Fate Weaver

By Loretta A. Condino-Grupp

...She [Night] bore the Destinies and ruthless Fates, Goddesses who track down the sins of men and Gods, and never cease from awful rage Until they give the sinner punishment...
from...Hesiod’s Theogony, eight century B.C.

Preface – In Medias Res
Time seems to be in slow motion as I struggle to understand where I am, and then...feeling an excruciating pain, as if getting yanked down a drain face-first, I hear an incredible tearing sound, the kind you want ear plugs for, and then the pain, feeling my eye dislodge, as if it is getting torn from my face, which it is. Fully awake now, I scream, feeling blood spurting over my nose, into my other eye that is trying to focus, totally paralyzed from stopping any of this madness and saving myself.
“Eva!” “Why?” I scream. I want to be sick.

All I keep thinking of is that I will have to go back and finish my junior year in high school with a hole in my face! A perpetual Halloween creep like Blackbeard the Pirate! Some Italian Christmas trip this has turned out to be.

“Because, Rosella, with your eye, I will have two of the three powers of our ancestry.” “We are the Living Fates, you know – of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the Fates.” “Now, if I can track down our third ‘cousin’ Beatrice, I will be complete.”

Watching me struggle with little success, Eva comments more to herself than to me, “My mother, Luigina, has taught me the darker Craft well, assuring me that this binding spell would keep you paralyzed enough for me to extract a piece of your physical power – good.” “You know of course that you are a foolish, foolish girl.” “What made you think that I would embrace you and accept you as a cousin, of sorts?” “It has all been a ruse.”...

Signs! This Fall, protagonist, 15 year old Rosella Faulk meets her destiny in the form of her two Advisors, Bryce – a large, imposing, black raven, and Dionne – a lovely grey and brown mourning dove. They inform Rosella that her maternal family has been waiting centuries for the coming of her, the Living Fate Weaver.

Changes felt at 13, Rosella’s abilities have been revealing themselves to her as she physically and emotionally grows, maturing through interactions with her family, Advisors; becoming more powerful with each Inner Seeing experience that she has. Rosella’s full potential will be present by her 16th birthday on August 1st the following summer.

Personal honesty, re-discovering family relationships she always has taken for granted, and finding herself experiencing first love, all while fighting an unprovoked evil, Rosella Faulk learns that the dynamics of an extended family, love, loss, and legend definitely complicate her adolescent life.

Creating rich fabrics for characters to live in, traversing the landscapes of New England, Tuscany, and Ontario throughout this planned trilogy, I hope you enjoy Fate Weaver, Book One of The Living Fates Trilogy.

All My Best,

L.A.C.-Grupp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loretta A. Condino-Grupp
• Release date: Feb 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452404714

Loretta A. Condino-Grupp

L.A.C.-Grupp [Loretta A. Condino-Grupp] is me! I am an enthusiastic writer, wife to the love of my life for 20 years (Christopher P. Grupp), mother of three creative, perceptive, and active children. As a life-long learner, I am truly, constantly, re-inventing myself.Inspiration for my novel comes from my love for my students – past and present and future, my passion for mythology and religious narratives, and from the family stories that I grew up with at home.My family, who are originally from Lucca, Italy, would sit around the kitchen table for hours talking, and I would listen to my Nonna, Mother, aunts, and cousins talk about the Old Ways in Italy – what they believe, practice, and live.Thank you for reading my novel, and I hope that this experience reverberates with you...Speaking of which, please look for my upcoming Fate Spinner – Book Two, and Fate Shearer – Book Three, the second and third installments for The Living Fates Trilogy.Love to All!!!Loretta

Book preview

FATE WEAVER

THE LIVING FATES TRILOGY: BOOK ONE

by

L.A.C.- Grupp

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

L.A.C.- Grupp on Smashwords

Fate Weaver:

The Living Fates Trilogy: Book One

Copyright © 2011 by L.A.C.- Grupp

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

* * * * *

FATE WEAVER

THE LIVING FATES TRILOGY: BOOK ONE

…She [Night] bore the Destinies and ruthless Fates, Goddesses who track down the sins of men and Gods, and never cease from awful rage Until they give the sinner punishment…

from…Hesiod’s Theogony, eight century B.C.

Preface – In Medias Res

Time seems to be in slow motion as I struggle to understand where I am, and then…feeling an excruciating pain, as if getting yanked down a drain face-first, I hear an incredible tearing sound, the kind you want ear plugs for, and then the pain, feeling my eye dislodge, as if it is getting torn from my face, which it is. Fully awake now, I scream, feeling blood spurting over my nose, into my other eye that is trying to focus, totally paralyzed from stopping any of this madness and saving myself.

Eva! Why? I scream. I want to be sick. All I keep thinking of is that I will have to go back and finish my junior year in high school with a hole in my face! A perpetual Halloween creep like Blackbeard the Pirate! Some Italian Christmas trip this has turned out to be.

Because, Rosella, with your eye, I will have two of the three powers of our ancestry. We are the Living Fates, you know – of the Tria Fata. Now, if I can track down our third ‘cousin’ Beatrice, I will be complete. Watching me struggle with little success, Eva comments more to herself than to me, My mother, Luigina, has taught me the darker Craft well, assuring me that this binding spell would keep you paralyzed enough for me to extract a piece of your physical power – good. You know of course that you are a foolish, foolish girl. What made you think that I would embrace you and accept you as a cousin, of sorts? It has all been a ruse.

Giving me no time to answer, it must have been a rhetorical question, I vaguely think to myself through the pain, which is coming in waves. She goes on, "All these years, my mother, Luigina, was trapped in an abusive relationship with that monster of a man who dared to call himself my father, and we had to scrape and struggle to get by here in the heart of our rich city, Lucca, living like poor beggars while he gambled away everything that she, then we, earned with our special skills only our people know of, skills which are mocked and feared by most, by the likes of you and your relatives, Shaman, but no more! When desperate, you people are only too willing to seek us out to ‘help’. Well, we made sure that we have been indispensible this past year. No one here ever helped us, while my grandmother and mother stood by and watched as your mother, Vanessa, went off to school and to a fabulous new life in America, and Beatrice’s mother, Anna, married wealth and left for Canada from England. All of that is about to change, now. In time, my mother, Luigina, and I, finally will live the lives we deserve, and others will feel the sorrow, pain, and humiliation that we have been living with for so many years."

Why does she have to ramble? On and on and on… like some kind of computer virus – a worm. And, on a history that I have had absolutely nothing to do with! I begin to feel faint. The loss of blood starting to make me shake uncontrollably, literally shaking in this web I am stuck in, feeling it with my hands. Because lucky me, I walked into the trap of Eva, her family, and her Advisor – Sybil, an overlarge, icky, hairy, giant Tarantula spider, that at this moment is staring at me with her gross-looking bulgy eyeballs. ‘What is the matter little Rosssella?’ Sneered Sybil. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’ ‘Do not worry.’ ‘It will be over sssoon enough, and we will be gone, on our way to find the last link to our domination and control of all that is around usss.’

"OKAY you psycho, hairy thing on a power trip! Don’t you even dare talk to me! I silently yell in my mind at it, at her, using Inner Speech. What a travesty. At least my Advisors are birds, a raven and a dove, speaking of which, Oh Bryce, Dionne where are you two?" They must be out of Inner Seeing. Please get here. Now is the moment when a large, imposing raven and a regal grey dove would be quite helpful. Knowing my own future sure could have helped me right now too, which I can’t – a major drawback in the whole Living Fates gig. I only can see other people’s futures, and I have been getting pretty good at it what with my sessions with Bryce, Dionne, meetings with Maria Pia and Caponnori – the two matriarchs of our family, here in Lucca. But now, I need to buy time and somehow get her to touch me, because, irony of ironies, Eva is the one of us that can heal – of all things.

Eva, I implore weakly. Could you just let me go so that I can stop the bleeding? "I can’t hurt you – as you can see with your wonderful witchy binding spell, and I can’t see all that much now!" At which point, I start to become really angry, even with only one eye. How dare she do this to me? Me, her somewhat cousin no less – so what if only really distant cousins, still related because of the three sister Fates – Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

Don’t worry dearest Rosella. I have made you a replacement. Look! Is it not lovely? With my one good eye, I look at Eva, her hands still splattered with my blood as she places my intact severed eye in a small jar containing amber-colored liquid. Cheerfully, she holds up a greenish-grey crystal orb; the exact shade of my eyes, or should I say, of my eye for me to see, sort of. If only she could come a little closer to me. I need to touch her. My power along with hers would render her paralyzing spell and this ridiculous web around me impotent and heal my wounds simultaneously.

You must understand, Eva went on, more to herself then me, I do not want you dead, only incapacitated and suffering, to feel what it is like to have very little and be ostracized for being different – like my mother and I have been all these years. Luigina would have you dead, but I dissuaded her, using my powers of influence to make her see the possible outcomes from such a behavior. I need you alive.

And this is supposed to make me feel better? Are you kidding me! Eva, I slowly reply through the pain, trying to control it. You are delusional. You have been ostracized in your mind. And, no one told your mother to practice dark witchcraft, necromancy. "Did you ever read Dr. Faustus??? It’s been her choice. The Fates passed on to all three of our mothers’ families their unique individual powers along with the power of choice. Something, humans do not have, and you know it. We have the ability to help so many, alter injustices, make some wrongs possible rights, and get rid of our curse with men, if we work together – as the prophesy dictates. Alone, we are special with unique gifts. Together, we are powerful. We are the Living Fates for crying out loud! The Mortal Tria Fata. That has to count for something with you. I have the gift of sight, to know and see that injury or death is on the horizon for those I interact with and lock eyes with; to warn, you have the gift of healing or injury, and instruction as to the multiple outcomes from initial choices, your hands could do wonders, and Beatrice, as you have said, when we finally find her, has the gift of decision, with her hair touching another, her voice can manipulate at will those around her – she is the most powerful of us all, the one who can end a life or allow it to continue with a snip of her hair…How did we come to this? What are you going to do if and when you find Beatrice? Cut off her hair and tear out her voice box?"

As I’m talking, I see that Eva’s agitated pacing is bringing her closer to me. Good, good. Please come nearer. Oh Bryce, I silently speak to him, find me soon. I hope you can hear me from this dank, closed up synagogue in the center of the city, of all the places for an ambush – quite disrespectful of Eva in my opinion. I don’t know how much longer I can keep her talking. I am starting to feel faint. I want my eye back!!! Dionne, stay with my mother, keep her safe from Luigina, she means her harm - death. They are evil incarnate. I speak from my heart to my Advisors.

**********

Among twenty snowy mountains

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

from… I.Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird – Wallace Stevens

Chapter 1 – Late Summer at Fifteen

Sitting on the side stoop of my house near the river, looking out at the water, I tie my running shoes, attempting not to dwell on the mundane beginning of high school next week, while listening to the grasshoppers play their end of summer song. Clear, late summer days in the afternoon always give me this sense of anxiety. Maybe it’s the fact that school is about to begin, so I’d better get myself more motivated than I am now. Running helps. It calms some of my jitters. Don’t get me wrong. I’m far from any kind of super athlete, but I am good running on my own, by myself. I have gobs and gobs of endurance.

Here I am, my junior year in high school, me, fifteen-year-old Rosella Faulk (my mother skipped me up a grade in elementary school). I should be uber excited; yet, my thoughts actually are focused on who soon might be experiencing an illness, injury, or death that I am feeling will happen in the very near future to someone I know. This also adds to my anxious state. At least it will not be immediate family. Concentrating on seeing who it is for me right now is extremely tiring, as I’m still pretty new at this stuff. So if it’s someone close to me, I have nearly collapsed from my overwhelming power of insight due to my lack of control and limited training and practice. I’m so far behind, which can be a problem, because, yes, lucky me, supposedly, I am a Fate. Not like the Weird Sisters from Macbeth, though there is a bit of the Craft in all of this, but pretty much the good kind. I am a modern-day version, one of the Tria Fata, the Living Three Fates. So, the running helps.

*****

Starting as uncomfortable agitations at thirteen and getting worse so that people around me, like the teachers at school and my friends, began to think that I had an anxiety disorder at fourteen, because I could not sit still or calm down easily. When my mother, brother, Leo, and Nonna Francesca (who we always just have called Frannie, living with us since I was twelve) and I returned from our family trip to Lucca, our Tuscan home in Italy, I had just assumed that I was one of the countless pubescents who suffer with Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder, commonly called, ADHD. I began to do whatever I could to calm myself down and stop the fidgeting, especially to get me through each day at school. With my mother’s support, I refused to take any drugs, and after experimenting with other natural interventions, I found that running long distances worked best for the feelings I had of bugs crawling up and down my skin, just to name one. It was as if my inner mind was pushing me to actually be outside; thus, the running. And, once I was outdoors, a sense of peace would envelope me, as though I was being naturally protected.

Themis did have a hand in my life, for soon after I developed my regular forays with the flora and fauna, I made a couple of friends. Or should I say, my Advisors made themselves known to me a little after I turned fifteen this present August. Running one day, I thought that I heard voices, speaking to me in my head! This really made me begin to question my sanity. I thought to myself, I’m alone, on River Road near my house, and all I should be hearing are the intervals of my breath keeping pace with my strides on the road pavement and the beating of my heart in rhythm with my feet. But, every so often I would hear a voice above my head, then another voice. It sounded as if they were arguing with each other – these voices. Willing myself to look up on this particular summer afternoon’s run, all I saw in the sky were a huge black raven and fluttering about its head a smaller grey dove.

‘We need to tell her!’ Rasped the raven.

‘No, not yet, she is not ready.’ Chirped the dove to the raven.

Really, I’m losing it, I thought. Forget ADHD, let’s move right on over to Paranoid Schizophrenia. There is no way on this earth I’m hearing two feathered creatures discussing me above my head. My curiosity, getting the better of me, in what I was convinced was only my back-to-school anxieties manifesting themselves in birds, I began to wonder why they wanted to speak with me and what I was not ready for and how long they have been following me!

Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore and just stopped in my tracks, breathing really hard. About three miles away from my house with the river on my left and houses on my right, I figured that if things became too strange I could high tail it across to some neighbor’s house and scream for help. Feeling absolutely stupid, I spoke up, into the air,

OKAY! Who’s talking about me and what do you want? Complete silence. The late summer grasshoppers the only voices, humming at each other, their harvest songs emanating from their legs. Suddenly from the sky I hear in my head again,

‘Rosella Faulk, we need to talk’ Rasped a voice.

That’s it. I am a crazy person. And, I began to cry. That’s it. My family is going to disown me, find me a residential program, and lock me up. Goodbye Ma, goodbye, Leo, goodbye Frannie. Next time I see any of you will be in another time, another place. I definitely was having a moment.

‘Rosella Faulk, look at me, we need to talk.’ For a second time, the voice rasped at me.

Look where? At who? Who is speaking to me??? I shouted out loud.

‘She has no idea, Bryce.’ ‘ Be kind to her.’ ‘ Tell her who we are and where to look.’ A softer voice reasons.

‘She does too have an idea.’ ‘ She has felt our presence since she was fourteen, coming back from the land of her mothers.’ ‘ She is just being obstinate about this entire affair, and I will not stand for it.’ The first voice lectures me.

‘This actually is true.’ ‘You cannot stand for it in the literal sense, dear friend,’ chuckles Dionne, thinking herself to be quite witty. The raven stares hard at her.

Slowly, I turn my head to the left to where the voices are coming from and stand facing a gnarled, old Willow tree near the water. Perched on a branch just above my head, I witness a most unusual sight – a large black raven and a lovely grey dove next to each other in apparent conversation, occasionally looking down at me. In a pretty level voice, I speak at the birds, still not truly believing that this is all happening. Who is speaking to me? Are you, or either of you speaking to me? Still, thinking that I am having an out-of-mind experience, like a bad made-for-TV. movie moment.

Pinioning me with a black-eyed, sharp glare, if such an action is possible for a raven, it says to me,

‘Rosella Faulk, you know perfectly well who is speaking to you, so stop this nonsense.’ ‘We have much work to accomplish and not much time to accomplish it in.’ ‘ Use your exceptional intelligence and latent talents to realize this please.’ ‘ I am in no mood for obtuse behavior.’

Ruffling herself up, trying to be at same height as the raven’s breast, the dove says, ‘Could we at least formally introduce ourselves to her?’ To which she says, turning her head sideways to look directly at me with her eye, ‘I am Dionne, and what my companion, Bryce, says is true.’ ‘ We fear there is an imminent danger on the horizon that requires your attention in the very near future.’ ‘ We no longer can cater to your slow development over time, as your mother has suggested.’

At this point, I stand glued to the side of the asphalt road staring at these two birds with the most dumbfounded look a regular, high school student can muster. I tentatively ask,

"My… mother… knows about you? I am speaking to two birds… and my mother knows that two birds can even speak back? Not to mention that you two are not what bird experts would call kissing cousins. A raven and a dove, who would have thought? What is going on? And, why are you two only speaking in my head? I am speaking out loud. If you are able to talk, what gives?"

‘We find it to be a strange animal behavior to squawk, and it is much more efficient to speak in your mind to you.’ ‘ This is one of your skills too that you need to nurture’, retorted the raven, Bryce.

Deciding to embrace the absurdity, I ask, What do you want of me? I have enough on my teenage mind with school coming up, not to mention that it will be the last year I can crush on Forrest Whittier, as he’s a senior, totally out of my league, and soon to be graduating, moving off to college girls, not that I would ever stand a chance. But, then again, I am quite the dreamer.

‘Stop running at the mouth, Rosella.’ ‘ You need to go home and tell your mother that we will be over this evening.’ ‘ Then, we will talk and begin to strategize on how to deal with what has been happening in Lucca, the land of your ancestors and relatives.’ again snaps Bryce.

‘A lot of your confusions will be resolved this evening, dear.’ said the dove that calls herself Dionne.

‘Nothing will be resolved.’ ‘It is only beginning.’ stated Bryce.

Well, I thought. He is a worse pessimist than me. I’m a Pollyanna compared to him.

**********

…the Infinite Zurvan and the Genius of Law (justice and order) who lie to no one, and Fate and the divine Fate will smite all the creation of Ahriman, and in the end the demon Az also…

from… Answer of the Spirit of Wisdom, Zoroastrian sacred book, Avesta, approx. 308 A.D.

Chapter 2 – In the Study

Having a heart-to-heart at fifteen with my kooky, lovely mother, a professor of English at nearby Brown University, is always a complicated deal. Responding to me in her melodious, rich voice, she exclaims, It must be time! Yes, like me, she can be somewhat melodramatic.

In fact, we are so much alike that it’s scary. We both are lucky enough to have the same light creamy skin, healthy-looking, even in the winter months. The same shoulder length, hazelnut colored hair with golden streaks running through it because of the summer, hers, showing hints of grey during certain weeks of the month when she needs a color job. And, a thin Roman nose flanked by similar wide-spaced eyes, though my mother’s eyes are a nutty topaz, while mine are a strange mix of dark green, with grey and gold. I am told they are the eyes of the most important woman from our family, our matriarch, Caponnori. Little did I know the truth to that.

So, arriving home, kicking off my running shoes in the side-door mud room heading right into my mother’s study, where I knew she would be, I blurt out to her,

Birds, Ma! Explain the birds, please.

As I said, with excitement in her voice, she replies, So now, it is time! I have been wondering how long before they would make themselves known to you. You know, you are very lucky. I am not blessed to have even one Advisor in my life, and you have two. This is the second sign that you are one of the Living Fates, as Caponnori told us would happen.

Ma, what does all of that mean? And, what connection does Caponnori have to do with all of this? I just found out about her last summer when Leo, you, and I went to Lucca for my birthday, on August 1st. Our other great-grandmother, Maria Pia, and Frannie kept talking about her, and her husband and our family and these really distant cousins that I have, that I have yet to meet. So, explain, please? Exhaling with what seemed like resolute trepidation, and in her most concerned motherly and professor voice, my mother began:

Well, sit down Rosella as it is a long and complicated story…

Our family descends from Tyrrhenos, the leader of the Etruscans who migrated from Lydia in the Near East due to famine, to what is now Italy, Tuscany, to be exact. After a time of wandering and finally settling near the Rivers Po and Arno, Tyrrhenos is said to have taken up with an enchanting woman Shaman with eyes the colors of the sea, a deep green and grey so lustrous that you could drown in them, as yours are, Rosella. They lived together for some years in what now has been known for centuries as Caponnori, an area east of Lucca, near the Italian Alps in a section of the Dolomite Mountains, a group of 11 villages in Val di Fiemme. Unbeknownst to Tyrrhenos, the woman Shaman was one of La Fata or Moiraé as the Greeks and Romans refer to them. Wanting to be alone for awhile, away from her overbearing older sister and needy younger sister, this second sister had been enjoying a brief getaway when she espied handsome Tyrrhenos looking for truffles in a nearby forest. Feeling a powerful affinity and attraction to Tyrrhenos, she immediately became enamored with the Etruscan and fell in love with him, but because of her inner sight, she knew that their relationship was not going to last. They were happy for a time and when Tyrrhenos left her she was not destroyed, for from their relationship together sprang her two children. The second, a daughter, blessed with her other-worldly abilities. From time to time, Caponnori, as she became known in the village, would leave her children in the capable hands of her Advisor and Protector, a large raven named Bryce that transfigured at will. What the village did not know was that their first woman Shaman of Caponnori was actually Lachesis – the Immortal Fate Weaver. "Her elder sister, Clotho – the Immortal Fate Spinner, and her younger sister, Atropos – the Immortal Fate Shearer, finding her in Piano di Lucca, what we would think of as the suburbs or outskirts of the city proper, demanded that she take up her duties again with them and share in their responsibilities, which she of course did, though somewhat reluctantly. And, henceforth that has become our heritage. Every second daughter of a union from a descendent of Caponnori, each in turn taking up the name by the age of sixteen and discarding her birth name, as she became known to inhabitants far and wide in Tuscany as its Shaman, is blessed with some degree of her abilities."

At this point, I think that my mother has lost her mind. Right Ma, and I am a Faerie Princess too, able to grant wishes to my family and friends! Now, seriously, please tell me. Do I have some sort of new scent on me from your wonderful laundry detergent that is attracting these birds to me?

Really now, Rosella. Do you think that I could make all of this up?

Actually, you can Ma. Remember, you are a professor of literature studies, specializing in religious narratives and classics? English department? Brown University?

Fine, but I would not have so many personal details like this if it was for one of my classes. My mother retorts. Also, we did go to Lucca when you were fourteen, now you are fifteen. You do remember meeting many of the elderly Arsina relatives? Right? The Caponnori that you met is the closest current living descendent of the original Caponnori. Her birth name is Clorinda, but over time with her abilities as the most powerful anyone in our family or in the surrounding areas of Lucca has witnessed since the original Caponnori/Lachesis, she has assumed the role and name of just Caponnori; as you will someday.

Wait a minute, Ma. Who is saying that I will become the next Caponnori. Why didn’t Maria Pia or Frannie or YOU become the next second-daughter-Fate Weaver??? All of you have been second daughters of second daughters. Why me?

Because dear Rosella, through the generations of the women in our family, it doesn’t seem to have worked that way so easily. You are right, Maria Pia is the second daughter of Clorinda" Caponnori, and she has fine intuitive abilities and holistic skills, which she learned from Caponnori before her to rightfully assume the role of Shaman, but neither of them nor any of us have the special talents and powers that place her on the plane of a what is known as La Vivana Tria Fata or the Three Living Fates. We believe that it is something to do with our humanness. Your grandmothers and I all think that you are the one as has been described in the prophesy left by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos to their women of Tuscany before they seemed to have permanently adjourned from the human world. Who knows, maybe to them these hundreds of years is only a short time, whereas for us, time appears so much larger and longer. Anyhow, that is me theorizing in the tricky, complicated realm of time and science. Not bad for an English guru, right?" My mother teases.

Ma, you are making little sense. Why are there three? And, where are the other two then?

Of that, your grandmothers and I have a few speculations, I’ll get to that. As to the other, when I was talking to them one day last spring, your grandmothers requested that I bring you to see them as soon as possible after I mentioned to them some of the signs you began to show just around the house, here at home, in Barrington. Hence, our family trip last summer to Italy. They believe that you may be one of the Living Fates from all of our observations, especially when we had you lay your head on the Po while we were in Lucca. Didn’t you notice that your headaches suddenly stopped after that? And, they have not come back? Reminded my mother.

I sort of understood why at the time, but you never fully explained it. All of you were so giddy about the result. So, now as with all of these other revelations, why did my headaches go away, Ma? "Which, I am still ecstatic about." I emphasize.

My mother explains, The reason why your grandmothers and I were so thrilled that your headaches disappeared and you reacted to the Po is because it has shown us that you have a deep connection to our early Etruscan ancestry, our land, and our Caponnori phenomenon. Usually, the migraine sufferers who approach Caponnori for help experience a temporary relief unless they have multiple treatments, so to speak. "They have to keep returning with the Shaman time and time again to heal their ‘mal di testa’ or headache because part of the treatment depends on the person’s inner connection to the energy that emanates from the Po. You see, when the Etruscans found a piece of land they wanted to develop, the seers were called to read the omens. This was done in many different ways. If the omens were favorable, boundary stones marked the land at intervals on each side. The builders made sure the space between the outer walls and inner walls was untouched - virgin land if you will. Soil, untouched by cultivation. It was forbidden to build upon or to plough the space of land between the walls and the buildings. The Romans called this space the 'pomoerium', or as we refer to it, the Po. As the City grew, these sacred grounds surrounded with boundary stones were always moved forward as far as the walls were advanced. This also is evident in Lucca’s walls, which surround the city. The more important the city became to our culture, the higher, stronger, and wider the walls became, signifying the importance of the Po’s proximity to the city." Finished my mother.

Truth be told, my migraines were never a fave of mine. But, that doesn’t mean I’m one of the Living Fates. What had been going on around Lucca that our families are so upset about?

Funny you should ask. My mother says. Strange things have been happening all around Lucca before, during, and after we left last summer. "A few of our family’s close friends, such as Lilia and Roger who own, La Cucina, the restaurant in the city, experienced some unusual events; such as pestilence in their food store, broken dishes stacked neatly on the shelves in their pantries, and customers complaining of a funny taste in the water they were serving. Others in the town have suffered strange rashes on their bodies that no balm or ointment seems to help clear, and there have been reported arguments amongst couples and friends who have never argued before. Some of our relatives and friends also have been getting a mysterious chronic illnesses. Remember when we were there and your two cousins Piero and Vittorio had that strange virus in their lungs where yellowish discharge kept coming up when they coughed?"

Yes, it was pretty much of a let-down when I couldn’t even hang out with the few people my age. You have to admit, I really did not have many cousins my age to interact with while we were there. I comment.

Rosella, we were there for specific reasons, not just to vacation, though that was a part of it. Well, since we have left, your cousins have worsened and others are still experiencing strange things. Nothing is working to help them. "Little by little, they are wasting