Tommaso and the Missing Line

ON THE DAY the strange thing happens—the day his line goes missing—Tommaso knows what he must do: find it. It’s the line on the drawing he puts in his pocket every day, the line he drew of the hill by his nonna’s house, and he knows he must find that very one.

Is that it there in the curl of the cat’s tail? No. Is it there in the antenna of the car? No, not it. It suddenly dawns on Tommaso whom to ask: Nonna. Nonna will know.

In a spare story with a fable-like tone, Matteo Pericoli takes us t...