Those of My Kind
By
Jennifer Loring
Omnium Gatherum
Los Angeles
Those of My Kind
Copyright © 2015 Jennifer Loring
ISBN-13: 978-0692440001
ISBN-10: 0692440003
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher. http://omniumgatherumedia.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
First Electronic Edition
To my husband, Zach, who never let me give up.
…[W]hen she does not find anything else to burn, she will destroy herself. And it will become incorporeal, without body, and it will burn matter, until it has cleansed everything—and all wickedness. For when it does not find anything else to burn, it will turn against itself until it has destroyed itself.
—“The Concept of Our Great Power,” from the Nag Hammadi Library. Trans. Frederik Wisse
Mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man—that would be an advance.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
—Maya Angelou
Chapter One
One moment, Tristan Marcsa felt the sting of hardwood floor against her cheek; the next she was on a gurney wheeled toward the red brick façade of St. Michael’s Hospital. Tristan drifted in and out of consciousness as nurses drained vials of blood from her arm. Her mother murmured that Tristan had gotten her first period this morning, and might it have caused the fainting spell? Momma had grown up in a small Hungarian town and, though one of the few Romani to attend school past Grade Eight, sometimes her rural upbringing showed.
Night fell. Nurses stopped by every couple of hours to check the IV needle or attach a new bag of fluids. It was dehydration all right, but of a sort that would have landed her in a much more unpleasant hospital ward had she admitted to it. Her experiment in deprivation had failed, and she would never be a normal girl. No one must know of the things she did in the dark after her family went to sleep.
A wet mop slapped against the floor outside her room. Moonlight streamed through the slats in the blinds. The whir of machines, coupled with the hard and narrow bed, conspired to prevent more than a few minutes of sleep at a time. Yet in those brief moments, Tristan dreamed of walking through a cemetery in a white dress flowing around her like a spirit. A presence too enormous to be human studied her from the shadows. White wolves attended her, silent until she reached a grave covered in a ragged cloth. Then they closed their unearthly blue eyes, threw back their heads, and howled…
Tristan, sensing someone that should not be in the room with her, struggled to open her heavy eyelids.
Mami Treszka sat on the edge of the bed and placed a statuette of St. Sarah on the table beside Tristan. She laid one of Tristan’s favorite shirts before the figure, and then began to pray. Black Sarah, patron of their people, whom Mami believed would heal and protect her granddaughter.
“They will tell you it’s another thing,” Mami Treszka whispered, “but I know what it is.” Her halo of white hair glowed in the faint light from the window. “I have seen it before, and I can see it in you. You’re having the dreams. You’re already Hunting, aren’t you?”
When Tristan did not respond, Mami murmured ancient words even more frightening for their mystery. Momma allowed no Hungarian or Romani spoken in the house, not after what happened to Daddy. Tristan and her older sister, Jinny, hadn’t learned more than a few words of their ancestral languages.
“My youngest was like you—special.” Mami Treszka lifted Tristan’s hand from the bed and traced her fingertips over her palm. The gentle sensation maneuvered Tristan ever closer toward sleep. “You’ll see how special you are, Trissie. It is your destiny.”
“Don’t be silly,” Tristan said and squeezed her bony hand. She wondered why Mami would say such an odd thing, but she was too exhausted to question her. “My mother is your youngest.”
Mami smiled sadly and contemplated the window, as if expecting someone to appear outside. “She is now.”
~
“Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria,” the doctor said. Mami Treszka’s satisfied smirk sent a shiver through Tristan. “Your blood cells are dying prematurely, and your body has trouble producing new ones.” The doctor turned to Momma. “What Tristan experienced yesterday morning wasn’t her period; it was a discharge of hemoglobin due to the breakdown of blood cells, which builds up in her bladder overnight.”
“Is it serious?” Momma asked.
“This is a rare and potentially life-threatening illness. She may develop blood clots, leukemia, even heart failure or stroke. We can treat her with warfarin to prevent thrombosis, as well as transfusion therapy and possibly antibody therapy.”
Tristan studied the IV needle in her arm, following the red tube up to a blood bag. That was one way of getting it.
“I do not understand any of this.” Momma shook her head. “How did this happen?”
“We believe it developed on its own, rather than in conjunction with another disease. Other than that, we don’t have many answers. But I assure you, we’ll treat Tristan to the best of our abilities. The most important thing she can do is to limit her physical activity, because exertion can trigger these fainting episodes.”
“Nope.” Tristan sat up. She did not intend to tell Rosa, though Momma certainly would. “I’m a dancer.”
The doctor’s condescending smile made Tristan want to knock his teeth out. “You’re still young. You’ll find something else; you have plenty of time.”
“You’re not listening to me. I’ve already been dancing for most of my life. It’s what I do. There is no “something else.””
“I’ll leave that up to your family, but my recommendation is that you stop immediately.”
“I recommend that you drop dead.”
The doctor’s mouth fell open, and his cheeks blazed. Momma leapt out of her chair, apologizing profusely in one breath and promising Tristan’s punishment in the next. Jinny covered her mouth in a failed attempt not to laugh.
Only Mami Treszka sat quietly, with a strange and knowing smile on her face, hands folded over the handle of her cane. She nodded at Tristan and winked, but somehow the small acknowledgement made Tristan feel even sicker.
~
Jinny had started shaving her legs when she turned twelve. Tristan, eight years old and fascinated by her sister’s initiation into adulthood, sat with her in the washroom to watch Jinny’s first attempt with a cheap, disposable razor. The inevitable nick came and then the blood, welling up so brightly against Jinny’s coffee-colored skin…
Jinny banned her from watching, and they never spoke of it again. Tristan figured out how to pop the razor blades from the plastic handles and how to make the blood rise from her own flesh. It began almost as far back as she remembered, a desire sparked by the blue paths visible beneath skin, pulsing in necks. It struck when her mother opened a package of raw meat in the sink and pink liquid dribbled down the drain, so painful a waste it may as well have been her own blood hemorrhaging away. Even her period, which she did get soon enough after leaving the ER, filled her with an unsettling sorrow for the squandered blood and tissue. She understood soon enough what that made her, and why Momma never mentioned Daddy. Why Momma
could not bear the sight of her. Why Momma had given her a boy’s name, a magical talisman to ward off the inevitable horror that befell girls in their family. Why Momma had locked away the memory of her younger sister like a lunatic in the attic, as if it would prevent Tristan from becoming the same.
Had Tristan known any of that at thirteen, had she been able even to grasp the enormity of the task before her, it still wouldn’t have hardened her to the devastation of losing the two things she loved most, and at exactly the same time.
“Come, let’s talk.” Rosa took Tristan’s arm and led her into her small office at the back of the studio. She gestured to a black plastic chair then sat behind her desk. Calendars, schedules, and catalogs of dance costumes for the upcoming recital littered her workspace, while posters of famous flamenco dancers formed colorful wallpaper over the otherwise dreary eggshell paint. Rosa’s desktop speakers blared Ramón Montoya, her favorite flamenco guitarist. When Tristan had first heard the melodies spilling like tears from acoustic guitars, the Spanish words lamenting the suffering of a people, her body could not help but convey their pain through its gestures. She didn’t miss the Victoria Ballet Academy one bit.
Rosa turned the volume down and pressed the “Do Not Disturb” button on the phone. “How are you feeling?” She spoke with a thick Spanish accent. She was obviously Rom, but Momma, of course, refused to concede the point.
“I’m fine. I got out of hospital a couple of days ago. Feel good as new.”
Rosa dropped her gaze to the large, dark purple bruise in the crook of Tristan’s elbow and pursed her lips.
“It’s nothing,” Tristan said. “You know how they are. When you come in through the ER, they test you for everything.”
“Your mother told me you have a rare form of anemia. They said you shouldn’t dance anymore.”
Tristan twiddled her thumbs. She couldn’t tell Rosa the cure was everywhere, in any creature possessing a heart and veins, and that she’d already made deals with some of the weird kids at school to get what she craved. She’d be locked up in a heartbeat. “Yeah, well, they might be wrong.”
“Tristan, I saw you faint. I’ve never seen you so ill, and it frightened me. If something were to happen to you, I couldn’t bear that kind of burden. Not to mention the liability that allowing you to dance creates for my business.”
“So I’m a liability now?”
Rosa’s eyes widened. She clearly regretted her choice of words. “No, no, Tristan, you are a brilliant dancer and a wonderful girl.” Her full, pink lips curved into a smile, making her cheekbones even more stunning. “I have enjoyed all of our time together. But you’re quite ill, and your mother has already canceled your lessons. I am so sorry.”
Tristan clenched her fists in her lap and sealed her lips together, but tears slid down her cheeks nevertheless. “Please, Rosa. Don’t make me quit. I won’t tell Momma I’m here. I’ll find a way to pay for it myself. Just please let me stay.”
“Oh, honey.” Rosa knelt beside Tristan’s chair. Tristan, quivering, welcomed her embrace even as she knew it was the last. “When you are old enough, maybe you can be my assistant. I’ve always meant to hire one—just look at this place.” Rosa offered another smile, but Tristan rejected it by turning away. She couldn’t stomach it any longer. “If there is a way they can make you well again, you will always have a place here.” Rosa dabbed Tristan’s eyes with a tissue. Her skin smelled of vanilla, her auburn hair of raspberries. Two scents forever entwined with heartbreak.
That evening, after Momma had taken Mami Treszka out to see a movie, Tristan stood beside the backyard fire pit and poured lighter fluid over the crumpled gored and ruffled crepe. She dropped a match on top and stepped back as flames whooshed up from the pit, then folded her arms over her chest as the inferno consumed her beloved purple flamenco dress.
Chapter Two
Once there was a beautiful noblewoman, the fairest in the whole of the Regnum Hungariae. As soon as the young ispán laid eyes upon her, he determined to make her his bride no matter the cost. And when he danced with her, it became clear God had made her for his arms alone. But what might win him the love of so beautiful a lady? And so night after night, he prayed to God without answer, until he began to despair of ever making the fair lady his. Then one day God bestowed upon the royal tailor extraordinary new talents with which she made three exquisite dresses woven of the rarest fabrics and threads. The ispán was to grant the dresses to his beloved as a promise of all that would be hers.
The lovely, sweet-natured noblewoman was timid and at first did not know what to make of the first dress presented to her. Many men had wooed her with extravagant gifts, but there was something exceptional about this one. Something that made her heart whisper in sweet tones of love for the young lord and his dresses, gowns as incandescent as the sun, the moon and the stars themselves, for he had pledged to her those very things. And when the girl put on her final dress, a golden gown made with the sun’s own light, God’s love burst forth from her heart with such potency that she consented to the ispán’s proposal at once. They were married the next day and lived happily ever after as lord and lady.
—Royal Scribe to Ispán Gergo of the Castle District Ambrus
~
The physician placed a small mirror beneath the lady’s nose. The glass remained clear.
“She is with God now,” said Gazsi, the priest. He set his hand on Ispán Gergo’s trembling shoulder. The ispán pushed him away.
“I want her with me!” He clutched at her hands again, kissed her forehead and her lips and her cheeks over and over as if to rouse her back to life. “My darling, my darling, I shall never let you go.” Ispán Gergo turned away from her only once, to fix the glare of his red-rimmed eyes upon Anasztaizia. “You. Get out of my sight.”
“Yes, Father.” She curtsied and left the room, anxious to shed the too-small dress for the white linen shift in which she spent most of her time. She would soon turn fourteen, but no one noticed she was no longer a child and had outgrown her dresses.
The Oriental trader, who passed through at least once a year to deliver the lady’s beloved silk pillows, stood against the wall. He wore silk himself, green robes with gold brocade and a tall, tasseled black cap narrow at its peak. A wealthy man; there was no mistaking it even in his foreign garb. He bowed his head. “Lady Anasztaizia, I am sorry for your loss.”
Her death is of no consequence to me, she wanted to say, for in truth the woman had not been a mother to her at all. She wanted even more to ask him for some of his silks, that she might have new dresses made. Instead, she simply murmured, “Thank you.”
Gazsi scowled as he trailed Anasztaizia into the hall, and with a nod, the trader left them to speak alone. According to rumor, Gazsi had attended to the lady’s family throughout her childhood. Lady Katinka insisted he join the royal household upon her marriage, once he returned from many years spent studying in other lands.
“Promise me something, Lady.”
“Of course.”
He flicked a glance toward the hallway into which the trader had receded. “Please stay away from that man. Something about him does not sit well with me.”
Anasztaizia’s stare followed Gazsi’s into the dark corridor. “You spent time in the East. Is he any different than the men with whom you studied?”
“It is not his country of origin that troubles me.” Gazsi smiled a little and shook his head. “Perhaps I am merely being an old, superstitious man. But be cautious around him, won’t you? I will make more time for us to speak later. I suspect your father will demand a great deal of my counsel in the days to come.”
“Do not trouble yourself with me, Gazsi. See to him. In his current state, I prefer he continue to forget about me.”
“He will forget about a good many things, I fear.” Gazsi made a slight bow and walked back into the room.
Gazsi’s words unnerved Anasztaizia as she walked down the winding wooden stairs of the donjon, flames crackl
ing from the torches on either side. Administration would fall by the wayside, yes, but the treasurer was competent enough to carry out the day-to-day necessities of running their small castle district, whose principal asset was the insignificant village of Bodi and its sheep herds. During the officially mandated mourning period, no one would think much about anything besides the dead woman, nor would their lord allow them to. But greater castle districts than theirs, despite the aptitude of its primary administrators, had fallen when a death proved too much for its ruler to bear.
“I will die if they stuff me into another one of those dresses.” Anasztaizia struggled out of the clothes, ripping the seams on each side in the process, and tossed it into the corner of her room. Dorika had left her only a goblet of water from the cistern; aside from Gazsi, she and Árpád alone knew Anasztaizia fasted in preparation for the secret baptism. Anasztaizia went to great lengths to take her meals, such as they were, out of her father’s presence.
Dorika had filled the wooden bathing tub, which sat behind a privacy curtain, with water heated by the great hall’s fireplace. Anasztaizia pulled off her shift and sighed as she sank into the warm, thyme-scented liquid. She rubbed a lumpy cake of soap, made at the nearby soap house where many of the peasants worked, over her arms, chest, and face. An unattractive tumor of tallow, ash, and mutton fat, nothing else made her skin feel so soft. She leaned forward and dunked her head into the water to saturate her hair.
What if I stay under this water? Let the air out of my lungs and watch it turn to bubbles until I can no longer breathe.
When she finished, Anasztaizia stepped out of the tub and snatched up the ruined dress to dry her skin and hair. As she put her shift back on, moonlight streamed in from the slit window, a window meant for an archer, not a lady. She dreamed of weaving a ladder to climb down and running away into the forest. Perhaps a prince in the shape of a beast waited there, hoping for a lady to break his curse. But no princes called upon her. The eligible men whose lands Ispán Gergo coveted received no portraits of her, nor did they attend balls in her honor. Anasztaizia felt herself withering away, a rose neglected on a vine. That she gave herself to Gazsi’s teachings was the natural outcome of her isolation, for she need not concern herself with fleshly pleasures. In a world made of suffering, to bring another life into it was to commit an unspeakable sin.
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