Viktor

by Francesco Leo

  THE SHORTEST WAY

  T rust put the palm of his hand against Selene’s mouth who smothered a second scream while she continued to stare at the point where Viktor had disappeared. A light breeze moved the cloth behind the wagon and it closed when Trust turned around again toward the point where he had seen the two shapes. He cursed when he saw that the end of the bridge was empty and turned toward Selene again.

  “Where are they? They were here a moment ago!” he said shaken.

  “I have no idea and I could care the less right now.”

  “He said we’d meet in Beleth, don’t worry, Viktor knows what he’s doing,” Trust reassured her.

  “I think I know him well enough to say that he often acts inappropriately,” the girl answered in a worried tone while she got down from the wagon.

  Trust stopped the horses and imitated the girl, stretching.

  “Under the bridge the river is deep enough to cushion the fall. It certainly wasn’t the safest action, but it surely worked,” he commented.

  “To save what? A rod made of mithril? Do you think it’s right to risk so much for something similar? It would have been better to have handed it over and gone back, in return nobody would have risked his life! And the thing that makes me more nervous is the fact that neither you nor Viktor understand it and I have to stay here and worry!”

  Trust got nearer before speaking again.

  “Viktor wanted to go to the competition as much as me, or better still, I think he’s using it as an excuse to leave Lezhen for once: at his age there’s so much curiosity about discovering the world. He must have thought that his action was justified and, even if you spoke to him about it, he’d answer that his action wasn’t so foolish for you to reprimand him. This is how he is, however sensitive he may be in depth, he always throws himself headlong towards the way out that seems the best, no matter what could happen. I don’t know if it’s a merit or a fault but maybe he will mature growing up. He’s only a boy with his own dreams, merits and faults, don’t blame him. From this point of view we are all the same.”

  Looking over the parapet, Selene stared into the darkness underneath but the haze of mist rising from the waterfall on the other side of the bridge reflected the moonlight, creating a shimmering platinum mantle that obstructed the view and didn’t allow the river to follow its course.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she concluded before getting into the wagon again and telling the blacksmith to continue the journey.

  “Viktor would have underlined the fact that nobody asked you to, I imagine,” Trust said smiling and getting on the cart, while the horses continued going toward Beleth and Selene continued mumbling threats against her friend.

  By now it was dawn when Trust and Selene had entered the tree-lined path that continued from the opposite side of the bridge they had crossed, up until the edge of the city of Beleth. The road was made of the usual soil that made the wheels creek even more, and it was surrounded by high bushes that gradually diminished leaving space to the pine trees that could be seen on the horizon.

  Trust slowed down, trying to remain vigil even if he was sleepy, intent on making up for lost time. For a stretch of road the two travellers followed a swarm of fireflies in different colours, making their way on the illuminated path. For a few minutes, the cart followed the procession of lights. Selene observed the lights of the fireflies disperse into the darkness.

  Her thoughts went to Viktor, as if suddenly she remembered the thing she cared for the most.

  “Such a foolish action only to get out of his own village…I think I’ll never learn to know him deeply,” the girl said, smiling sourly and then turning toward Trust. “We could stop for a rest…above all for you, you’ve been driving the cart for hours. We could start again at the first lights of dawn, it would also be easier to move under the trees,” she suggested.

  Trust turned toward the girl, thought about her suggestion and nodded, stopping the wagon on a small turf of grass off the bevelled path.

  The blacksmith got out of the cart and went into the back, laying down on the wooden planks, while Selene made room for him. On second thought, her being there seemed useless and the only reason why she had joined the other two was to be with Viktor, the boy she had grown up with and that, lately, realized she nourished a deeper feeling for than what she believed. It was enough to reflect upon how she had been worried when he had become ill and how she had been upset when, a little earlier, he threw himself off the bridge.

  The girl returned to reality and she noticed that the blacksmith was snoring; she got up and stepped down from the wagon to stretch. She got a blanket and put it over Trust. Got another one and put it around her and went out of the familiar curtain, stretched her legs and her feet disappeared in the thick, green grass. She began moving away from the wagon, on the path that crossed the pine forest.

  She looked toward where they had arrived and, even if they had gone at a crawl because of the dense darkness, she wasn’t able to see even a small remnant of the moonlight that lit the bridge they had crossed. Only then did she realize how far they had gone.

  It was nice to be there, in the centre of nothingness, listening to the silence and the quiet at night. For many silence is only the absence of sound, but for Selene it was much more: silence relaxed your mind, allowing who listened to it the possibility to travel with his own thoughts anywhere you want to, outside the limits imposed by reality and time. She closed her eyes and then opened them again.

  For a few seconds she imagined Edgar at her side, aloof and in silence, staring at her with a smile. In her memories, he smiled. That’s how she wanted to remember him, who cared if he wasn’t there anymore and those days would never return; she wanted to remember him while he was happy with her.

  Slowly, Edgar’s shape became blurry, ethereal and evaporated in the air, in imagination.

  Selene breathed deeply, then she returned to the wagon while she tightened the blanket around her that protected her from the cold night; she got onto the cart and sat beside the dreaming blacksmith.

  She decided to rest and closed her eyes, but sleep didn’t come, despite having slept such a short time; she was worried about Viktor.

  It took her a long time to fall asleep and, when she finally did, Trust got up to start the journey again. Even if he had slept only a few hours he felt as if he could travel for an entire week without stopping.

  Now things went better: the path was clearly visible even if it was covered by thick smog caused by the humidity in the air during the early hours of the morning.

  The surrounding grass and plants were covered with dew that sometimes fell from the leaves of the smaller plants, giving a bit of life to that forest that had been silent all night long.

  In the meantime Selene continued sleeping, remaining impassive to the continuous skidding of the cart caused by the discontinuity of the path, which seemed almost to worsen mile after mile.

  ******

  Viktor started to get dressed even if his clothes were still damp.

  The cold of early morning stung his shivering, nude skin while the boy put his trousers on.

  He had almost risked drowning, pulled down by the weight of his boots soaked in water. Luckily, he had found an inlet along one of the rock walls beside the river.

  He had spent the last hours of the night trying to find some little branches and stones to light a fire to get warm and dry his clothes, but the lack of wood didn’t allow the small bonfire to stay lit for more than half an hour. Then, the strong sense of exhaustion had made him collapse in front of that burned out brazier.

  When the young man decided to get back on the road, day light greeted him, giving him a delight he hadn’t felt for a while, a delight that disappeared with an idea that flashed into his mind. “To get on the main path I must find the shortest way to go up the rocky wall and return on the bridge,” he had thought. While he was planning what to do, he tightened his grasp on the damp bundle and walked down the narrow
stony path that went along the river in a discontinuous way. The roaring of the water relaxed him, allowing him to face the circumstances calmly and rationally.

  While he was walking on the damp pebbles at times covered with water, Viktor continued thinking about what to do.

  “The only possible solution is to try to reach the old road and continue walking until the high rock walls around the river give space to a different kind of territory, allowing me to climb up and go down the road backwards, going along the river from above to be able to get back on the bridge I jumped from.”

  While time went by relentlessly, Viktor began to lose the initial calm, and the sound of the splashing water in his ears was irritating him by now. The noise became louder and louder and it seemed to him that it was echoing through his temples with the same force as a hammer beating on an old anvil.

  When the sun began beaming over the world with more liveliness, Viktor was soaked with sweat, loosening his grasp on the bundle. The rays of the bright star were reflected on the limpid water of the river, a limpidity he had never seen: every one of the boy’s details was reproduced meticulously, as in a mirror.

  Viktor took the opportunity to have a break for a few minutes, he washed his face and then restarted his voyage following the stony path. The more he walked, the more he was worried that he wouldn’t make it: he began losing the hope of arriving in Beleth on time for the Great Talents competition.

  His fears increased when the path ended, interrupted by the wide river that flowed for miles toward the sea.

  “That’s the last thing I need…,” he thought, looking around and hoping he wouldn’t have to go back.

  He was almost tempted to dive into the river and let the current carry him away. He thought of what he had risked for the rod he had in his hand and of the satisfaction that Trust would have felt seeing it on show at the fair; he brooded about the uncomfortable trip organized in a hurry and of Selene’s involvement. He felt trapped in the centre of a problem that he himself had created and his morale collapsed to the ground. He tried to find a solution but everything he came up with became a miserable failure even before he tried it.

  Suddenly a pebble fell to the ground and the boy quickly looked toward where the rocky dust came from.

  He moved his free hand along a foothold on the rock wall, noticing in some points the very irregular stretches that ran up to the top: without thinking twice, Viktor decided to climb the rock with his bare hands.

  Not seeing better alternatives, he unrolled the cloth wrapping that covered the rod and tied it like a knapsack, tightening the cloth so much that it nearly stopped his breath; he took the green mithril rod and put it in the cloths around his breast, making sure the object wouldn’t move, and he began the ascent.

  He found it was easy to climb up the first part of the wall, finding many footholds that favoured a fairly secure grip with the cold stone, but after a while things began to get complicated.

  Climbing the rock wall had surely been an insane solution but it was better than remaining where he was waiting for help that would never arrive.

  Feeling better with this thought, Viktor tried to ignore the fatigue and strain on his arms and legs, nearly atrophied by the pain that increased every time he progressed in that crazy climb.

  A drop of sweat went down his forehead, going across his eye and stopping under his left cheekbone, provoking an annoying burning sensation. When this deepened, the young man brought his face near his upper left arm, rubbing his eye and putting an end to that slow torture. He began to breathe deeply but suddenly a big piece of rock fell from under his feet, making him fall.

  Viktor succeeded in quickly grabbing a foothold in the wall, remaining hanging, while he appealed to all his strength to be able to reach the top, the warm blood slowly gushing from the cuts on his hands. The boy watched it branch off on the rocky ledge he was holding onto, and then dripped onto his own face. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then he pulled himself up with all the strength in his body and managed to find a position that allowed him to continue the ascent.

  This time, more slowly and carefully, he decided to choose where to put his feet with caution and which protruding rocks to grab.

  He continued, moving his limbs by inertia; then, when he was about to slip once again, his muscles twitched with all the remaining strength, grasping the rock like a spider.

  The cloths that fastened the rod behind his back loosened and Viktor felt Trust’s work slip from him.

  He looked up and saw the end of the ascent a few feet away, his hands began to burn and tremble, frenzied. For a few moments the boy thought of giving up, realizing that his strength was diminishing; then Selene’s face and her tears that night gave him new energy.

  “She still needs someone beside her,” he mumbled, giving himself an impetus that brought him a step away from the grass above him.

  Viktor felt the rod slipping toward the chasm against which he had fought until then; he recalled all the will he had left and gave a further impetus to the surface of the rock wall.

  While he flew toward the top of the wall, the rod lost contact with the boy’s body and rolled toward the river under him, but as soon as he got to the top, the boy turned around quickly and tilted his torso downward, gripping it, blocking his aching body with his legs.

  A trickle of blood ran along the details of Trust’s creation, aimed at the river. The sun shone on the red filament suspended in the air that rushed slowly towards the water, as if it were a ribbon that let itself be carried away by the air, with a helical trajectory.

  When Viktor straightened up, he cleaned the rod with the cloth around his body and put it inside again, being careful to cover the object with the clean side of the cloths. He looked in the direction he had been going for a couple of hours but still couldn’t see where that passage through the rocks brought to.

  He turned toward the bridge where his ordeal had begun, then he let himself drop on the grass that muffled the fall.

  His right arm trembled a few seconds and the exhausted boy tried to recover the strength he needed to continue the journey. His heavy breathing swelled his lungs, arching his back, compressing his shoulder blades to the ground. Viktor, however, accepted that therapeutic feeling that lying down gave him and he remained in that position for minutes that seemed to him only instants.

  When he felt the strength to get up, his legs trembled under the weight of his body. He began to walk, until he seemed to have recovered his walking abilities, even if he was still very tired and the fatigue didn’t hesitate to make him feel the excruciating pangs that hit his femoral muscles and calves, which often stopped his advance.

  Limping and trudging painfully, he managed to reach the now hated bridge and slid down the cold stone railing where he had dived.

  “With daylight and a clear vision of the things, I would have never jumped off this bridge,” he said before sitting down to rest, looking toward the chasm below.

  A sunray lit his face and he smiled gratified and satisfied, satisfaction because he had survived after all he had been through.

  “There’s still a long way to go to Beleth” he told himself, trying to get up leaning his arm on the parapet behind him.

  AT THE KNELLING OF THE BELL

  T wo of the guards stationed at the gates of Beleth approached the cart, while the others watched Trust, sitting quietly, from a distance.

  “Where are you coming from?” the shortest one asked, going to the blacksmith’s side with an awkward step. The red plume of the helmet stirred with his sudden movements.

  “Lezhen. There are two of us and we want to take part in the Great Talents competition”.

  The guard scrutinized the wagon with suspicion. The other, taller and more composed, joined his friend.

  “We must control what you’re transporting,” he said. “Sorry but it’s a normal practise. We can’t let people in the city if we don’t know their intentions,” he added when Trust frowned.


  “No problem, check it out, but you will only find some food supplies and water for us and the horses.” When the guards approached the back, Selene pulled the curtain flaps aside, letting them enter; the lower one stared at her embarrassingly. Finally, when the two were satisfied that there was nothing suspicious, they got off the cart.

  “I don’t see the object you are going to display at the Great Talents,” one of the two enquired.

  The blacksmith did not intend to tell them what had happened the night before, afraid he would raise suspicions about their coming. Selene had gotten off the wagon and waited motionless for the evolution of the story, hoping that Trust had an idea what to say. Trust perceived she was staring at him and he turned toward her.

  “Lo, she is my daughter,” he extemporized, hoping that the tension in his voice wouldn’t betray him. “So, what beauty could be equal to one’s own child? She is the fruit of my talent, of a father’s sacrifice and of the love I feel for her.”

  The guards were struck by that unique answer, but something didn’t add up.

  “Your intention is to show your daughter to the jury?” the short pudgy one asked with subtle irony and the other guard smiled.

  “No… it’s a poem. I love writing at night when I return from work, so I decided to dedicate a poem to her and I want to present it today. A talent doesn’t have to necessarily be something tangible.”

  The two guards nodded their approval, then they turned to their colleagues who were waiting for instruction at the gates of the town and they both raised a fist to the sky, a signal that meant that the two travellers didn’t have hostile intentions.

  Trust moved the cart again, stopping as soon as they were on the side of the high walls that protected the town, getting in line after the others.

  Trust and Selene got the knapsacks and went toward the handful of guards; two of these opened the heavy entrance gate with effort.