"You, my little Anna, have my blood in your veins." Nonno said proudly. You think like a Del Forno. Yes, my mother told us stories about the wolves, but never to frighten us. To us, at that time, the wolves were just a fact of life, like a storm or people you had never met before and really just didn't understand. With wolves, one needs to learn, and having learned, one needs to adapt. It all revolves around Anna. 1965- Anna Del Forno was fifteen when she and her sister visited their grandparents at the farmhouse outside of Binghamton, New York. When a storm forced them to stay longer than expected, her grandfather, a reserved, almost reclusive man began telling them a story, one that he had kept to himself since his youth in the 1920's in Sicily, with his sister Gelsamina, and the baron D'Arcamo, and the wolves. 1980- Fifteen years later, Anna finds herself returning to the now abandoned farmhouse, only to discover clues and messages that begin a journey that takes her from Binghamton, all the way to Sicily. A journey that all along, she was intended to make. Some called it a legacy, others a curse. Gelsamina, the young woman in the portrait, can only offer so many clues. The rest, Anna must discover by herself. And yet, Gelsamina is always there, sharing a meal, sharing what she knows, sharing the legacy. And when she hears the wolves howling l'anelito, the longing, Anna understands what she must do. There comes a point in time when, wanted or not, ones family gives them things. There also comes a time when one must accept them.

Anna and the Tale of the Wolf

By A. C. Nicholas

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 A. C. Nicholas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-2050-1

Contents

Chapter I Fire and the Night..................................1Chapter II A Request..........................................13Chapter III The Banquet.......................................21Chapter IV The Red Ribbon.....................................35Chapter V A Little Detective Work.............................51Chapter VI Anna, the Little One...............................91Chapter VII Preparation.......................................119Chapter VIII A Visit..........................................137Chapter IX Chelsea Goes to the City...........................141Chapter X Conversations.......................................151Chapter XI Life Lessons.......................................157Chapter XII Palermo: There and Back Again.....................173Chapter XIII O Canada.........................................189Chapter XIV Merry Christmas to Us All.........................193Chapter XV A Visit to Yesterday...............................211Chapter XVI Local Lore........................................227Chapter XVII Meditation and Revelation........................249Chapter XVIII Resolution......................................265Epilogue Gina's Story.........................................275

Chapter One

Fire and the Night

My grandfather never spoke that much. Often, when we would come to visit at the little farmhouse in upstate New York, he would smile faintly and retire to another room as my parents spoke in animated tones with my grandmother. This would have been around 1965. My sister and I were usually sent outside to play in the yard that stood just in front of the vegetable garden. Sometimes we would see him from a window, staring vacantly out or pondering, deep in thought, over a chalk portrait that hung on the wall in the back bedroom.

The portrait was of a lovely young girl with deep brown eyes, and long hair the color of burnished walnut. Her small, sad smile was, in a way, reassuring, especially for one so petite as she. We had been told that she was our great-aunt, my grandfather's sister, and that she had died in an accident before he immigrated to America from Sicily in the 1920s. We were never told any more than that. "Nonno," as my grandfather was called, would stop or change the subject and walk away.

When we were very young, we never really thought much about it. Then one year, late in the fall, my parents (who were both teachers) were asked to attend an educational conference, and my sister and I were sent to spend the weekend with my grandparents. While we enjoyed the thought of spending time with my grandmother, we were, even then, at the ripe old ages of fifteen and thirteen, reluctant to be with Nonno. We loved him, inasmuch as granddaughters love their grandparents, but the deeper bond that sometimes arises between the generations never had formed.

By the time we arrived, the evening had already grown cold and dark. Pockets of wind swirled leaves into frantic little games of tag all around us as we marched up the front walk, suitcases in hand. In the small living-room fireplace, my grandfather had built a fire. Its flickering blaze, although not very big, was a great contrast to the moonless chill outside. As the hour was late, we all sat down to dinner. My parents had already left, dropping us off and continuing on to the airport for their flight to the conference. After dinner, Nonno returned to the fireplace, stoking it back to life. Nana gave us fruit and popcorn to nibble on as we all sat around the revitalized fire.

"I know!" exclaimed my sister, Tina. "Let's tell stories ... scary ones!"

"No," I said. "Tell us about Sicily."

Perhaps it was the wine that he had been drinking, perhaps it was just his mood, but Nonno put down his glass and looked at us. As he raised his hands to help conjure up pictures of the old country, his eyes glistened in a way I'd never seen before. I couldn't tell if their wide, animated gleam was a reflection of the flames in the fireplace or some inner torchlight.

"The town of Arcamo is a parched, old place," he began. "The hills are dry and empty, with patches of woods here and there as you go deeper into them. Maybe a few wildflowers grow, but even they fade into the dust at the foot of the hills. The only water in the town comes from a well outside of the baron's villa."

"Who's the baron?" asked Tina. At her age, one would have expected her to be beyond the stage where every little detail had to be spelled out, but such was not the case.

"The baron owned a lot of the workable land in and around Arcamo. What I mean is, his family owned a lot of the land, as they had for generations before him. In Sicily, the title of baron comes with the ownership of a lot of land, and the title is always given to the oldest son. If he marries, the wife's title is baronessa." Then he stopped. He turned and looked into the fire, his eyes seeming more wet and annoyed. Lifting his glass, he drained the remaining wine, spilling a little onto his chin.

"Papa," my grandmother interrupted, "let her go. It's been so long. She's happier."

I looked at my sister, with the reproachful stare that only an older sister who has achieved the lofty stage of know-it-all-ism can give, and whispered, "See what you did, Tina? You interrupted him." She returned my glare with the classic you're-not-the-boss-of-me sneer, but before we could bring it to the next level, I turned to my grandmother and said, "Nana, who are you talking about?"

"Well, Anna, you know that you had a great-aunt."

"Sure. Aunt Rose. She's great!" Tina chimed in.

"No, girls, not your aunt Rose. An aunt is the sister of your father or mother, like your mother's sister Rose. She is a great person and an aunt, but she is not a great-aunt. A great-aunt is the sister of your grandfather or grandmother. Nonno had a sister who lived with him in Sicily. Her name was Gelsamina."

"She's the girl in the picture, isn't she, Nonno?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied with wistful sadness.

"Tell us about her, Nonno." The distant look in his eyes softened. He looked at each of us with melancholy and relented.

"Outside of the town, past the well and into the hills, was the baron's villa. It wasn't a big one, like the castles that you see in the movies. But it was pretty big for Sicily, and to us, it was enormous—certainly more grand than the church in Arcamo. And it matched the baron very well. His name was Leonardo, and except for some servants—he called them his men—he lived there alone. He was the only child of parents who died when he was very young. From that time on, an uncle raised him, only to abandon him on the day he turned eighteen. We all thought that there had been an argument over money, but the uncle told people in the town that the family had been cursed. He refused to say any more and left angrily.

"In those days, the baron was a good man. He was young and just. He gave the people of the town permission to take water from the well whenever they needed it. And in bad times, he would often help them by offering the protection of his estate. That was until ... well, I must tell you that the baron was a hunter, but he did not hunt for sport. Most nobility hunted for sport in those days. They had falcons or visited hunting lodges where they could catch and kill much bigger game. The baron had only one quarry: wolves. You see, in those days, wolves still lived and hunted in Sicily. In fact, packs of wolves lived in the woods and forests of most of Europe. In the north lived big, furry wolves with dark brown or black fur that changed to white in the snowy winters. Here and in much of southern Italy, the wolves were a lighter colored brown or tan, to blend in with the tans and browns of the hills that surrounded Arcamo and towns like ours that were away from the coastline. Smart animals, cunning and hungry, always hungry. There aren't so many now, but then the woods were full of them. And where there were farm animals that could be killed, there were wolves to kill them. And when there was no more livestock on the farm, well ...

"And that is why the baron hunted wolves. There was once a story that wolves, a great pack of them, had killed his parents late at night, in the hills outside of the town, but the uncle told everyone that it was a storm at sea that took them. That would explain why their bodies were never found. Still, people love stories. Maybe that's why the baron grew so keen on hunting the wolves. He could always tell when they were near. And he would never shoot to kill with his first shot. I had heard many stories of how he would wound the animal first, just to see it turn on him and try to attack, only to meet his eyes and then turn and run in desperation. Once, he tracked a wounded wolf for two days into the hills just to watch it slowly die. It was as if his rifle was not enough. He had to hunt it with his gaze to prove that he was its master. That is how the baron D'Arcamo came to be known as the Master of Wolves."

"Nonno," declared my grandmother, not needing to say more.

"But," he continued, "Sicily is an old place, and hardly any wolves live there anymore." Taking his cue from Nana, he looked down at his watch. "Oh my, look at the time. Girls, it's time to get ready for bed. No more stories tonight."

With a chorus of awww's and noooo's, we begrudgingly left the room—but not before getting Nonno to promise to finish the story the next night. And so it was with some anticipation that we went off to the beds that Nana had made up for us, filled with visions of some dark, heroic, windswept figure standing at the parapet of his villa, gazing vigilantly at some distant point in the hills of Arcamo where the baying of a wolf could be heard.

The rain continued all that night and into the next day, as we read the books and completed the schoolwork that we had brought to keep us occupied and away from my grandparents for at least a little while–Anna all the time looking toward that magic time after dinner when Nonno could finish the story.

We both wore heavy sweaters—Tina wore two—so as to keep warm and cozy in front of the fireplace. Nana brought her knitting to work on as Nonno, now settled into his chair, finished his last pieces of fruit and cheese, and drank his last sip of wine. He wiped his mouth with the back of his thumb, looked to us, and began.

"Tonight, I need to tell you a little bit about my sister, Gelsamina." As he spoke the name, it sounded melodic. "My father, your great grandfather, used to say, `In Italian, some names are meant to sound like a song.' Gelsamina was a few years older than me, and as you can see from the picture in the back bedroom, a beautiful girl, just like your nana." We both looked at my grandmother with appreciation, searching for the face of the pretty young girl that my grandfather was describing, and now only he could see.

"You know, girls," he began, "farm work in the twenties was very different from farm work today. And I'm not talking about the little things that Nana and I do here. In order to make a living, Gelsamina and I had to get up between four-thirty and five o'clock in the morning, feed the animals, get the eggs, and milk the goats—and this was all before breakfast. Then I had to go out and, using the rain water that we'd collect in barrels, irrigate the crops (you know, water them) and weed, and I guess just basically take care of them."

"Nonno, how did you get the water from the barrels to the crops?" Tina interjected.

"Well, we had a small cart and a donkey. I would load a barrel onto the cart, and each barrel had a hole cut out near the bottom and plugged up with a cork. I would stop the cart by each row of crops and unplug the cork so that a stream of water would run into the ditch along the side of the plants."

"Oh," said Tina, satisfied at the answer.

"After all, these crops and our extra eggs and goat milk were our livelihood. If anything happened, we'd lose the farm. The farm was all that we had; it's what our parents left to us." For a young girl growing up in the suburbs in the sixties, it was difficult for me to comprehend the reality of people running a farm. My parents were teachers. They worked, essentially, with their minds. This was a very different scenario.

"One day, long ago, toward the end of the summer, my sister and I were tending to our chores," Nonno continued. "The day was like any other day; Gelsamina fed the goats and chickens while I worked at the crops that we had planted in the spring. This is what we hoped to sell at the market in town in the weeks to come. It was a bright, clear day, so sunny that the work seemed to go quickly. Soon, with our chores finished, we were on our way to town, where I would buy some fish for the night's meal. Now normally, my sister would not come into town with me—she would stay at home and shell peas or weed the flower patches that we had planted in the front of the house—but this was such a lovely day that she decided to join me on my walk. We held hands, and arms swinging, we joked along the way. She used to make fun of the expression on my face, which for a boy, just seventeen years old, always seemed angry. In Italian, we call this faccia brute, a hard face.

"Well, as I remember it, the fish had just been brought in. We made our choice, paid for it, and had it wrapped in leaves and then paper to keep it fresh for our walk home. Now, as nice as the day seemed so far, it became just as dark on the way home. Not dark meaning no light, but dark as if we had a feeling that something was going to happen. We were about halfway home when we heard the crack of a rifle shot, followed by the clopping of galloping horses' hooves and the thumping of men running along with it. No sooner did we look up than we saw the baron and two of his men charge up and cross our path. As they did, he brought his horse to an abrupt halt and looked at Gelsamina, first with the angry eyes of one who hunts and then with the smitten eyes of one who is hunted, although perhaps not for the same purpose. She returned his look with a shy innocence; he froze for a moment and then continued on with his hunt.

"His quarry had been a wolf, a great brown monster with red glowing eyes. I sometimes wonder whose eyes were more frightening, those of the wolf or those of the baron. He tore off down the road, following a set of bloody tracks that were his doing. But it was what happened next that eventually became his undoing."

Perhaps it was because the fire was beginning to die out that our eyes opened as widely as we could get them, feeling a small shiver of cold as we did, but I don't think that it was entirely to compensate for the lack of heat and light. The silence that accompanies anticipation was thick as Nonno turned toward the fire and, with a poker and another log, rekindled it. Fire lit, he reached down to the side of his chair for the wine bottle. After pouring himself a small glass, he sipped and then continued.

"Not thinking much of the incident with the baron, we were both walking on our way back to our little farmhouse when, along the side of the road, we heard some muffled noises, like whining or whimpering. Gelsamina went first, curious at the sounds. Sure enough, behind a mound of rocks were two small wolf cubs. They seemed to be crying for their mother, who was nowhere to be seen. We presumed that it was the great beast the baron was now putting to an end. Thinking only of the animals, Gelsamina adopted them, right there and then. She stretched out the apron that she wore over her skirts and held it like a basket as I placed the two pups delicately inside. She had a crazy idea that because they were so young, they would take to her. She wanted to tame them to be pets and guardians. Girls, I want to tell you something that I hope you will always remember: A thing that is wild must always be wild, and a thing that is tame can never be anything but tame. No matter how hard love makes you want to change, you can't. To change something that nature has made is to go against the power of everything in the world all at once. In the end, you will lose, and the thing that you tried to change will die—sometimes out of confusion, sometimes out of a broken heart, but it will die. Your great-aunt didn't know this, but she was young; we all were. And she raised those two cubs as if they were puppies. In no time at all, they grew. One was a rust red male that she called Fiero, for fire; the other was a black female that she named La Notte, the night. They had much in common, these two wolves. For one thing, they were big—as big as a mastiff (and remember, they were still young). Also, at sunset, their eyes would reflect the light and glow with the color of blood on fire. Finally, they loved my sister as if they were her children. And in a way, I suppose they were. Members of our family, aunts and uncles from neighboring towns, could all visit because she showed them affection. But no one could ever come anywhere near the house without the wolves standing on either side of her, backs bristling to defend. It was an eerie sight. A sight made worse on the day that the baron crossed our path again.

"We were by the well, getting water for the night's meal, when he trotted his horse over to water it. He saw her and their eyes met as if there had been no time between their last meeting and now. They exchanged pleasantries, and he left. The wolves stood at her side and gave a low growl, staring at his every move until he finally turned and walked away. I had seen him stare down animals before. In fact, there were stories all over the town of his ability to turn a snarling beast into a whining head-bent creature on the strength of his stare alone. But today, Fiero and La Notte returned his withering gaze, as if they sensed something about him that Gelsamina could not see. And they didn't calm down until the baron was completely out of sight.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Anna and the Tale of the Wolfby A. C. Nicholas Copyright © 2010 by A. C. Nicholas. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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