“Go home, Tyler,” she shouted back. “Or stay here, with her. Either way, I really don’t care.”

The weight of summer fell over her skin as she walked. Heat stuck to every surface, the copper light of dusk that graced the surface of the water as she looked down from the stone wall of the Ponte Umberto bridge. She stared at the reflection of mottled clouds and black trees that stretched to the banks of the river and wished upon wish she could wake up to discover it had been nothing but a dream.

Emily thought of all the lessons her grandmother had taught her. She was always asking her to look beyond the facts, to push her mind further than rational thought. Her way of teaching had shown Emily how everything in the world was somehow connected. Like water, which traveled all over the globe in a never-ending cycle of life and death, making you realize just how insignificant one life, one person, could actually be.

A soft swish of leaves as a warm breeze stirred the sleepy city. Ahead was the silhouetted dome of the Vatican. Inside those walls was a ceiling painted by Michelangelo, a masterpiece that he never wanted to work on and that took him years to complete. It was incredible and ridiculous all at once.

She could go and look upon it with her own eyes, search out all the clues, all the suggestions that there was more to the painting than you saw at first glance. The secrets Michelangelo hid in plain sight, just as she had done in all of her grandmother’s books. People have a habit of ignoring what’s right in front of them, choosing to see only what they want to, not what they should.

Emily started to become aware of something that didn’t quite fit, that shouldn’t be—a sensation which made her stand a little straighter, hold her breath, because the dome seemed to be moving, vibrating, and with it came the sound of…of what? Emily stretched her neck to see, to hear a hum, a crackle, as thousands upon thousands of black dots emerged from the top of the church.

It was like a cloud, a moving and expanding cloud that changed from one second to the next into fantastical shapes. Except it wasn’t a cloud at all.

Starlings. A murmuration of starlings that seemed to expand and retract like an accordion, painting pictures in the sky as they swarmed up and over the city.

Emily saw shadowy shapes that broke then fitted back together, deep pockets of black that fragmented into individual birds, all those wings that rustled and swooped in the darkening sky. The sound made her think of breaking waves on the shore back home. A storm approaching. The wind pushing and pulling the air back and forth. It seeped right into her soul, made her ache for the absence of her family, made her afraid to be alone.

Then it was done. The birds moved on, and the city seemed too quiet, too still. Emily turned to see Tyler standing at the end of the bridge, waiting for her.