Between the mountain and the sea

A short story.

She sat, her back to the olive tree, that coarse yet familiar pressure between her shoulders from a friend that felt as old as the Earth itself, and watched two butterflies dance through the azure sky.

The tree had been there for as long as she could remember. Maybe even longer than her grandmother could remember. She ran her hand absently over the wood, fingers tracing the lines of the graffiti etched into the trunk. Names and phrases from passers-by who had become a part of the tree, a part of the landscape.

The butterflies spiralled away and she brought her attention back to the present. She became dimly aware of words floating in with the late summer breeze.

The voice of her mother, calling her home.

She leaped up and ran, vaulting the low wall as she had done countless times before, disturbing a flock of sparrows that briefly shaded the sun like a dark cloud before dissipating and settling elsewhere.

The streets were busy; she weaved through crowds and dodged the wheels of a cart, its driver pulling the horse sharply and cursing her as she sprang in front of it. She took a back road past the baths and almost tripped over two old men playing knucklebones on the corner. She ignored their protests, ducked below an archway and paused in the doorway of her house, just long enough to brush the dust from her tunic, slow her breathing and pull a twig from her hair.

‘You’re late, Aemilia.’

The voice from behind her was that of her grandfather, face tanned and lined and carved into a permanently wry smirk beneath sharp blue eyes.

‘But I won’t tell if you don’t.’ He held out his hand and slipped her a stuffed date. She popped it into her mouth, wiped her sticky hands on her tunic, and they headed into the house together.

‘Four months?’ Aemilia felt her stomach lurch.

‘Close your mouth,’ said her mother, ‘we have company.’ Her grandfather busied himself with bread and cheese, keeping his eyes low and out of the conversation.

Her father’s voice was as gentle as ever. Aemilia had never heard him raise it, not even when he burned his hand so badly at the smith he kept it wrapped for several weeks and had to learn how to work left-handed. ‘I know it seems like a long time,’ he said, ‘but you’ll be so busy here you won’t even notice I’m gone.’

Four months. Four months without his laughter, without his hugs, without his calloused but gentle hands tousling her hair as the scents of coriander and fennel drifted from the cooking pot. Four months without her father. Aemilia’s eyes began to sting.

He guided her gently to the doorstep and pointed at a young tree in the peristylium. ‘Watch the leaves,’ he said. ‘You see how they are beginning to tinge gold?’ She nodded. ‘By the time I depart, the first leaf will fall. When all the leaves are gone, I will be back.’

She wiped her eyes. Watch the leaves. She could do that.

She remembered planting the tree when her father brought the sapling home years ago. She had helped dig the earth with her own hands, as deep as she could, and mix up the soil with wood ash from the stove. It had felt smooth and cool and smelled deeply of life. She had marvelled at how the death of one tree could feed another.

Now the tree was young, small leaves sparkling in the gentle sunlight that eased in through the open roof.

As they stood there, the leaves began to quiver. But Aemilia felt no summer breeze on her face this time, and in a moment the earth beneath her feet growled and hummed. Clay pots rattled on a nearby shelf, and an even layer of dust dislodged itself from the rafters and drifted down to dance in the sun.

Aemilia instinctively laid one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her father ignored the tremor entirely.

‘I will go with you,’ Aemilia said.

Her father laughed. ‘A ship is not your place,’ he said. ‘You’ll be sick as a dog before we even left port, and not even Neptune would be able to help you.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Aemilia pouted. ‘I can sail as well as any man.’

Her father squeezed her hand. ‘This is your home. Keep it, and tend it, and I will be back soon.’

She buried her face in her father’s tunic and the ground below them rumbled.

The grapes were fat and red. Aemilia made sure to sneak plenty into her pockets when her mother’s back was turned, although she was certain her mother knew what she was doing and turned a blind eye anyway.

The rest she cut and bundled into low wooden boxes. As the summer waned, the rest of the city turned out to do the same. Her mother whistled absently as they worked, and younger children chased each other between the vines. Aemilia had perfected her own method. With one hand she grasped the stem, with the other she cut with her little knife her father had made her. She knew exactly which angle to cut with to avoid the notch that had chipped while she had been trying to whittle hard wood three summers ago. Her father had offered to replace the blade for her but she had refused - she liked the new shape of it even if it meant she had to adapt how she used it.

The grapes tumbled into the box and she moved onto the next one.

She liked the routine of it. The motions were rhythmic, almost cathartic. She was surrounded by the same faces that worked the vineyards every year. Of course, some were more lined and worked a little slower than when she was a toddler, her mouth and hands stained red, following her mother as she whistled the same tune, but there was familiarity here. The grape harvest was how it had always been. It’s how it always would be.

Except when a cool wind blew in off the mountain and she looked up, she saw her father watching her with a cloak around his shoulders and she knew that change was coming.

She had never been fond of the mountain. Her friends had played there, scrabbling up boulders and slopes and exploring the cracks and crevices. She had been with them only once, but had tripped and skinned her shins on the coarse stone. Her friends had carried on regardless but she had limped home and her mother spent the evening picking stones from her flesh.

And now it just stood there silently, as motionless as her father who she knew wanted to stay as much as she did. She could see it in his eyes, dry and set but on closer look were deep wells of softness she felt she could swim in.

She cursed the mountain and she cursed her father and cried until he wrapped his arms around her and she was swallowed by the cloak that smelled of him.

She went with him to the port.

The ship was already waiting, its crisp white sails snapping in the wind. Gulls wheeled high, circling the glittering bay with their eyes on the fishermen mending their nets.

They pushed through the crowds and her father loaded the rest of the ship with the crew. She willed the moments to pass slower, for time to freeze, for the noise of the port and the sea and the city to diminish into silence. But it didn’t, and she sat on the jetty and watched fish dart in the shadow of the hull until her father laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ he said.

‘I will swim after you,’ she announced.

He laughed. ‘You would beat us to Rome, I am sure.’

‘I wish nothing was changing,’ Aemilia said, looking at her feet. She could see the cerulean water dancing between the wooden slats of the jetty.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I wish every day would just stay the same.’ She shivered.

‘Me too. It’s called getting older,’ her father said. ‘It happens the best of us.’ He kneeled to her level. She couldn’t help notice it took him a moment longer to kneel than it had when she was younger and he could lift her effortlessly. A flicker of discomfort flashed in his eyes and was gone. ‘But nothing is really changing. I will be travelling for a while, and the only thing that will change is the season. Remember what I said about the leaves?’ She nodded. ‘And when I return we can watch them grow again together. Buds at first, then a gentle unfurling, like a baby waking from a long sleep. Or a phoenix rising again after death.’

She understood, and accepted, and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Try not worry,’ he said. ‘Pompeii will always be our home.’ He spread his arms wide and flashed a bright smile. ‘The greatest city in the world.’

He stood and tousled her hair as he had done innumerable times before.

‘When the leaves fall, I will return.’

She sat on the jetty and watched the ship shrink beyond the bay, and white gulls followed it. She continued to stare at the horizon long after it had gone, until the jetty beneath her rumbled and the wood creaked and the ships rocked in the harbour. Sparrows took flight.

The crowds ignored the tremors as they had done innumberable times before.

The sun shimmered on the sea, and Aemilia turned her back to it. The mountain watched her go.

Image: Thomas Winward