ITALY (PRESENT DAY):
"We'll stop here for today," I said. "I remember this spot."
Enid looked around. "How can you tell? It looks all the same."
"See the bend of that stream over there?" I pointed to a stretch of water that made a hook-shaped glimmer through the trees. "And there's the village, just where I saw it last."
"Village? What village?"
I reminded myself once again that Enid was new to all this, and that she didn't even have a human experience of being outside her pretty little English town. "There," I said. "See the ruined buildings? They're overgrown, of course, but you can still make out the shape. They apparently never rebuilt it after the war." I got off my bicycle and propped it up on its stand. "Get the sleeping bags. We'll spend the day here."
"Which war?" Enid had finally begun to get used to cycling long distances, and hadn't fallen off in a couple of days. Still, she winced and rubbed her bottom. "When were you here last?"
"The Great War. Nineteen seventeen." I gestured. "There were a lot fewer trees around then, and the houses were just fresh ruins. Come on, let's find a spot to rest."
Enid took a moment to look up to the north, past the branches of the forest, where the jagged peaks of the Alps glittered in the morning sun. I tried to see it through her eyes, to feel the wonder that this beauty must still have for her, who'd not grown far too jaded with the passage of centuries to be able to be affected by mere natural beauty. She'd get that way soon enough; the thought made me hurt inside, as did everything else she was going through and would have to go through to learn to be what she would have to be for the rest of eternity.
"I'm glad we took this trip," she said. "It's all so lovely."
I found a place where the grass was thick and the branches overhead formed a lattice that would block out the worst of the sun. Nearby, the remnants of the old church were covered with vines and part of the bell tower still poked skywards like an accusing finger. The last time I'd seen it the walls were still smouldering and shattered chunks of masonry had been scattered everywhere.
"Are you sore?" I asked Enid. "Do you need a massage?" The wild boar we'd fed from the previous evening had put up a tremendous fight, flinging us both around as he tried to rip us with his tusks. We'd only got a few sips each and finally had to withdraw, calling it honours even. If easier prey had been available I'd never have tried to take on a wild boar. They are not animals to be trifled with.
"No, I'll be all right with a bit of rest." She pulled off her boots and socks and crawled into her sleeping bag. "Marcilla?"
"Hmm?" I looked up from undoing my bootlaces.
"Why were you here then, during the war?"
I sighed. "Do you really want to know?"
"Of course. I want to know everything about you."
I didn't say anything until I'd got into my sleeping bag. Enid stretched her arm out to me, touching the back of my hand. "Well?"
"You won't think well of me," I warned her. "You'll decide I'm a terrible person."
"No, I won't." She turned her head and looked into my eyes. "I promise."
"Right...so..."
I took a deep breath and began.
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ITALY (1917):
I learnt centuries ago that wars are a great potential feast for our kind. The death and destruction left behind by armies provides endless opportunities for feeding without danger of discovery. I'd followed Napoleon into Russia, and tore the throats out of the stragglers of the Grande Armée as they retreated from Moscow through the winter snows. In the 1850s, disguised as a missionary, I glutted myself on peasant soldiers as Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion raged across China like a forest fire. Just over a decade later, I was back in Europe, feeding from French and Prussian with equal abandon at the fringes of the battlefield at Sedan. I'd gone to the New World in between, too, but arrived just too late to be able to taste the harvest of the American Civil War.
Back then, conflicts were delicious to me, and I looked upon wars and the prospect of wars with anticipation and glee.
When Europe descended into yet another of its periodic paroxysms of madness, I was in London. By then I'd long since stopped considering myself an Austro-Hungarian or indeed of any nationality; England was no more, or less, my enemy than Austria-Hungary or France or Germany. I'd immediately tried to find a way to reach the fighting. But I'd soon realised that the Western Front, with its trenches, its millions of soldiers living cheek by jowl, its constant bombardments and its fighting that occurred almost exclusively at night, was impossible. A woman could never manage to get to the frontline without being immediately noticed; nor did I have any particular wish to be vaporised by a shell. You'll recall that then I was as powerless and vulnerable as a human during the day.
But Italy offered better prospects. The war was being fought on precipitous Alpine slopes, but I didn't need to go up there; the foothills were crowded with troops and civilians, and I was sure a woman like me could move unnoticed among the forests and little villages, taking what I considered to be rightfully mine.
So I took ship from Marseilles, disguised first as a society lady, and then, in Italy as a French prostitute, and afterwards as various other things, I made my way among the woods and valleys, feeding from sentries and peasants and moving on before my work was discovered. I didn't feed only a little, as I do now; I drained them, leaving only corpses in my wake. And then, one afternoon, I reached this spot.
I still remember it as clearly as it was yesterday, though so many other memories have blurred and merged and shifted in my mind. It was a sunny day, and I had been walking since the previous night. At first I'd walked aimlessly, just to put as much distance between myself and the previous night's victims as possible, but then I'd noticed smoke rising into the air, and one thing I had learnt was that smoke in wartime was an excellent indicator that I would find sustenance. So I changed direction and clambered over boulders and fallen trees until I reached the place the smoke was coming from.
It was this village. Even then, it was so small that it only had a single street and maybe twenty houses. But when I arrived it was already deserted and still burning. The Austro-Hungarian artillery in the mountains had shelled it to pieces. There were no corpses, not even civilian ones -- I looked -- so I don't know why they'd shelled it.
I'd sat down to rest a bit before moving on when I heard the engine noises. They came from aeroplanes, up above. Back then aeroplanes were still so new that even I'd only seen a handful, so I was curious enough to look up at the sky
There were two of them, an Austro-Hungarian and an Italian one. At first they were so high up that I had to squint even to see them. They were circling each other, each trying to get on the other's tail. And as they circled, they descended, lower and lower, until they were so close overhead that I could clearly see the insignia painted on their lower wings.
Long before the pilots themselves realised it, I knew that they were going to collide. Each of them was trying to turn in smaller circles than the other, until, inevitably, one's propeller clipped the other's wing, and then they both tumbled to the ground in a mass of wood, metal, and fabric.
Some of the wreckage must still be there, under the grass and moss and rotting logs, machine gun bullets and engine parts and such. But if you don't mind, I'm not going to look for any of it.
Before they'd even struck the earth, I was up and running as fast as I could. I knew that they could explode into a fireball, and I needed to reach the pilots before that happened. Back then, they didn't wear parachutes, so they would ride their planes right down to the ground.
I did make it to the mangled wreckage before anything exploded, but it was already too late for the Austro-Hungarian pilot. He'd been flung from the cockpit on impact and was dead, his head twisted on his neck at a grotesque angle. I wasted nothing on him but a glance, and rushed to the other plane.
The Italian pilot was still alive, and moving feebly in his harness, trying to free himself. I had a knife with me -- I never was without one in the days when one could still carry a personal weapon without arousing suspicion -- and used it to cut him free of his straps. Pulling him out of the cockpit, I dragged him sufficiently far away from the wreck that he'd be safe from any explosion, and then ran back to get his first aid kit.
He was looking up at me with an expression of incredulous joy when I got back to him, and began muttering something about seeing an angel. "Don't try to talk," I said in Italian, which was one of the languages I'd grown up speaking. "It'll be all right. You're safe. I'll take care of you." Though he was badly hurt, I was fairly certain I could keep him alive. But he still needed to be out of the elements, so I dragged him into the only nearby house I could see that was still relatively intact and no longer burning.
It was still late afternoon, though the shadows were lengthening. I cut off his flight jacket and the uniform tunic he had on underneath with my knife, carried water up from the river in a tureen I found in the kitchen, washed his wounds, and dressed them with the bandages I found in his first aid kit. By then he'd lost consciousness and I was terrified that he'd die, but eventually he opened his eyes again.
"My angel," he whispered again. "You're my angel."
"Shhhh," I said. "Try not to talk."
But he kept talking. "You saved my life, bella. I owe everything to you forever. Not only I, my old mother and my sister owe everything to you." He raised his head to try and kiss my hands. "As long as I live, I will remember every moment I have from now on is because of you."
He was really very handsome; dark eyed and olive skinned, with curly black hair that sprang out when I removed his leather flying helmet to mop his brow. A normal girl, something I of course no longer was, might have fallen in love with him on the spot. I closed my eyes tight for a few moments to dispel the thought.
"What's your name?" I asked. If he was going to insist on talking, at least I might try to make him say things that did not wound me to the heart. "Where are you from?"
"Enrico Cavalcanti," he whispered. "I'm from Firenze."
