The Last of the Seven by Steven Hartov

Author:Steven Hartov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2022-06-14T17:11:46+00:00

Seventeen

FROELICH AND SOFIA HAD no plans, but they had a water bottle, three oranges, a motorcycle, a rifle and a day, and all of that was treasure in the middle of a war. The coastal road was empty and serene, with blurs of lichen-covered shoulders on the right and sands of gleaming seashells on the left, and beyond that a boundless ocean with all its promise.

Few ventured out that way, as the guns had barely fallen silent, and the train tracks were still curled from German saboteurs and the engineers had not yet clawed up all the mines. The Sicilians were still wary, finding comfort in the herd, so the western fringe of Agrigento, beyond which lay Siculiana, was like the lip of a roaring waterfall that tumbled away to rock and foam and wild imagination. But Froelich and Sofia were young, and even though they’d lost that precious sense of childhood immortality, they dared to swim beyond where it was safe.

Froelich didn’t know where they were going, so he let Sofia tell him with her finger. She hugged him tightly till they came to any fork, then perched her hand below his chin and wagged her digit left or right, and he grinned and did as he was told. When at last Agrigento was lost behind them and it seemed that nothing else of humankind could flourish, Siculiana rose up like some creature from a Scottish fairytale unfurling from the mist. Hundreds of feet high, it appeared upon twin promontories like dromedary humps, both clustered with crooked houses as if some tikes had thrust their matchbox collections willy-nilly into mounds of mud. Nestled in between them at the top was Siculiana’s red capped duomo, tipped with a gleaming cross.

“Where are we going, Sofia?” Froelich called over his shoulder.

“It is named Siculiana,” she answered in his ear. “That small city in the sky.”

“Is there something there?”

“There is something everywhere, Tenente.”

“No, I mean something special.”

“Perhaps the next step on your stairway, I do not know,” she said, and with that she hugged him tighter, but only for a moment, as if she knew he’d have to leave soon and she’d have to let him go.

The dusty road dipped into a cactus valley and flattened out, and they stopped the Moto Guzzi, its engine gurgling. The town above was surely smirking down, as every narrow lane between its stony huts looked too steep for even mountain mules. But Froelich gunned the engine, Sofia gripped him round his neck, and they raced upward, spewing stones and dust, careening left then right, banging echoes off the walls as gold toothed matrons popped their heads from windows to glare down at these careless children shattering their morning, until at last they burst onto the summit of the town.

It was a cobblestone piazza the size of a cricket field, surrounded by a crown of mismatched homes, their pimply faces painted with pastels mixed from turmeric and pomegranate. In the middle sat a massive granite duomo with a dozen wide stone stairs rising to the church’s yawning door.

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