018. Little Girl's Coin and Foil

[coin]

Note: Is it still skeletal?

--

Pietrina tossed coins into the fountain.

Mum told her to ask for silvers, banknotes or copper. Sometimes, the laced-old-woman from the manor gave a handful of coppers. Sometimes, the paper-skinned vets pressed pennies into her small palm. Sometimes, folk just spit.

But Pietrina forgot to go home—all the shining things and crinkled paper in her hands. She wandered, scuffing bare feet through alleys, beyond the slum sidestreets and into the piazza.

Because the war’s done, mum had told her. Because now we die with empty guts and tears we can’t swallow.

But the fountain didn’t look like tears. There were silvers in it, sunlight and dawn.

Like silver and stone—Pietrina liked to picture gods in the water. Mum told stories about gods. Little, paper ones with pointed noses. Quicksilver boys, with winged sandals and mismatched eyes. Cloud-browed men with lightning in their eyes. And sometimes, she saw their faces behind the cascade.

‘One-two…’ she rhymed, ‘a copper for you. Three-four. Here’s a bit more. Silver and paper, aren’t like mum’s tapers. Burn out and die, ‘fore morningtide. Five-six, found the river styx. Eight-nine. Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die.’

And one day, a goddess found her— a little girl, crouched upon the marble rim, bare toes curled over the edge and droplets caught in her curls.

Tall in the sunlight, she bent slightly as if she couldn’t quite see Pietrina’s shape against the water behind. And her skin was sunny, freckled and bright; and her wide mouth was pursed, painted crimson; and her hair was flax, tossed all across her shoulders.

‘You’re pretty,’ said Pietrina. ‘Where did you come from?’

The goddess laughed,—and it flickered all across her face like sunlight on rippled ater; but there was wax in her eyes. Laughter’s flame brooked there, dulled.

‘From wherever I like.’

‘Bella*,’ smiled Pietrina.

‘Bellezza,’ said the woman, ‘Il mio nome e Bellezza. Come ti chiami, bambina*?’

‘Pietrina.’ She grinned, a gap-toothed smile. ‘It means rock—so I don’t get pushed around.’

‘Ah,’ said the goddess, ‘Ah.’

She wavered, just a moment--and her gaze found the etchings Pietrina had made with coin edes, eyes and off-kilter figures, suns and stars in the fountain's marble. 'Ah,' she said, now something else in her voice. Graceful, she wandered back round the water and into the crowd—but Pietrina thought something was odd. She danced, but one foot limped. She walked with a hand against her breast.

When she scuffed back home, mum was peering out the window’s shatter-webbed window. Sunset drew long lines, slashed, across her features. It puddled crimson-tinged mud beneath her eyes.

And Pietrina, with a squeak, dashed for the back stairway and shimmied her way onto the roof.

Pietrina! Pietrinezza! You little good-for-nothing! Come down—come down!

Climb, mummy. Pietrina peered into the dusk. Climb up.

But don’t you take that tone, was mum’s response.

I saw a goddess, mummy. I bet she fell in love with a boy.

Come down!

There’s coppers in the fountain.

Come down!

…I’m sorry, mummy. I’m sorry.

When she woke, the sky was fading, and there were roses in the rims of the city’s skyline. Pietrina climbed down; she left the last copper on the kitchen table.

The goddess wasn’t in the piazza that day, nor in the evening—and Pietrina spent her time, hungry feeling hollow, splashing feet through the fountain’s water.

But she watched the laced old woman tap across the square with sallow girl holding her arm, a girl who painted pictures in the air with her hands. And she saw a limping man whose shoulder didn’t fit his jacket. He caught her scooping copper and silver off the marble fountain floor. Stubborn, she popped her chin at him. And he gave her a lazy grin that didn’t quite reach his green eyes.

When she reached too far and fell in, he fished her out.

‘Can’t you swim, kid?’

‘I can,’ she said, ‘but you’re not s’posed to swim in the fountain.’

‘Ah.’ He sat down, with his back to the raised fountain-ring and beside her.

‘You can swim?’ asked Pietrina.

‘If you’re not s’posed to swim,’ he said, ignoring her question, ‘Are you s’posed to drown instead?’

‘N-no. The gods wouldn’t let me.’ She pointed. ‘See?’

He glanced up into the water, with eyes that suddenly seemed waxy as the goddess’s; and his smile seemed more crooked than lazy.

‘That’d be nice,’ he told her, ‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m Pietrina. It means rock. Why don’t you like the gods?’

He fumbled in his jacket, pulling out a clove cigarette.

‘You look like the gold boy,’ Pietrina hugged her shoulders, ‘In mummy’s stories. You got stoled by a goddess’s eyes and never came back ‘cos she fell in love.’

His laughter caught on the cigarette’s smoke, became a hack, half-choked. Dry laughter like the crinkled paper neighbour Tina sketched on. ‘Do you—‘ he took a deep breath, hoarse, ‘do you tell stories to all the dead-enders who sit down by the fountain?’

‘Only the gods—‘ Pietrina pointed again. ‘And you. ‘Cos you know them.’

‘I don’t know any gods. They all died, in the war, with everyone else.’

‘You’re not dead; even though your arm’s funny.’

‘Funny how things look. Dead doesn’t mean rotted’

And Pietrina couldn’t see past the wax; and he seemed to have the goddess’s glow, but inside out—it printed thin lines and shadows in his open face. ‘Don’t,’ said Pietrina, ‘don’t do that.’

She scrambled down, slipped on damp cobbling and pulled her skirt off sticky knees. ‘I’m going. Bye. Ciao.’ And she ran.

But when she came back, he was still there, head tilted back against the stone, cigarette dead in limp fingers.

Serious, she climbed up behind him and whispered to wake him. Hsst.

He started, green-eyes flicking a moment, light as dawn. ‘Ciao,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be the trickster. All stories have a trickster. Who can I trick?’

But the man didn’t want her to trick anyone—he didn’t smile, and his gaze got waxy when she told him more stories, all gods, golden and why the goddess had loved him.

Don’t, he said.

And Pietrina thought it strange—but the trickster never did put broken things back together. He could only break what wasn’t yet broken.

And she watched from the flat rooftop that night, the crooked-shouldered young man sleep against the fountain. In the dim light, streetlamps casting crisscross shadow through tree branches, reflected off the water, he looked like sack of grain or someone’s cast-off coat.

Near dawn, Pietrina nodding caught the tinny echo of footsteps. Below, a woman wandered into the piazza--feet light; and it was the goddess. But the night had drained all the sun out of her.

Faint, light blurring her lines and leaving her faded, she stood over the boy. She stood, and stood. Pietrina squinted—the goddess seemed loose, all but one hand, and it clenched like steel, paper sticking out between the fingers.

He slept on. The goddess watched.

But it wasn’t like her story. The gold-boy seemed crumpled, gold paper or foil; and the woman was a shade, goddess shadow and shivered by the breeze and shadow.

A trickster never did put broken things back.

Was it dead when it looked like that then?