Chapter 17

At eighteen, I was at the limit of learning to have complete control over myself. We were training, and Elinor did not soften, did not yield, and demanded everything from me. “It is not mechanical, Valentina. You do not become a machine overnight.” “The memories scare me. Not knowing what will happen scares me. Thinking that my father might discover what we are doing scares me.” “Fear is obscure. Fear blinds, freezes, and keeps you from taking the next step. Fear immobilizes you, puts collars and shackles on your body and your judgment. Ghosts appear in the dark. Destruction happens in the dark. That is why it is so frightening. As long as you face it that way, you will not move forward. You need to get used to it.” “What do you mean?” “Embrace it. Take it for yourself. It is hard to dance with a devil on your back.” I looked at her without understanding. “It is a song. We will train with it next time. You need to get rid of your demons, and only then can you become your mythological bird. You get rid of the demon, take hell, and dance over it. If you carry it, you can do nothing, because you will be immobilized by the weight. You cannot fear it, carry it, and fight it at the same time. Step away from it so you can dig a grave and bury it.” “Would I not have to kill it first?” “Sometimes you do not need to. There are demons who deserve to live their own disgrace. To make them wish for the end while we bury them alive.” “You use a lot of metaphors, do you not?” “It is a way for us to be silent. Not everyone has the understanding or is intelligent enough to know what we are talking about.” She played that song. Shake It Out by Florence and the Machine. The sound in the gym became deafening, but we trained, and she commanded loudly enough for me to hear her. That day, I transcended. “Do not be weak! Do not be a coward!” “I am not,” I shouted while fighting against her, after having passed out from an arm lock. I was breathless, tired, and wanted to give up. “Do not be a doll!” She said it at the same time I struck her chest with a kick, and she caught my leg before knocking me to the floor. We had been training for six hours, practically without rest, and I was fasting. She wanted to test my limits, but I was certain I had already exceeded them. I wanted to cry, I wanted to badly, but that would probably earn me another hour of training. “I am thirsty!” I was definitely dehydrating. “They do not care about your needs, so act as if they do not exist! Come on! I am still standing, and you need to take me down! React, Valentina!” “Enough! I cannot take it!” “You are weak! That is why the ghosts from that night haunt you.” I may not have told her, but she knew something had happened and that I had died when I was fifteen years old. There was a period when I almost gave up, six months after beginning my training. I believed Alexandra was already dead, and then I screamed at my father during his only visit that year. But that time he did not hit me, shout, or threaten me. He only opened his phone, where a real-time video was being streamed. And I saw her. Alexandra, or what was left of her. A thousand years would not be enough for me to describe what appeared on that screen. It was enough. With my strength restored, I have not allowed myself to be crushed since then. “You cannot defeat them! You are weak, Valentina!” I advanced, but she was stronger and less tired. “Do you think I am too strong? They are always stronger, Valentina! Listen to the ghosts accusing you of being weak! Free yourself from them!” I no longer spoke. I only advanced while she defended and attacked with skill. I was panting, and my brain only absorbed her eyes staring at me, seeing my weakness, my defeat. “Are you going to lose again, Valentina? They will win, and you will have to beg, doll!” I knew what she was doing. She was acting like them so I would understand that they were the ones I was fighting in that moment. “Doll.” Alexandra’s loud crying came to my ears in that moment, and I advanced with fury. “Come on, principessa! Be docile and obedient. After all, they are good to us, are they not?” Along with Alexandra’s crying, I heard my mother begging my father “please” while he destroyed her with his pocketknife. “It is your fault, Valentina!” she screamed as if she were my father. “It is your fault, and you can do nothing!” Remorse piled up like old friends who gathered at the end of the day and took me out to play. I remembered that, while she threw those words at me, I needed to shut off my mind. I could not think of Mother, of Alexandra, or of them. My mind had to go blank, because it weakened my body, provoked intense anxiety attacks, and stole my air. With every anxiety attack, I felt as if I was going to die and proved that he dominated me. So I focused only on the music. I forgot all of them for a moment. I even forgot Elinor. It was Bruno in front of me, the evil hand carrying out the task determined by the devil. And he did it with pleasure. My breathing quickened, and my body accelerated along with the music, making my body incandescent, inflaming my will. The song spoke of being condemned either way, of raising a toast in the dark, and of finding the devil within while searching for heaven. I could be as infernal as they were. I could be as dark as their rottenness, no matter how bad and wrong that was. I would have my own demons, and that, although contradictory, gave me hope. I could be like them and, with that, fight in favor of that Valentina who still cared. I would be damned if I did not do it, because guilt would demand punishment from me. I preferred to suffer in hell and take them with me. I lunged at Elinor in that moment, like I never had in years of training. On other occasions, she was less relentless and I was stronger, rested, and fed. But there, in that moment, no. Consumed by exhaustion, with her merciless over me and without any chance of winning the fight, I flew and embraced the darkness as she had ordered. Our voices mixed with the music. Let go! I struck her, and she struck me. Let go! I hit her hard, and my wrist burned. Let go! My abdomen throbbed. Let go! I pinned her beneath my leg and immobilized her arms, enough to reach the knife that stayed at the side of her outfit, leaving it in a strategic position against her neck. If I pushed, I would rupture her carotid artery. I had won, and it felt like jumping in free fall into the abyss. “Now you are ready,” she declared, breathless and sweating. “For what?” “To discover that it is darkest before dawn,” she recited a line from the song that was playing. “Poetic, isn’t it? We attract dark times so we can have a little light.” “There is no poetry in death.” “There is, when one of us can see the dawn.” She only smiled, aware that I meant far more than just the two of us. Us, women. And that night, in the suburbs of London, while a man was taking a lonely young London girl with rebellious hair as a guest for other men, whose natures were as ugly as Don De Luca’s, the teacher and her pupil made the executioner embrace the darkness. He left as a beggar. Burned documents, discarded phone, buried weapon, destroyed teeth, and burned body—nothing was left of him to be searched for. I was initiated with fire and blood at eighteen years old, and I swore not to stop until dawn came for all of us, so that freedom would come, not in whispers like a trapped bird freeing itself from its cage and flying without direction, but so that freedom would become part of our choices. The London girl? She danced with her freedom, and we never saw her again.