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“Don’t try anything.” Luca eased onto the floor. “I can defend myself.”
“I won’t hurt you. I can’t reach you.”
“Don’t call the guard, either.”
“I won’t. I’ll wake you before he brings dinner, and you can go outside and wait until he goes away. I’ll share my food with you.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you.” Luca’s eyes glistened with tears that caught the moonlight. “My mother died, and I had to bury her. I’ve been up all night.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember my mother. She might be dead, too.” Dante realized he hoped she wasn’t.
“I’m sorry.” Luca pulled his cap over his eyes. “I need to sleep.”
Dante stayed in his corner, and Luca dozed off instantly. Dante watched him sleep. Luca breathed in and out like he was real, but his paleness was so unnatural. In time, Luca slid over and started sleeping on his side. His cap fell off.
Dante leaned closer to see him better. Luca looked like a woman, with a delicate brow, a heart-shaped face, a smallish nose, and pretty lips. His hair was long, also like a woman’s, woven into a braid as white as the moon.
Dante squinted, trying to figure it out. Luca looked too much like a woman to be a man, but he was too pale to be a human. His skin was as white as the clouds, and his eyes were as blue as the sky.
Dante realized Luca could be only one thing.
“You’re an angel, aren’t you?”Dante asked Luca, when he came back in after the guard had brought dinner. They shared his meager portion of soggygnocchiwith rancid tomato sauce.
“No, I’m a man.”
“You’re not a man, I can tell.” Dante chewed his awful pasta, which he barely tasted anymore. “So, the truth. Are you an angel? Or a delusion?”
“I told you, I’m a man.” Luca licked tomato sauce from his fingers, but Dante stopped eating, giving voice to his fear.
“If you’re a delusion, you’re lasting longer than the others. It worries me. I don’t want to be Raving King Roger. Please, tell me the truth.”
Luca sighed. He took off his cap, showing his pale face, and his long braid fell out. “Okay, I’m a woman, and my name is Lucia.”
Dante sighed, relieved. “But why are you all white? And why are you here?”
“It’s the way I was born. I’m here to hide because people try to hurt me. This hall is empty except for you, and I need to stay out of sight.”
Dante felt a twinge of sympathy, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
If Lucia wasn’t an angel, she was as beautiful as one.
Over the next few days,Dante and Lucia fell into a routine, spending day and night together, sharing meals and getting to know one another. Lucia did most of the talking, telling Dante about her life and her travels, and Dante fell asleep every night, exhausted from learning about people, villages, flowers, trees, and birds. He mostly listened, lacking words or ways to explain things, but in time, he asked her questions, and she asked him about his past. She cried about her mother, which made Dante think about his own, and he started to remember more about his childhood. But what struck him most was that Lucia wasn’t afraid of him.
She didn’t treat him like a monster.
But like a man.
Lucia heard Dante’s whistle, whichcued her that the guard had left dinner. She hurried back inside the madhouse, down the hallway, and into his cell. He was setting up their meal of spaghetti with olive oil and old garlic, but she couldn’t bear to eat any more garbage.
“Dante, look.” Lucia took from her pockets a fresh blood orange and a prickly pear. It was all she’d had time to pick.
“Madonna!I haven’t had fresh fruit in so long. What’s that green thing?”
“A prickly pear. It’s from a cactus.”
“I never had one before. Let me try it.”
“Okay,” Lucia said, amused. She’d stolen a precious blood orange, but he wanted the fruit that grew like weeds all over Sicily. She slid a paring knife from her bag and slit the thick green skin of the prickly pear.
