Simple Prayers Read Online Free PDF Page B

that flashed across her seven-year-old brain, Ermenegilda fell in love. It was not a sexual love, like the yearning she felt for Albertino Tonolo — a love that set her toes on fire and made her sit in the Torta garden eating lamprey with hot sauce as the sun came up — but it was love all the same. Piarina seemed so odd, so completely unknowing, Ermenegilda's wrathful heart simply melted away.
    When the great girl waddled out of the hut, followed by the molelike maid no bigger than Piarina herself, Piarina considered it to have been a cure like any other cure; two days later both she and Valentina knew that their lives had changed forever. Ermenegilda showed up at the door looking fatter and pinker and gayer than she had ever looked in her life, and she brought with her a fleet of Torta servants bearing all manner of gifts: chickens, pigs, and geese; harrows, tubs, and jugs; wardrobes, lanterns, pillows, pitchforks, and lace. But most of all she gave Piarina something the young girl had never known before: the attention and affection of a loving heart. In the late afternoon, while the sun was descending, Ermenegilda would burst into the hut, scoop Piarina up in her arms, and carry her to the western shore to watch the last of the light disappear into the lagoon. When Piarina was sunk in the straw cleaning the tallow knives, Ermenegilda would ease open the door, sneak up behind her, and tickle her until the featherweight child nearly floated away. The two girls rarely did anything, they merely sat together — Ermenegilda on the ground, Piarina curled up gently in her lap. What mattered was contact. What mattered was the warmth of the other's body and the snug feeling of acceptance.
    It was therefore to Piarina that Ermenegilda turned when Albertino came to see her about the spring. She wasn't certain the girl's powers could extend that far — and if they could, she couldn't think why she hadn't already used them — but her instincts told her that most likely no one had thought to ask her, and that she was far too unassuming to have suggested it herself. So after Albertino left her on the morning of his strange request, Ermenegilda headed out across the island to find her.
    Piarina was sitting in front of the hut plucking a chicken when Ermenegilda arrived. When she saw the familiar shape moving toward her, a great, lustrous smile broke out on her face. As she ran toward the gate, she tripped and fell forward; when she rose, dark clumps of dirt were stuck to her tunic and pressed in her flyaway hair, but the smile remained as wide and as glowing as if she'd been carried to her friend on angels’wings.
    When she reached Ermenegilda she reached up and lightly patted her soft, full cheeks with both hands: her usual form of greeting. Ermenegilda lifted her up, tucked her snugly between arm and hip, and carried her, laughing, to their favorite spot out behind the compost heap. For a long while they just sat there, cradled against each other, Ermenegilda stroking the fine wisps of the fey girl's hair. But Ermenegilda was too full aflame with thoughts of Albertino, so she broke the silence and explained why she'd come.
    “He says he needs the spring. He says he needs the carrots to grow, and the dandelions and the blackberries. I don't know if you can do that, but I want you to try. For Albertino. For my funny, silly, stupid little love.”
    Piarina felt the fingers moving gently across her scalp; their light stroking was like wandering minstrel music to her. She hated to break the contact between them, but something in Ermenegilda's voice made her slither out of her arms and crouch down before her in order to gaze into her eyes — where she saw a love so intense, she could barely balance herself on her heels. She realized that Ermenegilda had spoken of this love before, had even called it “Albertino,” but in that moment the force of its meaning struck her for the very first time. Yet much as she wanted to hate Ermenegilda