The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (31 page)

“We didn’t find your bell or your notebook,” he said.

“I found my bell last night,” I told him. “The notebook … it had a copy of the poem in it, and a few other small notes. But I think the important stuff was all in my study notebook, the one I keep in the shop. I’m not sure. I’ll try to remember.”

“Yes,” he said. “Try.”

We met each other’s eyes.

“I will go,” he said grimly, “and stand on the doorstep of that damned poet, until he speaks to me.”

He went to the door. I put the things he’d given me down on the bedspread.

“Nonno,” I said.

He turned. I stood up.

“I don’t know what to say, either,” I said.

He came back to me and hugged me, then kissed me on both cheeks.

“Have a safe trip,” he said, and the words seemed to come hard.

I went back and sat on the bed and stared at nothing for what seemed like hours. Still, by the time Francesca got home, I had managed to pack. She came in, saying, “Has Nonna told you … Ah, you are packed. Good.” As I hefted the suitcase out into the hall, I saw Égide was home, too. He held out his hands and said, “Let me take it, Mia.” I followed him down to Francesca’s little hybrid. He set my bag in the trunk, then turned and took me by the shoulders. He looked into my eyes.

“You think you can’t bear it,” he said. “But you can. And in time, you will find a use for what you have experienced.”

I stared at him. If anyone else in the family, except maybe Nonno or Nonna, had said this, I would have thought, if not said, “I don’t believe it.” Because it was Égide, I didn’t doubt a word he said. For the first time, I wondered why he had left his home. I saw a history in his eyes that seemed to dwarf anything I was going through.

Nonna came up to us, Francesca behind her, then Nonno, carrying two more bags.

“You should have let me carry those,” Égide told him. Nonno rolled his eyes.

“Ready?” Nonna asked me, not looking at her husband.

“I think so, Nonna,” I said.

Égide took Francesca in his arms.

“Be safe,” he said.

“I will. I’ll come home soon.” She smiled at him, and they kissed in a way I didn’t remember having witnessed before. They kissed like Bernardo and I had. I felt the tears prickle in my eyes. Francesca broke away for a moment to say good-bye to her grandfather, and I got more good-bye kisses on my cheeks from him and from Égide. Then, while Francesca, Égide, and I finished loading the car, I watched Nonno Giuliano and Nonna Laura out of the corner of my eye: they stood apart, saying nothing, until Nonno opened his arms, raising his eyebrows with a question. Nonna stepped into them, and the two of them clung to each other. He murmured something I couldn’t hear. Then he let Nonna go, and Francesca started the engine.

My tears came again as we rattled down the streets and out onto the highway. I cried until I fell asleep, speeding west past fields and houses. We stopped in a rest area and ate sandwiches Nonna had made while the strange mountains around us sank into the darkness.

When I awoke, we were driving along a steep coastline in the mountains, with no barriers between us and the sea that was striking the cliffs below. We passed old houses made of stone and plaster and once even a castle that jutted out above
the sea, with elaborate battlements like the Castello Sforzesco. Then we were rumbling down cobbled streets again, into a town built on either side of a steep, narrow ravine. The houses charged up the sides of it, the topmost ones looking down into their neighbor’s yards. We parked in a square that could hardly hold five cars. Francesca opened the trunk and began pulling out our luggage. Then we started walking down the cramped main street, carrying our suitcases.

As we descended, I gasped.

“You all right?” asked Francesca without turning her head.

“Yes,” I said. “I just … I saw this town in a dream.”

“You did, did you?” said Nonna, sounding unsurprised. “Welcome to Vernazza, one of the Cinque Terre.”

“The place where the
sciacchetrà
is from!” I said, remembering.

Francesca laughed. “Yes.”

We turned up a side street and set down our bags just outside a stone house with a worn, wooden door that seemed polished by the centuries. I looked up at the crest above the doorframe.

There was a shield with a bird on it, like the one above our shop door. This bird, however, wasn’t just perched there, like the shop one; instead it was building itself a nest. Wavy lines of stone undulated beneath the nest.

I pointed. “That’s our bird, from the shop,” I said in a voice still thick with sleep.

“Yes,” Nonna said.

“Why is it building a nest? What are the wavy lines?”

“The wavy lines are waves,” she said. “It is building its nest upon the sea.”

“Why?” I asked.

“We should go inside. You need to lie down, and we need to make you some food.”

“Why?” I repeated, standing my ground. “Why a nest on the sea?”

They both stared at me.

“Because,” said Nonna, “this bird is the halcyon bird, the kingfisher. The ancients told of it. It builds its nest at the winter solstice, calming the seas for twelve days so that it can hatch its eggs in peace.”

The phrase she used was
uccello d’alcione
—bird of the halcyon, but the word
alcione
tugged at my attention.

Francesca said, “Something troubles you about this?”

“My demon called me
alcione
,” I said.

“Ah,” said Nonna.

I held still, looking up at the stone bird, nearly afraid to breathe for fear of losing this new connection.

“Well, he has known our family for some time,” Nonna reasoned.

I shook my head, thinking of the warmth and hurt in his voice when he had said that word. I felt certain there was more to it than that.

“Come,” said Francesca. “You need to rest, Mia.”

I let her take my arm and lead me inside. The house didn’t feel like our apartment in the Via Fiori Oscuri, dark and full of old furniture. The walls were whitewashed. The furniture was plain, and there wasn’t a lot of it. Francesca helped me up more stairs to a snug room with a single, shuttered window and a small bed. She said, “We need to air the sheets, but you can lie down for now. I’ll bring your suitcase in a minute.”

She walked over to the window and flung open the shutters to the night air. I sat on the bed and looked out, across a stone-paved courtyard with a lemon tree and a pot of basil in it, down through the gaps in the houses, to a yellow stone harbor and the Mediterranean Sea.

I put out my hand to touch the iron bedstead and ran my fingers over the chipped paint. I looked out at the water, where the moon struck pale sparks from the waves.

I don’t remember lying down on the bed or falling asleep. I remember waking, rising slowly through transparent layers of dreams, filled with scenes now familiar to me: a mirrored lake with ancient oaks, a bird building a nest upon the face of the water. Some things were different. Now a great black bear walked down through the oaks toward the water. I heard Nonna’s voice saying,
This is the halcyon bird
as it flew out to its floating home with another stick, its nest dark against the shining sea.

I woke all the way up to a patch of sun on my face. I smelled garlic, olive oil, and baking bread. My stomach growled.

I went to the window, looking out at the sun slowly lowering in the sky, the sea stretching to the horizon. I had slept the day away. I felt like I had when I first arrived in Milan, jet-lagged and disorientated. Suddenly, I wanted to talk to Gina. I decided to ask if we had Internet here, though from all I had seen of this stone town, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the neighbors wandering around dressed like figures from one of the paintings in Santa Maria del Carmine.

The bedroom held a single table; on it was a stack of bedding that smelled like the sun. I made the bed and came downstairs, rubbing my eyes.

“There you are,” said Francesca, looking up from the pile of greens she was chopping. “Good. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you.” A thought struck me. “Francesca, this house … Is it well warded? I mean …”

She smiled at me, a wry expression on her face.

“You’ve really become one of them, haven’t you,” she said. I felt proud, even though I couldn’t tell if she thought this was a good thing. “Yes, it is well warded. We have owned it for a long time, longer than the shop and the apartment in Milan. It is our halcyon nest,” she added, jerking her head toward the front door.

“Good,” I said, and felt a shudder of relief go through me. Only later did I realize I might have offended her by suggesting that they would take me someplace that was less than safe. “Can I help with anything?” I asked.

She put down her knife again, and looked at me, considering.

“You are sure you don’t want to rest?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I’d like to, but I feel weird watching you do all the work, and maybe it’s better if I do something.”

She nodded. “Come pit olives, then.”

I brought the olives and a spare bowl to the kitchen table, and sat pitting them, the tips of my fingers turning purple-brown. I sat staring at the growing pile of olives in the bowl and thought slow, olive-pitting thoughts for a while. Then I thought of Bernardo, and tried to remember where I’d put my cell phone.
I should call him and tell him where I am
, I thought, before I remembered the look on his face as he turned his head away.

“Have you heard anything from Milan?” I asked.

Her smile was sad this time. “He is recovering,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, in a small voice. I kept pitting olives until my face was wet and as salty as my fingers. When I was finished, I brought the bowl back on the counter and washed my hands and face, rinsing the tear sting from my eyes. Francesca said nothing; she glanced over at me a couple of times, while checking the oven.

Finally, she told me, “Chop those olives finely, with garlic.”

“Sure,” I said.

She nodded and turned away to sauté the greens. Then she started heating olive oil, butter, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper flakes in a pot. I watched her wash and dry two flat fish fillets.

I looked at her back, her perfect glossy chignon, her straight shoulders as she cooked. I understood that she was being kind. There was something different about her, too. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. The front door shut and Nonna came in, holding two bottles of wine.

“Salvatore gave these to us,” she announced, lifting them in the air.

“Wonderful!” said her granddaughter. “Mia, wait until you taste Salvatore’s wine.”

“You’re up,” grunted Nonna, sounding like a bear. “Good. How do you feel?”

“So-so,” I said.

She nodded. “But you slept well,” she stated.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good. Sleep, eat, walk along the coast, rest. That’s what you need. Go sit and look at the sea. It’s good for you. Breathe the air. It will all help.”

“Climb up to the tower,” suggested Francesca.

I had seen the tower on the way into town, standing watch over the headland. It wasn’t very big, as towers go, but it was higher up than just about everything else around here. The Italian word for tower is
torre
; it felt strange to see part of my family name on signs for tourists.

“Take your time,” Nonna added.

“Okay,” I said.

Our eyes began to water from the pepper flakes. Francesca
laid the fish in a baking pan and spooned the sauce over them. She turned them once, sauced the other side, then took the whole pan in two potholders and set it in the oven, on a rack above a nearly finished tray of focaccia. Then she poured out a boiling pot I hadn’t even noticed, mixing my olive paste with some pasta in the shape of small hats. We sat down to dinner—fresh focaccia, pasta with olive paste, fish that flaked off of our forks, sautéed greens with garlic, and a glass each of Salvatore’s wine, which Nonna explained was made up the street, from grapes grown on the hills above.

“Like
sciacchetrà
,” I murmured.

“Not
sciacchetrà
,” corrected Nonna. “That is made from dried grapes, and it’s amber, not red.”

“She knows that, Nonna,” said Francesca. She turned to me. “We can go down to the wine bar after dinner and have a glass of that, all of us.”

“I need to know,” I said, thinking out loud. “Can I go outside? Alone, I mean? You mentioned walking along the coast, like that’s something I could do. But my bell didn’t save me in the end,” I said.

“How do you know that?” asked Nonna. “Were you wearing it at the time?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, then. He still couldn’t reach you? The bell kept him from possessing you?”

“He reached me all right,” I said. Tears filled my eyes again.

“You know what I mean,” she said. She thought a moment. “But it’s more than that. What do you think your demon will do now?”

“Come after me?” I hazarded.

She looked me in the eye. “You really think that?”

I met her eye, then looked down. “No. I think I will need to go after him,” I said.

We blinked at each other in surprise. Nonna recovered first, nodding at me. “You’ll do,” she said.

After dinner and dishes, we all walked down to the water together through the musty stone alleys, smelling of damp. We passed wider streets leading upward and caught the moist night breeze on our cheeks. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with salt air, as we came out onto the piazza, full of tables and umbrellas spilling out from the restaurants around the edges. Waiters passed us with full plates; I saw four shrimp arranged on a swirl of bright yellow sauce, and a mound of
trofie
, the pasta Nonna had served the night of the Strozzi exorcism, speckled with pesto. I sighed. So much had happened to me, and still the world went on, the tables were set, people went on cooking and eating. I thought of Nonna saying to Anna Maria, “And this family keeps eating up all the butter.”

Francesca and I stopped at the top of the breakwater, looking out to the sea, watching the fishing boats heading out under the waxing moon. Nonna went on to the far end of the pier.