When the Mountain keeps Secrets

The Day after

I wake to my own breath and the emptiness of the room.

For a moment I expect the shape of someone beside me, the remembered weight of an arm around my shoulders—warmth where the night had chilled. But the other half of the mattress is cold, smooth as an unslept page. The shawl hangs where I left it; the little braid of herbs Lucia gave me watches from the bedpost like a small, patient eye.

Did I dream the way he bent his head? The kiss that felt more like a vow than a question?

When I sit up, the floorboards answer with their familiar winter-in-september groan. The light leaking through the shutter’s seam is thin and colourless. It smells less like morning and more like a day still thinking about becoming one.

Downstairs, the kettle already hums at the edge of a boil. Nonna stands by the hearth with her hands wrapped in a towel, lifting the pot to pour. She doesn’t turn when I enter; she doesn’t have to.

“You slept,” she says.

“A little.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Where—?”

“They went home.” She sets the kettle down, steam ribboning past her cheekbone. “Your amica and the shepherd boy. Lucia’s grandmother would have my ears if I kept her after the bells, and the boy has his own roof to listen to.”

So I didn’t imagine all of it. I hold the mug she passes me in both hands, just to feel the heat. “You let them walk back alone?”

“The wind quieted,” she says, which is not the same as an answer. She looks at me then, properly, and something in her eyes measures the night behind my eyes. “Eat. There’s bread.”

I tear off a piece too hard and scatter crumbs. My mouth is a small, disobedient thing. I want to ask her if she heard the slow scrape along the wall. If she saw the pale eyes. If she knows what paced the lane like it had all the time in the world.

Instead I say, “Do you need me at the market?”

Nonna presses her knuckles to her lower back, thinking. “Go. Quick there and back. Say buongiorno to Signora Vittoria. Bring beans and onions and… rosemary cuttings if she’s still offering. Don’t dawdle. Don’t look for trouble and don’t whistle to fill the quiet.”

“I never whistle,” I say, because the shape of the rule makes me defensive even if it never belonged to me.

“Meglio così. All the better.” She ties a red thread around the handle of my basket, the knot done so fast I only see the last tug. “And keep to the light.”

The lane is washed clean by last night’s cold. Lantern soot still smudges the stone where the feast fires burned themselves out. There are signs of what I didn’t see—little crescents in the frost where something heavy stood, a scuffed place against a wall where a body brushed. My skin remembers the sound more than my ears do: that long slow howl, the deeper answer that wasn’t a wolf, the space between them like a held breath.

At the square, the morning is pretending to be ordinary. The well is damp and shining; the bread smells respectable. The butcher’s window is fogged. Only a few shutters stay half-closed long past the hour they ought to open. People greet each other in twos and threes, voices lower than usual, as if they’ve agreed to speak softly to keep something asleep.

“Buongiorno, Artemisia.” Signora Vittoria stands with her basket hooked in the crook of her arm, a sprig of rosemary stuck like a quill behind one ear. “How did you find the feast of Saint Michael?”

“Beautiful,” I say, and that’s true. I add, “Strange,” and that’s also true.

She doesn’t ask which part I mean. “Your Nonna wants cuttings? Sì? Come this afternoon. I’ll take too much and you can pretend to scold me.”

Lucia appears the way sparrows do—from the edge of sight and entirely at home. Her braid is pinned up today, copper thread catching where the light sneaks through thin cloud. She looks like she slept, which is a talent.

“You survived,” she says, like we’re picking up a conversation from the middle. “How is your house this morning?”

“Quiet,” I say.

“And last night?”

I think of the shadow at the window. Of the patience in it. “Not quiet.”

“Mh.” She leans her hip against the well. “Quiet doesn’t always mean safe.”

“Do you think—” I begin, and stop. I don’t want to give the question into the air where it can take root.

Lucia sees the shape of it anyway. “I think some things walk because it is their walking time,” she says. “And some things walk because someone forgot to bar a door.” Her eyes go soft, then sharp. “Eat walnuts if your hands are shaking. It tricks the body into remembering it’s yours.”

She presses two into my palm before I can protest. The shells are cold enough to sting. “Matteo?” I say, and hear my own voice lean a little.

Lucia’s mouth pulls sideways. “He heard what I heard,” she says. “Maybe more. He went home by the shepherd’s path, not the lane.”

“Why?”

“It’s shorter if your feet know how to read it.” She tips her head. “And it keeps you out of sight of the windows.”

“What did you call him—at the chapel?” I ask before I can change my mind. “Winter’s Step. Why?”

Lucia rolls a walnut between her palms like a little planet. “Because some people bring seasons with them,” she says. “And because his steps sound like snow deciding to be snow.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I own.” She tucks the walnuts back into my hand and closes my fingers over them. “Go home, bella. The house may want your company today.” Then, quieter, “And if the wind knocks from the wrong side, don’t knock back.”

On the way down the lane I see Matteo, or rather I see the outline of him in the edge of my eye. He is two doorways away, talking to the blacksmith’s son with his hands in his pockets. When he looks up, our eyes meet. There’s a whole conversation in it that neither of us lets out. He lifts his chin an almost-imperceptible degree; I nod back. He doesn’t come over. He doesn’t have to. And I don’t want to share the kiss with the day.