He pushed her away. He was an open wound, flayed raw by the grass that covered his boys. “Woman, leave me alone.”
At first, his wife begged him for words. Failing that, she pleaded for his touch. As the days passed, she simply implored him to look at her. But Uri could not. He was blind to everything but his own pain. He regretted not dying in Bicocca. Whoever had saved him had not done him any favor. He had lived only to lose something worse than his own life: his past and his future.
There was not an inch of his house in which he did not feel the absence of his sons. An empty chair. A quiet room. A cold bed. There was no yesterday he could wade through that did not drown him in tears. To remember how his boys laughed when he carried them on his shoulders only made their silence echo louder. But turning his thoughts to tomorrow was even crueler. The years ahead held only promises he could no longer keep, memories that would never be made, and dreams that had turned into dust.
He looked across the table at where his eldest used to sit and ask for more watered-down stew. His heart had broken a thousand times when he had to tell him the pot was empty. He had hired himself out to fight other people’s wars so that he would not have to see his children go hungry. Now, because he had not been at their sides when they needed him the most, he would never see them at all. But maybe what he could not do for them in life, he could do for them in death. Porridge for Hans. Fruit for Peter. And bread. Stew. Meat. Milk. Their table would never be bare again. He picked up his paintbrush. Pie.
The light from his oil lamp flickered on the planks of the barn’s ceiling. Uri moved closer to the scaffolding’s edge. He dipped his brush into one of his pots and painted over the yellow glow.
“Good evening, Uri.”
Uri bolted upright, hitting his head on a beam. Wet paint streaked his matted hair. “Who … who’s there?”
“I see that you’ve been busy.”
“Show yourself!” Uri reached for his lamp. His hand trembled. A pot fell to the floor. Red splattered over dirty hay.
“I didn’t know you were this … talented.”
Uri scrambled down the scaffolding.
A dark figure emerged from an empty stall. The halo of Uri’s lamp lit the amber in his eyes.
“Captain!” Uri stumbled backward. “I … I thought you were dead!”
“Consider me a ghost then, or a basilisk, if you like. That’s what you and the men used to call me, if I remember correctly.” The Basilisk stepped out of the shadows.
Uri screamed and fled the barn.
Uri stumbled on the grass at the edge of the light seeping from the barn. What was he doing? Esther … his boys … they were still in the barn—with the monster that had taken a dead captain’s shape. He shouldn’t have left them behind. He had to go back. His heart pounded against his ribs as it had done so many times before a battle. He pulled himself to his feet and tightened his grip on his courage. War’s drumbeat thundered in his ears, urging him to advance. He flung the barn doors open.
The Basilisk was waiting for him. “I’m glad you came back.”
Uri froze. He did not have his pike.
“Come inside, Uri,” the Basilisk said.
Uri took a step closer, his empty fists trembling at his sides. His eyes darted over the Basilisk, searching for the best place to strike.
The Basilisk held up Uri’s lamp to his face. Uri held his stare, stunned—and relieved—that he did not turn to stone. The light illumined his captain’s eyes. They looked weary. Alive. “Captain, is that really you?”
“Yes,” the Basilisk said softly.
“But I saw you fall.”
“You fell, too, and yet here we both stand. Wounds heal, Uri. At least, most do.” The Basilisk glanced over at Uri’s leg. “Your leg seems to have set well.”
Uri nodded, unable to take his eyes off the man he had given up for dead. “It only hurts when it gets cold.”
“Consider yourself fortunate, then. Some pain never leaves, regardless of the weather.” The Basilisk stepped toward Uri. “I heard of your loss. I came to offer my condolences.”
“Condolences?” Uri asked, looking puzzled. “There has been no death here.” A smile warmed his face as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Forgive me. I have forgotten my manners. Captain, I’d like you to meet my wife, Esther. And these are my children, Peter and Hans.” Uri waved to the painted children. “Go on, boys, don’t be shy. Say hello to the captain.”
The Basilisk felt the ceiling close in on top of him. He was too late. Madness was a ditch he could not carry Uri out of. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t mired in it himself. In war, they had little in common. Uri had fought to live. He had battled to die. But now they stood on the same ground. Both of them were trying to find their way home.
“Won’t you stay with us, Captain? Esther will be thrilled to have a visitor. We have a spare room.” Uri pointed to an empty barn stall.
The Basilisk looked up. Uri’s family smiled at him. He envied Uri’s painted world. It was more real than any peace he hoped to find. “Yes … thank you. I think I will.”
Uri set up the scaffolding. The captain had been staying with him for a few weeks now. Or had it been months? He wasn’t very concerned with the passing of the hours. Time didn’t matter much when you were happy to be in the second where you were. He hummed a folk song. He was working on a scene on the left side of the ceiling. Hans and Peter were carrying a large basket. A half-painted Esther waited by the barn. “It looks like a good harvest this year,” Uri said.
“Yes, it does,” the Basilisk said.
“The boys are really a big help. They are growing taller every day.” Uri climbed up on the scaffolding and waved to his sons.
“I can see that.”
“So what story shall we have today?” Uri set up his paints.
“What sort would you like to hear?” The Basilisk leaned against a stall.
“All your stories these past weeks have been very entertaining. Not that I believe any of them, though.” Uri laughed. He had never imagined that he would one day be at ease in his captain’s company or that they would trade stories late into the night. But neither had he dared to hope for such happiness in his family’s arms, and yet every day with them felt like a dream. Only better.
The Basilisk smiled. He was equally content. He could not remember speaking so openly with anyone. Uri’s loosening grip on reality was a place where his secrets could run free. “To believe my stories would be madness.”
“I told Esther about the time you spent in a monastery.” He stroked his wife’s cheek. Her blush came off on his finger. He touched up the smudge with his brush. “She enjoys your stories as much as I do.”
“Does she?” The Basilisk tried to push the image of the real Esther away. He caught glimpses of her from the barn. She never left her house anymore and only came to the window to stare into the meadow where her children lay. He watched her cry.
“Yes, very much,” Uri said. “After hearing all your stories, it’s actually difficult to believe you are the same man the men called the Basilisk.”
“I can understand that.”
Uri finished his wife’s smile. He glanced down at the Basilisk. “But why did they name you the Basilisk, Captain?”
“They didn’t.” The Basilisk played with a blade of hay. “I gave myself that name.”
“Really? Why? I’m sure the boys would like to hear that story.”
“Because that’s what I am.”
“But you are not a monster. The children love having you around.” Uri turned to his eldest son. “Right, Hans?”
“Perhaps. But I have stared at death as many times as any basilisk.”
“Boys, go and play in the meadow while the captain and I talk.” Uri watched his sons run past the barn.
“Death consumes everything I care about, Uri,” the Basilisk said, “and all I can do is stand by and watch its slow feast.”
“What are you talking about, Captain?”
&
nbsp; “My family. I am here while everyone I have loved is gone. All these years I have wanted nothing more than to join them. But …”
“But what?”
“I grew tired of waiting.”
“For what, Captain?”
“Death,” the Basilisk said. “So I decided to seek it out.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I have led more men to battle—to their deaths—than I can even remember. But war was comforting, at least for a while. Feeling my pike tear through my enemy’s flesh and hearing it scrape against their bones made me feel … alive.”
Uri nodded. He remembered how he had never wanted to live more than when he stood in front of an enemy’s pike. “I understand.”
“But the desire to live would always pass,” the Basilisk said. “Each time I won the right to live, I stared with envy into the eyes of the man I had killed and wished …”
“That it was you who was going home instead.”
“Yes.”
Home. Uri closed his eyes. The word fell like a pebble into a well. It plunged through the stillness in his mind. Splash. His thoughts stirred, catching reflections of a reality he had chosen to forget. They grew stronger, swelling into a clarity that lapped at the edges of his painted peace. Paint dripped on his cheek. “My boys … they didn’t welcome me when I came home …”
The Basilisk took a deep breath. “No, they didn’t.”
“Why, Captain?” Tears streamed down his cheeks, washing away his world. “Why were they taken from me? After all the sacrifices, all the blood I spilled for them … my sweet boys …”
The Basilisk nodded.
“And Esther …”
“Is alive,” the Basilisk said. “She has been waiting for you to come home to her. Go home while you still can, Uri.”
“Home. Yes, you are right, Captain. I must hurry home.” Uri looked at the painted picture of his farmhouse. Madness and reality lapped over it, swirling into visions of muddy graves, empty supper bowls, and blood. He tried to open the door in the haze. It would not move. He needed to break it down. His children were calling for him from beyond his painted world. He needed his pike. Where was it? He looked at his wooden brush. He pressed the sharpened edge to his chest and called to his boys, “Wait for me! Papa’s coming home!” He pushed himself off the scaffolding and fell on the brush’s point. The hay turned red beneath him.
“Uri!” The Basilisk rushed to his side, but once again he was too late. Uri had left him.
The Basilisk cradled Uri in his arms and wept as Uri had for his sons. He stared up at the painted ceiling and through his salty grief he saw the barn for what it really was. It was a tomb long before Uri had died in it. He looked into Uri’s glassy eyes and saw his own amber eyes staring back at him. He watched his tears fall for the things long gone, a home as empty and imagined as Uri’s painted world. The Basilisk died at the sight of its reflection.
At dawn, a rooster crowed and the captain walked out of the barn. But before he left, he took the bloodied brush from Uri’s hands. What he could not give Uri in life, he would give him in death. He climbed up on the scaffolding and painted a myth over Uri’s madness. When he was done, he wrapped Uri’s fingers around a black rooster’s feather, leaving him the only dignity he could.
EMMENTAL VALLEY, SWITZERLAND
Five Years Ago
Dex’s snoring punctured the quiet in the barn, but that was not what kept Shelley awake. The Basilisk did. She could not stop thinking about him. Uri had found peace. She wondered if his captain had ever found the same. She hoped so. She searched the ceiling for him. She made out the outline of wings in the darkness. She could not see his eyes, but she felt their loneliness. She rolled to her side. Another set of amber eyes met hers.
“Jesus, Max. I thought you were sleeping. How long have you been awake?”
“A while.”
“I can’t sleep, either. I have a hard time falling asleep when I’m away from home.”
“Me, too.”
“But you’re a tour guide! How do you ever get enough sleep, then?”
“I don’t. It’s better that way.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like dreaming.”
“Nightmares?”
“No. I … dream about home.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“It’s not,” Max said. “It just makes it difficult to … wake up.”
“Oh, well, um, go easy on the Swiss soup before bedtime, then. I heard that it can give you a bad case of homesickness.”
Max chuckled. “I’m glad you’re awake, luv. It’s nice to hear another voice in the dark. Especially a voice that makes me laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever even smiled inside this barn until tonight.” He leaned closer and tucked a lock of Shelley’s hair behind her ear.
Shelley inhaled sharply and caught the scent of a rare evening, the kind of warm night when the most important thing you had to do was lie on freshly cut grass and count stars. And maybe eat jellybeans. She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the scent of Max. She sighed, reluctant to release him.
“May I ask you something, luv?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Do you regret the kiss?”
“Why? Do you?” Shelley held her breath.
“Yes.”
She was grateful for the darkness. It hid the pain burning in her eyes.
“I … I regret that I didn’t kiss you back.”
Her heart stopped. “You know, Max, it’s not good to have regrets.”
“I agree.”
Shelley closed her eyes and brought her lips closer to his.
“I can’t.” Max pulled away. “Not here. Not in this … place.”
She turned from him, embarrassed by her eagerness.
He sat up and ran his hand over her leg.
Shelley felt the sparks through her pajamas.
He whispered in her ear, “But there is something else I’d like to do …”
She told herself to breathe. The technique looked easy enough in her cousin’s Lamaze video. Hee hee hoooooo.
Max’s fingers glided down her thigh. His palm was warm around her naked ankle.
Hee hee hoooooo. Shelley grabbed the blanket to stifle her imminent moans. “What … what would you like to do, Max?”
“Well, if you aren’t ticklish …” He grinned. “I’d be happy to give you a foot rub.” He kissed her big toe and pressed his thumbs into her sole.
A FLIGHT TO THE PHILIPPINES
Now
Paolo remained silent, and Shelley had a feeling that it wasn’t because he had a hard time picturing his nonno massaging her toes. She wasn’t in the mood to talk, either. Thinking of her husband as the bloodthirsty basilisk made her stomach turn. She was sure that if she opened her mouth, she was going to throw up. She heard Paolo taking a deep breath.
“Shelley, this will sound strange, but of all the things I’ve discovered about Nonno so far, accepting him as the Basilisk has been the most difficult … and the easiest,” Paolo said.
“What?” She choked. “You’re kidding, right? Unless he chased you around with a pike when you were a kid, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you would feel that way.”
“No, I didn’t spend my childhood running away from pikes.” He almost smiled. Instead, his lips quivered, and he seemed to have difficulty regaining control of them. “But I did have other adventures. A boy can go many places and see many things sitting on his grandfather’s lap. Nonno told me stories, Shelley. Many, many stories.”
“Your point?” she said.
“He told me they were fairy tales, fables. But even as a boy I sensed there was something different in Nonno’s stories from the ones I read in books. Now I realize what it was.”
Shelley watched Paolo wrestle with the muscles in his face. They twitched beneath his skin as he struggled to keep them set in the calm and smooth lines she had grown used to.
“They were real, Shelley. Nonno yearned for those places
and the people in them. I could hear his longing in every word.” Tears crept into his voice. “He missed them, the way I missed him when he died.”
She sat helplessly as Paolo let his tears fall.
“That’s why I didn’t go back to Italy after Nonno died,” he said. “I couldn’t. Like him, like the Basilisk, I had nothing to go home to.”
Shelley watched him sob, unsure whether to hold him or run away. Since she met Paolo, she had fought hard to ignore how much he reminded her of Max. His eyes. His laugh. Even the way he smelled. But now that battle was lost. In this moment of vulnerability, he and Max could not have been more alike. She looked at Paolo through her own tears. His face blurred, swirling and changing into different men who shared the same pain. The Basilisk. The captain. Nonno. Max. She reached for Paolo’s hands. They were warm, just as Max’s had been. She held them tight, no longer able to deny that the hands that had once wielded a pike were the same hands that had kneaded the balls of her feet into oblivion every night.
Chapter Nine
Sand and shopping
EMMENTAL VALLEY, SWITZERLAND
Five Years Ago
You certainly work magic with eggs, Max.” Jonathan helped himself to the remnants of scrambled eggs.
Shelley was disappointed that Jonathan had beaten her to the morsels. They were almost as fluffy as the cloud she floated on when she woke up in Max’s arms. She consoled herself with another slice of zopf. She slathered the golden plaited bread with butter and marmalade.
“That’s the real reason why we look forward to his visits,” Josef said.
“And I thought it was my charming personality that kept me welcome all these years,” Max said.
“So where are we headed to next, Max?” Dex asked.
“I trust that you are all familiar with the Fountain of Youth?” Max asked.
“The one Ponce de León was searching for in Florida?” Simon asked.
“I’m no whiz in geography, but I think Florida would be quite a detour for a European road trip,” Brad said.
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