This is the first story of mine I translate in English. Please, be gentle, I know it's probably full of mistakes, but I really want to share it with you people, because I've put a lot of effort in it! If you want to read it in Italian, just look for the original version, I'll post it very soon.
Chapter 1
She was standing in a very familiar room. A bedroom, a large, large bed with a pale blue canopy. The whole room was adorned with paintings, a big tapestry, decorations on the walls that looked sculpted by the most skilled artists. A big gold-framed mirror reflected her image when she walked past it.
She saw herself marching with a pretty turquoise dress made of a fine quality cloth, her nape was left uncovered by an elaborate hairstyle adorned with pins and pearls, like those standing out around her neck and the ones dangling from her ears.
And she was holding a baby in her arms. The most beautiful baby she'd ever seen. His little round face was smiling at her carefree, shaking his little hand towards her. He was her son. A certainty that nobody could have taken away from her: he was her son.
She should have felt happy in that moment, but a great anxiety was coming up from her stomach, burning her chest. She looked outside the window and saw two men guarding the front gate, two soldiers. She suddenly started to feel helpless: she had no way of escaping. She swallowed, blinking a couple of times to repulse the tears, then a wail called her attention.
"Hey..." she whispered to the baby, caressing his face in a playful way. But then she went back looking from the window. Other three men were arriving at the castle, three men she knew very well. But they shouldn't have been just three; she vainly searched with her eyes for a fourth man.
Their light blue cloaks contrasted with their dark-leather clothes they were wearing underneath, and their large-brim hats were preventing her from seeing the faces of two of them, but there was no need: she perfectly knew who they were.
She looked at them getting off the horses and starting a discussion with the two soldiers at the door. Her eyes bounced from a faction to the other, distressed, until she heard the sound of the debate raising: when one of the men in the light blue cloaks drew a sword, she moved the curtain to keep herself from seeing more.
She held her baby and closed her eyes. She didn't want to stay there, it wasn't her place, her clothes, her bedroom. She didn't belong that world, and she didn't like the feeling she was having in that moment.
Then she heard heavy steps coming from outside the room and her instinct screamed at her to do something to block the entrance. But – as far as she could look around for some ideas – her legs were stuck and weren't answering to her orders any more.
The door opened with a thud which made her wince. She held the baby, protecting him with her body when she saw the man that she feared so much, escorted by a half dozen of guards like the ones who were watching the gate. He was fair-haired and his only blue eye to be seen looked like a precious stone embedded on a rugged bony face. The other eye was covered with a black eye-patch, which view caused in her a satisfactory wave.
He gave her a creepy smile: she wanted to beg him, to implore him to not hurt the baby, she wanted to throw herself at his feet crying and screaming.
But she couldn't do any of that, the words were stuck in her throat in a terrifying resignation. She felt naked in front of that person. The only thing she was wearing was her pride.
"Your Majesty" said the man, bowing to her slightly and hypocritically.
She pursed her lips to force herself to not cry, to maintain that little dignity she'd left. She was a Queen. She felt like she had to face all of that like a Queen, with grace and composure. But she also was a little more than a child, though, and her force of will couldn't stop those few tears from falling down her cheeks to the thought of her child, her beloved baby. It was the thing that concerned her the most, even if she knew she was in a great danger herself.
When the fair-haired stepped aside to let her walk through the bedroom's doors, she lifted her chin up showing the behaviour that suited her, royal, a little haughty. With a determined pace she left the room.
The thud of the door closing woke up Viktoria, suddenly. She winced, and she realized she was laying in a cold sweat. She moved the blankets right away, nervous, looking for something, but when she couldn't find it, she seemed to calm down. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes, drying her forehead and trying to cool down.
She looked around: she was in her bedroom again, luckily. There was no baby there. She recognized the photos hanging on the walls, her bookshelf, her neat desk. But while she was gradually coming back to reality, she realized that something was wrong. Until she heard a familiar voice screaming her name.
"Vicky! Vicky, hurry up!"
Eva was calling her, clearly panicking. She still hadn't realized what happened, but she jumped out of bed – forgetting at all how much she wanted to take a hot shower – and she put on her slippers, bolting out of her bedroom in her nightgown.
She saw her sister supporting their grandmother, holding her arm and walking her from her bedroom to the living room, and she suddenly understood. How could she not have heard? That dream looked so real that it had made her lose any concept of reality itself... A siren started to sound in the streets, loud and clear.
Still puzzled, she shook her head to repulse the anxious thoughts about her baby... She had no baby, she didn't even have a husband. She ran to Eva, helping her to hold their grandmother. In the moment she reached her, they heard a large explosion in the distance – which made the three of them scream – and they lowered their heads covering it with their hands.
"Where's dad?" Viktoria asked, trying to speed up her grandmother's stride. Eva didn't answer the question.
The bomb shelter was a few metres distant from their house, but every time it seemed to Viktoria like a long trip. Plus, with her grandmother arm in arm, it looked like an infinite journey. Usually it was her dad who picked her up with his strong arms so they could run faster. But the previous night he hadn't come back from work: he was often late, and Viktoria in that moment wasn't able to understand how many hours or minutes had passed from when she fell asleep.
The sky outside was dark, there was a great tension in the air, few people were running in the streets and she realized in that minute that with her slowness in getting out of her room, she'd put her whole family in danger.
"Let's go, grandma!" she tried to press the old lady, who was moving a little step after the other with difficulty, dragged by her nieces. Viktoria saw a large column of black smoke rising up to the sky, from east. She heard a plane buzzing over them, then she heard a whistle. Another bomb exploded – even this one was distant, luckily – and she couldn't help closing her eyes and recall that man from her dream.
They sped up even more, until they finally reached the bomb shelter's doors, in which they crawled just before it closed. She knew that it was one of the safest shelter in Vienna, but it was also risky because once the doors were closed, they didn't open to anybody. It wouldn't have been such a big problem, there were other shelters around, after all, and they were reachable in one or two minutes running, but with their grandmother everything was more complicated. So it was a luck that they'd arrived there safe and sound.
She saw the usual faces of her neighbours that she knew pretty well. From time to time there was someone new, someone that maybe was passing by when the bombing started.
"But where's dad?" she asked her sister again, while they were sitting their grandmother on one of the two long benches against the two sidewalls of the tunnel.
"He hasn't come back. I'm sure he'll be fine." Eva tried to reassure her, with her big sister's certainty that she often showed off. Viktoria was never able to understand if she was sincere or if it was just a face. She sat, staring into distance and nervously playing with her nightgown. She didn't like to appear to strangers like that, but after all she wasn't the only one to be not properly dressed. Her sister had wisely grabbed her own robe and her grandmother too was well covered. She looked around, concerned. She almost hoped to find between those faces, her father's, but she knew it was impossible.
"That dream, again?"
Another bomb made everyone jump, this time it was a little closer, but Viktoria didn't ignore her sister's question.
"What?" she asked, to have it repeated. It was a relief to be able to talk about it.
"I said: that dream, again?" she asked again, leaning towards her, to have a better view beyond their grandmother sitting between them. The old woman seemed to be not quite in the head, like if she was somewhere else. She smiled to nobody, with her look staring the shelter's ceiling.
Viktoria nodded.
"But this time... The door opened."
Eva opened her eyes wide. Viktoria had started mentioning that dream when they were little. She would always wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, terrified; sometimes it happened just once a month, sometimes once a week. It also happened that she didn't do it for years, and then, all of a sudden... But as she recalled, that door had never opened. She used to wake up in the moment she heard the steps in the aisle. As soon as the doors started to move, the dream always ended.
"So, who was there?"
Another bomb whistled and exploded, but this time much farther than the previous. Viktoria simply ignored it, like she was completely used to it.
"A man... A fair-haired man!" she saw the woman sitting next to her sister looking at her, dazed, so she lowered her voice. "He got me out of the room... And, I don't know, everything was really strange. I was afraid of that man." she explained, passing her hand through her blond hair down on her shoulders. "I was scared for my baby." she said, so gravely that – as far as that sentence could have sounded absurd – her sister didn't laugh.
"Was he...?" she tried to ask, but her sister forestalled her.
"No. He wasn't the man I was looking for."
They stayed quiet for a while. Viktoria stared at a woman at the end of the bunker holding a five or six months baby, who was crying, sobbing and screaming. A real strong maternal instinct almost made her get up from her seat to go and help that mother. She looked down again, worried.
"I think that you have..." her sister started to say.
"Don't tell me I have..." Viktoria quickly interrupted her, imposing.
"... read it in a book." they said with one voice, the first sceptical, the second annoyed.
"I can't have read it in a book, I've been dreaming about it since I wasn't even able to read!" she'd explained it to her sister hundreds of times.
"Mum used to read us loads of books..." her sister insisted.
"... but none of this kind."
The conversation fell along with another bomb, farther and farther again from their shelter. Their mother's thought had always made both of them feel sick in their stomach. When the topic would turn out by accident in a conversation, this punctually was interrupted in a sudden.
They heard no more explosions, and the siren stopped sounding after an ample half an hour. Everyone got closer to the shelter's doors: they could finally go home. They helped the grandmother to get up and they got in line to get out as well.
"Miss." Viktoria didn't hear the man's voice behind her, or she didn't think he was addressing to her.
"Are you okay, grandma?" she asked to the old lady, who nodded smiling, still unaware of what was happening around.
"Miss." this time the girl turned around. She recognized the man who was living on the second floor of their building: he was pointing to her back. "You have a little blood on your back."
Viktoria touched her nape, clear of her long hair which she'd moved shortly before on the front. She looked at her hand covered in some dark red stains. Eva helped her to move her hair, then she reassured her.
"It's nothing, you accidentally must have scratched your mole."
Viktoria rubbed her hand trying to wipe it, then she thanked the man with a smile. That little imperfection in a such inconvenient position often annoyed her, especially when she brushed her hair, so she didn't worry that much. Others were her thoughts in that moment. Even the dream appeared to her far and blurred and despite it had sustained a deep change from the other times, she didn't care that much.
She just wanted to know if her father was fine.