Blake stopped and looked at her. “You are speaking of the Baptistry doors,” he said, with all seriousness. “It can be none other than these.”
Caitlin’s eyes opened wide.
“Do they really exist?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “They’re one of the more famous sites in Florence.”
Caitlin’s heart leapt with excitement. Finally, something tangible. A real, solid clue.
Blake took her hand. “Follow me.”
As Caitlin and Blake walked down Via Dei Calzaiuoli, it opened up into a huge square, Piazza del Duomo, and Caitlin was taken aback by the site. Across from them stood one of the largest, most ornate churches she had ever seen. It was built in a light stone, every inch covered with carvings, statues, designs, and interlaced with color—orange and green edgings. It was so ornate, so busy.
Its rear cathedral, rose in an enormous, orange dome—the one she had seen when first flying over the city, the same dome that dominated the city skyline. It was very beautiful, and clearly the most important building in the city.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“The Duomo,” he said. “The main church of Florence for hundreds of years. Quite overwhelming, isn’t it?”
It was. But she didn’t see any gold doors.
“But the doors…” she said, “…those aren’t them.”
“No,” he said. “Those doors you speak of are opposite the Duomo. In the Baptistry.”
He turned her shoulders and pointed. “Look,” he said.
Suddenly, Caitlin saw it. There, directly across from the Duomo, sat an octagonal shaped building, which looked small compared to the Duomo, yet which was still quite large, about one hundred feet in diameter, and rising about a hundred feet high. It was as ornately carved as the Duomo itself, in a matching stone and matching colors. But what made it special, what made it eye-stopping, was its magnificent, tall doors. All bright, shining gold. All elaborately carved, with images all over them.
Exactly as Caitlin had seen in her dream.
Her heart pounded. It was so surreal to see something in real life that she had only dreamt of.
Now, more than ever, she felt that it was a message, that she was close, once again, to finding her father.
In a daze, she walked up to the doors, and slowly held out her hand and touched them.
It was just as she remembered. She couldn’t believe how smooth the metal felt. She marveled at all their shapes, at the intricate detail.
Blake came up beside her. “This is the oldest building in Florence,” he said. “Built in 1100. It took them 21 years just to build those doors. All by hand. They look like gold. But they are actually bronze.”
She looked up, and marveled at how high the doors went. She looked closely at the depictions, at the small shapes of people and animals and angels.
“These figures,” Caitlin asked. “What are they?”
“Scenes from the Bible,” Blake answered. “The Old Testament, mainly. You see: there is Moses, receiving the tablets of God.”
Caitlin looked closely. She saw angels, demons, people standing with wings….It made her think of her kind.
“Yes,” Blake said, reading the thoughts. “Our kind are included. Do you really think a human could have carved these? These doors were carved by one of us.”
Caitlin surveyed them in wonder.
“My dream…it told me that my father would be behind these doors.”
Blake opened one of them.
Caitlin pulled back the other, slowly. It was heavy, made of solid iron.
“Let’s find out,” he said.
It was dim inside the Baptistry, light coming in only through the stained-glass windows. Caitlin looked up at the high ceilings, and in here, she could really see the effect of the octagon-shaped building. The panels of the ceiling, all brightly colored in frescoes against a gold background, came to a point, with a small circle in its center. Their footsteps echoed on the beautiful marble floor as they walked, and as she looked around, she saw other people milling about. Sightseers.
Despite its great beauty, Caitlin could find no hidden messages, nothing of any great significance. It was basically just an empty structure, with a small altar at one end of it. And her father, of course, was nowhere in sight.
She looked around, again and again, looking for any clue, any message. Frustrated, she finally gave up.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he said.
She thought again and again.
“What exactly happened in your dream?” he asked.
She thought of her dream again, tried to remember every last detail, wondering if she’d left anything out.
Suddenly, it struck her.
“What if the answer doesn’t lie behind the doors?” she asked, excitedly. “What if the answer is the door itself?”
He looked at her, puzzled.
She took his hand and led him out of the building.
They stood back outside, before the doors, and she stared intensely at all the carved figures. She circled the structure slowly, walking all the way around, inspecting each and every door. Each had different carvings. She could feel the electricity running through her veins. A message was embedded in one of these carvings, she knew it.
She ran her fingers along them as she walked, trying to sense which one it could be. She closed her eyes, and circled the structure again and again.
Finally, she stopped, feeling something. She opened her eyes and stared.
There it was. Before her was a carved figure of a structure, an old church, with a distinctive shape, tall, capped by three triangles, before which knelt a winged figure. To humans, it might look like an angel, but she knew it was one of her own. This was it. She felt certain of it.
“This place,” she asked Blake urgently, breathless. “What is it?”
He came close, examined it. “That is the church of Santa Croce. It’s not far from here.”