The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli

dessert of sugared snow.
    It was a strange town. Black even in full sun. The streets were paved with lava. Lava highlighted arches over doorways. All of Randazzo was a shrine to the volcano.
    Everyone said the ground under Randazzo was blessed. Etna erupted often, destroying whole towns in a matter of hours. Neighboring villages came and went. In contrast, lava never entered Randazzo. Only ashes fell here; everyone swept their steps in the morning. Everyone wore hats and shook them off before entering buildings. They brushed off their cloaks. They stamped their boots. But those ashes were never from burned Randazzo homes. The town was blessed.
    Don Giovanni didn’t enter into talk about blessings. He listened carefully, though, whenever he was privy to talk—which wasn’t often. After all, the lonely trek to find snow filled most of his day. Still, gradually he learned to mimic the tongue of the poorer people in the Latin quarter.
    Soon he dared to open his mouth to ask for work from others. It was only fair; he’d served that one family for a month—so he’d earned those shoes and cape. More than earned them, actually. Don Giovanni had learned that few were willing to ascend the Mountain now because it wasn’t frozen hard enough to offer sure footing anymore. The maidservant had taken advantage of his ignorance.
    He took a perverse pride in knowing he’d braved such danger, and the spectacular view from the upper slopes struck awe into his heart every time. But the cold burned his hands. The sulfur in the air closest to the craters burned his eyes. The isolation burned his spirit.
    As the weather warmed, work got easy to find. He ran errands, transported things around town, mucked out stables—anything in exchange for meals and a place to sleep.
    The ground floors of the buildings were stables. Servants slept with donkeys, horses, goats. One flight up were stores and homes. Don Giovanni lay in a stall at night listening to rich people walk around overhead, living the life he was born to have.
    He worked for anybody—in any quarter. But people could be nasty. They’d pick about the way he stacked the wood or the shape of a hole he’d dug. Anything to say he didn’t deserve as much as they’d promised.
    So soon he stopped that work. He became a champion eel catcher. He hunted at night, so he could watch stars while he waited. The river ran too fast in early spring for nets. So helearned how to make a trap—a
tarusi
. Eels entered into one chamber, passed to another, and couldn’t turn around to get out again. Crabs were the best bait, and easy to get—they came after anything dead. So Don Giovanni picked rats off the town ratcatcher’s pile.
    Everyone ate eels, especially Catholics during Lent. Even after Easter they ate eels on Friday and Saturday, the no-meat days. Don Giovanni ate them, too.
    Toward the middle of April rivers slowed and he caught elvers off the bank with his hands. Slippery, tickly.
    By May the waters warmed with the air and the eels moved faster. They got harder to hold on to as he took them out of the trap. He switched to hunting frogs; the nights were loud with their chorus. He snipped off the heads and feet and peeled off the skin. Then he gutted them. A peasant boy taught him a trick: break the legs and they swell up and look plump, especially if you soak them in water. Don Giovanni had the plumpest frog legs of anyone. He could trade them to a tavern owner for a lamb dinner.
    He caught snails by following the shiny slime on the ground after a rainfall. People loved them in sauces, especially the tiny ones with the transparent shells. He collected mountain fennel; it smelled stronger than the lowland herb—cooks gave him better treats in return.
    The days were hot now, the nights balmy. Don Giovanni took to sleeping outdoors in the scent of mimosa, neargoatherds. They told stories about the wilderness and he told stories about