Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  "I'll come the whole way with you, pet," her aunt said.

  Her mother-in-law walked beside them, carrying the baby. He was wrapped warmly. Her head was down, and from time to time, she twitched the blankets back to look at his small, perfect face. There was a red mark on his forehead from the forceps, but it was fainter than it had been, no longer swollen. Edda's boy slept.

  The road gradually levelled, and they emerged into a clearing. The outbuildings were here, a bit of smoke rising from a narrow chimney of the company office. The wind blew harder now, whistling in her ears, but Edda refused to shiver. I won't, she thought. She walked on, careful not to stumble, and then she saw the men. It nearly brought tears to her eyes.

  They were standing along the road, lining it. A hundred of them. Maybe more. Some she knew, many she didn't. Men with beards blackened by the dust, men who shaved their chins smooth, men who were still slender youths, their shoulders already stooped from the time they'd spent crouched underground, ducking through shafts with their charges and picks. Piter had the same way of standing: canted slightly, his neck a little broader on one side from the muscles that came from holding himself at an angle for hours. They looked at her with open pity, these men, but with gratitude, too. Some of them nodded at her. Others wiped their eyes. Her cheeks felt hot and she turned her head to look up at the sky.

  A company man came out of the office, and several men stepped aside to let him by. He wore shoes—so silly, in this weather, with this much ice on the ground, Edda thought. Hobnailed boots would be so much more practical. His lovely overcoat was the most fanciful thing she'd seen, beautifully cut and swirling around him as he walked. He was taking something out of his pocket. An envelope. She stopped in the yard. The women behind her halted.

  It was quiet in the clearing. There were no birds this morning, not even the little dun sparrows that hopped and chirped all the year round. The hills crouched all around them, and the sun touched half the clearing where it could cut through the rock escarpments that ringed the mine. The sky was achingly blue. A perfectly clear January sky wrought from the icy cold of her despair.

  #

  She went in alone. That was how it was done. Her aunt embraced her, holding her close and rubbing her back. Her mother-in-law's chin trembled and tears dripped off the end of her nose, but she gave the baby to her and whispered, "I'm proud of you." Edda wanted to scream. The baby stirred with a funny, chuffing grunt. She took him in her arms and looked at him once more in the sunlight, folding the blanket back so she could see his whole face.

  The company man gave her a small lamp. He handed the envelope of cash to her aunt. "Once you get inside, you'll be fine." He spoke with a city accent, his words clipped and graceful. He talked to her like she was simple. She said nothing, and his face turned red as she looked at him and thought, you don't know anything about us.

  As she reached the entrance, a voice called out behind her, strangled with grief. "Tell my girl I love her!" She shuddered and kept walking, holding onto her small boy. She stretched out an arm to touch the wall to steady herself as she stepped over the steel tracks and wooden ties, feeling her feet sinking into loose stone. Sunlight glinted on a streak of quartz in the wall. The ground began to slope downwards, and it grew darker as she walked. She couldn't see more than a few metres ahead, and she felt her heart quicken. She held her baby close, the lamp swinging from the crook of her arm.

  The darkness closed around her as she walked on. It was warmer inside the mine. Water dripped. She passed narrow entrances to other shafts, the canvas curtains rustling as her hand trailed across them. The air grew thick and heavy. She stopped, her breath rattling in her chest. She waited.

  She hugged the baby close. She was deep inside the hill now, deep down. She could feel the pressure of the earth above her. It pressed down on her. It was hard to breathe. Sweat trickled down the small of her back. She wanted to turn and run out, to take her boy and race home to Piter. They could leave. They could. They could leave and go somewhere far away, where he wouldn't go down into the shafts and she could raise her boy in the sunshine. She whimpered. And then Edda wept, too afraid to go any further, unable to go back. The light from the lamp was feeble. The mine was blacker than black. As black of coal.

  She heard a soft crackle. Rock grated. A shiver of stones fell from the ceiling. They pattered down around her, striking her head and shoulders, and she bent herself over her baby to shield him. When it stopped, she raised her head and her breath caught in her throat. Her hands tightened on the baby, convulsively.

  Something scuffled in the rock nearby, but she couldn't see what it was. She heard a faint humming, a thrum that ran through the rock and came up through her heels. It was one voice. Then another joined it, the wordless song swelling around her, coming close. Something touched her, and she jerked herself away, gasping in terror. Another touch, a feeling of a small, rough hand on hers, another on her back, something touching her shoulder. They were coming to her. There were small hands on her back, pushing her forwards. She took a staggering step, then another, letting them lead her.

  This was the way it had to be.

  This was what she had to do.

  She could finally see the small shapes around her. The children were long limbed, lithe and slender. Their skin was scale and rock, and dust shivered from them as they ran towards her. They scampered gracefully on their arms and legs in the dusty gravel, their mouths open as they sang. Heads turned to her, squinting with black eyes at the light from her lamp. Quartz teeth flashed as they smiled. They danced in a circle around her, plucking at her clothes. One stood on its legs—she could not tell if it was a boy or a girl—and touched her hair. It laid a cool hand on her face, pressed a finger to her cheek. "Your mother says she loves you," Edda said. Her voice echoed. The child threw its arms around her, laid its head briefly on her shoulder, and then backed away. "Your mothers love you," she told the children. "All of you. They miss you and they love you." They crept closer, heads turning side to side as she spoke.

  Edda sat down carefully on the floor, up against the wall, and stretched her legs out, cradling her son in her arms. She told them about their mothers, about the sunshine and the blue sky. She talked until her throat was dry and hoarse. The baby woke and began to cry, a thin wail that bounced off the walls, and the children gathered around her to look at him, their heads pressed together.

  She looked past them, down the shaft, and she could see something coming slowly out of the walls. It moved ponderously. It had the same shape as the others, but the legs were broader, the shoulders wider. One of the children ran towards it, and the creature stretched an arm to it and took the child's hand.

  Edda undid her jacket, lifted her shirt and nursed her son. One of the children lay on the ground beside her, its head in her lap. She hesitated, and then she gently stroked its cool shoulders. The child turned its head, sighing, and patted her leg as it snuggled closer. It sang to her. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, licked her lips. The rock wall embraced her, shifting to support her back. The song ran through the walls and into her. The old creature shuffled towards them, and Edda saw how it touched the children as it passed: a loving caress for each one. She saw how they leaned into it, heard the song grow happier.

  "We all love you," she said to them. She looked at her son. His eyes were open. "Don't forget me," she told him.

  When she walked out into the sunshine, she was empty and numb. Somebody took her by the shoulders to lead her away, down the hill and home again. She'd left the blankets behind, all except the flannel that had been wrapped around his small body. Edda held that in her hands, and from time to time, she lifted it to her face and inhaled the sweet, dusty smell of her boy.

  THE TOWN THE FOREST ATE

  Haralambi Markov

  If you walk through the forests of Bulgaria in the evening, and you hear singing, or see a beautiful woman with long blonde hair, stay away! You've encountered a Samodiva, a woodland nymph
who spends spring through fall in the Bulgarian woods. They wear long, flowing gowns, often decorated with feathers. Sometimes they have wings. They dance through the night and enchant the unwary traveller with their beauty and power.

  During the winter, the Samodivas live in the fabled village of Zmajkovo, but during the rest of the year they live in caves, hollow trees, and abandoned sheds, near sources of water. At night, they dance, and mortals who stumble upon their dance will be tempted to join in until the die of exhaustion.

  Samodivas are usually harmful to people, either intentionally or accidentally. Men who see them fall instantly in love with them and will follow them through the woods while the Samodivas sap their life energy away. Women who see the beautiful Samodivas often kill themselves in envy. In some versions of these stories, anyone who sees a Samodiva is blinded. The Samodivas love fire, and cause drought, fires, and fevers. They steal babies and cripple people who fall asleep in the forest. Some legends say that Samodivas ride giant deer using snakes for bridles. When angry, the Samodiva turns into a giant bird that throws fire. It is not difficult to anger a Samodiva.

  Samodiva are dangerous, but knowledgeable in the ways of herbs and cures for illness. Their hair has great power, so one can defeat a Samodiva by damaging her hair. Sometimes a Samodiva will give a lock of hair to a mortal lover to enhance their strength. They don't share their knowledge of magical herbs readily, but some brave souls have managed to cure their sick loved ones by eavesdropping on Samodivas until they mentioned the needed cure. In some legends, they comfort the dying and in others they are an instrument of death. They are the dangerous beauty of the unknowable forest.

  ***

  “The forest called to him! The forest called to him!” Lublyana repeats it over and over, her fingers spread, palms slapping the concrete pavement where the town ends and the wild wood begins.

  The other elders pat her up and down in a clumsy attempt to soothe her, but then her cries become theirs, and Valtchan and Matei must wrestle the five person pile-up apart. Control over our parents wanes faster than we can adapt, their minds are consumed by whatever ailment turns their skin to bark and their limbs to sprouts.

  In a soft choir, Mara, Anna and Vanga hush the mewling husks of those who once were the care-givers, escorting them towards the meeting hall—the last habitable building. The last bit of land the forest has yet to claim.

  I am the oldest among children who haven’t been children for a long time, and I head over to the gap in the fence of welded rusty car roofs, the fence which is meant to keep disturbing sights hidden from the elders. Within the breach Kucho has broken with his body, moss, wood and grass as tall as a man stare back at me. Lublyana will miss him, when she remembers. Above, where the wind teases the blades, faded cloth breaks the monotony of green, showing where all those who have answered the summons and gone before succumbed to their personal transformations.

  The short branches, as gnarled and twisted as they are, still reveal the lines of human hands outstretched towards the sky. As if drowning; that’s how Mom described them, back when she was up to describing anything.

  The mix of emerald and brown is overwhelming and it’s hard to believe there is a street beneath, with rows of blocky houses—white walls and red shingles, textured stone steps and vegetable gardens squared off with brightly painted ironwork fences. I try to reconcile my memory of Before with the wilderness in front of me. I’m shaken by the black blur that catches my eye.

  The movement is sudden and jerky and it freezes my blood. Goosebumps burst on my skin despite the September high noon. The foliage rustles and sways against the weight of something big, which shuffles, undecided as to whether it wants to pounce or not. I think back on some of the old tales: of the bear, the wolf and the boar. Our guards that keep us in, isolate us, and maul any who try to escape the boundaries that have been set for us. Those are the stories the first ones to be touched by the madness told, as they screamed in the night about dark spirits, vengeful beasts, the things that came to exact a toll on us. It’s been a long time since anyone has bothered to ask why we are kept prisoners, and with each passing year I wonder: Does it matter?

  I stand still and so does the grass. As long as I don’t try to cross the fence, the border between our worlds, don’t try to make it to the old road that once connected us to the rest of the world, the beasts won’t attack, or so legends have it.

  “Lazar…” Valtchan calls from the once-elaborate entry of the hall. “Food’s on the table!”

  I leave the overgrown field behind, pull my mind away from the beast I may or may not have seen, and set it on how to mend the fence.

  Not that it matters: the forest always does as it pleases.

  #

  We hold hands at sunset, lying alone atop the hall’s roof—a moment of peace before the moaning and crying comes from the elders locked in the cellar; before night descends and their raving madness with it.

  The wind chases away any warmth the sun left on our skin—a sure sign autumn stalks close by with long fingers and a sharp bite. If we live until winter, it’s going to be the harshest yet, even with old Kucho dead. I push the thought away. Instead, I twirl the wedding band on Valtchan’s left hand.

  Between the callouses of his ring finger, the worn gold feels warm and smooth, feels like it belongs there. The bareness of my own fingers reminds me that, in his eyes, I don’t belong with him. I don’t like it. It shows.

  “You’re still mad about the wedding.” It’s not even a question. He knows me too well. We all know each other too well. Therein lies the problem.

  Valtchan squeezes my hand and pulls me in his embrace, a none-too-subtle move to pacify me. The dust and grit that serves as our bed groans and rumbles as we rearrange bodies so I can rest my head against his chest. His wiry beard scratches my forehead. Having these conversations with our eyes wandering over the trees and the shapes they draw in the skyline, is a habit. If we don’t look at each other, it’s easier, allowing us to communicate without raising our voices. If our emotions get out of hand, the elders latch onto them, fidgeting and causing more of a ruckus than usual.

  Our days are hard enough as it is: subduing family and friends when so much work waits grinds down even the strongest among us. Daily routines tiptoe around those incapable of any labour, which is nearly everyone except the children. At least those among us younglings who survived when the forest came for us.

  “I don’t even see why you’d agree to it. It’s pointless.” I turn away from the greenery when I think I see shapes moving inside the trees’ crowns, and focus on Valtchan’s rising chest. He’s grown thinner beneath the worn checkered shirts. This summer yielded the sickliest fruit and vegetables. Half the stock animals rot standing up. I wonder how long it will take for his ribs to jut out so I can play them like the ivories on the school piano, the one the elders chopped up for kindling when their madness first set in. How long before he, too, is called?

  “It’s all we have left. Our traditions.”

  “That’s bullshit.” I’m careful with my temper, but I still spit the words like locusts fighting for release. “We don’t even have a priest. Who are you doing this for? Our parents are dying, Valtchan. Mara finds earthworms in their shit. Fucking earthworms. They’re dead already. So who are you doing this for?”

  I hear his heart beat faster as he’s working himself up to tear a secret from his lungs.

  “I’m doing this for myself, I guess. I just wanted to be married. To capture something from the time before all this happened. Like how Mom and Dad were. I wanted to have that… to feel closer to them. But it didn’t work. This ring.” The arm he embraces me with is the one with the band and he makes a show of pulling it off. “It’s not real. It changes nothing.”

  With a flick of his wrist, the gold blinks in the dying sun as it flips in the air and disappears over the roof’s edge.

  Then why aren’t I wearing it? I wish you’d married me. Even a
fake wedding would be better than this stolen thing.

  I want to say the words, but I know better. I pretend to be content with the answer all the while imagining how pissed Ognyana is going to be when she learns her husband lost the ring a day after the wedding. A sudden gust of wind causes me to shiver and I wrap myself in the hooded cape mother knitted for me years ago. It still smells of wild flowers.

  As the sun sinks beneath the horizon, moans from the cellar float upwards.

  #

  The unhappy noises cease only when dawn breaks. This door used to terrify me as a child, those first times our parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts insisted on being locked up. Now the key twists almost as an afterthought—a ritual I don’t even remember doing anymore. The cracked yellow paint on the walls and the rotting sweet smell are so much a part of me that I don’t need to be fully awake to prepare them for the new day.

  I can pretend that this—seeing them squatting naked and bleeding something other than blood—is just a lingering nightmare. I can confuse the patches of bark for mere bruises and the twigs jutting from their backs as nothing more than shadows.

  But my fingers cannot be deceived when I pass a wet cloth over their bodies—17 corpses-in-waiting, including the one of my mother, who’s not remembered me in several years. Dip the rag in the red plastic bucket filled with well water; scrape up their filth then rinse it off; the wipe-down that leaves my palms lacerated. Dressing them reminds me how alien their bodies have become; then the encouragement that everything is going to be all right, which is meant more for me than them (for mornings in here crush me so badly that I want nothing more than for the forest to call me so I can let it all go and drown in grass and bark and feel nothing ever again).

  Drowning for eternity; surely it must feel better than this.

  Easier.

  Back outside…