“Orlando and I have a long history together,” he said. “I know he’s not above lying to achieve his own purposes. I know he would hurt those closest to him if he thought it would benefit him in the end.” He turned a sharp smile to Orlando. “I know he turned in his own brother to the authorities on a charge of treason.”
“That’s a lie!” Orlando snapped, his face mottled with rage. “You leave my brother out of this!”
Lorenzo’s smile turned into a grin. “We used to be called the Sons of Italy. But he had a problem with authority—with commitment—and was asked to leave the brotherhood.” Lorenzo looked at me. “He is unstable and unreliable. He is not to be trusted.”
“Who are the Sons of Italy?” I asked. The name didn’t sound familiar, but so much of my memory was still blocked or shrouded in darkness.
“We were patriots. Good men who deserved better than to count Orlando di Alessandro Casella among our number.”
“They were murderers and liars,” Orlando countered.
“You would know,” Lorenzo murmured. “Tell me, what did you exchange for your freedom, Orlando? Was it worth it? Has it made you happy?” He pushed away from the angel, closing the distance in a single long stride. “Did it finally make you feel like a hero?”
Orlando’s voice erupted from his throat in a wordless roar. He charged at Lorenzo, who moved out of the way so fast that his black robe seemed only his shadow.
Lorenzo laughed, the sound reaching high into the rafters like a song. “Ah, there’s the Orlando I remember. You were always the bear in battle. It’s nice to see you haven’t lost your edge along with everything else.”
The two men circled each other, each one placing his feet carefully, unwilling to turn his back to the other.
I crept away from the action, huddling close to the angel for protection.
“Why?” Orlando spat. “Why did you do it?”
“I did what had to be done. Believe me, if you had been in my place, you would have done the same thing.”
Orlando shook his head. “I thought we were friends.”
“I was never your friend, Orlando. I was your leader. Your superior.” Lorenzo arched an eyebrow. “I always have been; I always will be.”
“I should never have listened to you.” Orlando leaped forward, reaching for Lorenzo’s throat.
Lorenzo dodged again, but not quite as fast as before. This time, Orlando caught the edge of his robe and knocked him off balance. He pulled him close enough to lock his hand around his upper arm.
“Did you ever tell me the truth? About anything?” Orlando tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white. “Or were the lies easier for you?”
Lorenzo twisted on his heel and broke free, dancing back a few steps. Anger lit a fire in his eyes. He shook his head slowly, sadly. “I told you what would happen if you crossed me. And I always keep my word. I thought you knew that about me, Orlando.”
“I keep my word too. And I swear I won’t let you hurt anyone else,” Orlando said. “Ever again.”
Lorenzo suddenly relaxed, an aura of confidence snapping into place around him. A ghost of a smile appeared, his teeth as white as the snow in his hair. He flicked a glance at me and when our eyes met, I suddenly felt cold.
“But you’re too late, Orlando,” he said. “As usual.”
Then he rushed forward, heading for me and the angel statue. I pressed myself back against the wall, my hands in front of my mouth, praying I wouldn’t scream. The man before me bore little resemblance to the man who had kissed me a moment ago. This man was fast and deadly. Eager for violence. Satisfied to inspire fear.
I didn’t want this man anywhere near me.
Orlando reached for me, but he was too far away.
Lorenzo stopped. He wasn’t coming for me after all. He grabbed the angel’s wing and pulled. The stone figure toppled off the pedestal, crashing to the floor. A wingtip snapped off with a sound like breaking bone. A crack appeared along the edge of his face, cutting across his eyes. A second crack ran along the floor, as thin as a thread, but quickly branching out into an entire network like a fractured web.
Orlando and I both looked at the broken angel in stunned surprise.
“Here now!” Father Marchello’s voice rang out from behind Orlando. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You can’t stop me, Orlando,” Lorenzo said, his boots covered with a fine layer of white stone dust. “And what’s done is done.” He met my eyes for a brief second. He winked at me, and then, like the shadow man from my dream, he disappeared.
I gasped. Where had he gone?
The last vestiges of the dreamlike feeling that had cocooned me disappeared as suddenly. I blinked, barely able to believe what my senses said had happened. The faint music that had seemed never-ending had been cut into silence. Sparks wavered along my peripheral vision. My fingers trembled, but then so did the rest of me.
“What’s going on?” Father Marchello continued. “I heard shouting—” He stopped short, the words caught in his throat. “The angel. What happened to the angel statue?” His earlier kindness had vanished, and an ugly red flush began creeping up his neck.
“I . . . I’m sorry, Father,” Orlando stammered. He looked at me, his eyebrows lifted in confusion and surprise.
“You did this?” He marched forward and grabbed Orlando by the arm, pulling him out of the dark alcove and into the light of the cathedral.
Orlando didn’t resist, stumbling along behind the priest, his gaze still fixed on the spot where Lorenzo had vanished from sight.
“We grant you sanctuary, and this is how you repay us?”
I stepped through the broken fragments of the angel, careful not to disturb the dust or displace the shards of stone. I felt like crying. The angel had been so beautiful, and I had felt so safe standing in his shadow. I wanted to lift him back to his place of guardianship, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. And even if I could, he would never be the same. There were too many cracks. Too much destruction.
“Why? Why would you do such a thing?” Father Marchello demanded. “Have you no respect? No honor for our holy statues? I should call the guards and have them take you back where you belong. Not dangerous, you say? Bah!”
Orlando didn’t meet the priest’s angry stare. Instead he meekly bowed his head and accepted the berating in silence.
What had happened to the Orlando who had faced Lorenzo with energy and intention, with fire? Why didn’t he simply say it was Lorenzo’s fault?
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Father Marchello asked.
“What’s done is done,” Orlando said quietly, his face a mask. He looked as pale as the broken statue at our feet. And as sad. “I’m sorry, Father. Truly. I didn’t mean for—”
If Orlando wasn’t going to say anything, I would. It wasn’t fair to let him take responsibility for something he didn’t do. “It’s not his fault. He didn’t break the statue.”
“Then who did?” Father Marchello asked, folding his arms across his chest. “Certainly not you.”
“It was Lorenzo,” I said. This time his name left a bad taste in my mouth.
Father Marchello frowned. “I know of no one here by that name.”
“He’s not here now. But he was here. And he’s dangerous—” As soon as I said it I knew it was true. The trembling in my fingers increased. And I had kissed him? I had given him my locket? What was wrong with me?
“Then where is he?” Father Marchello looked around at the deserted cathedral. “Did he disappear into thin air?”
Orlando shot me a look; I saw some of that old fire in his eyes, and I stayed silent.
Father Marchello pointed to the main doors. “Out. I want both of you out of my church. Now.”
Orlando lifted himself to his full height. A quiet strength and dignity settled over him like a mantle. He held out his hand to me. “Will you come with me, my lady?”
A swirl of memory stirred. Orlando, his hand extended, a
question on his lips. I had trusted him enough to take his hand once before. Would I trust him enough to do it again? Lorenzo’s voice came back to me: He is not to be trusted. I pressed my lips together, feeling once more the burning touch of his mouth on mine, the sweep of darkness at the mere thought of him.
It wasn’t like that with Orlando. When I was with him, I didn’t feel the same danger or distrust. And with Lorenzo gone, my mind felt clearer, stronger. I knew what I had to do. What I wanted to do.
I put my hand in Orlando’s and let him lead me out of the cathedral.
Neither one of us looked back.
• • •
Cold winter sunlight had opened up the night, spilling the morning into the plaza outside the cathedral. The day was waking up, and the plaza was already crowded with small knots of people milling about, along with a few merchants who had set up stands to display their wares. But even with Orlando walking next to me, I still felt lost and alone in a strange place. A light breeze brought with it the smell of hot food, but I wasn’t hungry.
At least not for food. I wanted answers. I was starved for stability. I felt like I had been tossed and turned on an ocean of uncertainty and there was no land in sight. I was hurt and frustrated and confused.
I wrapped my cloak tightly around me, as though the rough fabric could hold me together. I knew there was something wrong with me, a heavy block separating me from my past and my memories. No matter how hard I looked at it, examined it, or attacked it, I couldn’t seem to break past it. When I tried to remember something, I ended up with a blistering headache, though, strangely, some memories and images seemed to sneak up on me when I wasn’t trying.
What was hiding behind that darkness? I wondered. A history filled with family and friends?
Or was it hiding horrors? Nightmares that were best kept in the dark? Maybe it was a mercy that I couldn’t remember. Maybe this was my chance to start fresh with a new life in a new place.
No. The farther down that track I thought, the more wrong it felt.
I wasn’t supposed to be starting over. I was supposed to be continuing.
But doing what? Going where?
I shook my head and blew out my breath in frustration.
I glanced at Orlando, walking beside me. There was something comforting about having him nearby. I had chosen to trust him more than once; I would choose to trust him a little longer. Orlando had led me from the courthouse and saved me from Angelo’s guards when he could have easily left me behind. Orlando had promised he would find a way to take me home.
I thought about the narrow black door standing in the depths of the courthouse. Did I dare reenter the building and cross through that door? If it really was a time machine, would it lead me home?
I sighed. Too many questions and not enough answers.
I stopped in my tracks as a sudden, piercing pain started at the base of my neck and radiated up through my head.
I clamped my eyes shut, rubbing at my forehead and pinching the bridge of my nose. It didn’t help much. The pain snaked thin tendrils down my limbs, following the path of my veins and making my blood tingle.
“My lady? Are you all right?” Orlando asked.
At least, that was what I thought he said.
A roaring erupted in my ears, the sound of an ocean crashing on a wide expanse of beach, and my vision blurred, the world around me smearing into wide paint strokes of color. I felt lopsided and unbalanced as the seams that held me together started to unravel.
I was no stranger to pain, but this was a level beyond the muscle cramp I had endured yesterday. It wasn’t even like the pain that accompanied the flicker of my returning memories or the heaviness of the block in my mind that kept them away.
My breathing quickened and my heart spun in my chest.
No, this was something different. Something worse. I had never felt this kind of unconnectedness before. A looseness that made my skin feel two sizes too big for my bones. A tightness that made my nerves feel like frayed wires, pulled taut and sparking with ungrounded power. A pressure that reached into every cell of my body and squeezed.
Orlando’s face swam into view, but it was only lines and shapes. Two circles floating inside an oval. A line of a mouth cutting through like an arrow.
His hands grabbed my shoulders—someone else’s shoulders? It was hard to tell anymore where the edges of me were. “Stay with me,” he ordered.
But though I wanted to obey, tried to obey, I couldn’t.
I closed my eyes and felt myself falling forward—or was it backward? My balance was gone. Directions were slippery and meaningless.
I counted the number of seconds it took me to surrender to the approaching darkness.
Fewer than I thought it would be.
• • •
My body knew it was a dream long before my mind did. There was a different kind of pressure surrounding me than before. It was still uncomfortable, just this side of painful, but at least it was a pressure my body recognized.
I opened my eyes and sat up, surprisingly unsurprised to see a vast, empty plain stretching around me all the way to the horizon.
My memory roared to life. I recognized the vast wasteland around me—the bank. I remembered a silver thread of light, images unspooling along the length of it, light dancing off the churning waves—the river.
I had been here before. Or almost here. I wasn’t fully on the bank or in the river, but had managed to drift between them, ending up on the strange dream-side of the bank.
And I wasn’t here alone.
I turned in a circle and came face-to-face with another girl my age. Her black hair was ragged; so were the hems of her skirt and shirt. She crossed her arms against her chest. The light flickered oddly around her body as though she were a ghost, turning the shadows on her skin from silver to gray to gold.
Even though the edges of her appeared wispy and faint, her eyes snapped with anger, and her pale face had two bright red splotches on her cheeks.
“He’s mine!” she spat. “You can’t have him.”
Stepping back, I blinked in confusion. My head still hurt a little from the changing pressure I’d experienced. My ears felt stuffy, the sounds reaching me on a delay.
“Who?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“Don’t play stupid. You’re not stupid, and it will just make me madder if you play pretend with me.”
“I’m not pretending,” I said, holding up my hands, palms out, in an effort to calm her down. I felt like I should remember her name, but even here in my dream the bulk of the block in my memory remained intact. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She laughed, a high, keening sound that circled up into the flat sky like a flock of birds. “When the Pirate King sings, and the Pirate King dreams, then we all fly away on the Pirate King’s wings,” she chanted.
The hairs on my arms stood up.
“And what the Pirate King knows, isn’t what the Pirate King shows, and we all must follow where the Pirate King goes,” she continued.
I took a step back. Dream or not, I didn’t want to be any closer to this ghost-girl with the strange light in her eyes and the naked note of madness in her voice.
“I don’t understand what you want from me,” I said. “Who are you?”
“He kissed you. He made you his,” she cried, ignoring my questions. I wondered if she could even really see me, if she was even really here. “You gave him your heart!”
My fingers automatically went to my throat, but my locket was gone. Given away by my own hand to a man I thought I knew, thought I remembered. A man this girl called the Pirate King.
“And now you belong to him,” she said a little sadly, but I couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for me or for herself. Tears of hurt and anger shimmered in her eyes.
A chill sense of dread circled in the air around me, close but not yet closing in.
“But I will fix it.” The gleam in her eye shifted to something
darker and more cunning. The outline of her body rippled like water. “I know how to fix it. I will make the River Policeman arrest him and throw him in prison. He belongs in prison. And once he is gone, everything will be all better.”
She turned her gaze on me, and I realized she wasn’t a ghost at all, but a real person who could somehow see me even in my dream. The dread hit me full force, covering my body and stealing my breath.
“Oh, yes, you may belong to the Pirate King now, but I will make the River Policeman mine. And then we’ll see. Oh, yes. Then we will see.”