How Fires End by Marco Rafalà

Author:Marco Rafalà [Rafalà, Marco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542042970
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

This was what happened to people when they believed too much in stories. Those stories that we all loved, if we held the pages to the light, we’d see right through them. If we held them close enough, they’d burn.

15

Old women in their black mournful shawls stood in doorways crying at the smoke billowing from the church. Men pulled at their hair with both fists and shouted curses at the sky. I stopped in front of the schoolhouse and looked back to see if Rocco and the others had followed me, but I could not spot them through the commotion in the streets. A man rushed into the school, and I followed him to my sister’s classroom.

“There’s been an attack,” he said. “Saint Sebastian Church is on fire.” Then he ran to the boys’ class across the hall. One of the girls screamed. The students jumped from their chairs and crowded around the windows.

“Calm down,” the schoolteacher said. “Come away from the windows.”

I told her our father wanted Nella to come home right away. The teacher said for us to be careful, and then I grabbed Nella’s hand and led her outside. We ran to the opposite end of the village and took a goat path that wound up the mountain slope.

“Where are we going?” Nella asked when she saw that we were not going home.

We stopped behind a crumbled wall with a swastika painted on it. The mayor had lived there. When the Germans came to our village, he welcomed them. He sat at their table, ate food stolen from our stores. After the war, the people turned against him. Someone killed him in the night. The authorities never caught the one who did it.

“We’re not going home,” I said. “I’m supposed to take you somewhere safe.”

“The cave,” she said. “There’s going to be another war, isn’t there?”

“The cave isn’t safe anymore, Nella.”

She tightened her grip on my hand. “Turiddu, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t let go.” I towed my sister behind me as I ran, bits of stone crunching under our feet and rolling down the slope.

The craggy path went up, almost to the mountaintop. We hid behind some prickly pears, and I peeked over the edge. Our farmhouse looked deserted, but the more I looked, the more I made out two bodies sprawled on the ground, not moving. And the more I stared at those bodies, the more I wished I hadn’t ever seen them.

Two goats walked up the path. They must have wandered from the flock belonging to Fortuna or Russo-any number of goatherds from the village. Their creamy-white coats dirtied with brambles stuck to the long fur. They looked at my sister and me as if they were trying to figure out what to make of us. Then one lowered its head, and I thought it was showing me its long corkscrew horns as a warning, but it was only grazing on the low weeds. The second goat did the same. They stood there, chewing and watching us, as if this were a normal day.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.