Ilna - Chapter 1

Why did conversations always have to end with 'By the way, I'm a big fan of you' or 'Wow, it's so cool to be actually talking to you', whatever she did?

It was a rainy day, one of the kind in which the clouds half-heartedly dropped a few raindrops here and there, in which puddles were long but never deep and the sky always stayed a dull, light grey. Ilna Salisbury stood in the subway, clutching the metal grab rail and pulling her hood down over her face. The wagon was packed, which was good, because nobody noticed her, and over the rumble of the train and the jostling of the crowd, no one inquired upon who that strange young girl by the door was.

The worst and best thing that had happened to Ilna Salisbury had been to become famous.

It had had happened three years ago - but it had all really started seven years before that, on a damp day like this one; how very different everything was now - and how very strange it was that it had been the very same type of day.

Ten years before, so, Ilna Salisbury had been the very opposite of famous. Whereals seven years later everyone would know her name, at that moment so little people did that they could be counted on the fingers of a pair of hands. Ilna was then nine, and quite worry-free.

The person that knew her name best was her mother; which was to be expected, as the latter was the one having given Ilna her name. Ilna's father, a certain Authbert Salisbury, she had never known, and as Ilna's mother never spoke of him and Ilna herself knew better than to ask, he was never mentioned. The only time he had ever been was when Ilna, six years old, had been told his name by her absent-looking mother on a cold winter's night. She remembered it well: the curtains of the living room had been shaking so violently that they had almost been torn off - her mother had forgotten to close the window behind them.

Ilna's mother, Miusa Salisbury - or Miu, as everyone called her - had been forgetting things as long as Ilna could remember. It was rather more than the average person: she forgot to close the windows, as mentioned, but also put off the lights and turn off the tap, which Ilna learned to do for her; she forgot the names of everyday objects every few sentences, and Ilna learned to put up notes on them saying their names for her mother to remember; she forgot appointments and what her job was, so Ilna learned to make her a timetable and put it up onto the fridge's magnetic door; the only thing she seemed to always remember was Ilna's name. It wasn't that she was old: she was barely into her fourties, and otherwise her brain worked quite well - it was a mystery, really, how this had happened, but after years of discussing this other people had gotten bored of it. However, this put her on top of the list for people knowing Ilna's name.

Second on the list was probably their neighbour, an old lady named Mrs Dillus. Mrs Dillus wasn't exactly what one would call a close neighbour: she lived ten minutes by foot through their village, Montsally-On-Hill. 

Montsally-On-Hill was a village on top of a very peculiar earth rise: it was a sort of large hill, but after around thirty meters of increase it stopped abruptly, went on flat for another fifty meters then continued to climb, this time in a rather steep slope. This made the rise look like a mishappen and very rocky two-block wedding cake. The villagers had called the topmost block 'Montsally' and the village on top 'Montsally-On-Hill'. The place attracted a trickle of tourists each year, a mixture of regular citizens looking for a change of landscape, and of passionate proffesionals coming to stare at the strange shape, facinated. And, of course, when they finally tore their eyes from the mound of earth on which the village was strangely perched, take photoes with large black cameras that stood on a changing amount of legs: sometimes three, a few times five and once a camera that was around a meter squared big and had a dozen legs. The owner had spent a record of eight months at the village, taking photoes and interviewing passers-by. As he had also accosted Ilna for a such interview, he could techniqually also be counted as someone who knew her name - though his questions had been personal and he pestering, so Ilna had been relieved when rescued by an empathetic Mrs Dillus.

Mrs Dillus owned a very hairy dog, which was one of the only reasons for which she ever left the house: other than walking the named 'Frodo' (Mrs Dillus was a very big fan of the Lord of the Rings) and shopping for dog food and toys, she only ventured outside to buy her groceries. Ilna visited her every Saturday for tea, while her mother was out working.

Ilna and her mother were relatively poor, though quite rich actually compared to most from Montsally-On-Hill. It was a village made from a majority of poor, living there either because life was not too costing in that secluded corner of the world, or because their ancestors had once moved to the place. Then, there were a few middle class, who either had a good business run for the handful of tourists that came a year, or who had inherited a small fortune and had decided to spend the rest of their days away from the bustle of city life.

With these different classes living together, one would have expected inequality. However, it was not so: there was a friendliness even between strangers at Montsally-On-Hill, and the richer helped the less fortunate where they could, and vice-versa. This resulted in the fact that nobody starved, though nothing could completely anihilate the fact that it was a rather poor village. But this changed nothing in the happiness of the villagers, who lived on, satisfied with life.

Ilna and her mother were a sort of in-between of the poorest and the richest, who, though they were indeed the richest, were not very rich all the same. Ilna's mother worked all days except Sundays, during the week as a cleaner and on Saturdays as a helper for Ms Billson, the florist. She had used to work as a librarian when Ilna was still small, but, as her memory had worsened since, she had been forced to find a new job. The fact followed that Ms Billson could also be counted on the list of people knowing Ilna's name; in fact, a few more people could, including three or four friendly neighbours and the local doctor. But then, the list ended there. Ilna did not have any friends - she'd never had any, and, as she had never gone to school for there was none at Montsally-On-Hill, she had never had the chance to make some. The few children that lived at the village were not her age, and she had not, of memory, ever met them. She spent her time caring for her mother, and the only people that could be counted as some sort of friends were her mother's, like Mrs Dillus and Ms Billson. 

However, Ilna Salisbury had never known anything else, and was quite content with what she believed was the most normal of lives. She had never thought of befriending other children, and barely thought of them at all. She was, as mentioned, quite worry-free. 

But would that last long?