Free The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird by Kat Beyer Page B

middle, letting myself get lost in the rapid rise and fall of my family’s voices. When we were all settled in the living room, I asked Francesca, “What’s he getting?”
    “The
sciacchetrà
.”
    “The what?”
    “Sciacchetrà,”
she repeated, pronouncing it like “shah-keh-TRA.” It had a beautiful sound. “It’s a dessert wine from the Cinque Terre.”
    I had no idea what or where the Cinque Terre was, but sometimes I get tired of asking for explanations, so I let it go. Emilio returned, breathless, looking like a little boy as he held up a long, slender bottle of amber liquid. Nonno had already gotten out glasses for everyone. I watched as he poured, because I’d never seen wine that color. Emilio raised his glass and we all followed.
    “To the best grandmother in the world,” he said, still looking like a kid. “A very happy birthday.”
    Nonna shook her head. We all clinked glasses and drank. It wasn’t like any wine I’d ever had before. It was sweeter, andthicker, and I could taste the grapes, and a sun like honey, and something else, a raisiny taste, if raisins came from the heavens.
    “It’s made from grapes grown on the original rootstock brought from Greece a couple of thousand years ago,” said Uncle Matteo. “These were among the few vines in Europe that escaped the vine blight in the last century. You know about that? You Americans saved us. We grafted our ancient grape varieties on to your rootstock, since our own were dying. Nearly every wine in Europe owes its survival to you.”
    I wanted to say, “Not to me, specifically,” but instead I accepted his thanks solemnly, feeling a sharp pain in my heart when I heard him say “you Americans.” It wasn’t because of all the lame things my country was doing at the moment, but because I had finally started to feel like part of the family. On the other hand, it was nice to hear that we had done a few things right over the years. Grape rootstock, the Marshall Plan, stuff like that.
    We ended the evening by singing some song that Nonna was trying to remember the words to, and some pop songs that everybody knew because you couldn’t avoid hearing them on the radio.
    “Ma gelido sarai,”
I sang to myself as I struggled with the zipper on my dress, thinking what it would be like to kiss various people.
    “You don’t quite have it yet,” Signora Gianna told me, speaking out of the air above my head. I jumped, having forgottenfor a moment that I shared my room with a couple of nosy and opinionated spirits. I reminded myself to try to find out which member of the family Signora Gianna had been, and to try to work out who her gravel-voiced friend was (I still just called him Gravel). I wondered why I kept forgetting to look her up, once I was out of the room. It was still hard to even talk about her to Nonno and the rest of the family.
    “Try again,” she prompted. “Listen, first.” And she sang:
    Gelido come
    Mi guardo allo specchio
    E non mi vedo più
    Qual è il mio nome
,
    Qual è la mia città
    Dov’è che abito
    Which I would translate sort of like this:
    Freezing like when
    I look in the mirror
    And I cannot see
    What my name is
    What is the city
    In which I live
    Signora Gianna has a beautiful voice, and I got lost,listening to her sing, so I was surprised when she said, “Now your turn.” I thought about asking who had appointed her my singing teacher, but I didn’t. Instead, I tried again, and this time I sounded much better. We ended up singing the whole thing together before I fell asleep.
    In the morning, Giuliano informed me that I would be going with him to visit Piero Strozzi, Tommaso’s father, because the only time the banker would see us was over his lunch break, and none of the others could get off work or school to go with us. Giuliano had insisted on seeing him in his home, a point that Signore Strozzi had made some difficulty over, since they were very busy people. Why couldn’t Nonno come to Signore