The Girl Who Rode the Wind

“No, Lola.” Nonna Loretta’s voice was quiet. “This is my home. My family have owned this land for centuries.”

“You used to live here?” I peered out the taxi window at the villa. It looked kind of rundown. “Who lives here now?”

“Nobody,” Nonna said. “It’s been empty a long time.”

Nonna got me to lift our suitcases from the trunk while she counted out money for the cab driver. They were speaking Italian and I think they must have argued about the tip because he barely waited for me to get the last bag out before driving away, dust flying up from his tyres.

“Look underneath the geranium, Lola,” Nonna instructed, pointing to the bright red flower in the terracotta pot on the doorstep. “The key should be there.”

I tilted the pot. There was the key, just like Nonna said: black iron, covered in dirt.

I held it out to her, but Nonna shook her head, almost like she was reluctant to touch it. “You do it, Piccolina.”

The door was arched, made of solid wood with these big wrought iron hinges, like an old-fashioned gaol. I put the key in and tried to turn it.

“It doesn’t fit,” I said. I felt like we were breaking into someone’s house. But if it wasn’t her house then how did Nonna know where the key would be?

“You have to jiggle it in the lock to make it work sometimes,” Nonna said.

“It must have been locked up for a long time,” I said.

“It has,” Nonna agreed. “No one has lived here since my mama died.”

I had just about given up on making the key work when something in the lock clicked, the key turned at last and the door swung open.

You know how a jewel box will look quite plain on the outside and then you open it up and there is a shock of pink silk? The villa was like that. All grey stone outside, but when I opened that door the sunlight flooded in on an entranceway full of colour. The floors were patterned in the most brilliant blue and turquoise Moroccan tiles and to the left the tiles continued up the staircase where the wall had been painted emerald green with a mural of a giant tree, tangles of black branches covered in pink roses spreading out in every direction all the way to the landing. The other walls downstairs were painted in a mind-bending harlequin pattern of brilliant orange, black and white diamonds, although the pattern was barely visible because of all the oil paintings hung on top. There were loads of them – all different sizes, some in gilt frames and others in plain wood. They were daubed in thick, richly coloured oil paint and nearly all of them were of horses. In between the paintings there were framed black and white photographs, also of horses. A massive glass trophy case filled up most of the back wall, its shelves crammed with even more photographs, rosettes and tarnished silver cups and trophies and medals.

There were swords crossed on the wall beside it, real ones, and at the foot of the stairs a suit of armour stood sentry draped in an orange, black and white flag.

“Nonna! Are you serious? Look at this place! Is this really your home?”

Nonna didn’t reply. I looked for her and realised she hadn’t entered the house. She was still standing on the doorstep, as if some invisible force held her back.

“Nonna?” I walked towards her and took her hand. She squeezed her fingers tight around mine and then she took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold.

“I haven’t stood in this room for almost seventy years,” she said looking around in amazement, “and yet it is all the same, just as I remember. A little smaller maybe …”

She let go of my hand and walked straight up to the suit of armour so that she was standing face to face with it, raised her tiny fist, knocked on the helmet then prised the visor open. “Good day, Donatello, I am home!” she said.

She turned to me with a smile. “My brother tried to climb inside him once when we were very little and got his head stuck. We had to use olive oil on Donatello to get him out. Mama was furious!”

“Donatello was your brother?” I asked.

Nonna Loretta laughed. “Donatello is the armour! My brother’s name was Carlo.”

I knew Nonna had a brother, but she had never said his name before. She hardly ever said anything about her family. She loved to tell stories, my nonna, but they always began from the day she arrived in New York with her duffel bag at Ellis Island. Whenever I asked her about her old life in Italy she had always claimed that she was too young to remember any of it.

“It is lost in the mists,” she would say dismissively if I pestered her. “Who can remember what happened so many years ago? And what does it matter anyway?”

The one thing I knew for sure about Nonna’s brother was that he had died in the war. My dad told me once that Nonna was very sad about her brother’s death and that was the real reason why she never liked to talk about Italy.

Nonna creaked the visor shut on Donatello and rearranged the flag that was draped over his shoulder. Then she turned to me. “Fetch the suitcases would you, Piccolina?” she said.

I struggled up the stairs with our luggage, stopping on the landing to drop the bags and rest. Up close, the painted tree was slightly terrifying, the way the tangle of black branches seemed to reach out of the wall to grab at you.

“Was this picture on the wall when you lived here?” I asked.

“The tree?” Nonna said. “Yes, my mama painted it. It is strange, when I look at it I can feel her presence so strong, even though she is gone.”

“What was she like?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, she was my mama,” Nonna said, as if that explained everything.

“Was she an artist?”

“She was good with her hands, painting and cooking and sewing. She cared very much for Carlo and me, but she was a very opinionated woman and obstinate too …” Nonna gave a chuckle. “I could be speaking of myself, couldn’t I? Perhaps that is where I get it from!”

Upstairs the paint along the hallway had begun to flake off and the plaster beneath it was crumbling. A thick layer of dust covered everything. We would have to get the place cleaned up, but at least it was liveable. Nonna opened the linen cupboard and began to pull out pillows and duvets from under a dust sheet, while I washed in the bathroom and discovered that the taps only ran cold and not hot water because there was no electricity.

“You will have my old bedroom,” Nonna told me. It was the first one at the top of the landing, with walls painted in dusky pink with crimson stripes. The budding bough of a tree bloomed out of one corner of the room and a white peacock perched on the bough with its tail spread out beneath it.

“Mama painted it pink with stripes and then I asked her to add the tree and the peacock,” Nonna said. “She never got the peacock quite right. You see how his head is too big?”

“It’s amazing,” I said. “It must have been the most incredible house to grow up in.”

“It was,” Nonna said. “I was very happy here.” But her eyes didn’t look happy at all. They were shining with tears.

“I’ll fetch you another blanket. You must be tired, Piccolina,” she murmured. “We’ll make the bed up and you can get some sleep.”

The jetlag that had begun to set in at the train station was like nothing I had ever felt before and despite the fact that it was still light outside I was suddenly too exhausted to stay awake any longer.

I must have fallen asleep thinking about that mural above the stairs, because in my dreams I was walking through a forest, only the trees weren’t real, they were painted ones, and when their black branches touched my skin they clung to me like seaweed. I was trying to navigate my way through when I realised that I wasn’t alone. There was something in the woods, stalking me. I began pushing my way through the trees, my heart pounding, and the creature sensed my fear and gave chase. I could hear it crashing through the undergrowth right behind me and I was running, but it was like my legs were stuck in treacle, a low animal growl growing louder, gaining with every stride.

I looked back over my shoulder, hoping that I would see nothing, but the creature was right there, monstrous and bristling, cold grey eyes fixed on me.

It was a wolf. A female with two little cubs at her feet. They followed her obediently, although she ignored them because her focus was completely on me.

I ran harder, my breath coming in frantic gasps. The grey wolf was gaining, I could hear her closing in, smell the hot animal stench of her.

Suddenly, in the middle of the forest, a stone building rose up right in front of me and I had to turn so fast to stop from running into it that I fell. I dropped to my knees on the ground which I realised was not a forest floor at all but hard, cold tiles, the same as the turquoise and blue ones downstairs. I was trying to get up again when the wolf leapt on top of me. She knocked me flat to the floor, sprawling me out on my back, her paws on my chest pinning me down and her great, grey menacing head hanging over my face so that I could see the saliva dripping from her teeth.

And then she spoke.

“Loyal are the people of the Wolf. Bravest of all the seventeen,” she growled. She came closer so that I could smell her fetid breath on my face. “You will need to run faster than this to win little one. You must prove yourself worthy to bring home the banner.”

She was crushing me. I could feel this enormous weight on my chest and I struggled with all my might to get her off me. I was shouting and screaming and the branches were alive and tangling around me. Then I realised they were not branches at all but bedsheets and I opened my eyes. The wolf was gone and I was wide-awake and starving.

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