Deepest Blue by Mindy Tarquini

Author:Mindy Tarquini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

For what reasons did we war?

For ego, for missteps, for fear, for loathing. Of ourselves, not the other. Of what is, not what might be. And all the while, you think you’ll have time, one more opportunity, to get it cleared.

Toward the end of Midsummer, I returned to Father’s office, buoyed by the birth of Matteo’s third, confident in my convictions and determined to convince Father. That it was time to end the vendetta, to face Ignazio, to explain to Matteo. We needed to plot a new course, do all those things which should have been done at first and must now be done at last.

I entered without knocking, pursued by a persistent rumbling, of earth shifting under my feet, into a space filled with stacks and sacks, mounds and molehills, and all of them arrayed near the fire.

And Father, feeding the flames, casting one document, then another, movements frenzied.

He reached for another parchment, a star chart, one I recognized. He took a moment, eyes widening in what I presumed to be surprise, then broke the seal and unrolled it, his gaze studious and steady. He ran a finger over one pathway, then another, all the possibilities, but the stars would not light under his fingertips.

Compassion, whole and helpless took hold of my heart and squeezed. I cleared my throat.

Father looked up and I had the impression he was glad to see me. “Lately I doubt my path, regret I was too rigid, too sure. A softer course might have saved Antonio, made Matteo feel more secure.”

He rattled the scroll. “Antonio’s chart. I thought you’d placed this in the archives.”

So did I. “Let me interpret it for you.” With joy, with sorrow. With deep examination of how we’d arrived at this pass. “Perhaps after we can discuss how much we should tell Matteo.”

Father nodded. To this day, I wish I’d waited my second statement until I got a response to my first. Because a nod is not permission if I do not know to which it refers. And I could not get clarity at that moment because the rumbling, present through the recent miseries, increased, near shaking me from my shoes. Then the chart dropped from Father’s fingers, the gentle green glow of Father’s amulet went dark and Father slumped over the pile in his lap.

The rumbling ceased. The ground grew still.

The nettle nearest Father began to brown, the wolf’s bane to howl. Father’s spirit rose over the ashes and the man who all had known as Bartomeo, Duca of Panduri, launched his spirit skyward and blew away on the breeze.

Taking Matteo’s answers with him.

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