of the higgledy-piggledy house far below, down the mountain. Aside from the former bunker by the shore, the villa was the only building on the Carnevares’ private island.
The helicopter had brought Rosa and Alessandro there the evening before, and had then flown back to the Sicilian coast, thirty miles to the south. Apart from the goats who had taken up residence after Alessandro demolished Cesare’s enclosure for big cats, they were alone on the island.
Rosa stood with her back to the mountain, enjoying the sensation of the wind on her face as it came up from the sea. She briefly closed her eyes, thought of nothing at all, simply sensed the gentle caress of the breeze on her skin. Then she felt that Alessandro was close, and the next moment his lips were on hers.
“It can stay like this,” she said.
“What can?”
“Life. Everything. You and me.”
“Not before we’ve seen the crater,” he replied, forcing a smile. It was stupid of him to come on this climbing expedition with his injuries only half healed. But he claimed that he had never been up to the peak and this was the best day for it. He didn’t tell her why and she suspected that any other day would also have been the best day for it. Just as long as the two of them were together and no one disturbed them.
“You really never looked into it?”
“Never.”
“Not even from the chopper?”
He shook his head.
She looked at the last part of the climb up the mountain. “We still have…what, about three hundred feet to go? So this is our last chance to think about what we expect to see.”
“A crater?”
“You can be so boring.”
He returned her grin. “A base for extraterrestrials.”
“The way down to the earth’s core.”
“A launchpad for nuclear warheads.”
“The ruins of Arcadia.”
“TABULA’s secret control center.”
She bowed her head. “Would that be good or bad?”
“How would I know? Let’s not talk about TABULA today.”
“You started it.”
“Only in the heat of the moment.”
They set off again. On the way, she said, “I went back to the palazzo yesterday. I’ve decided to leave the whole place exactly as it is for now. Everything is covered with ash. Even the lemons are gray.”
“The rain will wash it off again soon.”
“Do you know what I wish I’d done?”
“What?”
“Make a snow angel. In ashes.”
“Good idea.”
“No, seriously. I almost did it. I’ve realized that I can do or not do whatever I like. And if I want to lie down in the ashes with my clothes on and leave a snow angel shape there, how can anyone object?”
“Snow angels are only romantic if there are two people making them.”
“Then come with me next time.”
“I will. I’ve always wanted to roll about in a bed of ashes with you.”
She took his hand, and together they went the last few feet to the rim of the crater. It had been Rosa’s idea to come to the island this morning, after they’d heard the radio news reporting the murder of an attorney in Taormina. She badly needed fresh air, and—at least for a while—the feeling of being alone in the world with Alessandro.
“Okay,” she said, as they stopped and looked ahead, over the rim of the crater. “Wow! And it’s official.”
In front of them, a barren rock basin opened up, at least nine hundred feet in diameter and half that depth. Light and dark veins of stone meandered over its sides, meeting at the center in a pattern of countless shades of gray. They saw no hidden extraterrestrial base, no landing strip for flying saucers, only volcanic rock, hostile to all life, where thousands of years ago the lava had solidified into clumps and hillocks. There was a flickering above the bottom of the basin, like the heat of an imminent eruption, but it was only a mirage.
“Look—there’s more here than just the end of the world,” said Rosa softly, pointing to a solitary dandelion growing from a crevice.
“Or the beginning.” He smiled. “No one’s been up here for ages. Maybe no one ever. So let’s lay official claim to the place as its discoverers.”
“We can found a colony. And a mission station for the native population of beetles and spiders.”
“And ours are the first footprints here, like on the moon.”
“There’s only one problem,” she said. “The island has belonged to you Carnevares for centuries. Don’t tell me there’s any kind of remote spot that your family wouldn’t have exploited in its business deals.”