The return from the Vittorio Emanuele Theater was not a simple drive home, but a silent procession under the cobalt sky of a Messinese night that seemed to hold its breath. Elia drove the old car with an almost sacral caution, conscious that the cabin carried something far more precious than three human beings: it carried a miracle just performed. Belinda, sitting in the passenger seat, clutched her handbag tightly to her chest, feeling through the leather the residual warmth of those magical pointe shoes. Beside her, Mattia watched the lights of the Calabrian coast reflected in the waters of the Strait, deciding that silence had reigned far too long.
"Erica knew this moment would come," Mattia began, his voice made husky by emotion and the exhaustion of the journey. Belinda turned toward him, the reflections of the streetlamps dancing across her finally relaxed face. "She told me the story of that amulet just before I left London. It isn't an object bought by chance, Belinda. It is the missing piece of a puzzle that began the moment Shimmy set foot in this house."
Mattia began to recount a rainy afternoon in Notting Hill when Erica—driven by an intuition she could not rationally explain—had entered an antique shop located in a signless basement. There, amidst grandfather clocks that ticked to different tempos and carpets worn by the passage of centuries, she had met an elderly Egyptian man with eyes clouded by cataracts but capable of reading the soul. The man had placed the Eye of Horus—the Udjat—into her hands, explaining that in ancient mythology, that eye represented not just sight, but "restored wholeness."
"The antiquarian told her that the Eye of Horus had been torn away by the god Seth during a bloody battle," Mattia continued, as Elia slowed to turn into the lane toward home. "It had been shattered into pieces, scattered into the chaos. But the god Thot found it and, through a magic that blended science with the divine, he reassembled it. But there is a detail Erica wanted you to know: Thot did not merely repair it. He added a special component to fill the gaps, making the eye more powerful than it had been originally. It was not just a healthy eye; it was an eye that had known the darkness and defeated it."
Belinda listened, feeling every word vibrate in her kidneys—no longer as pain, but as a resonance. She understood that her illness had been the dismemberment of her own "eye," the loss of her equilibrium. Erica, in London, had perceived the toxicity of the lead that was poisoning her sister and had sought a "vessel" capable of reversing the process. The Shimmy doll had been the catalyst, the necessary weight to attract the evil, while the Eye of Horus was the promise of healing.
"When Azzurra danced tonight," Belinda whispered, glancing at her daughter who slept exhausted in the backseat, her head leaning against the window, "I felt as if every one of her jumps was stitching together an invisible wound. Mattia, did the antiquarian say anything else?"
Mattia nodded, lowering his gaze. "He said that base metal always seeks its own redemption through fire or through art. The lead in that doll didn't want to kill you, Belinda. It was a wandering weight in search of a body that knew how to transmute it. Azzurra offered her feet, and you offered your endurance. The amulet Erica sent you is the final seal."
Arriving at the front gate, the scent of night-blooming jasmine welcomed them like a balm. Elia switched off the engine, and for a long moment, no one moved. The realization that the "London cycle"—which began with a haunting doll and continued through clinical tests and tears—had closed in the arms of Sicily, brought with it a peace that was almost unbearable. Belinda opened her bag and brushed her fingers against the gold amulet. She knew that tomorrow, she would have to perform the final act of this long alchemical odyssey.