Dark Shimmer (3 page)

A couple of weeks ago, on the tenth of August, we celebrated the feast of San Lorenzo. The people here love him best of all the saints. Hundreds of years ago, some Roman prefect demanded that San Lorenzo give the church's riches to him. So San Lorenzo brought the poor, the lame, the blind, and the afflicted before that prefect, declaring these were the true riches. He was killed, of course—all saints die horribly, it seems to me. Everyone here loves to tell his story.

I would scream right now if Mamma weren't asleep. They're all a bunch of liars. They praise San Lorenzo when they don't agree with him at all. They don't value the afflicted. They hate the afflicted. They hate me.

And even though Mella cried so hard, she let Druda take her baby.

The quiet, familiar sound comes: a boat slides past along the canal. I run out to see who it is. I race beside the canal to the end and stare at the boat till its lamp is out of sight.

Slow footsteps come up behind me. But I know whose they are. I don't turn around.

“Dolce?” says Mamma. She touches my hand. “What are you doing out here?”

“Watching.”

“Watching the lagoon? Bad things happen in the lagoon at night. Come back home.”

“Where are they going, Mamma?”

“Who?”

“A boat passed.”

“Oh. That.” She comes to stand beside me. “The big city.”

“At night?”

“Mmm.”

“How come?”

“They're taking Mella's baby there.”

My teeth clench so hard my ears hurt. “Why?”

“For adoption. He'll be better off there.”

“Why?” My voice gets loud, but I don't care. “They're hateful in the city.”

“It's Mella and Lorenzo's decision. It's their baby. Dolce, come back inside. Come to sleep.” She takes my hand and pulls me behind her.

I give up. My arms ache from emptiness. I should be holding something. I can't think what, though. I stumble through the dark, fall onto the bed, roll so my back is to the open window, plug my ears with my fingers, and shut my eyes firmly. I am cut off from everything.

Except my thoughts.

All babies have big heads and short arms. But Mella's baby wasn't like other babies. Head smaller. Arms longer. Eyes…I don't know how to describe them…just different. Even his hands were different, with skinny fingers that scrabbled the air, all equally separated. Oh, Lord. Mella's baby is like me. He's a monster.

A monster wouldn't be adopted by anyone. And the lagoon is all around us.

Bad things happen in the lagoon at night.

I will never let anyone rip my babies from my arms.

I will never have babies.

“
I
know you're following me.” Giordano looks ahead as he speaks, but for sure he's talking to me. He carries a bucket in each hand.

I stay behind him and let him think he's clever for noticing me. Inside my head I laugh at him for not noticing Gato Zalo, who tracks us both at a distance. Giordano would shout and chase the cat off if he saw him. He'd try to kill him. Everyone says our island is best without predators.

It's not fair. I don't know how Gato Zalo wound up here, but he's got as much right to be here as anyone else. As soon as I can, I'm going to leave him a treat.

I dare to look back at my cat friend. He's gone, as though smeared to nothing in the damp air. I'm bereft.

This moment feels thin, like being alive but not quite. Most of the island is still asleep; usually the fishermen go to work right about now, but the tide is out, so it's too shallow for the boats this morning. Giordano is the first soul I've spied. Exactly the one I hoped to find.

“Come on up here and walk with me.”

I run to his side.

“If you don't speak, not a single word, you can help me.”

Why would I want to help him? My goal is for him to help me.

We move through the soft gray air as though floating in a memory. We're heading south. I keep my eyes down so I'm not tempted to look across the water to the next island. We arrive at a
fondamenta
—a stone wall wide enough to walk on that separates the land from the sea. Giordano sets the buckets on the wall, then jumps down into the water. It comes only to his hips. At high tide, he'd have to swim in this spot. He grabs one of the buckets and holds it above the water as he slogs off. After a few steps, he stops and looks back at me expectantly. I jump in. He keeps looking at me. I grab the other bucket. He nods.

We wade slowly, with me several steps behind. The bottom grasses are spongy underfoot with a slight film of slime. Silver clouds of tiny fish bloom, and dart away to safety. I'm tempted to dunk my bucket to catch them. They're delicious raw, soaked in lemon juice with onion and parsley chopped fine. But the bucket is heavy; I'd never be fast enough to catch them. And Giordano might get mad. He has a plan for these buckets.

All at once the grasses end, and the half-muddy, half-sandy bottom shows starkly through the clear water, even in this weak light. Giordano holds up a hand: halt. I stop and look at the shells scattered here and there on the bottom. The best clams, the tiny ones with the stripes, are just below the surface. I could dig them up easily. They would be scrumptious with oil and pepper over long strands of pasta.

I can't seem to think of anything but food. I skipped the evening meal last night. My stomach was all ajitter over seeing Mella's baby, even before I knew they were taking him away. I clutch the bucket to my chest so I can sort of hug myself.

And I do the forbidden: I look out at the island directly ahead. A spire rises high. It looks like an ordinary place. Appearances can be so deceptive. Why did marsh fever plague our island but not the others, so that many people live there now, but only a few of us live here? Sometimes I wonder if the Lord is punishing us.

But that's wrong-minded. We're here because it's safe. That's what everyone says. We're here because nearly twenty years ago a group of us was smart enough to take over this island and make it ours.

Suddenly, Giordano rips the bucket from my arms. Did he guess at my wrong thoughts? Will he tell Mamma where I was looking?

He holds a bucket high in each hand and leaves me standing there. My arms hang empty, useless. I squat in the water till I'm chest-deep and let my hands glide through it like when I'm swimming. The air above the water turns rosy with dawn.

It occurs to me that the grassy areas throughout the lagoon could hide any number of things. I don't want to step on anything…anything tossed in the lagoon at night…anything dead. I swallow a lump of sadness.

Giordano is clumping through the muddy sand. He stops, turns around, and points at me, then at the water. I look down. Crabs have emerged in his footprints. Ha! I hurry from footprint to footprint, snatching them and throwing them into his buckets. Foot-fishing!

We work like that till both buckets teem with crabs. The water is now up to Giordano's chest; the tide is rising fast. At last he nods and hands me a bucket. The buckets are so full, I have to keep pushing crab legs back inside, and still a few crabs escape,
plop, plop.
They slide through the water, scuttle under the sand, gone. We slog back to land and set the buckets on the
fondamenta
and I climb up.

Giordano goes back out in the water. He fetches a net he must have set there yesterday evening. He slogs over to sit beside me.

“Can I talk now?” I ask.

Giordano picks seaweed from his net. He glances up, then goes back to work.

“Did you live right near the king?” I ask.

“You did a decent job this morning, Dolce.” He picks the seaweed fast. “Venerio says you're a good worker at the mirrors, too. You're strong.”

“The king…?”

“I complimented you. You're supposed to say thank you.”

“Thank you. I want to know about the king.”

“What king? This is a republic.” Giordano gives a little laugh. “Are you talking about my homeland?”

“Yes. Did you ever see him? Did you see the queen? The princesses?”

“I did.”

“Really?”

He tosses me one end of the fishing net. “Pick. The ones like this”—he holds up some leafy seaweed nearly like lettuce—“they go in the pile here. The rest are junk.” He throws a lacy seaweed back in the water.

“I know which ones you sell to the glassblowers.” I get to work. The pile between us grows fast. “Tell me about your homeland.”

“You don't want to move there, if that's what you're thinking. There are wars all the time.”

“Is that why you left?”

Giordano lifts one side of his mouth as though I've said something funny. “I left to be with my own kind.”

“I thought you said you were a stranger when you came here.”

He shoots me a glance and looks down at his task. “What is it you want to know, Dolce? Why are you asking about that kingdom?”

“Does everyone love the king?”

“Hardly. He's got a whole army to protect him.”

“Just him?”

“Well, no. The entire kingdom. But it's always the kings who manage to start the wars, so they're the ones people try to kill.”

“So no one likes him?”

“They revere him, I guess. He's rich. Powerful.”

“And what about the princesses? Do people love them?”

“Those haughty spoiled brats? They walk like this.” Giordano moves from the hips up, as though strutting, stiff-backed. Even though he's sitting, I can tell the gait he's mimicking. “They don't talk to commoners except to bark orders.”

I blink. “You're lying. Princesses in stories are lovely.”

“Stories aren't life, Dolce.”

I find a tiny live shrimp in the net and pop it into my mouth. It crunches sweet and salty. “But even if they walk like that, no one would kill them, right? No one would dare.”

“No.” Giordano stares at me. “Why are you talking about death today?”

“Everyone should be.”

“What do you mean?”

“People kill ones they don't like.”

“That's murder you're talking about, child. Good people don't do that.”

“That's not true. I saw that baby go off in the boat in the middle of the night…off into the lagoon.”

“Mella's baby? Is that what you're talking about? No one murdered Mella's baby. He'll be adopted.”

“I don't believe that.”

Giordano shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

“I face the truth. No one here likes me.”

“The mothers like you.”

I shake my head.

“They do, Dolce. I heard them talking. They've taken to you lately. Some of them are sorry you've been so left out. They talk about how odd you've become, but they know you're not bad. They look at you differently now.”

“Only because I'm making the mirrors. They think it'll be my fingers and toes that go pink instead of their sons' fingers and toes. I might be saving their boys, so the mothers can see potential for me. Who knows? Someday I might be someone who could die in place of their boys.”

Giordano wipes sweat off his upper lip. “You have a dramatic streak.”

“But you're not saying I'm wrong.”

“You go talking like that, and you'll find yourself isolated for good.”

“That's all right with me. I'm supposed to be isolated. I'm a princess.”

Giordano laughs.

I stand. I could kick his buckets of crabs off the
fondamenta.

Giordano catches my foot in midair. “Go away, Dolce. Go be a princess. Pink toes suit a princess.”

I walk away haughty. This is my princess walk. I don't need anyone. I am a princess. And no one will dare try to kill me.

T
he sun is low on the horizon. It'll set in minutes. It's funny how the sun seems to rise so slowly but set so quickly. “Mamma, we need to hurry.”

“Another minute.” Mamma greedily throws two more crabs into the bucket I'm holding. She finally stops and grins at me. “Enough.”

We slosh back to shore, then walk home, our shifts dripping. It's dark by the time we go through the door. I build the fire—that's my job—then change into dry clothes.

Mamma's already plopping crabs into the pot, one by one. Her clean shift smells like dry grass. I love the smells of autumn. I kiss the top of her head and watch the gray shells turn orange in the flickering firelight. “You're an expert at foot-fishing.”

“There isn't much to it, is there? Anyone could be an expert. I'm glad Giordano taught you his secret. And I'm glad the tide was so low tonight that I wasn't afraid to do it myself.”

“You don't have to be afraid ever, Mamma. I can teach you to swim.”

“You're the mermaid, Dolce, not me. I'm content on land.” She laughs. “Except when I have a craving for crabs. Then nothing else can satisfy me, and look, I go right into the water.”

I don't have cravings like that. Except maybe for people to like me. Or to love me. Mamma makes life seem so simple, craving things she can have.

Mamma pinches my arm playfully. “My perfect daughter, you've made it so that I can satisfy my whims any time I want.”

Perfect.
Sometimes when Mamma says things like that, I'm so happy. But right now I'm too hungry to be happy. My stomach growls. “I guess I should throw roots into the water for me.”

“I can't lure you with crabs, not even when I caught them?”

“I hate them.”

“Who can hate crabs?”

“They take forever to pick through. How many are there in this pot? Fourteen? Fifteen? And still I bet you won't be full when you finish.”

“You have to take pleasure in the whole thing, Dolce. You talk while you pick out the flesh. You tell stories. You—”

“What if you're alone?”

“What?”

“What if you have no one to talk to?”

“Then you plan. You figure out what you'll do in the day ahead. Or you just dream. You're a good dreamer, Dolce. I see you sitting sometimes, back against a wall, sun on your cheeks. You know how to dream.”

Mamma watches me when I don't realize it. I bet she's the only one who ever looks at me when they don't have to. “You know what I'm dreaming of right now?” I ask.

Mamma thrusts her head forward and raises an eyebrow. Her cheeks pucker in expectation. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Don't be stubborn, Dolce. Just do it.”

I close my eyes. A moment later the vinegary smell under my nose is unmistakable. I open my eyes and quick take the plate of sardines Mamma's holding up.

She laughs. “I browned the onions slow, like you like, so the sweetness comes out strong. But I added something new.”

I sit on the floor with the marvelous dish in my lap. “Raisins? And what are these?” I pop a little white thing into my mouth. “Pine nuts. Did you add pine nuts?”

“Raisins and pine nuts cover stinky onion breath. I want my fair daughter to smell as sweet as she is. I cooked it this morning, so it's had all day to grow succulent.” She laughs again and scoops crabs from the pot. “As succulent as these crabs.”

We sit there, eating and telling stories late into the night, and I make sure to eat my sardines at the same pace Mamma eats her crabs. Just to keep her company. She'd do it for me. I am the luckiest monster in the world.