Forever Young (for cripmeister)

[justmedk]

16-year old Daniella Jakobsen had been looking forward to her high-school's study trip to Rome for months. Not because of the "educational" value of the trip, of course, but because of the chance to spend so much time with her classmates. The partying at night after the day's trips to museums, old ruins, etc, were what she was there for.

This tale starts on Wednesday night in a hot June evening in a hostel in Naples. Or, as the locals would call it, Napoli. The kids are tired from the day's activities of visiting Pompeii, climbing Mount Vesuvius, and of course their long drive from Rome, and the prospect of returning to Rome the next morning.
It was almost enough to make Daniella shrug her shoulders and go to bed when her best friend urged her to go along with her and some of the others to "this really cool place I just found on google that's only like...15 minutes away!"


Almost. But not quite. Daniella was ever curious, and the fact that they'd been told by their teachers to not leave the immediate area around the hostel, just made doing so even more alluring.
So around midnight, when their teachers had gone to bed, three girls and a guy snuck out of the hostel and hailed a cab.


The driver simply wanted to go home soon, and didn't want to bother with the nuisance of explaining to these tourist kids that the Palazzo della Rigati was not only supposedly haunted - he suspected that's why they wanted to go there in the first place - but dangerously unstable too. As long as they paid him at the end of their journey, he didn't care.

And so when they had arrived, and had paid him, he left without saying anything else than mumbling something in Italian about stupid tourists, and headed off. The place itself must have been quite impressive in its hayday, Daniella thought as they crossed the iron gates that seperated the property from the outside world. She shivered a bit, even in the warm Campanian night, which she thought odd at first, but pushed the thought away.
There was no such things as ghosts, but Fatima wanted to see this place, and she wanted to support her best friend, so here she was.



"Is it safe, though?" asked the one voice of reason in the group, a boy named Dennis, as he looked at the rather shabby looking outside of the structure.

"It'll be fine, don't worry!" Fatima said somewhat annoyed, as the group entered the building itself with a mighty squeak of the door. The place was like something out of a cheap horror flick. Spiders webs everywhere, furniture that was covered in layers of dust thicker than Daniella's arm, etc.


"Ew, this place is gross", she remarked as she followed in her friends' footsteps.


"It's an abandoned haunted house, what did you expect?" another girl - Elin - pointed out sarcastically, before she yelled out: "Yoohoo! Ghosties! We're here!", she called with a laugh that made Daniella roll her eyes, and Dennis shudder.

"Come on, let's go upstairs", Daniella said, and began to move towards a staircase that led to the first floor. The rest followed, but while she waited for them, Daniella moved towards the old wooden guard rail to look down and wait for them. She shuddered for a moment before she looked around. There was something about this place that creeped her out, and she simply wanted to do whatever the others came to do, and leave again as quickly as possible. She wasn't scared, of course, but she WAS creeped out. Not that she'd ever admit it.
"This is starting to get really fucking creepy", she mumbled as she leaned her weight against the guard rail....and she let out a loud scream of surprise and terror as the guard rail gave way under the weight of her body. She was not fat, but the wood was old and hadn't been taken care of in decades. She didn't have time to think much else than "this is gonna hurt" before she felt a very intense and very sudden sharp pain in her neck.


She stood up and brushed herself off, but something seemed.....wrong.
The interior of the house, which had seemed old and decrepit and neglected, now seemed to be in the prime of its life, its glory days, and everything appeared so much clearer and brighter. She looked around, confused, for a while, until she saw and heard her friends screaming in terror as well and rushing forward. But she was certain that she didn't see them quite rightly because they were slightly transparent. She figured she had hit her head harder than she thought, and shook it, before trying to speak up and call out to them as they rushed towards her......and found that she couldn't produce any sound. Her eyes widened in horror, as she tried to scream their names.
If any of the other kids had had the mental wherewithal to realize it, they would have just felt the same kind of cold she had felt moments earlier at the top of the stairs. They didn't, though, and Daniella was perplexed when they gathered around her, but knelt down and looked down at something on the floor rather than her.


She looked down herself, and froze as she saw what was there: It was herself, lying in a twisted, contorted pose.

Daniella didn't know what to do with herself. She simply stood there and stared at what was clearly herself, but in a faded, transparent state, with her horrified friends gathered around her, one running around in circles around herself, the other stimply staring at Daniella on the floor.

Daniella herself called out:

"ANYBODY? What's going on here??" she called out to no one in particular, and then proceeded to try to grab her best friend's shoulder, only the see her hand go straight through her. She screamed in shock, and recoiled, even as she saw the shades pull out their cell phones and call....presumably their teachers. Daniella herself simply stood there and stared, unable to fathom exactly what had just happened

[cripmeister]

The disturbance had been tangible on some level to all of the palazzo's many residents. For some it merely registered as a fleeting moment of noise in the century long quiet of their memories that provoked no reaction. For some though, more curious and still interested in something beyond their own consciousness, the presence of life in the palazzo was worth taking note of.

Giuliana Capelli had not got as far as she had in life without a great deal of curiosity and a desire to explore the world around her. Even now that world was restricted to the building in which she had died sixty years ago, she still investigated whatever sensations and experiences she could. Through experimentation she had managed to stabilise her form and her environment so that she could exist in the palazzo as she had once done, interact with objects that existed now only in her memory or that of the building - and in that process she had come to know some of the countless others who still did the same, who had made their own lasting realities in their former home, barely visible to outsiders.

So it was that she took note of the curious goings on just on the other side of the veil. On the other side at first, but deep in the palazzo the boundary was far less of a barrier. What was clear to Giuliana even from some distance away was that there were four living beings suddenly present; then all of a sudden, three - but still four spirits more than there had been.

The radiation of strong emotion from the entrance hall confirmed her assessment of what had transpired as she made her way there, peering through the sixty years of memory to see things as they were in the present, whenever that was.

By the time she reached the hallway, the balance had again changed, and the living were again absent from the building. The extra spirit remained. Giuliana took in the spectacle at a glance: a young woman - a child in fact, strangely dressed, stood to one side of the room beneath the landing above. The girl was still staring in horror and confusion at her former shell, lying twisted and broken on the floor at her feet.

Giuliana knew all too well what that moment was like. Her own end had been less sudden, but certainly unexpected, and for a long time afterwards she had been left to come to terms with it on her own. Instinctively she knew that was this girl needed to be moved somewhere else, away from the scene of the trauma, and to be told by someone that everything was going to be alright. If left alone, she would sink into a state of shock and despair that might come to define the rest of her existence.

Appearing beside the girl she reached out and got her attention by taking hold of one of her hands, relieved to find that the girl's form was as 'solid' as her own and she had fully transitioned to the other side in her full form.

'Look at me' she began. The first time she had communicated with another inhabitant of the house, it had felt strange and unnatural. Moreover at the time it had been her first communication of any kind for more than a decade. Now it came as naturally as speaking in life, and she hoped that the girl's swift transition would make it easy for her to do the same.

'Look at me' she repeated firmly. 'We need to move from here. I will explain where you are and what has happened, but you must believe me that everything will be alright. Now come.'

Slowly, she led the girl from the hallway, knowing that she could not move too fast at this stage in case the fragile interaction they had broke under the strain. Right now they were almost as close and as tangible to each other as two living beings, but that might not last if it was put under pressure, and reaching that stage had taken Giuliana years of work.
Once they were out of the hall, she proceeded down an enfilade of rooms to one she hoped would have a calming influence. It had once been a housekeeper's sitting room and it now had the appearance it had at the end of the 19th century - comfy, compact and homely.

Giuliana put her hands on the girl's shoulders and looked carefully into her face, to try and judge something of her character and her state of mind, and spoke in a voice she hoped was calm and friendly.
'My name is Dr Giuliana Capelli. Whose acquaintance do I have the pleasure of making?'

[justmedk]

Daniella was lost in the insanity of watching herself on the floor, mouth agape and eyes the same, when she felt someone take a hold of her hand.
She screamed in surprise and fear, as she had not heard anyone coming - not that she would have, of course. She turned around to look at who it was, and was even more afraid when she saw the woman looking at her. The look on the woman's face was not harsh, but it WAS firm, and the voice came through in clear Danish, so much like her own dialect that she would later find it disturbing, but for now she didn't pay it much mind.


There was an authority in the woman's voice, however, that she responded to and she nodded, following along where the woman led her away from the scene. The deeper she went into the place, the more real and bright things seemed to be. Daniella couldn't believe that it was the same crumbling mess they'd gone into. Especially the last room she was led into was almost nice and "hyggeligt". But she wanted answers, and she only barely heard Guiliana out, before she responded herself:

"I...I'm Daniella", she said, "I'm visiting with my school...what is this place? And why aren't you moving your lips when you talk? Are you like one of those people who can talk with their mouths closed and make it seem like their dolls are doing it?", she asked, "And how did you get so good at Danish?", she went on, before yet another question popped out of her. Deep down she knew the answer, but she did not want to think about it:

"And if I'm sleeping in the hallway, how can I be here as well? And why does this place look so nice when it looked like shit a few minutes ago?"


The look on her face was one of confusion, doubt, and, more than anything, fear.

[cripmeister]

Giuliana could have predicted this sort of reaction from the girl. It was not going to be easy for her to come to terms with what had happened. And she was so young, it was a terrible waste. For now though, she needed to try and keep her calm and rational - longer term she would come to terms with her new existence at her own pace and in her own way.

It took a considerable amount of thought for Giuliana to stay on top of the situation; this was more excitement than she had encountered in many years, and she needed to keep pace with the conversation and keep on top of young Daniella's emotions. As soon as the girl's questions had finished, Giuliana did the equivalent of pausing to draw breath, if she had still been capable of breathing, before she responded.

'We are still in the palazzo Daniella, I assume you know the identity of the building you came to. We are in what was once a private servant's room. It has not been for many many years, and yet as you see, it still is.' She was being deliberately a little cryptic, but she suspected Daniella did already have an inkling of what the situation was, even if she was not ready to admit it to herself.

'I am not speaking Danish - I assume that Denmark is your own country - nor are you speaking Italian. Language does not really enter into it, the fact is, we can communicate with each other.'

'I think you know the answer to that question Daniella. You are not sleeping in the hallway. Whatever is in the hallway may have been you, but it is not any longer, it is nothing. You are now here, in this room, with me, and that is all that is important. Do you understand?' Giuliana looked Daniella straight in the face as she spoke these words, trying to assess whether they were received as well as the girl's state of mind as they were spoken.

She flinched slightly at the foul language that came out of the girl's mouth. Someone of her age had no business knowing such words, let along using them. In fairness the girl was in some degree of shock, and also she was probably just getting used to non verbal communication and had less than the usual filter for what words left her brain. All the same, such language in Giuliana's youth would have earned the culprit a washed out mouth and a very sore backside.

Speaking of her own youth, Giuliana remembered that she had very little idea of the passage of time any more, and this girl probably represented a totally different outside world from who knew what era. She was certainly dressed fairly outlandishly. The sporadic visitors Giuliana had witnessed come and go from the palazzo (mainly surveyors checking just how dilapidated it was before swiftly leaving) did not give her much indication of the world outside.

'This is an important question Daniella.' she began, taking the opportunity also to distract the girl from her immediate situation. 'What date and what year is it currently?'

[justmedk]

Daniella was an intelligent child, and of course had known immediately what had happened, when she had looked down at herself and seen her friends scrambling, first to her side, and then out of the building. She'd tried to follow them, but when she had gotten to the door, it had been as if she'd hit a brick wall.
It had prevented her from leaving, and all she'd been able to do was stand there and stare at her friends disappearing into the distance.


But hearing it said so obvious, so brutally plain, even though it really wasn't as brutally plain as it could have been, was enough to send her reeling at the moment:

"N...no", she said, and if there'd been anyone in the area at that moment, they'd have felt the temperature drop considerably. "No, that....that can't be", she denied the obvious, even to the point where she zoned out of the conversation and was about to enter a loop of saying the same thing again and again:

"No, I can't be dead! It's not true! It's a mistake!"

She got that out a couple of times, before Guiliana's voice brought her back to the here and now, and she looked straight ahead of her before she answered the question. She looked into Guiliana's eyes and wondered how she could not know this, while, of course, knowing the answer herself. Time was said to be a "funny" thing to ghosts. And now she was one herself.
Daniella forced herself to answer the question:

"It....it's September 8th 2019", she said quietly, before she felt a new presence in the mansion and she looked up.


"Someone's here!", she announced and got up, following the trail of the scent of the living that permeated the house, which she could already feel as vastly different from the house's normal state.
When she arrived at the origin point, she found herself back in the hallway where "it" had happened. But it was not her friends. She spotted them in the distance through the open door.....but it was clear that it was several hours later than when they'd arrived, because the sun was starting to rise and the pitch black night sky was starting to brighten to the point where it almost hurt her eyes to look at......though it was still only pre-dawn. How did even the faintest light now hurt like this? She recoiled a bit as she saw the presence in the room with her. A patrol of Carabinieri who looked at the twisted form of what used to be Daniella with pity and sadness. One of them, a young woman made the sign of the cross before she said something in Italian which Daniella did not understand at once except for one of the few words in Italian she'd learned: "Bambina....", which the woman said with sadness in he voice. But when another man arrived, she understood the meaning of the rest well enough: The doctor, a middle-aged man came in, quickly touched Daniella's neck and looked at the position of her body, and shook his head at the police officer sadly, before he looked at his watch and said something solemnly. The young woman's partner nodded solemnly too, and wrote something down, before yet a third man, a paramedic, arrived and gently and respectfully put Daniella's shell into a body bag and zipped it up, before getting it up on a gurney wiht the help of the female police officer's partner, and rolling it out. The doctor put his hand on the woman's shoulder and said something in a gentle tone of voice, while the woman looked at the spot where Daniella had been a few moments earlier. She nodded and stood up, following her colleagues, and headed towards the exit.

Daniella couldn't stop herself from following them, calling out to her friends outside, and she just managed to get a glimpse of them, hiding their faces in their hands, before the door shut in front of her, and she slammed into it as if she'd run into a wall.


"Damn it!", she exclaimed as she fell on her butt from shock, but quickly stood up again. She merely stared at the door for a long, long time before saying, still facing the door.

"What...what happens to me now?", she asked, sadness and fear in her voice. "Aren't you supposed to...like...move on or something?", she suggested somewhat desperately.

[cripmeister]

It was always going to be a difficult moment, Giuliana knew. To come to terms with what had happened was something it would not be easy or quick to get over. It could take - well it was difficult to talk about the passage of time in this state, where it ceased to have as much meaning or effect on the house's inhabitants, but certainly it could take a long time. Her only hope was that while Daniella's tragic end had been premature, it had been mercifully swift; and now the reminders of her previous existence, her friends, her possessions, the scene of her demise, were all being cleared from sight and mind, hopefully that would make some difference.

Her plan had been to remove Daniella from the main part of the house for long enough for that to be fully accomplished. It was therefore a little frustrating when the girl leaped from her seat and rushed back the way she had come to witness everything that was happening. At the same time however, Giuliana was impressed by how quickly and readily Daniella had picked up on the presence of the living in the house. Interpreting that sensation was something it had taken Giuliana a little time to get comfortable with, and her scientific mind was immediately interested that this young arrival was so instantly attuned.

Putting that thought aside, she followed in the disturbed wake of Daniella's spirit back through the house to the hallway, where she too witnessed the conclusion of proceedings, the departure of the living and the tangible shift that made in the atmosphere of the room, and then Daniella's unsuccessful attempt to follow beyond the threshold.

They had probably all tried it at some point. It was natural enough. But every inhabitant of the house with the sentience to know what state they lived in knew that somehow, the walls and thresholds of the house presented an impenetrable barrier. Even seeing through them to the outside worlds was difficult - sometimes a vista would be conjoured up through a window, but as often as not it was a memory of a view long past, and not a true glimpse of the outside world. Either way, it remained unattainable. Daniella was getting her first lesson in that.

Giuliana felt herself overtaken by a level of emotion she had not felt for a long time, as she looked at the forlorn figure staring at the heavy wooden doors. In the surroundings of the palatial hallway, Daniella looked very small and vulnerable, even more so than her current state of mind would allow. Giuliana felt a wave of sympathy for the girl and a desire to care for her. Not that she needed care in many of the ways she used to, but Giuliana still felt the urge - stronger than at any time since she crossed - to look after, to comfort something or someone, and that someone was this newly arrived spirit.

Stepping across the hallway and manifesting herself as solidly as she ever did, she stood behinf Daniella and wrapped her arms rightly around her. Had she done this to a living person, they would have felt the chill that Daniella had experienced earlier, but between the two of them it was warm and comforting as any embrace Daniella had felt in life.

Taking a moment, Giuliana did her best to answer.

'I don't know sweetheart.' she said emphatically. 'I do not know what happens now. All of us are trying to work that out, to work out if we are supposed to move on from here, and if so how long it takes or what we need to do. But in the meantime we must try to make the best of our time here, and that now includes you too.'

'I know it is not easy to accept Daniella,' she felt slightly bold using the girl's christian name so soon after meeting her, but she sensed that a personal touch was what was needed, and besides, who knew how people spoke to each other in 2019? 'but for better or for worse, this place is your home now. I hope you will come to feel at home here even though, unlike me, you have not had the pleasure of making your home here for many years before. I am sure it may not be easy for you, but you must know that I will be here to help you with whatever you need, ok?'

She stepped back with her hands on Daniella's shoulders to make sure she was understood.

[justmedk]

Those few moments before Daniella heard Giuliana's voice and her arms around her, felt like an eternity of darkness, despair, cold, emptiness and an incredible, indescribable longing.
Hearing that voice. Feeling that embrace, however, changed that. She did not know why, but she turned around and practically threw herself into the woman's arms, seeking warmth and comfort in the one place she saw it offered at the moment.



"I....I'm sorry", she said after what appeared to her to be an eternity, but which was probably more like a few moments. As has been noted a few times by now: Time is wonky on the other side of the shroud. "I....I don't know what to do now", she said, softly, and with desperation in a voice. A desperation which Giuliana's soothing words and reassurances - which she instinctively knew were genuine - did quite a bit to help with, but the change was still fresh and raw.


"So....now what?", she asked the woman, wide-eyed - so to speak - like a younger child looking for answers would likely have been. "I mean....do we sleep? Do we like...disappear at day and only exist at night? Are there others here? Where are they? How many?", she asked, her questions coming faster than they would have from the living Daniella.
She paused, realizing this, and had blood still been pumping in her veins, she would have blushed. Now she merely looked at the floor somewhat embarrassed

[cripmeister]

Giuliana could not help but chuckle at all of Daniella's questions, and hugged her tightly again as the girl continued rattling them off. It was natural to be curious about the world around you, and in this instance there almost everything around Daniella was totally unknown. Giuliana had been exactly the same, her analytical mind almost immediately turning to compiling lists of questions about her environment, and her curiosity and drive to answer them had in many ways helped her through the difficulty of transitioning.

'All very good questions Daniella' she said as she released the girl from her arms again. 'I know you will want answers, and there will be questions after questions that come up as you think of them. I will answer some things for you know, but just remember, you have as long as you want to find the answer to things, ok?'

'So let me see. It is difficult to answer the first two, in simple terms, and I can only speak for myself. I will say that no, I do not retire to bed every night; nor do I find myself feeling tired at the end of the day. Sometimes though - it is hard to describe - I am less conscious, less aware of things, and suddenly realise that time, even months, have passed. To answer another uestion, you will find many of the inhabitants here are like that in their normal state; they are always "alseep" unless someone disturbs them, which I try not to do - although I am always glad to be awake again and up to things,'

'As I think you are already working out, day and night and time do not mean much in here. Sometimes it goes quickly and sometimes it goes slowly. Some of that we can influence, more so than when we were flesh and blood at least, but I have been working on such things for many many years now and I am still a novice, so a great deal is outside our control and time will always pass.'

'As for others? Yes. Yes a great many.' she allowed a pause after her deliberately vague answer and smiled slightly. 'This is an old house. It has many memories, and many inhabitants over the centuries, and consequently there are many of us dwelling here. I am sure you will meet many of them in time, some perhaps that I have never come across. Some of them still have form and movement as when they lived, like us, some are now just memories in a particular room. Some have been here so long they have great power over the fabric and the content of those rooms, including you if you venture in there, so you would do well to show respect and good sense when you are exploring.'

'If you would like Daniella, I could show you a little of the house, and perhaps we might meet some people on the way? I suppose seeing this place was what brought you here in the first place...'

[justmedk]

Daniella listened very attentively to Guiliana's words. She was not a model student by any stretch of the word. At least she hadn't been in school. But now? Now she realized that her entire future - maybe all eternity - depended on getting the right hang of this, as quickly as possible.


She took in what was said about night, day, time, and how everything is different now, and fought the urge to roll her eyes and say "well, duh". She needed this woman, and she could also feel - now that there was no filter between them as there were between two living people - that the woman somehow genuinely cared about her. She felt coiuld be honest and frank with this woman:

"Yeah, like, I read that the Romans built this thing, and that it's like...crazy old and stuff like that", she said. "Did anyone know Caesar or something? My boyfriend was crazy about all this history stuff, and.....", she stopped, as she trailed off, her mind now on her boyfriend back home, and her newfound enthusiasm stopped as suddenly as the car on a rollercoaster-ride that had reached the starting point agian, and the mood in the room turned around 50 shades darker and more sad just as suddenly.



"N...nevermind", she said. "S...sorry, forget it. Yeah, I'd love to see the house", she went on, trying to change the subject, and stood up, waiting for Guiliana to lead the way. "Since I'm gonna be staying here, I should...like...know as much about it as I can", she stated matter-of-factly.

[cripmeister]

It was clear enough to any student of human nature what thought process Daniella had just been through; again Giuliana felt a wave of sympathy for the girl, and moreover again she knew that she had to distract her quickly and get her mind on other things. She would get through the trauma of this process much better if she had things to do. Not that keeping busy was very easy as a ghost, but many of them did their best.

Do that end she reached out and took Daniella's hand to guide her towards one of the main doors out of the hallway. The gesture was rather familiar given they had just met, but seemed natural enough to Giuliana from her own experience, and she did not except Daniella to object in the circumstances.

She deliberately did not get to the main rooms on the first floor by using the main staircase in the hall, thinking it probably not wise to take Daniella there so soon after what had happened. Instead, she led her through a number of what had last been used as servants' rooms, then into grander spaces as they reached them, explaining a little of the history of them, whilst conscious she did not want to bore the girl and turn this into a dry historical tour, of the kind she had hated being taken on as a child.

She told her about the events and eras that were linked together by the building: how it had been first built in the middle ages on the site of Roman buildings; of the doings of medieval knights and their ladies, and renaissance nobles and artists; about years of pleasure and splendour and years of revolution over the next centuries; how the house had been a fortress, a prison, a grand hotel, a convent school, and finally a home again when Giuliana herself had lived in those rooms.

They moved not only through space, but also through time. Everywhere they went, the palazzo in its ‘real’ modern state, slightly dilapidated, was just about visible if you peered closely, as if seen in a dirty mirror, or a cheap optical illusion. Far more clear as they moved around were rooms which no longer existed except to them and the inhabitants of the house. Some were the house in its last glory days of more than a century ago; some were as Giuliana remembered it from half that time ago; some were far, far older. At times the form of the house had changed significantly and walls and floors were not where they once were. Giuliana kept Daniella close at hand to guide her and make sure she did not get lost or left behind or take the modern form of the house as that which constrained her – as she got used to seeing the house properly she would know which walls she could ignore the presence of and which long demolished stairs and floors could carry her to where she wanted.

None of this was an exact science, as Giuliana was careful to point out. She herself had spent many years wandering the house, and suddenly finding herself in rooms from another era entirely, with no real idea of why. There was some level on which these things could be steered, if not controlled, but Daniella would not be at that stage until her spirit had settled: she would probably be blundering between centuries as she explored for a while yet.

That thought led to a more prosaic matter in Giuliana’s mind. As Daniella peered through a bricked up window into the garden that had once lain beyond, Giuliana allowed herself another curious glance at what the girl was wearing. Had her senses not been attuned as they were, the living Giuliana might have at first wondered if she was a girl at all, dressed as she was like some kind of workman, in an undershirt and hard wearing trousers, and little else. During Giuliana’s lifetime the way women dressed had changed an awful lot – perhaps not so dramatically in Naples as elsewhere, but she had known from pictures in magazines that in America young women went out wearing trousers without much concern, so perhaps what Daniella was wearing was only the natural progression. At the same time, other people she came across in the palazzo might find it harder to rationalise.

‘Daniella,’ she began, thinking there was probably something to be said on the subject. ‘it occurs to me that I should say something about your clothes, although it leads into a much wider subject. I presume what you are wearing’ she gestured at the outfit, ‘is typical for nowadays, as well as what you last put on? Because the memory of it is what you have brought across with yourself, and will continue like that from now on. Of course in our new form, we do not get out of bed and choose some clothes from a wardrobe! The form we take is shaped by the memories of what was and what feels natural for us, which means, among other things, the clothes we appear in. So this is how everyone else here will perceive you, because it is how you perceive yourself in your normal state.’

‘I mention this because what girls like you wear will no doubt seem strange to many of the people you meet here. I think that is something you would be sensible to bear in mind. Over time, as you become more expert in manipulating the world we inhabit within these walls, you will find you are able to affect this as well. I remember the pleasure of the first time I managed to somehow conjure up my favourite gown to wear – I am still not sure exactly how one does it, but it becomes possible. And once you reach that stage, if you decide to spend time at, say, the victory ball given for Lord Nelson in 1799, you will be able to blend in a little better – in fact I would advise it.’

‘Even before you fully master that little skill, sometimes the house and all the collective memories manage it for you – and much more than just your appearance. I remember early on in my time here I was exploring the south wing and I found myself at a feast for some great prince in the far off past, and just as suddenly found myself wearing glorious silk robes to match anyone else’s there; I went along with it, I sat and dined and talked and enjoyed myself, and it was a magical experience I have never yet been able to repeat. But these things do happen, the house will take you along for the ride now and then. Just be warned, I doubt all such experiences are as joyful and enjoyable as that one.’ Giuliana gave a small smile ‘You needn’t be afraid Daniella, after all (if you will forgive me a little dark humour) things cannot really go too badly for you any more. But I would still say be cautious.’

As this discussion came to a close, Giuliana saw an opportunity for another new experience. They had continued their wanderings through the upper rooms and were now in what had once been a private but fairly grand bedroom from the turn of the century. These rooms had become the little kingdom of once of Giuliana’s fellow residents, somewhere she had made remarkably real and tangible, through her continuing habits of taking care of the rooms as she always did, even when they physically no longer remained.

‘Daniella’ Giulianna began, ‘you asked if there were others like us here, and there are plenty. Some you must be careful of, though I doubt any would mean you harm, but most of them you need have no worries of, and there is one here who I think it would be a pleasure for anyone to meet. She was a maid in this house oh, a hundred years before you were born, and she is most often around these parts. Would you like to do so?’