Dark Shimmer

I’m swimming through the lagoon in a giant circle around our island, free and graceful. My body isn’t my enemy in the water. And nothing can hurt me here—there are no nasty creatures in these waters, though men say they exist far away, in deep ocean waters. Here it’s shallow. Most of the time I could simply stand if I got too tired to swim. And for the few deeper spots, I could float on my back. But I won’t get tired; I’m the best swimmer of any of the kids.

I turn my face toward the lagoon. In this direction I can look out so far, the sky meets the sea. I’m not even sure where one ends and the other begins. That’s comforting. Mamma likes to say that even though we live out here, separated from the rest of the world, the water and sky remind us that we’re linked to everything.

My eyes go back to the island. Dawn slides slowly across it, making it shine yellow-gold. The fishing boats will be going out soon, but I’ve already passed the point where they come and go, so it doesn’t matter.

From here I can see the field, and the canal beyond it. Two swans swim in the canal, calm as stones. It is lined with houses, almost all empty. Lots of people lived here once. Thousands. So many, there were two convents and sixteen cloisters. The buildings are in ruins now. There was even a bishop here. He sat in the big stone chair outside the church of Santa Maria Assunta.

There are only sixty-four people here now. But Mella is with child, so we’ll soon be sixty-five if she’s lucky. Sometimes women aren’t lucky in childbirth. We’re not many here, and that’s how we want to keep it. This island is our refuge. Whenever men get in a boat to go trading, they tell the people they meet how our children die from marsh fever all the time. Otherwise, the people who originally owned the houses here might come back…and then we’d lose everything.

I swim past the marsh. Mosquitoes hover over it, a black cloud stark against the dawn sky. The air over the marsh is putrid—mal aria. Most people who breathe it get a fever so high, they’re in bed for weeks. Some even die. But the mosquitoes thrive on that air.

A man slogs through the grasses, bare-legged, with a cloth wrapped around his loins. It’s Giordano, of course. He’s the only one who can withstand that air and the only one who works so early. I change my stroke so just half my head emerges from the water. My hands and feet don’t break the surface—no part of me makes a splash. He’s unlikely to see me. We’re not allowed to swim alone, not even me, though no one really cares if anything bad happens to me. No one except Mamma.

Giordano flails his arms at the mosquitoes. He’s already clumping back out to drier land. He picks things from his legs and throws them in a bucket. Leeches.

People use disgusting, slimy leeches for healing. Someone must be sick. Maybe Mella had her baby in the night and something has gone wrong. Oh, I pray not. I pray Giordano is gathering the leeches to sell to physicians on the other islands.

The only thing I know about those islands is that the people who live there make glass and are rotten, like people on the mainland. Everyone here says life there was awful, and they wince. Only on our island are we safe. We children aren’t allowed to go out in a trading boat. Those wretched people might snatch us. They steal children and make them their slaves. We’re not even allowed to look toward other islands. We can look only north and west, to the forests on the mainland. Hardly any people live there.

I’m on the final stretch of this long swim; just around that bend I’ll see home. Mamma and I live in a room in one of the old convents, San Giovanni Evangelista. Now I see the bridge we cross to get to our home. Looking at it from here, it occurs to me that our home is on its own island. Ha! We have our own island. It’s as though Mamma is queen and I am princess, like in one of Giordano’s tales of the land he used to live in. Princess! If I said that to the other kids, they’d laugh in my face. Though not really in my face…they can’t reach anywhere near my face.

I swim faster. I can’t wait to call Mamma my queen. She’ll laugh, happy.

Hey! calls a voice from behind me.

A boat! I won’t look. I swim fast, faster than I’ve ever swum before. If it’s coming after me, I can’t hear for the pounding pulse in my head. I’m lost if they get me. Mamma will never even know what happened to me. Fast. Please, Lord in heaven, let me be fast.

I’m onshore in minutes and running toward home. I race along the rocky path, cross the little piazza—the campo—and go sprawling on my face, slamming my forehead against the ground.

What’s the matter with you? It’s little Tonso. His brother, Bini, stands beside him.

Run! I wave them off. Strangers are coming!

Tonso screams, Where? They dash around a corner.

I roll over and dare to look back. No boat has followed; no hateful strangers chase.

My knee split open in the fall. But I’m all right. I pick pebbles from the gash. I’m all right, I’m all right.

The boys creep out on bowed legs white as sticks without the bark, especially Tonso’s skinny leg, the one that never grew right. They peer in all directions.

I stand up. I’m older than these boys, but not by much. Still, they’re half my size.

I don’t see any strangers, says Tonso.

A boat came by.

You’re lying, says Bini.

I am not! They nearly caught me.

You? Who’d want you? says Tonso.

Bini nods. They think I wouldn’t even make a decent slave.

My ears buzz. My cheeks burn. My whole body is aflame.

I walk a few steps past them, my back tall, then break into a run, no matter the pain in my knee. I go straight to the church of Santa Maria Assunta. It’s empty. I race down the center of the nave and don’t even glance at the skull of Santa Cecilia, the martyr. I stop under the main apse. I strip off my wet smock and turn my face upward.

Light streams in through the rose-colored glass window. Maria the Virgin holds the baby Gesù high and looks down on me from the glittering gold background. A host of apostles stand below her, in a ring around the bottom of the dome. I wonder what they think, whether they can look ahead to that babe’s death. Mamma says only priests know, and there are no priests on our island anymore.

I turn in a circle holding my hands out, palms upward. Palms matter to God the Father, so they must matter to Maria the Virgin. Gesù’s palms bled. Not when he was a baby, like in the window’s mosaic, but when he was grown. When they killed him. Mamma tells me all about Gesù.

Maria, look at me, see me, please, I say, but softly. She can hear me, even up there. That’s part of being divine—hearing everything, seeing everything, feeling everything. I’m spinning now, faster and faster. Stop me. I slap my palms on the very top of my head. Stop me from growing. Stop me from being a monster.

And I fall. I always fall when I spin like this. I put my lips to the marble mosaic. Help me. I press one cheek against the chilled stone. I’m twelve years old and taller than any man here. I tower over the women. You can see it. You can stop it. Help me. I clear my throat. Help me. This isn’t right. Someone has to listen. Help me!

What are you doing? It’s Giordano.

My fingers scrabble across the floor for my wet smock, but he’s already swooped it up. I squat, knees to chest, arms holding all of me together tight. Give it back.

The tips of his shoes graze my toes. Don’t worry. No one wants to look at your ugly body. No one ever will.

I know that. Why else would I cover up? I glare. You have a fat, old face.

Your mother named you Dolce—‘sweet’—out of hope, I guess. You’re far from sweet. He drops the smock on my head.

I scramble into it as he walks around me.

I saw you running. Those long legs of yours afford you one advantage.

I’d give them up in an instant to have yours. I don’t know why I said that. It’s true, but it’s wicked. Mamma says I have a healthy body…and ingrates are the worst sort of people.

Giordano tilts his head, and his eyes drift upward to the Virgin. He sighs. You know what, Dolce? This is the first time I’ve ever felt sorry for you. Your mother would have done better to leave you on a doorstep in the big city before she moved here. But she’d lost six babies already by the time you came along….She felt cursed. She wouldn’t listen to reason. Did you know that?

Of course I knew that. But he’s almost acting nice. Doesn’t he realize he’s saying Mamma would have done better to kill me? That’s what abandonment would have meant. No one wants me.

So here you are. A freak among us. He laughs, and his big apple cheeks look ready to burst. Everyone has apple cheeks but me.

It’s not funny.

No. Not for you, I suppose not. He rubs the back of his neck. I was a freak when I first arrived. A freak even here. I spoke different—the way they speak way down south on the mainland. I ate different. Eh, you know, everywhere you go, you’re a stranger. But you can’t just sit in a hole your whole life, can you?

I scream inside my head. All Giordano had to do was learn to speak like here, eat like here. He has no idea what it’s like to be a real freak.

Look at all that blood on your leg. You fall all the time. Listen, you want to make people like you?

It’s impossible.

What would you think of making mirrors? Venerio needs an assistant. He’s getting too old to keep up with the workload. It’s a nasty job. If you do it, then he doesn’t have to recruit some other kid.

Nothing I do will make the kids like me.

Maybe not. But if you helped, the kids would be relieved, and at least Venerio would act like he liked you.

I don’t care if Venerio likes me or not.

You’d have a way to fill your time, learn a little. And he’d give you something to bring home for dinner each night.

I can catch fish on my own.

"Not fish. Moscardini."

Mamma loves those tiny octopuses. She hums as she eats them, laced with salt. My heart opens at the thought of presenting Mamma with a gift. I nod. Thanks.

I’ll let Venerio know, calls Giordano from behind me.

I walk home, feeling eyes watch me. I step through our door. The kitchen fire sputters loudly. The smell of cod and anchovies permeates the room, a surprise in this season.

Mamma takes one look at my knee and rushes over to put her arm around my waist and draw me close. I have to lean down to kiss her cheek. I’ll put the fish aside, she says. "My baccalà can wait. I’ll go get liver, my beautiful daughter. Liver and lungs can fix anything. Don’t you worry, Dolce. Don’t you worry one bit. You are my treasure. Your face—so fair."

She always says that. A sense of pain and tenderness fills me. I don’t understand why Mamma loves me, but I love her so much for loving me.

I’m in a hurry, but I weave my way through the yellow flowers anyway. Sunflowers, they’re called. Some explorers recently crossed a vast sea, discovered hot islands, and brought these flowers back to this part of the world. I love them. They grow taller than me, and they seem to be constantly smiling. With seeds all over their faces, big striped seeds that crack in your teeth.

When I emerge into our work area, I see my wildcat friend, Gato Zalo. He sprawls on his back, tummy to the sun, blissful. Inside my chest, I feel the color of his fur blend with the color of the sunflower petals, golden and sweet, as though I’ve become the clearest honeypot.

Not even a whisker twitches. I squat and put my hand on Gato Zalo’s ribs. He twist-jumps to his feet with a hiss and looks around.

It’s just you and me.

He walks off with a flick of the tail, unforgiving. I’m supposed to touch him only when he offers himself; those are the rules he established. Well, that’s all right. It’s work time. Besides, all it takes to lure him back is a pile of fish heads.

I like to feed Gato Zalo; it makes him happy, and it cuts down on the number of birds he kills. I love the birds. They eat the insects that would destroy our gardens. And nothing eases loneliness better than the trill of birds. Even the short, harsh cries of the terns that breed in the marshes are a respite from being solitary for hours on end. That’s another good thing about the new sunflowers—doves come to eat their seeds.

I lean over a transparent sheet of glass. It’s made on one of the other islands. Venerio told me glass used to be made on our island, years and years ago. The very rich had glass windows instead of oiled paper ones.

I’d better get busy. I’ve been working for Venerio for two weeks now, and I learn fast, but this is the first time I’m working alone. Venerio had a coughing fit yesterday, so today he is trusting in me while he rests up. The glass I’m supposed to turn into a mirror lies long and narrow on the ground. It’s about the length of my forearm and the width of my hand. Last year Venerio made only small mirrors; you could carry them in one hand. But now the glass is larger. Carrying this one takes two hands, even for me. If we’ll be working on bigger and bigger glass, that’s good, because my size will be an advantage. And bigger glass means my job will take longer. Both things are good—both will make everyone realize they need me.

People have been nicer to me since I began working for Venerio. The mothers, I mean. Some of them even smile when our eyes meet. None of the kids are nicer to me, though. So I have no choice but to glare at them; otherwise they’d steal my food and taunt me even more.

I place my hand on the sun-warmed glass. I know how they make these larger pieces. Venerio told me. He likes to boast that when he was young, before he got the tremors, he used to blow glass. To make the glass, they burn sea plants and then pour water over the ashes and mix in sand and cook it till it melts into a clear liquid. Then they dip one end of a long metal pipe in the liquid and hold the pipe high and blow into the other end. The molten glass grows into a huge bubble. Then the blowers swing the pipe so that the bubble hangs heavy and low and stretches into a long, hollow pod. They cut the ends off while the pod is still bubbling hot and then cut along one side and flatten it out. And there you have it—a long, flat sheet like this.

Our men pick up the glass sheets from the glassblowers’ island and bring them here for Venerio and me to turn into mirrors. As pay we get whatever we need—sometimes money, sometimes food, household furnishings, different fabrics, tools.

They make mirrors on that other island, too. But our job is special. We experiment with the mirrors we make, trying different methods to get the backing to stay on. Few others experiment like we do, because of the cost of the materials. But we don’t care about costs. That’s because no one gets the metals as cheap as we do. Venerio has friends far away, on the mainland. They mine tin from Monte Valerio and quicksilver from Monte Amiata, and send the metals across mountains and meadows and across the wide lagoon, to us.

The tin arrives in small sheets as thick as the top half of a thumb. Our boys pound it with a roller for days until it’s only a tenth that thick. There is a short stack of sheets waiting for me.

I place a thin sheet of tin on the glass. It’s smaller than the glass, so I pick up flakes of tin from the pile of pieces that have broken off in the rolling and add them carefully at the edges until every speck of glass is covered.

Now I carry the glass over to the slab of limestone that Venerio has scrubbed clean. I blow on the top of the stone, just to make sure. Then I remove the tin from the glass piece by piece, arranging them on the limestone exactly as they were on the glass. I’m good at this. I have sharp eyes and a steady hand, not like Venerio.

No one’s allowed to be around for what comes next except me and Venerio. This is the part that turns his toes and fingers pink, I’m sure, because the boys who roll the tin have ordinary-colored toes and fingers. Someday my toes and fingers will turn pink, too, I bet. That’s all right with me, though. It’s the mark of my profession. I grin. I have a profession, and I’m good at it.

I open the iron flask and pour the shimmering quicksilver onto a soft goatskin cloth. I quick plug the flask so the remaining quicksilver won’t disappear into the air. It can do that. I left the plug off my first day on the job and Venerio beat me with a stick so I wouldn’t forget again. And I won’t, though it would be easy to, because quicksilver gives off no smell to remind me to plug the flask.

I rub the soaking-wet cloth over the tin until the quicksilver covers it evenly, dabbing at the loose flakes ever so lightly so nothing moves. A little quicksilver runs off the edges of the tin, but it’s supposed to. It’s important that every bit of tin gets covered, and that’s the only way to make sure. This coat of quicksilver is a little thicker than the coat I tried last time. Venerio and I vary each part of the process, one at a time, so we can find the most efficient formula for making these mirrors. I’m determined to be the one to find that formula.

The tin and quicksilver merge into one as I watch. I hold the glass over it and look through, lining it up perfectly. I set the glass on top of the tin, edges matching. The fingers of my right hand are dirty with quicksilver; I’ve left prints on the glass, but that’s no problem. The only quicksilver that will stick is the part that touches the tin, because the quicksilver eats through the tin and together they form something new and hard that sticks to the glass. I wipe off the prints with my clean left palm. I spread a strip of wool over the top of the glass, to protect it from scratching, and I layer it with bricks. Sweat drips from my forehead onto the bricks. It’s not that hot today; it’s the concentration…that’s hard work.

I rub my hands clean with another piece of wool. Then I sit down and look at my work. Venerio will be the one to uncover it in three days. He’ll lift one end of the mirror just a little, and then the next day raise that end a little higher, each day higher and higher, till the mirror is vertical. That way, whatever excess quicksilver didn’t disappear in the air will run off into the box waiting just for that purpose. Then Venerio will cut away any tin that sticks out—but there won’t be any, I’m so careful—run a chisel around the edges, wipe it all down, and paint the back to keep my work from flaking away.

The result will be good. But probably not perfect. Not yet. Next time maybe Venerio will leave it for four days. Or maybe he’ll use more bricks, make it all heavier. We’ll keep trying until Venerio declares it can get no better.

I worked hard and finished sooner than I expected. But I mustn’t be seen walking home too early; people should think it took me hours and hours to set a mirror by myself. Let them be in awe of how hard I work. I sit on a low pile of rubble, and the sun feels good. I keep thinking about the idea of Mamma and me living on our own island. You can see tiny bubbles rising from the water below our bridge now and then, so people say a devil lives there. But it’s not a devil, it’s a guard. Royalty have guards. Mamma always calls our home a castle, after all. It doesn’t matter that it’s rotting and crumbling. I’m still a princess.

That makes me better than the other kids. It’s crazy, but who cares? Being better than them in a crazy way is better than being worse than them in every way.

But, oh, I have a trade. That makes me better, too. And being a monster made it happen. Ha!

A breeze comes off the water. It ruffles the edges of the wool that stick out from under the bricks. My mirror cooks under there, like rolls in an oven. I won’t own that mirror, I won’t even ever look in it—after all, mirrors just show how ugly I am—but it’s mine all the same.

I stand and stretch to get the kink out of my neck from working bent over for so long. Then I slowly head into the center of town.

Voices come from the other side of the wall beside the path, from Bartolomeo’s garden. I stand on tiptoe and peek over the wall. The pink oleanders are odorless, unlike the heady red roses. You’d never know from their mild aspect that chewing any part of them can kill you. Bartolomeo is a physician, and he uses the oleanders to fix women’s problems and calm the heart. Poking up through the bottom branches are purple flowers on long stalks. That’s monkshood. A mountain plant, it can grow in shade. Bartolomeo brought it here from Austria. The leaves are hairy and poisonous to the touch. But monkshood lowers fever and stops the horrible coughing that torments old people in winter. This is Bartolomeo’s medicine garden. I call it his horror garden, and I love it. No one’s allowed in without him. Bartolomeo doesn’t like me any more than anyone else does, but he takes me into his garden often because he’s flattered by how closely I listen to him.

The voices hush for a moment, but here they come again. I peer beyond the bushes and see Mella. Druda, Bartolomeo’s wife, huddles beside her. Bartolomeo is nowhere to be seen. So they’re here secretly. Mella’s shoulders shake with sobs. Druda puts a hand in the center of Mella’s back and waits. They talk, but I can’t make out their words.

The visible sadness brings tears to my eyes. If Mella were alone, I’d go to her. She needs a kind word.

Mella steps away and I can see…a baby. Druda takes the baby from her arms. Mella lets out a cry of despair. She grabs for the child.

For an instant I see naked flailing. What? I bite my tongue to keep from calling out.

Druda quickly wraps the baby up and walks off.

Mella drops to her knees and holds her face in both hands. She rocks forward and backward, moaning.

She’s alone now. But I don’t go to her. My insides have turned rock hard. Finally, she stands and smooths her dress and leaves.

I lean back against the wall and my eyes burn. It occurs to me that this wall is absurdly high. If someone wanted privacy, they could have made a wall that came up to my chest. That height would have served perfectly. It’s as though this wall is trying to keep out taller beings—monsters like me.

I walk on. When I reach the church of Santa Maria Assunta, I go inside, straight to the casket of Sant’Eliodoro, and look down through the