Crimson Feathers

due.

Evalina woke up to the sound of the shotgun and her baby's hysterical cries and knew instantly that the pain she had suffered over the last few months was going to intensify. She got up off the bumpy mattress that lay on the floor of the uninhabited cottage her husband had found and wrenched open the door that separated the two rooms. The room was now silent and devoid of her baby girl. Evalina ran to the front door of the cottage. She thought she could see a silhouette of someone running across the fields, towards the next village, but couldn't be sure as the night light played tricks on her eyes.

She turned and saw her husband lying on his back on the cobblestone floor and rushed to his side. Evalina knew he was leaving this world, and there was nothing she could do to save him. They were so far away from the nearest village, and they were not welcome there anyway. She silently lay on the floor next to the man she loved, her head resting on his chest, ignoring the blood that was trickling from his head. Their bodies lay side by side emerged in the crimson blood pool that had formed under them. She gripped his hands tightly, and as his skin became colder and icier, he left her.

Evalina would not cry. She knew that no one would hear her breakdown, but with her eyes stinging, tears threatening to pour out, she breathed in and out deeply. She had been taught to be strong, and with all the hardship she had dealt with in her nineteen years, she was prepared for this. As a child, the women of the village tried to shield her and the other children from the calamities that were occurring under the Duce's fascist reign, but as the devastation spread, the village became poorer, and the children grew less innocent as corruption spread. As more of the young men of the village donned the black-shirted uniform of the Duce's military squad, the Black Shirts, the youths learned that they had to "Believe! Obey! Fight!" or become victims of the harsh violence the squads had became known to inflict.

Evalina entered womanhood understanding that as a peasant, the only daughter of horse breeders who had migrated from northern Italy to the small southern farming village after the First World War, she could not beat them, only join them. When a handsome young Black Shirt asked her father for her hand in marriage, she accepted. Well, what choice did she have? But Evalina was lucky, he was a kind and gentle man, and she came to love him, with his dark but caring eyes, the windows to a soul that did not have the malevolence for the Black Shirt's violent ways. He was only under the influence of his older cousin, who took him under his wing and dragged him into the politics of the Duce's power-hungry regime.

The fascist regime pursued many causes that strengthened Italy's national liberation, but as years went by the obsession for more power and more wealth took hold, and when the Duce joined forces with the Nazi dictator, Hitler, the situation spiraled out of control. Suddenly, the young Black Shirts were instructed to not only take all the gold jewelry and anything of value from the villager's homes for the war effort but to also start rounding up the Jewish families, who had formerly been safely integrated into the village's society. They were friends, neighbours, acquaintances, and in the closely knit community, no one seemed to know why they were now being persecuted. The Black Shirts were instructed not to hold back, and that they should use any means necessary to get the Jews onto the carriages that arrived weekly to pick them up. The non-Jewish families tried hiding the Jews wherever they could, in the attics of their own homes and in bomb shelters situated below their grain fields.

Evalina and her husband also did what they could, and secretly tried to get as much food as possible to the hidden families, but his cousin soon caught on and beat her husband with the wooden Manganelli clubs that the squad members were given as weapons. He then threatened to kill Evalina if his cousin did not confess the whereabouts of the hidden Jewish families. Of course, out came the confession, and away went the Jews.

The other villagers learned of the confession, and called him and Evalina cowards, spitting on them as they walked through the streets, and telling the younger children to throw stones at their feet. To make matters worse, Evalina's dearest friend Martina had fallen under the spell of her husband's cousin, and they had married instantly. Martina was persuaded to tell the villagers that it was Evalina and her husband's fault that such upheaval was occurring. The village was confused and no one knew who to trust, or who to listen to.

Evalina was heavily pregnant by that stage, but in the shadows of the night, the pair stole a stallion from a nearby stable and fled from the village, finding refuge wherever they could. Evalina thought her baby would signify a fresh start, and when born, she first looked into the hazel eyes that matched her own and was filled with a sense of hope. That new beginning was destroyed when the man who had caused their exile caught up with them, and taken from Evalina the only two people she had left to love in the world.