Ring of Fire (6 page)

“Where are you going?” asks Harvey, hearing Elettra move across the room. She sits down on the edge of the bed and slips on a pair of shoes.

“I’m going out to check the hallway.”

“I’ll go with you,” the American boy offers, suddenly active.

Actually, Elettra’s mind is somewhere else. She’s thinking about the bolt of energy that surged through her. How she transmitted this to Sheng by touching his shoulder. How the energy made her aunt’s lamp explode.

She’s scared. She can feel her body trembling, right down to her bones.

The lamp exploded in a blinding flash of white light.

Harvey gropes around and finds his shoes at the foot of the bed. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken these off,” he jokes.

“You guys aren’t leaving us here, are you?” asks Mistral.

Elettra makes her way toward the door. “I’m just going out to see if the light in the hallway works.”

“I’m ready,” says Harvey. Then he pats his legs, realizing he’s still in his boxer shorts. “Um, just a sec.” They hear a brief rustling of jeans. Elettra opens the door and tries flicking the switch in the hallway.

Clack. Clack.

Nothing.

“Man,” murmurs Sheng for the millionth time.

“What do we do?”

“I’m going down to check the electrical meters,” says Elettra.

“Have you got any candles?”

“In the kitchen, maybe,” she replies.

“Where are you?” asks Harvey, groping around the bedroom. He trips over something, making a loud thud.

“My bag!” cries Sheng.

“Don’t move, Harvey!” orders Elettra with a touch of agitation. “Everybody, stay right where you are! Let’s let our eyes get used to the dark.”

“I can’t see a thing,” says Sheng.

Neither can Harvey. He stays perfectly still.

They all remain in silence.

Elettra thinks,
Everything can’t be as dark as this
.

A few moments later, Harvey says, “I’m starting to make things out a little. Elettra, I can see you near the door. I can see the beds, too.”

“So can I,” murmurs Mistral.

“I still can’t see a thing!” Sheng insists.

Elettra nods. To her eyes, too, the glowing snow is helping her make out the blurry silhouettes of the furniture in the room. But beyond the door, toward the inner rooms of the hotel, the hallway is pitch-dark. “I can see a little bit …,” she says.

“Lucky you,” replies Sheng. “Because I still can’t see a thing. Maybe … the explosion blinded me. … Hey!”

Something’s brushing up against his face. It’s Mistral’s hand. “Don’t worry, Sheng. It’s just me.”

“What are you doing?” the Chinese boy asks her.

The girl’s hands are caressing his face. “I don’t think you were hurt, Sheng. It’s just … well, maybe you should open your eyes.”

Sheng gives an embarrassed start. “Huh? I
what
…?”

“Your eyes are closed.”

Sheng tries to calm down and slowly opens his eyes.

This time it’s Mistral who gives a start. “Sheng!” she cries out. “Guys, look!”

“What is it?” he asks, suddenly nervous.

He sees Harvey and Elettra’s shadows standing over him. A hunched beanpole and a wild mane of dark curls.

“Your eyes …,” whispers Mistral.

“What’s wrong with them?” he asks, putting his hands up to his face.

Harvey shakes his head. “I must be dreaming.”

“What?”

“They’re yellow,” says Harvey.

“They look like gold,” whispers Elettra. “Like two precious little jewels…”

“You guys are kidding, right?”

Mistral shakes her head. “No, really! You’ve got two giant owl’s eyes.”

“Golden yellow.”

“But it’s going away,” Harvey points out.

“What’s going away?”

“The glow in your eyes. It’s like they’re … melting.”

“Do they hurt?”

“No!”

“Can you see okay?”

“I see everything … yellow.”

“But what can you see, exactly?”

Sheng gets up. “You guys, the beds, the door to the hallway, the bathroom …”

“You can see all the way to the bathroom?”

“Yeah. I mean … What, can’t you guys?”

“Not me.”

“Me neither.”

“Everything’s dark, Sheng. We can’t see a thing.”

“What’s happened to me?”

“I’m going down to check the meters,” decides Elettra, wheeling around.

“We’re coming, too!” the other three shout out, almost in unison.

Moments later, the four kids are feeling their way down the hall leading to the dining room. “I’m seeing less and less yellow … and not so far away anymore,” Sheng tells them.

He turns to look at Mistral, who says, “They’re almost back to normal.”

Sheng wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “So whatever it was, it’s going away, right?”

“That was pretty cool, though,” comments Harvey. “A flame turning you into a nocturnal animal.”

“Next time
you
do it, okay?” Sheng jokes.

Elettra leads the way. She knows the hallway by heart, but in the silent darkness, something is bothering her. And she’s got the nagging feeling that somehow it’s her fault.

They reach the dining room with its rows of little tables. The white tablecloths, in the near darkness, make them look like big, sleeping flowers. At the other end of the room, the elevator’s emergency light is off.

“The whole power system must’ve shut down,” Elettra says to herself.

She crosses the room, her hand brushing against the tables, making the porcelain cups rattle on their saucers.

“Does this happen often?” asks Sheng.

“Occasionally,” Elettra lies.

“I can’t see a thing,” Sheng moans after a while. They’re standing beside the big door leading out into the courtyard, at the bottom of the stairs that go up to the bedrooms.

“Auntie?” whispers Elettra, hearing a noise coming from the floor above.

Silence.

“I’d say they’re all snoozing away.”

“Actually, there’s not much better to do during a blackout …,” Harvey points out.

“Could we open up the door to let a little light in?”

“Sure. Give me a hand,” orders Elettra. She pushes on the heavy, well-oiled bolts, which slide across without making the faintest noise. The door opens up with a decisive clack, as if it were waking up from its silent slumber.

Outside, a mantle of white has covered everything. Soft
and light, compact and silent, it gives a graceful appearance to the square courtyard, the well, the awkward shape of the minibus. Over the terrace, the four statues have big heads of white hair.

“It’s like being in
Lord of the Rings,”
says Harvey.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Gandalf jumped out from somewhere,” Sheng agrees.

Mistral bites her lip, remaining silent. The stone courtyard looks magical to her, too, but she was thinking of something far more poetic than a simple movie.

With the front door wide open, a glow now fills the hotel’s atrium, allowing them to make out the stairway, the reception desk with its large copper umbrella stand and a thick cluster of garden plants.

“Elettra?” calls out Sheng when he notices that the girl of the house has disappeared.

“Coming!” a voice calls back from a distance. The kids hear a few drawers being opened and shut, and then Elettra’s voice. “Great! I knew it!”

She reappears from behind the reception desk holding a pack of cigarettes.

“You smoke?” Harvey asks her, horrified.

Elettra smiles and her perfectly white teeth gleam with the reflection from the snow. “I don’t. But my aunt Linda does. That is, she tries to make us believe she gave it up years ago, but I was sure she kept an emergency pack of cigarettes hidden around somewhere. And this is just what we need.” She opens up the pack and takes out a green disposable lighter.

* * *

Harvey’s thumb gives the lighter a flick, and a little flame lights up the stairs leading down into the basement. “Wow! Look at this place! It’s like—” Mistral passes by him, cutting him off before he has a chance to ruin the fascinating effect of this place, too. It’s an ancient stone basement, its stairs disappearing into a maze of rooms piled high with old things.

“It’s magnificent …,” she remarks, taking in the atmosphere.

“Hao!
Cool!” murmurs Sheng, admiring the stairs that disappear down belowground.

“The meters are right over here …,” Elettra says calmly, moving a few steps beyond the doorway. Harvey holds up the lighter so they can see the row of ugly black boxes, inside of which sparkle metal disks, which are perfectly still.

“It looks like they’ve stopped completely.”

“There’s an echo in here,” Mistral points out, a few steps farther down.

“And a nasty old mouse, too,” adds Elettra, checking the meters. “You’re right, Harv. They’ve stopped.”

The flame from the lighter flickers in the darkness. The American boy’s eyes are big and deep. “Yep, Elly,” he answers her, resting a hand on her shoulder.

Elettra blinks a couple of times. And she thinks,
Elly? No, no. That’s no good
. She hates nicknames. And she’s got to be the one who decides how friendly a boy can get with her.

“My name isn’t Elly,” she says, stepping away from him.

“Then my name isn’t Harv,” he replies stonily.

Then he lets the lighter’s flame go out.

The basement is plunged into darkness.

I like this guy
, thinks Elettra.

* * *

Covered with snow, the courtyard of the Domus Quintilia has a special charm of times gone by. Hearing a single, prolonged tolling of a bell, Elettra feels a cold shiver creep down her back beneath her pajamas.

“Maybe I should go wake up my dad. Or my aunt.”

“But why?” Harvey asks her. “If the power’s out, there’s nothing they can do about it. Besides, unless I’m mistaken … that bell tower’s out, too.”

Mistral is beside them at the threshold of the front door. She points out the vertical silhouette of the Santa Cecilia bell tower to the others. “Harvey’s right. It was lit up when we got here tonight.”

“It’s true!” cries Sheng, who adds,
“Hao!”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Mistral asks.

“Hao?
It’s an exclamation. It’s like saying ‘cool’ or ‘great.’”

Elettra shakes her head, not listening to them. “It can’t be. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“The power of February twenty-ninth,” remarks Harvey.

“What do you mean?”

“Four people born on February twenty-ninth wind up in the same city, at the same hotel. …”

“In the same room …,” Sheng specifies.

“And they make the lights go out all over Rome. It seems pretty normal to me. Or at least not very strange.”

Elettra looks at the snow piling up on the well. She can feel her heart thumping in her chest and her thoughts whirling through her head. Harvey’s right. The lights went out the moment she transmitted her energy to Sheng. And when she did, the lamp exploded and the boy’s eyes turned into two golden nuggets.

“We could go take a look,” she said, summarizing all her concerns.

“Where?” asks Sheng.

“Outside.”

“Outside where?”

“Outside the hotel. We could take a walk down the street and find out if there’s really a blackout everywhere. Or only here at our place.”

“And once we find that out?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have found out. That’s all.”

“But why should we find out?”

“Because we’re the only people in the hotel who are awake?”

Mistral shivers. “I’m not going. It’s too cold.”

They’re all still in their pajamas, except for Harvey, who’s already in his jeans.

“We’d all catch a cold,” says Sheng.

“Your clothes are back in the room,” replies Harvey, catching Elettra’s eye. “We’ll just put on something warm and then take a look around the city.”

T
HE
T
RASTEVERE DISTRICT LOOKS LIKE IT’S BEEN DRAWN WITH CHARCOAL
. Silent and still, it rises up over a white carpet of snow. Austere buildings, sloping rooftops, dark porticoes, slanted gutters, tilted chimneys.

Everything dark.

The kids warily leave the hotel, turn their backs to Santa Cecilia and head toward the river. Their footsteps crunch down gently into the compact layer of white snow.

Sheng is the only one of the four who hasn’t stopped talking. To keep his hair from getting wet, he’s put on one of the hotel’s shower caps, and he’s trying to convince the others to do the same.

“You look crazy with that thing on,” Harvey remarks bluntly. After the explosion and the blackout, his mood has radically changed. He seems calmer, more self-confident.

The kids reach Piazza in Piscinula, where groups of people are standing around talking about what’s happened. They light up their surroundings with their car headlights and point at the buildings shrouded in darkness. There are men and women laughing and others complaining. A bartender’s been unexpectedly left
without any music. A group of students have abandoned their backpacks in the snow to have a furious snowball fight. Elettra singles out two adults standing a bit off to the side and asks them what they know about the blackout.