Three days before he spoke to the mountain, Pietro Coppino noticed that Persephone's fingers had begun to droop.
It was 1823 in northern Italy, early October. The beat of horses' hooves in the street below was like the ticking of a giant watch, and children laughed and shouted as if by sheer will they could stave off the close of day. The sun had not quite set, but Pietro's studio was dim, for the blinds were drawn, as always. Hanging oil lamps gave off the only light.
Pietro had devoted close to a year to sculpting Persephone and her abductor Pluto, and by the hand of providence the piece was nearly finished. He blew fine marble dust out of the crevices where the dour god's arms wrapped around Persephone's ankles. The shapeliness of her calves drew Pietro's eyes up, up, up along the smooth slope of her leg, which was tensed as she strained to break free from Pluto's hungry embrace. Her arms were lifted to heaven, her eyes wide, her mouth frozen open in a small circle of terror.
The lamplight flickered, and for a moment Persephone's hair shone like a sunlit field of grain. Pietro stepped back, feeling a tightness in his chest. He scratched his pointed white beard, dislodging dust of the same color. Wiping his brow cut a sweaty pink swath across the back of his hand.
Since he freed the first of her fingers from its marble encasement, she had often affected that way, with an inexplicable mixture of yearning and grief, but it was an emotion he never let himself examine too closely. Most times when he felt it coming on, he would lay aside his mallets and chisels, lock his gate from the outside, and prowl the busier streets of Sugremaro, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his smock. When he would begin muttering, or even remonstrating with an unseen companion, the local police would take him by the elbow and usher him politely but firmly back to his house. He was a great sculptor, they would tell him in quiet, reasonable tones. Sugremaro was fortunate to have him, they would say, but he was not always good for business. He disturbed the patrons of the sidewalk cafés. He repelled paying customers from the streetside merchants.
Even in his confusion, Pietro always cooperated with the police. Arriving home would bring him back to himself, and he would spend the remainder of the evening in his library with his books--a fine collection of fifty or so, including works on art, science, history, and politics--and a bottle of red wine. He would often fall asleep in his reading chair, and would not reenter the studio until morning, when Persephone called to him again and he responded to her summons with the sharp clash of his tools, the caress of his files and rasps.
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