Jasmin was three months behind on her rent, but that was the least of her worries. The Emissary had possessed her mind and wadded it into a pulsing wreck. And soon he was to add her body and soul to his collection.
The winter solstice would be here in less than three weeks—and she knew as little about Hrot’s whereabouts now as when she’d met Helder in Barcelona. That was in spite of the fact that she kept combing the Portuguese coastline whenever she had some money, and that she dragged herself through the streets of Porto whenever she didn’t. As far as she knew, nobody had heard from Hrot for over a year. He might have already left the country thousands of times for thousands of reasons and thousands of destinations.
But she had everything planned in case she didn’t find him by the eve of the winter solstice.
She would take the two-euro coin out of the envelope in her drawer and walk downtown. She would buy a ticket to the Torre dos Clerigos. Then she would climb the two hundred and forty spiral steps to the top of the tower—and she would leap to her death. The vision of herself plummeting two hundred and thirty feet through the cold air and finding peace on the pavement below had obsessed her. This vision was the only thing that could put a smile on her face these days.
Jasmin would have never imagined that one day she would be forced to commit suicide. What was worse, she couldn’t even be sure whether death would bring liberation. She feared the Emissary would bring her back to life to make her suffer the rape, the sodomy, and all the tortures and atrocities he made her dream about. Nevertheless, suicide was the only way to freedom she could think of.
Jasmin turned off the tap and went back to her bedroom. Again she ran her forefinger around the circle on the map that marked the spot where her skull would soon splinter, and again she made sure the two-euro coin was still in the small envelope. Then she sat on the bed and burst into tears.
The world behind her bedroom window was as dark and disconsolate as her mind. And, like her mind, the world outside headed for a destructive storm. It wasn’t raining yet, but the clouds grew darker and the fog thickened.
Jasmin wiped her eyes and stood up. It was time to make another useless run around Porto. She shivered when she shed her pajamas and looked for clean clothes. Her cell phone rang while she was pulling on her jeans.
“Mother Marie,” she read on the display, but the bells in her head remained silent. Nevertheless, she pressed the green button.
“Darling, how are you doing over there?” She heard a familiar voice, and the fog in her head started to dissipate. “Darling, are you there?”
Instead of an answer, Jasmin shrieked when something began to pound on her windowpane. But it was only an army of hailstones that had broken free from the clouds and plummeted to their noisy death.
“Are you all right, Jasmin?” Marie sounded worried. “I called you half an hour ago, but you didn’t pick up. I’ve got some news about Hrot!”
Jasmin realized that the missed phone call must have been the noise that had woken her up. “I’m okay.” She forced herself to sound strong. “What’s the news?”
“I got a postcard from him this morning! It’s from a place called Aveiro. Unfortunately, he didn’t say how long he’s staying or where he’s heading. What’s worse, the stamp is from October twenty-sixth! I’ve just been to the Turnov post office, and they claim they only got it yesterday. I don’t know what could have—”
The cell phone slid from Jasmin’s hand. Forgetting that Marie was still talking, she rushed around the room like a crazed cat, looking for her rain jacket. She threw it on and galloped downstairs. As she ran through the drumming hailstones, she winced when she saw the Torre dos Clerigos loom above the downtown buildings.
The hailstorm was over as quickly as it began. The clouds scurried away from the sun as if they were afraid of being scorched. Strong sun rays drank feverishly from the pavement and the grass. Jasmin’s mind cleared nearly as fast as the sky. New hope pushed away the fingers of insanity that had been knocking on her mind for months. Later she would call Mother Marie to thank her and apologize. But now she had a train to catch.
Running down to the Sao Bento station, she tried to recall the details of the phone conversation. How could the postcard have taken more than a month to reach the Czech Republic? Was human negligence behind this, or had the Emissary been at his unclean tricks? In any case, it was a lead. At least she knew that, not too long ago, Hrot had still been in Portugal. He hadn’t been too far away either, as Aveiro was about an hour’s train ride south.
She rushed through the station’s beautiful azulejo-covered vestibule toward the information board. She was lucky: the Aveiro train would leave in four minutes. Jasmin realized she had no money for the ticket. Nevertheless, she found the right platform and sat in the middle car.
As the train jolted to life, she tried to think what to do once she arrived. Hrot had been in Aveiro more than a month ago, and if he’d been only visiting, she should logically look everywhere else but there. And yet she couldn’t think of doing anything better than getting there as soon as possible and trying to find a new lead.
Jasmin remembered Aveiro as a pleasant, small city that was also known as the Portuguese Venice because of the colorful, gondola-like boats that stirred the brackish waters of its canals. She imagined Hrot had sent Mother Marie a postcard of one of those boats.
The train rolled over a high bridge across the Douro River. As it halted in Porto’s twin city of Gaia, the conductor entered the car. Jasmin got up and walked to the bathroom, determined to hide in there, just as she’d hidden from Inspector Varbanov in the Czech Republic.
The bathroom was locked.
Jasmin returned to her seat, wondering what she should do. In spite of the fact that the train was surprisingly full for this time of year, the conductor swiftly checked the passengers’ tickets and got closer and closer. Jasmin thought of pretending that she spoke neither Portuguese nor English. But she remembered the conductor from her previous journeys, and the conductor probably remembered her. Jasmin was sure he would make her get off at the nearest station. As he would probably also alert his colleagues against her, it was better to get off before he reached her. Then she would board the next train and hope for the best.
The conductor was just across the aisle when the train made another stop. Standing by the door, Jasmin jumped off. She guessed she was only about a quarter way to Aveiro. When she saw the narrow road that led down toward the roaring ocean, Jasmin realized she’d already been here a few months ago.
The small station was decorated with beautiful azulejos, just like the one in Porto. The ceramic tile work above the station’s door spelled the word—Granja.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Never before, since their parting at the Ruins three years ago, had Jasmin gotten this close to Hrot. As she walked around the train station, trying to find out when the next train departed for Aveiro, he was just a few hundred yards away, picking mussels along the drenched shore.
Hrot looked like a quadrupedal savage as he crawled over the rocks on all fours, even at spots where more adroit people would easily walk upright. He knew every rut, hole, and fissure, and yet his terrible sense of balance made him use both hands as if he were an over-sized amphibian.
Although his ankle had long healed, Hrot liked this place so much he had decided to stay indefinitely. The nights had grown chilly, and heavy rain often lashed the coast. However, Portugal was still going through a merciless economic crisis, and the village of Granja was full of foreclosed or abandoned vacation homes where he could find shelter for the upcoming winter. He had already picked an old, unlocked house right on the seafront to which he would soon retire.
The tide was coming, and the waves were growing dangerously. The ocean looked like an enormous, boiling cauldron. Monstrous, white-capped waves rushed in one after another and threw themselves viciously against the rocks. When an especially high wave swept him off his feet and dragged him over rough rock and coral, Hr
ot decided he had enough mussels for now.
He scrambled out and staggered toward his tent. The ocean roared at his back as if it dared him to return for more. Hrot winced as he checked his skinned hands and knees. One of his fingers was cut and bleeding, and his right shin was bruised. What hurt the most, however, was the mark on his left forearm. The dreadful brand of the Emissary’s talon was still there, after all the centuries. It burnt and stung terribly whenever he exposed it to the sun or saltwater, a constant reminder of the terrible pact.
The chilly breeze made Hrot crawl into the tent and change into dry clothes. When he got out, he wrapped himself into the sleeping back. The smooth touch of the nylon filled his head with memories of the times when he could feel no cold—and when he’d watched Jasmin huddled in this very sleeping bag inside their cavern. This was his only memento of Jasmin. He would never part with the bag, as sometimes he imagined he could still smell her skin on the fabric.
“Jasmin!” The name gushed out through his salty lips like blood from an open wound. “Jasmin! Where are you?”
Hrot would’ve cut off his thumb for a single piece of news about her. Was she with his tribe? Were they treating her decently? Was she well fed and clothed now that another cruel Bohemian winter was coming?
With a groan, Hrot yanked the sleeping bag off his shoulders and threw it on the sand. He was grateful for the chill that immediately assailed his drying skin. Someone who had condemned the woman he loved to a decade in a freezing hovel didn’t deserve to be warm. How could he have been so cruel, selfish, and cowardly?
Of course, when he’d betrayed her, his love for her had only started to bud while his despondency had been in full bloom for centuries. And it was the Emissary and his mind games that had made Hrot double-cross her. But that was no excuse for what he’d done. Hrot had brought the curse on himself, and he’d had no right to get Jasmin involved, let alone trick her into an even deeper involvement. At times, Hrot hated himself so much he wanted to wade into the ocean and let the strong currents drag him far out and swallow him up.
Deep-chested barking stirred him from his stupor. A large St. Bernard suddenly ran up to him, circled him a few times, licked his hand, and stuck its snout into the plastic bag he’d filled with the mussels. Hrot gasped and stood rigid. He was still afraid of dogs, as they had been growling and snapping at him for four centuries at the Ruins.
“He doesn’t bite,” a woman called from the boardwalk behind the dunes. “He’s big, but he’s just a puppy. He only wants to play.”
Hrot nodded and relaxed. The dog clenched the plastic bag between his teeth and dragged it a few yards along the sand, strewing the mussels along the way. Then he let go and ran back to his owner.
Hrot cursed as he shambled along the beach, putting the mussels back into the slobbered bag. He took a camp pot and went to the brook to get water and wash the mussels. Then he made a fire from the canes that grew along the beach, and from the palm leaves and the bark which the ocean had brought.
As the bright flames briefly squirmed and muttered in the breeze and then slowly died out, Hrot threw the mussels into the pot and placed the pot on the red embers. He took a large, sizzling pebble between two sticks to drop it in the water, but gravity outmaneuvered him, and the pebble slid out whenever he tried to lift it. The water began to boil nevertheless, and the mussels soon popped open. The smell attracted a large flock of seagulls that surrounded Hrot just as vultures would surround a feasting lion.
Hrot pushed the pot off the embers and poured the water out. He picked the first mussel and—and suddenly he felt sick. For weeks and weeks, he had been eating nothing but mussels, limpets, and urchins, and he knew he would rather starve than swallow another lump of chewy seafood. The mere smell made him gag, and he stood up and spat on the sand. He was about to throw the mussels to the gulls when he got an idea.
JASMIN PACED ALONG the platform, trying to think what to do. The next train was to leave in one hour. Since Granja was a small town, its station was unfrequented, and the conductor would probably spot her as soon as she got on. It would be safer to walk south toward Aveiro and take the train at the next station in the bigger town of Espinho.
Espinho was also on the coast, and she briefly thought of going down to the beach and walking along the shore. Then she realized it would be much faster to take the regional road that ran parallel with the railway tracks.
Marching fast, she soon left Granja behind her back—along with her last chance to find Hrot.
As she passed the last houses on the outskirts, she spotted a three-headed crimson she-wolf standing in the middle of the road, showing three sets of fangs in a menacing growl.
Jasmin froze. Was this Krverah? Or the three-headed spirit worshipped by Plamena? Or was it the Emissary playing another trick on her tattered mind?
The wolf charged. Jasmin turned around and darted back toward the station. In a few seconds, her lungs were empty, and she realized she had been screaming. She gasped for air and turned her head. The wolf wasn’t there.
Jasmin kept stumbling forward, her heart fluttering like a bat’s wing, her head throbbing with confused thoughts. Was she awake at all? Had she finally gone insane?
As she neared the train station, she looked back at the road. There was no sign of the wolf: it had probably been just a hallucination. Nevertheless, she decided not to take the road again but walk along the beach instead. She was going to miss the next train in any case. But there were others.
As she headed for the raging ocean, Jasmin wondered whether her eyes had played tricks on her. Perhaps she’d seen a large dog, which her afflicted mind had transformed into a three-headed abomination. Or perhaps she had really lost it. That thought would have scared her at any other time. But now, madness seemed to be a cozy and merciful shelter from her nightmares.
The sky clouded over again as she took the boardwalk. The clouds blackened and the world grew grim, almost as if the roaring of the ocean had invoked a thunder god. Jasmin jumped over a brook and walked among the dunes. Then she saw a little campsite, and her heart began to beat so fast she thought it would burst and crumble. She walked toward the campsite as if she were mesmerized.
The lopsided, badly pitched ridge tent was unzipped, and she could see that nobody was inside. The sleeping bag was flung over a nearby shrub to air. It was purple and adorned with a large crescent in the middle and with a myriad of stars sprinkled all around it.
It was her sleeping bag.
She had bought it three years ago to be warm while visiting Hrot in the protective circle. She recalled that once she had put it too close to the flames and one of the corners had caught on fire.
Jasmin had left the bag behind when she’d departed to Hrot’s times. It had kept him warm while she’d shivered on a frozen straw mattress in his mother’s hovel. And now he was using it to happily camp on the beach.
This wasn’t the only purple sleeping bag with a moon and stars in the world, of course. But it was highly unlikely that two bags would have exactly the same burnt mark in the same corner.
And if she still had any doubts that her search was finally over, the footprints in the sand, awkward and crooked as if left behind by a clumsy, shambling person, were enough to convince her it was really Hrot’s camp she’d stumbled across.
“A clumsy, shambling person,” she ground between her teeth. “A lying, deceitful person. An ungrateful snake. A rat! A coward! A worm! You’ve put me through hell. But finally I’ve found you!”
THE RESTAURANT STOOD two blocks behind the railway tracks. It was a small and simple place with a few stools along the bar and five or six plastic tables covered with paper tablecloths. Only one table was occupied, and a young couple was sitting at the bar, talking to a short, stocky man in a green apron.
As he peered in through the restaurant window, Hrot frowned at his reflection in the glass. He was as gaunt, long-haired, and wild bearded as he’d been in his ghastly form at the Ruins. His clothes were so b
leached from saltwater that even he couldn’t tell their original color. He consciously smoothed his beard and tied his hair into a ponytail before he entered.
“Oh, you’re the guy who camps at the beach, aren’t you?” the man in the apron exclaimed, grinning under his thick mustache. “Sometimes we walk along the boardwalk with my granddaughter, and she’s a bit scared of you, the poor one. Too bad she’s not around, it would be really comical if she saw you here! But come in, come in!”
Hrot blushed and stepped closer to the bar.
“What’s this?” the man asked when he saw the pot in Hrot’s hands.
“I’ve brought you some mussels,” Hrot replied. The Spanish he’d learned in Barcelona, and the Classical Latin he still remembered from his stay in Renaissance Prague, helped him speak Portuguese quite well. “I’ve just picked and boiled them. And I was wondering if I could get something in exchange.”
“Something that isn’t seafood, I bet,” the man laughed. “I get that all the time. The fishermen who sometimes bring me their catch wouldn’t touch a fish either. Well, would some beef and potatoes be all right?”
“Great!” Hrot licked his lips. At that moment he seemed to long for meat as much as he’d longed for death during his imprisonment in the protective circle.
The wait for the meal was torturous. The smell of steak sizzling in olive oil wafted from the kitchen, and Hrot’s mouth filled with saliva. Finally, the owner came to his table with a steaming plate, a small basket full of fresh bread, and a bottle of beer.
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