Birds flitted around the colorful buildings. Gulls squawked warnings. Starlings darted down to steal trinkets and spoke of things unseen. A congress of ravens whizzed away in formation, promising sudden death and retribution of the sea.
My eyes glanced back at the tourists on the shore, my superstitions aroused. A middle-aged man in white shorts, Bermuda shirt and floppy white hat motioned toward the boats in the harbor. But then he turned to his wife at his side and gestured with his left hand . . . the hand sinister.
It was all a bad omen. A scene flitted through my mind.
“That man is going to die.” I turned to Jack in the shadows behind me.
“Pardon?”
“That man. See the one right there?” I pointed to him with my cell phone. “He’s going to die today.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “Superstition, I suppose. The flight of the birds in relation to the man’s position make it seem likely. That’s all.”
Jack’s eyes darted to something beside me.
“What?” I stood up and whirled to face him, stuffing my phone into the pocket of my white pajama bottoms.
“A scar just opened, fluttered a bit and then closed.”
Our eyes met. A thousand thoughts chased through my brain.
“What you said . . . ,” Jack began, “it sounded a lot like prophecy.”
My heart pounded.
I looked back down at the man. In my mind’s eye, I saw it again.
The man lying on the pavement of Riomaggiore, eyes staring sightlessly into the sky. His wife screaming hysterically. A raven hopping near his body, a harbinger of death.
The scene felt impossibly urgent.
That man was going to die today.
And only I knew it.
SEVENTEEN
Jack
Chiara dashed off the balcony and into the apartment. I followed.
“What are you doing?” I tried to piece together the last few minutes. Her odd observation about the birds and the man dying. The scar flickering open beside her.
“I’m saving that man.” She spun around, looking for her shoes.
“Pardon? If you saw that he is going to die, what makes you think you can change that?”
“Tennyson sees the future, but it’s only ever one possibility of the future. Itcanbe changed.”
She stuffed her feet into her shoes and then threw open a cupboard. She set aTangledbike helmet on her head and tossed an orange security vest on her shoulder.
“Chiara, I don’t think—”
“I have to try, Jack.” She paused and shot me her most serious look. “Ican’tlet someone die without doing something.”
“But how will he die?”
