Waterfall

by Lisa T. Bergren

  We had to get out of here. Back to our own time. Immediately. It was the only thing that could save me.

  “Lord Marcello, I must speak to you in private,” Lia said, reading my mind.

  “I am not leaving her,” he said, staring at me.

  “Then have them leave,” I managed to say, my voice ragged.

  He studied me, then raised his hand, clearing the room of servants. Cook was last to go, reluctantly closing the door behind her. Luca remained. “He is as close to me as Fortino. Say what you must before us both,” Marcello said, pulling his eyes from me for but a second to look Lia in the eye.

  She came around the bed and knelt beside me and Marcello. Luca hovered over his shoulder. “What I am about to tell you will be difficult to understand. We do not yet understand it ourselves.”

  I cried out, wondering if this was what it felt like to have a baby. Labor pains. My insides tearing. Was I already bleeding within? And added to that, was I about to have a full-on heart attack at seventeen?

  “Three weeks past we came to you, through the tomb.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Marcello said. “We remember it well.”

  “Nay,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm, forcing him to look her in the eye. “We came from another time. The same place, but hundreds of years into the future. We came from that time, to you, here, through the tomb. It is some sort of portal.”

  His eyes grew large and his brow furrowed as he stared at her. “You are witches?” he asked, his tone incredulous. “Practitioners of some dark magic?”

  “Nay,” she said calmly. “Nothing but two girls who were transported through time—as if we walked through a doorway in error.”

  He rose, looking frightened and confused. “You speak of madness.”

  Luca stood beside him, arms folded, no trace of humor in his face.

  Lia rose too as I cried out with another pang.

  “I must get her home, Marcello. To our own time. She is dying here. You said yourself there is no antidote. But there, in the future, we have antidotes to nearly everything. If I can get her to Radda in Chianti in time…”

  I winced, thinking of how far the Etruscan site was from any real sort of medical care, even in our own time. I cried out again, sounding pitiful, even to my own ears. When it was over, I gasped for breath as more tears rolled down my face.

  Lia stepped forward and grabbed Marcello’s tunic with both hands. “Do you love her? Do you love her as you have professed?” she demanded, all tough, trying to snap him out of his shock.

  He stared down at me. I could feel his hot gaze but could not meet it. I was writhing again, shuddering as a wave of pain shook me from the center of my gut outward. The pace was increasing, the time between the pangs diminishing.

  “Yes. God help me, I love her,” he said angrily.

  “Then save her,” she said. “Save her. Help me get her to the tomb.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Luca went running to the stables for horses. Cook and Fortino appeared in the doorway. “I am taking her to another doctor,” Marcello lied, staring into my eyes as he stroked my sweating forehead. I was panting like a pregnant woman trying to bear through constant contractions. At least, like what I’d seen on TV. “She has taken a turn for the worse.”

  “Let me send a messenger,” Fortino said. “Bring the physician here. We shall send our fastest rider.”

  “Nay,” Marcello said. “She will not survive but another day. She has ingested arsenic. We must try and make it to Siena.”

  Fortino and Cook both brought hands to their mouths.

  “Pray that we make it.” He rose. “Please, return to the dining hall and spread word that all is well. Keep everyone at peace. And away from us.”

  “Lady Rossi,” I panted.

  “Leave Lady Rossi to me,” he ground out, pulling aside my covers, and wincing as he saw the widening pool of blood upon the side of my gown. The wound had opened a full two inches, now oozing with each twist of my body.

  Yeah, you’re doing a number on yourself, I told myself. But I couldn’t help it. I again grew rigid, holding my breath against the searing pain. And my heart was seriously going crazy.

  “Pull some leggings of some sort over her,” he said to Lia.

  He turned to the others. “Return to the dining hall and keep everyone inside. Bring forth the jugglers, the singer again. Captivate them. No one must see us as we depart. If somebody wants her dead, I want them to believe they have accomplished their task—so I can hunt them down at my leisure.”

  We could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves from outside, through the open doorways.

  Cook bent and kissed my forehead. “God be with you, m’lady. Your return shall be my constant prayer.”

  “And mine as well,” Fortino said, bending to kiss my hand, even as Marcello pulled me up and into his arms.

  The two turned and scurried out, shouting at servants in the corridor to follow them, return to the feast. Luca appeared and glanced at Lia. “You need water? Food?”

  “We need nothing but to get her home,” she said, striding past him. Marcello followed her, holding me hard against him as I grew rigid with another seizure, arching back this time. Outside, he handed me to Luca for a moment, mounted, then reached for me, pulling me into his arms, stretching my legs across the mount, the better to hold me through the ride ahead, I assumed. No attempt at a sidesaddle this time.

  Distantly, I understood that I’d be dead if I fell off the horse. My sides would split open, and it would be all over.

  He shouted at the tower guards, and the massive gates were opened before us. Would it be the last time I ever saw Castello Forelli? I felt a wave of sorrow, wishing I was well, able to take one last look.

  He kept a firm grip on me as we tore down the path, the same path we’d taken the night of the attack upon Castello Forelli, and later Castello Paratore. I could tell he was trying to be gentle, easing me forward to duck a branch. But every movement was either an agony to my side or a searing to my gut. And my heartbeat was making me crazy. I literally thought it might stop at any point.

  Again and again we came to a stop as the pain overtook me and Marcello struggled to not let me slip to the ground. I concentrated on taking one breath at a time, of surviving just one more breath…

  In time, we were crossing the creek, climbing the winding path to the top of the hill. To where I had first met him. Luca and Lia were already there, faster on their own horses. Luca held a torch high, waiting by the tomb’s entrance, his brow a mass of confusion and frustration and fear. He handed the torch to Lia and reached for me. I pretty much slumped down into his arms. I hurt too much to even think about being embarrassed. I was crying pretty hard by then.

  Marcello dismounted and followed Lia into the tomb’s entrance, then turned to accept my body from Luca, dragging me inward. Luca followed behind.

  When we reached the center, Marcello looked up at Lia, who stood near the handprints, waiting. “You merely touch those, and you will be gone? Back from whence you came?”

  “I hope so,” Lia said, “for her sake.” Her face was a mask of sorrow and fear. “Let me hold her. I do not think that you should be touching us when our hands are on the prints, lest you leap through time with us.”

  “Mayhap I should,” he said, rising, with me in his arms again.

  “Mayhap we both should,” Luca said, stepping closer.

  “Nay,” Lia said. “It might keep us from going. And if you were to come to our time—you would be as lost as we felt here.”

  I panted, the pain constant, but I could not keep my eyes from Marcello’s profile, trying to memorize the line of his nose, the curve of his cheek, the strength of the muscles twitching in his jaw and neck.

  This was it. One way or another, I was saying goo
d-bye. Forever.

  I could tell I was dying then. Because it didn’t hurt.

  It was more of a dim assessment. An understanding. Fact.

  “Gabriella,” he said, looking down into my face. “If all it took was for you to touch the prints to return to your own time, why did you and Evangelia not do that as soon as you could?”

  “We had to be together,” I said, panting. “It doesn’t work with just one of us. And there was…you.”

  His brows lowered a tiny bit. “You stayed—because of me?”

  “Forgive me,” I said, shaking my head. “I interfered. Between you and Romana. In so many ways.”

  “Nay,” he said, kissing my forehead tenderly, then my lips, for such a brief moment I wondered if I’d dreamed it. He set me on my feet. Lia wrapped her arm around my waist to hold me up, her fingers from her other hand already on her print.

  Marcello lifted my hand in his, kissing the pad of each of my fingers, then looking into my eyes. “You did not interfere, Gabriella. I love you. You have stolen my heart,” he said, closing my hand in a fist, covering it with his own. “You hold it now. Do you understand that?”

  “I do.”

  “Then, if you love me, Gabriella,” he said, his eyes mad with urgency, “as I love you, return to me.”

  “You cannot ask that of her—” Lia said.

  “Return to me,” he continued, ignoring her, never looking away from my face, “and you shall find me waiting.”

  I wanted to tell him there would be no return.

  I wanted to tell him to go to Romana and do what he ought. What was expected of him.

  But all I could do was watch as he slipped the palm of my hand to the wall, directly above the print.

  I cried out as the muscle at my side stretched and the half-healed wound split further open, just as another wave of pain emanated from my gut.

  “Gabi!” Lia cried.

  I had dragged my hand to the print, and for the first time in hours, I felt heat and pain from something other than my torso, my pounding heart.

  The room was stretching, spinning, yawning wide in that fun-house mirror sort of way.

  And in a breath, Marcello and Luca were gone from the room, as if they had never been there at all.

  CHAPTER 28

  I opened my eyes and stared upward, through the hole in the roof of the tomb, up and up to a blue sky. I felt no pain, and for the first time, wondered if I was dead. If this was the afterlife.

  This it, God?

  I shifted and felt the grit of sand beneath my head, pebbles digging into my back. Nope, not heaven. At least, not as I had imagined it.

  “Gabi!” Lia groaned, beside me.

  I turned and looked at her. She rolled to her hands and knees, then crawled over to me and pulled me into her arms. “Gabi, Gabi. Are you okay?”

  I pulled her closer, assessing my limbs and gut. “I—I think so,” I said in wonder. I lifted the side of my short, bloody gown and gazed at my skin—it was perfect, whole.

  “Come on, we have to get you to a doctor,” she said.

  But I held onto her, not moving. “No. I—I don’t think so.”

  “What?”

  I moved my hand down my ribs to my waist, to where the gash and sutures and wound had been…and felt nothing but skin and muscle, firm. I shook my head. “I’m fine, Lia. Healed. It’s as if it never happened.”

  We heard voices, a shout. Someone was coming.

  “Over to the edge,” Lia said in an urgent whisper.

  We scuttled over to the side of the tomb, out from view of the passageway. Somebody paused at the entrance, shined his light in our direction and paused as if listening. “Chi c’è?” Who is there?

  I covered my mouth, because I suddenly had the insane urge to giggle. Who was there? Oh, nobody but two girls who just traveled through time. Don’t mind us.

  Lia seized my hand and squeezed it, hearing the man begin to crawl inward. We were going to be in so much trouble. But part of me didn’t care. How could I? We’d been through so much. Compared to all of that, what was ahead? A grounding? That was nothing. Nothing!

  I scrambled to my feet, hands on hips, determined to meet the guard, not as a cowering victim. But as a…as a…she-warrior.

  Lia groaned and then came to her feet beside me just as the guard caught sight of us, shouted in alarm, and stared into our faces.

  “Chi sei? Cosa fai?” He barked the questions, one after the other. Who are you? What are you doing?

  “We are Gabriella and Evangelia Betarrini,” I calmly returned in Italian. Still looking at my bloody gown. It hadn’t all been a dream—

  “Sta male?” he asked, taking a step closer to me, seeing the blood. He wanted to know if I was hurt!

  “I am fine, really. I know it looks bad. We…we just seemed to have become a little lost.”

  Lia coughed beside me, covering a choking laugh. I laughed then. I couldn’t help it. A little lost was one vast understatement. Lia dissolved into giggles, then, laughing so hard she was shaking. And I was getting carried along with her. The more angry the guard became, shouting questions at us, the more we laughed, almost-wetting-our-pants kind of laughing.

  Another guard arrived, setting us off on another round of laughter as he stared at me in my bloody shirt and Lia in her medieval gown. They probably thought we were in the middle of some weird, ritualistic act.

  But then Dr. Manero arrived, all stern and a bit triumphant in finding us there. No doubt he’d use it against Mom. Use us as Exhibit A as to why foreign scholars could not be trusted on Italian soil.

  It was only as they were ushering us out that I glimpsed the handprints and instantly sobered. They were pushing me forward, ducking my head and forcing me outward, down the passageway, and I wanted to dig in, push back, refuse to go. They were forcing me away from the path.

  The only path back.

  Back to Marcello.

  The only path back…to love.

  If you enjoyed Waterfall, I would be honored if you would tell others by writing a review. Go here to write a review on Goodreads.

  Thank you!

  —Lisa T. Bergren

  … a little more …

  When a delightful concert comes to an end,

  the orchestra might offer an encore.

  When a fine meal comes to an end,

  it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.

  When a great story comes to an end,

  we think you may want to linger.

  And so, we offer ...

  AfterWords—just a little something more after you

  have finished a David C Cook novel.

  We invite you to stay awhile in the story.

  Thanks for reading!

  Turn the page for ...

  • Discussion Questions

  • Interview with the Author

  • Facebook Fan Site

  • Acknowledgments

  • Historical Notes

  • Bibliography

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Grab your girlfriends and have a discussion at your local coffeehouse about this book! Here are a few to get you started:

  1. What was your favorite part of the novel, and why?

  2. What part of the novel did you not like? Why?

  3. What would be hardest about living in 1332? No showers? No hair products? No forks? No technology? No cars? Using a chamber pot? What would you miss most?

  4. Did you relate to Gabi? Why? What is it about her that you see in yourself?

  5. If you had been Gabi, would you have fallen for Marcello or Luca? Why?

  6. Is it ever okay to steal another girl’s guy? Why or why not? Why was it okay for Gabi to do so? Or was it?


  7. At first, Gabi thinks she can work things out on her own. Find her own way back to the tomb and through it. She’s kind of prideful and stubborn about it, even (sneaking out of the castle, climbing down the wall, taking off on the horse, etc.). How does pride sometimes keep us stuck in a tough situation?

  8. Do you think all things, good or bad, happen for a reason? Why or why not?

  9. Gabi wonders why God has allowed this to happen to her. If it happened to you, would you think it was God? Or something else?

  10. What do you think of the concept of “seizing the day”? Meaning, making the most of what you have, right now, right here? What does living that out do for a person?

  11. When Gabi is hovering between life and death, she thinks about what she is living for. What do you live for?

  12. If one of your parents died, what is one thing they always say that you’d always remember—that would actually help you deal with life?

  13. If you could go back to any time period, when would it be and why? (It may be medieval, like this book.) What would be the toughest part of living in those years for you? What would you miss most?

  INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

  Q. You’ve written contemporary romances, historical women’s fiction, general fiction, and more. Why turn to YA fiction now?

  A. I’m always drawn to a new challenge. And since I have teen and tween daughters in the house, it’s been natural for me to start reading some of their fiction alongside them. I was hooked with the Twilight series and Hunger Games books. I wanted to give them something they could hand to their friends as well as read themselves.

  Q. Have they read Waterfall?

  A. My eldest has. Olivia and her friends were my very first readers. They set me straight on things that would make other kids roll their eyes. Then I handed it off to more readers in my focus group, and they helped me refine the book further.

  Q. Was it hard to write in the medieval time period?