by Rosalyn Eves
“She’s with Anna,” Gábor said. “In a cave somewhere in the mountains, held by the praetheria.”
Surprise, joy, relief, and alarm washed through me, tangling in an uneasy mixture. I’d forgotten about the letters Anna wrote Gábor. “Are they all right?”
He looked grave. “As well as can be expected, when they’re held prisoner.”
A second man emerged from the tent, yawning and rubbing at his dark beard. Gábor introduced us, and I relayed my message.
“Advance?” Richard Guyon echoed. “You’d best go rouse the men, Kovács. And have fortification sent around. The men will need it.” He retreated back into the tent.
Gábor sighed. I cast him a sharp look. “Fortification?”
“Liquor—whatever we have most to hand. Guyon is a firm believer in the value of a stiff drink for bringing up courage.”
“Does it work?”
Gábor’s lips quirked with what might have been a smile. “They certainly seem less frightened, if not more agile.”
I smothered a laugh—and then, as memory slammed into me of students drinking in Café Pilvax just prior to our aborted revolution, any urge to laugh died. Some of these men might not see another sunrise. Let them have their drink.
I trailed behind Gábor, watching him set a wave of men rippling out to wake others.
The sun began to rise, the faintest hint of grey in a black sky. A good chunk of the camp still lay dreaming, undisturbed by the growing commotion around them. I thought of Görgey’s admonition to advance as soon as possible.
This was taking too long. In the forested area along the fringes of the camp, I could hear songbirds. Perfect. A few nudges, and a host of songbirds descended upon the camp. They made an ungodly chorus: tweets and chirps and fractured songs. Muffled—and not so muffled—swearing was soon added to the mix. The camp was stirring now, fully awake. I sent the songbirds away with a mental thank-you.
I might have saved myself the effort: an hour later, the camp still had not budged. Soldiers were grooming horses, mending uniforms, and taking down tents. But Guyon had not reemerged to take charge, to order the men to line up and begin marching. What was the man doing—preparing for a dance with a debutante at a ball?
The sun was up now, the sky a pale blue with a golden horizon.
“Shouldn’t we be moving already?” I asked Gábor.
He shrugged. “Guyon is a good man, but he will not be rushed.”
I thought of Dembiński and Görgey, facing the Austrians at dawn. Would an hour make a difference? Perhaps two? How long did it take for the tide of a battle to turn? Despite a lifetime of being fed heroic battle stories, my ignorance was daunting. And the slowness was like an itch I could not reach: so much hung on this war, and yet Colonel Guyon could not be bothered to drive his men in response to an urgent summons; Generals Görgey and Dembiński squabbled with one another and with Kossuth; everywhere was inefficiency and disorder. How were we supposed to defeat the Austrians, much less the praetheria in turn?
At last Guyon emerged, his hair neatly combed and his beard newly trimmed, and the troops began to gather: infantry in lines, the cavalry mounting up.
This was my cue. “I’d best get back,” I said. “I’ll look for you when this is over.”
Gábor reached out to clasp my hand, his fingers sure around mine. This was not his first battle. “May God keep you safe.”
It was difficult to track the passing days inside the caves, where the light was always steady and the temperature always cool. It had been early fall when I came to the caves; the mountain leaves were just starting to turn when the Russian soldiers gave me to the praetheria.
A few mornings after Zhivka’s vigil, Hunger brought some of the last fall leaves turning on the mountain: a handful of reds, golds, and burnished bronze.
“I thought you might like the colors,” he said, handing them to Noémi.
“How can you do this?” I asked. “How can you be kind to us and yet keep us prisoner?”
He shrugged, his gold eyes glinting in the dim light. “I do little enough. Your work will be easier if you do not hate us.”
I wanted to say, I do hate you. But the words wouldn’t come. They would not be true, in any case. I feared what the praetheria could do, but I could not hate them, not after swirling through the measures of that dance, the sheer beauty of the praetheria catching my heart with tiny hooks that would not release me. In Vienna, I had seen the praetheria in shades and gradations, just as I did the humans around me. Hunger’s betrayal of me had wiped all that away, a wash of shadow that colored everything I thought I knew. But now I was seeing those shades again: the giantess whom Noémi and I often encountered with her children, who always had a kind word for us and whose laughing children were even taller than me. A tiny, gnomelike creature who knew my weakness for sweets and smuggled us bits of honey or sugared breads whenever he passed our way. A young man with golden hair and a blazing smile—a sun deity before the Binding spell had drained much of his strength—who pulled tiny stars out of the air and left them littered behind himself like bread crumbs in a fable, and who had given us a handful of such stars to brighten our cell.
And Hunger, bringing us leaves from the mountain because he knew of Noémi’s fondness for pretty things. I resented those leaves, because they cracked the defenses my careful, practical cousin had built around herself. Noémi deserved true happiness, not the false cheer of a bit of brightness, delivered with a smile.
In his letters, Gábor urged me to try and escape, to bring the Hungarian army the precise location of the praetheria. He had been recalled from Perczel’s army and sent by Kossuth to join General Görgey’s troops in the north, to report on Görgey, whom Kossuth did not entirely trust. But I could no longer see the praetheria simply as an enemy to be fought. Some of them would feed gladly on the turmoil and bloodshed their war stirred up. But most wanted only to find a place in a world that had little use for them.
The praetheria had brought me here as a weapon, something they hoped to turn against the human armies, against my own family and friends. I was not willing to be a weapon, and I was finding myself increasingly unwilling to be a spy, either. The details I provided in my letters to Gábor shifted from descriptions of the caves and estimates of the number of praetheria to stories about the praetheria as individuals.
How could I choose human or praetherian when each side held part of my heart and choosing would mean setting my heart against itself? I could as soon set my dual chimera souls against themselves.
So I did nothing, chose nothing, and stayed in the caves, suspended in indecision.
On bleak days, I asked myself why it mattered. This was not my war. I was no soldier; I had no gifts or allies powerful enough to shift the future. Noémi taught me a Hungarian proverb once: Egy fecske nem csinál nyarat. One swallow does not make a summer: one person alone cannot change things. What I did or did not do would change nothing.
On those days, it was tempting to stay in the caves, where my needs for food were met, where I did not have to make hard decisions. And the longer I stayed, the more insidious and seductive the feeling grew. Perhaps this is how mortals like Tam Lin were lost in faerieland. What began with a trap ended as a willing imprisonment—a gentler cage than whatever choices faced them in the real world.
But I could not stay motionless forever. Not choosing was still a choice—and one I was increasingly unwilling to make.
* * *
Noémi set her winning hand at whist on the floor of our room with a small crow of triumph—and the cards caught fire as soon as they touched stone.
Both of us scrambled to our feet, Noémi patting at a scorch mark on her skirt where one of the cards had landed.
Laughter rippled out behind us, causing us both to whirl around.
“Most excellent,” Vasilisa said, her smile wide.
“I do like that lurch of fear.”
I smoothed out the scowl forming on my brow. “What do you want?” I had not seen her in all my weeks in the cavern, and I had begun to think that Pál was mistaken (or malicious) when he threatened me with her training.
“So hostile,” Vasilisa said. “And I came only to see how you are getting on.”
“I’m fine. Where is Mátyás?”
“The táltos boy? He’s safe.”
“That isn’t what Anna asked,” Noémi said, drawing close to my side.
“Isn’t it? It’s what she meant, though.”
“Is he here?” When Vasilisa’s smug cat-smile only deepened, I clarified, “In these caves?”
“Not in these caves, no. But near to hand.”
Her answers were maddeningly ambiguous. I could not tell if she meant he had escaped or was being held somewhere nearby.
“If you’ve come only to annoy us, please leave.”
She tutted at me. “I’m afraid I cannot do that. I’ve been charged with making something useful out of you.”
Charged by whom? Pál had brought me here, but I could not tell what role he played in the praetherian plots. From his servile attention to the praetheria, he seemed more commandee than commander in these caves, but I could not imagine he would be content to remain in that role forever.
“I’ve no intention of fighting for you.”
“You were eager enough once.”
Witness, Vasilisa had told me that spring, and I had done so—revealing the mistreatment of the praetheria to the entire Congress and spilling my own guarded secret (that I had broken the Binding) in the process.
“That was before you betrayed me, before you threatened the people and places I loved.”
“As your kind has threatened mine?”
I looked away from her fierce glare. “I will not be a weapon,” I said, but more quietly.
“You already have been,” Vasilisa said. “And will be again. The only question is for whom—and whether you will do so willingly.” She reached out a delicate hand and set it on Noémi’s shoulder. Noémi went rigid, sucking her breath in, as though in pain. “Such a curious paradox, don’t you think? That humans are at once so powerful and so fragile. So vulnerable.”
Her hand slid around Noémi’s throat, and the blood drained from my cousin’s face.
“Let her go,” I said, bracing myself to pry her hand away if necessary.
Vasilisa did not move. “There are ways to persuade you to help us that go beyond words. Your love for others makes you weak—your sister, your cousins, that Romani boy. Each of those is a weakness we will exploit, if we must. This is not a civilized war, played between lordlings who recognize a truce and send their troops forth only in daylight. We fight to survive, and we will use whatever means we can.”
She released Noémi, and while the color returned to Noémi’s cheeks, my heart sank. I had delayed too long, and my indecision would now cost us both. Until we could find a way out of the caves, I would have to play along.
“All right,” I said, gripping my hands together. “What must I do?”
“Practice,” Vasilisa said. “You’ve so much potential, and yet you keep it locked up like a miser.”
The words she gave me the first time we met circled around my head. What you could be, Anna Arden, if you were not afraid!
She was not wrong. I was afraid. I had broken the Binding spell because it had seemed to be the right thing, but I had not anticipated the changes it would bring in its wake. How could it be right for one person—for me—to hold so much responsibility? How could I trust myself not to abuse my gift? How could I trust myself to see beyond the immediately personal choices that called to my heart, to know what damage I might unleash?
It was safer to be small.
“And what am I supposed to practice?”
“Breaking spells, for a start,” Vasilisa said. “You still do not cast spells reliably. And there are other things you might do.” She picked up a singed card from the floor. “Creation itself is a kind of spell. All living things at their heart are held together by soul stuff, which is the source of magic. Even this card is a result of making—a kind of magic—creating something new where it did not exist before. And what can be made can be unmade.”
She held the burnt card out to me, and I took it. “See if you can feel that bit of creation in the paper.”
I meant to feign following her directives, but with the flimsy card in my hand I grew curious. Was there some spark, even in this small bit of paper? I sent my inner sight out cautiously, as though the card might catch fire again between my fingers.
Nothing.
Vasilisa gave off the faint bone-buzzing I’d come to associate with spells, but the card gave me nothing. Neither did Noémi, who had retreated to her pallet.
“Perhaps it was too much to hope that you could sense it,” Vasilisa said. “Your human senses are so often confined by what you believe to be true, rather than what is true. Try this instead: imagine that the card is a spell and attempt to break it.”
Would Vasilisa know if I only pretended to break the spell?
I closed my eyes, but did nothing, and a moment later, fire surged up my arm. When my eyes flew open, I found Vasilisa pinching the skin at my elbow, the slight prickle of her spell following in the wake of the pain.
“Do not toy with me. I have not the patience for it. I’ll stake your cousin out on the top of the mountain and leave her for the vultures to find.”
Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I thought of papermaking: grinding down wood to fibers to make pulp, pressing the pulp into fine pages. I closed my eyes and pictured that transformation as a spell nestled inside the card, the almost invisible net of magical lines woven together. I imagined pinching those threads, just as I might a real spell.
A faint pressure built between my fingertips, and I opened my eyes just as Noémi gasped. The card I held had crumbled, a few fibers caught between my fingers, the rest in a pile at my feet.
I dropped the fibers I held and wiped my fingers on my skirt, as if they were somehow filthy. My heart pounded in my throat. There had to be some other explanation for what had just happened—Vasilisa’s fire had not quite gone out, and poking at the card with my mind had caused it to disintegrate.
Because the other possibility—that I had somehow unmade the card, somehow undone the process that created it—was unthinkable.
My temples began to throb, prelude to one of the headaches that inevitably followed spell-breaking.
Vasilisa crouched, ran her finger through the bit of dust, then stuck it in her mouth. When she straightened, she was smiling. “Good,” she purred. “Most excellent.”
She left us both staring, dismayed, at the pile of fibers on the floor before Noémi thought to sweep the debris aside.
* * *
Some days later, Noémi and I were prowling through the caverns when a commotion in a side chamber drew our attention. I was distracted, watching for Vasilisa so I might avoid her, and would not have noticed the crowd had I not seen Hunger racing toward the praetheria, his golden eyes blazing with something that might have been fury. Or fear.
“Let me through!” he said, and the crowd parted for him. I grasped Noémi’s arm and pulled her behind him.
A small clearing in the center of the rocky chamber held a pair of praetheria. One was dark-haired, with brown bat wings folded behind him and two sand-colored curving horns springing from his forehead like a ram’s. His muscled chest gleamed in the dim light. Beside him, coming scarcely to his waist, crouched a second praetherian, who looked the way I imagined the Greek god Pan, with furred legs and a curling crop of hair. A cloak of bark and leaves clung to him, giving a rather shrublike impression. He seemed oddly familiar, though I did not remember having seen him in the caves before.
In front of both praetheria was a soldier, sunk to his waist in solid rock, still wearing the high plumed shako hat favored by most of the military orders. He wept a little.
Noémi’s grip tightened on my arm. “Anna,” she whispered, “is that—?”
“Shh.” I remembered, with sickening clarity, the shrublike praetherian who had tried to suck me into the ground at Prater Park in Vienna. Was this the same creature? He did not look the same—the bark that now covered only his cloak had then covered all his limbs—but his appearance might have been illusion, like nearly everything else that night.
“Chernobog,” Hunger said, and the horned praetherian looked away from the soldier. “You were told not to attract human attention yet.”
The praetherian’s lip curled. “And who shall miss one soldier in wartime? Soldiers disappear all the time. You cannot keep us confined to these caves for weeks without offering some entertainment.”
Electricity sparked in the air between them, some challenge that I could not quite decipher. Hunger’s lips tightened. Then, on a long exhale, he said, “Don’t make a habit of it.”
Hunger turned, nearly bowling Noémi and me over. His face changed, shifting from resigned to grim. He put one arm around each of us, shepherding us out of the chamber. “Come away,” he said. “You do not want to see this.”
And as the soldier’s cries became screams, then abruptly cut off, I pictured the rock closing over the soldier’s head as he struggled to breathe. I pulled out of Hunger’s grip to be sick behind a cluster of stones.
Noémi’s cheeks were wet when I rejoined them.
“How could you allow that?” she asked.
Hunger’s face went blank. “I am not a master of these folk. I lead, but they follow willingly or not at all. If I command too much now, when there is nowhere to lead, I might lose them altogether when I must lead.”
I tried to parse his words. Did this mean the praetheria were not so unified as I had first supposed?