Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) (23 page)

I stared at Signora Gallo, then back at Volatile’s lifeless head, lying on the ground.

“Ever since he shot that thing it’s caused nothing but trouble. Take it with you! Isn’t that what you came here for?”

In horror, I backed out of the room before hurtling down the stairs and out of that property as fast as I could. But not before I saw Orlando rise to his feet, taking one last look at Volatile’s features, concealed within a bird. He took Signora Gallo’s hands between his, looked into her eyes, and whispered, “May she haunt you until the day you die,
Insha’Allah
.”

Ever my opposite, Orlando calmly strode out of that place, head held high. We walked silently through the vineyards and the woods, until the path forked: one toward Orvieto, and one east, to my farm.

“The journey ends here,” stated Orlando solemnly.

“If you want to come to the house later, I can—“

“You misunderstand me, Laurentis. Our friendship has come to an end.”

“What?”

“As all things run their course, so have we.”

“Is this about her?”

But Orlando was unwavering. “I have done all I can do for you. There is no road left for us to travel together. We must go on, separately, for our paths lead to very different places.”

“Are you leaving Orvieto?” I asked, not quite understanding.

But olive-skinned Orlando laid a hand on my shoulder.

Orlando Khan closed his eyes as a hush descended over the whole world.

Orlando Khan opened his mouth, but all I could hear were the voices, the whispers that lay behind the white world.

Orlando Khan spoke.

“Be well, Gabriel Laurentis. This is the will of God.”

“Well, I can’t say that I am happy about this,” I began, then stopped suddenly.

I comprehended for the first time how wrong he seemed without the flock of birds accompanying him, like he was missing a vital limb, like he was naked. And then I understood. “You’re going after the swallows, aren’t you?”

A strange smile spread over his face. “I suppose you could call it that.”

“I want to thank you for all you have done for me.”

“It was done gladly, in the service of a friend.” He raised a hand in farewell and ventured down the dirt trail, the path that took him away from me, permanently.

But he turned back in afterthought. “I have one more piece of advice for you. Heed it well, for it may save you someday.
When we die, we do not live on.
Do you understand?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted helplessly.

“But you will. Goodbye, my friend.”

“Goodbye, Orlando Khan.”

“I
don’t understand,” I would say so often to her as we lay, her head at my feet, on the white cotton sheets in my dreamscape bedchamber. My manor in the thriving vineyard, the smell of young grapes in the air. It was magic, even though it was two-dimensional. This house, this vineyard so exact as it had always been in my dreams, only in greyscale. “Volatile, you’re dead.”

“Do I look dead to you?” she replied, and would laugh.

“I saw your remains,” I stated. “That head.” I shivered at the recollection of that ghastly thing mounted on a slab.

“Think of it as a layer,” she instructed, “and of me like a snake who sheds its skin.”

“But Volatile,” I began, “the head – it looked like a bird, but it also looked like you. It had your eyes. And all Gallo could see was a falcon, but his wife saw a woman, she saw you.”

And then she said something that terrified me, “How do you know I really look like a woman?”

She must have noticed my discomfort, the horror I tried to conceal, because she laughed, restoring my confidence. “Gabriel, I control how human beings perceive me. I wanted Gallo to see a falcon. Just as I wanted his wife to see me.”

“Still messing with the Gallos’ from the grave, huh?” I said grimly.

“Not from the grave.”

“Volatile, you’re dead.” I was growing exasperated. I could sense the truth dangling right before my eyes, but try as I might, it remained just out of reach, just beyond comprehension.

“But is not death merely a migration?” she responded, and she looked at me with those eyes of hers, and I would become putty in her hands. She could tell me anything, and I would believe it.

In those moments of peace, I would cross my arms at the back of my head, and look up at the high beams that supported the soaring roof. Just outside of my room, I could hear the animated chatter of my mother, who was cooking an incredible feast and singing her favorite songs. Outside of my window lay a vast vineyard, larger than the Gallos’ could ever hope or dream, and my workmen filled the symmetrical rows bursting with fertility. Nestled amongst the beams and rafters over my head were bulbous, cone-shaped nests, constructed of sticks and mud, containing hundreds of fork-tailed swallows, their round entryways blinking at me like the eyes of night-dwellers.

They were everywhere, her swallows. In the kitchen, in the hall, in the ballroom with its dome-shaped ceiling, in the woods, in Orvieto town. I often complained about them. “They go where I go,” explained Volatile.

“Couldn’t you have left some back at the real farm?”

“No,” she responded drily.

“You even took Orlando’s swallows away,” I would press.

“Orlando no longer needed them.”

“He no longer required protection?”

“Orlando has gone to a place where what he requires is beyond human understanding,” Volatile responded mysteriously. “And don’t look at me like that, Gabriel Laurentis, for I won’t tell you another word!”

“You never want to talk about Orlando with me,” I sulked.

“It is not your business,” she replied.

“I would think it was!” I exclaimed.

“And why is that, Gabriel?” There was a twinkle in her eye; she wanted me to admit something.

“Did you love him very much?” I asked in a small voice, trying to seem nonchalant.

“I…still love him very much.”

It hurt a little, to hear that. Even in a perfect dream world. “Still?”

“I will always love Orlando Khan,” she stated as matter-of-factly as she would trees being green and the sky being blue, although they really weren’t, not in the white world.

“The same as me?” I asked tentatively.

She closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply, as if searching for an answer inside herself.  Her lips began to move, and although I couldn’t hear what she was saying, it was almost as if she were consulting with something…someone. 

“It is a very different kind of love. Let’s compare it to fire,” she began in a voice that was hers, yet not quite hers. “I love Orlando like the flames in an oven. Contained, temperate, with a purpose, and end in mind, a finished result. I am able to dictate the heat I desire, low to high, off and on. The fire does not exist outside of the oven, and the oven is useless if not for the fire.”

“And me?”

She sat up in the bed, her wings unfurling around her like a fine silk parachute caught in mid-air, gently drifting down to earth. She was a vision. “Like wildfire. Fire sparked by an infidel in a patch of nature, an act of mischief. But this fire burns to bone and destroys all things.” She smiled at me then, an all-knowing expression on her face. “I watched you grow up, you know,” she whispered. “My flock and I would nest in the trees around this place. There were so many locations my people wanted to return to after the winter. Some wanted to see France. Others Wales, the wild Nordic lands. But every year, I would lead them back here, after migration. The first time I saw you, you were in your mother’s arms. You couldn’t have been more than a few month’s old.”

I learned forward in eagerness as Volatile continued. “She didn’t stutter much in your early years, so consumed with caring for you. She would pick wildflowers and herbs in the garden, with you strapped to her breast in an old shawl. I had never seen hair that shade, like white gold. You would point at us and smile, and you sparked my interest, because I had the ability to see your spirit, your nature. And I could not forget you as we journeyed from land to land, chasing the sun. So we returned, and I watched you grow, and your simple, trusting nature brought out the protector in me,” she paused then, and colored a little. I nodded at her to continue. “I had a plan, that one day I would come to you, to be the friend and playmate child you so desperately needed. I didn’t know exactly the day we would meet, and although I realized Gallo was stalking me, I always counted on his shots missing. It’s strange you know,” she concluded, staring out of the window and into the horizon, “the first time he discovered me was not on your property, but his own. I was at
Il Casa di Gallo
, watching you through the window as that hateful little girl slapped your face with her dolly.”

I must have looked as alarmed as I felt, for Volatile wiped away the eerie atmosphere with a sweep of her hand, and everything returned to a calm state. “But that doesn’t matter now,” she said breezily.

She gazed at me expectantly, as if she wanted me to kiss her. But I did not want to, not at that moment. She was dead. She was nothing but a dream.

“Who are your people, exactly?” I changed the subject. “The birds? Or the others?”

“What others?” she responded lightly. “There are no others.”

“I saw him, Volatile. And Orlando said there were others like you that lived within the ruins of ancient cities—“

“What is it your father once said? I am merely a girl with swallow’s wings—“

“Don’t expect me to believe this
merda
, Volatile.”

“Why must you press this?” moaned Volatile, reaching over to stoke my face. “It is not for you to know.”

“But Orlando has access to this privileged information?”

“Why do you concern yourself with Orlando? You two have parted ways now. He has left your life.”

And hearing this filled me with the kind of deep sadness that permeated both dream life and the real.

“You know,” said Volatile, sensing my disappointment, “what went on between Orlando and I.  It’s not…it’s not what you think.”

“But I
saw
you, Volatile.  I saw you in the woods.  Kissing and touching each other all over…”

“There is such a thing,” she explained, “called
perspective
.”

“You can’t tell me that what I saw wasn’t real.”

“Enough of these questions,” murmured Volatile, sitting up on her knees and edging over to me on the soft, feathered mattress. “I have something important to ask you.”

“What is it?”

Her face began to radiate, and her green eyes shone. “How would you like to live with me here?”

I began to laugh. “That’s insane, Volatile. This is just a dream!”

“But it isn’t.”

“I’m asleep right now, in Orvieto. My mother is dead and my father works hard to forget it. My best friend broke with me, and we have a farm that desperately needs care and attention. And there’s this girl, you see. She lived with us, on and off. She was murdered.
That
’s where I live.
That
is real life.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Volatile whispered. “
This
can be real life.”

“Impossible!” I scoffed.

“No, Gabriel, listen to me. How do you know your version of real life, the one you just described, isn’t the dream?”

“I just know.”

“But did you not frequently question that, as a child?”

“I…”

An enigmatic smile spread over her face. “That’s just it, don’t you see? You need to un-know it, it’s so simple. It’s like changing loyalties, alternating realities. You simply tell yourself that
this
is real life, and we can be together, and have all this, everything you ever wanted! All that stuff you just mentioned,
that
is the dream.”

“That sounds crazy. People can’t trade dreams for reality. It’s impossible.”

“But people don’t have dreams like you do, Gabriel.”

“Why am I the only one?”

Volatile’s eyes were on me, focused and intent. “Concentrate,” she commanded. “What do you smell?”

I closed my lids. My mother’s cooking. Chicken. White wine and garlic sauce. Something roasting. The smooth, suede scent of thyme. But no, there was something beyond that, as if the scent of food were merely a mask, a veil. A familiar fragrance that had always permeated this white world, something I recalled from my childhood. And then it hit me: moss. Dried leaves. The insides of eggs, unfertilized yolks dripping over straw. Mold. The innards of insects and the slime of earthworms. The acrid, subtle trace of poultry’s naked skin.

And then I realized where I was, not in my room, not in my house, not in Orvieto, not even in a dream, but the inside of an enormous nest, a nest she had constructed for me.

I tried to recall the first time I began having these dreams, but couldn’t fix upon a season. It was suddenly cold in the white world and I shivered despite myself. I wanted to leave.
Wake up
, I screamed at myself, concentrating fiercely.
Wake up!

As if she could read my thoughts, she placed a hand on my knee to calm me. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “And it is the truth. I created this place for you in your mind. You were so troubled as a child, filled with so much pain and self-loathing. All you had was your cat and your prayers to Zeus. So I designed a haven of refuge for you, an Orvieto where all your wishes would come true.”

“Like a genie,” I breathed, suddenly remembering Orlando’s hypothesis of yesteryear. How long ago that all seemed now.

If she heard me, she didn’t react. “I worked so hard on this place,” she continued, “it nearly took everything I had.”

“But those pills,” I stammered, “I ruined it, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t ruin it,” she soothed. “Look around you, the frames and the foundations are still intact. And that’s all you really need. So what will you do? Will you live with me here?”

“But it’s only in my head.”

“Your subconscious is a place too, as real as any other.”

“Volatile,” I began unsteadily, “I really don’t know if I can…”

“But don’t you miss me?” she said, and I saw pain in those eyes.

“Of course I do.”

“And isn’t this place better than the other?”

“There’s no comparison.”

“And you can touch, feel and taste here, just like the other?”

“Much better, much more distinct.”

“Then stay here with me.”

“I just…I don’t know if I can—“

“But Gabriel,” she said, and her voice was like heartbreak. “Don’t you love me?”