Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) Read Online Free Page A

bedroom door, I saw him sit next to the cradle, pull out his spectacles and examine them, as if he didn’t know what they were for anymore.

 
     
     
     
     
    I was a child that reveled in sleep. Unlike other children, who are up and brimming with anticipation as soon as a new sun hits their windowpanes, I would screw my eyes shut and will myself back to slumber. It became an achievement to sleep solidly for long periods of time, and I hoped to beat my personal best of thirteen hours thirty-five minutes. In that way, I was similar to my mother, who always retired early and rose late. My father didn’t seem to mind, if it wasn’t harvest season.
    I would be lying if I said it was the rest, the unconsciousness of sleep that I loved. It wasn’t.
    It was the dreams.
    But the next morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. My mind was fuzzy with faded memories of a new arrival, and Signore Gallo was there too, and a 1912 shotgun. Something told me it was no dream, and I wanted to confirm my suspicions by whatever sight lay in that cradle. When I opened my bedroom door, I realized that I was not the only person in the house with ideas.
    Mamma and Papa, both in their night robes and nursing steaming cups of espresso, were peering over the cradle. The bird-girl was awake, both her wings stretched around herself. Only the top of her head and her eyes were visible. She stared at them like a rabbit caught in headlights.
    “I suppose,” said my father with resignation, “that calling the authorities is out of the question.”
    “If you want to hand her over to Alfio,” said Mamma with a rare hint of authority, “that’s the way to do it. You know Gallo has lined police pockets for years.”
    “I worry,” muttered my father, “for Gabriel.”
    Silence. Then, “She will be good for him. Like she was for me.”
    “Blanca—” warned my father.
    “Where do you suppose she came from?” whispered my Mamma.
    “The sky, my dear,” responded Papa.
    “But what is she for?” asked Mamma.
    “For?”
    “What did God make her for?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You know, Celso. Cows are made for milk and meat. Bees are made for honey, for honey . That sort of thing.”
    “Then what are humans made for?”
    Silence. Then, “I don’t know. Something.”
    “Then that something,” stated my father like the good Catholic he once was, “is something only God knows.”
    “Do you suppose,” began my mother, her voice wavering, “that God didn’t make her at all?”
    “Maybe she is God,” I said from behind them. “Maybe she is the daughter of Zeus or Apollo.” I was learning about Greek gods at school and lived part-time in an imaginary world where I fought alongside them in their great red battles.
    “Don’t be blasphemous, bambino ,” said Mamma, coming to her senses. Papa merely chuckled.
    We were silent for a moment, just gazing at the creature in the cradle. For once she had heard my voice, her eyes had swiveled over to me, and she seemed to regard me like she knew all my secrets (correction: secret. At that age, I had but one. It was so large and so heavy and so important that I never imagined it were possible to have more than one).
    “But what if she is an abomination?” my mother insisted. “What about her parentage? One is human and the other – a bird? Is it even possible?”
    “But Mamma,” I interjected, “don’t you already know her?”
    “I doubt that is the case, Blanca,” said my father, giving me a hard glance that I could not mistake the meaning of: don’t ask.
    “Or what if there is no God, just hundreds of little ones, and she is a goddess?” I insisted, changing tactics. This was my preferred belief system at the time. “Maybe she is the goddess of the sky. Or wine! Or healing,” I added slyly, glancing sidelong at Mamma, in hopes of her approval. I already wanted it as a pet, despite what Sweet Vittoria might say.
    “Maybe she is a devil,” murmured my mother, and her speculation