My entry below! I started late, so I wrote it rather quickly, and I exceeded the word limit a bit (I bet it's the word counter being imprecise and not my fault 
).
A New Life
).A New Life
Spoiler
Filthy woods. Filthy, fetid woods infested with flies and gnats. How on earth did she end up in such a place, Martina wondered. Yet their honeymoon had started so well, with those three days on Lake Maggiore! Alberto had been charming and everything had unfolded like in a movie: the room with a view, the sunset watching the reflections on the calm waters of the lake, happy days immersed in a romantic fairytale atmosphere. And he had not even touched her, waiting until she was ready. A true gentleman.
Everything had been perfect, until they had decided to travel to Alberto's hometown.
"What a beauty, right Martina?" said Alberto. "There's no such thing in the city!"
"Thank goodness..." she muttered between her teeth. Her t-shirt glued with sweat to her back, her blister-covered feet slipping on the forest floor covered with wet leaves and gnarled roots, Martina was certainly not in the mood to admire nature.
"Just think, there are more than a hundred native tree species in the Rubicante Valley alone!" continued declaiming Alberto, like a bucolic documentary programme.
"There he goes again!" He was so irritating when he started his boring speeches about trees, animals, the beauty of the earth, with the tone of a TV presenter.
Yet, three weeks earlier, things had been quite different. To think that it was precisely those conversations about mountain life that had fascinated her so much...
She had met Alberto Ferrero in Milan, the city where she had always lived. An inveterate city dweller, more used to being stuck in traffic than walking in nature, she had been captivated by Alberto's simple and affable ways. She had never met anyone like him. Most of her friends were university students or recent graduates from large private departments, a bunch of snooty, snobbish kids who spent their parents' money with alarming liberality, constantly searching for a quick and easy solution to their deep personal dissatisfaction.
Then, Alberto had arrived, a sudden ray of sunshine. Alberto, with his tanned face, his smile that looked even brighter under his dark skin, his muscular body, and his manner without pretence. She was immediately captivated by him. The evenings she used to spend with other students in the city's trendy bars had turned into long walks with Alberto.
Alberto was in Milan dealing with paperwork concerning a bereavement in the family, but he came from a small valley in Piedmont and rarely travelled to the big city.
A shy, unassuming man, he had not wanted to meet her friends to avoid making a bad impression. "They are cultured people," he said. "What do they have in common with a simpleton like me?". But it was precisely his simplicity that had attracted her so much.
And then she had fallen in love with the tales of his land, the Rubicante Valley, described as an enchanted, wonderful, unspoilt place. Alberto had an almost motherly bond to his land and was able – through his simple, unpretentious words – to paint a vivid picture of these places. It was all so fascinating!
Martina, accustomed to the daily grind of the big city, would never have imagined that such beautiful, immaculate lands could exist in the region next to hers.
"It is a unique place," Alberto recounted, his voice a whisper of reverence to those lands so dear to him. "A valley enclosed between two calm rivers, surrounded by magnificent forests and high mountains that protected it from the outside world, from wars, from worldly corruption. Its fertile land produces everything you need, the forests are full of game, and up there you can live a simple existence, far from worries, and happy. What we have, no one can ever take away from us. For centuries we have avoided all the problems that have plagued the rest of the country. It is a magical place".
Martina, almost hypnotised by these stories, had soon fallen in love with Alberto, despite the age difference. Within a few weeks, they were married and thinking back, Martina still couldn't quite understand how it had happened. Those days seemed to have disappeared from memory, carried away by a sudden whirlwind of happiness. It had been her first true love, as intense as only inexperienced youth can feel.
Alberto made her promise to spend the honeymoon in his lands and Martina happily agreed, eagerly to visit those magical places she heard so much about.
And now here they were, two newly-weds, sweating in mud, covered in blisters and insect bites. The much-dreamed Rubicante Valley had turned out to be a nightmare for Martina. The inn they were staying in was an ugly cube covered in plaster, with small windows set into thick walls and rooms that resembled burial recesses rather than the luxury hotel rooms she was used to when going on holiday with her parents.
The locals weren't much better. They seemed poorly dressed, boorish peasants speaking an incomprehensible dialects. They made her immediately miss her friends from Milan who, as shallow as they were, had at least some shared interest with her! These people, however, seemed have no other topic of conversation than hunting, gathering, and harvesting.
And Alberto... Alberto was like a pig in the mud! Where was that charming man who had bewitched her with his sincere ways? Suddenly he seemed to have been replaced by a crude mountain man who, like a snake shedding its skin, had revealed his true nature once surrounded by his fellow men. And to think that she had married him, despite her parents' warnings! She had scoffed at their worries as petty bourgeois concerns, but now she saw how right the were. What an idiot she had been!
"Shall we go back?" whimpered Martina, seated on a smelly rotting log. Compared to that forest, even their room at the inn seemed cosy.
"Why, you don't like the forest?" said Alberto with a gentleness that felt feigned.
"No!" she burst out. "I can't take it any more! Look at my feet," she said removing a boot to show him her blistered sole.
"Poor darling! I told you to wear socks with your boots."
"You didn't tell me, though, about all these gross flies! My face is full of bites, I have gnats splattered all over my skin. You didn't tell me about the disgusting stench emanating from these woods! I can't take it any more! I can't!". Martina realised she was having a fit, but did nothing to stop it. She felt so childish, but she could not stop sobbing.
Alberto sat down next to her and surrounded her tenderly with his muscular arms, wrapping her in a warm embrace.
"You're right, darling. It's my fault, I should have known you weren't used to it. I was selfish."
Patiently, Alberto bandaged her aching feet after covering them with cream. He kissed her gently on the head and the girl suddenly remembered why she had fallen in love with this rough-looking man.
"The smell in the air is the humidity," Alberto explained quietly. "I'm afraid it's going to rain soon. It's like that in these mountains: every now and then there is a downpour, but it's short-lived. Unfortunately, we have strayed too far from the town to go back, but I know a place nearby where we can take shelter until it stops raining."
Alberto helped Martina – now calm but with eyes still reddened – up, and they set off again through the pines, while the sky showing through the trees grew darker and darker, furrowed by gloomy clouds.
The air became colder, as the first drops of rain began to filter through the tall foliage. The ground was getting steeper and the humidity made it difficult to breathe. After walking for half an hour, the pine trees began to thin out, revealing far in the background a high rock face extending beyond the treetops.
The unpleasant stench of dampness and rotten vegetation had become even more intense and had an aftertaste of rotten eggs, almost causing Martina to retch. Where the hell did that stench come from?, Martina kept asking herself, increasingly tired and disoriented. It certainly could not be the dampness of the woods, as Alberto had said. The smell kept increasing the more sparse the woods became. With relief she noticed, however, that the flies had finally decided to leave them alone, a thought that made Martina laugh to herself: maybe they too must have been disgusted by the stench! Or perhaps it was the rain, which was beginning to beat heavily on their heads, that had made them run for cover.
As if crossing an invisible border, the forest abruptly ceased, giving way to a high, impassable-looking rock face. The only trees visible now were skeletal. The area appeared barren and bare: only a huge wall of rock towering above their heads.
"Look Martina, salvation!" Alberto was pointing to a spot in the rock face. "Just one final effort and you'll be able to rest."
Through the thick rain, Martina had not noticed some crude constructions embedded in the rock, ancient dwellings carved into the hard material, with openings like black gaping mouths.
"Nobody knows when they were built, people say they existed before the creation of the world", explained Alberto as they took shelter in one of the small dwellings, the rain almost deafening.
Under the cover of the rocky roof, Martina suddenly noticed how beneath the noise of the rain there was a quieter one. A faint white noise, an insistent hum like the sound of a broken radio.
It was only when they pushed further into the ancient dwelling, through a narrow, dark corridor carved into the mountain, poorly lit by Alberto's lighter, that Martina realised where the noise was coming from.
Flies, hundreds of flies were swarming madly, banging on the narrow walls of the corridors.
At Alberto's insistence, they went further into the artificial cave. "Wet as we are, we have to find a place to light a fire and dry ourselves".
Martina felt as she was about to have another fit. "I can't stand it here," she gasped. "This oppressive darkness, the flies... I... I can't breathe!"
"Would you rather catch pneumonia? Look at the rain out there!" blurted Alberto, irritated, his face suddenly appearing old and covered with wrinkles in the light of the lighter. "So much fuss over a little smell of sulphur."
They descended deeper, into dark corridors that penetrated through the bowels of the mountain. Alberto moved confidently, as if he had traversed those paths many times. The flies were again a constant, thick presence, with their fat, dark bodies covering what little light came from the lighter. The smell of sulphur had become so intense that Martina struggled to breathe, nausea gave her bouts of dizziness that left her disoriented in that cramped and oppressive space. She felt she was about to faint, could no longer stand, as they descended lower and lower.
Martina woke up on the dirt floor, inside a circular room carved in the rock, poorly lit by a few candles. A deafening buzzing sound seemed to vibrate from the very essence of the room. Next to her, she recognised Alberto.
In the middle, a table carved into the stone separated them from a figure seated on a crude pew, the man an indistinguishable silhouette in the darkness.
"You finally woke up," said Alberto in a sarcastic voice. "It's not nice to keep our guest waiting."
"W-where are we?" she stammered.
"Remember Martina, when I was telling you about the Rubicante Valley, how it remained a peaceful and idyllic place for centuries, without war or destruction? Well, you must know that some things don't just happen. No, sir. There is no such thing as luck. Maintaining peace requires, shall we say, a little sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?"
"Our Lord left one of his sons here, for us, to protect us. But, poor thing, he too needs nourishment, don't you think?"
Alberto drew a candle closer to the table, revealing the occupant of the pew.
His face, if one could call it that, was a milky, pulsating cocoon, with silky filamentous threads connected to the rest of his body. A dark gash started to widen from his grotesque head and flies, thousands of flies, began to fly out of it, heading towards the girl. Martina closed her eyes.
That year the crops of the Rubicante Valley were lush and the game abundant. The land seemed to be regenerated with new life.
Everything had been perfect, until they had decided to travel to Alberto's hometown.
"What a beauty, right Martina?" said Alberto. "There's no such thing in the city!"
"Thank goodness..." she muttered between her teeth. Her t-shirt glued with sweat to her back, her blister-covered feet slipping on the forest floor covered with wet leaves and gnarled roots, Martina was certainly not in the mood to admire nature.
"Just think, there are more than a hundred native tree species in the Rubicante Valley alone!" continued declaiming Alberto, like a bucolic documentary programme.
"There he goes again!" He was so irritating when he started his boring speeches about trees, animals, the beauty of the earth, with the tone of a TV presenter.
Yet, three weeks earlier, things had been quite different. To think that it was precisely those conversations about mountain life that had fascinated her so much...
She had met Alberto Ferrero in Milan, the city where she had always lived. An inveterate city dweller, more used to being stuck in traffic than walking in nature, she had been captivated by Alberto's simple and affable ways. She had never met anyone like him. Most of her friends were university students or recent graduates from large private departments, a bunch of snooty, snobbish kids who spent their parents' money with alarming liberality, constantly searching for a quick and easy solution to their deep personal dissatisfaction.
Then, Alberto had arrived, a sudden ray of sunshine. Alberto, with his tanned face, his smile that looked even brighter under his dark skin, his muscular body, and his manner without pretence. She was immediately captivated by him. The evenings she used to spend with other students in the city's trendy bars had turned into long walks with Alberto.
Alberto was in Milan dealing with paperwork concerning a bereavement in the family, but he came from a small valley in Piedmont and rarely travelled to the big city.
A shy, unassuming man, he had not wanted to meet her friends to avoid making a bad impression. "They are cultured people," he said. "What do they have in common with a simpleton like me?". But it was precisely his simplicity that had attracted her so much.
And then she had fallen in love with the tales of his land, the Rubicante Valley, described as an enchanted, wonderful, unspoilt place. Alberto had an almost motherly bond to his land and was able – through his simple, unpretentious words – to paint a vivid picture of these places. It was all so fascinating!
Martina, accustomed to the daily grind of the big city, would never have imagined that such beautiful, immaculate lands could exist in the region next to hers.
"It is a unique place," Alberto recounted, his voice a whisper of reverence to those lands so dear to him. "A valley enclosed between two calm rivers, surrounded by magnificent forests and high mountains that protected it from the outside world, from wars, from worldly corruption. Its fertile land produces everything you need, the forests are full of game, and up there you can live a simple existence, far from worries, and happy. What we have, no one can ever take away from us. For centuries we have avoided all the problems that have plagued the rest of the country. It is a magical place".
Martina, almost hypnotised by these stories, had soon fallen in love with Alberto, despite the age difference. Within a few weeks, they were married and thinking back, Martina still couldn't quite understand how it had happened. Those days seemed to have disappeared from memory, carried away by a sudden whirlwind of happiness. It had been her first true love, as intense as only inexperienced youth can feel.
Alberto made her promise to spend the honeymoon in his lands and Martina happily agreed, eagerly to visit those magical places she heard so much about.
And now here they were, two newly-weds, sweating in mud, covered in blisters and insect bites. The much-dreamed Rubicante Valley had turned out to be a nightmare for Martina. The inn they were staying in was an ugly cube covered in plaster, with small windows set into thick walls and rooms that resembled burial recesses rather than the luxury hotel rooms she was used to when going on holiday with her parents.
The locals weren't much better. They seemed poorly dressed, boorish peasants speaking an incomprehensible dialects. They made her immediately miss her friends from Milan who, as shallow as they were, had at least some shared interest with her! These people, however, seemed have no other topic of conversation than hunting, gathering, and harvesting.
And Alberto... Alberto was like a pig in the mud! Where was that charming man who had bewitched her with his sincere ways? Suddenly he seemed to have been replaced by a crude mountain man who, like a snake shedding its skin, had revealed his true nature once surrounded by his fellow men. And to think that she had married him, despite her parents' warnings! She had scoffed at their worries as petty bourgeois concerns, but now she saw how right the were. What an idiot she had been!
"Shall we go back?" whimpered Martina, seated on a smelly rotting log. Compared to that forest, even their room at the inn seemed cosy.
"Why, you don't like the forest?" said Alberto with a gentleness that felt feigned.
"No!" she burst out. "I can't take it any more! Look at my feet," she said removing a boot to show him her blistered sole.
"Poor darling! I told you to wear socks with your boots."
"You didn't tell me, though, about all these gross flies! My face is full of bites, I have gnats splattered all over my skin. You didn't tell me about the disgusting stench emanating from these woods! I can't take it any more! I can't!". Martina realised she was having a fit, but did nothing to stop it. She felt so childish, but she could not stop sobbing.
Alberto sat down next to her and surrounded her tenderly with his muscular arms, wrapping her in a warm embrace.
"You're right, darling. It's my fault, I should have known you weren't used to it. I was selfish."
Patiently, Alberto bandaged her aching feet after covering them with cream. He kissed her gently on the head and the girl suddenly remembered why she had fallen in love with this rough-looking man.
"The smell in the air is the humidity," Alberto explained quietly. "I'm afraid it's going to rain soon. It's like that in these mountains: every now and then there is a downpour, but it's short-lived. Unfortunately, we have strayed too far from the town to go back, but I know a place nearby where we can take shelter until it stops raining."
Alberto helped Martina – now calm but with eyes still reddened – up, and they set off again through the pines, while the sky showing through the trees grew darker and darker, furrowed by gloomy clouds.
The air became colder, as the first drops of rain began to filter through the tall foliage. The ground was getting steeper and the humidity made it difficult to breathe. After walking for half an hour, the pine trees began to thin out, revealing far in the background a high rock face extending beyond the treetops.
The unpleasant stench of dampness and rotten vegetation had become even more intense and had an aftertaste of rotten eggs, almost causing Martina to retch. Where the hell did that stench come from?, Martina kept asking herself, increasingly tired and disoriented. It certainly could not be the dampness of the woods, as Alberto had said. The smell kept increasing the more sparse the woods became. With relief she noticed, however, that the flies had finally decided to leave them alone, a thought that made Martina laugh to herself: maybe they too must have been disgusted by the stench! Or perhaps it was the rain, which was beginning to beat heavily on their heads, that had made them run for cover.
As if crossing an invisible border, the forest abruptly ceased, giving way to a high, impassable-looking rock face. The only trees visible now were skeletal. The area appeared barren and bare: only a huge wall of rock towering above their heads.
"Look Martina, salvation!" Alberto was pointing to a spot in the rock face. "Just one final effort and you'll be able to rest."
Through the thick rain, Martina had not noticed some crude constructions embedded in the rock, ancient dwellings carved into the hard material, with openings like black gaping mouths.
"Nobody knows when they were built, people say they existed before the creation of the world", explained Alberto as they took shelter in one of the small dwellings, the rain almost deafening.
Under the cover of the rocky roof, Martina suddenly noticed how beneath the noise of the rain there was a quieter one. A faint white noise, an insistent hum like the sound of a broken radio.
It was only when they pushed further into the ancient dwelling, through a narrow, dark corridor carved into the mountain, poorly lit by Alberto's lighter, that Martina realised where the noise was coming from.
Flies, hundreds of flies were swarming madly, banging on the narrow walls of the corridors.
At Alberto's insistence, they went further into the artificial cave. "Wet as we are, we have to find a place to light a fire and dry ourselves".
Martina felt as she was about to have another fit. "I can't stand it here," she gasped. "This oppressive darkness, the flies... I... I can't breathe!"
"Would you rather catch pneumonia? Look at the rain out there!" blurted Alberto, irritated, his face suddenly appearing old and covered with wrinkles in the light of the lighter. "So much fuss over a little smell of sulphur."
They descended deeper, into dark corridors that penetrated through the bowels of the mountain. Alberto moved confidently, as if he had traversed those paths many times. The flies were again a constant, thick presence, with their fat, dark bodies covering what little light came from the lighter. The smell of sulphur had become so intense that Martina struggled to breathe, nausea gave her bouts of dizziness that left her disoriented in that cramped and oppressive space. She felt she was about to faint, could no longer stand, as they descended lower and lower.
Martina woke up on the dirt floor, inside a circular room carved in the rock, poorly lit by a few candles. A deafening buzzing sound seemed to vibrate from the very essence of the room. Next to her, she recognised Alberto.
In the middle, a table carved into the stone separated them from a figure seated on a crude pew, the man an indistinguishable silhouette in the darkness.
"You finally woke up," said Alberto in a sarcastic voice. "It's not nice to keep our guest waiting."
"W-where are we?" she stammered.
"Remember Martina, when I was telling you about the Rubicante Valley, how it remained a peaceful and idyllic place for centuries, without war or destruction? Well, you must know that some things don't just happen. No, sir. There is no such thing as luck. Maintaining peace requires, shall we say, a little sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?"
"Our Lord left one of his sons here, for us, to protect us. But, poor thing, he too needs nourishment, don't you think?"
Alberto drew a candle closer to the table, revealing the occupant of the pew.
His face, if one could call it that, was a milky, pulsating cocoon, with silky filamentous threads connected to the rest of his body. A dark gash started to widen from his grotesque head and flies, thousands of flies, began to fly out of it, heading towards the girl. Martina closed her eyes.
That year the crops of the Rubicante Valley were lush and the game abundant. The land seemed to be regenerated with new life.
[close]
) and their interactions are fun to read. The ending is a nice twist. Is Simon's surname a reference to the Bell test?
).
