When the Mountain keeps Secrets

The wolf in white

The wind above the village drags its claws tonight.

It scrapes over slate and shutter, prowling between chimneys before curling down into the narrow lanes. Even the dogs keep to their corners.

From the kitchen window I can see the fortress slope, half-vanished in a wash of moonlight. It’s brighter tonight than it should be, like someone’s taken a knife to the cloud cover and let the silver spill out.

Lucia had walked me home after dusk, her braid swinging like a pendulum against the dark of her coat. She’d said little, only a parting reminder to “keep the latch fast,” the same way she’d said it the night the snow came. But she’d glanced at the path above the village with a crease between her brows I hadn’t seen before.

Matteo hadn’t been with her. He hasn’t been at all since the honest shape of him burned itself into my memory on that narrow stretch of road.

The latch is fast. The shutters are drawn. Still, the wind drags its claws.

I lay the journals out on the table, not to read them—I’ve read and reread until the words ghost behind my eyes—but to feel their weight. Nonna Maria’s shawls still smell faintly of rosemary where they’ve been folded over the leather spines. I press my palms flat to the covers, grounding myself in that scent, that weight.

And that’s when I hear it.

Not claws. Not the slow, deliberate tread I’ve learned to dread. This is softer. A pad-and-crunch, measured, as if whoever walks out there is careful not to disturb more than the snow demands.

I slip to the front window, lifting the edge of the curtain. The moon has pulled the village into a pale, sharp-edged world. Every roof and wall wears the frost like new skin. And there, at the far end of the lane—white.

Not snow. Not quite.

A man stands just past the last house before the lane bends toward the slope. His coat—if it is a coat—hangs long, pale as bleached bone. His hair catches the light like frost on wire. He leans on something I can’t see clearly, but his posture is easy, like he belongs in the cold.

And he’s looking straight at my window.

I let the curtain fall. My breath fogs in the dark.

A knock.

Not at the door—too light for that. Against the shutter. Once, twice, like fingertips.

“Artemisia,” a voice says. Not loud, not pressing—just certain.

The sound freezes me more than the cold. I don’t know that voice, but it says my name as if it’s been waiting to.

When I don’t answer, the snow crunches again. Steps approaching the door this time. Then the scrape of knuckles against wood.

“Your grandmother would tell you not to answer,” the voice continues. “But I’m not here for her.”

Something in the tone—polite, almost amused—strikes the same nerve the wind does when it shifts direction without warning.

I move toward the back of the house, thinking to slip out the other way, but the moment I set my hand on the latch, the voice comes again, close enough I can hear the smile in it:

“You know about the Fonte Vecchia.”

The words jolt through me. Fonte Vecchia. I’ve seen it—written in the old journals, in the curling ink that traced “where the spring feeds the old stone.” I never knew what it meant. Until now.

Snow shifts under a boot. “You will. When the melt comes, the whole mountain will taste it. But you—” A pause, like he’s leaning closer to the wood. “You might taste it first.”

A second set of footsteps crunches into range, heavier, sharper. The white presence outside doesn’t move, but his voice loses the amusement. “Ah. Here he is.”

The door rattles in its frame—not from him, but from the impact of something else hitting it.

“Step back,” Matteo’s voice snaps, and the sound of it cuts cleaner than the wind. “You don’t speak to her.”

The laugh from the other man is low, rolling, almost pleasant. “You’ve kept her to yourself long enough.”

“This isn’t your pass, Raffaele.”

“Nor is it yours, Winter’s Step.”

The snow shuffles again—footsteps circling, testing. I imagine two predators measuring the same space, neither willing to give ground.

“I’ll walk away,” Raffaele says, “but she’ll find me before the thaw. They always do.”

A beat of silence. Then the snow’s whisper fades into distance.

Matteo knocks once—sharp, his usual rhythm—and I lift the latch. His hair is wet again, his coat dusted with frost. Behind him, the lane lies empty, moonlight unbroken.

“You don’t answer if he comes again,” he says.

“Who is he?”

“The kind of man who circles what he wants.”

“And are you here to make sure I’m not?”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t answer.

I should be afraid. I am, somewhere under the press of questions. But above it, something else hums—Raffaele’s words about the Fonte Vecchia. About tasting it first.

⸻

The days that follow are sharp-edged with cold. Snow comes in fits, sometimes thick enough to erase the line between roof and sky, sometimes so thin it falls like ash and vanishes before it settles.

Matteo stays to the edges of the village. I see him from my window sometimes, moving along the slope or vanishing into the shadow of the fortress wall.

Lucia comes twice, each time with herbs for Nonna Maria—though my grandmother still hasn’t returned—and each time with a look at me like she’s checking whether I’ve strayed.

It’s on the third afternoon, when the sun is little more than a pale smudge above the ridge, that I see the white again.

Not Raffaele this time.

The shape is lower, broader in the shoulder, gliding just beyond the last fence. Snow clings to its fur in dull clumps, but the eyes—light-struck, deliberate—are fixed forward.

A wolf, but not like the stories tell it. Not ragged, not wary. This one moves as if the land is its own body.

And on its back, the faintest suggestion of a scar.

I press my forehead to the glass. The wolf slows. Lifts its head. The distance between us is too great for me to see its eyes clearly, but the moment holds anyway—like the space between the drawn breath and the prayer.

Then it moves on, disappearing into the line of pines.

⸻

That night, I dream of the spring.

Not the gentle kind in gardens, but a place where the water forces its way out of the rock, white with cold, loud enough to drown the voice beside me.

Except I can hear it anyway.

“You’ll come,” Raffaele says. Not a question. “You’ll bring him if you must, but you’ll come.”

I wake with the taste of iron on my tongue.

The journals wait under the shawls. I open the one with the three circles sketch, running my finger along the ink until it meets the faded scrawl: where the spring feeds the old stone.

The phrase sits heavy. The wolf in white walks the pines. Matteo haunts the slopes. And somewhere, water waits.

⸻

The next day, the snow breaks enough for the market to open. Lucia insists on walking with me, though her errands pull her to the other end of the square. I wander the stalls, buying little—dried apples, a twist of blue-dyed wool—but noting who greets me and who doesn’t.

That’s when I see him.

Raffaele.

Not in white this time, but in a dark coat that makes his hair almost luminous against the crowd. He’s speaking with the man who sells knives, both of them laughing low. His eyes lift just once, over the heads between us, and land on mine.

It’s not a stare. Not a challenge. Just a quiet, certain recognition.

Then he turns back to the knives, as if the moment cost him nothing.

Lucia reappears, catches the direction of my glance, and frowns. “You don’t want his attention.”

“He already gave it,” I say before I can stop myself.

She sighs. “Then remember this: wolves bargain in circles. They always come back to where they began. Make sure you’re not standing there when they do.”

I nod, but my mind is already pulling threads—Raffaele’s voice at the door, the wolf in white on the slope, the taste of iron in the dream.

And somewhere under it all, the sound of water against stone.