“We have the murderer!” the crier shouted. “We know his name and ‘tis not unfamiliar to you all.”
And Lilith’s lover was led into the square.
She caught her breath, her fingers tightening over the card. Sebastian, so tall and straight, so handsome, his chestnut hair in disarray, his wondrous eyes flashing in displeasure. Lilith’s heart thundered, her gaze greedily devoured the sight of him.
Three whole days she had endured without his beguiling touch, the echo of his laughter, the warm glint in his eye.
This was why he had not returned! Relief made Lilith’s knees weaken. She had not granted her maidenhead in vain. She cast a triumphant glance to her uncle, but that man did not even look her way.
Lilith noted that Sebastian’s fine linen shirt was soiled, as he would never have permitted, had he been given the choice. His hands were bound behind his back, yet he managed to give a dignity to his role. There was a confident swagger to his step.
“This man” - roared the crier - “this man is infected with the witchery of the Egyptians! He killed his own neighbor in a bloodthirsty rage, a rage unlike anything ever witnessed in him before. The man is enchanted! These wandering sorcerers have cast demons into his soul, they have made him other than what he is!”
It was only then that Lilith fully understood the import of the crier’s words. Her eyes widened in shock.
“No!” Lilith called in her dismay. This must be a cruel jest! She would vouch for her love. “No, Sebastian is innocent!”
“Hush!” elderly Dritta hissed in Lilith’s ears, but Lilith ignored her council.
Sebastian’s head snapped up, his gaze sought the source of Lilith’s voice, Lilith’s heart leapt when he smiled. She waved madly, oblivious to the agitated crowd. He did love her, after all! He had not come because he could not come.
And surely nothing could come between them now!
“Sebastian, Sebastian, I am here!” The gypsies instinctively stepped back into protective shadows and closed ranks around Lilith.
“Lilith!” he roared and struggled against his bonds for the first time.
“You see the truth of it,” the crier declared, his voice filled with disgust. “He is tainted by vagabonds.”
“We are not vagabonds!” Lilith cried angrily, but Dritta drove an elbow into her ribs.
The councilman spared Sebastian a glance and raised his voice over the din. “The priest demands you be burned,” he declared with a cold determination that chilled Lilith’s blood. “But you are Giorgio’s son.” There was a heavy pause and it seemed everyone in the square held his or her breath.
Lilith bit her lip and clenched her fingers. They would release him. Surely they would set Sebastian free.
He was innocent. He had to be!
The crier slanted a heavy look at the younger man, his low voice carrying over the expectant crowd. “So, in deference to your father, we choose to hang you.”
“No!” Lilith fought to be free of the gypsies encircling her, struggled to go to her beloved’s side. “This is wrong! It is unfair! Sebastian is innocent!” Lilith managed to say no more in defense of her lover, for Dritta clamped an iron hand across her mouth.
“Fool!” the older woman muttered. “They will see you dead this very night!” Two cousins caught Lilith’s arms from the back and held her powerless despite her struggles.
And as Lilith watched, unable to intervene, the hangman fitted the noose around Sebastian’s neck.
Lilith’s mouth went dry. They could not do it. She fought, she bit, but she was sorely outnumbered. Desperate tears stung her eyes, but there was nothing she could do.
The crier cleared his throat and glared pointedly to the Rom. “The burning,” he declared ominously, “We will save for the gypsy harlot. We shall burn the puttana who bewitched and tainted one of our finest sons.” The crowd hissed; the gypsies stiffened.
Sebastian had not been bewitched! They were in love!
“Lilith!” Sebastian bellowed as twisted against the heavy rope that bound his hands. “I promised I would return to you and I will, I will! I swear it to you.”
Lilith bit Dritta’s hand. “Sebastian!” she managed to cry. “I love you!”
Any answering declaration had no chance to leave Sebastian’s lips. The hangman tightened the noose and kicked away the stool beneath the younger man’s feet. Sebastian writhed as he dangled. Lilith could not bear to watch; she could not bear to turn away. Every eye was riveted on his struggle, but not a soul stepped forward to aid him. Lilith changed his name in her mind, her tears falling on her cheeks.
“No!” Lilith screamed into Dritta’s hand. The kumpania beset her again and she fought against them. They could save him, if they stepped forward together. She struggled and tried to make herself understood, but she was overwhelmed.
And suddenly, Sebastian was still.
No.
The townspeople turned as one, a thirst for vengeance bright in their eyes. A bevy of burning torches was lit, one after the other in rapid succession. The square was suddenly flooded with blinking orange light. The firelight flickered off the malice in the peasants’ expressions and Lilith’s eyes widened in sudden understanding of her own peril.
They meant to see that burning done this very night.
The burning of her.
When her family released her, Lilith needed no urging to run as fast as her feet could carry her. The Rom retreated like the wind in the trees, even as the infuriated crowd lent chase.
Lilith and her kumpania fled through the cobbled streets, racing toward the hills they knew so well, running for the forest that had sheltered them all these years.
They ran to the growing volume of shouts behind them. They ran with their hearts pounding like thunder. They ran aching with betrayal and fear. They ran until they could no longer breathe. They caught old Dritta beneath the elbows when she stumbled; they swept children on to their shoulders.
And they ran for their lives.
*
It was only when the town that had once welcomed them was a small orange glow in the distance, only when the villagers’ vengeful cries had faded to nothing, that they halted, panting beneath the protective shadows of the trees. Every gaze was drawn back to that angry village; every ear strained for sound of pursuit.
None came.
For now.
Lilith found Dritta by her side once more, and she braced herself for the older woman’s lecture. But Dritta, with eerie conviction, plucked the hidden tarot card from beneath Lilith’s shawl.
“Fool,” she snorted. Lilith knew she did not refer to the card itself. Dritta’s lip curled in disdain, the touch of moonlight on her features making her look older than she was. “You knew better.”
“It was just a card!” Lilith protested.
Dritta’s eyes flashed, and her fingers curled around the edge of the card. “You have the Gift. You can see beyond others. Your mother’s talent courses through your veins,” she hissed. “How dare you disregard the knowledge entrusted to you?”
“I did not know…” Lilith blinked back her tears, still fighting to understand what had just happened.
Sebastian was dead.
Lost to her for all time.
The world was devoid of promise. Of hope. The most magickal summer of her life was over, and there would never be another.
Sebastian, her lover true, dangled at the end of a hangman’s noose. Lilith wanted only to hide away and weep for what she had lost, not answer Dritta’s questions.
But Dritta spat in the grass. “You knew; you had to know that the Fool brings change and choice, transformation and journey. I taught you as much.”
Lilith took a shaking breath, knowing that no one would respect her showing the weakness of tears. “Sebastian drew the card,” she said. “And clearly, Sebastian will journey no longer.”
“No?” Dritta chuckled to herself, her response making Lilith look deeply into the older woman’s eyes. She found an une
xpected conviction there, as well as a twinkle of mischief. “Maybe not in the way that you will.”
“What do you mean?”
“Use the Gift you have been granted, child.” Dritta’s tone was more gentle. “She arched a brow. “Have you never truly listened to the tales we share? Nor attended to the cards you read so well? You read for him. You answered his query about love with your own heart hanging as full as a pomegranate, ready to be plucked and peeled.”
Lilith blushed.
“I saw you watch him, child. I saw your eyes when he came to you for his future. I saw the look that passed between you two when he entered our camp. I knew what would happen – and you would have known, too, had you cared to look.” Dritta shook her head and Lilith knew she had no secrets from this woman’s perceptive gaze.
Lilith looked away.
Dritta turned the card between them, the painting upon it catching the moon’s silver light. Her tone turned thoughtful. “This card, this card of his love, is your card as well, is it not? Are you this Sebastian’s love?”
Lilith’s tears welled. She bit her lip, unable to keep from looking back to the distant glow of the village. Her heart ached with the knowledge that she’d never hear Sebastian’s laugh again. “You know that I was,” she whispered.
“And you think love is something that dies with the flesh?” Dritta snorted, not waiting for an answer. She gripped Lilith’s shoulder suddenly, her fingers digging into Lilith’s skin. The younger woman didn’t dare to move. “You are his love, for better or for worse.” He has sworn to return to you, and a pledge made on the gallows is not readily evaded.”
Lilith frowned. “But…how?”
Dritta chuckled. “How indeed?” She handed the card back to Lilith with the courtly air that earned her much silver from the gadje, a mysterious smile on her lips. Lilith looked down at the card, willing it to give her an answer.
The Fool spoke of travels, of a journey beyond your current place, a new beginning, a shucking of an old skin.
A beginning – like a new life.
Lilith’s eyes widened in sudden understanding, and she looked to Dritta with astonishment. “Sebastian will return as a babe!”
Dritta’s smile softened. “As do we all. Remember?” Lilith nodded, staring down at the card in wonder, and Dritta tapped her shoulder. “And you, you had best be ready, child.”
Lilith frowned. But if Sebastian was reborn as a child, even this very day, she would be old by the time he grew to a man again. And if it was not this day…Lilith could not bear the thought.
She could not die before Sebastian returned!
Lilith’s hand rose to her lips, an ancient rumor echoing in her thoughts. Could it be true? Dritta would know. “It is whispered that there is a way to immortality.”
Dritta nodded, her eyes bright. “I do not know the secret, child, or on your mother’s memory I would share it with you.” She leaned closer, her brow nearly touching Lilith’s own. “But there are others, others who know different secrets than we do. With your Gift, you can find them, learn what they know, prepare yourself.”
Lilith was shocked. “But I cannot leave the kumpania!”
Dritta sighed, a sad sound. “You cannot stay, child.”
Lilith noticed only now that the rest of her Rom family lingered in the shadows behind Dritta, watchful, silent as birds. There was a new wariness in their gazes, and their expressions reminded her of how they watched the gadje. Her uncle was no longer alone in that.
She understood that they had sheltered her in defiance of the gadje. And in so doing, they had risked their lives. Any affection Lilith had known here, any old obligation to her mother, was gone. The only debt owing was her own. She had been judged.
She was mahrime. Polluted. Unclean. She had been intimate with a man not of her own kind, not of the true blood, not tacho rat. She was tainted.
Love was nothing compared to that.
And through no fault of his own, Sebastian left her doubly shamed – due to his death, he had not rendered the bride price to Lilith’s kumpania for taking her maidenhead.
It did not matter that Lilith had surrendered it willingly. She stood and surveyed the others, recognizing that her choice had cost her the only family she had ever known.
It was a high price to pay for love, but Lilith had no regrets. She could never have denied the passionate touch of the man she loved. If nothing else, she had those golden moments to treasure until – if? – she and Sebastian found each other once more.
“You must leave,” Dritta said, her tone resolute. “You are of us no longer.”
Lilith lifted her chin. Even knowing this was the way things had always been done did not take the sting from the wound. Her own family denied her. The cast her out to the four winds and left her open to any fate. Their disregard made her deeply angry.
But she could deny them in return.
Knowing how they loved a tale, she would give them no story of her stormy departure to recount in the years ahead. She would leave silently.
And she would continue to deny them, as they denied her, for every day and night that remained of her life.
She would never forget this rejection. For this one deed, they would forget everything that had been between them, all the things she had done for them, all the bonds that bound them together. Lilith did not care if it was the Way; it would be her way no longer.
“You are right,” she told Dritta proudly. “I will leave the kumpania. From this moment, I am not Rom.”
“You will always be Rom.”
“No. I choose to be Rom no longer.”
Dritta shook her head. “It is in your blood, child. Who you are will follow you.”
“I will not let it.” Lilith stared at the others for a long moment, noting the distrust in those eyes. “Do not fear my taint, you who have been my brothers’ and sisters. I will leave this very night.”
If she’s hoped for an argument, Lilith did not get one. Indeed, their relief was tangible.
So be it.
Lilith turned away, only the sight of a rare tear on Dritta’s cheek making her pause.
Dritta reached to touch Lilith’s cheek, then kissed her gently. “Bahtalo drom, child,” she whispered, so softly that none of the others could hear her words.
Lucky road. There would be no second chances.
It was farewell forever.
Lilith plucked the Fool card from Dritta’s hand, then turned away, her heart aching. She did not know where she would go, where she would find shelter, what dangers would confront her, whether she even could discover the secret of immortality.
But Lilith would cut a new path. She would make a new life and find a haven for herself in some corner of the world. She would become something other than what she had been; she would shed the identity that had cost her everything, and shed it like a second skin. She would wait for the reappearance of her true love.
That would make every sacrifice worthwhile.
She did not miss the fact that Sebastian was not the only one to step toward a new horizon on this night of nights.
*
1
The Magician
Toronto – August 1999
It was hotter than Hades in the city, the kind of sticky steamy summer day that most people consider more characteristic of New Orleans than the great white north. The humidity was oppressive and tempers were wearing thin on that Saturday afternoon.
And Mitch Davison had the misfortune to be moving.
“I wanna go swimming!” three-year-old Jen wailed from the back seat of the much-abused Honda wagon. She kicked her feet against her car seat impatiently and Mitch caught a glimpse of her trembling lower lip in the rearview mirror. The treasured toys she had refused to entrust to the professional movers filled most of the back seat of the car – at least what was available after the family wolfhound staked his turf.
“I’m hot,” her brother Jason agreed.
Both children looked expecta
ntly to their father, as though he could solve everything.
Mitch tried. He really did.
“Well, you’re just going to have to wait a little bit longer,” he said with as much cheerfulness as he could manage. “What kind of Kool-Aid should we make first?”
The dog nudged Mitch in the back of the neck with his wet nose, demanding an open window. Mitch rolled down his window and got a great furry head beside his ear as a bonus. Colley panted like a blast furnace on his shoulder.
“Cherry! And I wanna swim now!” Jen cried, as though volume could make it so.”
The combination of a restless night and an unsettled day was affecting the toddler’s usual sunny disposition. It was a tough day for the kids, Mitch knew, but he wasn’t having a lot of fun himself. The traffic was brutal, the air conditioning had given out in the car and the sweat was running down his back like a river. Not for the first time, he knew why parents usually came in teams.
Not that Janice would have done any better with this day than Jen was doing. That thought did just about nothing to improve Mitch’s mood.
Maybe, maybe, Andrea was already at the house. Mitch could really use his stepmother’s help this weekend.
Which pretty much guaranteed she had forgotten the whole thing and gone to the Caymans instead. The last trait Mitch would attribute to Andrea was reliability.
Charm she had by the bucket, though.
“I’m working on it, Jen,” he said. “Just hang with me. How about a song for our new house?”
Jason started ‘Old Macdonald’ and much to Mitch’s relief, Jen went for the diversion. They got through the intersection on the next green light, and entered a miraculous stretch of unjammed road. Within moments, Mitch was turning into the common driveway that ran behind the houses on their new street. Ramshackle garages were interspersed with new ones. Gangly tomato plants and grapevines dangled over fences with such abandon that he thought they might take over the lane, given half a chance.
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