She had dressed and gone out without giving much thought to the possibility that her father might come home while she was gone. Opening the front door, she had been greeted by a fairy tale landscape with a touch of eeriness about it: the fog was so dense that it had altered the features of the world beyond recognition. It got into her mouth, made it feel sticky with the taste of something damp, rotten. Lucia realized that if there was someone hiding in that whiteness, she wouldn’t be able to see them until they were close enough for her to feel their breath on her face.

She walked quickly to the center of Travenì. The streets were deserted, and she could barely make out the lights inside the homes and restaurants. It was no time for tourists, and as for the locals, they were all staying indoors where it was warm. Lucia followed the main road that cut the town in half until she reached the square with the small church and the medieval clock tower. This was the spot where brave knights had repelled the invading Turks. When the teacher had told them that story, Mathias had asked whether there were any bones buried in the ground there. The whole class had laughed at that, and the teacher had told him off for asking such a morbid question. Lucia didn’t know what “morbid” meant; she’d had to ask Diego. Mathias had told her that his obsession with bodies—living or dead—disgusted his father, too, and that one day his father had called him a “psychopath.” It meant that your mind didn’t work right. But Lucia didn’t think there was anything wrong with Mathias.

Still, the thought that there might be the remains of an ancient battle beneath her feet scared her that day. She sped up, taking the road that led from the city center to the twin lakes of Flais and through to the border. She didn’t go that far, though, and stopped at the fork in the road near the railway station. Somewhere in that mist was the path that led to the statue of the Austro-Hungarian grenadier.

Lucia used the sound of her footsteps to guide her. When she heard the crunch of gravel beneath her feet, she followed that noise all the way to the slope. The higher she climbed, the thinner the fog became. The outline of the bronze statue emerged from the heavy air like a gargantuan shadow. Over on the other side of the promontory were the woods and the trail that led down into the gorge.

Through the haze of fog, Lucia spotted a scarf wrapped around the statue’s neck. As if by magic, her fear dissipated. She took the last few meters to the statue at a sprint and reached the top of the hill with her breath singeing her throat. The world at her feet looked like a low-lying cloud.