Tears of the Salamander by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

to be used for eating. The food was peasant stuff, but excellent and plentiful, and the forks and spoons were silver, well polished, and there were fine white napkins. Uncle Giorgio ate in silence, as if eating were all that mattered to him in the world. He filled his plate three times, taking small mouthfuls and chewing them well but swallowing without difficulty. Alfredo felt too tense to eat but was too hungry not to, so chewed and swallowed, barely noticing the taste. When they had finished, Uncle Giorgio pushed his chair back and looked at Alfredo for the first time since they had sat down.
    “I am too tired for questions,” he said. “I have been very near death. I miscalculated. It is a long time since I was away from here for more than a few days. I was aware that the tears of the salamander begin to lose their virtue once they are shed, but I did not guess by how much. Is there anything you need to know now?”
    “Someone … something sang … in the … I don’t know what to call it. …”
    Uncle Giorgio smiled for almost the first time since Alfredo had known him.
    “In the furnace?” he said. “That was my salamander. Itanswered your singing and wept for me, so that I could drink its tears and be healed. Is there anything else?”
    “The…the
Bonaventura
…it wasn’t ordinary fire. The mountain did something. I felt it,” said Alfredo.
    Uncle Giorgio sighed and shook his head sadly.
    “Yes, it is in your blood to feel it,” he said at last. “The mountain destroyed the ship in vengeance for its having brought me back. I am the Master of the Mountain, as our ancestors have been for more than a thousand years, and in full health I could have restrained it. I did what I could, but to my grief I was too feeble. That is my task, to control the rages of the mountain. One day it will be yours. I will tell you more tomorrow.”
    And that had been all.
    So Alfredo sat at his window while the night wheeled on, trying to think about the salamander, and the mountain, and his uncle. Master of the Mountain! Yes, that was what Father had been saying on the evening of his name-day. “
The Mountain must have its Master
. …” It had been an extraordinary relief to have even that little explained, however strange the explanation.
    And it didn’t even feel all that strange to Alfredo. In fact, it felt somehow
familiar
—something he hadn’t known but had, so to speak, been all along waiting to know. …And in the same way the terrible thing that had happened to the
Bonaventura
made sense to him since Uncle Giorgio had explained it.
    He thought about Uncle Giorgio—how like he was to Father, and how different. When Father had smiled you could feel how pleased he was. When he had sighed youshared his sadness. His feelings beamed out of him, like the heat from his ovens. But Uncle Giorgio was like the salamander’s furnace—there were great fiery energies inside him—Alfredo was sure of that—but they stopped at the surface. You couldn’t feel them, not in his smile, not in his sigh.
    His thoughts went round and round, until he fell asleep where he sat. He woke in the dawn chilled through, though the fire of the mountain had raged through his dreams. He crept shuddering into the bed,
his
bed, and fell asleep again, this time with no dreams, and didn’t wake until the sun was high. And still he didn’t know what to do or think or feel. There was food in the eating room—bread, fruit, oil, dried fish, water flavored with lime. He was eating with furious hunger when the silent woman came in, nodded and left. She returned a little later and simply stood waiting. Her presence was uncomfortable, so Alfredo pushed his plate away unfinished and rose.
    “Please, where is my uncle?” he asked hesitantly.
    For answer the woman opened her mouth and pointed her finger into it, shaking her head as she did so. She then beckoned to him to follow her. The room where they ate was down a side passage at one end of a wide