Arcadia Burns

THE ISLAND AND THE MOON


A GOAT LOOKING FOR tufts of grass among the volcanic rocks bleated as, a few hundred feet farther down, the waves broke in cascades of spray on the shores of Isola Luna.

Rosa and Alessandro were on their way uphill along a rocky slope. They had spent all morning climbing over porous stones, bizarrely shaped ridges, and lava glaciers frozen solid. Rosa had grazed her ankles and the palms of her hands, had lost no opportunity to curse volubly, but it had been a long time since she’d felt so content and happy.

Now the rim of the crater was directly above them. So close to their destination, she was almost sorry that the climb was nearly over. She stopped and looked back at the rooftops of the higgledy-piggledy house far below, down the mountain. Aside from the former bunker by the shore, the villa was the only building on the Carnevares’ private island.

The helicopter had brought Rosa and Alessandro there the evening before, and had then flown back to the Sicilian coast, thirty miles to the south. Apart from the goats who had taken up residence after Alessandro demolished Cesare’s enclosure for big cats, they were alone on the island.

Rosa stood with her back to the mountain, enjoying the sensation of the wind on her face as it came up from the sea. She briefly closed her eyes, thought of nothing at all, simply sensed the gentle caress of the breeze on her skin. Then she felt that Alessandro was close, and the next moment his lips were on hers.

“It can stay like this,” she said.

“What can?”

“Life. Everything. You and me.”

“Not before we’ve seen the crater,” he replied, forcing a smile. It was stupid of him to come on this climbing expedition with his injuries only half healed. But he claimed that he had never been up to the peak and this was the best day for it. He didn’t tell her why and she suspected that any other day would also have been the best day for it. Just as long as the two of them were together and no one disturbed them.

“You really never looked into it?”

“Never.”

“Not even from the chopper?”

He shook his head.

She looked at the last part of the climb up the mountain. “We still have…what, about three hundred feet to go? So this is our last chance to think about what we expect to see.”

“A crater?”

“You can be so boring.”

He returned her grin. “A base for extraterrestrials.”

“The way down to the earth’s core.”

“A launchpad for nuclear warheads.”

“The ruins of Arcadia.”

“TABULA’s secret control center.”

She bowed her head. “Would that be good or bad?”

“How would I know? Let’s not talk about TABULA today.”

“You started it.”

“Only in the heat of the moment.”

They set off again. On the way, she said, “I went back to the palazzo yesterday. I’ve decided to leave the whole place exactly as it is for now. Everything is covered with ash. Even the lemons are gray.”

“The rain will wash it off again soon.”

“Do you know what I wish I’d done?”

“What?”

“Make a snow angel. In ashes.”

“Good idea.”

“No, seriously. I almost did it. I’ve realized that I can do or not do whatever I like. And if I want to lie down in the ashes with my clothes on and leave a snow angel shape there, how can anyone object?”

“Snow angels are only romantic if there are two people making them.”

“Then come with me next time.”

“I will. I’ve always wanted to roll about in a bed of ashes with you.”

She took his hand, and together they went the last few feet to the rim of the crater. It had been Rosa’s idea to come to the island this morning, after they’d heard the radio news reporting the murder of an attorney in Taormina. She badly needed fresh air, and—at least for a while—the feeling of being alone in the world with Alessandro.

“Okay,” she said, as they stopped and looked ahead, over the rim of the crater. “Wow! And it’s official.”

In front of them, a barren rock basin opened up, at least nine hundred feet in diameter and half that depth. Light and dark veins of stone meandered over its sides, meeting at the center in a pattern of countless shades of gray. They saw no hidden extraterrestrial base, no landing strip for flying saucers, only volcanic rock, hostile to all life, where thousands of years ago the lava had solidified into clumps and hillocks. There was a flickering above the bottom of the basin, like the heat of an imminent eruption, but it was only a mirage.

“Look—there’s more here than just the end of the world,” said Rosa softly, pointing to a solitary dandelion growing from a crevice.

“Or the beginning.” He smiled. “No one’s been up here for ages. Maybe no one ever. So let’s lay official claim to the place as its discoverers.”

“We can found a colony. And a mission station for the native population of beetles and spiders.”

“And ours are the first footprints here, like on the moon.”

“There’s only one problem,” she said. “The island has belonged to you Carnevares for centuries. Don’t tell me there’s any kind of remote spot that your family wouldn’t have exploited in its business deals.”

“Oh,” he said, frowning. “You really think so?”

A smile stole over her features. “No, the island was your mother’s favorite place. She wouldn’t have let that happen.”

“She wouldn’t have let Cesare murder her, either, given any choice.”

She sighed softly. “No.” A gust of wind blew through her hair from behind, sending it fluttering around her face. She had to tame it with her hands so that she could lean over and kiss him.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was staring at her.

“Not fair,” she complained. “People aren’t supposed to look when they’re kissing.”

“Says who?” His smile was as infectious as ever, and she was glad that he had forgotten his grief again.

“Kissing calls for concentration if you want to do it properly.”

“We don’t have transformations anymore when we kiss. Did you notice?”

She reacted with pretend surprise. “And I was just wondering what was different from usual.”

His grin widened, the dimples were deeper. “Want to go down there?” He pointed into the crater.

Rosa shook her head. “No, I’m sunburned already.”

“That’ll go away again after the next transformation.”

She moved away from him and climbed up a small rise with a flattened surface on top. “Come up here.”

In spite of his injuries, he followed her nimbly. They sat down on the rock, held hands, and looked out over the slope of the volcano onto the wide expanse of the Mediterranean.

“It’s out there somewhere,” she said thoughtfully.

“The Stabat Mater?”

“The answer. The ship is only a part of it.”

“Probably.”

“And Arcadia once lay somewhere there.”

They fell silent as their eyes lingered on the horizon, looking for something that might have existed thousands of years ago. They themselves were only an echo of it, the shadow cast by Arcadia into the present.

“We ought to try it again sometime,” he said after a while.

“Kissing without turning into monsters?”

“I like you even as a monster.”

“But at the end of love stories like that, the monster always falls off the Empire State Building.”

“Except that we’re both monsters. Or all the others are, depending how you look at it.”

This time the kiss lasted much longer. Rosa peeked, but Alessandro’s eyes were shut tight. With a warm feeling inside, she closed her own eyelids, searched for the chill of the snake inside herself, and found nothing but a faint breath of icy air that she could easily tamp down. Was it only a question of practice? Of readiness? Of being an adult?

The sun was high in the clear sky, yet the moon was visible, pale in the radiant blue.

“You can only see it from here at this time of the year,” he claimed.

She didn’t believe a word of it. “Imagine that!”

He hesitated, and then said, suddenly very serious, “I’d like to give you all this, if you’d like to have it.”

She stared at him, openmouthed. “The sun? The moon?”

“The island. Well, the moon as well if I could get my hands on it.”

“Just like that?”

“You said you liked the villa. My mother loved it, and you once said that you could see why.”

“I do like being here. But what about you? I don’t want to have an island where you never come to visit me.”

“I always liked Isola Luna, and that won’t change.”

“The weird seventies look of the villa?”

“Throw out what you don’t like.”

“I like it all. Especially the record collection.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m in love.”

The sun sank lower, and the moon moved on. The flickering haze in the crater faded.

“It will be dark soon,” said Alessandro.

“Not up here.”

He stroked her hair and kissed her.

“Not with you,” she whispered.

Never with you.

Later, when they were halfway down the mountain, Alessandro’s cell phone rang. He answered it, with a guilty expression. Rosa watched him as he listened.

After only a few minutes, he thanked the caller and ended the conversation.

“That was the hospital.”

The moon was hovering above the volcano, and the sun had disappeared behind the rocks. Shadows lay on the slope.

“Fundling.”