Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  ARCADIA

  AWAKENS

  KAI MEYER

  Translated from the German by

  ANTHEA BELL

  DEDICATION

  For Steffi

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Last Chapter

  Rosa

  Alessandro

  The Clan

  Predators

  Enemies

  Bestiarium

  The Slave’s Book

  Fundling and Sarcasmo

  Isola Luna

  Gaia’s Secret

  The Girl on the Chain

  Family Feud

  Tiger and Snake

  Cold-Blooded Creatures

  Wild Dogs

  Castello Carnevare

  The End of the Road

  Rain Shadows

  Hunting Instinct

  The Cages

  The Arcadian Dynasties

  The House in the Forest

  Rome

  Sisters

  Kiss of Darkness

  Heart of a Cat

  Night Ride

  Amphitheater

  A Vow

  Iole

  On the Seafloor

  TABULA

  Allies

  The Pact

  The House of Stone Eyes

  The Riddle of Messina

  Promises

  The Hidden Room

  Betrayal

  The Heiress

  Traitors

  The Monument

  The Ruins

  Blood Flows

  The Informer

  In the Dark

  Panthera

  Zoe’s Message

  The Secret

  Two Animals

  A Message

  A Farewell

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  Back Ad

  About the Publisher

  THE LAST CHAPTER

  “ONE DAY,” SHE SAID, “I’ll catch dreams like butterflies.”

  “And then what?” he asked.

  “Then I’ll put them between the pages of big, fat books and press them until they’re words.”

  “Suppose there’s someone who never dreams of anything but you?”

  “Maybe then we’re both words in a book. Two names among all the others.”

  ROSA

  SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC the silence woke her.

  She was hunched in her seat, knees drawn up, her back feeling bent and twisted after a cramped five hours on the plane. The windows were dark, and most of the passengers were asleep under gray blankets.

  No voices, no sounds. It took her a moment to figure out why.

  Her earphones were silent.

  She glanced at her iPod display. All gone, several weeks’ worth of music deleted, just like that. There was only a single genre left, a single musician, a single song. One she’d never heard before, and certainly hadn’t downloaded herself. She clicked through the menu once again.

  Others.

  Scott Walker.

  My Death.

  That was it. Everything else had vanished.

  She supposed the emptiness suited the beginning of her new life.

  She leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to “My Death” on an endless loop for the next three hours, until the plane landed in Rome.

  At Fiumicino Airport Rosa discovered that her connecting flight to Palermo had been canceled because of a pilots’ strike. The next didn’t leave for another five and a half hours. She was exhausted, and “My Death” was going around and around in her head even without earphones now.

  She had to transfer to another terminal for her connecting flight. With her carry-on baggage, she stood sleepily on an endless walkway. At six in the morning, it was still dark outside, and the brightly lit interior of the corridor was reflected in the enormous glass windowpanes. Rosa saw herself on the walkway dressed entirely in black, her long, blond, witchy hair tousled as always, and the shadows around her ice-blue eyes as dark as if she’d put on too much mascara, though she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. She hadn’t touched it since that night a year ago.

  Her strappy top emphasized her doll-like figure, too small and thin for seventeen years old. But then she saw a family on the walkway behind her, with fat children and carrying large bags of food, and she felt glad to be thin and have no appetite, glad that she’d come into the world kind of different and oh, such a difficult child.

  There was a pregnant woman ahead of her. Rosa kept her distance without coming too close to the group behind her. Even though the plane had been almost full, she’d had her own row, and she’d built a cage around it in her mind. Her own little world by the window. But here on the ground everything was moving, there were too many people, too much confusion for her to draw clear boundaries.

  She put the earphones back in. A strange song, it sounded like something out of a black-and-white Europe, out of old movies with subtitles. Gangsters in black suits on sun-baked beach promenades, beautiful Frenchwomen in hats being throttled by jealous lovers.

  The song didn’t have to be called “My Death” to make her think of these things. It was something about the heightened drama of the music, the sound of the deep, dark male voice. A death wish with an aftertaste of chilled martinis.

  My death waits like

  A Bible truth

  At the funeral of my youth.

  She dreamed of drops of blood smeared over the decks of white Mediterranean yachts, of melancholy silences between lovers under the southern sun.

  The walkway brought her out into the crowded departures lounge.

  Other girls carried tasers or pepper spray for safety. Rosa had bought herself a stapler in a hardware store on the corner of Baltic and Clinton Streets. Her thinking was simple. An electric shock is nasty but leaves no marks. With her method, though, she could put two or three staples into any attacker’s body. Then he’d have to stop and decide whether to tangle with her or start getting the staples out of his skin. That gave her a moment to hit back. Last time she’d broken a fingernail. Uncomfortable.

  She had had to pack the stapler in her suitcase, which she’d checked. She was carrying her black jacket in her left hand, and its side pocket sagged where she usually kept the thing. The sight bothered her because it meant there was something missing. Neurotic, her sister, Zoe, had called her. Rosa decided to fill the pocket with something else. Her glance fell on a stall selling candy on the edge of the departure lounge. The salesman was leaning against the wall behind it, dozing, eyes half-closed. Except for the family on the walkway, no one had bought anything from him in the last half hour.

  Rosa got to her feet and strolled over. Her pale blond hair was even messier than usual; it hung well over her face and hid the outer corners of her eyes. Her minidress had once belonged to Zoe and was too big; the hem came down to her knees. The salesman’s glance slid down to her thin legs clad in black stockings. They ended in sturdy boots with metal studs in them, laced tightly around her ankles. If she had to kick anyone, she didn’t want them falling off. How embarrassing would that be?

  “Welcome to Italy, signorina,” he said in heavily accented English. He wore a cap that looked like a paper boat, and a red-and-white uniform. Why silly hats would make anyone want to buy more chocolate she couldn’t imagine, but someone or other must have told him it would be good for sales.

  “Ciao. That one, please.” She picked out a chocolate bar, the last of its brand, and noticed that the black nail polish on her forefinger was flaking. She quickly put her middle finger over it, but that wasn’t much better. She’d obviously been scratching something in her sleep again.

&nb
sp; The salesman had a nice face, and there was nothing pushy about his friendliness. He bent down to get another bar from behind the counter. She took her chance to stuff four more into her jacket pocket while no one was looking. Then she paid for the one he was holding out to her, smiled at him, and went back to her place among the crowded rows of seats.

  One of the fat tourist children was sitting there now and grinned cheekily at her. She wished she had the stapler handy, but said nothing and looked for a free space on the floor under the window, where she lay down on her jacket with her knees drawn up, straightened her dress, pushed her black traveling bag under her head, and closed her eyes.

  When she woke up it was light, and the chocolate had melted underneath her. She threw away all the bars unopened, the one she’d paid for and the four she’d stolen. The boy occupying her seat watched, baffled, as the candies went into the garbage can. The salesman waved to her as she passed him. “Nice hat,” she said.

  At security a flight attendant spoke to her when she reached the gate. North Italian, judging by her accent.

  “Rosa Alcantara?” The woman wore too much makeup and looked as if she’d be the first to get herself to safety after a crash landing so she could freshen up her deodorant.

  Rosa nodded. “That’s the name on my boarding pass, right?”

  The attendant looked at the ticket, typed something into a computer, and looked at Rosa with a frown.

  “It wasn’t me,” said Rosa.

  The woman’s frown deepened.

  “The hand grenades in my suitcase. Someone else must have put them there.”

  “Not funny.”

  Rosa shrugged.

  “We were calling over the loudspeaker.”

  “I was asleep.”

  The woman seemed to be wondering whether Rosa was a junkie. A child in line behind her was bawling. Someone was muttering impatiently. A second flight attendant shepherded the other passengers past Rosa. They all stared at her as if she’d been caught blowing up the plane.

  “So?” asked Rosa.

  “Your suitcase—”

  “I already told you.”

  “—has been accidentally damaged in transit. Badly damaged.”

  Rosa smirked. “Can I take your airline to court over that?”

  “No. It says so in the conditions.”

  “So I’m going to land in Sicily without anything clean to wear?” Without music, either. With nothing but “My Death.”

  “The airline regrets your loss—”

  Yeah, right, thought Rosa. Sure looks like it.

  “—and will of course replace your possessions.”

  “I had some really expensive things in there.” She smoothed down her sister’s old minidress. She’d been wearing it for the last two years.

  The flight attendant’s mouth twisted, her chin wrinkled up until it looked like a peach stone. “We have experts who can check up on that.” And almost with relish, she added, “From what’s left.” She handed Rosa a form. “Call that number and they’ll assist you. At the bottom of it you can give information about the contents of your baggage.”

  “Can I board the plane now?”

  “Of course.”

  As the woman handed back her boarding pass, Rosa’s fingers rested lightly on her wrist. “Thanks.”

  On the shuttle bus, jammed between other passengers, she opened her hand. A gold bracelet lay in it. Rosa slipped it into a Japanese woman’s jacket pocket and put her earphones back on.

  They had been in the air for three-quarters of an hour when the man beside her pushed the button to call a flight attendant.

  Surprise, surprise, thought Rosa when the woman who had stopped her at the gate came down the aisle.

  “The signorina here won’t pull up the blind over the window,” he said. “I’d like to see the clouds.”

  “And lean over to look down my cleavage,” remarked Rosa.

  “That’s ridiculous.” The man didn’t even look at her.

  The flight attendant’s glance passed doubtfully over Rosa’s black dress.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Rosa sweetly. “They’ll get here.”

  “I just want to see the clouds,” the man repeated.

  “My window seat, my blind.”

  “Wrong. The window doesn’t belong to your seat.”

  “And the clouds aren’t part of the entertainment program.”

  The man was getting edgy, but the flight attendant smiled with all the charm of a department store mannequin. “There’s a window seat free two rows farther forward. I can offer you that, sir, and in a couple of minutes I’ll bring you a glass of champagne. Please excuse the inconvenience.”

  The man brusquely undid his seat belt and pushed his way out into the aisle, muttering to himself.

  “Us girls have to stick together,” said Rosa.

  The flight attendant looked around, slipped into the vacated seat, and lowered her voice. “Listen, kid, I know your type. Give me my bracelet back.”

  “What bracelet?”

  “The one you stole from me. The woman in the back row saw you do it.”

  Rosa half got to her feet and looked over her shoulder. “That woman with the diamond earrings?”

  “Give it back and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  Rosa dropped back into her seat. “If that woman accused your daughter of stealing rocks like those diamonds of hers, would you believe her?”

  “Don’t you try—”

  “Then why accuse me?”

  The flight attendant’s eyes flashed furiously. She said nothing for a moment and then rose. “I’m reporting this to the captain. The carabinieri will be waiting for you when we land in Palermo.”

  Rosa was about to reply, but a voice from the row in front of her spoke first. “I don’t think so.”

  A boy Rosa’s own age looked over the back of his seat and stared gravely at them. “I saw a bracelet on the floor at the gate, right where you were standing.”

  Rosa smiled at the flight attendant. “Told you so.”

  “Come on, this is—”

  “One person’s word against another’s.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “As for the police, it’s not that easy. The captain will tell you so. Anyway, that gentleman in front of me is waiting for his champagne.”

  The flight attendant opened and closed her mouth like a fish, stood up abruptly, and walked away.

  The boy seemed to forget the woman immediately and looked curiously at Rosa, sizing her up.

  “Why don’t you worry about your own shit?” she inquired.

  ALESSANDRO

  HE LOOKED GOOD, no doubt about it.

  However, the law of probability told her the precise opposite should be true. No one who really helped you out of trouble was ever good-looking. It was never a Norwegian pop star. Or even the acne-scarred quarterback of the high school team. It was guaranteed to be some geek with greasy hair and bad breath.

  But this guy was different.

  Rosa scrutinized him for two or three seconds, then stood up. “Just a minute.”

  She slipped out into the aisle and walked slowly to the back row of seats. The woman with the diamond earrings looked up from her magazine.

  “If this plane crashes on landing,” said Rosa in dulcet tones, “then the chances are ninety-two to eight that all passengers sitting in the back of the plane will burn alive.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “The rest of us farther forward will probably survive. Particularly the bad guys. Life is unfair and death’s a real bummer. But enjoy the rest of your flight.”

  Before the woman could say anything in reply, Rosa was on her way back to her seat.

  The boy had folded his forearms over his headrest and was watching her as she sat down. “What did you say to her?”

  “Told her we’d be landing soon.”

  His eyes were an unusual shade of green. Her own were glacier blue, very light. If he mentioned them, she was
going to ignore him. Simply act as if he weren’t there.

  “I’m sorry about your suitcase,” he said, without sounding particularly sympathetic. “I heard what she said. I was standing behind you.”

  “Did you wreck it?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “No need for you to be sorry, then.”

  She examined him at length, since he left her no other choice. And he showed no signs of sitting down again.

  He didn’t look very Sicilian, even though she could tell from his voice that he’d grown up on the island. Now she remembered seeing him at the airport in New York. Going on vacation to see relatives, maybe. Or back home after a semester abroad. Though he wasn’t much older than her, so he couldn’t be studying at some Italian university yet. Maybe it was the other way around: He went to college in the States, and was on his way home to visit his family in Italy.

  She thought his face looked familiar, though she couldn’t have said whether she had ever met him before the airport. Straight, narrow nose; thick, dark eyebrows. A touch of cynicism in his eyes and around the corners of his mouth. He had tiny dimples even when he wasn’t smiling. His skin was pale gold, unlike her own. Rosa never got a tan, in spite of her Italian father. She had inherited her mother’s Irish-American complexion. And that, she fervently hoped, was all she’d inherited from her.

  His dark brown hair looked as if he’d just been running his hands through it. The tousled strands surrounded a face that, now that she let her brain study it more closely, seemed to have something aristocratic about it. Not that she knew any aristocrats except from TV. But she instinctively knew that the word fit him. A touch more symmetry, a little more regularity and perfection, and he’d have been almost too good-looking, although his features still had to develop. Over the next two or three years they’d become harsher, more rugged.

  “Am I keeping you from reading?” He pointed to the rolled-up magazine she had jammed between her armrest and the side of the cabin. She didn’t even know which one it was. She’d simply picked one up from the stacks of them on the way into the plane, just because they were there. Her usual impulse.