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  He also became restless and sad at night for reasons unknown—loneliness, perhaps, or a sense of loss or longing for his own place and time in the world—so to help him through these difficult evenings, Elizabeta would read to Emilio from books in the library. She would tell him about some of the historical events he’d missed and how much the world had changed. He was distraught to learn about World War II, Mussolini, and the fascists in Italy. The television and computer seemed like magic to him. He couldn’t believe airplanes had become so large and fast, crisscrossing the globe with hundreds of people inside them, and that men had walked on the moon.

  Emilio loved wine, which had been a rare treat for him during the war, so Elizabeta would often uncork a bottle, and they’d sip a mellow red or white and talk late into the night together. And so, with il vino liberating her tongue, Elizabeta would tell Emilio things about her childhood, her family, and her love for the olives and the groves, things she’d never been able to tell anyone, not even Crispo. She never felt self-conscious in Emilio’s company as she did with so many other people. She couldn’t explain why things were so easy with Emilio, why she felt so free with him, or why her heart beat so rapidly in his presence. But she could feel her pale skin flush when he smiled at her, and she soon found herself thinking of Emilio all the time, worrying about his incessant shivering, and fretting over his lost memories. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall his name, his family, where he’d lived, or anything at all about his childhood.

  Then one afternoon, Emilio told her he wanted to work in the olive orchards. “I don’t think I’m ever going to remember who I am,” he said, “and I can’t sit around the house doing nothing forever. You speak so passionately of the olives. I want to learn about them.”

  “You shouldn’t be working yet. You’re too weak.”

  “I’m much better, and I need to feel useful again. I must earn my keep, after all. It’s not right for you to say no to me.”

  “I think it’s too soon. But let me talk to my husband about it.”

  Crispo didn’t like the idea either, although for different reasons. He couldn’t understand why his wife was so preoccupied with the soldier. If the boy began working for them, he’d become even more entrenched in their home and lives, and they might never get rid of him. It was time for the boy to go away, he thought, so he and Elizabeta could return to their normal routines and peaceful existence together.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeta. You wanted to nurse him back to health, and you’ve done that. In fact, you’ve done a remarkable job. But we agreed to call the government when he was well.”

  “No, I didn’t agree. You agreed. We can’t just send him away now. He still gets cold at night.”

  “He will probably always get cold after being frozen in ice for a century. Look, he’ll be better off if he leaves us. Think about it. Someone in the military might be able to identify him. A psychiatrist could help him regain his lost memories. Doctors will want to examine him to figure out how he survived. They might even cure his shivering. And his family has a right to know he’s lived through the war, don’t you think?”

  “His family is dead. Everyone he once knew is long gone. Imagine the heartbreak he’ll suffer.”

  “Even so, his descendants have a right to know.”

  “Why can’t we just keep him here with us? No one ever needs to find out anything about him.”

  Crispo frowned and rubbed his furry black beard. As much as he disliked arguing with his wife, he needed to put the situation aright before things got too far out of hand. He thought Elizabeta’s strange attachment to the boy, the way she doted over him, might have something to do with the lack of children in their home: “I think I know what you’re doing. You want to make Emilio our son because we haven’t been able to have children of our own. I’m sorry. I know it has been hard for you, but it’s time for the soldier to go. He’s a grown man, not a child, and he has a right to live his own life. If you won’t contact someone in the government tomorrow, I will.”

  Elizabeta stood up straight, her arms anchored to her sides. She was stunned at how badly her husband had misread her heart. Or perhaps not so stunned. Crispo knew nothing of la passione. Of amore. For the first time in her life, Elizabeta was in love. If Crispo had guessed this, she could have done nothing but tell him the truth. She would never have lied to him or denied it. But no, now she could remain silent for a little while longer, maybe long enough to do something about it before it was too late.

  “Very well,” she said. “If there’s truly no changing your mind, I’ll call the authorities myself in the morning.”

  Crispo nodded. “It’s settled, then.”

  * * *

  That night, Elizabeta was so upset she couldn’t bring herself to visit Emilio. She went to bed early and pretended to sleep late the next morning to avoid talking to her husband. If he sensed she was avoiding him, he said nothing about it, and went to work in the fields as he did every morning.

  Elizabeta rose and showered and tried her best to put on a smile before going to see Emilio. She found him sitting beside the fire, and she began trembling and struggling to find the right words to express her emotions, but the words would not come. Emilio grabbed her shoulders and asked her what was wrong and why she hadn’t come to visit him the night before.

  Finally, Elizabeta blurted out the answer. Crispo wanted to send him away, turn him over to the military to be studied by doctors and become a celebrity, and she’d never see him again. She not could hold back her tears or her feelings any longer. She began to weep and confessed her love for him. “Ti amo, Emilio. I love you!”

  “I love you too, Elizabeta.” He hugged her to his chest. “I’ve wanted to say it for so long. I can’t live without you!”

  They each swore to one another they’d have nothing to do with Crispo’s terrible plan, and they would never be separated. No. Not ever! And so it was decided....

  * * *

  They quickly devised a plan. Elizabeta packed a suitcase with a few things for them and gathered all the euros she could find around the house. She went to the barn, started up the old flatbed pickup truck they used for hauling weeds, branches, and gardening tools around the farm, and drove herself and Emilio to the train station. She left the truck in the parking lot with a note in an envelope on the dashboard, explaining to Crispo that she was running away with Emilio, they were in love, and she would not return. She bought two tickets to the farthest city from the village she could find, and together they boarded the train and left il Villaggio di Ombre behind.

  Once they arrived in the big city, Elizabeta asked the taxi driver to take them to a hotel, something affordable, out of the way, nothing for tourists, where they might stay among good people for an extended time. The driver knew of such a place, an antiquated inn just outside the city that catered to locals.

  There she and Emilio ate a romantic dinner for two in the inn’s tiny bistro, where an old man played violin, and they could hear pots and pans clanging in the kitchen, and their meal of la pasta e fagioli con le cozze (pasta and beans with mussels) tasted so transcendent it must have passed through the gates of Heaven.

  Back in the room, under a slowly turning ceiling fan, they lit a polished brass candelabrum and kissed passionately for the first time. All the feelings of awkwardness she’d experienced with Crispo were gone, and her body came alive under Emilio’s inexperienced touch.

  Emilio couldn’t remember if he’d ever made love to a woman, and admitted he didn’t know the first thing about it, but it didn’t matter. There was no self-consciousness or shame in him. Elizabeta showed him what to do, and they spent a long night together with many rounds of lovemaking, the old bed creaking under them. When they finally fell apart, exhausted, and could carry on no more, they curled up together, glistening in each other’s dew, and spoke in hushed, exuberant tones of the future. The plans they made! The l
ives they would live!

  They would rent a flat for very little money somewhere in the city. They were almost certain to find work in such a big tourist area and needed almost nothing to be happy, just a little to get by from day to day. They spoke of love and the lives ahead of them without a care in the world like excited children. They believed fate was on their side—il destino—and they would surely live a great love story. Nothing other than this simple, improbable joy mattered to them.

  Emilio turned to her just as the candles began to flicker and die. “Elizabeta,” he whispered, “I no longer feel cold inside. Look. I’m not shivering.”

  She felt Emilio’s heart pounding under the palm of her hand, burning like a hot coal. She smiled, gazed into his wide, damp eyes, and for the first time saw no frost in them. This was the most romantic moment of Elizabeta’s life. She’d never been happier. But the moment would not last. Ecstasy never does. La passione is an ever-passing storm. Maybe if Elizabeta had known more of love, she would have expected the inevitable fall. But no....

  When she woke the next morning, Emilio was gone, and in his place there was nothing more than a large pool of water. She fell out of bed and wept, adding her own fountain of tears to the puddle that was once the body of her young lover, her beloved Emilio.

  * * *

  Elizabeta might have stayed in the city forever, heartbroken, ashamed, and alone, were it not for Crispo. It had been easy for him to track them. Everyone in il Villaggio di Ombre knew her, including the ticket master at the train station where she’d abandoned the truck and purchased the one-way tickets.

  When Crispo arrived in the city, he asked a lot of questions outside the station. He talked to a taxi driver whose friend had mentioned taking a young man and woman to a certain inn outside the city. When he found his wife alone in the room, weeping over the pool of water in bed, he guessed what had happened, and his heart melted just as Emilio’s must have.

  He went to his wife and held her in his arms. “Come home with me, Elizabeta.” He’d never been good at expressing his emotions, but now, unexpectedly, his words were at the ready. “It was my fault this happened. I didn’t realize it before, but I’ve grown to love you with all my heart, and I should have made you feel loved. If I had, you never would have wanted to run away. You’re my wife, and I want to live with you forever. Please, come home with me.”

  Elizabeta’s heart responded to her husband as never before. “I want to come home,” she said, surprising herself, but knowing it was true. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I was wrong to run away. I love our farm...the land...the olives...and I love you. I just didn’t know it until now...here...holding you like this in my misery.”

  * * *

  So Elizabeta and Crispo went home to start their lives over. And it was as if they had become different people. For the first time, Elizabeta opened her heart to her husband, her brief but intense affair with Emilio having taught her how. Crispo no longer felt indifferent toward his wife’s thoughts, feelings, or emotions, nor was he bashful around her. He began to enjoy talking to Elizabeta even more than talking to the olives. Losing her even for one day had taught him that to hold onto love, he must give himself over to it.

  Soon they began sharing many passionate nights in each other’s arms. They grew very happy together and agreed there was much to be said for arranged marriages. Love, they discovered, could be cultivated and grown like olives once you began to share its secrets across the terraces of the human heart.

  Then, finally, the following spring, with the flowers in full bloom, the farm bursting with the smells and colors of new life, they learned Elizabeta was pregnant. After that, they spoke of the soldier only on rare occasions, late at night, with il vino loosening their tongues. They eventually became convinced that the mountains and the sea had conspired to give life to Emilio, wrap him in ice, and send him to their shore to help them in their marriage. He was a ghost, a fantasma, whose purpose was to show them how to love one another.

  In the years to come, as the olives thrived, so did Elizabeta and Crispo. The couple would go on to have many children together, although their firstborn, a boy they told everyone they named Emilio after Elizabeta’s lost brother, would grow taller and leaner than the others, and not resemble anyone else in either family.

  None of the workers on the farm ever spoke of the little boy’s snow-blue eyes, which always seemed lost or searching for something in the world, or how he was cold all the time and could never get warm even in the summer. No, they never mentioned his likeness to the soldier who had washed ashore long ago, not even to each other, except in winks and nods and knowing, furtive glances.

  Copyright © 2018 by Nick DiChario

  Laurie Tom is a Chinese American writer with a fascination with World War I. This story allows her to play with both. Her work has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, and of course Galaxy’s Edge, where we’re happy to welcome her back.

  KITE DANCER

  by Laurie Tom

  They called her Ke-feng Yu when they accepted her contract with the Imperial German Navy, basing their pronunciation off the letters other westerners had used to approximate her name. Signing was to choose the lesser of evils, the same way her country had decided to enter the Great War on the side of the Central Powers.

  It was foolish. Neither the Entente nor the Central Powers truly cared for China. The Germans had forced her country at swordpoint to lease Kiautschou Bay to them. Then at the start of the war, the Japanese had taken it over, and they proved even more demanding than the Germans.

  Ke-feng did not like being so weak that her country had to choose between one occupying force or another, but the Kaiser promised to return Kiautschou Bay, even providing the military might to do so, if China would lend his country its kite dancers.

  Her eyes were damaged and she could no longer perform her art as intended, but she still had the training, the ability to channel the wind, to feel its direction and change its flow. An airship with a kite dancer would never be blown off course and could skirt any storm, solving one of the greatest weaknesses in the Kaiser’s fleet.

  “We’re almost there,” said the soldier beside her. He spoke in German.

  “I can see that,” said Ke-feng, replying in the same.

  She could still distinguish light and dark, even read if she pressed her face close to the paper, but he held her hand as though leading a child across the German airfield. The airship in front of them was a gigantic shadow and little more, but there was nothing else it could be. The hangars were behind them.

  “The ladder is just two steps away. You can reach for it.”

  Dressler was the L 75’s navigator, and because she was responsible for directing the wind around the ship, he considered her his obligation. He was beside her every insufferable moment, leading her about as if she was an invalid. She could find the ladder on her own, eventually.

  Her fingertips brushed metal and she curled her hands around the rails. The light was not good in the shadow beneath the airship, giving her no contrast to work with, but she did not worry about the ship escaping while she climbed aboard. The L 75 might strain against its tethers, but it would not fly away.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Dressler.

  Ke-feng frowned and said, “Nothing.”

  She climbed up the ladder. Dressler would be right behind her, but she didn’t wait before walking to her post. Ke-feng had served on the L 75 for several months now, and knew her way through the forward gondola. Oberleutnant Walther ensured that the men did not leave things for her to trip over. Walking to the navigation pod was no more difficult than walking in her own quarters.

  Ke-feng did not entirely regret the contract she had signed, or the reason she had, but she had not expected to serve so far from home.

  She’d hoped to participate in the liberation of Kiautschou Bay. Sh
e knew the winds there better than anywhere else. The city of Tsingtau was her home, where the coastal weather provided ample training for the years needed to channel the winds as a kite dancer. She had such mastery of the dragon kite that even the German governor had asked to see her perform.

  That had ended with the siege of Tsingtau, when the shelling landed and the shrapnel blast ruined her eyes. Now she had no art, and no means to earn her keep, because the options for a blind woman were few. Her parents feared for her future, because who would want to marry a cripple? Who would care for her once they were gone?

  But Ke-feng could still channel the wind. The German navy hired her for that. She wanted to free Kiautschou Bay and throw out the Japanese, but the Germans were her paymasters, and sent her halfway around the world to fight for their own country.

  Someone dropped into the navigation pod beside her and from the sound of his landing it was Dressler. It was a cramped, cylindrical space beneath the bridge with two components of note: the viewing station, and the machine gun below it. The machine gun was Dressler’s post in combat, but the rest of the time he was by the maps and the Fernhaube, the device she called the farviewer.

  “Before I forget, you have a doctor’s appointment scheduled for when we get back,” he said.

  “I’ll go,” she said, though she did not like western doctors much. Their methods baffled her and they not seem particularly useful.

  On learning that she had retained some sight, the German naval office had given her glasses, but they hadn’t helped. The doctor said he could do nothing if it was nerve damage, which meant he was about as effective as any other doctor back at home.

  Ke-feng pressed her face against the map on the wall of the navigation pod, hoping to find the foreign letters signifying their destination. The Oberleutnant said it was the British capital of London.