Free Damiano by R. A. MacAvoy Page B

be?” he cried and sank down on his knees in the wet snow.
    There stood peaks ranked against the sky: an awesome white phalanx, blinding bright from the teeth of their summits to the green cloaks that wrapped their feet, which were banded with silver rock. They were so tall they crowded the sky, and they grew taller as they seemed to rush at the kneeling youth. In their silence were all the voices of an infinite, inhuman choir.
    Two presences dominated. To the left sat the highest peak in the Valle d’Aosta: Mont Emilius, whom the peasants called Grandfather. Rugged and glistening, it had roots reaching almost to the road. To the right, far away and behind a palisade of mountains, out of a shimmer of light rose a single white fang, sharp as the tooth of a dog, and crooked at the tip, like a dog’s tooth, but unearthly clean. Damiano did not know it was Mont Cervin: the peak called the Matterhorn.
    As he stared, kneeling, he wept, knowing the beauty he saw must be like that of Raphael, if the archangel were to fling aside his little human cloak and appear as a flame of divine love. This the angel would never do, of course, out of a concern for the limits of man. The mountains, however, were less merciful. Damiano’s ecstasy bid fair to do him damage.
    â€œMaster! Get up! Please, your knees are getting soaked. Master! Damiano. What is the pain?” Macchiata danced a circle around him, nuzzling his hands with her warm tongue and her cold nose.
    â€œLittle dear, I see a beauty fit to kill a man! Can’t you see the... thrones of the ages?”
    â€œThrones of who?” She prodded him to his feet.
    â€œOf the... the mountains. Mont Emilius and another. Doesn’t their loveliness pierce you?”
    She snorted. “I see nothing. The wall is too high. But if piercing is what loveliness does to you, I want no part of it!
    â€œCome, Damiano. You can’t stop here, in the wind, and now wet besides.”
    Docile, made meek by so much splendor, he allowed her to lead him forward. In a few minutes the village of Sous Pont Saint Martin peeped out between two hills. Damiano passed between them into a natural rock shelter, where the wind swirled aimlessly, carrying snow spray in a high spiral into the air.
    The west side of each square hut was braced with a flying buttress of white. The patch of ground blocked from the wind by each building was scattered with bootprints, along with the prints of shod hooves. Many riders had been here recently.
    But were not here now. The village was desolate. Silence rumbled in Damiano’s ears. Or was that Macchiata, growling?
    Damiano glanced down at the dog in surprise. Her hackles were up, her squat legs braced. Nervously, her eyes met his. “Let’s go back to the road,” she suggested.
    â€œWhy, Macchiata? Here is shelter, and my feet are frozen. What’s wrong, little dear? Do you smell soldiers?”
    â€œYes. No. No soldiers now. Just blood. Frozen blood.”
    Damiano took a wary step forward. Macchiata scrabbled in front of him and stood barring his way. “No, Master. You are too sensitive; looking at mountains hurts you. This will hurt you worse!
    â€œLet’s go back to the road. Our people aren’t here.”
    Damiano’s easy color rose to his cheeks, and he gazed resentfully down at her. “Love of beauty is not the same thing as cowardice, Macchiata.
    â€œWasn’t it I who found my father perishing in torment? And have I not grown up hearing Father Antonio remind us that all flesh is the food of worms—flesh of both dogs and men, little one? Dead men hold no terror for me.”
    The dog dropped her head and Damiano swept by.
    In the circle formed by the huts was a little meadow, which in the summer was browsed by chickens and the occasional hobbled goat. Now it was swept by wind and ice and snow, with the gray stubble of grass exposed where the wind had scraped most deep. In this field lay the