings that swiftly split again, first into strands, then into separate hairs. Soon a wild mane of blond hair surrounds the head of the girl who, only moments ago, was a snake. There is
nothing left of the reptile except a few dry scales on the asphalt.

  Rosa wakes and blinks at the daylight. Naked and weak, she crawls away from Pantaleone’s body, finds the cell phone, presses a key with shaking fingers.

  “Quattrini,” she whispers, without raising the phone to her mouth. “You can have the old man now.”

  Zoe’s life ebbed out of her in a single long breath. Rosa had been kneeling on the ground, cradling her sister’s head and shoulders in her lap, gently stroking her long hair. Zoe’s eyes sought hers, but she could see that they were barely able to take in any of her surroundings.

  “Was it us?” Zoe managed to gasp.

  “Don’t talk now. Help will soon be coming.”

  “Was it … us?”

  Rosa saw one of her own tears drop, as if in slow motion, on Zoe’s cheek. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Were we … the traitors?”

  “I went to a judge. I broke the law of silence.”

  “Not that.” Zoe’s lips quivered. “TABULA,” she whispered.

  Rosa’s memory lay hidden behind a wall of pain and grief, yet something stirred slightly in her mind. One of the families had given the Arcadian dynasties away to TABULA—the Alcantaras, Cesare had said.

  “It could have been anyone, maybe even the Carnevares themselves.” She listened to her own words; it kept her from losing her mind then and there.

  Zoe coughed up blood. “You must … must find out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” She broke off, her breath coming noisily as she relaxed her face muscles. “Because of Dad,” she whispered.

  Rosa shook her head. “Listen, now you must—”

  “Because of Dad, Rosa. Because of him and TABULA.”

  Then Zoe smiled, and died.

  A MESSAGE

  LIFE-SUPPORT MACHINES HUMMED AROUND Fundling’s bed. His head was bandaged, and propped on white pillows to keep it from tipping over sideways. Someone had shaved his black hair off. His lids were closed, but the eyes under them moved feverishly.