The man walks down a hallway. “Century tells us where we came from and where we’re going. And for how much longer …”
The hallway is almost two hundred yards long. It has neither doors nor lights. Tall and narrow, the walls are covered with drawings and writings in childish red scrawled handwriting. The man walks all the way down to the end, where there’s a tiny door. He needs to hunch over to step through it.
On the other side of it is his bedroom. The man undresses with methodical, routine precision. The cuff of his shirt is splattered with blood. He shattered his glasses after all, and he’s still clutching them in his fist. He lets the pieces fall to the floor.
“He who knows the secret behind Century,” he says, resting back on the bed, which is too short for him to lie down on entirely, “rules the world.”
He doesn’t shut his eyes. He almost never sleeps. He hates sleep. Most of all, he hates dreams.
“I want to rule the world,” Heremit Devil says, the expression on his face unchanging. Painted on the ceiling of his room are the stars. But they’re all depicted wrong.
36
THE CHILDREN OF THE BEAR
WINTER HAS SWALLOWED UP THE CARDINAL POINTS IN SIBERIA. The woods are icy. The rivers slice through the rocky heart of the valleys. Nothing is moving. Tunguska is an expanse of broken rocks, moss and lichens, motionless forests where the pine needles are as sharp as razor blades. The paths are scanned by the blue eyes of wolves and marked by the passing of white foxes.
A single train reaches this land, braving the cold with its pinnacle of black smoke. The noise of its wheels on the tracks can be heard from dozens of miles away. The train is a black iron drum, its thumping beat echoing through the whiteness. It does this every year at the beginning of spring.
In Tunguska, there’s one thing that isn’t to be spoken of. It isn’t easy to discover, let alone reach. It’s a forest that no longer exists. It used to be very large. Its outer perimeter was once formed by slender pine trunks that tilted backward. Little by little, the smaller trees disappeared and the age-old pines became those that were tilted. They grew at impossible angles, as if they’d been swept back by an overpowering wind.
Then the trees disappeared. Their trunks were driven down, one beside the other, their roots pointing toward the center of the forest. In the center there was only snow, which covered expanses of molten, superheated rock. They say a comet fell in Tunguska in 1908. But that’s only a rumor. It’s best not to speak of what really happened.
Two figures are walking through the forest that no longer exists. They’re wearing heavy, hand-sewn furs. Crystals of snow are clinging to their eyebrows. Their boots are sinking down into the glistening mud. Their eyes are mere slits. It’s a woman and a man.
“I saw the star,” she says. She stares at the figure accompanying her with eerie-looking eyes. They call her the Seer, because she can see things with those eyes that others can’t see.
“What was it like?” her companion asks her.
“It was white. Like a foxtail. I saw it coming. But I couldn’t see if it was bringing life or destruction.”
“More destruction?”
“Not here. Somewhere else. But it won’t be like it was a hundred years ago. This comet will be much, much larger.”
The wind sweeps across the land, finding no obstacles.
“Who could ever know if it’s going to bring life or destruction?”
“The ones who summoned it. The Children of the Bear.” The Seer huddles up in her furs and points at the white expanse of the forest, which was destroyed by the impact of a falling star. “Every hundred years, the bear gives birth to four children. They’re her chosen ones and they’re born in the north. They’re the ones who summoned the comet. And now they have to guide it.”
“But how … how do you know these things?”
The Seer’s eyes narrow. “They told me. I’ve seen them. In the mornings and evenings. In the river and in the plain. I’ve seen it in the snow. I’ve heard it in the songs no one sings anymore. In the lost music. The world itself told me.”
“Here?”
“Here,” the Seer replies. “Because this is where it happened a hundred years ago, when the old children of the bear came. They summoned the comet and they didn’t know how to guide it.”
“How could anyone guide a comet?”
“By respecting the Pact.” The Seer kneels down to touch the ground. “The pact that allows us to live with her. The pact between man and the Earth.”
The two fall silent for a long while, and then the man helps the woman to her feet. “Why did you bring me here?” he asks her.
“Because you need to go find the Children of the Bear.”
“Where should I look for them?”
“In the city of wind and words.”
“I don’t understand,” the man replies. “There’s no such city.”
“Yes, there is,” she insists. “They call it Paris.”
“You want me to go to Paris for you?”
The Seer shakes her head. Very few teeth remain in her smile. “Not for me. For all of us. You need to find the Children of the Bear and give them something.”
She pulls out a leather pouch sealed with a rawhide string stiffened by the cold.
Inside of it is a wooden top.
Engraved on the wooden top is a heart.
CREDITS
© Iocopo Bruno (p. 4, photo 1; p. 4, photo 2; p. 5, photo 4; p. 5, photo 6; p. 5, photo 7; p. 9, photo 20; p. 10, photo 25; p. 11, photo 27; p. 11, photo 29; p. 12, photo 30; p. 12, photo 32).
© Chang/istockphoto.com (p. 4, photo 3).
© Corbis (p. 5, photo 5).
© daniellesmith/istockphoto.com (p. 4 top; p. 7, photo 12; p. 8, photo 15; p. 9 top; p. 11 top left; p. 12 middle right; p. 13, photo 34).
© Denis Finnin, American Museum of Natural History (p. 9, photo 21).
© flexidan/istockphoto.com (p. 8, photo 17).
© FreeTransform/istockphoto.com (p. 12, photo 31).
© Jello5700/istockphoto.com (p. 9, photo 22).
© lfreytag/istockphoto.com (p. 13, photo 38).
© Lingbeek/istockphoto.com (p. 11, photo 28).
© Marbury/istockphoto.com (p. 6, photo 8 bottom).
© Mikadx/istockphoto.com (p. 13, photo 37).
© Nazreen/istockphoto.com (p. 11, photo 26).
© nicoolay/istockphoto.com (p. 5 top right; p. 6, photo 11).
© Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (p. 6, photo 10).
© Stan Rohrer/istockphoto.com (p. 6, photo 8 top).
© Clare Stringer (p. 6, photo 9; p. 7, photo 13 top and bottom; p. 7, photo 14; p. 8, photo 16; p. 8, photo 18; p. 8, photo 19; p. 10, photo 24 all; p. 12, photo 33; p. 13, photo 35; p. 15 bottom; p. 16).
© Terraxplorer/istockphoto.com (p. 10, photo 23).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PIERDOMENICO BACCALARIO was born in Acqui Terme, a beautiful little town in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. He grew up in the middle of the woods with his three dogs and his black bicycle.
He started writing in high school. When lessons got particularly boring, he’d pretend he was taking notes, but he was actually coming up with stories. He also met a group of friends who were crazy about role-playing games, and with them he invented and explored dozens of fantastic worlds.
He studied law at university but kept writing and began publishing novels. After he graduated, he also worked with museums and cultural projects, trying to make dusty old objects tell interesting stories. He began to travel and change horizons: Celle Ligure, Pisa, Rome, Verona …
He loves seeing new places and discovering new lifestyles, although, in the end, he always returns to the comfort of familiar ones.
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