Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

Back outside it still feels as if I’m in the cellar. Still buried beneath the burden of earth.

  The weight nests in me as I tend to the chickens and gather eggs for breakfast. It distracts me from noticing how none of the poultry move or how heavy the eggs feel as I pick them up. I fail to see the other birds—swallows and owls, rollers and doves, cuckoos and sparrows, tits and larks—perched on every high point around the pen. Until, that is, they sing with human voices.

  “These men: they slew the maiden.

  The fair maiden that they slew,

  Hair of silver did she have.

  Hair of silver and the kindest heart.

  The heart, child, they ate.

  The skin, child, they kept.

  Her flesh, they tossed aside.

  Her clothes, child, they stole.

  From her bones, a crib they made.

  From her hair, a cape.”

  They sing with purpose and they sing with accusation I’m meant to understand. As each verse rings, the eggs in my hand and basket crack and burst, gurgling vile fluid from the fractures. I turn side to side to find a break in the circle, but I’m surrounded and the birds close in, hopping from their perches to the ground. A giant owl breaks off from the choir with a screech and flies at me.

  Then all goes black.

  #

  I work the scythe through the grass, cutting a corridor into the overgrowth up North to where the oldest trees stand and the sedge has no sunlight to grow as tall; this is the only way we’re allowed to go. Behind me, Ognyana tills the soil with a hoe to stall the roots from shooting up and swallowing the path. Each excursion lasts three to four hours out of precaution. No one is to go alone in the forest—such is the cardinal rule of survival. The second is to protect the hunter; die for them if need be. That’s the sole reason I’m with Ognyana, our only living hunter.

  “Valtchan could have come, you know.” Ognyana starts once we’re at the mouth of the woodland. We stick our tools into the ground so they form an X to mark our position. “Or are you afraid I might really take him from you?”

  At that we both laugh. As if anyone can make Valtchan do anything other than what he wants.

  “It’s been two days since I fainted. I can’t stay in bed anymore. I feel useless.” I also don’t want to go anywhere near the chicken coop. How did no one see the birds? Hear them? In my life I’ve never heard anything louder. Louder than the church bells when they still rang, louder than the screams of the first to try to escape the town when things got bad. No one mentioned them, just like no one mentions my face. Are the bird scratches I see there not real? They sting like they’re real.

  Is this how the sickness starts? I’m 28 now. I could be the next to be called. Ognyana doesn’t look at me, so I check my skin for any deformities, and sigh in relief when I find nothing.

  “You can’t do everything around here.”

  “Wasn’t aware there’s a quota on how much I’m allowed to do.”

  “What I’m saying is, leave some of the work for us. You’ve earned the right to take it easy for a few days at least.”

  But that’s not what I want. To be ignored like I’m one of the sick. Out of sight, out of mind. What I want is for someone to ask me what happened, why I fainted, how I got my face cut in so many places. Even Valtchan pretends nothing is out of the ordinary; as if he doesn’t feel the lacerations when he kisses me. Because I do and it hurts, more in my heart than my skin does.

  The path winds deeper into the forest, punctuated by trunks splashed with orange paint to mark the way to the clearing where the most rabbits come. Ognyana leads, knife in her right hand and a makeshift spear, part ironwork and part window frame, in the left. In the sunlight, her hair reminds me of dark tea. Her gait reminds me of Death.

  I’m tired of pretending, of not asking, not knowing.

  “Do you think they’re still here?” I ask.

  “Who?” she responds as she places one careful foot in front of the other.

  “The monsters.”

  She pauses for a split second—this rattles her—then resumes her prowl.

  “I don’t know. The monsters were a long time ago, Lazar. Maybe. Why do you ask?”

  “I think I saw something the day Kucho died…” I’m not sure I can bring up the birds.

  “Now’s not the time,” she interrupts, and points at the blood splatter that competes with the garish paint on the trees. It grows heavier as we reach the clearing.

  “God.” It’s the only thing Ognyana manages.

  Before us lies the biggest bear we’ve ever seen. It’s been gutted and the glade floor looks as though it holds all the red in the world. We slosh through the blood, chunks of meat, and torn strips of fur, to the heaving body. The bear’s eyes spin like bees caught in a glass. A mouth as wide and dark as a well gapes at us, adorned with teeth that could plough the earth.

  “How is it alive?” Ognyana nears the bulk of angry shredded flesh and prods the beast with the spear’s tip. The jaw snaps, making her jump away. Its eyes focus on us.

  “Humans.” Loud enough to be heard, hard enough to be an insult.

  “It speaks. It speaks!” Ognyana screams, but is silenced by the bear’s roars, louder than any mountain storm.

  “Humans.” It groans. “Monsters. I wanted to watch you starve into nothing before I died. At least I die knowing you will pay for your sins.”

  “Monsters? We did nothing! You’re the monster!” Ognyana yells and sinks her spear in its side. It seems the bear is beyond pain for it barely reacts.

  “Yet you’re the one tormenting a dying creature. You’ll pay for what you did to her, the forest’s daughter. The madness is doing fine work, and it’s slow, but you’ll die from something else. Soon at that. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the surprise. It’s less than you deserve, murderers. I feel blessed to have delivered news of your punishment.”

  “But what did we do?” I ask, but the bear says no more and its eyes roll back slowly in its head.

  #

  I pace the room that belongs to my mother and me, from one wall to the other. I drag air into my lungs as if there’s not enough in the whole world. Death isn’t coming; it’s here.

  The bear said so, the bear promised; how can you question the veracity of a creature that should not exist? Then the tales are true. The beasts are still are out there and want to keep us in, but they’re not the only ones. There’s something else, even worse, dangerous to even that bear, that wants us dead now. What else could the bear’s words mean?

  Weapons and traps and walls.

  That’s all Ognyana talks about on the trail home, the original point of our expedition long forgotten. But how do you kill something that butchers a monster?

  You can’t. You don’t. You die.

  Death has hung over us, close and closing in, for so long. We’ve seen it in the dwindling animals, rotting fields, and shrinking well. But this, this not knowing when the end will come. How it’ll come.

  Each day is like coming to terms with your mortality over and again and I don’t think I can face it one more time.

  I stop in the middle of the room and pull the cape around me; it’s all softness and flowers.

  That’s when I hear Mother singing in the hallway and lose my grip on the fabric. I stare at the entrance, waiting.

  “From her bones, a crib they made.

  From her hair, a cape.”

  Her voice soars high, each syllable unspooling in a ribbon of sound, undulating one into the next. She enters the room and I see certainty and purpose in the way she moves as she takes place in her favorite armchair, the one that belonged to Father, the one that now resembles a heap of trash. Her melody winds down to a gentle hum, then nothing.

  This feels like the one chance I have to know. Be the first one to ask the questions and learn what happened to us. I wrestle with myself, the fear of knowing sewing my lips shut, but before the silence stretches furthe
r I approach her with my practiced, even voice. I don’t stare directly, but observe her face from the corner of my eye.

  “Mom, what are you singing?”

  “Nothing.” She stutters and keeps looking as far away from me. “No one’s singing here.”

  I can’t let this slide. Not this time. The need for an answer burns through me, so I drop to my knees and grab her shoulders. She shrieks and pulls back into the chair, but there is nowhere to go.

  “Don’t lie to me, Mom.” I coo to calm her, but I make the edge in my voice known. “Don’t lie, Mommy. I will know and if you lie, I will bring you through the hole in the fence. We’ll go down the road out of this town. You know what happens to those who escape, don’t you?”

  “No, no, no, nononono” she moans and fights. Her pinches and kicks do nothing to dissuade me. “No one is singing. I am not singing.” I squeeze harder and lean over until I hover over her ear, the one that’s still good.

  “I’ll bring you to Dad, Mom. I know which tree he is. I wonder… Is he alive? Can he speak? What will he tell me?”

  She stops her struggle and just breathes, defeated. For the first time in years, she meets my gaze and looks me directly in the eye when she replies.

  “I’m singing of our sins, my son.” Her serenity scares me more than her words. Her words mark her liberation, but I feel they open the doors of torment for myself.

  “What sins, Mom?’

  “Ah, my boy, all the things we did wrong, all the things that rain down on your heads now.”

  “What did we—you—do??” My voice shakes, but I stare straight at her, looking for the madness. “Does this have anything to do with the forest?”

  “With everything.” She smiles, sadly. “We should have told you long ago, but oh the shame closed our mouths. Fear that our children would hate us for this secret.” She shakes her head and fidgets in her seat.

  She is more bark than skin. One eye milky all over, hair tangled in white streaks and green leaves. Yet, she looks more human now than she ever has.

  “Your father killed her deer. Biggest deer anyone in town has ever seen, big enough to feed us for a month or more if we were careful. It took ten men to drag its body back. That’s what started everything.” She stops there. I’m scared she’s going to revert back to her maddened state, so I press on.

  “What does the deer have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, the deer is the most important thing of all! It belonged to her, the samodiva.” She smiles again, puts her teeth into it. “Back then no one really believed in those old folk stories anymore. Not even here where these spirits make their homes. But when the samodiva started kidnapping the children and blinding the oldest folk in revenge for her beast, we had to believe.”

  She draws a sharp breath and tears fill her eyes.

  “We had to kill her. The police laughed at us. The journalists laughed at us. Everyone laughed at us and we had no way to protect ourselves. So, our men hunted her, killed her. Each took a bone as much for good luck, as to try to confuse the spirits to what they’d done, and built it into the cribs for their children. As we all did, but your father did more. He kept not only her bone, but took her clothes, skin and hair. The hair your grandmother and I wove into the cape you’re wearing.”

  Repulsion fills me and I tear the garment from my shoulders. The fabric doesn’t rip, just smoothly drips to the ground.

  “What about the skin and clothes, Mom?”

  “In the bottom of that trunk right there,” she says and points at the dower-chest next to my bed. “I should have thrown them out. Oh, child. My poor, poor child. Oh what I did to you. Oh…” Her voice melts into mewling and she begins to pat herself all over. The brief period of sanity is done.

  But I’ve stopped listening, concentrating on the brown dower-chest alone.

  I only know I never want to step inside this room again.

  #

  It’s been four days since meeting the bear and the moans reverberate through the walls as they do any other night. Tonight Valtchan and I contribute to the noise, though our groans hold no more hope than those from the cellar. Between me and Ognyana, he’s exhausted and as soon as I kiss him and roll over to catch my breath, his snores add a new note to the evening chorus.

  Sleep never comes though, not for me. Not since I learned of the samodiva, her skin and hair. The thought of it stretches through my mind until it’s the only canvas I can paint my thoughts on.

  I run my fingers through Valtchan’s chest hair and breathe the scent of him, which is even stronger now that he’s sweated through sheets and blankets. I feel his chest rise and seek to lose myself in its rhythm.

  Bring the skin. Bring the clothes. Bring the hair.

  The voice is the sound of wind through leaves, the creak of boughs. The whispers have been in my head every night since my mother’s attack of sanity. First time it I heard it, I thought it was one of the girls. Perhaps Mara, asking for a favor with her soft timbre, but now I fear it’s someone else speaking in my head.

  Bring the skin. Bring the clothes. Bring the hair.

  All I can think of is the skin from the dower-chest, and the cape I have worn all my life, feeling it around my shoulder and face. This is how the madness starts, but every inspection of my body reveals nothing to suggest I have the same illness as everyone else. I’m still flesh, scars and callouses. Yet, I’m compelled by the voice.

  Bring the skin. Bring the clothes. Bring the hair.

  I’m out of Valtchan’s bed and I stand against the wall, soaking in the elders’ moans. Nothing will happen if I stand here and drown the voice out. My room is down the hall on the same floor, right after Ognyana’s. I’m relieved there is one person separating me from the chest with the samodiva’s belongings, but I’m worried.

  Bring them to the forest. Bring me back.

  I don’t recall moving, but I’m in my room, sitting on my haunches. The chest is open and the skin lays in my lap. After all these years, it’s still soft.

  It still bleeds.

  Bring the skin.

  The cape sits wrapped around me against the chill, and I face the opening in the fence we’ve yet to rebuild. The night is dark, but I still see shapes dancing. In one hand I hold the skin folded perfectly. In the other I brandish a knife I don’t remember picking up.

  Bring me back.

  I catch myself following a path that is not a path. I don’t know where I am. Grass surrounds me; its rustling has become one with my thoughts. I want to run, but I can’t.

  Wear me.

  White light pushes against the black of the woods and I see it’s the samodiva’s white dress shirt that glows in the dark, offset by the multicolored sash set across the waist. The light spreads on the ground and the cape catches on this soft luminescence, each fiber standing out. I realize I’m naked and kneeling.

  Be me.

  There’s a finality to the command. I don’t want this to be the end. I don’t want to leave my people behind. I can’t leave Valtchan and Ognyana behind. Yet, I reach for the knife and feel its worn out handle as I palm it.

  Be me.

  I feel the knife’s tip as it slips into my thigh to pry off my skin from my flesh.

  BLACKTHORN

  B. Morris Allen

  The mărțișor (pronounced roughly ‘mart-sea-shore’) is a symbol of spring. In Moldova (between Romania and Ukraine), friends give each other a mărțișor on the first day of March. It’s not a valentine—there’s no romantic element—and the exchange doesn’t have to be bilateral. It’s just a gift to a true friend. The mărțișor can be hand-made (like this one) or purchased. The recipient wears the mărțișor throughout March—pinned to a lapel, perhaps. On the last day of March, you tie each mărțișor you received to the branch of a tree.

  Romania and Bulgaria each have variants of this tradition (in Bulgaria, it’s called a мартеница), and there are dozens of origin stories. The story
on the other side is the one told in the village of Tomai in western Moldova, just by the Romanian border.

  The story of the mărțișor

  There was a time like no time; if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t tell about it. One year, on the first day of March, the beautiful Spring came to the edge of the forest. There, in a clearing under a blackthorn bush, she saw a bright white snowdrop. Naturally kind, Spring decided to help the little flower, and she started to move away the snow and break some of the thorny branches. Winter, seeing this, was angry and called the wind and cold to destroy the flower. The snowdrop immediately froze. Spring tried to warm the flower by covering it with her hands, but she cut her finger on a thorn. A drop of blood spilled from the wound and trickled onto the snowdrop. The warm blood revived the flower, defeating Winter. The colors of the mărțișor symbolize the snowdrop and the blood of Spring.

  ***

  There is a black thorn bush up on the hill above the village, where the slope is too steep to farm, and too bare for deer. The branches of the bush are splintered and thin, its core twisted and rough. The bush crouches in a rocky clearing at the edge of the forest, naked to the wind and sun, its roots clinging to cold stone and the little bit of soil it has gathered. The bush has been cut, burned, buried in filth, but it clings to life, such as it is. The locals call it Winter’s Bush, and revile it for having made Spring bleed.

  #

  It was a long time ago, in the village of Tomai, in Moldova, back when it was Bessarabia, or maybe even before that, when it was no country at all, just a region between the Danube, the Dniester, and the Black Sea. A time when the land didn’t belong to anyone in particular.

  In those days, the seasons were more free than the rigid periods we think of now. Summer wandered the land, a pale thin man with golden hair, and the air was warm and dry wherever he went. When Autumn came in her rich dress of brown or red or orange, the berries ripened, and the trees dropped their bright leaves out of respect. Spring… it was Spring that everyone loved. A plump brown girl dressed in the blue of the sky laced with the thin silver of distant clouds. Wherever she passed, the land shone green with the grass that reached up to cushion her feet. The trees stretched out their leafy hands to brush her hair. Flowers sprang out in all the colors of the rainbow just to light her path with beauty.