Only you know what it was like
Back there, back then
When we were safe
As she looked at the stony mound before her, Micol remembered the men she’d once called her brothers.
Micol, the girl who climbed trees and roamed the countryside, the girl who had jumped fences and ridden horses since the age of eight, was scared of water. The sun shone on her hair as she sat on the shore, watching her brothers dive and swim. Ranieri swam like a fish. His tanned, strong body glistened in the sunshine, his black hair wet and swept back. He was in his early twenties, tall and strong and her sister’s idol. Micol was desperate to impress him.
“Micol! Vieni, dai!” he said once again. “It’s beautiful!” Ranieri couldn’t believe his fearless sister had such a phobia, not when all of them had been swimming in the lake since they were babies. She knew that later he’d tease her around the dinner table. And it hurt.
But she couldn’t help it. She jumped up, determined, and took wobbly steps on the pebbles towards the water. She wet her toes and forced herself inside the lake up to her knees. And then the wet feeling of weeds and slimy floating things around her legs began, and she grimaced, panic twisting her stomach, her resolution waning.
And then, one day, when she was ten years old, Tancredi simply convinced her. She still had no idea how he’d done it.
“Take my hand. I won’t let you go,” he’d said, and something in his voice made her really, really want to do as he said, made her believe that she could do as he said. She was frozen with fear and all her limbs were rigid. Her heart was beating in a crazy rhythm, but she still took his hand.
They jumped together, and like he promised, he never let go.
She emerged spluttering and scared, but triumphant.
That was her brother, Tancredi Falco. Sweet and kind and brave.
And now he was cold and alone, dead in another world, never to see his home again. A memory of him, sunshine and water and a strong, sweet hand holding hers, was all that Micol had left.