by Jason Graff
Soon, night flapped her wings about us, and even though the fog had mostly disappeared, there was still enough to turn the stars into smudges of light. Fifika stopped, and the force of her stopping, stopped me. She sniffed the air; then even in the darkness swallowing us as a sparrow swallows worms, I could see her eyes twinkling at me. I followed those sparkling jewels to what they beheld before us.
It took a moment for me to realize that we had walked in a kind of giant half-circle and now found ourselves looking at the back wall of the boyar’s castle. We stood in its shadow, my Fifika leaning against me, a shadow blacker than the blackness of the night. My mouth hung slack, and my eyes strained to make out the immenseness before me. The moss in the cracks of the huge stones glowed silver in the moonlight, which had just then undressed herself of the clouds. Up and up, my eyes went toward the window near the top of the castle. Suddenly, the frame of the open window was filled by a man with curly hair like loosely spun yarn, piled high. Thick spectacles slipped down his nose. With a kind of madness riding his movements, he reached out for a moth that fluttered there in the glow of the candles coming from his room.
“Master,” he barked, his voice like a gilabno whose throat was full of burning embers. “The children! May I have the children, Master? May they be brought up to my chambers?!”
The mist that surrounded us suddenly thickened and turned first silver then green in the glow of the moon. A breeze came out of nowhere to sweep it past us and then up the wall of the castle, through the open window. The jabbering madman fell away from the window as the strange mist filled his chamber. He began to scream, sounding like some terrified animal. His cries were soon muffled, replaced by the banging and thudding of a struggle. When it was once again silent, the clouds pulled their caissons across the sky, and all went dark. After they floated from the face of the moon, its light revealed the boyar standing where the lunatic had been.
“My children of the night,” he said, his voice deep but friendly, befitting a man who needed to make no demands for the attention of those in his presence. “You go now to your beds, before the others see that you are gone. Your camp, you will find, is just on the other side of this wall. Never fear to wander those mountain paths, as they all lead to one part of my home or another.”
I soon surmised from hearing Papa talk about the odd fellow staying in the castle that the man we’d seen at the window was an Englishman called Renfield. Papa called him Wren Fooled and joked with Mama about how those most English of birds must have driven him insane. Renfield had been brought here for what the English call paperwork, which is as much like the work that the people of our kumpania did as a lazy housecat is like an ox.
C
hapter Four
Not long after Fifika and I had chanced upon the mad Wren, he was replaced by another Englishman. Why our wise boyar would employ men from such a work-averse country, I never could surmise. One night, soon after Fifika and I had discovered the path that led around to the back of the castle, his replacement came howling and stumbling into our camp. Thin and tall this one was, looking even less fit for work than Renfield. His overly tight black coat hung to his knees. Beneath it, he wore an even tighter-fitting vest, designed, it seemed, to hinder his movements. Beneath all these layers was a collared white shirt which, due to the snug fit of the vest, looked to be painted on the poor “chap.” He called himself Harker. From the look in his eyes, which were the weak blue of a winter sky, it was clear he was the sort of a man who could not hide his fear.
Papa and the elders welcomed him to our evening meal, for it was Saturday. That day, we all huddled around a communal fire eating tender hunks of smoked rabbit right from the spits. Harker refused, taking the typical tone of an Englishman afraid to eat out of doors. Finally, he pestered Boval into leading him to the castle, claiming he wished to begin his business with the count, so it could be concluded quickly. That’s the English for you, looking for the end of things before they even begin.
It was around this time that my world was briefly torn asunder. One evening, Papa returned from work bent over as though broken. I’d never heard him grunt that way, almost as though he wanted to cry out. Mama had to remove his boots, which were caked in their usual cast of mud. In the glow of the hanging lantern, I saw his face, smudged with soot and filth and clenched in an expression of pain. He told us that they hadn’t the men to finish the digging by the count’s schedule. They were all weary of toiling from dawn until after sunset, and he feared someone was going to get hurt if they continued at that pace. Beseeching Mama with those eyes of his that always did beg so well, he wondered aloud if I were now of age to dig and work with the men. Mama cupped the back of my head in her hand and said she guessed I was, if he thought so. I pulled away from Mama but did not rush to agree with Papa as I might have only weeks before.
The timing of this decision seemed unnaturally cruel to me, and I thought, as all children do in their self-centeredness, that the fates were all against me. For many a night not long before, I had laid awake, dreaming of the day when I would be treated not like a boy but the man I was soon to become. Now that it was actually happening, my heart preferred to remain in the child state and wander with Fifika along the mountain paths. I fought tears as I nodded in my acceptance of this position.
“What is it?” Papa asked, reading the undoubtedly glum look on my face. “You’ve been begging to go with me ever since you could see over my knee.”
“I am, it’s just…I am so excited, Papa.”
The next morning, Papa woke me early. He told me from that day forward, I would rise with the men and live the day as a man. I was given a small, chipped pickaxe and joined the march into the castle’s bowels. The air down there smelled of earth. Along the stone walls, the candles danced furiously in flickers of anxious light.
Our task was to dig up the ground and place it in huge wooden crates—for what purpose, we did not know. So, I set about my task, trying not to think of Fifika. But even as I dug up the black, rich earth with the other men, she remained close to my thoughts. It was as though ghosts made from the feelings she aroused inside of me were dancing among the shadows of that subterranean vault, waiting to reveal themselves.
Each time Papa caught me staring into those shadows, he hissed at me to get to work. I would then bend my back and dig. Even though my ax was small, I managed to break up the soil without much effort. It proved a fairly easy task at first. I soon found the best way to keep Fifika from my mind was to work hard, work until my limbs were sore, until pain was the only sensation my body would allow itself to feel. By the end of the day, we had filled almost a dozen and were then all quite tired. We only had to wait and make sure the final box of the day was hauled up.
“Up, up, up,” Aberama shouted to the men manning the ropes above. “Pull!”
Grunting, they heaved and pulled. That final box was so full that soil spilled out from between the slender gaps in the planks. Then, just before it disappeared up to the surface, the ropes snapped. We all scattered into the shadows as it slid down the ramp, hit the ground, and swung open, re-depositing half of its content back to the earth.
The crate shattered when it crashed to the earth. Loose chunks of wood flew about the underground vault. We all took cover, crouching low and burying our heads in the cradles we made of our arms. Only after we got back to our feet did we see that a large splinter of wood had pierced Rye’s chest and now pinned him to the ground. He lay gasping and gargling, his hand clutched uselessly around it. No one knew what to do at first, so we gathered around him and silently watched him squirm and struggle, a look of shocked pain freezing his features wide.
“We are cursed,” Aberama muttered again and again, as his former nemesis struggled with ever-greater effort for each successive breath.
The others moved to hush him as his muttering grew louder, becoming a growl. Papa tackled him and attempted to put his hand over Aberama’s mouth, receiving a bite from the brute for his efforts. Pap
a’s blood mixed with the foaming saliva running down the madman’s chin. I ran over and gave Aberama’s shin my best kick. He cried out and knocked me down.
“I’m telling you,” he wailed, “working for this man, this boyar, has put us under the sign of a hex. We should quit this accursed place and head east over the mountains, to Ruska.”
All the while, Rye lay moaning, his eyes rolling up in his head. With the hand that had not been bitten, Papa reached out for Rye, taking his hand and whispering to him. How horrible the pain on the wounded man’s face appeared in the harsh orange light of the torches. The other elders fell on Aberama until he, too, was pinned to the ground.
“We should leave here,” he continued to cry. “We should leave before it is too late.”
They managed to get him to his feet and calm him enough that he could be led out of the vault. All the while, he kept muttering a low, forced sound that was more frightened then angry. Meanwhile, Papa’s comfort did nothing for poor Rye, dying there in the mud. Soon, with a rattle from his chest, he breathed his last. In his final movements, he closed his eyes, and his head sunk back into the mud.
I fell to my knees, well aware that I was sharing a space with death. I barely dared to breathe. Papa took me in his arms, careful to keep me from seeing the blood still pooled in Aberama’s teeth marks on the side of his hand. I wanted to cry for Fifika but doubted the men to whom I had been proving myself all day would think much of me.
“Better this for him than by some Jofrankan pig farmer’s torch,” Boval said, once we’d surfaced with the body. “Better to die working for the boyar who welcomed us than to be murdered by those who despise us.”
All of us who had worked with him there beneath the castle fell into a silence that was almost holy. It was a tragedy to share with bowed heads. It was not long before the blood soaked through the shroud that had been placed on the body, dripping black as we carried him back to the camp. I wanted to be a man for my Fifika, so I helped the men load the body onto a wooden handcart. Papa forbade me from following him, but I would not have obeyed him if he had the force of ten boyars at his back. I waited for the line of men following the wagon to pass, then straggled along behind them.
“You were right, lazy one. Work was the death of you,” Fifika’s mama said as she pulled back the shroud. “Lazy bones!” She cackled.
Her face twitched but she did not cry. Fifika was hiding behind a coverlet hanging on a line strung between two trees. Mama refused to put up such a line, believing the trees to be evil. Poor Mama, like so many others in our kumpania, finding evil everywhere, under every rock and stone. When a breeze issuing down the mountain lifted the sheet to reveal the expression frozen on the dead man’s face, Fifika came running toward me. I took her in my arms and again felt the true pleasure of what it meant to be a man who can help the one he loves. Though, I must admit that in my greed to be the strong one, I was a little disappointed that she did not cover my shoulder with tears. She did squeeze me mightily, holding on as though she would not let go. The moment had me so deep in the grasp of its bliss, I could not tell her how sorry I was.
“Take this away,” Fifika’s mama said, nodding at her dead husband’s body. “But keep him away from where the birds can get to it. We do not want them getting sore stomachs on top of everything else.”
C
hapter Five
The elders decided that Aberama’s poor behavior and excitability not only during that awful incident but since our arrival there had earned him a period of time alone in the vardo that was referred to as the Flower Pot. It had earned this name because it was there that those from among our kumpania who had done something that displeased the elders were sent to live for an extended period of time. Those dwelling inside of it were not allowed out even to bathe until the elders said so. In time, based on the length of the sentence, the stench emanating from it would be so great that the womenfolk would lay flowers around it, hence the name.
That night, when Mama heard the story and saw Papa’s hand, she began shrieking in a language I could not understand. Papa, seeing my startled reaction, took her in his arms and whispered to her. I could not hear what he said, but he soon calmed her enough that her shrieks had turned into muttering.
She began opening jars from the chest she kept beneath the bed, the one I was forbidden from opening. The smell of their contents was sweet and moldy. Once she had a handful of what looked like brown and green herbs, she put them in a pot and set it to boil. After the mixture had cooked for a time, Mama used a flat spoon to remove it from the pot and began covering Papa’s wound with it. All of this was done in silence. At the time, it struck me as the sort of strange superstitious ritual by which people misjudged our kumpania. I was just happy when Papa wrapped his hand with a cloth, as it masked the sickly sweet odor.
That night, my sleep was broken by what sounded like a wolf growling nearby. From the window next to Mama and Papa’s bunk, I could see across the camp to the Flower Pot. There was no way with the thick, black clouds obscuring the slight sliver of moonlight to see exactly what Aberama was doing, but his language was so animalistic that I kept my watch.
Then, from across the camp, Fifika stumbled into view. She walked towards the Flower Pot, whispering; what, I could not discern. I could not see even a foot in front of me, and my own hand held before my face might as well have been a sparrow. When the moon reappeared, my Fifika was gone. Where she had stood there was now what looked like a wolf cub. It went closer towards the Flower Pot. A shudder went through me, and I fell back away from the window. I landed in Mama’s arms, who, though sleeping, took me in her powerful grasp. I worried about Fifika at first, but the music of the wolves soon strangely soothed me so that even though I wanted to keep the manly feeling of concern for my love close to my breast, I soon came to slumber under the influence the wolf cub’s song.
Just before morning, a murmuring from outside woke me. Papa had gone. I crawled from beneath Mama’s arms and looked out the window. Several of the elders had gathered around the Flower Pot. Remembering my fear for Fifika, which I had allowed the music of those beasts to soothe away, I darted out into the night. Most of the fog and mist had lifted. The deep darkness of the predawn sky made the moonlight brighter, even though it was but a sliver in the sky. I came upon the Flower Pot to a most disturbing sight. The end of it had been smashed open, and Aberama was gone.
“Fifika,” I cried out, howling my own little howl.
“What?” Boval asked, coming over to me and pulling me up by the scruff of my neck. “What are you moaning at?”
“I saw her out here wandering around near that wagon. She was gone, then I saw a wolf…a small one…a cub.”
“Did you see the wolf smash his way into the wagon and drag Aberama away?”
“No, this wolf…this wolf was too small. Like I said, it was no more than a cub. It could not have carried away a man of Aberama’s size. But…Fifika…” I broke again and wept more.
“This way,” Papa called, swinging his torch at the elders from the edge of camp. “Tracks up into the mountains.”
I followed behind the search party, relieved to be in the glow of their torches as the moonlight cast the cliffs into shadows in sinister shapes that looked like daggers or rows upon rows of sharp teeth. Soon, a blood trail joined the tracks. It was thick in places along the trail, though sometimes it was little more than a crimson thread winding atop the rock and dirt. Just before the first rays of dawn began to peak out from between the mountains to our east, we came to a clearing.
“Chik,” Papa called out and fell to his knees before what was left of the man.
Fifika’s brother’s arms were gone up to his elbows, one of his legs was missing below the knee, and the other lacked even a stump. His stomach and chest had been torn open, their contents scattered about as though they had burst from inside his body. Half of his face had been ripped from the skull, revealing a pulpy red mask with blood weeping from an empty eye socket. So
me of the elders became sick and returned their dinners to the land. I only worried for my Fifika and cursed the wolf and her song for lulling me back to sleep.
“Fifika,” I cried into the mountains so that the echo was all there was to hear. “Fifika!”
Before I could cry her name a third time, Boval screamed. We followed where he pointed with his shaking hand. There above us stood three wolves; one appeared to be the cub I had observed earlier in the night. The two others were full grown. One’s fur was white, her eyes a milky blue. Standing next to her was a most impressive beast with a crooked snout; his broad chest and powerful forelegs gave hint at what he might’ve been capable of. He growled a growl that showed off his impressive teeth. The elders ignored Chik’s body and began running down the hill. Certain the wolves had taken my Fifika, I stood my ground, ready to face the growling beasts. Papa grabbed me by the collar, and though I tried to resist, he soon had me running back down the mountain. The wolves stalked the path somewhere above us. Their paws sent showers of pebbles and small rocks down onto our heads. Papa must’ve heard them as well, as he picked up his pace so that it was almost in rhythm with theirs.
When we made it back to camp, dawn’s golden light was just taking hold. The morning was now totally free of mist and fog. Breathless, I caught up with Papa, and we both went in the direction of the Flower Pot. There was Aberama sleeping inside. Boval and the other elders roused him, asking what had happened to Chik and Fifika.
“How should I know?” he asked. “You locked me up in this stinking prison.”
“But Aberama,” Papa said and gestured at the damage at the open end of the wagon.
“Who did this? And is there blood in your hair and beard?”