by Lana Popovic
Dusting off my hands, I head back down the path. Five minutes later I’m behind the inn, Peter’s familiar shadow gliding over the leaded windows. Only the innkeeper’s family is wealthy enough in our village to afford the luxury of glass, and the fine, long slabs of stone that form the building’s facade; the rest of us make do with wattle and daub, and local shale that need not be hauled from a distant quarry. Ducking, I scoop a handful of pebbles and dart them at the glass, biting my lower lip to restrain my grin. The figure starts, then surges against the frame. Though the glass is so thick and milky that I cannot make out his face, I think I see the flash of his teeth right before he knocks back cheekily, flicking his fingers against the glass in a gesture that, knowing Peti, may very well be lewd.
I wait for him, swinging the basket around my wrist, until he emerges from the heavy back door with a basket of his own. Beyond the pleasure of his company, I can always count on my friend to feed me from the inn’s groaning larders.
“I thought I heard a little bee flitting against my windows,” he teases, flashing that broad grin again. My qualms settle incrementally; he wouldn’t smile at me just as easily as he always has if he were intending to propose so soon as my mother suspects. But before my guard drops entirely, I remind myself that affability is just his way. Peter smiles more than anyone else I’ve ever met. Perhaps courtesy of his easy life, I think, a touch unkindly. With an innkeeper and vintner for a father, he’s never known the taste of hunger, the particular torment of too little for too long.
“I thought maybe she could use a little honey,” he continues, “and butter. And bread.”
My knees nearly go weak at the thought of warm, crusty bread, generously slathered with salted butter. If Peti had his way, he would split all his rations with me, sneaking me food on the sly at every turn. But even his boundless generosity could not possibly be enough to feed an additional five mouths, and I could not live with being well-fed while my mother and siblings grew ever more hollow with hunger.
Still, I refuse to begrudge myself the occasional treat, and I’ll be bringing half home to Klara.
“I would say you spoil me,” I quip, dimpling back at him. “But we both know I deserve it.”
He rolls his eyes skyward, still grinning. “Ah, my honeybee, modest as she is industrious and fair. The clearing, then? Do you have time?”
“I do today. No one seems to be sick or dying, for a wonder, so I have a moment to catch my breath,” I say, though the feeble stab at humor curdles on my tongue as soon as it emerges. Do not court the reaper when an ill wind blows, they say. Another superstition that my mother would not grant the time of day. But I am not my sensible mother, and the notion of it expands in my mind, haunting, twisting out of sight like a trailing phantom spotted from the corner of the eye.
Peter’s gray eyes sharpen as he notices my turmoil. “What troubles you, Anna?” He searches my face, the exposed skin on my hands and forearms. Over the years, he’s seen the worst of the damage my father wreaks upon my flesh. “Has he . . . ?”
I shake my head. “No. Not this time, anyway. It’s something else.” I incline my head toward the path that wends away from the village proper, twisting into the silvery thicket of beech and birch on the outskirts. “Come. I’ll tell you once we’re there.”
We’re sitting by the trilling little brook that runs through our clearing by the time I feel ready to begin.
“Here,” Peter says before I can speak, unwrapping a fragrant langos and pressing it into my hands. “Eat first. You’ll be the actual size of a honeybee soon enough.”
Peter has called me “honeybee” since I can remember, in reference to my love of plants and how unable I am to keep still, my hands and mind ever busy with some task. I am a whirling dervish of activity in comparison to him, who runs slow and steady and dependable as tree sap.
“Believe me, it’s not from lack of appetite,” I respond tartly. My mouth fills with water at the aroma of the fried bread, cupping sour cream, garlic, and curled strips of crisped ham in its center. “Are you sure, though? You said just bread and honey. Your mother must have made these for lunch, they’re so rich, I wouldn’t want to—”
“Eat, Anna,” he says firmly. “We have plenty at home.”
“Even with the harvest as it has been?”
“Even with that. My father has begun selling his ale and plum brandy to Gor, Ikervar, and Szotony, with plans for beyond. We . . .” He hesitates, not wanting to seem like he’s rubbing their prosperity in my face. “We’re faring well. More than well enough to feed my best friend in the world.”
I nod reluctantly, trying to force down the envy creeping up my throat as I take a bite of the bread. It crackles as my teeth cut through the fried meat, then yields with satisfying give, so greasy and chewy that my eyelids slide involuntarily closed with pleasure. Klara will love it, I think, almost as much as the beloved savory dumplings she so rarely gets to sample. When I open my eyes again, Peter is watching me closely, brimming with satisfaction. He offers me a wineskin, and I tip it to my lips and drink deep, letting the rich red wash down the remains of the mouthful.
“Better now?” he asks, amusement coloring his voice. “It’s not nectar, but it’s the best I can do.”
“It’s wonderful,” I say ardently, taking another swallow. It is, tasting of hay and cherries, incomparably superior to the sour, watered-down pig swill we can afford. “You’ve been holding out on me. This is even better than the usual.”
He gives a bashful half shrug. “I tried my own hand at this batch. Apu thinks I have the knack for it—I’m glad you like it. No, no,” he demurs when I try to hand it back. “I brought this bag just for you.”
“More for me, then.” I shrug, tipping it to my lips again. “Tell me, how is Marika doing? Recovered from her tree fall?”
“Oh, she’s fine, the ridiculous imp,” he replies, his face brightening at the mention of his littlest sister. He dotes on both his sisters, loving them as I do Klara—as well he should, given how bright and darling they are. “Bossing all the rest of us about while her ankle heals. Apu has been carrying her all over creation on his shoulder; she actually pulls his hair to tell him which way to go, the little snot.” He shakes his head ruefully, eyes soft with indulgence. “I swear, that girl thinks she was born to be a queen. And who am I to say she wasn’t?”
He continues telling me of his sisters and mother, resting on his elbows as I devour half of the bread with unladylike speed—though I should like to meet the well-mannered lady whose belly growls like a slavering pack of wolves as mine does—and swig his fine wine. When I’m done, I wrap up the remainder for Klara and trail my hands in the icy brook to clean them. I wipe them on the grass before I lean back on my elbows, unaccustomed to the sensation of being so full-bellied and drowsy.
“Now, then,” Peter says companionably, turning his gray hawk’s eyes on me. The sunlight slanting through them brings out the hidden honey in their depths. “What’s been preying on your mind, bee?”
I pause, hesitating for a moment. Whatever his intentions toward me, Peter has known me since we were babes; our mothers are dear friends, and we were born within days of each other, my mother going into labor just hours after having safely delivered him. We are both eldest, reared together, washed in the same basin and swapped freely between our mothers’ breasts, sharing the same milk.
No one knows my soul quite as he does.
“I delivered the Countess Báthory’s son from death, and now she’s set her sights on me,” I say, all in a rush. “She wants me as her chambermaid, but my father will not let her have me for the sum she’s willing to pay. And I think—I know—she will not merely let me be. Between them, I fear they’ll tear me in two.”
Peter recoils a little, lips parting with surprise. “The countess’s son?” he says carefully. “Maybe you’d better tell me how all this trouble found you.”
I spill the entire strange tale to him, words tumbling over each other, sped
along by a healthy wash of wine. I swear him to secrecy when I explain Gabor, though I know Peter would sooner die than betray my trust even without such prompting. Finally, I come to this morning, Janos’s glowering shadow at our door, the quiet ruthlessness of his insistence.
“He frightens me, Peter,” I finish, wrapping my goose-bumped arms around myself. “Or she does, I suppose. Something has me badly out of sorts, at any rate.”
“But does she frighten you?” he asks, dark eyebrows lifting. “Does she, really? It sounds to me as though you rather liked her.”
“I—I did, I suppose,” I falter, unsure why I cannot meet his eyes. “But even so. Mama needs me more than ever, with the boys so hard to manage. Honestly, sometimes I fear Father would let Klara starve if I were not there to sneak her my scraps. I’m afraid to go, even if it would mean more coin than we’ve ever had; more likely than not, he’d line his gullet with it anyway. But I cannot see how to slip loose of her.”
“I can,” he responds, and there’s something determined in his voice that draws my startled gaze. “I had hoped to do this later, properly, when I had everything ready, but . . .” He ducks his head at this, jaw working as he struggles to master himself. My heart plummets in anticipation, falling like a stone. “But you need me now, not perfection later. So wed me, Anna. The lady couldn’t force you to come, were you a married woman. Becoming my wife would keep you safe from her.”
I blink rapidly, a prickly tangle of shock and dismay writhing inside me, for all that I dreaded this was coming. I can feel myself blush furiously, the hot scarlet splotch of it stealing up my neck. “So it’s true, then,” I manage through clenched teeth. “What the entire village has been twittering about for weeks. It seems you’ve seen fit to share your intentions with everyone but me, Peti. I would have expected better of my best friend.”
He winces sharply at the remonstration, averting his eyes. “For that, I’m sorry,” he says, low. “You should not have heard it from anyone else. But that was my mother’s doing, not mine. I implored her to keep silent, but you know how hopeless she is when she’s excited.”
The notion that his ebullient mother would thrill at our betrothal, though I am daughter of the village drunk, warms me despite myself. “Even so. That is hardly the point. We’re friends, Peti. Don’t you think you should have asked me first?”
“Just listen, bee,” he plows onward, his gray gaze slicing back earnestly to me. “Let me finish, now that we’re already here. If we were wed, your family would be mine as well. There would be coin, food enough for feasts, plenty of everything. No need for you to worry ever again.”
“But your father hates me,” I protest weakly, though I’m aware that it is not me his father despises. “And I have no dowry to offer.”
“Why would I need a dowry, when I could have you?” he scoffs softly, a corner of his mouth curling. “And you know well enough that Apu hates Istvan, not you. Never you. He simply cannot abide a drunk, not as often as he serves them. Though I have yet to see him turn one with coin away.”
“And what of love, Peter?” I ask so softly it’s barely above a breath. “What of your heart? Or mine?”
“I cannot speak to yours, Anna, though I badly wish I could.” He reaches for my hand, slides his warm, callused fingers through mine in a strong grip. I can see his relief when I don’t pull away. “But I have loved you since I knew my own name. There’s been no one else, no one that could matter as you do. Would that be enough for you, do you think? At least, to begin?”
Though I’ve averted my eyes whenever I could, it is no secret to me that Peter has long yearned for more than just our deep and abiding friendship. While he has been content to hope and wait for me, never so much as letting an embrace linger too long, I could not have missed the desire brewing in him—without ever sensing so much as an answering flicker of the same within myself. Now I consider it again, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Peter is more than handsome enough, strong-backed and tall, with a dark tousle of hair, clear-cut features, and those spectacular predator’s eyes, incongruous in their gentleness. Certainly he turns enough heads in our village, and likely the ones beyond as well—though I cannot say I have ever wanted to steal his kiss and mingle my breath with his. I have never wanted that from any of the boys who strut about our village with their fuzz-patched faces and cracking voices, playing at being grown.
But he is the only man with whom I’ve ever felt safe. I would not fear sleeping next to him, nor wake with my hands fisted to protect my face. And he does not look upon me as others do, covetous of my charms while balking at my full measure.
And yet, my insides still churn with rebellion. To wed Peter is to belong to him, for all that he would prize me, never to lift a finger to me in anger. And I don’t want the gilded cage of such a love, not from him or anyone.
But maybe this time, I can’t afford to refuse it.
“I know honeybees have wings, Anna, if that’s what you fear,” he says, interpreting my hesitation with startling accuracy. “Know that I would never strive to curb you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I say, squeezing his hand, pressing down the sadness that swells up at the flare of hope in his eyes. “It’s such a kind offer, Peti. More than I deserve.”
He shakes his head, wry now. “‘Kind’ is not exactly the answer I was hoping for.”
“Tell me—is this truly what you want between us?” I peer closely at him, hoping to uncover at least the hint of a doubt that mirrors the legion of my own. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Of course it’s what I want,” he replies, vehement. “I’ve thought of it for years, yearned for us to be even more than we were. Nothing could please me more than to call you my wife.”
“Then let me think on it. But before I do, tell me something else. Will you . . .” I pause, uncharacteristically bashful, uncertain how to articulate my fear.
He tilts his head to the side, knuckling a stray lock out of his eyes. “Will I what, bee?”
“Will you still wish to be friends as we are now, even if—if my answer is no?”
Peter sets his jaw, but not before I see the pain skate across his face. It will grieve him sorely to lose me, the prospect of our lives together, I realize. “Of course, always. No matter what you choose to do, you have me, as a fast friend if not a husband. Promise me that you’ll never doubt as much.”
The relief is tremendous, though I should have known he would stand beside me, stalwart as an oak, keeping me safe in his steady shade. It’s not in his fine heart to abandon me only because I cannot give him exactly what he wants. Impulsively, I bring our joined hands to my lips and press a kiss to his knuckles. “I’m the midwife’s daughter, aren’t I? Privy to women’s mysteries. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
“I am only a man,” he teases back. “So why don’t you enlighten me?”
I allow myself to smile at him fully, without reservation. “It means that I know better than to doubt you.”
Chapter Four
The Web and the Tomb
On the way home, I tread through a spider’s web.
One moment, the air is brisk and pleasant over my face. The next I’m gasping with revulsion, my skin alive and crawling as I pick sticky filaments out of my lips and hair. It’s all over me, trailing down my arms and bosom, dangling to my ankles. Some of it has even gotten in my mouth, and my gorge rises until I spit by the side of the path, over and over, to clear out the foul tack of it. When I straighten, still lurching with nausea, I survey the branches. But even the closest boughs are far enough above my head that I can’t fathom how large the cobweb must have been, to drape all across the path and trap me within it.
Eventually I give up searching and strike down the path again, though my innards still quail. Disturbing a spider’s home is another forerunner of evil.
When I reach the cottage, before I even set foot across the threshold, I know—something is badly wrong. The air itself seems muffled and dense.
The crudely hewn stones that form our cottage walls, remnants of a more prosperous time, suddenly seem heavy and foreboding as a tomb. And that is when it hits me; this rampant silence, the utter absence of sound, as if all the birds around our home have choked on their own breath. This silence is wrong, too abundant and unbroken. I don’t hear my mother’s humming, and my mother always hums when she works if she does not sing aloud. The boys’ cries aren’t splitting the air, and I don’t hear Klara’s sweet, warbling tones. Even Zsuzsi’s fussy yowl is lacking.
My heart shudders to panicked life. I fling the door open and spill into the front room—where what look like waxen effigies of my family have gathered around my parents’ bed.
The sight of their stillness is so uncanny it roots me where I stand, desiccating my throat and bolting me to the packed-earth floor. My mother sits on the straw tick mattress, her hands upturned in her lap like small dead animals, limp and useless, fingers feebly curled. My brothers and sister kneel by her feet, huge-eyed and vacant in expression. Zsuzsi sits curled awkwardly on my sister’s knees; she pets the kitten with mindless, spasmodic strokes. For a moment none of them acknowledge me, and it’s as if I’ve stepped through a fairy circle and encountered the changeling versions of my own family, clay-faced mimics with dead eyes.
Gooseflesh erupts all up and down my arms, and I stand like a stone, too afraid to speak.
Then my mother stirs and breaks the spell.
“Anna,” she says, vaguely petting the space next to her. Her voice is hoarse and rasping, as if she hasn’t spoken in weeks. “Come sit with me, would you.”
The twins shuffle over to make room for me as I pass, so uncharacteristically compliant I gape down at them. Klara reaches up to stroke my calf, letting out a muffled little whimper of distress. Perversely, it comforts me, a welcome contrast to this otherwise suffocating silence.
