When the Mountain keeps Secrets

The Long Ascent

I had been watching the mountains for hours.

At first they were only a smudge on the horizon, pale and thin as if painted in watercolour. But as the mule-cart rattled higher along the switchback road, the ridges swelled into great sleeping beasts, their backs dusted with snow, their flanks furrowed in shadow.

The driver, a stooped man with hands like olive roots, spat into the dust and muttered something I didn’t catch. His hat brim was pulled so low I could see only his mouth — thin, weathered lips that barely moved when he spoke.

“Best keep your eyes low, signorina,” he said. “The mountain sees you before you see it.”

I might have laughed if he hadn’t been so serious. Instead, I tucked my hands under my shawl and turned my gaze to the path. The road here was little more than a strip of pale stone carved into the slope, the kind of path where one bad step would tumble you into nothing but air. Below, valleys curled away into shadow though it was only mid-afternoon, and far-off bells marked some hour I’d lost track of.

The driver let go of the reins just long enough to make a small, sharp gesture — curling his fingers into a fist and thrusting his index and little finger forward, palm down toward the road. I recognised it at once. Le corna. The horns. My grandmother had told me it was for protection against the malocchio, the evil eye. But I had never seen anyone use it so quietly, almost hidden at his knee.

He wasn’t looking at me when he made it. His eyes had gone to a fold in the mountainside where the rock seemed to drink in the light.

“Do you believe in omens?” I asked. My voice sounded strange in the thin air.

“I believe in what’s here,” he said. “And what’s here is the Guardiano.”

The word sat heavy between us — Guardian — and I remembered the stories my mother used to tell me when I was very small, before she decided I was too old for fairy tales. A bear with silver fur who walked the ridges at night, keeping away wolves, thieves, and things darker still. She’d laughed at herself afterward, as if the story were nonsense, but the picture of that bear had stayed in my mind for years.

We rounded another bend, and the landscape opened to a stretch of wind-swept grass studded with strange, spiny blue flowers. The driver flicked his fingers toward them.

“Cardo amaro,” he said. “Bitter thistle. We leave them alone. Pick one, and the teeth will come for you.”

He didn’t explain what kind of teeth.

The wind was sharper here, carrying the scent of resin and something faintly metallic, like rain before it falls. I pulled my shawl tighter, but it wasn’t only the cold that made me shiver.

We passed a little roadside shrine nailed to a post — inside, a faded print of Saint Michael leaned behind a clouded pane of glass. Dried flowers lay in a neat bundle beneath it, their petals curled tight like small fists. The driver tipped his cap. “Protector of heights,” he murmured. “But even he shares the mountain with others.”

The cart jolted as the mule stumbled on loose gravel, and my fingers dug into the bench. In the distance, something moved along a ridge — too big for a wolf, too heavy in the shoulders to be a man. I blinked and it was gone, swallowed by the slope.

We met no other carts, no travellers. Only once did we pass another person — a shepherd leading three goats along a narrow cut of the path. His eyes slid over me and then away, as if looking too long might bring bad luck. He touched the rosemary sprig tied to his belt as we went by.

The higher we climbed, the less the land seemed to belong to people at all. Woods gave way to scrub, then to bare rock, each turn revealing another patch of wind-worn slope or a valley so deep it looked like the mouth of the earth.

By the time we reached the last stretch of road, the village came into view — clinging to the southern side of the mountain where the wind was softer. Stone houses the colour of old bone huddled close together, roofs slanting under the weight of age. The streets were narrow, more like passageways than roads, the kind where shadows stay even in full sun.

Above it all loomed the mountain’s upper reaches. Somewhere far higher, hidden in the folds of rock, sat the ruins of Rocca Calascio. I could see only a pale suggestion of walls between the jagged ridges, like the bones of some long-dead giant half-buried in the earth.

The driver stopped in a space barely wide enough for the cart to turn, a stone trough at its centre. “Eccoci,” he said, handing down my trunk. “Two streets up, the house with rosemary over the door — that’s your nonna Maria’s.”

Then, softer: “And remember what I told you, signorina. Keep your eyes low after sundown. And if you hear whistling, don’t answer.”

I wanted to ask why, but he was already flicking the reins. The mule plodded on, the cart creaked away down the road, and soon the sound of the wheels was gone.

The air smelled of woodsmoke and something sharper, like iron or rain on stone. I lifted my trunk and started up the lane. The cobbles were uneven, each step pulling at my ankles. Wooden shutters banged softly against their frames, though I saw no one close enough to open or close them.

I passed a doorway where rosemary hung in a thick green bundle. A black cat sat beneath it, yellow eyes following me as I walked. Somewhere above, a woman’s voice sang a low, wordless tune before falling silent the moment I glanced up.

At the corner where the lane turned, I saw them — more of those spiny blue flowers I’d noticed on the road. They grew from a c***k in the wall, their petals a deep violet against the grey stone. I knelt without thinking, drawn by the strange geometry of them, the way they looked almost like stars. But when my fingers brushed the stem, a shiver prickled up my arm, and I remembered the driver’s words: Pick one, and the teeth will come for you.

I stood quickly and kept walking.

My grandmother’s house was small, its doorway low enough that I had to duck to step inside. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of dried herbs — sage, lavender, something sharp I didn’t recognise. Copper pots hung from hooks above the hearth, and a kettle hissed softly over the fire.

She was there, seated at the table, her hair a grey braid wound around her head like a crown. She didn’t stand, but her eyes — pale green and sharp as glass — swept over me in a way that made me feel like the mountains themselves were sizing me up.

“You came later than I thought,” she said. Her voice was low, even. “Sit, Artemisia. You’ve walked enough for today.”

I set my trunk by the wall and did as she asked. She poured tea from a pot into two chipped cups, the steam carrying that same sharp scent I couldn’t name.

For a time, we drank in silence. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters. I thought I heard footsteps on the lane, but when I turned my head, Nonna Maria’s eyes flicked to mine.

“Don’t look,” she said.

And I didn’t.