Work Text:
On sunny days like these, Angelica almost didn’t mind the long walks that took up almost the entire day. Her legs rarely ached anymore, even when the walking was combined with nights resting on the hard, rocky ground. Her younger brother Paolo hopped and skipped along as if he got twelve hours of sleep on a feather mattress every night, though their older brother Tullio’s swift steps and set expression more accurately reflected their night. In their own silence, the three siblings made their way through the sun-dappled woodland, on a path when they could, but over dirt and rocks without a thought when they couldn’t.
They were walking along a path at the moment, not anything like a main road—which would be very dangerous—but the going was easy. Angelica was fully prepared to continue for another couple of hours. She was in the middle of saying so to Tullio when out of the blue his face went white and he pointed behind her with a shaking finger. She turned, ready to face a wild animal or a feral and violent child, but there was nothing.
“What is it?” she cried, turning back to Tullio in alarm. His arm was still sticking straight out and pointing, but he was slowly becoming a more normal colour. He licked his lips and tried to speak as Paolo and Angelica watched him in concern.
All three stood paralysed while Tullio’s eyes flicked back and forth, and finally rested on Angelica. “It ain anything. I thought… I thought it was a Spectre but it ain anything,” he said finally.
“Don’t be silly,” Angelica said severely. She put her arm around Paolo, who had dropped their gear and was shaking slightly. “You ain old enough to see Spectres.” She turned away to conceal her own shaking, under the pretence of picking up the things her little brother had dropped.
Tullio didn’t answer, though Angelica knew if she turned around she would see his answer plain on his face. It was on all of their faces. The fear, the feeling of running out of time. Even little Paolo, who had years until he would be at the mercy of the Spectres, felt it. It wouldn’t be long until Tullio was too old, and then, without their oldest sibling, Angelica could tell that Paolo didn’t know if they’d survive.
Angelica did her best to shelter Paolo and not let him see her fear, but of course he could see it. “You don’t think he actually saw a Spectre?” he asked quietly. Angelica continued to pick up the food and supplies that had fallen to the ground and contemplated answering the question.
“You think he’s that mature? No way, he acts like a baby! I don’t know what you’re thinking, all right,” she said casually, and looked up to watch him react. He laughed, and she let herself relax.
Tullio cleared his throat but waited for them to finish cleaning before he spoke. “The sun’s going down,” he said. Angelica looked to the west and thought to herself that the sun still seemed pretty high in the sky, but she didn’t mention it. He continued, “We’re almost back to Ci’gazze so why don’t we set up a camp here and enjoy our life in the wild for a bit before we go back to civilisation?”
Paolo snorted at Cittàgazze being called civilised but he looked happier thinking about an early night. Angelica didn’t want to push him too hard, but…
“We ain got time! We gotta get to Ci’gazze first, before the other kids get there,” she said and looked beseechingly at Tullio. He shook his head firmly. “It’s not far, all right, we can rest when we get there,” she tried.
“They’re all far behind us, Angelica, not everything’s about winning,” Tullio snapped. She flushed and stared at the ground for as long as she could, while she tried to remind herself that he was older and more experienced. Unfortunately, ‘as long as she could’ wasn’t very long.
“It ain winning! It’s about you! How—” She cut herself off when Tullio sent her a warning glare. They stared at each other for a moment, and both silently accepted their opinions. “All right. Where we gonna set up camp?” she asked.
Tullio smiled at her, gratitude clear in his eyes. He grabbed one of Paolo’s grubby hands and took the basket from his other one, setting it down next to the path. “Just here.”
Angelica nodded approvingly, and the siblings were a team again, planning and chattering and unloading all their luggage.
They set about making a camp. Paolo didn’t grumble when Angelica set him the task of finding wood for a fire, and she in turn barely complained when Tullio forced her to put up all their tents herself. He didn’t seem to do much, but she thought she spied his hands still shaking once or twice, so she kept quiet about that too.
Angelica struggled with the flint and steel for nearly a minute before giving up and handing it over to Tullio to light the fire, but once it was set going, it quickly became a roaring inferno. “It’s too hot today for a fire,” Paolo whined, and Angelica, who was already mopping sweat from her brow at two metres away, had to agree. She worried that it might be a fire hazard too. Tullio scoffed at them all, but when he went to put the food on it she could see regret on his hot, red face.
They settled down to wait at a distance and began preparing the rest of the food. “I miss ice cream,” Paolo said mournfully as they looked at the meagre helpings of vegetables.
“There’s gonna be some at Ci’gazze, all right,” Angelica said, patting his shoulder. “Unless” — her expression turned crafty — “the Spectres ate all of it.”
Paolo laughed. “No way! They be sick, all right, if they eat all that!” He stared daringly at Angelica and she smirked at him. Tullio got up to take the food off the fire and passed in between them but they didn’t move. Angelica wasn’t going to do anything other than stare intently until Paolo gave up.
“They eat it, they get sick, they throw it up, they eat it all over again,” Angelica said seriously. A corner of Paolo’s mouth twitched but he didn’t look away. The twitch disappeared for a second but came back on both sides as he struggled to keep a straight face. Angelica watched him, amused, until he finally cracked, a laugh bursting from his lips.
Tullio returned with his hands full of food. He didn’t take long to divide it between the three of them, but he stood, looking undecided, for an uncomfortable amount of time.
“Come on, sit,” Angelica told him but he shook his head and shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry for being all scary before,” he said. “It just was a blurry bit of stuff. It ain anything to worry about. Just a trick of the light, all right.”
“Sit down,” Paolo said. He grabbed Tullio’s hand and dragged him down. “Stop worrying about it. You were imagining things that ain there, nothing’s gonna hurt you.”
Angelica glanced at Tullio with raised eyebrows but he was staring at his little brother with an adoring expression. She kept her lips pressed firmly together.
Tullio wrapped his arm around Paolo’s shoulders and passed his food to him. “You’ve got it, I won’t worry no more. Soon we’ll be back at Ci’gazze and in familiar territory, you excited? There won’t be nothing to scare us.”
Paolo was smiling, but Angelica watched it slowly drop from his face.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“It’s gonna be weird without Mum and Dad there,” he said quietly. “I want them back.” A frown pulled at the corners of his lips, which were starting to wobble.
Tullio hugged Paolo tightly with the arm he had around his little brother’s shoulders. “It’s only been a few days since you saw them last. They’re safe up in the hills and we be safe here and at Ci’gazze too.”
“Yeah!” Angelica chimed in. “We’ve been travelling for no time, we’ve been much quicker than when we travelled during the fog. We ain got parents weighing us down now. We’re almost there!”
“I know it ain been that long since we saw them, but I wish they were here… I hate them Spectres!” Paolo said savagely. He buried his face in Tullio’s shoulder, who moved to wrap both his arms around Paolo. For a moment they were still, Tullio’s arms barricading off the real world from his little brother. Angelica watched them with a smile on her face, though it wavered around the edges. She felt her heart constrict with pain at Paolo’s sadness and expand with love for him and Tullio at the same time.
She let them hug for a few seconds longer, then launched herself towards them. Tullio looked up at the moment before impact, his eyes widening and then narrowing into “angry” slits, but it was too late to move out of the way. She collided with them, arms wrapping as far around as she could as she pulled them into a group hug.
They tumbled sideways, fortunately away from the fire, with Angelica still holding onto them tightly. Every so often, she caught a glare from Tullio before they were bumped into a different angle, and eventually apart.
“Why did you let go? Come back here,” Angelica said with a pout. She scooted forwards and picked Paolo up from where he was lying giggling on the ground, dragging him towards Tullio.
Tullio scowled at them, but Angelica thought she could see amusement in his eyes and he didn’t resist when she pulled him into the hug. Angelica smiled into his shoulder and squeezed Paolo tightly.
“I wish Mum and Dad were here same as you do,” she said, “but we gonna be alright.” She patted him on the head.
Angelica sat still with her brothers in her arms, in front of the fire for a couple more minutes. She would have stayed like that forever, but Paolo was starting to get squirmy. At least that meant he was feeling better.
Paolo poked her and ran back over to their food, though he didn’t pick his meal up. Of course, he went for Angelica’s, which meant she had to grab his and Tullio’s and not let go until they had fought it out.
They took their time eating, probably, Angelica thought, because once they were finished they would have to put the fire out. Then, all they’d be surrounded by would be darkness. Angelica wasn’t afraid of the dark, not like Paolo was, but it would be her first night without parents or light, two of the constants in her life.
Paolo finished last, having been bribed with promises of ice cream to finally speed up. Tullio looked disapprovingly at them for this, probably because he very well knew that they wouldn’t be getting the ice cream from their own house, but Angelica reasoned that they might as well eat most of it before it went off. She doubted that the adults were coming back any time soon, with all the Spectres that were clustering in Cittàgazze.
There weren’t any more excuses not to put out the fire, so Paolo and Angelica let Tullio do it. He demanded to have the first watch, even though he had taken the first watch almost every night on their trek home, and had let them sleep until dawn before waking them. Angelica could see bags under his eyes that contrasted sharply with the pallor of his skin.
“You can let me have the watch tonight,” Angelica told him. “I promise you I ain gonna let anything happen to you or Paolo, all right.”
Tullio attempted a smile. “I know it, but there’s some things only I can look after.”
“Like…” Angelica prompted.
He cleared his throat and forced the smile onto his face. Angelica wished he hadn’t, for it made him look less sensible than usual, in a way that was quite unnerving. He moved closer to her, and lowered his voice as he said, “Like Spectres.”
Angelica felt her heart leap into her mouth. She imagined Tullio sleeping peacefully while a Spectre moved closer and closer towards him, neither she nor Paolo able to do anything as they suddenly worked out what was going on. “I didn’t realise,” she said, her voice small.
Tullio shook his head, and when he looked back at Angelica the smile was gone, replaced by a kindly warmth in his eyes. “I didn’t expect you would. I won’t let the Spectres get to me, all right. But I’m gonna take the first watch.”
She didn’t argue after that. They settled down next to their supplies with Tullio sitting on a log next to them, and tried to fall asleep.
Paolo shuffled in circles and turned over a hundred times before drifting off and leaving Angelica in silence. She closed her eyes and told herself that it wasn’t dark, and her parents were right next to her keeping her safe.
It didn’t work.
She thought she heard a branch crack, and whipped her head around to see only trees and sky. She glared into the distance, waiting for something to reveal itself. Was that a smudge? Or was she suddenly old enough to see Spectres?
Angelica glanced at Tullio, who was looking in the other direction. He seemed unaffected. It must have been a smudge.
She lay her head back down and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. The ground under them felt more like brick than dirt, sticks poked into her back, Paolo was snoring. Sleep was impossible, but she had to try. She needed all her wits about her for when they got to Cittàgazze.
Tullio made a soft, gasp-like noise. Angelica’s heart gave a lurch, and she sat bolt upright. She looked to the place she last saw her older brother, expecting to see him with lifeless, soulless eyes, the tell-tale sign of a Spectre’s victim, but he wasn’t there. After a desperate scrabble at the ground, Angelica found a rock, and gripped it tightly as her eyes darted back and forth. She heard the noise again and her head snapped around, the rock brandished in front of her, though she knew it would do no good against a Spectre.
Her eyes locked onto Tullio and she paused with the rock in the air. He sniffled again and relief filled Angelica, followed by painful sympathy. He looked so wretched, so broken with his head in his hands, that she could feel tears pooling in her own eyes.
No matter how much Angelica disliked trekking through the dangerous woods without parents, she would do it a thousand times over for Tullio. If he thought his best chance of survival was by having some magical artefact that he could only get in a Spectre-infested city, she was going along with him.
Her heart slowly stopped pounding, and Tullio’s quiet sobs and sniffles slowly died away. She still felt on edge, but Paolo’s warmth next to her convinced her that all would be alright, and she could close her eyes for a little while.
As Angelica requested, Tullio woke her a short while before dawn. He didn’t bother giving her a smile, and lay down in her place without a word. She pursed her lips, grit her teeth, and nodded her head to him, though he might have seen the nod as more of a shudder. He dipped his head in return in a curt nod, then covered his head with the blanket and stopped moving.
The next hours that followed were torturous as Angelica sat alert on her log, flinching at any noise and flicking her eyes in every direction. Her breathing felt overly loud, and she feared that it would drown out the noise of an approaching enemy, but when she focused on making it quieter she felt like she would pass out. Even when she let herself breath normally, passing out felt quite possible.
She kept an eye on Tullio as well, ready to drag him into a tree or fight a Spectre with her bare hands if he seemed to be drifting into oblivion or even acting weird in any way. She watched the rise and fall of his chest suspiciously, like it might stop moving at any moment.
Finally, when she could barely sit still and every shadow seemed like a Spectre, the sun came up. Paolo woke soon after and Angelica felt like she could breathe a much-needed sigh of relief as they ate breakfast and packed up the campsite. They had finished and were sitting on logs and talking when Tullio woke up.
“Finally! We gotta hurry up all right, or someone might get there first,” Angelica huffed, unable to stop herself from scowling.
Tullio frowned back at her, but he picked himself up off the ground and made his way towards them at a slightly quicker pace than before. Angelica knew that he liked to be on the move even more than she did, but he ate his breakfast unbearably slowly, so much so that she continued to berate and prod him the whole time.
As soon as he seemed finished, she pulled him up and yanked him and Paolo down the path. “We gotta hurry,” she urged, exasperated. Paolo whined and complained but Tullio let himself be dragged along, eyes on the ground.
She let go of him once it was clear that he was content to trail after her at whatever speed she chose. Paolo, she kept a hold of, partly so that he would stay at the same pace as her, and partly so that she wouldn’t have two free hands to take their supplies with. Paolo was complaining about the speed and not the heavy baggage so she reasoned that he wouldn’t mind continuing to hold onto it.
They walked for two hours without much change. Angelica and Tullio eventually held their things for Paolo, and they had to slow their pace from a speed-walk to a weary trudge.
“Can we have a break yet?” Paolo asked, for the fourth time. No one answered him.
Angelica saw tears start welling up in his eyes, so she sighed and shook her head. “Not yet.”
Paolo sighed too, and wiped a grubby hand across his face. “All right…” he said, his voice watery but determined. After a moment of silence, he pointed ahead and said, “Is that Ci’gazze?”
Angelica looked up but all she could see were trees. She scoffed. “There ain no way we’re there yet.”
From her left there came a rustle and then two young children appeared with sticks sharpened at the ends. One of them grinned wickedly. “Ci’gazze, eh?”
Paolo dropped his basket. Angelica shoved him behind her and pulled out her knife. Tullio seemed to snap awake, and after a short fumble, pulled his out too. “Cittàgazze, yeah… Who are you?” he asked cautiously.
The two children smirked at each other and didn’t answer. Instead they stepped aside and another child, this one older, stepped out next to them. From behind trees and bushes, another two appeared, who stood themselves beside the older one, making an intimidating line of five children.
Most people in Cittàgazze had red hair, but Angelica noted that they didn’t just share a hair colour, their rounded noses and smirking mouths looked nearly identical. The oldest child and one of the first little ones were boys, and the other three were girls, seeming to range from just younger than Paolo to a few years older than Angelica.
Their stances and stares were intimidating enough, but the moment Angelica noticed the two bows and the crossbow in the older children’s hands, she held her knife up high.
The oldest child didn’t seem to notice, and simply looked up and down the path for a few tense seconds. Finally, he turned to Angelica, Tullio, and Paolo.
“You can put that down,” he said, with a nod to Angelica’s knife.
She scoffed at him and didn’t lower her weapon. “With you holding that crossbow? Ain likely.”
The boy looked down at his bow and coughed awkwardly. “Sorry. I… yeah.” He put it down carefully, then glanced at the children beside him who Angelica assumed were his siblings. “Go on, there’s only three of them, they ain gonna hurt us.”
Angelica opened her mouth to argue that she definitely could hurt him, when he interrupted her again.
He turned around and said to the bushes, “Come on out.”
All holding hands, a group of at least ten young children emerged from the trees. The first one walked up and grabbed the boy’s hand with a lazy kick aimed at the bow he’d put on the ground.
“Hey! You’re gonna break that!” he said, and yanked the little child back.
She glared at him, water pooling in her eyes. “No I ain!”
One of the girls, who Angelica assumed was the boy’s sister, smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. “Leave her, Cario! We have… visitors who need your attention.”
“Yeah, visitors who ain put their weapons down yet because some people who aren’t visitors ain either,” he said pointedly. The girl looked down at her crossbow and then back up at her brother with a roll of her eyes. She placed it on the floor and sent him a mocking smile, which he replied to with a smirk.
“So, you’re off to Ci’gazze? That where you’re from?” Cario asked. When no one replied, he sighed. “You might as well put down your knives, they ain gonna do much good against us. Even Spectres don’t scare us here.”
Paolo pushed Angelica out of his way, head held high and proud. “We ain scared of them either,” he said, his voice only slightly shaking from addressing the large crowd of children.
“Yeah, and that’s very comforting to hear. I can’t imagine why we’d put down our knives when you’re such a threat we ain gonna stand a chance,” Tullio added. He stabbed towards them with the blade in a very clearly threatening way.
The girl Angelica’s age pushed the younger kids out of the way and bent over slightly to let her hands hover over the crossbow on the ground. Her older brother, however, barely flinched, and kept a hold of the little boy’s hand. Angelica struggled to contain her fury at Tullio and keep her face straight as she watched Cario for his reaction.
“Or keep your knives. We rarely visit Ci’gazze, don’t see many cities at all, so we mightn’t see you again as long as you don’t try and sneak your way back into our territory, all right.” Cairo grinned at them, but it wasn’t friendly anymore. Even Tullio could tell this was a threat he shouldn't ignore.
He lowered his knife slightly and stepped backwards. His movements were uncertain all of a sudden, and Angelica felt it was time for her to take control. She was good at pacifying Paolo so she hoped she could pacify these children too, and hopefully salvage the situation.
“We don’t wanna fight, our only enemies are the Spectres,” she said as calmly as she could. The little boy holding his big brother’s hand watched her trustingly and his sister stood straight again, her eyes on Angelica and not her crossbow. Everyone watched her as she smiled weakly and continued, “So we’re gonna just go and not bother you anymore. All right?”
The little boy tugged on Cario’s hand. When he looked down at his little brother, the boy tipped his head towards their sister, who was watching Cario carefully. After a moment of silent communication, she turned around and gestured at the younger children, taking one by the hand to lead them back into the shrubbery.
“Goodbye, good luck with Ci’gazze,” Cario called as he followed the band into the trees, though he didn’t look back.
Angelica immediately turned her sights to Tullio, whose eyes were wild and face was pale. “You could’ve killed us!”
He didn’t react for a second. Her eyes narrowed and she prepared to smack some sense into him, but before she could, he opened his mouth and laughed.
Paolo flinched and grabbed Angelica’s hand at the sound. It was cold and mirthless, with an edge to it that unsettled his siblings. Angelica didn’t know whether to call it on the verge of insanity, or definitely insane.
“Tullio!” she cried. When the laughter continued with no sign that he heard her, she lifted her arm and gave him a smack that left a vibrant red mark on his cheek. His laughter stopped immediately and he scowled down at her, though his anger seemed to lessen when he saw the relief on Paolo’s face. Angelica picked up the basket and pressed it into his hands, then pulled Paolo back down the path. Tullio fell into step beside them without a word.
For the next few hours, they walked silently. Tullio was on edge and flinched so often that it started making Angelica flinch too, in response. However, even though Tullio clearly thought that a Spectre was seconds away from attacking the group, no horrible and deadly events occurred.
Eventually, Paolo broke the silence. “That’s Ci’gazze, ain it? It gotta be!”
Angelica smiled, full of relief as she looked up to see the welcoming spires and roofs of Cittàgazze. “That’s it, all right. You wanna go get some of those ice creams?” she asked Paolo.
“Go look for your ice creams,” Tullio said abruptly. He placed the basket on the ground. “I’m done with these Spectres and them watching me all the time. I’m leaving, all right.”
Angelica felt her heart clench at the thought of him leaving them alone, and it didn’t help that he would be alone in a Spectre-infested city either. She let go of Paolo’s hand and wrapped her arms around her older brother, squeezing him tightly. Tullio gently hugged her back, then let go to do the same for Paolo. He had to crouch down to reach his little brother, but Angelica saw him stiffen in surprise at the little boy’s strength as he gripped Tullio’s sides.
Finally they let go, and Angelica picked up Tullio’s basket, then took Paolo’s hand again.
“Goodbye, Tullio,” she said.
“Goodbye, Tullio!” Paolo cried.
“Goodbye,” Tullio said. He couldn’t quite keep the fear from his face as he turned around, but when he walked off into the city it was with quick, certain footsteps and his head held high.