by Daniel Caet
“Those memories had to be erased from your mind so you could start a new life in Canada, a safe life, a long life.”
“A lonely life.”
“I know, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't let you end up like many others in your same situation, like Genevieve herself. Unfortunately, I have not always been able to protect you as much as I would have liked. Genevieve thought you were entitled to a life as normal as possible and took you away from me who wanted to hide from the world. Her love for you led her to take refuge with you, who were just a little girl, at Marcel's parents' house. I lost count of the number of times I tried to make her understand that getting away from me exposed you both to immense danger, that only by my side you were safe. I think Genevieve saw in you the girl she couldn't have been, and she wanted you to have something different from what she had. A desire that only brought misfortunes. You were hardly at Marcel's parents' house for a week when an extermination angel, the same type of creature that attacked you in Scotland, showed up at the house. Far from my influence, my protection spells were not as powerful, and he found a way to find you. Genevieve was able to cast a concealment spell on you and Marcel, but she paid for it with her life and that of Marcel's parents. We found you two days later, hugged inside a fake closet, still protected by that spell. That day I lost someone I loved like a daughter and two great friends, Marcel lost much more! At that same moment I decided that I would not allow the same thing to happen to you, even if I had to take you from my side and keep you in oblivion, even if it broke my heart.”
Becca looked at the woman whose eyes were full of tears and couldn't help her own from responding in the same way. There were no more words, no more room for reproach. None of this mitigated the pain of what she had lived, but without thinking for a second she held out his hand to Sadith in a gesture that the two had long needed.
“Why?” asked Becca, still holding on to her. “What is in me that is so important that so many people have had to die for me?”
“That, my little girl, is the reason I need you to meet your mother,” the woman replied, gently stroking her hair. “Because I don't think it's about what's in you, but about who you are.”
Becca preferred not to ask any more questions and shut up, not daring to say how terrified she was to meet the woman who had brought her to this world, the mother she had never met.
The journey through the Mediterranean continued calm, it seemed like the sea wanted to make it easy for Becca who had almost come to enjoy the trip. Charice tried to convince her to relax like her and put on a bikini to sunbathe on the deck as if it were a French Riviera yacht, but Becca refused causing Charice to rage and to remind her that at least one of the gentlemen on board had already seen her in all her glory.
At sunset on the fourth day they finally arrived in Istanbul and prepared to cross the Bosphorus Strait. The number of ships that were waiting to do the same was immense, mostly cargo ships and tankers, and the occasional ferry. They entered that mess of boats, and by the time they finished crossing the strait, it was already dark night. Becca felt a pinch in her heart at the thought of how close she was to Istanbul, a city she had always wanted to visit, and to know she couldn't get off that ship even for an hour; but she promised herself that as soon as her life returned to normal, whatever that was, she would return to that city. That night she lay in the cabin she shared with Charice thinking about the lights of Istanbul.
The next morning, Becca ascended to the deck hoping to find an immense expanse of dark waters around her, but the image had not changed at all with respect to the previous day. An expanse of turquoise waters continued to surround the ship as if they had not left the Mediterranean.
“This is the treacherous sea that everyone calls black?” she asked with a sincere smile to Marcel who was behind the helm.
“Ah, this sea is like a woman, give her time to show herself as she is and tremble!” he answered with a smile.
“I don't know if you have a wife or girlfriend, but I don't think she likes those comments very much.”
“Don't worry,” he replied, laughing out loud. “I don't have one.”
“Single by conviction?”
“I didn't say I was single,” he answered with a wink. “There is no Mrs. Marcel Clemont, but there is a Mr. Clemont and a little Louise.”
Becca blushed slightly.
“Sorry, I was silly, as if there weren't as many forms of families as people.”
“Don't worry,” he replied, still smiling, “it happens a lot, it's the Christian effect, I don't take it personally.”
“And what does Mr. Clemont think about you being away from home all this time?”
“He understands perfectly. He knows the relationship that links me to Aunt Sadith, and he knows that I would do anything for her. Obviously, there is much that I must hide because he would not understand it and for his own safety and Louise's, but, for the rest, we are a most normal and boring family.”
“I doubt that the life of anyone linked to this family can be boring in any way.”
“That's true!” Marcel replied and they both laughed out loud as if they had been told a silly joke.
“Marcel,” Eustace's voice interrupted in bad ways, “can you concentrate on making this thing sail faster? This ship of yours is too slow!”
“Maybe you can try to swim, Oswald, it would be good to loosen up those amazing muscles of yours!” replied the man, making Eustace snort for his feigned compliment. “You will have to explain to me what you have done because he is unbearable,” he whispered to Becca.
“Me?”
“Oh, come on, he's been avoiding you the whole trip, and considering the shortage of spaces on this ship, it's been really difficult! Everyone has noticed. Including himself.”
“I really don't know what you're talking about.”
“As you wish, but if I were you, I wouldn't let that fish escape, it's a hard catch to find.” This time it was Becca who walked away from Marcel snorting for the big man's entertainment.
Becca understood what Marcel meant when he defined the black sea as treacherous when the sun went down. Suddenly, a dense fog surrounded the ship making it impossible to see anything in any direction. Sadith, Charice and Becca went down to the ship's dining kitchen while Eustace remained on deck in case Marcel, who was now traveling blindly with the help of a radar, needed something.
Neither of them slept that night, but neither of them complained, even when the mist persisted throughout the next day making the navigation painfully slow. In those two days they did not encounter any other ship, and Becca came to think that more than a black sea that was a lifeless sea. Finally, at dawn the next day the mist lifted and, although the sky was cloudy, they could finally see some light.
Marcel told them that same afternoon they would arrive at Constanta, and that everything was arranged for the next phase of their trip. They did not get close to the port. As soon as the city lights could be seen on the horizon Marcel stopped the ship, and immediately Eustace began preparing everything for the landing. Becca did not realise that two men had approached the boat in a motor boat until they were on deck. The men went directly to Sadith ignoring everyone else and, to Becca's stupefaction, they knelt in front of her as if she were a queen. The woman addressed them in a language that Becca could not recognise, and the men returned without giving further explanations to the boat that had brought them.
“These men will take us to the coast. There are two vehicles waiting for us to drive us to the mountains,” Sadith explained, making Becca feel her mood deflate when she thought she should travel more.
“Who are they?”
“Those men have sworn to give their lives for your mother and, by extension, for you too. For now, that is the only thing you need to know.”
Becca didn't want to argue, but she was starting to get tired of the woman's elusive responses, and she could not bite her tongue.
“One of these days you should start considering answerin
g some of my questions.”
“One of these days you will have to start asking the right questions,” she replied with half a smile that further unnerved Becca. “Maybe you want to say goodbye to Marcel, we have to leave.”
Becca reluctantly obeyed and merged into a hug with that blond big man thanking him for all his help.
“Hopefully one day, when all this is over, I can meet your family!”
“I'm sure you'll really get along with Louise,” Marcel replied, looking at her face sweetly, then whispering in her ear. “I know she can be desperately cold but remember that you are alive thanks to her, and that she is your only true ally.”
Becca did not have time to answer because Eustace urged her to leave alleging that it was not safe to be there for a long time, but a look in Marcel's eyes made her feel that the man was absolutely serious in his statement. He grabbed her by the arm and almost lifted her up so she could start down the rope ladder they had placed on the side of the ship. When she was finally safe in the boat, the two men started the engine that made an indiscreet noise and left quickly. Only Becca turned to see how the schooner that had been her home during the last days was lost in the distance.
The boat took them to an area away from the pier where Eustace pressed them again to get into a completely black van with tinted windows that was waiting for them on the ground.
In less than a minute, all of them, including the men who had brought them there, were inside that vehicle, equipped as if it were a minibus, and they were lost in the night.
“I hope you like our vehicle because I'm afraid we're going to spend a lot of time here,” Sadith said, catching Becca by surprise, who didn't expect any explanation.
“What do you call a long time?” asked Charice fearfully.
“We have about twelve hours by car to the Apuseni Mountains, and from there at least another four hours on horseback to our destination.”
“What? But are you all crazy? We cannot travel that number of hours without resting. I don't even think it's legal,” Becca replied.
“But it's the only sure way to get to your mother. Do you want to get to the bottom of all this or not?”
Becca could not answer because she knew there was only one valid answer and just looked out the window of the van where the Romanian night only allowed her to see her own reflection, the face of a person she was not sure if she knew as well as she believed.
The trip was exactly the nightmare she had expected. She slept during the first part, curled up in her seat with her head against the window, but it was only a few hours. Charice, who in normal conditions would have been responsible for keeping everyone entertained with her tireless verbiage, was as exhausted as the others and unusually silent. Eustace limited his conversation to his mother, who, on the other hand, only spoke with the drivers in that strange language that sounded so extremely musical to Becca.
“What language is that?” she asked finally driven more by boredom than by real curiosity.
“It's Romani, the language of the gypsies. Well,” she said, “perhaps I should say that it is one of the languages of the gypsies. There are many dialects of the Romani language in the world.”
“Where does one learn the gypsy language?” asked Becca, surprised. “I don't think it's something they teach you at school.”
“When you live as many years as I do, you end up learning many languages, Becca; but in your case, if you were interested in speaking with them, you probably just have to want it.”
“How? No one learns a language by infused science.”
“As I told you in Paris, your power is much greater than we've seen before in other sons of Helel’s. Your mother and I have the gift of speaking any language, and I would not be surprised if you had it too.”
“But how do I do it? Do I simply tell myself that I want to speak Romani?”
“Something like that, yes. You see, Becca, there are three types of magic in the world; the magic of the word, that of the act and that of the will. The first is what are popularly known as enchantments, words that have to be pronounced to cause an effect. The second is that which requires the participation of objects and movements, the spells as most people know them. The last of these is true magic, the magic that only requires the desire and thought of the one who executes it. There are people who have a special talent for the first or second, and there are people whose power goes beyond all that and they only need their will to create things around them.” The woman extended her hand and a white rose like the purest snow appeared on it, created from nothing. She placed the flower on Becca's hand, and when the rose got into contact with her skin, it turned black as the night, and then turned into a handful of ashes causing Becca to shake her hand in scare. “Magic requires will, but also control and serenity and, obviously, is dominated by our emotions. Joy and sadness, courage and fear are powerful weapons that most humans do not know how to use for their own benefit. You must use it as a propulsion element, and not as an obstacle, use the energy they provide you to go further not to force you to stop.”
Becca reacted without thinking, staring at her hand and only wishing that the rose materialised again, feeling that the energy around her would obey to satisfy her desires and, almost without realising it, the ashes that had fallen to the floor of the van flew back to her hand, swirling together and creating a familiar shape, a perfect rose that, however, had a difference with what Sadith had created, it was red as blood.
“It's red!” said Becca without knowing if that was good or bad.
“It's exactly how you conceived it, perfect in every way.”
Becca felt a powerful energy take hold of her, a strange force, but that, however, was not completely unknown, it was the same force that had filled her in the cemetery before she lost control, only this time Becca felt able to manage it. Without waiting a second she closed her eyes to concentrate on the driver of the van and his companion who were in the front engaged in a conversation in their language. Becca could visualise every word they said, every sound, she almost thought she could see his lips moving without being able to understand anything; but, suddenly, the words began to make sense. She could still hear them in that musical and delicious language, but in her brain, they had a meaning, she could read them as if it were an open book.
“Is everything ready?”
“Yes,” the driver replied, “Zazva has prepared everything. We will spend the night on the outskirts of Alba. There is a house ready for them to rest. They are going to need it if they want to get to Zazva.”
Becca opened her eyes suddenly and looked at Sadith with a smile from ear to ear.
“I know. I hope you never doubt yourself or the wonderful things you are capable of doing,” she replied with another smile as she moved to return to her seat.
“Who is Zazva?” Becca snapped before she walked away.
“I think you already know, don't you?” Sadith replied with a certain mystery but still smiling. “Zazva is your mother.”
Becca spent the rest of the ride playing with that rose in her hands and mentally repeating that new name that, however, was so close. Zazva. She couldn't remember anything about her, but that name didn't want to go away from her mind since she had first heard it. How would she be like? Would she look something like her? The anxiety of the encounter mixed with the rage she still felt inside since she had known she was still alive. Knowing that woman had consciously removed herself from her side left a taste of vinegar in her mouth. Sadith had explained that everything had been done for her safety, but Becca could not understand how dangerous her existence could have been to have forced every person who had entered her life to push her away and never see her again. Those thoughts consumed her the rest of the trip, and at dusk, they finally reached Alba. Becca had thought they would stay in some big city, but her joy ended up in a well when she finally got out of the van. Alba turned out to be a small town located between mountains and without a hint of life in those night hours. The van had stop
ped in front of an old house, located on the outskirts of the town and which, in the light of the headlights of the vehicle, appeared painted in a grey-white colour.
“God, I'm dying for a hot shower, an even better, a bath!” Charice snapped as soon as she put her feet on the floor stretching like a cat.
“Have you looked around, Charice? Here we will be lucky if they give us a bucket to attend the call of nature,” Becca whispered half horrified, half disgusted.
“We better get inside, here we are protected, but it's better not to risk anything,” Eustace interrupted as he pushed them toward the door of the house through which Sadith had already entered.
Becca and Charice's faces changed completely upon entering the house. What they expected would be a shabby and ruinous decoration like the exterior of the house, was actually an explosion of rustic style chosen with the best possible taste and worthy of being on the cover of any interior decoration magazine. The earth and pastel tones flooded every corner, exquisitely coordinated even with the location of the points of light that was arranged to generate a warmth that flooded the body as soon as it entered.
“I could live here,” Charice said in a tone that left no doubt that she was excited as she launched herself to investigate the rest of the house.
“It's not what I expected at all, I thought ...”
“You thought we were going to sleep in a wagon, right?” Sadith smiled. “I don't blame you, for many people that is the only thing they can think about when they hear the word gypsy. And, in fact, I can't assure you that there isn't going to be any of that before we reach our destination, with your mother you never know.”
“I thought you had been there before.”
“That's right, but your mother is, let's say, a bit nomadic; I know she's out there, in those mountains, waiting for us, but where exactly only she and her people know.”