stained and chipped over the years but Adriana kept them stored in her mind with their original shape and integrity. She sometimes played a game in her mind, in which she would have to choose one of these objects over another, or over all the rest, or over a member of her family. Of course, Adriana would never really relinquish a person for a thing. It was just an amusement. But this gesto di bilancia arose more often these days, beyond her will, almost the inevitable punctuation to her thoughts when she was alone.
Once, in exchange for four baked roots, Signora Lina had handed Adriana a lump wrapped in wax paper. Adriana only dared unwrap it at home. Giovanna stood beside her, peering at Adriana’s hands. Little Sibilla stood beneath them both, sniffing upward, hair pulsing into her nostrils. Adriana peeled open the paper, the scent of spice and lavender pouring out, and after a pause, they all reached for it, six hands clashing. It tumbled to the floor, denting itself there. Sibilla, closest to the ground, grabbed for it but couldn’t get a grip – it caked the hair on her hands and sprang away again. Adriana swooped down with a tsk and picked it up as gently as she would an egg.
‘Non sai come tenere le cose belle,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t know how to hold nice things.’
* * *
‘Mostro!’ the boys shouted and bent to pick up more stones.
Sibilla turned and ran, wincing as hair caught under her tread. The wind sent strands down her throat as she panted and she could barely see, but she could tell that she was running downhill and that the ground was softening. Her feet abruptly went ice cold and wet. She gasped and hopped backwards and turned. The boys were walking towards her. She knew they were boys but stared at their clothes with curiosity – she had only seen trousers and vests in a picture book of Gianduja. Two of the boys were carrying big branches. They stopped a few feet away from her. One boy’s branch lost a piece of bark and it fell in the leaves with a rustle. Sibilla willed herself to stop shaking.
‘Mostro,’ one boy said again and the others laughed, their breath feathering the air.
Then she realised that she wasn’t the only one shaking – they were, too, their laughter was shaking. They are feeling what I am feeling, she thought, and just then her hair began to rise.
* * *
The truth was, Adriana had claimed the soap for herself before it even fell to the floor. It was impractical to use anything but tallow on Sibilla, and a waste to use it on a wrinkled old woman. Adriana kept it for herself, using it sparingly: birthdays, saints’ days, at the end of her menses. She would drag the metal tub behind the cabin and fill it with heated water. Then she would strip off her clothes and lower herself into the steaming bath and spin piles of ornate lace with the soap, making baroque circles over her body with her palms. Like a woman, she would think. Like a real woman.
Over time, the soap dwindled and dulled and formed cracks like a desiccated fruit seed. It grew so thin that it slipped between her fingers into the water, where it would lose even more silky layers, a cycle of diminishment that filled her with anguish. To use it was to lose it. How strange, she thought now as she reached the short uphill path that led through the woods to the cabin. That soap had once seemed an extravagance – a thing that smelled like gianduja chocolate and felt like satin lining and gave you licence to touch your own skin and still feel clean. How had it become a need?
* * *
Long strands of hair streamed out from Sibilla’s body. She could see better like this and she noticed that the boys’ hair sat greasy on their heads. The trees in the distance were not stirring, either. So what was lifting her hairs up this way? She saw the boys wonder the same thing. They glanced at each other and slowly began to back away, their eyes widening as her hair rotated to the front of her body until it was pointing directly at them. They stepped backward faster and faster until one of them stumbled over a root and cried out. Then they all turned and ran.
Sibilla’s hair was streaming before