“You must promise me you’ll be careful,” I said.
Florindo lifted himself onto Spuma’s back with a grunt, and the animal started to turn in circles before he had managed to slip his other foot into the stirrup.
Mad creature.
I pulled on the reins and it snorted at me but came to a stop. I didn’t know why he was taking the damned beast when all it would do was create more problems.
“Of course, I’ll be careful, sposa.” He motioned to one of the men nearby, who handed him the only true weapon we possessed, a musket that Florindo had fired just once on the day that he’d bought it twenty-odd years ago. The blast had almost made him drop it.
I’d watched last night, as we’d sat by Giacomo’s bed, how he’d taken it apart and cleaned it, his lips pinched as if he’d taken a sip of something impossibly sour. If it came to it, would he be able to fire?
Ugo left my side and started walking up to the horse to get a better look at the musket, and I pulled him back, away from the reach of Spuma’s hooves.
“Mamma,” he said. “I want to see it. Why can’t I go with Father?”
“Because I say you can’t, child. He can show you later how the musket works, but you’re staying here with me and your siblings for now. Don’t you want to help me with Giacomo and Ilario?”
His forehead knotted and he shook his head.
“That’s not very kind of you. You won’t help me even if I let you choose the poppy pods to boil? I need a good eye for the task.”
He said nothing but at least the frown disappeared. He slumped back to my side.
“You will send one of the servants for me when the doctor arrives?” Florindo said. “I’ll leave a watch up at the mountain and come help.”
I nodded. “But it won’t be for hours yet.”
The steward had left in the carriage as soon as dawn had arrived, so it was likely he wouldn’t be back until well into the afternoon with whatever physician he was able to find. Until then, the most I could do was provide Giacomo and Ilario sanctuary from the pain.
“Give him a kiss from me when he wakes,” Florindo said.
“I will, sposo.”
He pulled on the reins and forced Spuma to turn. The six workers he was taking with him wisely gave the beast a wide berth and waited until they were out of biting and kicking range before starting after my husband. It seemed rumors of the animal’s temperament had spread as rapidly as everything did in these parts.
“Oh, Maddalena,” Florindo said, turning in the saddle, “I hate to burden you with more, but if you have time, could you check on the couple of men I’ve left working in the mill? Just every so often to make certain they know what they are doing?”
As if he needed to ask. “Of course.”
He gave me a smile so fragile I could have blown it away, and then continued on. The group of them headed down the dirt road toward the side path to the forest.
Although Florindo himself had removed the animal trap, red with our son’s blood, this morning and hadn’t found any others in the area, I couldn’t stop a fresh surge of worry. The thought of anyone else getting hurt, even that white insanity on hooves, made me bite at my lips. If only I’d had time to make protective sachets . . .
Sighing, I watched the men until the pine trees hid them.
I turned and started back to the colonnade. “Come, Ugo. Let’s go see how your brother and Ilario are.”
Once I looked in on them, I’d go up to the cucinetta to start those sachets and see if I had the herbs I needed to put together a balm for the wounds. The doctor would surely recommend washing them with wine, but I’d always seen better, quicker healing with the application of certain herbs. Without an apothecary nearby, my choices were limited, but I should still have goldenseal in my reserves. I could add that to a crushed garlic and black walnut base that would work marvelously to stave off pus.
There was silence behind me where none should have been. Ugo did nothing quietly.
I glanced over my shoulder to see what had caught his attention enough to keep him from coming after me. Just in time to see him darting into the woods.
“Ugo!”
But he had already disappeared.
“No,” I said and started after him, my heart already trying to leap out of my throat. “Not again. Ugo, stop!”
But he didn’t answer and I couldn’t see him.
This had to be a nightmare. I couldn’t possibly be running once again into the forest chasing after one of my children. Not after last night’s horrors.
“They’ll all spend the rest of the day in their rooms,” I hissed. “I’ve had enough of this disobedience.”
In every branch that snapped under my feet, I heard the metallic clank of iron jaws, in every groan of the wind against the trees, the beginning of a scream.
I followed the path that Florindo and the men had made, racing right to the entrance to the mountain, but saw no sign of Ugo. If he had chased after his father, he had to have gone in. There was no other option.
Voices echoed all along the walls and tangled together as I entered the cave and headed for the stone stairs. They were a knot of sounds, and I couldn’t tell to whom they belonged or what they were saying. Panting, I forced myself to stop and listen for my son’s piping voice but didn’t hear it.
Was he up there or was he still in the woods?
I took the steps at a run.
A pile of manure lay in the center of one of them, and even in my scramble to get to the top I had to shake my head at Florindo. He couldn’t have tied Spuma to one of the trees outside? He had to drag it up the mountain to make everything more difficult for everyone?
The closer I got to the opening, the more I began to be able to pick apart the voices I heard. Florindo and a couple of the men, those I knew.
And then there was another, one I’d hoped not to hear again outside of a podestà’s court.
Antonio’s.
My legs found a reserve of swiftness, and I leaped up the last few steps in an instant.
This field was empty of people, and I could hear the real distance of the voices now that the echoes were gone. They came from much farther down, from where I’d seen the remaining oaks the first time we’d come up here.
It all looked more violent in daylight as I followed the path of chutes down, all raw tree pulp and splintered bark, my eyes searching for a darting boy in between the sawdust and stumps. A boy who didn’t appear.
The voices were closer now.
The first thing I saw as I crested the small hill separating the fields was Spuma, almost glowing in the morning sun. On him was Ugo. He sat in front of his father, who had his arms wrapped around him, and he didn’t have a single scrape on him.
I exhaled, feeling the relief spreading down to my toes.
Florindo looked at me, drawing the eyes of the group of seven people who were not supposed to be there.
Antonio lifted an eyebrow. “Will the entire family be joining us, then?”
Insolent boy.
I crossed the distance between me and my loved ones and dared Spuma’s wrath as I came to stand beside the animal, reaching up to touch Ugo’s knee, eyes casting about for injuries I might have missed. He’d have his punishment for his willful disobedience once we were back at the villa, but for now, all I felt was a marrow-deep gratitude that he was unharmed and in his father’s arms. Safe.
“How touching,” Antonio said. “Although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to be rid of at least one of those imps you have.”
“You will watch your tongue,” Florindo said.
One of the men beside Antonio, whom I realized now was the missing dove-keeper, snorted. He tapped the axe he carried against his leg.
“I will not, and they are horrors,” Antonio said. “I rather thought I was doing you both a favor by bringing the illness into the villa. Thinning the herd with a few pails of raw water.”
I sucked in a breath. A buzz filled my ears as blood rushed up to my head.
He had done that to my twins. He had placed them in mortal danger.
I’d had quite enough. Of everything.
I strode forward until I was within striking range and slapped him. The clap of it multiplied across the hills and valleys all around us.
The dove-keeper and the other men surged forward, but I refused to take a single step in retreat. The workers Florindo had brought with him also drew closer, flanking me, although if they carried blades or any other weapons, I hadn’t seen them.
“You spiteful, fiendish creature,” I hissed. “I’ll see you thrown in a cell where you’ll rot for the rest of your life, you mark what I say. And the same applies to the rest of you.”
“I don’t think so,” another of the trespassers said.
His face was familiar. Yes, he’d been one of the men I’d met on the day we’d arrived, one of the ones who had helped carry my father’s alchemical tools up to the cucinetta.
“Look around you, woman,” he said.
He motioned to the webs of ropes wrapped around stumps and felled trees, the chutes already holding freshly cut logs. A large oak at the edge of the mountain had a wedge of wood missing from it, an axe still lodged in the bark. It was a few strikes away from being pulled down with the help of the rope tied around its trunk, the other end hanging in hasty, wide loops around the branch of another tree. That was how they’d kept us from hearing the trees falling, then. By lowering them slowly to the ground.
“We’re here,” he continued, “taking what we want, as we have been for weeks, and no one besides a few half-starved workers have offered you their help.”
“And no one will.”
I turned to look at the new voice and saw the leader of the group of men the children and I had encountered in the woods the day of the sowing. The other three were beside him.
They’d all been involved.
“No one will help a sorcerer. A strega.”
“How dare you!” Florindo boomed. Ugo flinched in his arms.
I almost reached for him, to bring him down beside me, but I didn’t want him within range of these monsters’ grasps. He was safer with the barrier of Spuma’s temperament between him and them.
“You will not speak to my wife in that manner!”
The trespassers laughed. All of them except for Antonio, who just watched us, arms crossed over his chest.
“We’ll speak as we please,” he said. “Not a one of us is in your employ any longer. And really, I can’t imagine why you think you have the right to be acting so high above us. You’re practically destitute, or have you forgotten? All your servants know it, and I made certain everyone else in the region does too. You can expect no more loans, no more help. I told you last night you’d learn your place.”
“Seems like even your devil’s work has its limits,” the dove-keeper said. He spat in my direction.
The men behind me shouted in protest, and I had to halt Florindo with a raised hand. This couldn’t slip out of our control.
“Get off our land,” I said between clenched teeth. My face was so hot I expected to feel flesh melting off.
“Or what, strega? How will you have us thrown out? With those weaponless men beside you or with one of your enchantments? And if you do manage it, how will you keep us out? Your own ungodliness has poisoned the chancellor against you, and neither the massaro nor his sbirri will help, for they’re very much on our side.”
“Side? There is no side,” I said. “You are on our land, trespassing. You are in the wrong.”
Antonio’s mouth twisted in disgust. He glanced from me to Florindo, shaking his head. “You continue to accuse us of trespassing, when it was you who took our land.”
“What nonsense is this?” Florindo said.
“You didn’t bother to learn the history of the place you bought or cared to think of the lives that you destroyed when you did so. And so now you face the consequences of that indifference.”
I glanced at my husband, but the confusion was as easy to read on his face as I was certain it was on mine.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“If you had bothered to ask, you would have known that the people who used to live on this land had done so for generations. Our family.” Antonio motioned with an arm to the men around him. “We farmed it and milled it, we were born on it, our ancestors died on it. Our family built the stone steps you climbed up to get here and helped plant half the trees you see before you. And we hoped someday to purchase it from the nobleman who took half of our work in payment for allowing us to live and work on it.”
“But instead,” the dove-keeper said, “he decided to sell the property to those willing to pay much more than we ever could have. Do you know, he gave us three days to leave the land? Our home? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be ripped from the only place you’ve ever known, from your livelihood? To have no one listen as you ask for some legal recourse?”
Despite myself, I could feel their despair, the anger they carried. It was like sawdust in my mouth. “A perfidious action, to be sure, but one you cannot blame us for.”
Antonio’s top lip lifted in a snarl. “And tearing down the home our great-grandfather built with his own hands, constructing your villa on its bones, we can’t blame you for that, either?”
I frowned and looked up at Florindo once more. I hadn’t known there’d been a house on the land.
He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid you can’t lay even that blame at our feet. We bought the property fairly, to do with as we please. I am sorry the house was destroyed, and of course what that nobleman did was barbaric, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“It was our home!” the boy spat out. “All of this was!”
“And now it is ours.” Florindo sighed. “By law.”
One of the other brothers, the leader of the group we’d encountered in the woods, nodded. “Yes, and we’ve made sure that the same law that failed us, fails you too. We want you torn from this land just as we were. When we take the rest of our oaks, your debts will accomplish that.”
My teeth gritted, the granule of reluctant sympathy I’d felt growing now dissolving in the bile of his words.
“We’ve seen who you are, all of these men have seen you, too,” I said. “We’ll go to the massaro and tell him everything.”
Antonio scoffed. “The massaro knows who we are. We’re paying him a portion of what we make off this lumber to keep quiet, so I assure you he is well aware of our names.”
Santa Madre.
“And most of his sbirri have known us since childhood, so they won’t help strangers like you over us. They wouldn’t have done so even before learning that you dabble with unholy forces, but they certainly won’t now that they know.”
My hands were clenched so tightly they shook.
Ugo shifted on the horse, the first notes of bored fussing reaching me, and I all at once wanted nothing more than to grab him and take him back home, away from the mountain.
I forced myself to remain still. I couldn’t leave Florindo alone with this.
“You’ve made it all much too easy for us.” Antonio shrugged. “You let us into your home, you gave us access to everything, including your children. You expected servants, so that is all you saw in us. No threat at all. For people who seem to think you’re so superior to us, you are damned foolish.”
“That’s enough,” one of the men behind me said.
The dove-keeper turned to look at him. “You’re a traitor, you know? You’re just like us and you bow and scrape to these people who’d take your very blood if they needed it. You should all be on this side, with us.”
There was a rumble of low voices.
“You attacked Ilario and Nino and a boy of fourteen to get your way,” another man said. “Who are you to talk of morality?”
“We are taking what is ours. What is right and fair. If anyone tries to stop us, they will be met with resistance,” Antonio said.
“Right and fair?” It was my turn to curl a lip in disgust. “You brought disease into our home, threatening the lives of everyone in the villa. You destroyed our dam—”
“Our dam,” he said. “Our family built it. My brothers and I used to help our father maintain it. Just as we maintained the mill and the fields and the forest and everything else you’ve taken for granted since you arrived.”
No, I wouldn’t be lectured by this boy or his brothers. Not when they’d felt no compunction at putting lives at risk. “We’ll go higher for help, then. To the podestà of the region, and we’ll get his assistance in removing you.”
But even as I said the words, I realized how hollow they were. The podestà would ask the massaro to confirm the problem, to provide information and the support of his sbirri. Which he’d never do.
Antonio watched me stumble upon that thought.
“You have no recourses,” he said. “We’ll continue to take the trees, and if you try to prevent us in any way, all of this will get much worse. What you’ve experienced until now will seem a mere nuisance to what we can do.”
The dove-keeper tapped the axe against his side again. “And I imagine you really wouldn’t want to do anything that puts your children at risk. You’d do well to remember that thanks to our brother, we know precisely where they sleep.”
The words were lashes. They burned into me.
I heard Florindo’s sharp inhale.
“Have you lost your senses!” one of the workers shouted. “You don’t threaten to hurt children over a patch of land. It’s madness.”
“This has all gone too far,” another one said, stepping past me.
“What are you going to do, then?” the dove-keeper said. “Come on, traitor. Show us.”
The rumble of male anger shook against the tree trunks, the voices knotting once again as the shouts multiplied. The laughter of the dove-keeper joined with his brothers’ taunting calls, which they flung at the workers with jeering smiles. Only Antonio held his silence.
“Enough!” Florindo yelled, but not even his voice could cut through the chorus of rage.
Ugo’s first whimpers pulled me back to the horse’s side, the animal snorting at my sudden movement, its honeyed eyes flicking from man to man as its nostrils flared. Its flanks had started to shake.
One of the workers picked up a branch to the laughter of the dove-keeper, who swung his axe forward, lightly. As he would a toy.
This would be out of our hands in seconds if we didn’t do something.
“Damn it all, stop!” Florindo shouted.
But the roar of voices just grew and spilled over the mountain.
I saw Florindo bring the musket forward from where it hung against his back, pointing it up at the sky as he wrapped the horse’s reins around his forearm, and my heart’s beating became as frantic as my thoughts. I grabbed for Spuma’s rein rings, feeling the scrape and pinch of the animal’s teeth as it nipped at me, and restrained its head as much as I could manage.
The beast neighed in anger.
“Cover your ears, Ugo!”
The musket shot rattled through my bones.
Spuma shrieked, its hot breath against my hands, and jerked forward, trying to rear up or kick or do anything that might set it loose. I held on to it, fighting for my footing, as Ugo’s wails began. The scent of gunpowder burned into my nose and eyes.
Boulders of silence crashed down on the group.
“This is unacceptable,” Florindo boomed, his face mottled with red. “Are we no better than beasts? We will have civility here!”
He shifted on Spuma, unwinding the reins from his arm and handing them to me as he started to dismount.
I opened my mouth to tell him to bring Ugo down with him, but the musket’s voice was still ringing in my ears and then he was already on the ground, already walking away from the horse.
“Mamma,” Ugo whimpered.
But I couldn’t control the beast and help him down at the same time.
“Grab on to the saddle,” I told him. “I have a hold of Spuma, I promise. Everything with be all right.”
He sniffed and wiped at the tears on his cheeks but obeyed. His small hands tightened around the leather.
“We will not accept another threat from you,” Florindo said, walking toward the seven trespassers, the musket at his side still pointing at the sky. “Leave our property.”
“I don’t think you’ve understood,” Antonio said, shaking his head. “Unless you plan on somehow shooting each one of us and dealing with the consequences of murder, nothing is going to change. You have no say in this. We will take all the trees and you’ll have no choice but to leave.”
The boy radiated hate. How could I not have seen it? I, who claimed to be so perceptive. How could I have ever allowed him into our home?
Florindo took a step toward him and the dove-keeper moved to block his path. The other brothers shifted to stand closer to their youngest sibling.
My husband slipped the musket back over his shoulder and lifted his hands, palms up. “Please. I’m not going to shoot any of you. But we have to be able to resolve this. We can think through it and find a solution, one that doesn’t involve violence.”
One of the brothers, with a scar running down the side of his nose, who had been silent until now, stepped closer, his eyes level with Florindo’s. “Go back to your villa. Go on. Enjoy it while you still have it.”
“This is absur—”
The man shoved Florindo back a step.
I held my breath and the entire mountain seemed to do the same. For the first time since we’d met, I didn’t know how my husband would react.
He blinked and remained still, watching the man’s growing sneer, their barely contained laughter in his face.
The tension made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up.
Moving much more rapidly than I would have imagined, Florindo made the wrong choice. He shoved him back.
Gran Dio.
The man smiled and grabbed Florindo by his tunic, one sharp wrench more than enough to toss him off balance. My husband fell with a grunt.
“No, stop,” I said, but my voice had lost most of its strength.
The man snorted and stepped closer without glancing at me. He kicked out at the musket, jerking it away from Florindo’s reach. “You’re too soft, old man. Too many years of doing nothing, I gather.”
The men helping us rushed forward, shouts of protest leaping from their mouths as they tried to push their way to Florindo, but the trespassers blocked them with ease, holding axes and shovels and anything else they’d had at hand. Even Antonio had grabbed a pitchfork bent with age and rust.
“Leave him be,” one of workers said.
“I don’t see why we should.”
“It’s not a fair fight.”
“I’ve not seen much fairness in my life, have you?”
Florindo tried to shift away, shuffling backward on his elbows, but the scarred man moved with him. He shoved my husband back down, pushing at his chest with a muddy boot.
“Enough!” I shouted.
Ugo let out a wail and Spuma whinnied tightly, a trembling thread of sound, as it tasted the same sulfur of fear in the air that had filled my mouth. I tightened my grip on the animal’s reins.
“Stop this!”
The scarred trespasser did look up at me now and smiled again before cocking his leg back.
“Haven’t you realized it yet? We don’t take orders from you,” he said and kicked Florindo in the ribs.
Ugo screamed.
My husband curled into himself with a groan and I realized now that I could have committed murder. I was capable of it. If I’d had the musket in my hands, I would have fired it. And not at the sky.
Racing footsteps pulled my eyes from Florindo’s prone figure to the two men who had just appeared on the hill separating the fields.
“What is happening?” one of them said, panting. “We heard the musket shot from the mill and—”
His gaze landed on my husband. Eyes widening, he looked at me, at the other workers, at the trespassers.
It was now that one of our men leaped forward, taking advantage of the instant of distraction to break past the dove-keeper, running toward Florindo.
He just wasn’t fast enough.
The thud of the axe as it crunched into bone brought bile up my throat, but it was the scream of distilled pain that bent me over and emptied my stomach.
The man fell.
One look was enough to see his knee was gone, shattered into bone shards.
The mountaintop lit up with screams once again. The workers picked up rocks and sticks and started hurling them at the trespassers as the injured man fell onto his back, gasping, his body starting to shake under the force of the pain. Florindo shifted forward and reached for him, but the scarred man kicked him back again. And then again.
I felt each blow as if it’d been directed at me.
“Papà!” Ugo shrieked.
I looked up at my son, the empty words of comfort that were already on my lips slipping from me as I saw Spuma rear up on its hind legs. Its high scream smothered all other sounds as it kicked at the sky. I felt myself unable to gaze away from the beast’s vicious dance, hooves obscuring the very sun, covering me in shadows.
Ugo let out a cry and one of his hands slid from the oiled leather.
I blinked. This was no time for stupidity.
I yanked on the reins with everything I had in me and bent, feeling my knees brush the dirt in the effort. The horse tossed its head, snorting, its nose flaring as it tried to shake me off. It kicked out with its front legs and I just managed to sidestep a blow to the chest that would have cracked open my ribs.
“Spuma, stop!”
But there was no reaching the animal. I could see it in the glowing white of its eyes. Even when I pulled it down to the ground again, its teeth clanked, in fear or rage or both, attempting to reach my hands and my face. I’d not be able to hold the beast for much longer. I needed to get my son off its back.
I searched around me for anyone who could help me, but there was no one to call on. No one who didn’t also need help.
Then we’d do it ourselves.
“Ugo, listen to me,” I said, looking up at my sobbing child. “I need you to jump to the ground. I know it’s high and you’re frightened, but you need to get off Spuma.”
“Papà,” he said.
“I know. We’ll go help him as soon as you’re safe.”
And back in the villa. Because even if I had to drag him through the entire forest, I’d get him inside and away from these people before I would return to help. I knew Florindo well enough to realize it was the action he himself would have urged me to take.
Yet, despite that knowledge, I didn’t dare look behind me, at my husband. I didn’t know what I’d see and I couldn’t lose focus now.
Spuma let out another piercing whinny and tried to rear up again. I groaned and pulled on the reins, wanting nothing more than to hit the animal into unconsciousness.
“Ugo, there’s no time. You have to jump! Now—”
A sound needled into my mind.
It pulled all my attention away from the violence around me and tugged it down, deep, into the raw roots of my being.
A furious ringing.
The sudden and brutal need to cry sank its teeth into me, tearing at me in that terribly familiar way. It pulled me back to my eight-year-old self, dissolving to tears at the sight of my cousin or watching that Barbary pirate ship nearing the coast, carrying my brother’s death in its plague-tainted hold.
The certainty of what was coming.
The scrape of bare grindstones, clouds of flour dust haloing the simple light of a spark.
The mill.
When the explosion came an infinite second later, it shook the mountain, the sound darker and more powerful than thunder, than the dam breaking, than anything I’d ever heard before. It snuffed out everything else.
Except for fear.
Spuma lunged forward with a throat-tearing scream.
With a gasp, I pulled on the reins, digging my feet into the dirt as I spun under the animal’s force, but the leather whipped out of my hands, sending me to the ground as the horse bolted. With my son on its back.
“No!”
“Mamma!”
The beast raced past the workers and trespassers, the men leaping out of the way, its hooves stomping by Florindo before he could force his broken body to grab the dragging reins.
Even its whinnying shrieks, which were trying to shatter the sky, couldn’t drown out Ugo’s calls for me.
I leaped to my feet and ran. Stumbling over my skirts but somehow remaining upright, I darted past the men, whose bodies still thrummed with the explosion.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Spuma, stop!”
It was useless.
The horse was a panicked arrow of white plunging through the oaks, their branches snapping over Ugo. He had one arm up to block the worst of the blows from his head and he was shifting about on the saddle. If he fell now, he could land on anything, and at that speed . . .
“Hold on to the saddle! Use both hands!”
But Spuma’s wild whinnying swallowed my voice.
There were steps and shouts behind me but I didn’t know what the men were saying and I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was in front of me, my son’s small body whipped by branches.
Fabric tore as my dress caught in splintered bark. The pull of it sent me against the side of a wooden chute and my leg hit it with a crunch, one that I hardly felt because only now did I realize what lay ahead: the half-cut oak I’d seen earlier, the rest of the rope wrapped around its trunk, swinging loosely across the horse’s path to hang from another tree. Beyond it, the mountain, coming to an end.
Spuma had to stop. The barrier of rope would spook it, force it to retreat or rear back. There was no alternative. There just wasn’t.
“Santa Madre, per favore,” I muttered and found I couldn’t run anymore. The overpowering trembling in my legs had forced me to an abrupt stop. I clutched my hands in prayer, in supplication, in anything that might urge those hooves to slow.
But no one was listening.
Spuma raced right into the rope and dragged Ugo through the loose coils of it that hung from the branch, which now scraped across his face. The heavy loops fell onto him, tangling him with the horse.
Spuma gave another scream and galloped on, its powerful chest now pulling on the rope, tautening it. The oak it was tied to creaked and the wedge the trespassers had cut into its trunk began to splinter under the horse’s force.
Another pull did it.
I gasped as the tree tipped forward.
The oak crashed down in a storm of cracking branches, the crown of it listing off the side of the mountain. The horse let out a piercing whinny and sped up in a fresh surge of fright.
There was just nowhere left for it to go.
“Mamma!”
Ugo’s golden hair rippled as he turned to look for me.
My arms flew out as if I could erase the distance and grasp my child. But if I had unholy powers, I couldn’t find them, and fate did have a habit of getting what it desired.
Spuma’s white shape glowed in the sun as it ran out of land and disappeared in a twist of limbs and rope.
The snap ricocheted across the entire mountain, rebounding against me, knocking the scream I’d not realized I’d been hurtling from my throat.
And then I was at the edge of the mountain, my legs folding under me. Hands digging into the dirt to keep them from tearing at my flesh. Staring down at my son’s lifeless body as he swung from the tangle of rope around his neck, his small feet tapping lightly against the rocks and ivy.