Except for that strange gypsy woman.
I spy her from the corner of my eye, and it makes me jump.
Her back is to me, her raven hair delicately highlighted by the rising sun, and she’s picking tender shoots in a glen in the woods and placing them in a suede pouch. Each time she plucks one, she whispers gestena to it as if to say “thank you.”
Then she turns around to face me, as though she could feel my eyes on her back.
And smiles.
A light breeze brushes her wild hair from her face, revealing dark eyes as large as chips of coal. She pulls her coat tighter around herself, and for the first time I realize it has brass buttons that match the gold in her teeth. As the shy sun begins to warm her high cheekbones, strong nose, and full lips, I feel my breath catch.
Honest to God, she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Her features are smoothly carved—even regal—yet she seems so strong with her earthy, wide hips and straight back that funnel into a narrow waist. She reminds me of a bohemian Sophia Loren, the actress I saw in that dorky Houseboat movie with Cary Grant, one of the few films they let us watch at my old boarding school because it’s rated G.
But something in this woman’s eyes tells me she isn’t rated G at all . . .
She narrows her eyes, her gaze intense as black beads, and lifts her chin.
“Do you want to be a girl—or a woman?” she challenges me.
I have no idea what she’s talking about. But I glance back at Creek, still as a stone with scruffy bed hair on our faded blanket, and I feel unbearably naked near this woman. Something about her seems like she can see right through me. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m actually 18. And all of a sudden I remember—so is Creek! Today’s his birthday, and we’re both . . . adults . . . now.
“I already am a woman,” I reply defiantly, standing up and thrusting my fists into my pockets. Second guessing myself, I realize that must look childish, so I leave the ruby in my front pocket and fold my arms. “What’s it to you?”
She smiles, flashing gold teeth.
“Everything,” she calls back.
Her voice rings across a nearby field and I hear birds sing in reply. She swings her pouch from her hand, back and forth like a ticking clock, as if pondering my future, then waves me over to her.
“Now come with me.”
I forget to breathe.
This woman scares the daylights out of me. And I don’t know if she’s after the ruby in my pocket, or if she has darker intentions. How’d she know it was there? I blush, recalling it’s not like I hid the bulge or anything. Swiftly, I transfer the stone to my cleavage inside my bra while she’s not looking, where it feels icy against my skin. The woman is walking ahead of me deeper into the woods, taking long, swinging strides.
I feel an irresistible pull to follow her, even without Creek for protection, the same way Alice must have tumbled after that rabbit and down a hole to Wonderland. What does this woman want to show me? There’s something magnetic about her—as if she stands at the gateway between my horrible and lonely teenage years and what I hope for in adulthood. And despite any logic, I feel my feet stepping after her in a way that sends violin chords screeching through my brain.
What the hell are you doing? Some rational part of me scolds. This woman might want to kill you for the ruby . . .
But I can’t seem to get my brain to tell my feet that. My heart is racing, yet my soul is heading like a moth to a flame—her flame. And whether my brain wants to admit it or not, my soul suspects she might lead the way to Alessia.
With that thought, I feel the stone warm against my breast, pulsing to the rhythm of my strides. Cautiously, I follow this woman to a lush draw in the woods filled with green grass beside a stream.
“We flow, like this water,” the woman says without turning around. “That is our nature. The life of travelers.”
She stands facing the stream with her eyes closed, as if listening to it. A little girl from the camp skips up to her—with an almond complexion and bright ribbons dangling from her dreadlocks—and gives her a handful of herbs. The woman opens her eyes and smiles before the girl scampers off, swift as a breeze. Then she points to where the little girl had paused. She leans down and collects a fistful of green shoots and sniffs them before bringing them to her lips. One by one, she tastes each at the root, chewing slowly as if they were tobacco. She spits them out and nods, slipping the remaining herbs into her pouch.
“Tell me,” she says softly, “what shape will the shon—the moon—be tonight?”
I shake my head.
“How would I know?” I answer, glancing up at the glare from the sun higher now in the sky. “It’s broad daylight.”
“Sit down.”
I do so reluctantly, wondering how many demands this odd woman is going to make. The fact that she sits beside me makes me feel even more awkward. She crosses her legs, revealing weathered, lace-up boots, a lot like Granny Tinker’s.
“Feel with your hands.”
She begins swishing her fingers through the weeds.
I move my palms across the long stems that are moist with dew.
“What do you feel?”
“Um,” I mutter, wondering if this is some kind of test, “wet plants, I guess. Is there more?”
The woman’s broad hands pause over the grassy tips, and I thought I heard her mumble as if praying over them. Her lips rise with a hint of smile.
“The moon is full tonight. Like you.”
I don’t know why, but her words shoot tingles up my back.
She pets the stems lovingly, as if they’re her friends. “They swell and lean toward the moon at this time, when she’s round and bright. You are eighteen, no?”
The tingles are skittering in downright ripples across my skin now. I shift uncomfortably.
“H-How do you know that?” I ask, as spooked by this woman as I was when I first met Granny Tinker. Maybe more—
I feel her strong, warm hands move across my arm. Startled, I look down and see her fingers following the contours of my skin, gently kneading my flesh the way one tests a plump piece of fruit.
“I can feel your ripeness.” She takes a deep breath. “Smell your—how do they say it? Your readiness.”
Those gold teeth flash again with a smile. She turns her face up to the sun.
“It is time for you to show me that you can be the next Thagarni. Gypsy Queen.”
My heart is racing out of control. And I fear at any minute it might burst through my chest like a runaway train.
“W-Wait a minute,” I defend. “I don’t want to be anyone’s Gypsy Queen—”
The woman laughs.
“What makes you think you have a choice, shebari?”
“Who are you? What’s your name?” I demand, standing up and glaring at her. I’m sick to death of wasting time and she’s getting downright creepy. “Tell me what happened to Alessia—”
A blue bird flutters in front of my face, scaring me out of my wits.
I take a step back, hoping to make my heart rate slow down, only to see it land on the woman’s arm. She and the bird are so calm in this odd moment that I half-suspect she has this animal trained. My thoughts are confirmed when I see her sneak it a bread crumb from her riding coat pocket. Strangely enough, she never looks at the bird, which I’m sure now is a kind of falcon. Nevertheless, it chortles at her and she nods, making soft sounds deep in her throat as though they share a secret language.
“If you don’t lead yourself,” the woman says in a peculiar tone, almost as if taking dictation from the bird, “someone else will. And you will not like the path they choose for you.” She lifts her arm and lets the bird take to the air. “It’s time to be a woman,” she says like a warning.
We watch the bird spiral into the sky.
“Now, show me how you will make your own path.”
Path to what? I wonder. The next gypsy camp, or maybe to find my mom?
“Only if you tell me your name,” I insist. I’m totally done with this woman’s puzzling games. Trade for a trade—I’m not my father’s daughter for nothing. And if she wants me to take a fricking walk with her to find herbs or whatever and pretend I’m her long lost Gypsy Queen before telling me my mother’s whereabouts, so be it. I’m as fine an actress as they come. But she’d better deliver.
The woman points to the bird over the horizon, its wings gently riding on the growing thermals of the brightening sun. It disappears into the boughs of a tall tree across a field.
“That’s who I am,” she replies, waving at the sky and then the earth. “My name is Zuhna. Like my friend the falco cuculo—I am wherever my feet land.”
She stands up in front of me, but her dark eyes are still lifted to the sky, which I find peculiar. Before I can blink, she wraps a yellow paisley scarf over my eyes and ties it tight—
Holy shit!
I’m blindfolded. I whip to my feet, punching at the air, and attempt to rip off the scarf, but her strong arms are already wrapped around me like a bear. Wriggling fiercely, I can’t get loose, and just when I’m about to scream Creek’s name, Zuhna nearly suffocates me with her thick-skinned palm. Her seal is so strong I can’t open my lips to bite her.
Seriously? I’m going to meet my death wrestling a creepy gypsy chick?
I kick back at her but she doesn’t budge. Doesn’t yelp. She only chuckles at me.
“Oh draga, I’ve been kicked by wilder horses than you.” She lets out a throaty laugh. “You will not get away until you follow your senses.”
“My what?” I mutter, voice muffled by her fingers. At this point I’m wondering if she’s got some weird fairy tale idea of preparing me for dinner.
“You want to find your mother?” she hisses, clasping me tighter.
I feel all my breath deflate from my body.
Of course that’s what I want, bitch!
Tears are threatening my eyes, but I grit my teeth, ready to deck this chick the second her grip slacks.
I feel her press her suede pouch into my hand.
“Then keep this putsi and follow your star. Use your senses.”
“Like what,” I mutter, “touch, taste, smell?” My words are still garbled by her palm.
She’s so close I can feel her breath against my temple. When she nestles her cheek against the back of my hair, I jump. Quite frankly, I’d love to start running by now if only I could figure out how—
“Take a deep breath,” she insists, her voice low and grave.
“Then you’ll tell me where my mother is?”
“No. You’ll tell yourself where your mother is.”
Her words spread a shiver through my body.
I shake my head to brush it off. For crying out loud, what’s next—duck-duck-goose? It’s got to be only six in the morning and this woman already has me exhausted.
“Just one sniff,” Zuhna encourages.
I take a big whiff, hoping it will get her off me. At first I smell mostly her skin, a light musky scent with hints of cinnamon and clover and the earthy smell of horses. But when I inhale another deep breath, the stone trembles at my breast, and that’s when I smell smoke. Grassy smoke, like a nearby meadow is on fire—
Alarmed, I reach my fingers to the scarf over my eyes, but her strong hands stop me.
“Follow,” she insists, as a breeze swells up in the glen. It brings such a strong smell of smoke I start to cough.
“What kind of fool walks toward a fire?” I argue as she gently nudges me forward, her arms still wrapped around me like a vise.
“Are you so sure it’s a fire?” she says.
Sighing, I take another whiff.
She’s right, it smells more like . . . ash. As though there used to be a fire that was recently put out.
“Take a few more steps, jel’enedra.”
I can hear her breathing deeply as well, as if catching the scent, and I wonder if she has her eyes closed, too. We step through the grass and she loosens her grip, her hands now firmly on the back of my shoulders. We go over a little hill and down into another glen. I know it’s in the trees because I feel colder, as if we’ve stepped into a shaded, woodsy area. But when I feel the sun on my forehead again, I assume we must have reached a clearing. The stone shivers at my breast—not warm this time, but oddly freezing. It’s such a shock to my skin that I rip the scarf off my face before Zuhna can stop me.
And that’s when I see the blackened patches of earth. In a small meadow that’s so familiar it nearly knocks the wind out of me.
This is the same place where I had my vision of the lovers who were murdered.
And I swear to God, the burned grassy area in front of me looks like two people lying on the ground holding hands, with smoke rising all around them as though they’d fallen here and were incinerated in place. The sight is beyond ghastly, like accidently stumbling into Auschwitz, and my hands rise to my mouth as I scream.
Zuhna hugs me—it’s the first truly compassionate thing I’ve seen her do—and she rips the scarf from my hand and tosses it into the meadow, where it bursts into flames. The sight startles me and I shake all over.
“Shh,” she purrs kindly, rocking me a little. “You did it, pakvora. You felt your way through the cracks.” Just as she says that, the stone at my breast warms again.
And the blackened earth is gone—
Even the yellow paisley scarf lies on top of a few wildflowers, completely unscathed.
“Never forget,” she says, “you are nothing without learning to feel. This is where your power lies—what will lead you to your mother. You must feel your way through the cracks of the star . . . through the folds of emotion and time.”
Zuhna begins talking softly in her gypsy tongue. Not to me, but as if there’s already a conversation going on with someone I can’t see. With every word she utters, the stone at my breast grows warmer. I watch her nod, as though she’d retrieved a missing piece of a puzzle.
“You must be a woman to find a woman,” she says to me gravely. “Not a little girl. But it comes with a price.”
I don’t know what the hell she means.
“How do you know my mother is alive in Italy somewhere and not dead?” I demand.
Zuhna tilts her head back and laughs, her smile a mix of gapped teeth and gold, with a broad cackle that eerily reminds me of Granny Tinker.
“Gypsy Queens can never truly die,” she says mysteriously. She reaches out her fingers to lift my chin. “Can you handle what you find?”
My fists tighten into balls.
Who the hell is she kidding?
I’ve already survived a childhood in mean-girl boarding schools, an absent dad, robbing banks, and now people who’ve been shooting at me! I think I got this fucking covered.
“I can handle anything,” I hiss back at her.
Zuhna runs her hand over my hair, stroking me like a horse.
“You are strong—so strong, young one.” She cups my cheek. “It is in your soul.”
Then she runs her fingers over my forehead and slowly down my temple to my cheek and jaw, her hand lingering and massaging a little, as if detecting something.
“You have tasted your lover’s blood,” she nods. “It’s written on your face. But when he tastes yours, you will be a woman and he will be a man. And then you will come into your full power . . .” Her voice trails off, as if she’s thinking for a moment. “You can never go back, pisliskurja.”
She reaches into her pocket and glances back up at me. “Use your talents wisely,” she warns.
With that, Zuhna holds up the ruby heart.
I choke back surprise—
I never felt her take it! Her gypsy pickpocket skills must be legendary.
I stare into her eyes for either mischief or deceit, but instead what I find are dark pools that appear like an abyss in the middle. Instinctively, I wave my hand in front of her. Nothing registers—no flutter of the lashes or eye movement.
>
And for the first time, I realize that Zuhna is blind.
“We all have our segreti—our secrets,” Zuhna nods. “I only see the sun and moon, things that shine very bright. Like you.” She cups my face in her hands and kisses both cheeks, in that odd way that Old World people do, and drops the stone back into my cleavage. It burns like a fire. “I also feel heat,” she says, turning to walk away.
Just then, the little girl with dreadlocks scampers up to her from behind a tree, as if she’d been spying on us all along. And part of me wonders if she’s for real, or if she’s one of Zuhna’s familiars. But then she grabs Zuhna’s hand and they swing their arms in rhythm with their strides. The little girl holds up another fistful of herbs and smiles proudly.
Zuhna pauses and turns around.
“Time for breakfast,” she says, tousling the little girl’s hair. “We have much work to do.” She lifts her head and stares in my direction, as if she can actually see me.
“And tell your man not to follow me anymore,” she calls out, pulling a silver dagger from inside her boot and flashing it to the sun.
“Or I shall have to kill him.”
Chapter 10
Creek drops from a tree right in front of me, scaring me out of my mind.
“Don’t worry, babe. She wouldn’t have a chance at offing me.”
Cocky as hell, his lips curl crookedly, turning his cheek scar into a dagger that rivals Zuhna’s, and he folds his arms. A shaft of light warms his wayward blonde hair, making his blue eyes sparkle.
“She’s blind as a bat, you know, like Lorraine at Turtle Shores. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see things—”
“Creek!” I gasp. “You were watching this whole time?”
Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) Page 7
