Power to Burn (13 page)

It would be great to talk to Mum about this, I thought suddenly. Mum, who'd tried to make life so normal, warding off the truth as if it were some evil spirit you could kill with a fixed dinner menu. I wondered if she thought habit would send us all to sleep, make her forget.

Only she didn't count on the kind of girl Angelica turned out to be. Neither did I, for that matter. It had been Angelica who'd led me into that new, quiet place of understanding, helped me see the colours, and I realised then that it is only in the quick-step of change, as the wheel turns, that you really come alive.

How to
stay
alive, now that we were headed for Limone – freezing temperatures, skiing lessons and a murderous aunt – was going to be my next big problem.

A
nother new place. Ever since I came to Italy, I've always arrived somewhere new in the dark. Dusk comes so early here, falling suddenly at four o'clock in the afternoon like a curtain closing on a show. Each time I go to bed with only a vague idea of where I am, and wake up in a totally unexpected place.

Limone. The home of the vengeful witch. My aunt. It's so great to come back to the old country and meet the folks.

I looked out of the window of the third story apartment we were renting. Mountains rose in front of me like walls, white and silent and absolutely unski-able.

‘They make me claustrophobic, these mountains,' I complained to Angelica. We were sharing a room and I'd tiptoed out to the kitchen and brought back coffee and rolls. The grandparents were still asleep; I could hear Nonno snoring from the hallway.

‘Why claustrophobic?' Angelica said, munching away. ‘There's nothing but space up here.'

‘That's right – just space and vertical rock covered with snow. Great for a goat, but how am I going to get around?'

‘You're going to ski, Roberto,' said Angelica, yawning. ‘That
was
the idea.'

‘Well my sports master at school says I have the agility of a one-legged duck, so for someone with that kind of talent, a day should be more than enough for me to master skiing.'

Angelica sat up then and threw off the bedclothes. In a flash she'd pulled on the required five layers of clothes and began brushing her hair. It crackled and sparked with electricity, flying up in a black cloud around her face.

‘You're really charged up this morning,' I joked.

Angelica laughed. ‘I
am
excited,' she said, turning around to face me. ‘Oh, I don't know if it's just the mountains – I love the hugeness of them, they make me feel anything's possible. Or maybe it's because we're getting closer to
her
. I've dreamed about this for so long, but now we're nearly there. It's like we're facing the last test. I can almost feel her breathing down my neck!'

‘And that makes you excited? It make
me
panic.'

‘I know what you mean,' Angelica said. She was hopping about the room, picking up clothes, straightening the sheets. She seemed to do everything with twice the energy she needed. I had a sudden picture of the silent girl at the dinner table that first night, and I marvelled at how much she had changed. Or maybe it was just me getting to know what lay beneath.

‘If you search around in yourself,' she said – she was unpacking her suitcase now – ‘you'll find the excitement. Haven't you ever really looked forward to something, something scary and new perhaps, some kind of adventure to test everything you knew? You get a glimpse of how it would be if you went through with it, and you see yourself differently for a minute, as if you're wearing a new skin.'

Yes, I thought, but the feeling never seems to last very long. Not long enough to make a difference. Take that walk in the snow, for instance. The colours – I'd suddenly felt I understood the universe, or at least, myself. But where did it all go? I was still the same old nervous boy, terrified of mountains, and skiing.

But Angelica was fired up. She made me think of a firecracker about to explode. Excitement was one thing.
Wild
was another.

I looked at her standing there, the brush still in her hand and her eyes dancing about, her face shining. The thought of Angelica, usually so serious and responsible, being suddenly out of control made me go cold. I realised how much I'd relied on her being calm, my wise guide in all this mystery, and now we were suddenly in the same class without a teacher!

‘Well, excitement is fine, but we can't afford to let go and get crazy,' I frowned at her. ‘There's so much at stake.' (I sounded just like my mother!)

Angelica threw down her brush. ‘Oh, Roberto, you sound just like Nonno. Shut up!'

She closed her suitcase with a bang.

There was a knock at the door and Nonna came in. Her eyes darted around the room and she smiled.

‘Up and dressed and ready for the slopes!' She shivered and pulled her gown around her. ‘I hope you've got enough on, you two, it's going to be freezing out there.'

She went over to the window and looked out. The sky was heavy and grey, and a fine spray of snow pearled the air.

‘The chairlift is working,' she said, ‘but I can only see a couple of people on the slopes. No crowds this year.' She turned around and her face looked worried. ‘Oh, I don't know if we've done the right thing coming here. Your grandfather has influenza, I think. He woke up coughing and sneezing. I've told him to stay in bed.'

She put her hands on Angelica's shoulders and said, ‘Now, the instant you feel really cold, you come in, won't you? It's insidious, the air up here, it eats into you before you realise. And stay on the small slopes, don't go too far.'

‘
Sì
, Nonna, no, Nonna,' Angelica smiled and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Come on, lazy legs,' she turned to me, ‘let's go skiing!'

By the time I'd worked out how to strap on the skis, it was almost lunchtime. I felt like the giant out of ‘Tom Thumb', clomping around in the huge boots. A clumsy giant.

‘Fe Fi Fo Fum, here I go, down on my bum!' With every step I took, I fell over. My knees and bottom must have been screaming blue under my pants.

Angelica said she wasn't going to hand me over to a ski school. She wanted to teach me herself. I reckoned she was just dying for the chance to laugh at me every time I fell over.

No wonder I'd never wanted to ski. It was hard to appreciate the bold brave mountains Angelica kept shouting about when I was aching all over and spending more time on my face than on my feet.

‘The first thing,' she said, ‘is to learn how to stop. Then you get the courage to let yourself go.'

Well, in another hour I'd learned how to do a snowplough. It was a relief, I suppose, and I didn't get to dig myself out of the snow quite so often. But my face and hands were so numb with cold I couldn't feel anything much.

‘Didn't Nonna say we should come in when we got cold?' I said in a pleading voice. I'm sure I looked pathetic shivering there in the snow, and anyone with a heart would have relented. But not Angelica.

‘Come on, Roberto,' she said in this brisk voice, ‘you've been through the hardest bit. Now for a bit of speed!'

Oh no! We were headed for the chairlift.

Angelica's face was set and determined. For the first time I almost hated her. Always pushing me, shoving me this way and that, prodding me into things I didn't want to do.

‘Make sure your skis are straight and hang onto the bar,' she said, as we swept higher and higher up the mountain.

My heart was hammering away so fast I thought I was going to pass out.

When we got to the top Angelica took a deep breath and let it out with the force of a steam engine. She sounded like one of those physical fitness experts lifting weights.

‘Do you have to breathe so loud?'

‘Oh,
look
, Roberto! Why don't you just look around you?'

The mountains dropped away out of sight below us and the fir trees at the bottom were like Lego pieces. I closed my eyes.

‘Staggering isn't it?'

That was the word.

‘Now, we are going to zig-zag across. Remember to bend your legs, lean into the curves. Just follow me. You'll love it.'

Sure. After I've thrown up.

‘Just give me a moment, Angelica,' I said. ‘I'd like to soak up all this atmosphere.'

‘
Dio mio
, stop stalling. We'll do it
together
. Now let's go.'

She set off, turning to the right across the mountain. I stood there, paralysed. I didn't know which was worse, defying gravity and going after her, or standing all alone watching her back get smaller and smaller. I decided to follow.

My left leg seemed to be sliding down the wrong way. What do you do when your legs won't obey you?
Lean into the curve
. Yeah, okay, so I lean, then what?
Bend your knees
. That's better. I can always do a snowplough. But I was going straight now, and there was Angelica, right up ahead of me!

I used my sticks and I was going faster. My heart was just about up in my throat but I was too busy worrying about the speed to mind that. The freezing wind was rushing at my face, little particles of ice and snow needled my skin, but I was burning up inside. I was leaning into the curves, I was leaning as easily as breathing. Lean into the waves, lean into the beat, I was hunching and straightening, hunching and swaying and then I caught sight of Angelica's face glancing back at me and I could see she was fired up too and excited as hell. Her cheeks were scarlet and her mouth was open and we grinned at each other. I didn't hate her anymore.

We did a wide turn and headed back across the mountain. If I didn't look down and only watched the slope ahead, the rhythm took over. There was just the blinding snow and the speed, and the skis were like wings, I was weightless. I imagined myself as a bird swishing through the air and now we were heading straight down, our skis pointed like arrows.

I was zooming along. I never wanted to reach those trees or those little houses, and the only picture I had in my mind was the bird rising higher and higher over the snow. My feet lifted off the ground and I was flying.
Flying
.

‘Aargh!' I heard Angelica screaming and she was floating through the air beside me. I waved my hand and realised that I couldn't really feel it. There was only what I was seeing, outside myself. The fear was gone, every wisp of it, leaving a space so light, where only the speed and wind were rushing through. I was hanging on to nothing, nothing at all, I was a particle of white air, swimming with the currents and waves of cloud.

And then I looked down.

On the snow, way down there, I saw my body as heavy as lead. I felt the space in my mind grow cloudy, and my arms were no longer wings but just arms that picked things up and dropped them, and my legs sank with the skis. I began to fall, slowly, greyly, down to earth.

Later, when we were sitting in a cafe, in the village of Limone, we ordered hot chocolates and rum baba cakes. We were silent while we munched and drank.

When I had finished I said out loud what I was thinking. ‘This power we have, it's amazing, fantastic – but it's not, well, it's not exactly reliable, is it? I mean, nothing lasts, does it?'

‘The power isn't some kind of machine that you can oil and grease,' said Angelica, spooning out the last dregs of chocolate, ‘it's part of you.'

‘I know, but as it's only been part of me for the last few weeks, it still doesn't feel exactly normal. And what worries me, what
really
gives me an attack of the purple panics is – how do you know when to use it, and how do we know it will still be there, enough, when we need it?'

‘Oh, Roberto, that's the question. I don't know either, I haven't used mine yet as I need to.' She grimaced and threw up her hands. ‘I've always had to be so controlled, so quiet, so invisible in a way, but things are changing, aren't they? Opening up?'

‘I suppose, but I wish there was some kind of map of life with all the major events signposted –'

‘We've just got to live with the power, use it when it feels right, just like we use our heart and mind to see the truth beneath things.'

‘But Lucrezia is using
her
power, and look what's happening to the world.'

‘Yes.'

We sat on for a while more, saying nothing. Outside the sky was blackening and a sharp wind was edging its way through the crack under the door.

‘We'd better be getting back,' I said. ‘Nonna will be worried by now.'

‘Oh, just a bit longer,' Angelica said in a rush, and she grabbed my hand. ‘I just want to be here, by ourselves, without anyone watching or fussing or stopping me for once.'

I looked at her face and saw that it was strained and vulnerable; shiny, like new skin after a burn.

‘You know,' she said suddenly, ‘I was just thinking that mothers are supposed to hand you some sort of map when they bring you into the world. Tell you about living. But ours didn't. And neither did Lucrezia's. If I ever become a mother, I'm going to be the best guide there is.'

I took Angelica's hand. ‘You'll draw a great map, with all the forest marked up, and your baby will never need breadcrumbs to find her way back, or forward.'

‘I know,' said Angelica, but her smile was sad.

When we stepped outside, it was dark. I checked my watch and it was only half past four, but it looked as if there was a storm brewing and the sky was heavy and bruised, with dark shapes of cloud moving with the wind.

‘The weather is worsening,' Angelica said. ‘It must have dropped a few degrees since we arrived.'

‘We're getting closer, aren't we?'

‘I think so.'

We could only see a few metres ahead. ‘I know Limone is a small village,' I said, ‘but how are we going to find her?'