AURORA (Original Novel)

PROLOGUE. Part one

Russell Lee Andersen

PROLOGUE

The dust particles swirled in a translucent whirlwind in a flickering round dance in the sun's ray of light, which fell in an oblique line onto the gray stone floor. A single, tiny window under the domed ceiling not only provided illumination to the gloomy room, but also reminded its inhabitants of the living world where passersby hurried about their business. The large basement of an old house, built during the Prussian Union,*( An attempt to reconcile German religious communities, undertaken by the Prussian King Frederick William III in 1817.) was located at the intersection of two streets in a small village located north of the Austrian mountains. True, the snow-white peaks were not visible from these places. Residents of the settlement began their day early in the morning, even before dawn.

The bakery, located two houses away from the gloomy basement, spread the aromas of fresh baked goods throughout the area. Here, in the quiet kingdom of forgotten things and twilight, it was completely different. A couple of small mice hurriedly ran between a carved chest of drawers, blackened by time, and a sagging sofa, which once looked rich and even pretentious. A rough male voice came muffled from above, as if from the bottom of an empty barrel. A sound that is frequent within the walls of this house. He was periodically echoed by woman pitiful excuses. Another scandal was brewing between the owner and his wife. A small child roared invitingly, demanding the attention of adults.

For broken toys and worn-out items, human cries meant nothing; their world was a sleepy, mold-smelling basement shrouded in shadows. Sneaking like a thief in the night through someone else's yard, a boy of about nine came down the stairs. His thin, sharp, bruised knees flashed next to the dilapidated railing. Feet, shod in hard leather boots, quickly passed an obstacle course of rickety, creaky steps and stacks of newspapers with yellowed pages scattered on them. The boy visited here often; he was not a guest of the old cellar, but rather its full-fledged inhabitant, a king in a dusty kingdom. The child was not frightened by the moving shadows in the corners or the rustling mice in the broken furniture, even the spiders hanging their webs from the ceiling were friends to the boy who came down.

There was a fresh bruise on his long face under his right eye. The boy stepped over a hanger that had fallen to the floor and climbed into a wide gap between an empty wooden box and a shelf with canned supplies. He pulled his legs under him and began to cry quietly. Upstairs in the kitchen, something fell loudly, the father of the frightened boy screamed indignantly, but it was impossible to make out the words, they merged into a single roar, walking in the vaults of the underground floor. The child shuddered, looking up at the ceiling, he was afraid that Alois, his dad, was about to come down here in search of his careless son. The boy touched the swollen bruise with his fingertips; if the head of the family saw this, he would be in trouble; the matter would not be limited to reproaches and abuse.

A cart wheel flashed through the window, rattling along the cobblestone street, and a dog barked in the neighboring house. Having caught his breath, he calmed down, took a deep breath of the stale air, taking out a notebook hidden under a moth-eaten sheepskin coat. Having wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts, the boy hiding from his parents' scolding picked up with his fingernail a broken pencil that had rolled into the crack between two floor tiles. The room was quite dark to the unaccustomed eye, but over the past two years the boy had spent a lot of time here, much more than on the street or at school. It was there that he received a bruise from the bully Gershom for calling him a «Jewish rat».

The boy did not like his father, but shared his opinion about the Jews, believing that they only caused trouble, although in fact he understood little about this issue. The child adapted to the dampness and inconvenience of the basement and considered them quite acceptable, just to hide from the always dissatisfied eyes of Alois, whom he never called dad, addressing him only by his first name. He was tired of his brother and newborn sister, as well as the world in general. The eldest of the children who lived in this house dreamed of changing it.

The boy put the pencil in his mouth and, grabbing the crumpled notebook, crawled to the only well-lit place in the cellar. He was about to indulge in his favorite activity, drawing, when his eyes, accustomed to every spider in his refuge, noticed the imprint of a miniature bare foot on the dusty floor. The child froze in bewilderment, because here he always wore shoes. The print belonged to someone small, but the younger brother was afraid to go downstairs, believing that an evil spirit lived under their house, rumors about which were spread by the boy himself, so as not to share this place with others.

A thought flashed through his head. "What if the spirit is really real?"  Goosebumps ran down the boy's sweaty back. He peered, trying to discern a lurking stranger in the shadows and silhouettes of old furniture, expecting to see anything, even a terrible monster, even a ghost.

"Don't be afraid." A thin voice whispered quietly near right ear. The child jumped on the spot in surprise, dropping the notebook. The jaws clenched in fear and almost bit through the pencil that was still sticking out in the mouth. He jumped back, colliding with the sofa, and his side hit his back painfully, this knocked the boy off balance for a second, but his thin legs did the job, and he did not collapse on the chairs stacked one on top of the other.

The basement immediately ceased to seem like a refuge; now in the boy's eyes it was a dark, damp and scary place. The chewed pencil cut the inside of his cheek and the boy, grimacing, spat it out in pain. He clenched his fists, turning his head around, but did not see anything suspicious. Ahead, behind the stairs leading to the exit, the footsteps of bare feet were heard.

"Ahhh!!!" the boy screamed at the top of his lungs, taking a step back. Into the beam of light that fell from the window, a miniature girl of about eight years old with golden long hair, wearing a simple white dress, came out. An ordinary child at first glance with a pale, doll-like face. She did not have sharp huge fangs or long claws, she did not glow with a ghostly light and was not translucent.

"Don't be afraid, otherwise I'm afraid too." - said the stranger. It looked like the girl was about to cry. The boy hardly swallowed the lump stuck in his throat and croaked in a trembling voice.

"My dad and mom are at home and will come down here now..." The mysterious guest did not let him finish, interrupting him.

"And then what? They'll beat me, right?"  The girl sobbed, her thin lips trembled. The toes on her bare feet curled, and the first tears appeared in her bright, unusually colored eyes. The nine-year-old owner of the cellar felt ashamed, he absentmindedly thought that it was probably cold for the uninvited guest to stand barefoot on the stone floor, and he was also surprised by her pupils, the likes of which he had never seen.

"Do not Cry! I'm sorry! I was joking, don't be afraid." The boy said, trying to calm his trembling voice. His knees were still shaking slightly, taking on a life of their own.

"Exactly?" - The girl wrinkled her snub nose.

" Exactly, if you don't do anything bad to me, then for sure." The boy crossed his arms over his chest, thereby hiding their trembling. The stranger wiped away her tears and smiled. "How did she end up here?" -He thought, and this thought frightened him, as did her strange eyes. Alois's son remembered what they looked like, his mother had amber beads that she inherited from her grandmother, and their color was very similar to the girl's pupils.