The GPS turned off on the lava. Then a woman placed a river stone in his hand.

Erasmo couldn't believe it. His satellite navigator, until a few minutes ago a reliable guide, had suddenly shut down, leaving him alone in a lunar landscape. He was on a stretch of black lava, sharp and desolate, where the only trace of life was a few tufts of dry grass defying the aridity of the rock and the silence interrupted only by the rustle of the wind and the sound of his footsteps. He had read stories about Misterbianco, the city buried by lava centuries ago, but being there, on that ground that hid secrets and pains, was a completely different experience. He walked aimlessly, hoping to find a signal, a clue, anything that would bring him back to civilization. But the GPS remained silent, a useless piece of plastic and glass in that stone desert.

It was then that he saw her. "Look deeper, Erasmo. The sky here does not provide answers; the belly of the earth does." The voice was ancient, like the rustle of silk on a stone floor. In front of him, a young woman, Agata, appeared among the shadows of the partially carved arches. She wore a long skirt that rustled against the rock and an embroidered bodice that seemed woven with the ashes of Etna. She gestured for him to enter where the sunlight struggled to break through, where the air smelled of extinguished incense and damp limestone. As soon as Erasmo's feet touched the floor, the church was no longer a ruin but an organism that was beginning to breathe again.

The Main Altar let out a groan of rock: "I feel your footsteps on my back. I have absorbed the heat of Etna and transformed it into memory. I am your stone archive." But it was not alone. Along the nave, the Side Altars awakened one after another. The Altar of Saint Anthony, covered in a patina of sulfur, vibrated with a voice that smelled of wax and old candles: "I have been entrusted with the humblest hopes. I have seen the calloused hands of farmers grip my frames until they were scratched. The lava sealed me just as they were asking for protection, yet my stone is still warm with their faith. I am the keeper of unanswered prayers."

The Altar of Saint Erasmo responded with a metallic reverberation, like the distant sound of chains clinking: "My name is the mirror of yours, boy. I have watched over those who suffered in body and spirit. The lava tried to extinguish my light, but I transformed my pain into a shield of rock. I still hold the visions of those who, looking at me, sought a way out of the darkness of the world. I am the tenacity of those who never surrender to fire."

Finally, the Altar of Our Lady of Grace, on the opposite side, spoke with a sound of the sea's ebb: «I am the last memory of those who fled. The lava caught me while the community tried to take me away, but I remained here, a prisoner of the river of fire. Every time a visitor stops in front of me, I feel the void they left when they had to escape. I am the nostalgia of those who have lost everything.»

Agata led Erasmo to the base of the bell tower, where the square walls disappeared into the ceiling of lava. Suddenly, a dull toll, an invisible heartbeat of bronze, shook the air. «Don't look for my hat among the clouds!» exclaimed the Bell Tower, the voice descending from above like a cascade of gravel. «I am an upside-down periscope. Once I called the faithful to prayer, today I call the dreamers to memory. I am a needle that has sewn together the world above and the world below. Erasmo, your gadget searches for satellites, but I am the only signal that does not fade: I indicate where the land ends and where your buried soul begins.»

Along the walls, the Side Altars began to whisper to each other in a frantic murmur, like old men in the square. «Do you remember the fire?» one said. «How could I forget,» the other replied, with the veins of the stone suddenly glowing red. Agata approached a niche. «I reveal my secret to you. That morning I was baking bread. When the mountain roared, the lava entered through the window, but it did not burn everything. It wrapped the loaves of risen dough and petrified them instantly.» Agata continued: «You seek the great works, the statues, the names of kings, but the true soul of Misterbianco is this: the ability to remain 'soft under the weight of the world.' We remained here because the lava did not destroy our life; it only transformed it into a secret that no one can steal.»

He pulled a small white stone from the folds of his garment, smooth as a river pearl, and placed it in Erasmo's hand. "This comes from the river that flowed here before the land turned black. As long as you keep it with you, you will smell the fields of Misterbianco before the fire. It is your link to the invisible." Erasmo found himself alone on the sciara, with the wind blowing among the prickly pears. The phone was on again, showing a time that was not the one on his watch. In his pocket, however, he felt the weight of a small, cold stone, the only proof that the woman from the past had not been an illusion of fatigue. Upon arriving in the square, he began to consult the digital archives of the parish, cross-referencing the data with the old maps of the land registries before the eruption. He was looking for a family that had owned a house near the Mother Church, a woman named Agata who sold bread. He found a recurring name: "Alessi".

Following a trail made of small clues, a frieze on a portal, a nickname passed down in the shops, he arrived at a small side street of the new city. There, on a tarnished brass plaque, he read: "Laboratorio d'Arte Alessi". He entered. The air was thick with plaster dust and paint. A middle-aged man, with white-stained hands, was shaping clay. "Are you looking for something, boy?" the craftsman asked without looking up. Erasmo said nothing. He simply placed the white stone that Agata had given him on the workbench. The man froze. His fingers hovered in mid-air.

He took the stone, turned it over in his calloused hands, and a shiver ran down his shoulders: "Where did you get this? This... this is not stone from today. It is river stone. From our river, the one that hasn't flowed for centuries." "A woman gave it to me in Campanarazzu," Erasmo replied softly, "She said that white never dies under black." The craftsman smiled, a smile that Erasmo had already seen in the belly of the earth. He stood up and went to the back of the workshop, returning with an old wooden box. Inside was a faded miniature portrait: it was her, Agata, in the same dress and looking towards a distant point. "Every generation of my family," the man said, "dreams of a woman who offers a piece of bread or a stone. We thought it was a legend to not forget who we are. But you... you really saw her."

Erasmo left the workshop as the moon rose over Etna. Now he knew that Misterbianco was not divided in two, but sewn together by invisible threads. The city above was the body, the one below was the soul; and as long as someone continued to seek the white in the black, Agata would continue to walk among the lava aisles. Erasmo now walks the streets of Misterbianco with a different weight in his pockets and a secret in his gaze, knowing that beneath the asphalt and concrete still beats a heart of basalt and memory. The invisible city of Campanarazzu has found a new witness, and Agata can return to watch over her stone bread, knowing she has not been forgotten.

ICS LEONARDO SCIASCIA