Ring of Fire

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  No one answers her.

  “Kids?” the woman insists, knocking louder. She opens the door a crack. “Wake up, sleepyhea—”

  The room is deserted.

  Slightly concerned, Linda Melodia walks into the room.

  There’s a note on Elettra’s bed. Linda snatches it up like it’s a parking ticket and reads:

  In a fit of rage, Linda has the urge to crumple up the note, but she stops herself. She stomps out of the room, looking for Fernando. The moment she finds him, she shoves it right under his nose. “Just look at what your daughter’s done!” she yells. “What she got herself into last night, wasn’t that bad enough?”

  “Linda …,” mutters Fernando, trying to read the message and calm her down at the same time.

  “A note!” sputters Linda. “After everything that happened to them yesterday!”

  Harvey’s mother walks up to them and asks, “Why? What happened yesterday?”

  Aunt Linda is about to reply, but for once Fernando manages to beat her to it. With a reassuring tone, he says, “Oh, nothing in particular … They went a little bit crazy on the streets of Rome.” Elettra’s message quickly disappears into his pocket.

  “Are they still in their room?” Mrs. Miller demands.

  “Not exactly …,” replies Linda Melodia, thumping her foot on the floor nervously.

  “Then where are they?”

  “To tell you the truth … we don’t know,” admits Fernando, shrinking beneath the American woman’s icy glare. He looks at Linda, hoping she’ll back him up, but she promptly refuses. “They went out early this morning without saying anything to us.”

  Mrs. Miller’s face blazes up. “What do you mean, they went out?”

  “They went for a walk. But they’ll be back soon—”

  “A walk where?”

  “Um … well … we don’t know.”

  “This is outrageous!” the woman thunders. “George!”

  Her husband walks up to them, powdered sugar on his nose.

  “Harvey’s gone!” his wife says, summing things up for him.

  “What do you mean he’s gone?”

  “He went out early this morning with the owner’s daughter and their new Chinese friend! Without telling us anything! Without even saying goodbye!”

  “Where did they go?”

  His hand in his pocket, Fernando crumples up the note.

  “They went out to … well … to play some sort of game, I think …,” he improvises.

  “That’s impossible,” the professor states categorically. “My son never plays. He’s a very mature young man.”

  “Well, then … maybe he decided to go to a museum and wanted to get there before the lines got too long?” Fernando suggests, his face as red as a bell pepper.

  “I don’t like you, sir,” the university professor declares. “If I decided to stay here in this hotel, it was only to make my wife happy … but now I think you’ve gone too far. So I’ll ask you one more time: where is my son?”

  “He’s downtown with Elettra and Sheng,” replies Fernando.

  Mrs. Miller turns to Linda, hoping to find some female solidarity, and confides, “Harvey doesn’t like to waste time with kids his own age. Much less with girls … especially the impulsive, flighty kind!”

  “What Harvey does is his own business,” blurts out Linda, unexpectedly taking Fernando’s side. “After all, he seems old enough to decide for himself, if you ask me!”

  “How dare you?!” the professor growls, taken aback.

  “If poor Harvey’s decided to waste time with kids his own age, which includes my impulsive, flighty niece, it’s probably because he’s been bored out of his skull up until now!”

  “Oh, heavens!” gasps Harvey’s mother. “George, say something!”

  The man raises his finger.

  “What does that mean, George?” Linda Melodia asks, cutting him off, her hands on her hips. “That you’re going to speak to the dean about this?”

  19

  THE MAP

  KNEELING ON THE CHAIRS IN ERMETE DE PANFILIS’S KITCHEN, Harvey, Elettra and Sheng study the stellar map spread out on the table.

  “Look …,” the man explains. “You need to start in the center, at the woman surrounded by the stars of Ursa Major.”

  “Hao!” says Sheng, just to avoid losing the habit.

  “Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, is the constellation that contains Polaris, the North Star.”

  “The North Star …,” Elettra says, making a mental note of it. But she wishes Mistral were there to take down notes in her sketchbook.

  Harvey sputters, “Listen, if you’ve discovered how it works, can’t you just tell us, without all these explanations?”

  “Sure, if you like. But that way you’d miss all the good stuff. The fact is, this isn’t a normal map … and it doesn’t simply show you where to go. It’s the map of all possible maps. It’s the map Alexander the Great used to conquer the Orient. The map the Three Kings followed to journey to the West. The one Plato used to describe Atlantis, the one Marco Polo showed to the Great Khan, the one that allowed Christopher Columbus to discover the route for the New World.”

  “Hao!” repeats Sheng, leaning forward on his elbows.

  “You just listed off a bunch of random names, didn’t you?” asks Harvey.

  “Not at all.” Ermete leaves the kitchen and comes back in with a large envelope. “These are the photos and negatives of all the inscriptions carved into the map. Take a look at this!” he says, starting to sort through them. “This mark might be the only signature Alexander the Great ever made in his whole life. The Assyrian-Babylonian letters ‘B,’ ‘G’ and ‘M’ correspond to Balthazar, Gaspar and Melchior, that is, the Magi. This symbol is the signature of Christopher Columbus, while this squiggle in the wood is the seal of the Polo family, Venetian merchants who traveled all the way to China.”

  “My home!” exclaims Sheng, pleased.

  “I could go on and on for weeks,” continues Ermete, setting aside his documents. “But you don’t seem to be interested in hearing about the other possible owners of this map, who include Plato, Pythagoras, Emperor Hadrian, Ibn Battuta, Schliemann … and all the others, up to Alfred Van Der Berger. And you kids.”

  “It still just looks like a piece of scratched-up wood to me …,” grumbles Harvey, not at all impressed with his explanation.

  “Was Schliemann the guy who discovered the treasures of the city of Troy?” asks Sheng, who, unlike his friend, is excited about the idea of being in possession of such an important map.

  “That’s the one,” Ermete confirms, turning the map upside down. “And this is his signature, still perfectly legible.”

  “It’s just plain impossible,” mutters Harvey.

  “So all these people,” Elettra says, cutting in, “they all knew how to use it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they use it to find the Ring of Fire?”

  “No,” replies Ermete. “It isn’t a map to the Ring of Fire.”

  “Hold it! Hold it!” Sheng says, jumping up, his hands held out in front of him like a goalie blocking a soccer ball. “The only thing I’ve understood up till now was that we needed the map to find the Ring of Fire.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But if you’re telling us it isn’t a map to the Ring of Fire, what is it, then?”

  “Right now, in Rome, the map can be used for finding the Ring of Fire,” Ermete says.

  Sheng looks at him warily. “But you just said the opposite.”

  Elettra grabs Sheng by the wrist. “He said, ‘Right now, in Rome,’ and ‘can be used.’”

  Sheng nods, although he still doesn’t get it. “Right. Meaning …?”

  “Meaning that … at other times … in other places in the world … this map allows you to find other things.”

  “Hao! Now I get it.” Sheng grins. “So how does it work?”

  “It’s quite simple, actually.”

&nbs
p; Ermete asks Elettra to hand him the map of Rome she found on the professor’s refrigerator and spreads it open over the wooden box so that the grooves on the inner section are right beneath the paper.

  “You do this, I think,” he says.

  “What do you mean … you think?” blurts out Harvey.

  “This is the first time I’m actually trying it out …,” he explains. “Help me keep the map down flat. …”

  Elettra rests a cereal bowl on each corner of the map of Rome.

  “I bet this is how Marco Polo did it, too …,” quips Harvey.

  Ermete ignores him. “Good. By overlaying this map, we’ve established the ‘where.’ Now all we need is the ‘what.’ ” The engineer picks up the wooden tops resting on the table. “Take a look at the drawings. First top: the tower of silence—that is, a sanctuary, a hideaway, a safe place where people can stop to rest. Second top: the guard dog.”

  “See? I told you it was a dog!” Sheng says, bouncing in his chair, while Harvey glares at him.

  “He guards over something important, something precious,” continues Ermete. “But in order to reach what you’re looking for, you need to get past him first. Third top: the eye. Only a keen observer can see what other people fail to notice. And finally, the last top: the vortex, the whirlpool. The place that pulls in ships and sinks them. Danger.”

  Ermete arranges the four tops beside the map.

  “So what do we have to do?” asks Elettra.

  “Spin them across the map,” he replies, with a hint of tension in his voice, “and let the map decide.”

  The silence that follows is shattered by Harvey, who bursts out laughing. “Give me a break!” the American boy sneers. “You actually think we’re supposed to do something so stupid?”

  “It isn’t stupid.”

  “It’s even worse! It’s crazy!” Harvey says, getting up from his chair. “Nine times out of ten the top’s going to fall to the ground!”

  “And nine times out of ten your horoscope is wrong,” retorts Ermete. “But one time out of ten it’s right. And one out of ten is better odds than you can expect from life.”

  “This is nuts!” sputters Harvey. “I don’t think you understand a single thing about this map. That’s not how it works. Guys, they want this map because it’s really old and it’s worth tons of money. There might be some art collector out there who can’t wait to see it on his mantelpiece. But I really don’t think they want to spin a few toy tops on it!”

  Ermete is about to say something when he’s interrupted by Sheng, who lets out a booming “Enough!” and grabs the top of the tower. Then he adds, “I dreamed about it—about this thing with the tops.”

  Harvey throws up his hands. “Oh, great! Just what we need! Dreams!”

  But Sheng looks perfectly serious. “So you think all we have to do is pick up a top … and spin it across the wooden board, right?”

  “Yes,” Ermete says softly, pushing aside the bowls holding the map down to the very edges. “At least, I think so.”

  “Then let’s give it a try.” Elettra motions to Harvey to be quiet, while Sheng lifts up the top and rests it in the center of the map. “After all, it can’t hurt.”

  “Of all the stupid …,” Harvey starts to grumble.

  “Tell me, top of the tower of silence,” Sheng pleads, remembering the veiled face of the woman in his dream, “where is our safe place?”

  He spins it between his fingers and lets it go. The top begins to whirl around, moving across the map. Its tip follows the grooves sculpted into the underlying wood, dancing along the streets of Rome like a graceful ballerina. Via Condotti, Villa Borghese, Testaccio, Parioli … The top moves around in all directions, as if it were trying to choose the very best one.

  Not to be reached by a single path, thinks Sheng as the top makes its way up the Tiber, spinning around furiously. It reaches Tiber Island and veers slightly southward. And there it stops, starting to spin around in larger and larger concentric circles.

  “Trastevere. Piazza in Piscinula,” Ermete reads.

  “Hao!” cries Sheng. “Then it does work!”

  “How can you tell?” the man asks.

  Elettra smiles. “Because that’s my house.”

  The top slowly stops spinning and rests on its side, right over the street where the Domus Quintilia is located. “Well, what do you say to that?” Ermete asks the others, his hands in the pockets of his robe.

  “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes …,” Sheng whispers.

  “It’s just a coincidence,” Harvey retorts stubbornly.

  “Let me try it this time,” Elettra suggests.

  She grabs the top of the tower and spins it a second time. The top wanders across the entire map and stops once again in Trastevere, leaving everyone gaping. A moment later, Harvey shakes his head skeptically. But he doesn’t say a word.

  Elettra grabs the top of the eye. “I’ll try this one, too. The one showing …”

  “Something only a keen observer can see …,” suggests Ermete.

  “All right, then … Come on, top!” The girl spins it around with a skilled flick of her hand. The top begins to whirl around the streets and stops on a little lane in the center of the city.

  “Via della Gatta …,” reads Ermete. “Does that mean anything to you guys?”

  “‘She-Cat Lane’?” Elettra replies. “No, I’ve never even been there before.”

  “What does that mean?” Sheng asks, clearly disappointed. “That it won’t help us?”

  “Exactly,” says Harvey, once again on the offensive.

  “Maybe the top wants to tell us we need to go there and take a look …,” Elettra guesses.

  Sheng’s eyes open wide. “Could Mistral be hidden there?”

  Elettra picks up the top of the guard dog. “If Mistral’s been kidnapped, like we think she has … Couldn’t we find out from this one? The dog you need to get past to find something important …”

  “Sure, why not?” grumbles Harvey.

  Elettra throws the top, which starts to spin and then takes tiny little hops across the map. In the end, it stops on a house in the Coppedè district.

  “Once again, a total mystery,” remarks Elettra, confused.

  Harvey cackles. “Two good tries and two useless ones.”

  The look on Sheng’s face is indecipherable. “What does ‘Coppedè’ mean?”

  Ermete shrugs. “It’s the name of the half-crazy architect who designed that part of town.”

  “What kind of a place is it?”

  “A residential area, but really bizarre. There are lots of strange houses. I’ve heard they’ve even filmed a few horror movies there.”

  Elettra and Sheng exchange nervous glances. “Cheerful little place,” Sheng says. “Is it dangerous, do you think?”

  “Why don’t we ask the last top?” Harvey suggests provokingly. “This is the one that shows us where the danger is, right?” And, without waiting for an answer, he picks up the top of the whirlpool and throws it onto the map.

  The top spins around like crazy for a few short moments.

  Then it stops on the very same house in the Coppedè district, right beside the top of the guard dog.

  20

  THE DISTRICT

  MISTRAL OPENS HER EYES AND FINDS HERSELF STARING AT A LIGHT blue ceiling.

  Where am I? she wonders, sitting up in the bed.

  She’s in a little bedroom. A wardrobe, a rug, a beige leather armchair. Streaks of light stream in through the slats of the closed shutters of the room’s only window.

  It’s daytime, then … But what happened?

  The last thing she remembers seeing is the floor of the professor’s apartment bucking like a wild horse, then turning into a massive pit. She remembers Elettra, a few steps away from her, shouting out something about the red circles on the floor and then … then nothing.

  With great effort, Mistral gets up off the bed. Her whole body aches, h
er head feels heavy and her legs are stiff. She looks around. Whoever put her to bed also changed her into pajamas. Her clothes are folded and lying at the foot of the bed.

  Mistral takes a few moments to peek through the shutters, trying to figure out where she is. Outside the window is a sort of medieval castle with crenellated rooftops. And a garden with dark trees, the corner of a fountain, a yellow house whose walls are decorated with bold floral patterns …

  If she’s in Rome, it sure doesn’t look like Rome. Mistral grabs her sweater and slacks and begins to slip them on directly over the pajamas. Then she spins around.

  Someone’s opening the door.

  It’s a man. A man Mistral recognizes instantly.

  She lets her sweater drop to the floor.

  And she screams.

  Jacob Mahler utters a single word. “Stop.”

  Mistral’s scream dies in her throat and she backs up toward the empty space between the bed and the nightstand, shaking her head. This is a bad dream, she thinks. It’s just a bad dream.

  Mahler stands there in the doorway, stock-still, an icy stare on his face and a large bandage just below his hairline.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.

  Mistral feels the wall pressed up against her back. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the person who saved your life.”

  The girl shakes her head in disbelief.

  “I pulled you out of the building just as it was collapsing,” continues Mahler. “And I brought you here so you could rest.”

  “You’re one of them …,” hisses Mistral. Her hands grope the wall nervously, searching for something, anything.

  “I’m well aware that you don’t like me. And I don’t care. But I suggest you trust me. What’s your name?”

  “Mistral.”

  Jacob Mahler takes a few steps into the room, just reaching the bed.

  “Very well, then, Mistral. I’m Jacob.”

  The killer reaches out his hand. It’s long, slender and covered with tiny scratches. It remains there, suspended in the air, but the girl never reaches out to shake it. After a few seconds, the man lets his arm fall back down to his side.