Pino glanced toward the wall and down, saw that snow blocked any real view of what was a very, very long fall—an unlivable fall.
“The rock wall will be right in front of your nose,” Pino said. “Look in front of you and sideways, but not behind you or down.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” the violinist asked.
“I’ll bet you didn’t like the first night you played at La Scala, but you did it, and you can do this.”
Despite the frost on her face, she licked her lips, shuddered, and then nodded.
After everything they’d been through, crossing the face via the cable and ledge proved easier than Pino expected. But that side of the peak was southeast facing and leeward to the storm. All five refugees and Mimo came across without further incident.
Pino collapsed in the snow, thanking God for watching over them, and praying that they’d seen the worst. But the winds picked up again, not in gusts but with steady force that drove the snowflakes into their faces like icy needles. The farther northeast they trudged, the worse the storm got, until Pino wasn’t exactly sure where he was. Of all the obstacles they’d faced since leaving Casa Alpina that morning, moving blind in a snowstorm across an open ridge was the most dangerous, at least where Pino was concerned. Pizzo Groppera was pocked with crevasses at that time of year. They could fall six meters or more into one of them and not be found until spring. Even if he could avoid the mountain’s physical dangers, with the cold and wet came the threat of hypothermia and death.
“I can’t see!” Mrs. Napolitano said.
The D’Angelo children began to cry. Judith couldn’t feel her feet or hands. Pino was on the verge of panic when ahead, out of the storm, a cairn appeared. The stack of rocks immediately oriented Pino. Ahead of them lay Val di Lei, but the forest was still a solid four, maybe five kilometers away. Then he remembered that along the trail that climbed north from the cairn there was another shepherd’s hut with a stove.
“We can’t go on until the storm lets up!” Pino shouted to them. “But I know a place we can take shelter, get warm, and ride it out!”
The refugees all nodded with relief. Thirty minutes later, Pino and Mimo were on their hands and knees, burrowing into the snow to open the door to the hut. Pino ducked inside first and turned on the miner’s lamp. Mimo made sure the stove was not booby-trapped, and built a fire. Before they lit it, Pino went out into the snow once more and invited them inside before climbing onto the roof to make sure the chimney was clear.
He pressed the door shut and told his brother to light the stove. The matches caught the dry tinder, and soon the kindling and logs were ablaze. The firelight revealed the exhaustion in all their faces.
Pino knew he’d made the right decision coming here and letting the storm sputter out before they pushed on. But would Mr. Bergstrom be there in the woods beyond Val di Lei? The Swiss man would suspect the storm had delayed their progress. He’d come back when it was over, wouldn’t he?
In a few moments, those questions were pushed aside. The little stove was almost red-hot and throwing delicious heat into the dirt-floored, low-ceilinged hut. Mrs. D’Angelo pulled off Judith’s boots and began to knead her daughter’s frozen feet.
“It stings,” Judith said.
“It’s the blood returning,” Pino said. “Sit closer to the fire and take your socks off.”
Soon they were all stripping down. Pino checked Mimo’s head wound, which had stopped bleeding, and then got out food and drink. He heated tea on the stove, and they ate cheese and bread and salami. Mrs. Napolitano said it was the best meal of her life.
Anthony fell asleep in his father’s lap. Pino turned off the miner’s lamp and nodded into a deep, dreamless sleep of his own. He woke long enough to see everyone else dozing around him, then checked the fire, which was down to fading embers.
Hours later, a sound like a locomotive engine woke Pino. The train rumbled right at them, shook the ground, passed, and then there was nothing but a deep silence for many long seconds, broken only by the groaning and popping of the logs supporting the roof. From deep in Pino’s gut, he knew they were in trouble once more.
“What was that, Pino?” Mrs. Napolitano cried.
“Avalanche,” Pino said, trying to control the tremor in his voice as he groped for the miner’s lamp. “It came right over the top of us.”
He lit the lamp. He went to the door, pulled it open, and was shaken to his core. Avalanche-hardened snow and debris completely blocked the hut’s only exit.
Mimo came up beside him, saw the dense wall of ice and snow, and in a terrified whisper said, “Mary, Mother of God, Pino, it’s buried us alive.”
The hut erupted in cries and worries. Pino barely heard them. He was staring at the wall of snow and feeling like the Mother of God and God himself had betrayed him, and everyone else in that hut. What good is faith now? These people just wanted safety, refuge from the storm, and instead they got—
Mimo tugged his arm, said, “What are we going to do?”
Pino stared at his brother, hearing the frightened questions the D’Angelos and Mrs. Napolitano were firing at him, and feeling completely overwhelmed. He was only seventeen, after all. Part of him wanted to sit against the wall, hang his head, and cry.
But then the faces looking at him in the glow of the miner’s lamp came back into focus. They needed him. They were his responsibility. If they died, it would be his fault. That clicked something inside him, and he looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten in the morning.
Air, he thought, and with that one word, his brain cleared and he had purpose.
“Everyone be quiet and still,” he said, crossing to the cool stove and turning the damper. To his relief it moved. The snow had not come that far down the chimney.
“Mimo, Mr. D’Angelo, help me,” Pino said as he put his gloves on and worked to free the chimney from the stove.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Napolitano asked.
“Trying not to suffocate.”
“Oh dear God,” the violinist said. “After everything I’ve been through, my baby and I are going to choke to death in here.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Pino disconnected the stove and moved it aside. Then, close to the ceiling, they detached the lower section of the blackened sheet metal chimney and put it aside, too.