Belinda, back home, reminisced about the days spent with her best friends, Mattia and Erica. They had been brief and intense, like a shot of tequila to be thrown back in one gulp, which then numbed the thoughts and the tongue, but warmed the chest.
Mattia had always been Belinda's dearest friend, her accomplice. She remembered sunny afternoons playing volleyball or hide-and-seek in the courtyard, remembered snacks made of bread and Nutella and orange juice prepared by Grandma Belinda, known as Linda, and mornings at the beach building sandcastles with buckets and spades. She then remembered the phase of growth, becoming adolescents and then adults, and the paths separating for a period that seemed long and painful to Belinda.
Mattia had always been a sensitive child, but very different from Belinda, his sister, even physically. Taller and more slender than her, with big eyes and full lips, an olive complexion, very Norman in his features. Slender and lean physique, typical of dancers: Mattia was in fact a dance teacher and owned and managed a Caribbean dance school in London along with his wife Erica, who was also a belly dance teacher. The meeting between Mattia and Erica had been almost mandatory. When one spent a lot of time in the same place and shared the same passions and interests, the spark of passion and love ignited.
Belinda sat down on the purified sofa in the living room, the Villa immersed in that dense, almost religious silence it had acquired after Mabon. The walls seemed to listen to her. The memory of Mattia was not just sweet; it was a goad. Her brother's life in London, so vibrant, efficient yet distant, represented a crossroads she herself had faced: remaining trapped in Sicilian history or choosing individual freedom, at the cost of closeness. Mattia had betrayed the Sicilian rule of physical presence, but he had found happiness. It was a balance she still struggled to accept.
She moved towards Grandmother Linda's chest. The embroideries were now kept with reverence, no longer hidden. She took the locket and turned it over in her fingers. It was time to transform the energy given by London and Samuele's wedding into action. She had to close the circle of greed.
She found Elia in the garden. He was measuring the points of the old dry-stone wall he had repaired, making notes in a notebook. His way of facing life had always been methodical and tangible, the perfect counterweight to Belinda's volcanism.
"Elia," she said, her tone resolute. "We must close the account with Grandfather Giovanni's past. We must go to Punta dei Venti and descend into that cellar. Mabon is over; now it is time to harvest what was not spiritual."
Elia looked up. The Sicilian sun, relentlessly returned, illuminated the expression lines around his eyes. "I knew you would ask. Samuele called. He found the original old blueprint of the lighthouse. It's drawn by hand, probably not official, but it clearly indicates an underground crypt for salt storage, beneath the circular base."
"Salt?" Belinda asked.
"Yes. Before it became a lighthouse, the promontory was a strategic point for the salt and fish trade. The crypt is deep. They called it the Sala del Ritorno, the Hall of Return, because the salt, returning to the land, restored life."
The Sala del Ritorno. The name echoed in Belinda with the sound of an ancient ceremony. It was a term that spoke of cycles, of earth and sea.
"We must go now. I don't want any more nights of waiting," Belinda concluded.
They set off in Elia's car, leaving Azzurra with a trusted neighbour. The air was still, heavy with sun. Arriving at Punta dei Venti, the place seemed even wilder and more desolate. The lighthouse base was an island of stone immersed in the Mediterranean scrub.
Samuele was waiting for them. He had brought a crowbar and a large lantern. He was not dressed for a ceremony like in London, but in jeans and a wrinkled linen shirt, the investigator ready for action.
"Beneath this stone, according to the diagram, is the trapdoor. It was camouflaged to deter raiders," Samuele explained, pointing to a slab of limestone near where Belinda had found the Sabbat carvings.
The three worked together, in a harmony that smelled of dust and salt. The crowbar leveraged the stone, and the slab lifted with a groan of old rock. Below, a black hole opened, with the acrid and salty smell of the underground crypt.
Samuele lowered the lantern. The light trembled, revealing a steep stone staircase descending into the darkness.
"Who goes first?" Samuele asked, tense.
Belinda did not hesitate. "Me. This is the end of my old burden. You are my life, but this is my past to face."
She slowly descended the steps, the locket tight in her hand. The Sala del Ritorno swallowed her. The lantern light revealed walls of rough rock and an earthen floor covered with a thick layer of crystallized salt. There were no glittering treasures, no bags of gold. Only the echo of thousands of years of labour and toil.
In the centre of the hall, however, there was something. Not a strongbox, but an old rough wooden display, a makeshift glass case covered with a thick cloth.
Belinda approached and pulled back the cloth. Her heart was pounding, not from greed, but from pure emotional tension.
Inside the glass case, there was no gold, no money, nothing monetizable. There were three objects, carefully arranged and illuminated by the trembling lantern light: an old pair of worn dance shoes, 1920s tap shoes, with rusty taps; a small tin box, which contained dried seeds and a label with elegant handwriting, the same that had written "The Lighthouse. 1928."; and finally, an old passport, dated 1928, with the photograph of a young woman, her features very similar to those of Grandfather Giovanni, but with a dreamy and rebellious look.
Belinda felt an emptiness in her stomach. The treasure that had consumed a generation was not a treasure of wealth, but a treasure of unheard dreams.
The woman in the passport was Grandfather Giovanni's sister, an aunt she had never known, who had left Sicily in 1928. The dance shoes and dried seeds were her legacy. Grandfather Giovanni's obsession with gold was not born from a hidden treasure, but from the anger of having lost something invaluable: his sister's freedom. Mattia, the dancer, had unconsciously inherited the legacy of a rebellious aunt, while the family consumed itself in the search for gold that did not exist.
Belinda called Elia and Samuele. The two descended and remained silent, struck by the material poverty and emotional richness of the discovery.
"The real Lighthouse was this," Belinda whispered, touching the shoes. "Freedom. The right to choose a life outside of greed. Grandfather Giovanni did not lose gold, he lost his soul, and we lost the chance to know this woman, who only wanted to dance. Le radici chi teni (the roots you hold) are not a prison, but a starting point for flight. Just like Mattia."
They embraced each other, the lantern light illuminating the glass case. The Sala del Ritorno had not returned gold, but the final meaning of their search. The circle of the past was finally closed, but the passport and the small tin box of seeds opened a new perspective on the future and the bond with Mattia.