Under A Million Stars by Mindy Haig
“Mama should have eaten you. Can you see I am trying to make friends here? Father is going to be mad at you if you drive him away now shut up.”
This one stepped up his pace a bit, leaving his brother behind, but dragging me along with him. “So, this woman, what is she looking like?”
“I don’t know.”
He sighed. “What is her name being?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you think I am the idiot,” the brother chimed in.
“She saved my life once. I was thrown from a boat that was struck by lightening. I was not conscious so I don’t remember much, but she had eyes like the sea and her hair seemed to be the color of the setting sun. I need to bring something to Trastevere and I hope it will help me get more information.”
“Damn, he is the one,” the contrary one said.
“Of course he is the one. I have been telling you for an hour he is the one. We are supposed to teach him to speak Italian.”
“How do we make a Frenchman speak Italian?”
“I am half Italian.”
“Do you hear that? Half Italian. I guess he can’t help what ever the other half is, probably had no say in the matter...”
“Balordo. You bring me great shame. Enough about his bloodline! You are so ignorant you did not even notice that he understood.”
“He did! Yes, he did! Well of course we would be good teachers, we founded a city! Who would be better for the job than we are?”
“You founded a city?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes!”
“No. Now he is hearing too much. Stop speaking nonsense, we have a job to do.”
“What is your task? Did someone send you to find me?” I asked, but before they answered, it occurred to me that we were far from the road. “Where are we going?”
“You need to get to Trastevere.”
“Yes, but the road...”
They both sighed at me.
“Are you driving a racing car in France? No? No one finds fate in a car, Sebastien. To find what you seek, you must know the world as she is. We will get you where you need to be but there are two things you must see first,” the difficult brother said seriously.
“What are they?”
“Water.”
For a moment I thought I misunderstood him.
“Water is all of life, Sebastien. You know the body only. But you must know the soul and the blood of the world too.”
And with that, I let them lead me.
OTTO:
“Are you certain we are going the right way?”
“Of course we are going the right way. East and just a bit south. The sun is over my left shoulder...”
“We are taking directions from your shoulder?”
“I never get lost.”
“You could get lost in a closet with only one door!”
They had a supernatural talent for bickering. I had no siblings, and though I spent a good amount of time with Adrienne our banter was not like theirs. She would coax me into doing things for her, particularly chores and homework, but we did not argue. Perhaps it was only brothers that behaved that way. Perhaps it was Italian brothers.
I dug through my satchel. I tapped the less combative one on the shoulder and handed him the old compass. “Here, I think you could use this.”
He looked surprised for a moment, and then somewhat relieved. He opened the lid and the arrow was in fact pointing just a hair south of due east.
His brother snatched it from his hand and victoriously touted his prowess while doing a little in your face victory dance.
“We shall never hear the last of this.”
~ ~
We arrived at what was evidently our destination quite late in the night. The moon was already high in the sky. My companions threw their bags down into the grass, sat and began removing their boots and socks.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting in the water, of course. Come on, boots off, lets go!”
It was January. The weather was temperate, but certainly not weather that would make a man want to strip down in the middle of the night and dive into a lake. Still, I was here for a reason and if that meant diving into this lake, I would dive, so I began to undress.
“No, Sebastien, we will not swim. Just roll up your pants high enough to wade in and drink. This is the cleanest, purest water in all of the world. This water comes directly from her soul. Take it in you, feel her inside of you. Make her part of who you are,” the difficult brother said. And we three waded into the water, cupped our hands and drank.
I felt the water inside me.
An instant later havoc broke loose.
A great howl broke the magical serenity that held me just a moment before and my companions scrambled back up the bank and began to hastily get their boots back on.
I felt absolutely no compulsion to do as they were doing though my brain was trying to tell me wolves were coming and I should run. I stood there stupidly watching them, watching myself as though my brain had been disconnected from my body. I could see the beasts coming at us, their eyes shone in the moonlight, and they did not try to approach stealthily, no, I could hear them running.
I thought: ‘this is it, I am going to die being mauled by a wolf and no one will ever know.’
“You’re not going to die, Sebastien,” a woman’s voice said softly.
I spun. The woman sat upon the bank with her arms wrapped about her knees, looking up at me.
There was a ruckus behind me, but I did not turn to watch, I just watched the woman. She was dressed all in modest white robes with hair that hung in curls so long they swept the ground where she sat.
She looked past me for a moment, then back up at me with a small smile. “My boys, they are eternal children in the bodies of men, always tumbling about with the wolf cubs. Welcome to Bracciano, Sebastien Parodi.”
“Who are you, my lady? How do you know who I am?”
“The whole world knows your name, Sebastien, you have set out to do what only two others have ever done in all of history. I am Rhea Silva, once a vestal virgin, and the Mother is watching over you. You see, she asked a man to be true to his word and made a promise to him that she would give something dear to one who sought it. You are one. You are seeking something you don’t really understand, but is locked inside your heart. Unlock your heart. Be true to that feeling. Take what the world gives you, don’t turn anything away and you will find her.”
“Is this real?”
“Of course it is real!” she laughed. “But you walk in the twilight between the two worlds, Sebastien. You need to embrace both to make the life you wish for. Fill your thermos with this water and keep it with you. It is, as they told you, the soul of the world and will lift you when you have need.”
“Thank you. Is there something I can offer you?”
She smiled. “Do you have the flute? Would you show me?”
NOVE:
I woke up alone, on the ground and it was raining on me.
Well, I thought it was raining, the truth was that my two companions were standing together about six feet away flinging water on me.
I cussed at them in my head.
And then I felt bad about it because they were doing me a favor, sort of.
But then they immediately began giving me grief about the laid back attitude of the French and I stopped feeling guilt.
“Still a long day, long way to go, get up already!”
“I’m up.”
“He does not see the difference between awake and up!”
“Well, he is only just being Italian, he has much to overcome.”
I felt like I should rebut them in Italian, but at the same time I knew my lack of skill was going to cause peels of laughter and an abundance of ridicule.
For two guys who’d been rolling around with wolves, they were remarkable unscathed.
“What was all th
They looked at each other in sort of stunned silence and then at me. It was the first time they were not bickering.
“They are our kin.”
Oddly, that explained quite a bit, though they fired off a story in what might have been Italian or might have been Latin, so quickly I only grasped parts. Someone was murdered. There was something to do with Mars, which might have been the month or the planet, but seemed to be the God. There was a river and there was a wolf.
And while these two had been a constant stream of chatter, once they finished their abridged version of their story, the topic was closed. They walked in complete silence, though the one that I considered the sensible one put his hand on his brother’s shoulder offering quiet comfort.
My brain was racing. It knew this story. It was locked inside my head, behind that terrible day that my mind erased. I could almost hear my father’s voice telling it to me. I needed to hear it. I needed that memory back. I needed to get through that wall that separated me from my past. But all I could remember was being a petulant boy who lost his mother and did not want to lose the French part of his life so he ignored the Italian part.
In my head I was screaming out: ‘please, Papa, tell me the story again. I will listen this time. Please!’
The sun was high in the sky.
We had been walking a long time, though I didn’t realize it.
I didn’t even know if they had been speaking to me.
But the combative brother grabbed me by both shoulders. “Sebastien, look at me, come on now, look at me.”
I couldn’t see him. I fell to my knees. My mind was locked, looking for some image it had stored away. “Please Papa!” I called out, but I don’t know if the words came out or just reverberated around inside me
“It’s no good. He is locked in a memory.”
“Did he fill his thermos like Mother told him?”
“Ah! Si!” the rational brother said as he rummaged through my bag for the thermos. “Sip, Sebastien, sip the water.”
But I heard my father at the moment the water touched my mouth. He was laughing. ‘Yes, Son, it is a strange statue...’ It was a she-wolf nursing two children. It creeped me out. I didn’t like looking at it. I half-heartedly listed to his story, the story of the two brothers who founded Rome, the story of Remus and Romulus. The story of the two men who were guiding me on this journey trying to teach me to be Italian again.
“He is coming back.”
“Are you okay, friend?”
I said that I was and we continued to walk. But I didn’t know if I was. There was a very good possibility that I had lost my mind. I was traveling across the Italian countryside with two men who had been gone for millennia.
“...southeast.”
“But we are going south.”
“We are not going south, we are going southeast. If we were going south we would be in Marina by now. The compass says southeast.”
“Can you even read a compass?”
“Was there always this much fighting between the two of you?” I asked.
“Yes,” the less contentious one replied. “You know who we are?”
“Yes. But the myth says...”
“The myth is both truths and fictions. My brother and I loved different things. He loved his city and his great wall. I loved Graciana. What was in my heart was stronger than his ridiculous wall.”
“It was not a ridiculous wall.”
“Of course it was, it was built for war. It’s not important now. I jumped from the wall but many saw us arguing before I did and that is where the fiction comes from. He did not kill me, we are brothers. Like he could ever best me, honestly, I have no idea how anyone could have believed such nonsense.”
“I could have thrown you from the wall, little brother.”
“But you didn’t. And you wouldn’t have, even if you could,” Remus said placing his hand on his brother’s shoulder. I went to Alba Longa and tried to quell the fears that Roma was causing, and then Graciana and I went to Rasenna. It is a strange thing to love a woman. That feeling can take you from everything you know and change your path.”
~ ~
It was not long before I could smell the water. To me, it was the perfume of life, the clean, pure scent of living. I breathed in deeply. I could hear the water rushing, I could feel it like the blood in my veins. My brain was telling me I should not hear any such thing above the sound of the afternoon traffic, but I was not walking in the world of men, the sounds of that life didn’t reach me.
We walked out onto a small dock that jutted from below Ponte Maiteotte. There were houseboats out on the river. Romulus cupped his hands around his mouth and howled like the wolves at Bracciano.
Remus chuckled.
A man rowed toward us.
He was vast, well muscled, and well, intimidating.
His boat was absolutely beautiful. The wood was deep mahogany. She was very finely finished and her stem was elegantly shaped and elaborately carved with fruits and bunches of grapes, the gunwale was carved with lotus leaves and blossoms. Her oar locks were bronze and gleamed in the afternoon sun and the oars themselves had masterfully wrapped leather grips.
“You made good time,” the man said as he came ashore.
“We managed to get him here without committing any felonies, Papa,” Romulus joked.
They laughed for a few moments while I stood gaping. This man was clearly a king, and most likely a God. I stood on the bank of the Fiume Tevere with the founders of Rome, descendants of Aeneas of Troy, sons of the Gods, as I sought the Nymph who saved my life. I was not worthy. I was of a different world.”
“You are worthy, Sebastien Parodi,” the man said.
Remus turned to me and placed his hand upon my chest. “Safe travels, Sebastien. May the water always be your friend.”
Romulus did the same, then he took the compass from his pocket.
“Keep it. Keep it with my thanks for your help. Try not to fight over it.”
“Fight? We never fight! What would we possibly fight about?”
“That ridiculous wall?”
“Don’t start on the wall again...”
“Come, Sebastien, our trip is not long. Let us leave the cubs to their bickering.”
We climbed into the boat and started down the river.
“You’re their father?”
“Step-father. They are sons of Mars, they were set adrift upon my river to die. I gave them to Lupina to protect and I sought their mother. If two infants were sentenced to die, the fate of their mother had to be dire. I rescued her, and she stole my heart. I brought her into this realm.”
“So you are all immortals?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking. For me, as long as the river flows I will be part of it. The water is the life of this world, it comes from deep inside the living springs and runs like blood in her veins. The rivers carry the water to every part of the country, just as the veins carry the blood inside you. Put your hand into the river, Sebastien, feel it’s life force.”
“I did not realize how much I missed my old life.”
“You have a chance for something better. You seek one of the daughters.”
“Yes. But...”
“There are many questions and many doubts in your mind. You should forget what your mind says and listen to your heart.”
“You made your wife immortal. I would be asking her...”
“Would you trade your comfortable life for a life where someone loved you unconditionally?”
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“What is eternal life worth if all you love is beyond your grasp? If you must watch it die without ever having the joy of touching, of being part of something and someone. Follow your heart and it will not lead you astray.”
I ran my hand along the top of the gunwale. “This boat is fantastic.”
“She is a t
“I have never even seen her. I don’t even know her name. I only know her voice. How will I find her? What words could I say to make her choose me?”
“The words are already said.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Ah, well, you will know when you must know. Go to the fountain and make your wish.” He rowed toward the shore. The Piazza will only be about four hundred meters west, but you should rest now. Make your wish just as the sun breaks the horizon.”
“Thank you for your help. Is there something I can give you in return?”
“No, Son. The Daughters have given you the protection of the water, it is my privilege to help a man who has earned such an honor,” he said with a smile as he placed his hand upon my heart.” Go now, find your fate.”
DIECI:
Rest.
Such an easy thing to want, such a difficult thing to find.
I lay in a soft bed in a nice hotel near the Basilica. I should have been exhausted, I mean, between sailing to Italy with Armon and the two incredibly weird days that followed, I should have fallen into sleep so deep that I would have to wonder if everything that had happened since the moment Adrienne opened her gift had been one exceptionally long dream. But sleep refused to come and I lay there looking at the darkness outside my window wondering if I was the only person in the world.
I thought about the words the king of the river said. What was life without someone to love? It was a string of empty days. It was accomplishments and no one to share them with. It was having everything except someone to enjoy it with.
It was silence where there should have been laughter and singing.
Especially singing.
“I miss you, Papa. I was so lucky to have you for my father. I wish I had been a better son. I wish I had just one more day. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” I whispered to the emptiness.
~ ~
The world was still dark when I took my things and left the hotel.