“We are both,” my mother says. “We are Szgany.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Szgany. Our last name, our family. Văduvă is not our name. That was the name of my first music teacher. And my first name is Lolo, not Lola.”
“What the fuck?” I’m actually not sure if I say that aloud or just express it with my face.
“I know you think I am... what did you say, ‘schizophrenic,’” my mother says, and I wince. “It is all right, child. What I am going to tell you will sounds like delusions. But you need to hear me.”
I love her so much and I am such a shitbag. “Of course.”
“The man chasing you is called Hunyadi Corvinus Mátyás, the Raven King. Or, as I knew him, Matthew Corbin. He ruled Hungary in the fifteenth century... he helped Vlad Drăculești take power in Transylvania—”
I already have, like, 50 questions, all at once, and I am so overwhelmed, I ask the stupidest of all. “Drăculești? Like Dracula? I vant to suck your blood Dracula?” When did you know him? In the 1400s?
“Many years ago, our people... my mother... we were enslaved to the house of Drăculești. When Drăculești was killed, Corvinus claimed his rights to the Szgany.”
This is the craziest shit yet to come from my mother’s mouth. Is it the drugs in my system? Her mother? Vampires, slaves. Why am I... believing her?
“The Szgany served Corvinus for many years. But in the 20th century... he lost us. The First World War and the Second World War, and the Szgany died or took the opportunity to disappear. Corvinus vowed to have us back.” My mother studies my face to see my reaction, and god damn it if I’m not all in. “When I went to university, I met some of the extended family. I did not know Corvinus had them back in his power.”
At this, we both startle. A nurse comes in to check on me. It’s time to order lunch and to stop accidentally sitting on the call button. I have no idea if the nurse heard anything; if she has, she acts as if she hasn’t. Knowing Seattle, it’s probably far from the craziest shit she has ever overheard.
When she leaves, my mother continues. “I met him there, in London. To me, like I said, he was Matt. My... boyfriend.” My mother laugh-chokes in her hand, embarrassed. She pushes on. “I was very naive. I did not know better. My mother—she sent me to him, in a way.”
“I don’t understand the timeline, Mamă.The fifteenth century? You went to school in the ’seventies.” At least I’m going for better questions, now.
My mother nods. “My mother, your grandmother, she swore the oath that enslaved all Szgany. For that, she was punished, too. When my mother had me, she was almost 500 years old.”
Yeah. I wrote that correctly. Grandma’s 500 years old. No wonder my mother looks great at 65.
My mother pours a dixie cup of water from the pitcher by my bed. “This does sound crazy. Nonsense—‘shesti’ was the word I used to use with my best friend. Bull shit.” She hands the cup of water to me, then pours herself one. Then she continues.
“Anyway, to make a long, shesti story shorter, make sense, I do not know. The Raven King had me, and let me go. He tells me that it’s written, that I am fated... he tells me it does not matter if I stay or if I go, because it is not me who is important. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, one day, he will come for my daughter.”
Aides with lunch trays come in then. They make a big show of moving things off my table, and I want them to just leave, and the food smells sort of horrible. My mother makes me take some apple juice then, and she refills her water. When we are alone again, she continues.
“I decided to disappear, Then, I made it so I could never have children.”
I almost drop my water. “But—”
She does not let me finish. “Danior, Dani. You are mine, but I did not have you. I wanted you, desperately. I had a chance to take you, to help out someone, and I thought—”
“It would be OK because I was a boy.”
“Yes,” she said. “A boy would be safe. I named you Danior for the reasons you found out, all on your own. I was so proud when I saw that. You were a gift. And you would need to be strong. With teeth.” My mother gulps down water like it is a shot of something, and I don’t blame her. “But I knew you were a little girl soon after you came to me. I hoped because I didn’t birth you, you would be... free. But I did not want to chance you.
“So, we traveled.” She held open her arms. “We lived like Romany, and you did not even know. I raised you Romany, after all. We traveled like Gypsies have done for thousands of years. We travel to stay free, we travel to be ahead of monsters. War, famine, oppression, slavery, vampires. Monsters.”
I’m sure I missed parts. I’ll try to add them as I remember. But at this point, my mother stopped. We were both exhausted. My mother held my hand, and we shared my hospital lunch, and we watched the news as Hurricane Harvey landed in Texas. There was comfort losing ourselves in the suffering of others, strength in feeling for someone else, in watching them run from their own monsters.
August 27 (Public)
I’M HOME! IN one piece (though a gallbladder short) and sore all over (but I have a week’s worth of happy pills to help with that). I am going to have one bad-ass scar, and you bet I’ll show it off, someday, in a bikini.
I’m not supposed to sit up for too long, so this is just a quick update. Things are great here. I’m so happy my mother knows everything. In fact, she’s been telling me stories about the past, about her life, and we’re closer than ever. She even gave me things to read about women in our family, and one day, she says, I will take my rightful place.
You can’t fight nature, my mother always said. You can only rise to meet her or you can run away.
And I am wayyyyy too sore to run (grin).
August 27 (Private)
MY MOTHER GAVE me a leather portfolio. “It’s our history,” she said.
Where she’d kept it hidden in this RV, I’ll never know. I was sure I’d searched every square inch of this thing at one time or another.
The pages are delicate—a journal article, handwritten letters—and I’m scanning them in to protect them:
• ftp://TheGypsyLoreSociety_Grandma_Mera.pdf
• ftp:///Lolo_Letters.pdf
My mother’s introduced me to something actually quite nice: tea with jam, and “Django Reinhardt—Pêche à la Mouche: The Great Blue Star Sessions 1947/1953.” I’m showing her how to use the computer to find her best friend, cousin Kezia Szgany. They haven’t spoken in 46 years.
We’re getting to know one another, no more secrets.
WELL, MAYBE JUST one secret, and it is mine to keep.
I was born a girl, the granddaughter of death. Fated to bring together again a clan, sworn in blood to serve the devil. I will fulfill my destiny, but not how Hunyadi Corvinus Mátyás believes.
He’s thinks he’s coming for me, but I will be waiting.
Someday, I, Dani Szgany, will bring my people to the light. I, Dani Szgany, am going to kill the so-called Raven King.
Sparkle!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Milena Benini started writing when she was 12, and simply never stopped. She has written five novels in Croatian and one in English, as well as numerous short stories, some of which have been translated into several languages, including Spanish and Polish. She is also the winner of five SFera awards, as well as a number of other local awards. She lives in Zagreb with her family.
Emil Minchev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, on the 26th of October 1984. He has a master’s degree in International Relations from Sofia University and has translated more than 40 books, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dracula’s Guest, Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis and many others. He has also written for various Bulgarian magazines and published three novels of his own—Towers of Stone and Bone (a fantasy novel), Unlimited Access (an epistolary anti-utopian novel) and Nose for Crime (a sci-fi detective novel).
Caren Gussoff Sumption is a SF writer living in Seattle, WA.
The author of Homecoming (2000) and The Wave and Other Stories (2003), first published by Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Books and The Birthday Problem (2014) by Pink Narcissus Press, Gussoff Sumption’s been published in anthologies by Seal Press and Prime Books. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West.
Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person currently living in the US as a resident alien. E writes both speculative fiction and poetry, and eir work has been published in a variety of venues like Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex and Strange Horizons, among others. You can find visit eir website at www.prezzey.net and find em on Twitter as @bogiperson. E also reviews books focusing on marginalized authors at www.bogireadstheworld.com.
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He’s the author of the critically acclaimed series Shadows of the Apt and Echoes of the Fall, of the standalone works Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time, and numerous short stories and novellas.
Magic, Michief, Love and War
It is the Year of Our Lord 1601. The Tuscan War rages across the world, and every lord from Navarre to Illyria is embroiled in the fray. Cannon roar, pikemen clash, and witches stalk the night; even the fairy courts stand on the verge of chaos.
Five stories come together at the end of the war: that of bold Miranda and sly Puck; of wise Pomona and her prisoner Vertumnus; of gentle Lucia and the shade of Prospero; of noble Don Pedro and powerful Helena; and of Anne, a glovemaker’s wife. On these lovers and heroes the world itself may depend.
These are the stories Shakespeare never told. Five of the most exciting names in genre fiction today – Jonathan Barnes, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, Foz Meadows and Kate Heartfield – delve into the world the poet created to weave together a story of courage, transformation and magic.
Including an afterword by Dr. John Lavagnino, The London Shakespeare Centre, King's College London.
www.abaddonbooks.com
THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS DETECTIVE, AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE!
This is Sherlock Holmes as you’ve never seen him before: as an architect in a sleepy Australian town, as a gentleman in seventeenth-century Worcestershire, as a precocious school girl in a modern British comprehensive. He’s dodging his rent in the squalid rooms of the notorious Chelsea Hotel in ’68, and preventing a bloody war between the terrible Lords Wizard of a world of fantasy.
Editor David Thomas Moore brings together the finest of celebrated and new talent in SF and Fantasy to create a spectrum of Holmes stories that will confound everything you ever thought you knew about the world’s greatest detective.
Featuring fourteen original stories by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, Gini Koch, Guy Adams, Ian Edginton, James Lovegrove, Glen Mehn, Jamie Wyman, JE Cohen, Jenni Hill, Joan de la Haye, Kaaron Warren, Kasey Lansdale and Kelly Hale.
www.abaddonbooks.com
Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories was one of the first true children's books in the English language, a timeless classic that continues to delight readers to this day. Beautiful, evocative and playful, the stories of How the Whale Got His Throat or How the First Letter Was Written paint a world of magic and wonder.
It's also deeply rooted in British colonialism. Kipling saw the Empire as a benign, civilising force, in a way that's troubling to modern readers. Not So Stories attempts to redress the balance, bringing together new and established writers of colour from around the world to take the Just So Stories back, to interrogate, challenge and celebrate their legacy.
Including stories by Adiwijaya Iskandar, Joseph E. Cole, Raymond Gates, Stewart Hotston, Zina Hutton, Georgina Kamsika, Cassandra Khaw, Paul Krueger, Tauriq Moosa, Jeannette Ng, Ali Nouraei, Wayne Santos and Zedeck Siew, illustrations by Woodrow Phoenix and an introduction by Nikesh Shukla.
www.abaddonbooks.com
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