Gianni considered this possibility for a moment, but then shook his head. “Not exactly.”
Bethania continued to examine the drawing. She couldn’t understand any of the words that accompanied it, but she seemed to understand the woman. Her eyes gazed out at Bethania with a sadness and a knowledge that she easily recognized. “She looks frightened,” Bethania whispered.
“Are you...certain you don’t know her?” There was a note of hopefulness in Gianni’s voice that confused Bethania.
“I don’t,” she replied.
He gave a solemn nod and went to put the book away. “Best not tell Graziella about this. She doesn’t think you’re ready.”
“Gianni...Signore...who was she?”
“They called her the goddess of gifts.” He sighed, shaking his head. “She certainly gave me a great deal.”
Bethania watched him, unsure what to make of all this. “And what about you? Who are you?”
Gianni’s frown deepened. He began to speak, but before Bethania could make out what his words the door burst open and Graziella appeared. Her cheeks were flushed almost as red as the spectacular stockings she wore on her legs. “Good news!” She said excitedly, not noticing the gloom inside the cottage. “It’s still snowing!”
7.
Queens, New York. 2013
Alice woke up alone on the kitchen floor. There was no sign of Befana. Even all remnants of the shattered coffee mug were gone. She had to take several deep breaths before getting to her feet. Though she knew it should have been, it wasn’t obvious to her that the night before was a dream. It still felt so real.
She had many vivid dreams before. Dreams that convinced her for years that she had an intense argument with her father about whether or not chili powder was a proper sweet potato pie ingredient and whether or not that was the reason Henry divorced her. She didn’t talk to him for weeks because of things his dream persona had said. This was different though. She could still feel Befana’s eyes on her. Alice couldn’t explain why, but she knew that woman had been real.
As her mind eased over the details of the night before, her pulse began to quicken. That woman, that very real woman, had threatened to take Nick. She raced to his room, trying to steel herself for a worst case scenario and finding it impossible. “Nicky!” She called out, unable to contain the desperation inside her own body.
The little boy was asleep in his own bed, dreaming soundly and clinging to his new action figure. Some time during the night, he must have kicked off his blankets as they now puddled on the floor. Her pulse still moving a touch too quickly, Alice began to readjust the blankets and carefully smoothed the hair away from her son’s forehead. It burned her.
She jumped back involuntarily. Her hand felt as if she had just touched a hot stove-top. The panic, which had been slowly dissipating, returned with a vengeance. “Nicky,” she said, trying and failing to remain calm and gentle as she nudged him. He did not respond. His breathing was too shallow. His fever was too high.
Terror raced through Alice’s body as she carried her son from his bed to the car. A small voice whispered in the back of her mind that this was that woman’s fault, but she tried to ignore it. There were more important things to focus on now.
*
The coffee the nurse with thick glasses brought Alice tasted like cat litter, but she thanked her graciously anyway. The long night had drawn into a long day and it did no one any good to be rude. “Any word?” she asked, setting the mug down on a nearby magazine table.
The nurse shook her head. “His fever is still very high, but it has gone down a little.”
Alice wasn’t sure if she should be disappointed or heartened by the news. “Can I see him?”
Again, the nurse shook her head. It wasn’t the answer Alice wanted, but the nurse’s eyes were so clearly sympathetic, she couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry. The two women watched each other a moment, before the nurse quickly turned and left. Alice assumed it was in an effort to avoid the mounting awkwardness.
The loneliness of the waiting room was oppressive. She wasn’t truly alone. The room was actually rather crowded. There were five other people sitting at the small island of chairs and end tables that she occupied and at least one doctor or nurse made their way through every minute or so. Still, Alice didn’t feel connected to any of them. They all had their own concerns and all that mattered to her was Nick. She took another sip of the stale, cat litter flavored coffee and forced herself to swallow. It was cold now too.
“If you would have just listened to me...” A familiar medieval-accented voice said from behind.
Alice turned quickly and once again found herself face to face with that woman. She looked different somehow. Her hair was grayer. Around her neck, she wore the talisman that had made Alice faint the night before. It was a bronze disk engraved with a cylinder and three horizontal lines. It didn’t look so scary here under the harsh fluorescent lighting.
“Are you saying this is my fault?” Alice asked in a low voice.
Befana shook her head. “I’m not saying that, but there are things you couldn’t possibly understand.” She sounded so sure of herself. It grated on Alice’s nerves.
“He’s my son,” Alice replied, her gut turning with worry once again. It hadn’t really stopped since she woke up.
“Not…quite,” Befana corrected. “Graziella could explain it better. If you come with me.”
Alice locked her in a fierce glare. “I have no idea who you are!” A few people turned to look, but Alice did not fully realize.
Befana did. “You’re making a scene,” She said carefully and place a gentle but firm hand on Alice’s arm.
But Alice didn’t care. She stood up abruptly and paced away from her ghostly twin. “He’s sick! Are you going to help me or not?”
Befana stared back at her, pity filling her eyes. Alice recognized that pity. She somehow knew it and felt it as much as her own emotions. She felt as if she were not wholly in her own body.
“What’s going on?” She asked.
“Come with me. Graziella is much better at explaining all this.”
Alice shook her head and did not move. “Who’s Graziella? Who are you?”
“I already told you. My name is…”
“I know, but who are you?”
“They can hear you but they can’t see me,” Befana said quietly, looking to her left. Alice let her gaze leave Befana’s face and saw each pair of eyes in the waiting room was fixed on her in terror. “Come with me…”
“But what about Nicky?”
“Nico will be fine.”
A man in a security uniform had entered the room. Alice took a deep breath and then nodded to Befana, who stood and began to lead the way out. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said to the rest of them before following as quickly as she could.
10.
Brianza. 1277
Out of the corner of her eye, Bethania could see Graziella watching her. She didn’t like feeling those eyes upon her and it was hard to escape them, trapped as she was in the cottage. Graziella was still adamant that she not leave the confines of the building and this time, with an unfamiliar snow covered mountain range surrounding her, Bethania did not offer much protest.
What did bother her, was Graziella’s ever watchful eyes. “How am I supposed to practice with you judging me all the time?” Bethania whined one afternoon. She was, at Graziella’s insistence, trying to practice a little magic and it was harder than she had anticipated. She had managed to make the broom stand up, but it remained motionless in the center of the room.
Graziella sighed. “I’m not judging you...and you’re doing very well at that.”
Bethania, however, did not believe her. “This is useless. I’m not like you. I can’t just change my face at a moment’s notice.” The broom shuddered then tumbled to the floor with a clatter.
“We all have different gifts...” Graziella trailed off, looking around the room. Her eyes were alert,
like a rabbit who had sensed danger.
Bethania felt cold. “What is it?”
Graziella didn’t answer. She paced to the window and peered out at the snowy landscape. Bethania could only see an empty world of white, Graziella was tensely coiled. Her entire body was a cat ready to strike as she watched the nothingness.
A knock came at the door. “Don’t answer,” Graziella said immediately, her eyes fixed on Bethania.
“Why would I?” Bethania craned her neck to see the stoop, but there wasn’t anyone at the door.
“Because he’s here for you.”
“Me?” The knock came again, louder this time.
Inching toward the door, Graziella bared her teeth in a low almost bear-like growl. “Go away,” she said.
Bethania was both frightened and empowered by this. So many things about Graziella were terrifying, but the growl filled her momentarily with warmth. Then, the figure on the stoop became clear. It was a tall man, covered in a dark cloak, clasped at the neck with silver brooch. A quiver of arrows was slung over his back, it was almost impossible to make out the silver white feathers against the snowy backdrop.
“Let me in,” he said in a slick sweet voice that reminded Bethania of honey. “It’s so very cold out here.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Graziella said. She pointed at a bolt of wood and it moved itself across the door frame.
But the man’s words rang over and over in Bethania’s ears. She felt drawn to the door. It would be so easy just to move the wood away. Trying to resist, she turned back to the window. He was looking directly at her now. The hood of his cloak hid most of his face, but Bethania could see his eyes. They were eyes she recognized, eyes she knew well, but they were also a wolf’s eyes. She fainted straight away.
*
The first eyes Bethania saw upon waking were Graziella’s. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks at that. “Is he gone?” She asked, trying to sit up.
“I took care of it,” Graziella replied, gently fluffing some pillows that had been cushioning Bethania’s back. “You knew him?” Her tone was the gentlest it had ever been and Bethania was grateful. She did know him, and well, but she thought it had been a nightmare.
“When I had the pox,” she said, her words halting. Just saying it all out loud made her body feel blazing hot and itchy all over again. She noticed Graziella reach down and touch her red stockings reverently as if trying to ward something off. Maybe not even witches were immune. “I met him then. I thought it was just a dream, but...Nico came...and...I was wrong.”
Graziella’s eyes were wide and full of sadness. Bethania could read every emotion etched onto the witch’s face. “I knew...but I didn’t know that...” She trailed off and looked around the room. With a fearful tread, she stood up and went to the bookcase. She pulled out the spell book and clutched it tightly to her heart, breathing deeply before returned to sit at Bethania’s side. “I suppose it is time for you to know some things.”
The room was still spinning a little, but Bethania nodded, ready to finally understand what had been happening to her and why.
Graziella turned the pages with gentle fingers, pausing momentarily to allow each leaf of parchment to come to rest before going on to the next. Bethania knew that books were precious and expensive, but she had never seen someone treat one with this much reverence. She stopped on a page with a large illustration. The image contained Graziella herself standing in a snowy wood. Most of the colors seemed to have faded, but her bright red stocking were still clearly visible. “Lux Brumalis” was written in ornate letters above it. Bethania couldn’t tell if the intricate drawing was rendered lovingly or fearfully. There was a precision to it that could indicate either.
When Bethania said nothing, Graziella turned the page again. The next illustration was clearly done with love. It was a brightly colored image of a wheat field. The bright blue of the sky alone made the page priceless. If Bethania hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the amber-yellow colors were painted with real gold. She could see why Graziella took such care of this book, but what she didn’t understand was what it had to do with her.
Sensing this confusion, Graziella moved on. “We each have our own talents and realms that we are charged with,” she said with the tone of a tutor as she turned past pages of winged women casually lounging in forest pools, people who appeared to also be oak trees, a young lady in a black cloak with devilishly orange curls. “You do not necessarily have powers of the winter. You see, you are meant to be an overseer of things that are necessary in winter: charity, gifts, acts of kindness...”
“Gifts?” Bethania asked, thinking back on the drawing of the Roman woman Gianni had shown her. “But isn’t that...Strenia?”
Graziella gave her a suspicious look. “What do you know of Strenia?”
“Gianni...” Bethania began before trailing off. He had probably told her not to mention it to Graziella for a reason.
A cold fire flared up behind Graziella’s eyes, but then she gripped Bethania’s wrist tightly. “Do you remember what you asked me when you came to La Chiesa dei Morti? The night of the first snow?” She spoke in a hushed, tense whisper that made Bethania’s heart race.
“Ar-are you Graziella’s daughter?” She repeated slowly. How could she possibly have forgotten?
“And what did I tell you?”
“That...you were Graziella?”
“Yes...” She glanced around the room as if looking for spies. “You are Strenia. You.”
“Me?”
“You are Gianni’s beloved little sister...and he made me swear. He made me swear on all that we both are that no harm would come to you again.”
Bethania’s head was swimming. She didn’t understand. “But...My name is Bethania Peralta. I do not have a brother. All of my siblings died of the pox, I am the only one left...I...” She felt faint again, but she struggled hard against the rushing sound of water in her ears.
Graziella shook her head. “We sent you to the future to protect you. Just as we did with Nico. When I sensed that there was danger...”
“The future?”
“Gianni...he manages transitional states...this includes time.” She spoke so matter of factly. That made it all the harder for Bethania too take in. “You sent my son to the future?”
“To one of your…descendants. He will be very safe and when the time comes for him to return...she will be very understanding, I assure you. She will have to be. If she doesn’t return the boy, she will have never been born.”
“I--” Bethania stopped unsure of how to formulate the questions that were running rampant through her mind. She wanted to know how Graziella would know when the time for Nico to come home was and how she herself had been sent to the Peraltas; was she truly not a Peralta after all; and who was this hunter with a wolf’s eyes that haunted her nightmares? What did he want with her? Could he hurt Nico?
“I’m not a favorite, Bethania. In fact, I am hated. People consider me an evil witch. But you…you’re different. I can teach you what I know: to change your shape, to travel quickly, to divine. What you choose to do with it then will be up to you. Will you stay?”
Bethania watched Graziella’s pleading eyes, which seemed to somehow shimmer between aged and young by the second. “If you promise to keep nothing else from me.”
Graziella hesitated. Bethania could see a life of hiding the truth from others written on her face. “You have my word,” she said after a long moment of consideration, and Bethania trusted her.
“Who was that man then?”
“The Hunter, my young one. But you might know him better as death.”
11.
Queens, New York. 2013
Alice stepped outside into the small courtyard and directly into about 4 inches of thick heavy snow. More of it was falling mercilessly all around her. She cursed to herself. “Couldn’t we do this inside?” She asked the ghostly woman in front of her.
Befana was clearly not bothered
by the weather. She looked back at Alice with an expression that could only be interpreted as patronizing. “You need to talk to Graziella and this is where she is.”
At first, Alice couldn’t see anyone. She began to wonder if the ghost had led her out here to die when, as if out of the snow itself, a woman appeared. She was stooped and old in a way that people no longer were. Her long thin hair, which was the same awful slushy color of New York snow, fell limply to her waist. Her skin was tight and gaunt. So much so that Alice wondered if it was really skin at all. It resembled parchment paper much more. She smiled broadly and Alice couldn’t look away. She hadn’t a single tooth.
“She’s pretty, Beth,” the old woman said. Her voice rasped, like a cold wind.
Befana shrugged. “You expect me to disagree?”
“I suppose Beth told you my name is Graziella?” the old woman asked as she shuffled toward her.
Alice stared, unable to speak. She didn’t know why an old woman should frighten her as much as this one did, but she couldn’t help it. Just looking at Graziella filled her with dread. “She…she did,” she forced out. Her throat felt cold and she could practically see the words hanging in the air before her.
“Did she tell you anything else about me?”
Alice shook her head. She had never felt so cold in her life.
Graziella held out a spindly hand. In her palm, she held a small bronze medallion on a chain. It displayed the same symbol Befana’s did, a cylinder with three horizontal lines. “This is for you.”
“I…I’m sorry?”
“Take it.”
Hesitantly, Alice looked from Graziella to Befana and then back again. She had no idea how to process what was happening, but hoped that her body was actually asleep in a waiting room chair. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the medallion from Graziella’s hand. “Should I put it on?”
Graziella nodded, but Befana shook her head. “Not yet. We need to take Nico with us,” the young woman said.
“We shall,” Graziella replied, touching Befana’s arm lightly. “We’re not leaving yet. There is still much that Young Alice does not understand.”