The Girl Who Rode the Wind

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.

I looked in all the cupboards downstairs but of ‌course there was no food in the house.

“You’ll have to go into town, Lola,” Nonna said. “It’s not far from here – about twenty minutes’ walk.”

She took out a pen and a piece of paper from her handbag. “Here is the road.” Nonna drew me a map. “You go along until you see a small stream with a narrow bridge over it, and then you turn the corner and go over another bridge and you reach an avenue of tall trees … they take you to an arched gateway called Porta Ovile.”

She sketched the city walls around the archway with crenellations on top of it like a castle. “Behind the high walls follow your nose through the streets and you’ll reach the piazza. There’s a marketplace with stalls selling fruit and bread and cheese. You can buy us food there.”

“Nonna,” I said. “You haven’t lived here for seventy years. I don’t think there’s still going to be a market stall in the same place there was when you were a girl.”

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