If someone were to ask me to name the most terrible things that have happened in my life, I would say two things: the death of my brother and sister-in-law and the disappearance of Dioana.
The day Dioana disappeared, I cried out in helplessness and despair that I might lose her too.
To elaborate a bit more on that day, it was not long after my brother and sister-in-law’s funerals.
Maybe a week or so.
Dioana had been crying feverishly through the night for a while now, as if she didn’t know much about death but at least intuitively knew that her mum and dad weren’t there to hold her as tightly as before.
She cried herself to sleep for a while, not knowing whether she was having nightmares, and at night everyone in the castle was on high alert to guard her bed.
For sometime I slept in Dioana’s bedchamber and nursed the squirming, sickly child, even though I could not sleep well myself with such a niece.
Nannies, maids, and everyone else helped me, but it didn’t make parenting any easier.
It was my first time raising a child, I didn’t know what it meant to be a parent, and everything was new.
I shouldn’t have, but for a brief moment I thought it was unfair of my brother and sister-in-law to leave Dioana behind.
I didn’t know then that raising a child requires sacrifice.
If I had, I would not have put a “parenting is easy” or ” having a child is easy” setting in my world.
Anyway, I barely got Dioana to sleep that night, still crying.
I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, and as I patted the little one’s back, I too passed out.
Maybe it was the accumulation of stress that day.
As I drifted off to sleep, I uncharacteristically started having nightmares.
Because of the triviality of the nightmare, which I can’t even remember what it was about, I kept falling asleep, unaware that Dioana had gone outside.
Normally, her little stirrings would have woken me up. But the strange thing was that no one noticed her as she got out of bed, went to the veranda balcony, tied a cloth around herself, went down to the ground floor, and went into the woods.
When I woke up from the nightmare, I felt my heart pounding against the cold empty seat and the harsh rain pounding against the open veranda door.
For hours that day, from dawn until dusk, I and everyone else in House Steren searched the castle and the surrounding forest for the child.
Hours and hours of calling her name.
Torches were lit but quickly extinguished by the torrential downpour, and the wind blew with such force that it seemed as if everything was preparing to take her away.
Tiny footprints in the mud led into the forest.
Hounds and dogs searched in it, but they could not find her.
My robe, worn loosely over my pajamas, was soaked through due to rain.
It was raining so hard, and if she had gone anywhere near the river.
I quickly shook my head and ran to the river against everyone’s wishes.
“Your Excellency, it would be suicidal for you to go to the river, we’ll go there, so please stay here.”
“How can I stay here when I haven’t found Dioana yet? Let go of me. I will look for her myself, and you shall look over there.”
Then my ears caught the sound of a child’s cry.
I listened again, thinking it was the ghostly sound of the wind through the trees, but it was unmistakably Dioana’s voice.
As soon as I heard the muffled sound, I ran quickly.
Even if my boots slipped off in the mud and I was barefoot, even if branches whipped at my face and body in the bushes of the forest as I ran towards the sound. What a foolish thing to do.
To run so helplessly to my death when the Archduke, the man who was supposed to be protecting the Changeling, might be setting me up for assassination.
But so be it. Dioana called me from there.
I ran, and there I found her.
She was soaked to the skin, wailing and sobbing, and wearing clothes I had never seen before.
“Auntie! Haaaaaah!”
“Dioana, it’s okay. It’s okay. Auntie’s here. You’re safe now. Oh my God, baby, how did this happen….”
I hugged her and patted her reassuringly. I couldn’t care less if I was covered in mud or drenched.
Jeremy and the nanny arrived later, and I put a blanket over Dioana, who had fallen asleep in my arms. And just like that, Diana was back at my side, unharmed and conscious.
Of course, she had a high fever for a while, but thankfully it didn’t turn into pneumonia, just a simple cold.
A few days later, I stuck a thermometer in her armpit and asked.
“Dioana, can you tell your aunt why you snuck out onto the veranda that time, and why you went to the woods? I’m not trying to scold you, I’m just curious.”
“Hmm. Well, Dio doesn’t remember much either, and when I woke up, I was in the woods, and I was scared, and I called Auntie to take me away, but it was dark. So I started crying, and I started running, and it was raining suddenly.”
The next words out of the child’s mouth were quite shocking.
“So I ran even more. Then I got thirsty, so I went to river water. But then the water came! It washed over Dio. I fumbled and called for my aunt, but the water got in my nose and it hurt. I couldn’t even open my eyes, it was so cold. But then someone grabbed me and pulled me up to the surface. It was a very pretty person.”
“Pretty?”
“Mmm. But it was a brother. Anyway, he asked Dio if she’s okay and took off his coat because I was cold. Then he said, “Stay here while I go get the people. But I was scared and cried. Just then, aunt came to me!”
“What did he look like?”
“I can’t tell you, Auntie, because he’s Dio’s guardian angel, and I asked him, “Are you Dioana’s guardian angel?” and he said yes” And now I can’t tell you, because I’m going to keep it a secret. He said that I have to keep it a secret so I won’t break my promise.”
“…he told you to keep it a secret?”
“Ugh. It’s a secret now, everyone stop asking.”
“Okay. Okay. I won’t ask you anymore.”
For a while after that day, security was tightened around the castle. I released men to scour the nearby woods for the mysterious man who had saved Dioana.
This was partly to reward him for saving her, but also because I suspected she might have gotten herself into some sort of trouble.
It didn’t make sense. Since she was a toddler, Dioana had always been the kind of child who, once fell asleep, slept soundly without tossing and turning.
Even if sleepwalking had come out of nowhere with no precursors, a four-year-old weaving her way down to the ground floor? Waking up in the woods without realizing it? It didn’t make sense.
There must be someone out to get her, I thought. But in the end, she never found the person who had saved her, nor the person who had brought her to the forest.
“-Puffy is really the guardian angel who saved Dio back then?”
“Ugh! Ha, I can’t help but say it. Anyway, it’s obvious. Puffy remembers Dio, too.”
“So, Auntie, you must never kill Puffy. He’s my guardian angel, and he’s my puppy now, and if you hurt him, I’ll hate you so much that you will regret it.!
I was left speechless by Dioana’s firm declaration of war.
…It was he who saved Dioana back then?
‘If so, doesn’t that mean he’s been living near this estate for nearly three years, and all that time he has been living here undetected…. My soldiers don’t miss a rat, so how has he never been spotted?’
Besides, the last time he was caught, he fell over the fence by himself.
He’s been hiding on this estate for three years without a mouse or bird noticing, and he’s been caught so easily?
…I wonder if he was caught on purpose?
When my thoughts reached that point, I slowly raised myself from my seat.
When Dioana noticed my expression, she seemed a little afraid and said while clutching the hem of my clothes.
“Auntie, you really can’t kill Puffy, he’s a good man. Okay?”
“Dioana, …that’s for your aunt to judge.”
“No, don’t kill him.”
“I won’t kill him, if he’s safe. I want you to understand your aunt’s position, and if he is a good person, I’ll let him live here, as Dio said. If he really is your guardian angel.”
“…Mmm.”
I left the playroom and headed straight for the office.
I need to find out more about this man.
I need to find out more about him, whether it was through appeasement or torture, I need to find out his true purpose.
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