The morning following the feast, everything was silent and luminous—an ethereal stillness broken only by the reassuring hum of the vacuum cleaner and the songs Tiziana hummed in her deep, earthy voice. Outside, the sea was a flat sheet of intense azure, and the heat was oppressive, a humid warmth that seemed intent on crushing every thought. Belinda rose and, rubbing her eyes still in disbelief, thought back to the night before: she saw again the terror crystallized in her daughter's eyes, the panic of the guests, and that sense of helplessness that had torn through her chest.
Belinda did not know if the previous night's episode had merely been a dark parenthesis, a mechanical glitch of life that had ended well, or if behind that piece of stringy cheese lay the heavy, vengeful hand of fate still reaching for Azzurra. Perhaps the debt was not settled; perhaps the darkness was seeking another way to reclaim what the gold had stolen. Therefore, the best thing a witch like her could do was to turn to the Goddess. But not just any goddess: she wished to pray to the Goddess of health and protection, Hygieia. In Greek mythology, Hygieia was depicted with a serpent on her arm drinking from a cup; she was not the goddess of miraculous cures, but of the preservation of health—the equilibrium that fends off evil. The goddess had given her name to the term "hygiene," and for Belinda, she represented the ideal candidate for her purpose: to protect her daughter from all future snares.
To do this, it was necessary to find a suitable prayer and celebration among her ancient writings. Climbing into the attic, amidst heaps of dusty papers and the scent of old wood and dried lavender, she finally found what she was looking for. Wedged in a chestnut trunk, between a pile of yellowed letters and a bundle of what had once been blessed grain, she spotted a peculiar missive. It was bound by a black silk thread, thin as a hair. The paper was porous, written in a hurried, ancient hand, clearly penned with an inkwell; there were still stains of old ink, now dry and sepia-colored.
The letter read: "To the women of my lineage. To you, my future granddaughters and daughters, I write these ancient prayers with trembling hands so that they may protect you. I did not have much schooling, for I was always gathered in the fields to work, but an ill-fated husband befell me, who curses me and my entire seventh generation. As if it were not his own as well. I spoke with fate and it reached far, far into the future and told me: watch over yourselves, all of you, my poor girls, for what cuts is yet to come!"
Belinda reread the mental translation of those dialectal words with her heart in her throat: "I am not very educated, I didn't go to school much because I spent my life working in the countryside, but I ended up with a husband who curses me, me and my entire seventh generation, as if it weren't his own too. I questioned destiny, fate, and it went far into the time, into the future, and it told me: protect yourselves, all of you, my poor daughters, for the worst is yet to come."
The letter continued: "He left me two prayers and I write them to you: one is for protection and the other cuts the Draunara. You do not know it now, but one day it will serve you!"
The Draunara. Belinda shuddered. According to the ancient legend passed down by the island's fishermen, the Draunara was a waterspout—a whirlwind of wind and stormy sea from whose waves emerged a demon with a serpent's tail that shattered human lives and vessels at sea. Facing the terrifying wave, the fishermen would brandish a black-handled knife and recite a secret prayer; with ritual gestures, they performed the act of "cutting" the demon's tail and horns to calm the storm.
Belinda did not fully understand why Grandma Belinda, known as Linda, had left her that maritime prayer, but she felt that the "Draunara" could be a metaphor for any sudden storm, like the one that had nearly suffocated Azzurra. She hurried to copy the verses into her Book of Shadows, feeling the blood tie vibrate through her fingers.
The prayer to cut the waves recited:
"Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, this tail into the sea falls, and in the name of Mary, let this tail be severed."
After sealing that formula of banishment, Belinda moved to the second part of the page, the one dedicated to the Goddess Hygieia—the prayer for the preservation of life that her grandmother had syncretized with ancient wisdom. The prayer to the Goddess of Health said:
"O Hygieia, guardian of the sacred breath, you who hold the serpent that bites not but heals, drink from the cup of our purified blood. Protect this creature who from the lead was born and into gold was transformed. Banish suffocation, cast out the shadow that strangles the voice, make her breath clear as the north wind. By the silk that was lead, by the gold that is now a heart, keep your hand upon Azzurra's chest, so that the debt may be ash and health may be an eternal flame. So mote it be, so it is, and so it shall ever be."
Belinda closed her eyes, visualizing the Greek goddess enveloping Azzurra in an embrace of emerald green light—the same color as Mastro Alfio's eyes. She felt that the magic had not ended with the melting of the metal; magic was a constant maintenance, an everyday act of love against the forces that sought to reclaim her daughter's body.
She descended from the attic with the book pressed to her chest. She looked at Azzurra, who was in the garden playing with a blade of grass, unaware of the shadows her mother was fighting for her. Belinda knew that Grandma Linda's letter had not arrived by chance. The "ill-fated husband" mentioned in the letter had cast a curse that spanned centuries, and the "Draunara" was not just a weather phenomenon, but a spiritual threat still roaring in the distance.
But now, Belinda had the knife to cut the demon's tail. She would no longer allow any rice ball, any doll, or any shadow to steal her child's breath. The lineage of the women of silk and gold was ready to defend its harvest.