Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

He realized Annetta was looking at him.

“He sits just the way my father used to sit!” he blurted. “My uncle does it too!”

She nodded calmly.

“My uncle’s son? My cousin?”

She nodded again.

Yes, of course! That was why Toni had been able to summon the Angel! The mind might be damaged, but the blood ran true. …

Another pulse of understanding. Yes again, this woman to live in his house, to bear his children—of course Uncle Giorgio would want her dumb, another barrier round his aloneness, his secrets. Perhaps some of those children would inherit the defect—what of it? One son who could speak, and sing to the salamander, would be enough. Nothing else mattered.

Only there was also a defect in the father’s seed. His own seed. He could sire child after child on whatever woman would let him, and he would finish up with a household of idiots—horrible! A punishment, a judgment, for what he had done and become? No wonder he had spoken of it with such anger and contempt.

Alfredo pulled himself together, walked round the table and put his arm round Toni’s shoulders and hugged him. Toni looked up at him with a surprised smile, hesitated and offered him his piece of bread. Alfredo tore off a morsel, dipped it in the bowl and ate. He looked across at Annetta and saw that she was smiling, though there were tears on her cheeks. At that moment the big clock in the hallway clanked the hour. There wasn’t much time before he’d need to go and sing the chant for Uncle Giorgio, so he gave Toni another hug, then went back round the table and hugged Annetta. She bent and kissed him on the forehead.

Halfway up the stairs he realized that his feelings had changed. He had finally stopped trying to love and trust Uncle Giorgio. It wasn’t because of anything the salamanders had told him, or what Uncle Giorgio might or might not have done to Alfredo’s family, or his friends on the Bonaventura —there was still no way he could be sure about things like that. It was because of the way he had treated Annetta and Toni, and what he had said when Alfredo had asked about them. How could you love someone who spoke like that of his own son, or of the woman who had mothered that son for him?

Perhaps there might have been another Uncle Giorgio—the man Alfredo had glimpsed once, standing troubled at his study window, heard that very morning in a sigh and a few regret-laden words—but he was gone and would not come back. It was, as he himself had said, too late.

And something else. Uncle Giorgio was no longer the only family Alfredo had in the world. He had found a cousin, and an aunt, people who actually felt like family in a way Uncle Giorgio didn’t. People it would be possible to love.

But Uncle Giorgio mustn’t believe that anything had changed, so he settled into his window and read the words of the chant over and over, and found as he did so that since Toni had played it in the rose garden, the strange music had somehow become familiar and lodged in his mind. As he mouthed the unintelligible syllables they seemed to fit themselves naturally to the notes and cling there. He put the paper aside and whispered them through, half expecting to see the Angels of Fire floating quietly up across the long shadows toward the sunset, but there was only the breeze and the dry herby odors of the southern hills. When it was time he made his way down to Uncle Giorgio’s study.

Standing at the door, he paused, once again remembering that Uncle Giorgio could feel the comings and goings of the molten currents in the mountain, and wondering how much else? How closely did he watch? Was he already aware of all that Alfredo had done and seen that afternoon, of the singing of the salamanders in the lava flow, and above all, of the great Angel of Fire in the rose garden? No. Surely he would have done something about the Angel, had he known. …

That apart, Alfredo felt both tense and calm. He seemed able to sense that things were moving, moving fast, to whatever place they were going. He had no plan, no idea of what might happen, or what he would then do. The important thing was that when whatever was coming at last did so, it would not be wholly under Uncle Giorgio’s control, though he himself might believe it was. Uncle Giorgio had great power, but there were other powers around that were not his to command. Nor was Alfredo. Uncle Giorgio might believe he was completely under his control, but he wasn’t. Alfredo had knowledge his uncle knew nothing about, and friends where his uncle believed he had none.

He drew a deep, steadying breath and scratched on the door.

“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling, drowning his uncle’s answer. He lifted the latch and went in.

Uncle Giorgio seemed unperturbed, indeed, almost eager to see him. He put his book down at once and looked up. “You are rested?” he said. “You have learned what you can?”

“Yes, I think I know it.”

“All of it? Well, let us see. Watch me. Stop if I hold up my hand.”

Alfredo straightened his shoulders, put his hands behind his back, drew breath and began, singing quietly, as if to himself, concentrating on his memory of the words, sure that the notes were there ready and waiting to hold them. Halfway through the first repeat Uncle Giorgio stopped him and he fell instantly silent, holding the next phrase ready in mind and throat, much as if he’d been holding his breath. The air in the study seemed to crackle, or prickle. His skin crawled. He recognized the nearness of the Angels of Fire.

Uncle Giorgio muttered a few words into the silence. The sensations faded. He nodded to Alfredo to sing on. He did so, and reached the end without further interruption.

“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “You have done very well, Alfredo, better than I could have hoped. This chant is not itself in your blood, only the ability to perform it. None of your ancestors, for many generations, since first we came out of Persia and settled on the mountain, had known it. I myself underwent much labor and danger to search it out. I traveled to the farthest East, to the Island of Fire, and there I found the last of those who speak that ancient tongue, and to gain their trust I underwent the Ordeal of Fire, so that they should teach me the chant, and other long-forgotten secrets, which one day you too will know. …

“Now, listen. Next Monday is the full moon in Leo, which is one of the three Houses of Fire. Furthermore it falls in the season when Sol is at his strongest. I had not expected you to be ready so soon, but now, on that day, we will perform the Second Great Work, you and I. Before we can do that, though, there is a test to make, which we must do as near to the full moon as we may come, and yet give ourselves time to rest, for the task we must undertake requires strength—strength of body, strength of mind, strength of will. So you must look after yourself, Alfredo—eat well, sleep well, rest. In two days we will go to town so that I may make my new will, and Wednesday you will sing again to the salamander. On Friday, we will make the test, and if that goes well, then on Monday, the Great Work!”

He spoke in his usual slow, precise, slightly grating voice, but his excitement throbbed within it like the fires in the mountain.

“And what then?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, Uncle. Is there a Third Great Work?”

“Who knows, Alfredo? Who knows? If a man in our pitiful little lifetime can come to control a mountain, then a man who lives forever might control the innermost fires of the earth!”

He turned away abruptly, snatched a crust from the bowl by the birdcage and fed it through the bars. “One! Two! Three! Four!” screamed the starling, and fell on it.

“Time for us also to go and eat,” said Uncle Giorgio, and opened the door.