“Bring Elaine up,” ordered Arthur as he put Vasilisa’s hands under the tap.
Elaine was on the couch, asleep in front of the muted TV.
Billi shook the old woman. “Dad wants you. Quickly.”
Elaine nodded and stood up, straightening her shawl. Billi was about to follow when the screen caught her attention.
At first it looked like snow falling, but it was too gray, too dirty. A man’s shoulders were covered with it, and long streaks of ash ran down his smart suit. His face, too, was coated in soot; the ash was everywhere. He stood in a square filled with people. Car horns screamed in the background, and lights flashed behind him.
“…It’s unbelievable. Even in all this smoke, you can see the glow surrounding the edge of the crater. And the column, it just goes up and up…” The radio crackled and the voice faded in, then away, but there was no mistaking the excitement and fear in the broadcaster’s voice.
The road signs and advertisements, those not completely lost in the fog of ash, were all in Italian. But behind them, Billi saw the burning mountain and gasped.
It climbed like a tidal wave behind the city, a black silhouette crowned by a red-lit cone. Mount Vesuvius. A huge column of black smoke rose straight into the sky. Occasionally a flash of sky-hurled lava would light up the rolling clouds, and lightning stabbed against the rising black tower. The camera shook as a roar broke out of the TV. People started screaming, and bumped and pushed past the newsman. He almost fell under a surge of panicking locals. The screen went blank, but the voices carried on.
“Don’t lose the camera… There it is!”
The picture was suddenly restored, and showed the newsman, Nicholas Rhodes, staring into the camera, close up and coughing. His red eyes ran with tears, but he couldn’t speak. The ash was too thick, muting even the cries coming from around them.
The ground shook, and again the camera went dark, but then the screen was filled with the blurred image of another eruption. The dense cloud rising out of the cone fattened, then collapsed, rolling down on itself, flooding the mountaintop, slipping like overflowing boiling water outofa pan.
“Oh my God,” muttered the cameraman. “C’mon, Nick. We’ve got to run.” But he kept filming even as he backed away.
The crater top was gone now as the black cloud dropped down on top of it. Waves of ash and smoke threw newspapers, litter, any loose thing into the air. People fell and were trampled. Cars crashed and drivers scrambled out of their windows as the square gridlocked.
“What is it?” shouted Nicholas at his cameraman. A howling rose through the streets. People grabbed on to each other as winds shook the white-coated trees. Windows in apartments overlooking the square shattered.
79. The ash fall had merely buried an already extinct city. There was no escape. “No use, no use,” said the cameraman. The camera lowered to dangle over a pair of boots. “We’re dead.”
The camera swung back and forth. The sound was just screaming and the roaring of the wind. Then the camera went up and Nicholas was back on the screen, his red tear-filled eyes staring straight at Billi, straight at them all.
“Keep filming,” he said grimly. He steadied himself and ran his hand through his hair, shaking ash off his hands.
“I love you,” he said. “I just wanted to say that I love you, Maggie.” He was shouting now as the wailing around them became deafening. “Tell the girls Daddy is thinking of them.” His voice was hoarse and he cradled the camera with both hands. “Tell them I love-”
The screen crackled, filled with electronic snow, then went black and silent. The only thing left on it was the headline,
Billi raced up the stairs.
Elaine and Arthur held Vasilisa in the half-filled tub. The water steamed, and both were using soaking towels to hold the semiconscious girl; she was too hot to touch.
“What’s she doing?” Billi could only think of that eruption. “She’s not
Vasilisa jerked savagely, almost breaking free. Water splashed everywhere as she fought. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “This is what she wants!” she screamed. She grabbed Arthur’s arm, staring madly at him. Billi held her shoulders and watched the girl’s eyes darken, the pale blue melting into black. “This is what she wants!”
Elaine fumbled for the talismans around Vasilisa’s neck and pressed them against her temples.
“Fight. Fight her,” she whispered.
Vasilisa glared, snapping her teeth in fury. “Foo
The water in the bath continued to steam, and Arthur pulled back his hand, which was ringed with burns. It was sauna hot in here, and the temperature was still rising.
“Snow,” Billi said. “Put her in the snow.”
Arthur wrapped Vasilisa in a wet blanket. The three of them ran into the gardens of Middle Temple. The blanket was smoldering by the time he unrolled her into the snow. Desperately they scooped handfuls over her, and great wet puddles formed as the snow almost instantly melted. But with the three of them at work they managed to get Vasilisa’s skin back to a normal temperature. Vasilisa gazed around her.
“Oh. So much snow.” She turned to Billi. “It’s Fimbulwinter…” Vasilisa’s voice fell into a murmur and she slumped.
Elaine put her hand against the girl’s forehead. She waited a minute, then sighed.
“She’s okay.”
Arthur lifted Vasilisa, cradling her in his arms. Elaine struggled to her feet.
As they made their way back home they passed a house with the lights still on. Billi paused outside a window.
It was indistinct, but the newscaster was repeating the same sentence over and over again, as though eventually she would believe her own words.
11
THE ASH KEPT FALLING OVER NAPLES. NEWS COVERAGE continued as the scale of the disaster climbed. Towns had vanished, completely submerged under the millions of tons of volcanic detritus.
The pyroclastic blast had petered out as it smashed into the eastern face of the city, so the western inhabitants avoided the worst excesses of the eruption. Huge crowds of terrified people clustered at the bay, all struggling for a space on the flotilla of boats and ships that had gathered as part of the rescue operation.
For a while reports still came out of the city, mostly telephone calls from people who had hidden in basements while the volcano raged. But slowly the signals faded as they were buried alive, trapped forever underground.
They’d put Vasilisa back in bed, and she was sleeping soundly. Elaine had made sure the talismans were
