Guest post written by The Web of Time author Flavia Brunetti
Flavia is a writer and humanitarian aid worker from Rome, Italy. She grew up bouncing back and forth between Italy and California, and since then has lived between Tunisia, Libya, Palestine, and back to Rome. Because of this, her writing often revolves around place and identity, and is usually written on a plane where she inevitably apologizes to the person sitting next to her for bumping their elbow. This is actually how The Web of Time got its start—on a flight between Tunis and Rome, spent thinking about the places we run to and wondering what the gods might make of days like the ones we are living through.
About The Web of Time: Time is erasing itself, history is disappearing and the gods don’t know how to stop it—until Jack meets Anna. Anna was raised in a Rome full of magic, complete with a god to protect her, while Jack grew up splintered between two places, and harbors a traumatic past. Helped and hindered by a rotating cast of flawed deities that spring from the places they belong to, they’ll embark on a journey to reopen powerful portals that connect three ancient cities: Rome, Tunis, and Tripoli. If they can come together in time and use their passion for drawing and writing to reopen the blocked pathways, they may be able to save history, the gods themselves, and the possibility of a future. PLUS you can read an excerpt at the end of the guest post!
I moved around a lot as a kid, and so I spent a fair amount of time in liminal spaces, on one side or the other. In airports, my eyes grew bigger to take in all the people moving around me, and those who were still were the most fascinating of all. The concept of movement, or a lack of it, of the in-between and how it shifts around us as we move through it, was one of the first things little me scribbled about in notebooks.
I wouldn’t say I was lonely, exactly, but I would say that I grew up used to being the one who leaves, acclimated to the fact that missing people I had grown to love, subsisting on memories, was the natural order of things. And anyway, there was always the magic, and the stories were everywhere: the woman running through the airport, hair flying, yelling she couldn’t miss her flight, had to get home to help her mother complete a spell that needed all the witches of their family; some of the kids at school were mean because they were actually children of ogres, except for the nice ones, and they were elves; there were mountain lions roaming our region of California because the land was full of new magic, and they drank it at night for strength; when my father dropped me off at the Fiumicino Airport in Rome, until my aunt met me at the San Francisco Airport, I was a super spy on a secret mission, and spies were always mysterious, but especially brave; and when my father took me to see his favorite historical remnants, the Pantheon and the Colosseum, Piazza Navona, I didn’t even have to make up the magic: it was right there, shimmering at the surface. Rome was bursting with it.
So, of course, whether I did it on purpose or not (I didn’t), when I wrote The Web of Time, my first YA Fantasy novel, it came out full of fantastical elements blended into real-world history, places I fell in love with in real life, and transient deities both fiercely devoted to their places of origin and unable to save them. There’s a web of time that simply can’t do it on its own anymore, and stories and found family that can save the world, but only if our characters, both god and human, can come together.
Here are some of my favorite combinations in the book of the normal mixed with the fantastical:
The Web
“Far beneath the ground, near the core of the Earth, there is a web, stretching its strong silver filaments for untold miles, cocooned in a cave that grows with it.” The Web, guarded by the gods, weaves time itself, marks history. Until one day, the river god Tevere, guardian of Rome’s Tiber River, realizes pieces of the history of his city are missing. Slowly, time is disintegrating, and the Web with it, causing what’s already happened to mix with what never should have happened and barrel into what now may never be. The gods must find heroes to save time, and as always, will look to the humans, though they disdain them.
The Portals
Powered by the Web of Time, the Portals of Kindness, Art, and Language that connected ideas and people disappeared from the world long ago. The gods blame the humans, but they also have themselves to blame (they do not admit to this). One of my favorite parts of writing The Web of Time was writing the stories that take place through time and tell us how it came to be that the Great Portals closed. And they stay firmly shut—that is, until a young human boy named Jack falls through one in Tunis’s Ennejma Ezzahra Palace and lands squarely on the ruins of Rome’s Umbilicus Urbi—right into Anna (by the way, you can read the exclusive excerpt with this scene here!)
Memories
To know the heart of the story, you have to follow the memories. Moneta, the goddess of memory, mistakenly sends Jack and Anna into a memory of Jack’s past that will remind him why he must always seek to forget. Anna will meet her father in a memory of Lecce, Italy, and will have to decide if she wants to stay there, in temporary respite from a crumbling world she doesn’t know if she can fix and doesn’t want the responsibility for, for the opportunity of spending time with the father she lost as a baby. Nafusa, the Libyan cat god, lives with the remembrance of a mistake he made long ago, that has colored the rest of his days. And to open a rip in time, you must offer a memory, one you cannot choose.
Places and the history they belong to
Three of the main characters of The Web of Time are its cities of Rome, Tunis, and Tripoli. The adventure spans out over their histories, their gargantuan ancient markers, and their present-day, interweaving time and places and the deities that belong to them, and that they belong to. I suppose it’s no coincidence that, in the end, the gods of WOT are a combination of the embodiment of places: Nafusa is named after the Libyan mountain range he hails from; Tevere is the Italian word for Tiber, the river that defines Rome; and Vulturnus, the most darkly chaotic of the book’s gods, is the east wind in Roman mythology and a river god himself; and concepts that humans are fascinated with, like memories, chance, and fate.
As an adult, more than in-between, I now feel consistently an amalgamation of many things and yet entirely myself, of places, experiences, life I hope is so far well lived and will continue to open up and make me uncomfortable. Instead of feeling pulled between memories and cultures, I feel I get, in some small way, to be part of all of them, make them also a little bit my own, fashion out of them a beating heart. Movement, now, is also a tree leaf turning in the breeze, flashing emerald green and silver as it turns, on a summer day in Rome as I am walking home.
EXCERPT FROM THE WEB OF TIME
Anna del Giudizio firmly believed places of history had opinions, and if that was the case, then dusk was the Roman Forum’s favorite time of day. Anna didn’t think this was necessarily a problem, though, as she stubbed her toe for the umpteenth time, she wished she could see better in the dark. As if on cue, the lights dotting the Forum lit up. She stood up from where she had been massaging her big toe.
“Papà?” she called, looking around at the sweeping landscape dotted with ruins, but no one was there. Figuring her stepdad was probably at one of the ticket offices, she began retracing her steps.
Rome on a cool evening was its own particular beauty, and Anna took her time walking slowly through the Forum Magnum, the marketplace, and central structure of ancient Rome. She never grew tired of the sweeping history in the ruins that patterned the stretch of land between Rome’s Colosseum and Piazza Venezia, where time, as her stepdad would tell her, was truly layered, and the deeper one went, the more intrigue was uncovered.
Anna never found Rome boring, but she did often find it chaotic. It was in the Rome of old that Anna felt truly comfortable and unfettered, especially in the Forum, where her stepfather was both a researcher and a tour guide. She was free to roam there, and roam she did, though carefully, full of respect, never touching anything. In a place like this, she always thought, you might pick up what you think is a random rock and find you’ve moved a two-thousand-year-old remnant of a temple to a god or a monument to a leader. Or, she thought now, looking up and up at her favorite structure, you might stumble into a two-thousand-year-old arch of victory in honor of Emperor Septimius Severus and his sons.
“Knew I’d find you here, eh Anna?” said a familiar voice behind her, and Anna smiled without turning around.
“Ciao, papà. Ti stavo cercando. I was looking for you, and I got…” she gazed at the arch.
“Distracted,” Arturo sighed. “I so understand.”
“I guess I take after my dad,” she smirked at him, knowing it would please him. Arturo had never barged past the memory of her father, respecting the other man’s place in the same way that he respected the monuments he curated: in reverence. So she always tried to make it a point to let him know of his importance to her. He smiled quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“She’s one of my favorites, too,” Arturo said, referring, as always, to the monuments as females, because, he said, awe-striking things that change the world are often female.
“Ti va una pizza?”
“Absolutely, let me text Mom and see if she feels like one. She’ll want a carbonara instead, I’m sure,” Arturo said as they picked their way back to one of the main entrances. “And maybe I do, too, actually. Oh! Ignazio!” Arturo stopped to speak to one of the night guardians of the Forum.
Anna, knowing Arturo would take some time to chat with the guardian, pulled out her phone to text her mom, smiled and waved at Ignazio, and wandered a little farther down the path. She perched on a large rock that jutted into the main path. She sat on it knowing anything that was in the public path was just a rock and not a marker of ancient civilization.
It was a quiet night. Anna looked up at the stars, which could just be made out through the lights and smog of the city.
“The blending of the ancient and the modern. Or the clashing,” she said out loud, wishing she had brought her notebook with her to write down her thoughts. She could just hear the comforting sound of Arturo talking, and she was gazing off into space when two bright spots of light appeared in front of her and blinked.
“Ah, ma ciao eh. I wondered when I’d see you again.”
The black cat materialized seemingly out of thin air and wound himself down the path. He was much larger than a normal housecat, with white moon-like eyes that hung like lamps in the dark. Anna held out her hand—an attempt she made every time she saw the cat. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I was wondering where you were.” He sat down a few feet away, lifting one paw to lick. “Wow, your paws are huge.” He looked up at her with both eyes in a manner that implied he understood her and did not appreciate her comment. “I mean, you’re beautiful.” He resumed his licking. “I’m just saying you’re huge and glossy for a stray cat.”
“Anna, are you talking to the cat?” Arturo was coming down the path, and the cat turned to look at him before leaping onto the rock next to Anna, then pausing for a moment before disappearing into the night.
“I know him. I see him all the time around here.”
“Really?” replied Arturo. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. I like to think I know all the cats that roam the Forum. Does he ever talk back?” he grinned at her.
“Sometimes,” she said, smiling.
Arturo laughed, “Oh, but of course!”
She was certain the cat used to answer, so many years ago, she sometimes wondered if it had been the wishful thinking of a lonely little girl—a game she had played. She knew if she told Arturo he would ask what the cat had said, so Anna just smiled, lost in thought, looking back the way the cat had gone.
“So, I need to stay here with Ignazio a bit longer. Is that alright? I’m sorry. He needs a bit of help with tagging some of the new pieces.”
Anna snapped out of her thoughts. “Sì, certo papà, of course. I’ll make my own way back.”
“Maybe I should call your mother to come and get you. It’s quite dark,” Arturo replied, worried, fishing for his phone in his pocket.
“Papà! I’m fifteen! Dai!”
“That’s exactly why!” he laughed.
“I’m around the corner from the house. Dai, you and Mom told me I could at least walk home from here by myself. I’ll see you at home, okay?” She hugged him tightly and walked quickly in the other direction before he could change his mind. Besides, she wanted to think, and that was always best done when she was by herself.
Anna found herself back near the Arch of Severus when a sudden tremor almost lifted her off her feet. She stumbled, catching herself on a guardrail, and looked around for Arturo or anyone else. But she was alone, the settling night slowly cloaking the familiar ruins all around her.
Her eyes focused in on the remains of the Umbilicus Urbi, which sat next to the arch. Something was moving above it; the night sky was rippling. She squinted, moving slightly closer. Something seemed to be etching itself out against the space between stars. Anna looked at it curiously as the crack became longer and longer, and finally, with a sound exactly like the one made when cracking an egg over a pan, it opened and a person was pushed out, falling about a foot before landing with his hands and knees onto the remains of the Umbilicus Urbi.
Anna circled the structure to get closer, but she couldn’t see the person from this vantage point. She could only hear heavy breathing and some wet sniffling. She looked around in case Arturo was in the vicinity, but the Forum appeared deserted.
“He-hello?” she tried, not sure if a person shoved out of a crack in the sky would be more likely to speak English or Italian. The sniffling stopped.
“Hello?” came a reply, and a head appeared from over the edge of the Urbi, followed a moment later by the rest of a boy, scrambling over the edge to get down, landing with a thump on the ground, still breathing heavily and with a bloodstained shirt. He tried to get up, but his legs were trembling too much, and he sat back down, leaning against the green pack strapped to his back.
“Are you alright?” Anna said, getting closer to him.
“Am I… is this… am I home?” asked the boy, putting a tentative hand on his dark curls, seemingly to check for wounds.
“I’m not sure,” Anna said, crouching down, thinking he did not seem dangerous so much as confused. “Where is home? You’re in Rome.”
“How?” he said, looking at Anna as if she had an answer. “Who are you?”
“My name is Anna. I was just walking by on my way home when you appeared out of a sliver in the sky,” she considered how ridiculous that would sound to anybody but the person it just happened to.
“Out of a… what? I was in the Ennejma Ezzahra just a moment ago, drawing. In Tunis,” he added in response to the confusion on her face. “The capital of Tunisia,” he added for good measure.
She nodded. “I know Tunis,” she said almost absentmindedly, walking slowly around the remains of the structure Jack had tumbled off. “Never been there, though. Is it nice?” she asked.
Now it was Jack’s turn to look confused. “Yes. It’s a great place.”
Anna turned her attention back to the boy, whose breathing seemed to be returning to normal. She handed him a napkin. “For your nose. So, who are you?”
He stared at her. “Sorry, my name is Jack,” he answered, standing up and putting his hand out for her to shake. “Um, sorry, I just…” his eyes fluttered, and he sat back down. “I’m a little discombobulated.”
“Good word,” said Anna, flopping down next to him and turning to face him. Close up, he smelled like sweat, though she could also smell blood. “But I meant who are you, like, do you often go popping out of the sky?”
Jack opened his eyes to stare at her again. “No. I don’t know what happened. I was drawing in the Ennejma Ezzahra, and when I went to look for the guards to let me out, I started feeling sick, then I came out here.” His head sank back onto the rock behind him. Anna stood up and ventured closer to the ruin. She put one hand out tentatively, withdrawing it before she touched it.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left the notebook at home today,” she said, looking around for something.
“Is there something there?” Jack asked.
“No, I just… do you know what this is?” she asked, turning to face him. He shook his head. “It’s the Umbilicus Urbi. Well, the remains of it. Used to be the symbolic center of ancient Rome. It’s… well, it doesn’t look like much now… but, you know, my dad, he was a researcher, ‘obsessive,’ my mom used to say,” Anna punctuated her words with air quotes, paused and then went on, “and he did research on a lot of parts of Rome and he would have told you that this was the center point for everything back then, so when people were measuring distances, they would use the Urbi as the main point. I feel strange just touching it.” She looked pointedly at Jack’s sneakers, and he tucked his legs under himself.
“Obviously, I didn’t mean to fall on it,” he said defensively, getting back on his feet and approaching the ruin. “But I’m gonna have to climb back on it.”
Anna turned around, eyes wide. “You’re going to climb back on?” She appeared far more shocked that he was going to touch the relic again than she had when he appeared out of the sky.
“I have to go back the way I came, don’t I?”
“Did you not hear me? Historic structure. This is what my stepdad means when he says ‘kids these days have no reverence.’ Anyway, I don’t think you can,” said Anna, easing herself between Jack and the relic, as if he were going to pounce at any moment. “There’s no more crack in the sky.”
“Kids these days? Never mind. Listen, Anna, that’s what you said your name was? Maybe it will come back. I don’t know how these things work, but I need to get back. So, can you move?”
Anna frowned but scooted out of his way, not knowing what else to do. “At least take your sneakers off,” she said.
“I need them! I’m going back to Tunis in my socks?”
“Is the place you were drawing very mountainous?”
“Fine,” he said, slipping off his black sneakers, “but you have to take them then. I’ll… get them from you next time I’m in Rome.”
“The normal way, or should I expect you back through the same route?”
Anna flinched when Jack placed his hands on the Urbi, though she noticed he touched the ruin exceedingly carefully. For a moment, he took his hands off, leaving them in the air, as if he were thinking about it, and then he scrambled up. He stood, poised at the top, a disgruntled Anna crossing her arms as he jumped up and down.
“Do you think I’m meant to do something?” he asked when nothing happened.
“Get off the ancient ruin?” she shot at him.
He continued to wave his arms and turn in tiny circles. Finally, defeated, he jumped off.
“Now what?” he demanded, embarrassed that his voice lifted when he spoke, as if he were about to cry.
“I could be the crazy person and suggest a plane,” chimed Anna.
“I could probably just scare my mom senseless by showing up at her house here tonight.”
“Okay, I can take you to my stepdad and we can figure it out from there.” She gestured toward the path that led deeper into the Forum and handed Jack his shoes, which he slipped on, following her. A moment later, they were both standing in front of the Umbilicus Urbi again.
“What’s going on?” Anna shook her head, confused, turned around and took a step, finding herself back in the same place a moment later. Jack took a step away from Anna, moving quickly, and a second later stumbled right into her. She reached her hands out to steady him, but he veered away, landing roughly on all fours.
“Are you alright? What’s going on?” he said, his voice lowering as he hoisted himself up.
“It looks like you started something, and now you will have to finish it,” said a voice behind both of them, and they turned to see who had spoken. The only thing there was a familiar looking black cat.
“Surely not,” said Jack, but Anna knew better. A sigh surrounded them, a small breeze in the otherwise windless night.
“What do you mean?” Anna said to the cat.
Jack looked at her incredulously. “Someone else is talking,” he said. “Someone behind the rocks or something.”
“I mean,” said the cat, and Jack blanched, taking a step back, “that you’re stuck in a loop. Stop struggling, please.”
