The bells rang out in celebration. Although it was still April, the air felt milder and more benevolent; the village was awakening to the tolling chimes calling the faithful to Sunday services. The sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden by a typical Sicilian mist—that milky, heavy haze that accompanies the scirocco wind. Tiziana, cleaning Belinda's house with her usual fervor, murmured to herself: "Tramuntana e u pisci si ritana, di sciroccu senti cauddu a ogni toccu!" (When the north wind blows, the fish hides; with the scirocco, you feel the heat with every touch).
She was dusting not only the furniture but also the ancient proverbs passed down, perhaps, by some grandmother of her own. The scent of lavender incense, which Belinda had scattered throughout the house—to purify it, she claimed—wafted through the air. Tiziana, however, cared little for it; in fact, she found the odor intrusive and unnecessary, as it masked "her" scent of cleanliness—the Marseille soap detergent she had used to wash the floors of the entire house.
Azzurra had only just woken up, though it was late; on Sundays, she was allowed to linger in bed. Her mother, Belinda, let her rest after an intense week of school commitments, homework, dance, and English lessons. The young girl could still feel her muscles aching from the previous day's grueling lesson; so, before climbing out of bed, as many of her fellow dancers did and as her teacher had taught her, she began some muscular warm-ups, lifting her legs and flexing her toes with geometric precision. Her long hair completely covered her shoulders; it was essential not to cut it, as the chignon was an absolute requirement of her teacher, even during weekly rehearsals. Thus, there was simply no question of scissors.
Azzurra was a silent girl. Not because she had little to say; on the contrary, she weighed every word carefully and reflected deeply before speaking. She never raised her voice; her tone was always like a light breath, almost a whisper.
"Morning, Mama," she said with a sliver of a voice as she entered the kitchen. "I had a dream."
Belinda, following the teaching her mother Caterina had left her, replied promptly: "Cuntilu a mamma, chi passa u distinu" (Tell it to your mother, so that destiny may pass).
"I dreamed I was at my dance classmate's house with her parents," Azzurra began, shrugging her shoulders as she sat at the table. "Suddenly, the scenery changed. We found ourselves in a large ballroom with ruined, peeling walls, and we had to dress up, perhaps for a party. The only outfit I found was an odalisque costume, similar to the one on the Shimmy doll—the one Uncle Mattia and Aunt Erica sent me from London when I was little. It was purple and gold, do you remember it?"
Belinda felt a sudden chill race up her spine, ignoring the heat of the scirocco for a moment. How could she forget Shimmy? She had been a beautiful but unsettling doll, arrived from the heart of the United Kingdom years ago. She had a glassy stare that seemed to follow every movement in the room, and in that house already burdened with tensions and ancient magics, her presence had become unbearable. She had been destroyed because everyone in the family had come to believe she was malevolent—a vessel for misfortune or an open eye onto secrets that were never meant to be revealed. To see her reappear in her daughter's dream, in the form of a dress, was not a good omen.
"In the dream," Azzurra continued, her gaze lost in the emptiness of the kitchen, "I began to dance among those ruins wearing those purple veils. The more I moved, the more the cracks in the walls closed up. But the strange thing was Samuele's amulet: in the dream, it glowed so brightly that I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I felt that the dress was no longer a disguise and that Shimmy was no longer bad. It was as if I were finally me—a warrior dressed in silk who repaired what was broken simply by dancing, using the energy that doll had held prisoner for so long."
Belinda set down the cup she was holding. She knew that in their lineage, nothing was ever truly lost, and that destroyed objects often returned in another form. Shimmy, the "cursed" doll from London, had returned to be redeemed through her daughter's dance. The gold and purple of the dream-dress were the colors of transformation: the lead of the old magic turning into light through the body of a twelve-year-old.
Azzurra would not use needles or incense to mend the cracks in their lives; she would use her body and that strange, silent determination that was blossoming like a flower beneath the scirocco mist. The Shimmy doll was no longer a ghost of the past, but the symbol of a guardian who was learning to don her own power, transforming an old fear into a new, radiant victory.