“And if the sun comes up before he finishes, then we’re safe?”
“Yes,” said Sofia, “for the time being.”
Peter wheeled around on his heel like a trapped animal looking for an escape, but there was none.
“And you? What do you mean, you’re looking after me? I don’t understand.”
“Be still, Peter. We must be calm.”
“Calm? How can you be calm?”
Sofia put her arms out wide, a gesture of submission.
“Peter, you think this is easy for me? You think I am not scared enough to drop dead right here? Because I am. I am. But I have something you do not. I have knowledge. I have done this before, many times. But trust me, you will need all your wits about you. You will need to be calm, in order to live. Do you understand me?”
Peter shook his head in disbelief, but he understood.
“But what about Agnes?” he said. “I must find her.”
“I think it is probably too late for your friend.”
“How can you say that?” Peter cried. “What do you know?”
“I know that she has been taken from here. Given what you have seen, you should understand. We can do nothing. For the moment we are trapped. If we can get out, then that is a start. That might be of some help.”
It was almost too much for Peter.
“What do you mean?”
“If we can get out of this, so good. But there is a greater evil at work. There are bigger battles to be fought.”
Something clicked inside Peter.
“You mean the Shadow Queen, don’t you. But I don’t understand.”
“No,” said Sofia. “I know. Your father has spent your whole life stopping you from understanding.”
“What do you know of my father?”
Sofia was silent for a moment.
“More than you do, I suspect.”
25
The Winter King
It was strange. Even as it was happening, Peter knew it was strange. It was like sitting in the center of a hurricane. Outside, a man whom he had seen buried was prowling around, intent on doing them harm, and prevented from doing so only by millet seed. Inside the hut, in relative safety, he sat quietly, though not peacefully, with a girl he barely knew, as she told him the story of his father.
“Have you heard of the Winter King, Peter?” Sofia asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s a story. The king who’ll save us all from every evil. He was supposed to have saved the land from the Turks. Everyone knows that story. But it’s just a story that the peasants tell each other.”
“The peasants? That’s not you talking. That’s your father. It’s more than a story. Your father could tell you that the Winter King is real. Or was. Your father fought with him.”
Peter laughed.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “My father fought with King Michael. They fought the Turks.”
“That’s right, Peter. King Michael was the Winter King. That was thirty years ago, no more. But memories are short when lives are short. Already the King has become a legend.
“The Turks were greater in number, but the forest in winter is a treacherous place for the unwary. They were overcome by King Michael’s men. Massacred. Some escaped and slipped away into the depths of the forest, never to be heard of again. The Mother Forest dealt with them. When her anger is aroused she takes no prisoners, but it wouldn’t have happened without the Winter King.”
Peter nodded his head. He understood what she meant about the forest, and thought about why he made his little carvings, to give something back. It would never do to betray the forest’s generosity; Peter believed that those who thought the forest was simply a gathering of trees were foolish, unwise, and that there was something else that gathered among those trees.
“The Winter King,” Sofia said, “who will save us from all evil. Now he must save us from the Shadow Queen. His greatest battle ever.”
“But he’s dead. King Michael is dead.”
“Yes. He died and the new king was weak. He let the country crumble into factions, no longer unified. In the chaos that followed many bad things happened. Fighting between men who had been allies. And your father was put in jail.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know because your father fought alongside my father.”
“A Gypsy? Fought with King Michael?”
“A Gypsy, yes, Peter.” Sofia glared at him. “What is so wrong with that? There is more to some of us than there might seem.”
“And your father is here now? He spoke to my father that night when…?” Peter stopped.
“My father is dead. He died in jail when I was just three years old. My uncle leads us. My uncle, Milosh. And yes, he went to speak to your father that night, when we met on the road.”
Peter remembered it all too clearly. He hated himself, with Agnes missing, but he couldn’t help remembering what had happened. What he had felt. Blood rushed to his face as he remembered how he had carried Sofia, cradled her arms and long slender legs, and how she had held his hand.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Peter said, but Sofia merely held his gaze, a sorrowful look on her face.
“That night,” Peter said, quietly.
“What of it?”
“That night, when you—”
Sofia interrupted him.
“Don’t think anything,” she said flatly. “I was sent to delay you from returning home, so that my uncle could speak to your father alone. I did what I had to do. My uncle has been following your father for years and he didn’t want anyone to get in his way.”
Now Peter was angry. With himself. With Sofia. Too angry even to ask why her uncle had been hunting Tomas. Was that why they’d always lived on the move? Always keeping to the edges of the civilized world? He was not surprised at what she said, and yet he knew he was disappointed too. An image of Agnes flickered into his mind, and though he tried to push it away, he could not do so entirely.
Frustrated, he turned back to the crack in the shutter.
Still Radu crawled around. Peter tried to work out if more than half the seed was left on the ground, but Radu’s feet had turned the snow to mush, making it hard to see anything clearly. He wondered if it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that Radu was moving faster than before.
He turned back to Sofia.
“And now?”
“What do you mean?”
“So the Shadow Queen is coming. Making dead people walk again. To make us like them? But the Winter King is dead. How can he save us now?”
“King Michael is dead. But the Winter King lives. In us. In your father. In us, the Gypsies. Even in you, Peter. We all belong to one another, to the ancestors, and we can fight. We have fought for as long as I can remember. Moving, traveling, fighting. We live the life of Gypsies, but we fight the fight of the Winter King.”
She stopped.
Peter shook his head, sighing. It was too much. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to believe what he was hearing—a story coming to life.
“Peter. You must join the Winter King. We need you. We need your father.”
“Why?”
“Because your father was the finest warrior in King Michael’s army. He was famed for it. And he had something else. A sword. A Turkish sword. He found it on a campaign far into Turkish territory in the summer before that final battle in the winter forest.”
“A sword? What sword?”
“A fine sword, Peter. One that is perfectly balanced. It is as light as the wind, yet as hard as the winter. But there is more to it than that. It stops them.”
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, still confused by everything Sofia was revealing to him.
“People like him. Outside. The woodcutter. The sword stops them. Returns them to the soil, for good. It was forged in a land often plagued by such people. There they call them vrykolakoi. Here we call them nosferatu, or moroii. It is all the same. They are all hostages. An
d once, it is said, they were as common as the blades of grass in the meadow, or berries in a pail. In every land they have a thousand names. It doesn’t matter; it is up to us to stop them.”
“Us?”
“Us,” said Sofia. “The ancestors. All across the land there are groups of us. Some are Gypsies, some are soldiers, some are common people, some are priests. It doesn’t matter. Those who fight the hostages are all ancestors—my uncle, my father, your father. Even you, Peter.”
Peter shook his head, incredulous.
“We need your father’s sword,” Sofia said.
“My father was no warrior. My father has no sword,” Peter answered. “I would have seen it.”
But even as he said the words, he thought of the box his father had kept from him all these years. Was it possible? Was there really a sword inside?
“Perhaps,” said Sofia. “But wherever it is, we must find it.”
“My father is no hero,” Peter said bitterly, still refusing to believe. “He fought with Michael, that is true, but he is not a great soldier. My father is a drunkard.”
Sofia stared at him, but Peter could not fathom what she was thinking.
Now something else struck him. Saying nothing, he moved yet again to the crack in the shutter.
He stepped back, as if he had been stung.
“Sofia,” he said, “look!”
She came and pressed her face to the hole, and gasped.
Outside, Radu was busy picking up the seeds. But Peter’s fears had proved true: Radu was moving more quickly. His hands flew through the snow, sending small flurries all around him.
It was not possible, but it seemed that he grew faster with every passing minute, until he whirled around the hut like a dervish, faster and faster.
The remaining seeds grew fewer, and fewer. Very soon, there would be none left at all.
26
Escape
“What are we going to do?” Peter cried.
“I don’t know,” Sofia said quietly. “I’m thinking.”
“There’s no sign of dawn. He’ll be finished long before!”
“Listen to me. How far is it from here to your hut?”
“Not far,” said Peter, “but far enough. Why?”
“I’ve got a little of the millet left. If we throw it behind us as we run, he’ll have to stop and collect it.”
“This is madness!”
“Can you break the door down?”
Peter looked at the door and nodded.
“I think so. How much seed do you have left?”
Sofia showed him the remnants in the bottom of the little sackcloth bag. He didn’t like what he saw.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll break the door down as soon as he’s on the far side. I’ll lead the way, you throw the seed. And I warn you, I am a fast runner.”
“So am I,” said Sofia, tipping her chin up. “A kiss for luck?”
But Peter was in no mood to play her games.
Sofia moved to the shuttered window, her hand raised, waiting till she saw Radu move away.
“Oh!” she whispered. “He’s finished!”
“Then it’s time to go!”
Peter ran at the door and jumped, hitting it squarely with both boots near the lock. The wood was in fact quite thin; splinters flew in all directions, and the door smashed open with a loud crack.
Peter landed in the snow amid the wreckage of the door, and scrambled to his feet. He heard footsteps immediately behind him and for a second thought it was Radu, but Sofia passed him in an instant, flinging a few grains of millet as she went.
“Come!” was all she had time to yell, and Peter followed.
Within a few strides he had caught her, and grabbed her hand, pulling her on. He threw a glance behind. What he saw made his limbs want to seize and stop, but he forced himself to run. Hardly more than a breath behind them, Radu followed, lurching through the snow.
Sofia flung another handful of seed, which struck Radu in the face. He howled, hurling himself to the ground, scrabbling to pick it all up.
Now at last they put some distance between themselves and their pursuer. They did not dare slow down, and sickeningly, as Peter looked back once more, he could see Radu closing on them again with shocking speed. If he could run that fast, Peter thought, what in the name of God was his strength like?
Fleetingly, Peter wondered how they would be any safer in his father’s hut than in the one they had left, but they were running too hard to gasp a single word to each other, and Peter decided that if they could reach the hut, he could perhaps get to one of their axes before Radu got to them. And his father? Maybe he could help them. Was there really a sword in that box? If what Sofia said about him was true…
Even as he ran, Peter knew that was ludicrous. His father was a drunkard, who must have malingered his way through his years under King Michael. He was no use.
Sofia shouted at him.
Stop shouting, Peter thought. Just run! He bounded a few more paces through the trees before realizing what she had said.
“It’s all gone!”
They were on their own now, with only their legs to keep them from harm. Radu groped in the snow, then stood. He had all the seeds.
Sofia shrieked and, for a few steps, overtook Peter.
“There!” he shouted. “The hut!”
Had he turned he would have seen Radu close behind, his hands clawing out toward them, inches away.
A dozen more paces would see them over the bridge. But Radu was on them. Seeing that Sofia was the easier target, Radu flung himself at her. Sensing the attack, she dodged to the side, but she had misjudged her distance from the river itself, and the bank gave way under her foot.
She slipped and tumbled into the water with an almighty splash.
Peter stopped, only feet from the bridge. He hesitated, seeing Radu standing on the bank, looking at Sofia in the water. Then Radu spun around and saw Peter, and made for him.
“Go!” shouted Sofia from the water. The current was taking her the wrong way, away from the hut and the island on which it stood, but she seemed to be swimming toward the island.
Peter didn’t need telling twice.
He ran over the bridge, screaming.
“Father! Father! Wake up!”
Peter made the hut, not daring once to look back, desperate to find his axe; but as he burst through the door, it suddenly occurred to him that he had heard no footsteps on the bridge behind him.
He turned in the doorway, and saw Radu on the far side of the bridge, shaking his fists at him but making no effort to cross. Peter watched, confused and relieved in equal measure, as Sofia reached the island.
“Help me out!” she called to Peter, angrily.
He ran over to her and, wrapping his hands around her wrists, pulled her in one long motion from the water and up the steep bank.
“What in the devil is going on?”
Tomas staggered from the hut, a lamp in his hand, pushing the hair back from his eyes with the other. He had been dragged from a bottomless sleep, and was not amused.
“Father!” Peter cried. “It was after us! Look there!”
But when Peter pointed to where Radu had stood at the edge of the bridge, there was nothing but the rustle of bare branches in the half-light.
He had gone.
27
The Island
Peter stood, panting heavily. He began to shake and for a while was unaware of his father shouting.
Sofia was wet through with icy river water. She moved to Peter, who acknowledged her with a lifeless smile.
“What in God’s name?” Tomas said. He grabbed Peter by the scruff of his neck. “What are you playing at? Who’s that?”
Sofia stepped right up to Tomas, ignoring his rage.
“You know me, Tomas!” she declared. “I am Sofia, Caspar’s daughter.”
For a moment Peter thought he saw a glimmer in his father’s eyes, but then it was gone.
“I don
’t know what you’re talking about,” Tomas said, deliberately. “I don’t know anyone called Caspar.”
Sofia fell back suddenly, as though he had struck her.
“Liar,” she said.
Tomas lifted his hand in fury, but Peter stepped between them.
Tomas tried to push him aside, but Peter stood firm, though his legs shook.
“Father,” he said, “why are you angry? If this girl is nothing to you? Or do you know her?”
Tomas spun away.
“Get her off here!” he spat.
Peter pulled Tomas back and was surprised by how easy it was. He looked at his father’s face as if for the first time. Tomas’s face was ruddy and swollen from drinking, his nose pockmarked; broken veins showed in his cheeks. He stank of drink. He was old.
As they stood facing each other, Peter became aware that daybreak had come. A few low streaks of sunlight pushed weakly through the trees, gules dappling the roof of the hut here and there.
“Father,” he said again, more quietly this time, “Sofia says you knew her father, that you fought with him, for King Michael. Is that true?”
Tomas stared at his son.
“She says you were put in jail after the war,” Peter went on. “With her father. And she says that you have a sword. A sword that stops these people who have come back from their graves.”
Tomas blinked, then walked away, still mute.
Peter wouldn’t give up.
“What is it? What are these people, who won’t stay dead? Father?”
“Nonsense,” Tomas said over his shoulder. He moved toward the door. “All nonsense, and Gypsy tales.”
“No!” Sofia cried. “No. Look at me! I am soaked to the skin. We were chased by a dead man. He chased us here!”
“Nonsense,” Tomas said again.
“No!”
Sofia, seething, stepped toward Tomas, but now Peter stopped her, grabbing her soaking-wet sleeve firmly at the elbow.
“Sofia,” he said gently, “don’t.”
“What, Peter? You too? Do you think this is a Gypsy tale? Your father knows it’s true. Ask him! Ask him why he built a house on an island if it’s all nonsense!”
Peter’s hand dropped from her arm.
My Swordhand is Singing Page 8