While silence returned to reign in London after Azzurra's frenetic dance, the air in Messina was thick with an electric tension that made the hair on one's arms stand on end. The collapse of the Sant'Alessio pier had not been a mere structural failure; for those who knew how to read the signs, it had been an omen. Belinda walked among the ruins of the construction site, observing the cracks in the concrete that looked like black veins split open across the skin of the coast.
Nonna Anna's arrival had been like the grafting of an old oak into crumbling soil. No sooner had Anna set her suitcases down at the villa than she dispensed with pleasantries. She looked Belinda in the eye, saw the deep hollows beneath them and the subtle tremor in her hands, and understood that the diplomacy of funds and charities would not suffice.
"Belinda, these shadows are not fought with lawyers' documents," Anna said, as she boiled water with wild herbs she had brought with her. "The pier collapsed because Harry's breath still lingers beneath it, and that breath has turned foul. We must perform a Witches' Sabbath of the Roots."
Belinda hesitated. For two years, she had tried to be a clean, public figure, distanced from the "sorcery" the townspeople whispered about behind her back. But the call of Samuele, the memory of his sacrifice, urged her to leave no stone unturned.
That night, while Elia slept a fitful sleep upstairs, the two women retreated to the oldest part of the villa's garden, the section directly overlooking the sea. Nonna Anna had lit a small stone brazier, feeding it with dried olive branches and scraps of raw silk that Belinda had kept in secret.
"Take off your shoes, Belinda," Anna ordered. "You must feel the cold of the mud. Only then will the shadows know you are not afraid to get dirty."
They began the rite. It was not a mass, nor a storybook spell. It was a guttural, ancient chant, a prayer addressed to the Goddess and to the Sicilian earth. Anna guided the rhythm with a staff of lemon wood, striking the ground with a cadence that, incredibly, mirrored the heartbeat of the dance Azzurra was performing thousands of miles away.
"Exorcise the mud!" Anna invoked, throwing handfuls of rock salt into the flames. "Drive out the Draunara that crawls among the foundations! Protect the blood of Samuele and the house of Elia!"
Belinda felt a superhuman strength invade her limbs. She began to move around the fire, her loose hair dancing in the sea wind. It was not the grace of her daughter, but the power of a mother defending her brood. With every step, Belinda felt images of the collapsed pier flash before her eyes: she saw the envy of rival builders, the corrupt bureaucracy trying to sink the fund, and that sense of guilt that still haunted her for sending Azzurra so far away.
"Samuele!" Belinda cried toward the violet sea. "Samuele, help us hold this pier up! Your light cannot be extinguished like this!"
Suddenly, the sea seemed to answer. A massive wave crashed against the cliff beneath the villa, but instead of destroying, it sprayed a freezing, purifying water that nearly put out the brazier. In that vapor, Belinda and Anna saw, for a fleeting instant, a luminous figure—a human lighthouse smiling at them from the darkness.
"It is done," Anna panted, sitting on the ground, exhausted by the ritual. "The shadows have retreated. The sabotage will not work. We have created a bridge of protection."
Belinda remained standing, gazing at the horizon. She felt a strange peace, a sudden warmth that started in her heart and radiated toward the North. "Anna, I felt Azzurra. She was here with us. She was dancing... but it wasn't a Richmond dance. It was a dance from here."
Anna smiled through her wrinkles. "Roots never break, Belinda. They can stretch all the way to London, but they always drink from the same spring. Your daughter protected the pier from the other side of the world."
Belinda looked at her hands, black with ash and earth. She was no longer the lady of the charity fund, nor the victim of the hurricane. She was the Guardian of the Strait, and that night she had understood that true reconstruction did not pass through concrete alone, but through the blood and spirit that united her, her daughter, and the memory of those no longer there. Sicily was still standing.