When Marek turned up it was a sign from God. It was like someone put the sun inside him and when he smiled it shone out. Perhaps he was an angel I thought. His voice was soft and deep. His skin was the colour of honey and his light brown eyes had tiny flecks of gold.
We slept on the forest floor that first night and ate a small portion of food. He shared the food equally. The rain was bad and we were forced to sit huddled in the hollow of a tree waiting for it to stop. At some point I dozed. When I woke, I found my head was resting on Marek’s broad chest, the steady rhythm of his heart beating loudly. I studied his face while his eyes were closed, afraid to move in case I woke him. When he caught me looking up at him I rushed from the hollow. I was thinking that he might be angry. Sooner or later all masters were angry about something.
We walked for another two days and nights. Our food from Esme was nearly gone. I was hoping that Marek approved of me so I only ate the smallest portion. I knew that in less than a week we would have left the oak woods for the Black Forest, and other strange lands, and perhaps he might think of selling me to someone else for food.
That night we sat by the fire. Marek talked about his island often, the golden sands, the cool waters, the sea birds, and about his father. I tried to picture myself there on the beaches but it was hard to imagine since I had never seen the sea. He talked about the girls on the island and I wondered what it would be like to have their life, dressed in thin cotton and endless days of sunshine.
Marek had his secrets too. He talked more about the other people on his island than himself. At times he would stop talking mid-sentence and bite his lip. I felt he was hiding things. It was normal for men to lie and say what they have to, to keep you quiet. Even beat you when it’s necessary. And there was another thing that I noticed. When he lit a fire it was almost as if he didn’t need a flint, so quickly did the wood take to flame even when it was damp. It was like magic.
Marek chased down a hare with such speed, it was hard to keep track of him through the trees. A short time later, he reappeared quietly beside me holding the bloodied carcass. I jumped with fright at his sudden appearance and he laughed, but it was not like the mocking laughter of Jon and his brood of brats.
‘That’s much better. For a moment I wondered whether you had any teeth.’ I felt stupid then. How hideous I must have looked: a description often used by the boys on the farm.
He skinned the hare with his big hands and a short knife, and we roasted it with sticks over the fire. It tasted good. The rich juicy meat dripped down my chin and fingers. I was unsure why he was staring until he passed me a cloth to clean my face.
The next day we came to a stream. It had been a long time since I had bathed in fresh water.
It was a sunny day and Marek peeled off his clothes until he was just in undergarments, and I looked in amazement at his chest and strong arms. He reminded me of the men from the troupe and for the first time I understood why my mother spent so much time with them. He entered the water and rubbed at his body with soap, spreading foam over his muscled arms and torso. His wet body glistened from the sun and his long thick hair clung to his back. He called to me to share the soap, which he said was made from wood ash and fat.
When I started to walk in fully clothed he laughed.
‘Do you not have any underclothes?’ I hesitantly peeled off the dress to reveal a grey sheath beneath, which barely covered my knees, but Marek failed to notice. If he was one of Jon’s sons he would have mocked my skinny body. Marek waded towards me in the waist-deep water. He pushed me under the water and I panicked.
‘You’re safe! It’s just shallow water.’
He turned me around so my back was to him. I could hardly refuse. He was, after all, my master. While he washed my hair I could see my reflection in the water and for a moment I was looking at my mama, her hair and her chin. But I was not my mother. I was not beautiful at all.
Marek’s hands were gentle as he massaged my scalp then combed through my long hair. I felt tears prick at my eyes. This was the second time his hands had touched me with tenderness. He dipped my head under the water playfully.
When we left the water I noticed he was looking at me strangely. I followed his gaze to my body where my wet undergarment clung, and I prayed that he was not thinking of hurting me.
Marek
Until that moment I had regarded Celeste as someone a lot younger than myself. But with her face clean and the clinging fabric outlining her body, I could see how wrong I was.
I only realised that I had been staring when she covered herself with her hands, her cheeks reddening. What an idiot I was! Sure, I had seen the girls from the island bathing, and yes, I admit to thinking about them a lot when I lay down to sleep, and even admit to meeting one or two of them on occasion at the beach. I was not completely without knowledge of the female kind. I just wasn’t expecting to be this close to a girl, sleeping beside her at night, bathing, eating. Celeste had been just a child until that moment.
She eyed me suspiciously and I made a feeble apology and explanation. She ignored it and quickly dressed.
‘Can you write?’ I asked her, to distract her from her embarrassment, and mine.
She shook her head.
‘Is there any way you can communicate?’
She didn’t respond. Her face was stony and unresponsive.
‘I can teach you your name.’
She followed my hand as I spelt out her name with a stick in the hard earth. It took several minutes of encouragement to get her to copy me. She did so and when she was finished she surveyed her work. The effect was uneven and illegible but I could tell that she was pleased with herself.
She pointed to me and I wrote my name, which again she copied.
‘Do you have any family?’
From her sack, Celeste handed me a piece of bark etched with a woman’s face. The eyes were almond shaped, the lips full, though there were deep frown lines.
‘Is this your mother?’
She nodded.
‘Do you want to try and find her?’
She nodded again but it was with a little less enthusiasm. With further questioning I found that she once lived on a farm with others, perhaps her grandparents, far north from here. She drew a small map of the woods. She indicated that we would shortly be on the other side then pointed to an area much further east. I despaired that it was not in the direction we were heading. Perhaps later, when I had finished my quest, I could help her find her family.
Continuing our journey the next day, clusters of oak started to thin, and meadows and wider skies lay just ahead. The sound of wood chopping brought relief, as I had begun to fear that this lonely woodland would never end.
A recently used trail led to the crest of a valley, and from there the path continued downward towards a small village. Behind the village was a tall guard of trees, and the endless stretch of darkness beyond this point – as indicated at the edge of my map – was the Black Forest.
In the village, clouds of thick wood smoke hovered over crudely thatched roofs, and the smell of salty bacon cooking reminded us that we hadn’t eaten. Ravens picked at bloodied animal skins thrown in a heap on the ground, vegetable gardens were untended, and live animals were tethered on short ropes that allowed them barely enough room to walk. These folk survived on little, and did little to survive.
Strange crosses were scratched above hut doorways. Some had the remains of animal carcasses at the foot of the door. We passed a man who ignored our greeting. He stood with shoulders braced and fists clenched to warn off our intrusion. These people were not welcoming.
Celeste grabbed my arm and shook her head. She had a bad feeling about the place or maybe a memory. I assured her that I would not leave her side.
Several children had cornered a chicken and laughed at its bursts of failed flight in an attempt to be free. They stopped their game when they saw us.
‘Are you the children stealers?’ A small child had bravely broken from the saf
ety of his group to speak with us. His face and hands smeared with days of no washing, and the hem of his long nightgown was heavily soiled from brown earth.
I felt slight nausea and then it passed. Perhaps it was the lack of food. I patted the child on the head and assured him I was no child stealer. I asked where his father was and he pointed to a house.
‘The bad fairies suck out your blood and use your intestines to make their boot laces,’ he continued, before racing off, presumably to warn his father that the children stealers were coming.
I looked beside me at Celeste whose olive skin had gone ashen. She looked back at me as if I was a spectre.
We passed two women with bare feet and grey pinafores over coarsely woven dresses. They ran from us dropping their pails. After spying our approach, another woman called to her children to come to her side.
The brave boy, who was watched with awe by the litter of children, led us into a house that was slightly bigger than the others. A group of men sat around a table and as Celeste and I entered they stopped their dice game to give us an unwelcome stare.
The children did not step into the room but peered in through a small window. They were nervous but I wondered that it may not be from the bad fairies, rather the men. One of the men told them to ‘scat’ and they bobbed out of sight like sparrows.
One man addressed me but, while experiencing another dizzy spell, I did not catch what he was saying. There seemed an invisible wall around me that bent and contracted, and just for a moment their faces were out of focus.
The man repeated his question: ‘Why are you here? Strangers are not welcome.’ The men were sun-weathered and strong and some wore daggers on their belts. One of them stood and moved to the door behind us. Something about this was menacing and Celeste took a step closer to me.
‘We are heading north. I go in search of my sister, and my friend here is also searching for her family. We have spent a week travelling through the woods and seek shelter for the night out of the cold. And we are hungry.’ Already I had lost weight around my shoulders and Celeste’s nose was red and peeled from the whipping needles of cold air.
‘Where are you from?’ asked the speaker of the group. He was a square jawed man with thick wrists. Several of his teeth were missing and he wore a red scarf around his neck to signify leadership. The backs of his knuckles were purple and blue, and several of the men’s faces were bruised from fighting. They were rough, the sort of men who could turn on you if you said the wrong thing.
I explained about my island but left out any details about Celeste.
‘So far south? How do you speak our language so fluently?’
It was more an accusation than a question. Language?
Celeste looked at me frowning. She was wearing the same question in her face. I was speaking an eastern language that I did not know I knew. Could it have been my mother’s influence? Could it perhaps be one of the benefits of my craft? It would explain the nausea and the slight weakness in my knees when the child first came to speak with me. Any use of the gift weakened me temporarily.
‘My mother taught me.’ I said. ‘She came from these parts.’ I felt the eyes of the men burning into me.
‘Well, for silver you can sleep in the barn behind this house.’
He walked over to me for one final look, to make sure I would not be a threat in any way. Suddenly I was worried about Celeste. The men had the same look as a falcon before it swoops on its prey. Several who were bored with us turned back to their game. One held up a glass of clear liquid inviting me to share with them and I shook my head. The man scowled and nodded to his friends. I had insulted him. I remembered what my father said – that men who do not mix with other men are guilty of something, and likely to be watched. But something told me that I would need my full senses that night, and perhaps leaving Celeste in the barn alone, for any length of time, might be unwise.
The leader barked instructions to a woman who was working quietly behind them. He was keen to get back to his game. The woman led us outdoors to find that the group of children hovering outside had grown. They were calling us life-takers and other names I did not understand.
The woman waved her arms and yelled for them to go away. I asked the woman why they were so hostile towards us. She was reluctant to speak at first, her eyes darting around her to see if anyone was listening.
She looked me up and down and stared at Celeste, then shrugged. She agreed I was probably harmless – my lack of guile apparent. I was still just a boy in many ways.
‘Evil witches,’ she whispered. ‘They wander the land in search of people to implant their evil souls. They commit the most unspeakable horrors in their stolen bodies. If they don’t steal your body then they steal your blood.’
I forced a laugh.
‘Some people have died in strange ways in this village. Wandered too far away and then not returned. We have found their bodies, those that have not been eaten by the wolves anyway. Their bodies are lifeless and not a drop of blood left in them.’
I felt the cold prickling of fear at the back of my neck. I was relieved not to be travelling that night.
We were taken to a dilapidated shed, barren of hay and roofless in places. The earth was dry in one corner where we camped, partly covered at least from the rain clouds looming. I began to tell Celeste what the woman told me but it appeared, from a dismissive nod of her head to end my speech, that she understood this language.
The woman returned. She avoided looking in our eyes and put down two steaming bowls of watery soup with pigs’ trotters. It had little substance but it warmed our bones. We listened to the men play their dice game in the house. They were drinking and arguing loudly. I could feel Celeste tense beside me. Outside was the patter of rain. Their shouts eventually died down and finally sleep overcame me, and I fell into a dream. This time it was of Celeste in the stream.
Chapter 3
Celeste
I was awoken by a scream outside. Marek sat up beside me. It was still dark and there was much shouting. The doors to the shed were thrown back, snapped from their rusted hinges. Several of the men stood there with fire torches, the light revealing their shades of fury.
‘Strigoi!’ they yelled at us as they stepped forward. Marek stood up to protect me and the men descended on him like the wind in a storm. He was pushed over and trampled. I heard the breaking of his bones. He was face down and blood seeped from his head wound. It was not Marek they were after.
One of the men hit me with such force that my head was flung backwards. Someone took hold of my hair and pulled me out the door. There were fire torches everywhere in a sea of faces. Women, children and other men were chanting and yelling.
They dragged me, all of the men, by my hair, my arms, my legs. The ground was sodden and muddy from rain. I was dropped near a pyre. There was a roaring sound and a rush in my ears as the fire took hold of tinder. There they tied me to a pole, my arms twisted behind me at a strange angle, my ankles and head bound so tightly I could barely move at all.
It was terrifying. I wanted to call Marek’s name but the sounds did not come.
People were calling me a witch, some called me a demon. Then they dragged something in front of me. It was black, a tree stump or effigy. I could only see it in the shadows of the firelight. As the fire grew and the circle of light widened, the real image emerged. This thing was once a man, his neck twisted upwards, his arms reaching for the sky with claw-like fingers.
The men pointed to me and said I did this. I wanted to shout no. I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t me but I could not even shake my head. My eyes wandered wildly to the faces in front of me but they were calling for my death, spitting and cursing. Even the children picked up handfuls of dirt to throw at me.
An older woman appeared from the murkiness in front of me, a scarf wrapped around her withered face. She closed her eyes as if the sight of me would burn out her eyes. She was praying, and from a water bowl, flicked droplets from her fingers i
n my direction.
The men lifted up the pole. I was hanging like a pig for roasting. They placed the pole on four larger poles forked at cross-angles into the ground and above the flames. I tried to squeeze my knees together to stop my skirt from slipping into the fire but I could not hold onto it. The flames licked at the fabric. Water drizzled from the sky but it was not enough to smother the fire.
There was a scream from the group. I strained my neck to see someone walking towards me. It was Marek with thick blood matting the hair near his temple. But it could not be! I had heard his bones break. Someone rushed for him only to be flung to the side.
I was distracted by the fire that had taken hold of my skirt. I wriggled wildly but it made no difference, and the flames spread slowly across the fabric like black and orange marching ants. The heat was becoming unbearable and I silently screamed when the fire licked at my leg. Smoke burnt my throat and filled my lungs. I could not breathe.
Suddenly I was jolted high and away from the fire. Marek wrapped me in a rug to smother the flames and lay me gently on my side. My watery, stinging eyes opened just a fraction but he was gone.
Squinting, I saw him raise his dagger and aim it at the man with the red scarf, the one who was calling for my death. Barely a moment later, this man writhed like a burrowing worm on the ground. The villagers who had started to descend on Marek drew back as another person parted the way.
A girl, perhaps some years older than me, entered the group and stood before the leader who now lay still. She retrieved a dagger from his neck and waved it above her head, teasing them all, her eyes darting and watchful. When another man stepped towards her, he sailed back into the air like a cloth doll, before flipping and spearing into the ground, his head twisted. The rest of the group had become still. They eyed the girl warily; some turned their heads in fear.
Marek (Buried Lore Book 1) Page 5
