Vito said, “I learned that from your mother.”
“Oh!” Yalda was astonished; how could you learn anything from someone your own age? “But who taught it to her?”
“She had a friend, a girl named Clara.” Vito spoke slowly, as if the subject required some special effort to address. “Clara went to school. She’d tell your mother about the things she’d learned, and then your mother would explain them to me.”
Yalda knew there was a school in the village, but she’d always thought its purpose was to train people for unfamiliar jobs, not to answer their questions about the stars.
“I wish I could have met her,” she said.
“Clara?”
“My mother.”
Vito said wryly, “That’s like wishing you could fly.”
Yalda had heard the phrase before, but now it struck her as an odd choice for the epitome of unattainability. “What if we stretched our arms wide, like a mite’s wings—”
“People have tried that,” Vito assured her. “We’re too heavy, and too weak; it just doesn’t work.”
“Oh.” Yalda returned to the subject of her mother. “What else did she teach you?”
Vito had to think about that. “A little bit of writing. But I’m not sure I remember much.”
“Show me! Please!” Yalda wasn’t sure what the point of writing was, but the prospect of seeing her own father perform the elaborate trick was irresistible.
Vito did resist, but not for long. “I’ll try,” he said. “But you’ll need to be patient with me.”
He stood for a while, silent and motionless. Then the skin of his chest began to tremble, as if he were shooing off insects, and Yalda noticed some strange, curved ridges starting to appear. They weren’t holding still, though; they were slipping away across his body. Yalda could see him struggling to keep them in place, but he wasn’t succeeding.
Vito relaxed, smoothing out his skin. Then he tried again. This time, a single, short ridge formed near the center of his chest, and though it quivered a bit, it more or less stayed put. Then as Yalda watched, it bent in on itself until it formed a crude circle.
“The sun!” she said.
“Let’s see if I can do the next one.” Vito’s tympanum grew taut with concentration as the ridge spread out and reformed, winding itself into five wide loops.
“A flower!”
“One more.” The flower split apart and the lines that had formed the petals softened, but then the fragments came together in a new configuration and the ridges grew sharp and clear again.
“An eye!”
“All right, three symbols, that’s enough!” Vito’s shoulders sagged.
“Teach me how to do it!” Yalda pleaded.
“It’s not easy,” Vito said. “It takes a lot of practice.”
“There’s nothing else to do here,” Yalda pointed out. She would have happily gone exploring in the forest instead, chasing the lizards to find out what they ate, but they couldn’t leave Dario behind.
“I suppose we could try one symbol,” Vito said reluctantly.
He beckoned to her, and Yalda knelt down so she was closer to her father’s height. He sharpened a finger and began scratching gently on her chest, never moving from the same small spot. Soon his touch was as irritating as the attentions of any insect.
Yalda squirmed; her skin was quivering, but that was giving her no respite. A mite would be swiftly unseated, but this prodding finger was far too heavy to dislodge.
“Don’t move your shoulders!” Vito reprimanded her. “Just use your skin. It’s something you’re doing dozens of times a day already, but you have to learn to control it more precisely.”
“I don’t see any shapes yet,” Yalda complained.
Vito said, “Be patient! The first thing is to make yourself aware of what’s going on under your skin. Then you can try to shift the point where it’s happening.”
It was harder than changing her posture, harder than reshaping her hands, harder than anything Yalda had tried to do with her body before. Most transformations took some effort, but once she pushed herself her instincts took over. This was different; the only thing her instincts wanted her to do was stop wasting her time with this ineffectual shuddering and simply sweep away the nuisance with her hands.
But she persisted. Her mother had learned to do this, taught by her friend, then passed on the skill to her father. Impossible or not, her mother’s finger was prodding her, urging her to keep on trying to tame the swarm of tiny muscles beneath her skin.
By the time the clearing fell into gloom and the violet flowers above them unfurled across their nets, Yalda had made her own sun, written on her skin. As she peered down at her chest the dark circle writhed like a worm chewing its tail, then broke apart.
Vito looked wearier from his efforts than she was. “Well done,” he said.
“Can I show Dario?” He’d be amazed, Yalda thought. Not one day in school, and here she was writing!
Vito said, “Your grandfather’s tired, let’s not bother him with this.”
Yalda woke, confused for a moment by the brightness of the clearing. It wasn’t morning; she’d been roused from her sleep by the sound of Dario humming with distress.
She turned to look toward him, then rose to her feet for a clearer view. At first she’d thought that a strong wind must have blown through the forest, tearing petals from the trees and strewing them over his body as he slept. But the patches of luminous yellow belonged to his skin.
Yalda knelt by Dario’s bed; his eyes were closed, but he was thrashing from side to side. She could feel mites coming and going all around him; she tried waving them away, but they were persistent.
She called out to Vito, “Father! Help me!”
As Vito stirred, the haze of sleep cleared from Yalda’s vision and the throng of mites came into sharper focus. Those that were descending onto Dario’s body appeared perfectly ordinary, but those rising up into the forest again, having bitten him, were imbued with their own small share of the strange yellow light. Yalda had never seen anything like it; when an insect fed on a flower it did not take on its glow.
She looked up to see Vito standing across the bed from her. “He’s in pain,” she said. “I think the insects are troubling him.” She widened her hands and fanned more vigorously, hoping her father would join in.
“The heat!” Dario protested miserably. “Is this what childbirth is like? Is this my punishment?” His eyes remained firmly closed. Yalda doubted that he knew where he was or who was tending to him.
Vito said nothing, but he knelt and began swatting at the insects himself. Yalda peered down at Dario, hoping for a sign that their efforts were bringing him some respite from his suffering. A new patch of radiance had appeared, a shimmering yellow smudge that appeared to be leaking out from a tear in his skin. It was spreading at an alarming rate, as if it was made of some unimaginably soft resin. Yalda had never seen anything move so freely, other than the finest dust—but despite the steady breeze this wasn’t scattering like dust.
“What is that?” she asked Vito.
“I don’t know. Some kind of… liquid.”
Vito spoke the last word with an air of dismay, but before Yalda could ask him what it meant the whole clearing lit up, brighter than day. She closed her eyes instinctively; when she opened them the light was gone, but everything looked darker, as if she’d been staring into the sun.
“We have to leave,” Vito declared abruptly.