Midnight's Daughter(48)
“We’re going to have to be more careful from now on,” I told Olga, who gave me an impatient look. I noticed that she had her ax in hand, and nodded. We were on the same page.
It took us almost ten minutes of very cautious movement to get to the large cavern at the end of the hall. But maybe ten seconds after we entered, I got two big clues as to why nothing had grabbed us. A complex ward called the Shroud of Flame leapt up behind us, blocking the way back, and a wall of emotion hit me so hard that it literally knocked me off my feet.
The sensations were familiar, and highly unwelcome. So was the scene that accompanied them, superimposed over the real one like a movie shown on a see-through screen. I could still see the cavern, but most of my attention was caught by the images of my past that flickered and changed in front of me. It was like someone had accessed the part of my memory labeled “good riddance” and was doing a top-ten most-hated-events countdown. Only it seemed they were starting with number one.
A dark-haired child woke up in a nest of blankets next to a fire. It was summer, so there was no need to sleep inside one of the cramped wagons, which always smelled of body odor and garlic, in the surrounding circle. The only others up at this hour were two camp dogs worrying something near the edge of the clearing. The girl threw off her blankets and smoothed her clothes before going to see what it was. The food was usually hung from tree limbs to keep animals out of it, but sometimes a rope would break, and she knew she’d catch hell if the dogs were eating the smoked ham they had acquired at the last village. I wanted to scream at her to run and not look back, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. She couldn’t hear me, and even if she could, she was far too stubborn to listen. Then or now, I thought as my eyes followed her small form toward the two large dogs.
The shaggy gray creatures were part wolf—wild, half-feral things, kept around by more food than they could scavenge, and used to scare off interlopers. They were about as far from domesticated as they could get, but it had never occurred to her to consider them dangerous. Dogs of any kind don’t usually bite the hand that feeds them, but Dili, named after the fact that he had never been quite right in the head, was gnawing on something that looked a lot like a human arm. Baro, his huge mate, had something in her mouth, too, which a beam of early-morning sunlight showed clearly as the head of a middle-aged, bearded man.
The girl screamed then, at the sight of Tsinoro, leader of their kumpania, being breakfast for dogs. She screamed for quite a while before she realized that no one was coming out of the brightly painted wagons littering the small clearing. Her cries would have raised the deaf, much less a company of people used to reacting quickly to any sign of trouble. She should have been able to sense immediately why no one had come—her sense of smell was good enough to discern the miasma of blood and feces that radiated out of the small wagons even without her entering them—but she wasn’t thinking clearly. Wasn’t, in fact, thinking at all, being in a panic to find someone, anyone, still breathing.
She ran to the nearest wagon, one of the largest since it belonged to Lyubitshka, the chovexani of the clan, who was respected for the power of her magic. But it quickly became obvious that it had not been strong enough to help her this time. The girl stared at the mutilated body of the most powerful person she knew, and began to shake. She was afraid, not only that whatever had killed the wise woman would come for her, as well, but also because Lyubitshka had yelled at her just the day before for tearing a hole in her favorite blouse when laundering it, and now there was no way to obtain forgiveness. Having someone so strong go into the spirit world angry with you was the worst thing her young mind could imagine. Lyubitshka would make a powerful muló, a vengeful spirit that returned to seek out those who had wronged it in life.
After stumbling down the steps of Lyubitshka’s wagon and looking wildly around for the angry muló, the girl went a bit mad. She ran to throw open the doors of each wagon, but found only more corpses inside. After her increasingly panicked investigation proved that she and the dogs were the only living things left in the kumpania, she collapsed near the fire, exhausted, tearstained and shivering in shock. Even after her natural resilience kicked in to calm her slightly, she didn’t bother to wash herself or even look for salvageable items to pack. She was not so young that she didn’t know the proper way to treat the dead, and there was no one else to do it.
I watched her dig a pit in the middle of the clearing, to which she dragged each body after wrapping it in a blanket to avoid handling it directly and risking marimé, or uncleanness. They should have been dressed in their best clothes, but there was so much blood, and some were not even whole anymore, that she didn’t know where to start making them presentable. She arranged the bodies in the hole, and piled on top of them their extra clothes, jewelry, tools and best dinnerware as custom required. There was no beeswax to use to close their nostrils and prevent an evil spirit from entering them, but considering how many wounds most of them had, she doubted the spirits would find animating these bodies very useful.
As she piled earth on top of the heap of the dead, she sobbed for them, even those who had considered her unclean because of her parentage. They had been her family, or as much of one as she had ever known. And now they were gone. Sweat and dirt mixed with her tears, and her nose started to run, but she didn’t wipe it away. She wasn’t finished yet.
She turned the horses loose and ran them away from the camp, since tradition allowed their continued survival. But everything else had to be destroyed. It was a laborious process, but she finally managed to break every remaining plate and glass, kill the two dogs and pile great armloads of brush around each wagon. She lit the fire and stood off to one side, watching everything she had ever known go up in flames. She would soon start to feel hungry and worry about how she was to survive when all the money and salable objects of her kumpania were now cursed and useless. She would wonder who would take her in, since the other Gypsy bands would certainly blame her for the tragedy, just as she was starting to blame herself.