Unable to breathe and unable to keep running, Sophia pulled her hand from Victoria’s and bent double, clutching her knees and gasping for breath. Pain knifed through her ribs. Victoria stumbled to a halt and reached for the Sophia’s shoulders.
“Sophia!” cried the younger woman, trying to pull Sophia forward. “Do not stop! Come with me!” She glance fearfully behind them and Sophia too sensed the wall of blue-white fire rising high behind them and sweeping around them. Unimaginable heat engulfed them. White-hot sparks snapped at them.
“Is this how we die also?” whimpered Victoria, bending over and burying her face against Sophia’s shoulder.
A dark figure, the blurry silhouette of a man, seemed to materialize against the bright flames.
Clutching each other, Sophia struggled with Victoria to stand erect. Sophia nodded toward the figure, dark against the flames. Victoria peered in that direction. The figure seemed to be leaning forward, pressing both palms against the wall of fire as if to push it back. It was impossible to tell for sure, from where they stood, but the shadow-man seemed to be holding the fire at bay. Maybe he was even pushing it back a little. But the fire encircled them and burned all the hotter and more brightly around them for being held back.
Sweat stung Sophia’s eyes, making it more difficult to see. She felt the rage of the fire on her back. Victoria turned her head back toward her, eyes squeezed closed, and pressed her forehead against Sophia’s shoulder again.
Sophia glanced up at the heavens, squinting against the brilliance of the flames, hoping for help or inspiration. “How do we help him hold back the fire? How do we drive back the flames?” she asked the night sky. The walls of flame high above them seemed to lean towards each other, fingers of flame reaching out as if to crush the women and the shadow-man in the grasp of the bonfire.
Victoria, her eyes still pressed tightly shut, screamed again.
Fr. Dmitri slowly gathered the tarot cards from the cobblestones around him and stood. Breathing deeply of the fresh air that now surrounded him instead of flames, he stumbled forward and realized Theo and Sean, bringing their bags of salt canisters, were also converging on the center of the square.
“Where is Sophia? Did you see which way they went?” the priest asked the other men.
“No,” Sean answered. “It was all too fast.” Theo shook his head.
Dmitri turned anxiously, searching the square for some sign or hint of where his wife and Victoria had run. “Wilcox…?” he began.
“Yes,” Sean agreed. “Wilcox stopped the flames.”
“Do you think he has stopped the flames for Sophia and Victoria as well?” Fr. Dmitri was frantic. “But how could he? The flames were growing stronger… we must do something to help him!”
“How can we, if we don’t even know where they are?” Sean asked, his own fear for the women coloring his voice.
“There.” Theo pointed at the base of the Hus memorial. “The fire came from there. If we could do something to extinguish it at its source…”
A woman’s cry rang out from a lane near the Tyn church.
“Sophia!” cried Fr. Dmitri.
Dropping the shopping bags of salt canisters, Theo and Sean ran off toward the Tyn church.
But the priest knew he would never get to the women as quickly as the younger, fitter men. He had to do something to stop the fire. Now.
He hurried to the Hus memorial, where a thin line of the spectral fire continued to burn around the base, and dropped the tarot cards onto a bench. He quickly rummaged through them, chose one, and picked it up. Stepping over the low chain that served as token security around the memorial, he laid the Star card at the base of the statuary.
Sophia bit her lip. The fire was blisteringly hot. The roar of the inferno and Victoria’s screaming made it impossible to hear anything else. She wiped her eyes with one hand and for a moment the shadow-man flickered as if about to vanish.
Theo turned down the lane he thought the scream had come from. Sean was following right behind and nearly stumbled down onto the cobblestones when Theo suddenly stopped. The fire was raging before them, its roar filling the alleyway and its shimmering blue and white flames reflecting off all the windows of the stores on either side. Heat rolled off the immense bonfire in great waves and Theo instinctively raised a hand in front of his face for protection.
Within the depths of the translucent, brilliant flames they could see two blurry, indistinct forms huddled together.
“Victoria! Sophia!” Sean called out.
Closer to Theo and Sean, but still within the circle of fire, was a third figure that could only be Wilcox. Against the brilliant light of the fire, it was hard to make out anything more than the dark outline of the dead professor, whose throat had been torn out by the Dearg-due. He was leaning forward and pressing his palms against the wall of fire as if to push it back. He was struggling, his feet slipping on the cobblestones. He twisted slightly, pressing one shoulder against the flames.
“Wilcox… how can we help?” Theo called to their friend.
Wilcox, his feet slipping and sliding, turned his face toward Theo. But then the fire crackled and burned even more hotly, more brilliantly, and the silhouette that was Wilcox withered like a dry leaf in a campfire. Twisting up like a feather of ash, the shadow-man Wilcox shriveled and vanished.
The flames roared in triumph and swept in to consume the women at the heart of the blaze.
“NO!” screamed Theo and Sean together.
“YES!” chortled George, delighted at the scene playing out in the tea light’s flickering flame. “Yes!”
At the Hus memorial, Fr. Dmitri’s hands hovered near the card he had placed at the statuary’s base. He hoped desperately that he had chosen the correct card, as it depicted a kneeling figure pouring two pitchers of water onto the ground and was generally interpreted as a message of hope and renewal. The blue-white ghost fire flickered around the base of the memorial and then flared out around the card, which blazed for an instant before the entire ring of fire went out as if doused by a bucket of water. Steam hissed, rising from the soggy ashes of what had been the tarot card.
Roaring more thunderously than a waterfall, the flames rose and twisted into a knot high above Sophia, Victoria, Sean, and Theo. But without warning, the flames then plummeted to the ground and vanished.
“No!” cried George, shocked to see the great ring of fire suddenly vanish. He slapped both hands against the desktop and it trembled with the double impact, causing the tea light to tremble as well and extinguish itself when the hot wax spattered the desktop.
Sophia and Victoria nearly collapsed as the cool night air rushed in where the fire had been an instant before. Theo and Sean ran to catch them before they could fall and guided them, shaking and trembling, back to the Old Town Square.
Sophia’s husband was waiting for them, still at the Hus memorial. He hurried to wrap her in his arms.
“We must hurry,” he urged. “We cannot be sure that the fire is truly extinguished or if it might not be rekindled at any moment.”
Before he had even finished speaking, Sophia heard the wail of police sirens approaching the square from behind the Tyn church.
“Someone must have heard the screams and called the police,” Sean offered, looking nervously around the square.
Collecting the shopping bags of salt, they hastily agreed that burning the remaining tarot cards on the continuation of the Royal Road would have to wait until the next day.
Theo moved as if to leave the Old Town Square along the same alley that would lead them past Wilcox’s body, but Victoria pointed to another way that would lead them down a street behind the Astronomical Clock, which she said led more directly to the bridge and away from the approaching police.
“Thank you, my friend,” Sophia heard Theo whisper as they nevertheless paused for a moment before exiting the square, the police sirens growing louder as the patrol cars neared the square. Then they all hurried as quickly as they co
uld back across the bridge toward their hotels before either the police arrived or the fire could reappear.
“Curse their wives and children!”
(Fall–Winter 1356)
P
etr burst through the door into the house with a burning stick in his hand.
“Petr!” cried Nadezda, seeing her brother brandishing the stick. “What are you doing?”
He dashed across the room and tossed the large stick across the hearth, into the fireplace under a bubbling kettle. The stick vanished in the flames, its fire swallowed by the larger, controlled fire cooking their dinner. Petr stood panting before the hearth, his tongue hanging out, a broad smiled plastered across his ten-year-old, soot-streaked face.
“I did it, Nadezda! I helped burn the witch,” Petr exclaimed proudly.
Nadezda felt her face blanch. “Petr! How could you do such a thing?” she demanded. “How could you be so cruel?” She paused. “What witch?”
“Fen’ka,” her brother answered. “The old woman from the edge of the forest. We burned her in the Old Town Square. First, we dunked her in the river to see if she was a witch, and then, when she wouldn’t sink, we burned her.”
Fen’ka? Burned in the Old Town Square? Their grandmother had known her, grown up with her, told them about her. Nadezda even remembered being taken by her grandmother once to visit her old friend, but that had been years ago. When Nadezda had been even younger than Petr was now. Nadezda had heard the rumors and the stories for a long time, about how their grandmother’s childhood friend was a witch, but had never thought the suspicions and bad feelings would ever come to something like this. Well, this certainly explained where her younger brother had been all day, but how had this happened without her knowing about it?
Nadezda squatted down in front of her brother, taking both his shoulders in her hands and looking squarely into his face. “Petr. Tell me everything. Exactly what happened. From the beginning.”
Petr cleared his throat and swallowed. Nadezda knew she sometimes made him nervous. He complained about her always telling him what to do, even before their mother died. When she had gotten married and moved into her own house with her husband, Vavrinec, she had left him alone with their father. But then their father had died, and he had had to come live with Nadezda and Vavrinec. As if that wasn’t enough, the baby had been born shortly thereafter and although Petr loved his baby nephew Milos, she could tell he was jealous. Jealous of the way Nadezda hovered over the cradle, jealous of Milos having both his parents alive and well, jealous of Milos’s being young and having no responsibilities, since now that he was ten, Petr was expected to go out and work every day with Vavrinec at the bakery.
Petr looked into Nadezda’s eyes. “I was helping Vavrinec at the bakery this morning, just like I’m supposed to do,” he began. “We went to get the flour from the mill. Over in the Little Town. I was standing with Vavrinec while the miller’s apprentices loaded the sacks of flour on our wagon when all of a sudden, a big crowd was all around us. They were shouting and pushing. It was exciting. I went to see what was going on.
“The crowd went down to the place on the river, by where the gypsies always camp, you know?” he asked to make sure she understood.
Nadezda nodded. She knew the place.
“That’s when I saw Fen’ka,” he continued. “Everyone was saying that she was a witch, like they always do. But this time they were so mad at her, not scared at all. They were shouting and screaming at her and then the men tied her up, put her in the boat, and took her out to throw her into the river. They were all screaming but she never said anything. When they threw her in the water, she stayed down a long time and they were just about to pull her up by the ropes tied around her—you know?—when the river tossed her back up to the surface. Proved she was a witch, the river did. Then Fr. Conrad, from Tyn church—remember him, with the scrawny neck?—he pulled her skirts up to show everyone the devil’s brand on her butt! Final proof that she was a witch, you know? He was so glad to finally get everyone to believe him. Remember how he’s been saying for so long that no one should allow a witch to live? Well, then someone shouted, ‘Burn her!’ and then everyone started shouting, ‘Burn her! Burn the witch!’ So we took her back to the Old Town Square to burn her!”
Nadezda saw the excitement burning in her brother’s eyes. Yes, she knew Fr. Conrad at the Tyn church and had heard him preach many times his shrill, angry sermons. She knew that her brother was young and angry at their parents for dying and leaving him alone, forcing him to live with her and her husband. He had a hard time keeping his mind on his chores at the bakery and had to be constantly reminded to sweep the floor, tend the fire, or watch the store. He was always running off to play with a stray dog in the street or get into a fight with another boy, or play a game with other apprentices who had a few free minutes at odd times during the day. She knew Petr was a good boy at heart and could grow into being a good man. But he was a handful now.
She had been the firstborn and was ten years older than Petr. Even though her parents had several other children after she was born and before Petr, they were the only two who had survived. Their mother had always been a hard worker alongside their father, selling vegetables in the market, and her mother—the children’s grandmother—had lived with them and taken care of them during the day. Grandmother had gotten sick first and died, just as old grandparents are wont to do, but then their mother had gotten sick and died too, leaving Nadezda in charge of the house. She had been almost seventeen then and her father had postponed finding her a husband as long as he could. He loved his family and could not bear parting with his daughter so soon after his wife and mother-in-law had died. But finally, he had relented, giving in both to the expectations of his neighbors and his own good, common sense. He knew that he could not keep hold of Nadezda forever and that she needed to marry and continue her own life. She had always been friends with Vavrinec, whose family lived nearby, and as the children grew older, he had seen the love blossom between them. Even though Vavrinec and Nadezda had both tried to hide it from the families—“such a shy, modest girl,” her father always remarked—the look in their eyes when they glanced at each other and the nonchalant way they tried to say the other’s name of course gave them away. Nadezda’s father had been delighted to finally agree to Vavrinec’s request to marry Nadezda. Vavrinec had served as the neighborhood baker’s apprentice and so her father knew that Nadezda and his grandchildren-to-be would always be cared for and have enough to live on.
Her father had kept Petr with him at home, although she knew it was hard. The boy was left by himself during the day while her father was at his stall in the vegetable market. Some days, Petr went to help him and was popular with the other vegetable sellers and their customers. Other days, Petr played with his friends, went fishing, or tried to help keep the house clean. Even though it was hard for her father to care for a boy Peter’s age alone, he wanted to keep Petr at home as long as possible. Other boys his age were often sent to live as apprentices with various craftsmen, but he spoiled Peter, and he knew it.
The accident at the vegetable market had killed him instantly. Nadezda had been able to bid her grandmother and mother farewell before each had died, as they had been ill and death, though never happy, had not been unexpected. But the mad horse in the streets, the careening wagon crashing into the market stalls, their father trampled by the horse and then crushed by the wagon wheels as he tried to save others—that had been unexpected. She had not seen him for a few days before his death and now would never see him again. At least, not on this earth. She had not been able to say goodbye to him or tell him that he was going to be a grandfather, as she had just discovered this herself. She had been planning to see him that evening when he returned from the market and tell him the good news when people had come running to her house to tell her of the terrible accident. So she had been happy to take in Petr and give him a home. Vavrinec had been just as happy to take the boy in, doubling the size
of his quickly growing family. He was also happy to take Petr in as an apprentice at the bakery, teaching the boy a way to support himself when he reached adulthood.
In his heart of hearts, Petr must have known it wasn’t true, but in his darker moments—of which there were many—she knew he wondered if they hadn’t taken him in simply to get free help around the house and at the bakery. He was angry, very angry, that Mother and Father had left him. He must be terrified that his sister would leave him in the same way.
Nadezda knew all this and understood the excitement in her brother’s eyes. A chance to be part of a crowd, to see something up close he had only heard about in stories from towns further north along the river. But such a terrible crowd, such a horrible story had come to life in front of his eyes.
“And then what happened, Petr? Then what?” She stopped herself from shaking him roughly to get the rest of the story out of him.
He looked away. “That’s when it got scary,” he muttered.
That could mean anything. “Scary? How? What do you mean?”
He paused, keeping his eyes averted. Finally he looked back at his sister’s face. “We took Fen’ka into the square, where a stake had been set up for burning her. Everyone kept pushing and shoving me, it was hard to see what was going on and what was happening. But then she started to scream at us. She called Svetovit to make us afraid, to teach us his power and make us afraid. She wanted Svetovit to curse us. That’s when the sky got dark and the lightning started. Then we tied her to the stake,” he told Nadezda, the excitement flushing his face again for an instant. “We tied her to the stake and lit the fire. She kept screaming. She wanted Svetovit to take away what we want and make our tables into traps. She wanted the earth to become iron. That’s when the other apprentices ran up to the fire. It wasn’t burning very well and so they brought oil. But no one would give me any to pour on the wood. So I grabbed the stick from the fire and got away when the soldiers came and tried to put the fire out, but they couldn’t, and she screamed one more time that we should all receive no vindication. What’s that, Nadezda? What’s ‘vindication’?”
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 97