Another excerpt from the historical novel I’m working on. This one is titled “Of the things placed therein.”
This is also my first post for paid subscribers! Next week’s post will be free. Yay!
Of the things placed therein
Many things enter waters. Pebbles, the branches of trees, the mud from a bank of loose soil, animals to bathe and drink and to cross to the other side, humans to do the same. Put a boy in a river and he will be forever changed.
When he was young he would go often with Uncle Francesco into the hills outside Vinci. They would look for many things—unsuspecting flowers, chittering squirrels, caves tucked into the rock ledges, the tracks of bears and mountain lions—but on summer days when the heat made your skin itch with sweat, it was the pools they sought out, where tumbling waterfalls fell into rock clefts, the perfect size for a boy and his uncle who was still not that much more than a boy himself. Some pools they approached with caution, inching their bodies into the freezing water; others they splashed into with abandon, shocking the heat out of their skin. Emerging each time as if it were a fresh baptism.
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