Mirage Beyond Flames (Coriola)

by De Ross, Melinda

  “I’m starving!” she exclaimed.

  “Me too, darling, but you forget we can’t even read the menu.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” she replied while they headed toward the long building, having the rustic aspect of a large cabin.

  The dim interior was cool, everything smelled of wood and delicious food. Only two tables were occupied.

  The couple sat at a table near a window revealing a breathtaking view. A thin waiter came to bring their menus. When he concluded they were tourists and didn’t speak a single word of Romanian, the young man shrugged, not understanding either English or Gerard’s French. Linda opened the menu randomly. They all seemed to be written in Sanskrit. She chose something called sarmale cu mamaliga. From the section DESSERT – another word she thought she understood – she chose papanasi.

  Gerard burst out laughing. Entering her game, he also chose something randomly, indicating to the waiter what he wanted: ciorba de burta.

  The young man watched them dubiously, saying something that could mean anything, then left.

  Shortly, their food arrived. Linda had on her plate three rolls made from sour cabbage leaves filled with minced meat, accompanied by a yellowish paste she said was delicious.

  Gerard wasn’t too excited by his food.

  “It looks like baby-puke,” he told her grimacing and shuffled his spoon around the bowl full of a yellowish liquid in which were floating meat pieces whose origin was a mystery.

  Linda carefully scrutinized his food. She smelled it, taking a spoon full.

  “Mm, it’s delicious. Granted, it’s not as good as mine, but it’s not bad. It doesn’t resemble anything I’ve tasted in my life. Here, try it!”

  He took a few testing sips, then began eating more enthusiastically. Still, after tasting her food, he thought she’d gotten a better bargain.

  Dessert met with a mad success. They both showed their appreciation to the waiter using signs, making him feel extremely pleased. Papanasi were some kind of fried donuts made of cheese, served with jam and sour cream. Linda noted down the names of all the dishes they had, intending to look up the recipes and learn to cook them. When their bill was brought, he congratulated her for having a considerable amount of Romanian lei. She’d made the exchange near the car rental center, because in few places Euros were accepted.

  Full and rested, they climbed once again into the Jeep, resuming their journey to the smoky peaks of majestic mountains, which filled the horizon.

  The road had cleared some and the view was spectacular. While looking in the distance at the forested ridges, seeming to support rolls of blue and yellow clouds, he noticed Linda’s eyelids began to droop. She had dozed, probably rocked by the car’s motion and the radio playing in the background.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She woke up abruptly with the feeling something was very wrong. Gerard’s voice whispered insistently:

  “Linda, baby, wake up!”

  “What happened?” she asked, adjusting her position in the seat.

  “Take a look at that map. I think we got lost and the damned GPS isn’t working anymore. We drove almost four hundred kilometers, but we’re not the right place. I don’t have service to my cell either, so I can’t call Jean-Paul.”

  Linda looked around, disoriented. They weren’t on the road now, but on a sort of country path. From both right and left, as far as the eye could see, they were surrounded by trees. They seemed to be in the densest forest on Earth, because not even the evening sunlight was well-filtered through the thick branches. It was almost dark.

  “Stop the car,” she said. “How the hell did we get here?”

  “I followed the directions of that shit,” he replied annoyed, indicating the GPS. “But now it stopped, it doesn’t have a signal, nor my phone either. Check yours.”

  “Dead,” she confirmed after getting her cell out from her purse. “Let’s see what this map tells us.”

  They both bent over the piece of paper, analyzing it from all angles.

  “If you say we drove almost four hundred kilometers and obviously we’re in a pretty big forest, I don’t think we can be anywhere else but here.” She put her index on a green area, somewhere west of Cluj-Napoca – their destination. “Look, here the road splits in two. To reach Cluj-Napoca we had to turn right. We probably went straight ahead. If I’m right, this is the Hoia Forest, that’s what the map says.”

  “Could be.” He rubbed his chin meditatively. “We could go back or go forward, which isn’t a smart thing to do, ‘cause this road could might as well end somewhere deep in the forest.”

  “Speaking of the forest,” she said opening her door, “it is gorgeous here, it’s the most unusual place I’ve ever seen. Let’s take a look around.”

  “I don’t know if that’s prudent, baby”, he replied but got out of the car anyway. “I’ve no idea what kind of beasts are lurking around here. I’m really not in the mood for the company of a bear or wolf or even something worse.”

  She laughed, taking his hand.

  “It’s broad daylight! The sun is up in the sky, even though you can’t quite tell from here. Besides, a car could drive by and we could ask for directions. You know what? Park the car perpendicularly with the road, so no one can pass. That way we make sure any potential driver passing through here will have to stop.”

  “There’s a good idea.”

  He followed her advice, then they made their way into the forest, on a small exploratory incursion.

  The place was indeed strange and didn’t resemble anything they’d seen before. In some areas, the trees were straight, perfectly aligned, like soldiers of an army. As they went deep into the forest, the light began to fade even more, revealing tree trunks contorted in bizarre shapes, bent or twisted like huge serpents. Among all these odd formations were filtered fascicles of light. A sort of fine mist gave the scenery a surreal appearance, enchanting and mysterious. However, the two intruders’ enthusiasm rapidly transformed into an inexplicable cautiousness. The fantastic beauty of that place had a hostile, unwelcoming element. They both felt they were profaning a sacred ground, where no human foot had stepped until then.

  Indeed, no trace - fresh or otherwise - seemed to have disturbed the ground, which had probably stood there untouched for centuries. The ambiguous uneasiness and the darkness, which apparently fell over them with every step they took, sent a chilly wave through their bones.

  “I think we should go back,” he whispered.

  His tone chilled her, not knowing exactly what or who he didn’t want to disturb by talking in that hushed tone. Barely now she realized the trees and all the vegetation surrounding them were in fact forms of life. They seem a bit much too alive in the weak rays of foggy light, sleeping their centenary sleep. That made her wonder if at night they came awake or if they only seemed asleep, being in fact in a standby, alert state. She had the same weird, outlandish feeling when she was in a cemetery.

  “You’re right. But let’s take some pictures first. This forest is so strange and beautiful… Not that I could ever forget it, but I want us to have some photos. I’d like to sculpt something inspired by these phantasmagorical shapes.”

  She took out the camera from her shoulder bag and started photographing from several angles, moving like a true professional.

  She’d taken at least ten pictures when Gerard exclaimed:

  “Look, I can see a light!”

  “Where?” she asked startled. “I can’t see anything.”

  He pulled her a little to the left, as a tree trunk was blocking her visibility. Quite right, straying in the dark density facing them, at a considerable distance, glowed a faint light.

  “Let’s go over there,” she urged, stuffing the camera into her bag. “Maybe it’s a house and someone could give us directions on how to reach Cluj-Napoca.”

  Gerard was gazing thoughtfully in the same direction, but he didn’t seem too pleased with her suggestion.

  “I don’t know, baby�
�� A house in the middle of a forest like this one is not a usual thing. Maybe it’s something else entirely.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a serial killer, for example,” he snapped irritated. “I don’t suppose that crossed your mind, has it?”

  “It has,” she replied in the same tone. “I’m not a moron, you know. But no one knows we’re here. We can approach it slowly and if something seems suspicious, we don’t make our presence known.”

  He still wasn’t convinced. A feeling of inexplicable caution seemed to burden his every step. But since she was already heading in that direction, he followed her closely.

  They made their way with difficulty among the deformed trees, while the already low light was rapidly fading even more.

  As they got closer, they discovered the light came from a small cabin situated in a sort of clearing. Here, the trunks were shaped even more strangely, bent, twisted like some undefined bodies frozen in the middle of a pagan dance. Or contorted in the pains of a terrible agony.

  The access to the clearing was delineated by something none of them had ever encountered: a tree trunk grown horizontally, parallel with the ground, over thirty feet long. It seemed a levitating snake and its surface was free of any leaf or branch, of any form of life.

  The intruders stepped around this bizarre apparition, overly amazed by the shapes born from nature or from unknown deities.

  The cabin located in the clearing was built solely from almost unpolished wood, having an antique, rustic appearance, like from another era. Linda knew there were places in this country still far from the civilization known to her. She imagined they’d just encountered such a place.

  They cautiously approached the two rudimentary windows and peeked inside. There seemed to be a single room, simply furnished: a big bed in one corner, a table, two chairs and some other basic things. On the wooden floor lay a kind of woven rug, similar to the colorful woven canvas decorating the walls in wooden frames.

  Along the opposite side stood scattered a few shelves and an object whose sight left the two with their mouths agape. It looked like an oven, definitely something used for cooking, but it seemed made out of raw dirt. On top of it steamed a clay pot.

  Fascinated by this oddity, they forgot to be surprised by the woman who was fussing around said object. She opened the tiny door that rudiment of an oven had in its center, revealing something burning inside. The woman stirred the embers using a poker, then she stirred the pot’s contents with a wooden spoon.

  She appeared to be middle-aged, short and thin, her hair hidden under a brown kerchief. She wore a white long shirt, embroidered on the sleeves and chest, tied at her waist with a colorful belt. From there, in both front and back, two narrow pieces of multi-colored fabric were hanging almost to the ground.

  “Who lives like this in the twenty-first century?” Linda demanded in a whisper, watching fascinated the preparations taking place inside the cabin.

  “Some people live even more primitively than this,” he replied. “Comparing to those cannibals tribes in Africa, here is the center of civilization. But I doubt there’s a tiny possibility of her speaking a word of English. She seems to be a simple peasant. I wonder why she lives here in the forest, isolated, and where is the man of the house? A woman can’t live here by herself.”

  Linda looked around uneasy. The twilight glow was barely visible through the trees.

  “Let’s knock. Maybe we can make ourselves understood somehow.”

  They went around the cabin until they reached the massive wooden front door. Gerard knocked softly. After a few moments, the door opened a crack with a soft wood groan. The woman looked at them curiously, but without any trace of fear or caution, which they found extremely strange. She analyzed them in amazement from head to toe, as though studying some unseen creatures, stopping her attention on their clothes in particular.

  “Good evening,” Linda began in English. “Could you help us?”

  The woman raised her eyebrows and shrugged, looking from one to the other. She said something in a foreign language – probably Romanian – but none of them understood a word.

  Linda looked at Gerard helpless.

  “Parlez-vous Français?” he asked without much conviction, but his face immediately enlightened and so did the woman’s as she answered in the same language, nodding satisfied:

  “Oui, oui, Français… Mon mari… étudiè à Paris!”

  Gerard smiled, overwhelmed by a feeling of relief. He translated for Linda, who was impatiently awaiting:

  “She speaks French, she said her husband studied in Paris.”

  Gerard explained to the woman in as few words as possible their dilemma. She welcomingly urged them to come in.

  “Now we don’t know how to get to Cluj-Napoca,” he concluded. “Do you know where it is and how we get there?”

  “Yes, of course, it is not far,” the woman replied.

  “Could you draw us a map?” he pleaded, gesticulating at the same time to make himself understood.

  The woman gazed at him surprised, seemingly not understanding the request.

  Gerard turned to Linda:

  “Do you have a pencil and paper? I want to ask her to draw us the route.”

  She rummaged through her bag, producing a pen and notepad.

  He handed them to the woman, who looked at the objects with great curiosity, turning them on all sides. When he showed her how the pen worked, it became obvious she could write, but she’d never used a pen before. She was pressing the pen’s tip a bit hard on the paper.

  While she traced some lines and highlights, she began explaining to Gerard each one’s significance. Because the road - she said - was sinuous, they had to be very careful not to get lost again.

  Up until that point, Gerard had translated everything that was said for her, but now he had stopped, carefully listening to the woman’s indications, asking a question now and again. Not comprehending a single word from their discussion, Linda walked around the room discreetly, studying each object. She would’ve liked very much to take some pictures, but considering the reaction the pen’s sight had caused, probably the woman would’ve thought the camera was a devil’s tool.

  Her attention was caught by a small glow, which came from the dark corners of one of the shelves loaded with ornamental things. Linda bent to see the source of that faint light. Involuntarily reaching out to the shelf, she grasped the object in question.

  It was perhaps a sort of rock. It resembled slightly a mineral rock she’d once seen in a museum. The object fit perfectly in her hand. It was white, with an ivory luster and an extremely irregular shape. It had a lot of edges - some elongated, some rounded, all reflecting light in a strangely spectacular way. Here and there it had a lacy-looking hollow. The most bizarre thing was that, at a close look, in some places she could distinguish something seeming to be minuscule metallic fragments. They created a contrast on the otherwise unblemished ivory surface. Could it be a rock from metal or salt mountains? Cupping it between her palms, Linda noticed the object had a strong phosphorescent glow.

  Fascinated by this discovery, she jumped when the woman touched her arm, asking her something in French.

  Linda looked helpless at Gerard, who smiled.

  “She asked if you like it.”

  “Oui, oui,” she replied, smiling at the older woman who returned the gesture, showing unusually white teeth as she said something else.

  “She says she’ll give it to you, as a present, so you can have a souvenir from the Hoia Forest. That’s what this place is called.”

  Linda’s first impulse was to decline. It seemed she was taking away the only treasure in this shabby but so welcoming little place. Seeing the woman’s kind expression, she squeezed her hand. Lifting the other hand in which she held the rock, she said, with all the gratitude she felt:

  “Merci beaucoup, Madame!”

  “De rien,” the woman replied, then returned to Gerard the notepad on which she had
drawn the route. After a slight hesitation, she also handed him the pen. Linda took it from his hand and gave it to the woman, smiling. What she told her didn’t need translation:

  “A present for you, Madame…”

  “Maria,” the woman said. “Je m’appelle Maria.”

  “Madame Maria,” Gerard told her in French, “thank you so much for your help, but we must leave, it’s nearly full dark.”

  “Yes, of course, go with God, darling children!” she blessed them. They left her standing in the doorway, watching them with a strange nostalgia, while they were lost beyond the trees.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Linda was still holding the phosphorescent rock, both of them marveling by the strange light it emanated in darkness. Afraid not to lose it, she put into an inside pocket of her bag and zipped it tight, then she grabbed his arm.

  Above them, at a dizzying height, an almost full moon made its shy appearance through the irregular tree tops.

  “Do you know what’s the oddest thing in this whole business?” Gerard ruminated thoughtfully. “She asked me where we’d left the carriage.”

  “The carriage?” she exclaimed stunned.

  “Yeah. She told me to beware of wolves and boars.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” she whispered, nestling closer to him, looking around fearful, as though seeing a threat in every silhouette, branch or tree hollow.

  He completely empathized. If before the contorted trunks seemed bizarre in a fascinating way, now he perceived them as being grotesque and scary. The most striking thing was the dead stillness, the silence, not at all natural in a forest. At the very least, the insects – which overpopulated any forest– should’ve made some noise, but not even a single mosquito made its presence known.

  A flutter of wings suddenly broke the silence very close to their heads. He felt Linda ready to scream - that tensed she was, clinging hard to him.