The morning after the expedition to Punta dei Venti, the Villa was no longer an isolated building, but a crossroads. The air, previously heavy with mourning and that latent rancour—the burden inherited from generations consumed by the blind obsession with wealth, and only mitigated by the dignity of figures like Uncle Carmelo—was now crossed by an electric current. Belinda no longer saw the damp walls or the furniture covered in the dust of years; she saw an ancient altar, a focal point for a rediscovered, millenary wisdom. True wealth, she had realized, was not material, but self-awareness.
"It's not enough to know it, we must live it," Belinda declared fervently, her copper hair tied back fiercely, as she began moving the old sofas from the centre of the living room. It was an act that felt more like a purification than a mere cleaning. "These cycles, this Wheel... Mom left it here not to be filed away in a dusty register, but to be the backbone of our lives. We must clear out. We must make room for the seasons, freeing ourselves from the weight of the avarice that has infested this house."
While the faithfully pragmatic Elia took up a broom to sweep the garden, clearing paths overgrown with weeds, Samuele, seated at the kitchen table surrounded by maps and photocopies of cadastral records, pointed out the one remaining logical knot, the practical one.
"Belinda, the wisdom is beautiful and poetically perfect, but there is an inconsistency," Samuele argued, tapping his finger on the grimorio's notes. "Only four feasts were carved into the rock at the lighthouse base, the hinge feasts. Your mother, obsessed as she was with order and completeness, could not have failed to know all eight. And she would never have left them exposed to the erosion of wind and salt, especially if they were such a sacred treasure. Where are the other four? And where is their centre of control?"
The observation struck Belinda with the force of a wave. Mom. Every detail of her Mom's character resurfaced with a new light: her meticulousness, her deep and almost secret reserve.
"You're right, absolutely right," Belinda murmured, freezing in the middle of the salon. "Mom used to embroider linen, she sewed. I remember her mania for order, her attention to every thread. Everything had to have its place, maniacally guarded, far from the eyes and hands of anyone trying to monetize or destroy our past. If the Lighthouse was the place of her illumination, she would have left only a clue there, an invitation to search... but the rest, the complete treasure, must be stored neatly here. In a place she considered sacred, inaccessible to the madness of searching for money."
Elia returned to the kitchen, his face sweaty but satisfied. "What are you looking for? There is only one place where Mom kept things of emotional value, things that were hers, and which she kept out of reach of anyone determined to dig for a treasure. The one she affectionately called 'Grandmother Linda's chest,' because it contained the family embroideries. The one she kept beside her bed, in the room. No one has had the courage to touch it since her death, out of respect."
Belinda felt an intense thrill, almost a physical connection with the past. Mom had that single, large chest of dark, massive, antique wood, inherited from Grandmother Linda. For years, it had remained untouched, a silent monument to grief and a warning not to desecrate her memory. Now, confronting it felt like a ritual passage, a spiritual cleansing necessary before rebirth.
Together, the couple went upstairs. The heavy chest still smelled of dried lavender and ancient linen. Opening that box was not just recovering an object, but giving permission to the past to speak and the future to begin.
Belinda pulled out the key, which she had always kept in her jewellery box like a talisman. The mechanism clicked with a solemn sound amplified by the silence of the room.
There was no gold, no diamonds, nor the secret documents that the obsession with wealth had led people to seek until the end of days. There was an infinitely more precious treasure: her Mom's spiritual testament.
Inside, wrapped in linen and cotton veils, were eight small circular embroideries, each the size of a saucer, fastened onto wooden hoops as if they were sacred medallions. They were the symbols of the Wheel, stitched with an almost maniacal precision and passion.
While Belinda, with trembling hands, pulled out the first four embroideries celebrating summer and harvest (Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon), Elia extracted the remaining four she had seen carved into the lighthouse rock (Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara).
"She made all eight, perfectly preserved!" Belinda whispered, tears in her eyes not from grief, but from understanding. "The cycle is complete! Mom knew the entire Wheel! She saved everything!"
Each embroidery was meticulously dated, but the detail that unveiled the secret bridge between the two families, the reason why the Lighthouse was a common reference point for wisdom, was a small symbol sewn into the lower corner of every Sabbat. It was the Eye and the Wave, the exact carving from the medallion, the symbol of protection for Belinda's and her Mom's bloodline. And next to the Akragas symbol on every embroidery was a tiny stylized Almond Blossom, a symbol Belinda immediately recognized as being linked to Elia's mother, Anna, whose childhood home was surrounded by almond trees in bloom every February, the period of Imbolc.
Samuele, who had joined them, understood the heraldic significance of that stitching. "Your Mom and Elia's mother, Anna, were accomplices in this wisdom... or they exchanged these symbols as a sign of recognition. The Wheel is the missing link, the secret code that unites the two women and their lineages against the blind obsession that consumed their families."
"My entire family paid the price of avarice," Belinda reflected. "But Mom and Anna did not yield. They left this, the true lighthouse, the wisdom. It is a silent resistance, a woman's magic that preserved our true legacy against corruption."
Belinda took the embroideries into her hands. The cycles of the earth, the dignity of Uncle Carmelo, the profound resilience of Mom and Anna, the light of Magna Graecia. All united by eight simple circles sewn on linen.
"The Lighthouse is complete," Belinda said, with a calm and quietness she hadn't felt in months. "Mom left me the map for living. And now I know what we must do. Our next appointment is Mabon. The Autumn Equinox, the reckoning, the thanksgiving, the harvest. It's not just a feast on the calendar, it's a mission: to celebrate the harvest of awareness we have just gathered."
She closed the chest, but this time without fear or sadness. It was empty of mourning, but full of purpose and light. The Villa was no longer the house of ghosts, but the sanctuary of the cycle that begins anew.