“They can,” Gabi warned. “I’ve seen it.”
Two men came out the front door and stumbled around to the side of the tavern, pulling down their pants to piss on the wall. When I made a grossed-out noise, Gabi put a hand over my mouth, and we both went still.
“Did you hear?” one of the men asked.
“Hear what?” asked his friend.
For a heartbeat I thought they meant us, but then the first man said, quieter, “The White Wolf’s been seen.”
The second man, clearly the more drunk of the two, started to chuckle. “The what?”
“The White Wolf,” the first man repeated. He pulled up his pants and lowered his voice. “The one who used to look like a man? The priest who could talk to the animals? They say he’s been spotted down below the mountains. They say he’s headed our way.”
“How long till he’s here?” the second man asked, suddenly sober.
“Days, maybe. Less. Just giving you warning in case you’ve got business to see to before he arrives.”
“Many thanks, friend. I’ll be sure to pass on the story.”
The two men went back inside, leaving Gabi and me with wide eyes.
“What’s the White Wolf?” I finally asked, feeling nervous.
“I don’t know,” Gabi said, and she looked nervous too.
We both decided it was time to go home.
Back at the top of the hill, Mamaie was calling my name. When she saw me emerge from the forest, she rushed over and grabbed me by the wrist.
“What did I say!” Then she shouted over my head, “She’s here! I found her!”
Tataie appeared, coming down from the path up the mountain. He took off his cap and put it to his chest, crossing himself. I was hurried into the house. There I found Uncle Andrei pacing. He stopped when I came through the door.
“What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you follow directions?” he asked angrily.
“I just went to town,” I said, confused.
“We told you to stay in the yard!”
My cheeks flushed. My knees went weak. He could make me feel awful like nobody else.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
I knew things were serious when Tataie locked the door and Mamaie started closing the shutters. The cottage grew dark, and my voice dropped an octave by instinct.
“We just went by the creek. We were looking for Ioan,” I said.
“Did anyone strange talk to you?” asked Mamaie.
“We were hiding. No one talked to us at all.” I smiled, trying to reassure her. “We’re really good at spying now. These two farmers walked right by us and didn’t even notice. They almost peed on me.”
My grandmother made an unpleasant face, but everyone looked generally relieved.
At least until I added, “They were telling a weird story, though. It was about a wolf. A white wolf.”
Mamaie’s face paled. Tataie went still by the stove.
“A story about a white wolf?” my grandmother repeated, and I knew I’d landed in a pitfall.
“They said… they said people had seen a white wolf. They said he used to be a priest who could talk to the animals—”
“No more, child! Shh!” She turned to my tataie. “How could they be so dense? To let a child overhear! And of all the children in the world!”
Tataie knelt down in front of me till I could see the bald patch on top of his head. He picked up my hands. His were dry, the skin loose and rough. There was a ragged scar on his forearm that I’d never noticed before. He looked at me head-on, unblinking.
“Ileana, are you listening?”
I nodded, suddenly frightened.
“What you heard is a very special story,” my tataie said. “Only adults can tell it, and even then, they can’t tell it all the time. Do you understand?”
I nodded again, though I didn’t.
“What you heard is a story that can’t be told to anyone. Not to Gabi. Not to the other children. Not even to us. Not ever. Do I have your word?”
I’d never seen my grandfather look so shaken. I nodded again, and I meant it. I wouldn’t tell the story. Not for my life.
The Manifesto
Uncle Andrei left in the night while we slept. No more word than a note by my pillow.
It’s not safe here for me anymore. If I stay, it won’t be safe for you, either.
He’d folded the little paper into a bumblebee, like I’d taught him.
That morning I woke up crying. It was an hour yet till dawn, and I sat up straight in the dark, knowing he was no longer there. I’d dreamed that he’d lifted me from my pallet and held me, that he’d given me a gift—not the note, something much more important—and he’d whispered, “Remember, Ileana, even while I’m away, you must always keep faith with your family.”
When I sat up, I was covered in sweat, my face wet with tears. Rain pattered against the cottage windows. Wind shook the shutters and pulled at the boughs of the trees. A fire had ignited inside me, wild and terrified and furious. I got up and ran outside without even finding my shoes. I stumbled down the porch stairs, the door swinging open behind me, banging against the chair by the wall. I screamed for him from the yard in the pouring rain. I screamed for him till I heard rustling in the trees. Then I ran straight toward the sound, gasping, my bare feet breaking branches and slipping on mud, my toes stubbing rocks. In a matter of seconds I was soaked, clothes clinging to my skin as I hurried along the path up the mountain. I called for him, begging him to come back.
The rustling came again. Brush shifted to my left and I turned.
I stared into the eyes of a wolf.
He was gray, dark points at his paws and his ears and his tail. Neither of us moved. Neither of us had expected the other. Sweat and rain dripped from my nose to the earth.
There was shouting behind me, commotion, and the wolf took off into the woods. He was long gone by the time my tataie reached me and knelt down.
“Are you all right? Are you all right, Ileana?”
I stared into the trees, unable to answer.
Sanda came later that morning, when I was tucked into bed. She felt my forehead, her small hand frigid, and smiled.
“Just a summer fever. A couple days’ good rest and she’ll be fine.”
My mamaie put oversize wool socks on my feet. She kept the windows shut and the woodstove hot to keep out the chill from the storm. She cut an onion in half and left it by my bed to suck out the sickness. My tataie brewed a special tea made of herbs. I slept and woke to eat garlic soup, hardly noticing how bad things were beginning to smell. Two days later, though, I was still burning up. My skin was sore to the touch. I was too weak even to walk on my own to the toilet outside, so my mamaie kept a little pot for me to use in the kitchen. When I breathed, there was a rattle deep down in my chest. When I coughed, there was brown phlegm in my handkerchief. A real doctor, from another, much larger, village, was sent for. He gave me an injection and left me with a bottle of syrup that burned my throat going down.
I missed my mother so much then, more than I ever had in my life. I craved the back of her hand on my forehead. I yearned for her kiss on my cheek. Her humming. Her scent like a salve. The feel of her presence lingering at the door while I dozed. She could soothe my aches with only her touch.
I missed my father, too, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Was he walking to the boulevard alone, with no one to hold his hand? Who found his reading glasses for him if he misplaced them? If Tata had come into the cottage and picked me up in his arms, I’d have started to cry. I’d have forgiven him without hesitation for all the things that he’d done, and begged him to tell me the end of our story.
I pleaded with Mamaie, wanting her to call my parents, sure they would come if they knew I was so sick. Finally she did as I asked, but there was no answer at home.
Adults whispered over my bed, their voices drifting in and out like waves, like
a radio signal from over the border or the dub on a copied tape that had been watched too many times.
… they surely won’t bother you… told them it’s very contagious… no one’s suspicious; don’t fret… should be gone in a day or two more… a sighting up in the mountains…
For days it continued to rain. My grandparents took turns keeping watch. Mamaie embroidered in her chair or wove at the loom in the corner. Tataie played softly on his fiddle. They told stories, and the stories would churn around in my head as I dozed and woke and dozed again. Roma and dragons and magic. The evil box buried under the house. Tataie’s three coins and the night he was sure he would die.
Cooped up in that smelly, hot cottage, I felt like my head would burst, it was so full. My dreams were so ripe, gushing, and swollen, so overflowing with color and sound, that one night I floated right out of my bed. Past the stove. Out the door. Off the porch.
In the yard was a girl just my age, humming as she skipped out the gate. She had a basket with a yellow cloth. Her nightdress was dirty and torn at the hem. A shawl slipped over her ears and fell to her shoulders. She paused at the place where the stone steps up the hill to the cottage met the path that would lead through the forest. A wolf appeared from the darkness to meet her—not gray, but white.
I couldn’t help following. All the way up the mountain we went—all the way to the twisted trees and the ancient monastery at the top of the world. At times, I tried to catch up, hurrying as fast as my dream legs could fly, but the girl and her companion always stayed just ahead, out of reach.
Inside the high walls of the monastery, its stones covered in moss and cracked at the seams, the girl with the basket tiptoed through the halls, pausing to peek into doorways. When she came to a great vaulted room, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, gesturing for me to come look. When I peeked inside too, I saw monks, all lined up at massive oak tables. Tiny flames burned on pale mounds of melted wax, the memory of a hundred candles in each spot. The men were dressed in black robes with big sleeves and metal crosses dangling from their necks. They wore tall, rounded black hats with black cloth hanging like capes halfway down to the floor. They didn’t see me. They were chanting and writing, so diligent in their work, making copies and copies and copies of the very same story. I desperately wanted to know what it was, but I knew that I couldn’t disturb them.
I snuck through the remains of the dusty old stone halls, the overgrown gardens, and the great crumbling chapel. Back outside, the girl and her wolf came to a stop at the tip of the mountain. There I peered over the edge of the world into the valley below.
My heart caught in my throat.
Armies had come to the village while I was away. They were burning the homes to the ground.
I reached out to the girl, frightened, craving her touch and the hum of her song, so close this time, but when my hand found hers, it glided through like water. She shimmered and rippled, wisping away, the smoke of her sailing over the tops of the pines and ashes and firs.
Then, to my right, there was movement. The white wolf’s body changed, growing larger and longer. He shed his fur, his skin turning scaly and slick. He wasn’t really a wolf. He never had been. Instead he was a white dragon with a white wolf’s elongated head. Six silver tongues darted out from his mouth. When he howled, there was fire, and a thousand wolves howled back in response. I watched them cascade down the mountain. I watched them crash into the armies.
The white dragon-wolf leaped from the peak of the mountain. He soared down to the valley below, and I again heard my uncle’s voice at my ear. “Have you kept faith, Ileana? Is the gift that I left you still safe?”
When I woke, I was calm, and I lay for a long time listening to the rain. The lamps had died down, only one left on the windowsill, flickering. Tataie was asleep in the chair by the cold stove. Mamaie was snoring in their bedroom. My fever had broken, but the dream still burned hot in my head. I sat up, and the floorboards beneath me creaked. I looked at the woven blankets that made up my pallet, then lifted them to reveal the smooth wood. One of the planks was uneven—a corner sticking up above the rest, nails loose and wiggly. I pulled the blankets up more, and light from the one tiny flame shone into the space underneath the loose board.
Something was there in the dark.
I glanced at Tataie. Quiet as I could be, I removed the plank and reached down inside. I had to put my arm in up to my elbow. I had to feel around in the air, fearing what creatures I might touch by mistake. My fingertips scraped old stone. Something squirmed past my wrist and made my spine stiffen. But then the thing I sought was in my hand and I was pulling it out.
The papers Uncle Andrei had left us were torn at the edges.
They were muddy, and the black ink was smeared.
I remembered his left hand wrapped tight in a bandage, the fingers unable to move.
“I guess they weren’t fans of my writing.” A wink and a smile.
My eyes scanned the first page. Not his Ts. Not his Fs. Not his Ms. But I’d know his voice anywhere. If he’d published a grocery list, I could tell.
It was only a story in the broadest of terms: a history of the pains of our people, a series of demands to relieve them. Attached to the end was a list of names in different handwriting. Beside the names were professions: teachers, scientists, artists, musicians. My uncle was one of the first. The list went on and on, page after page after page. At the very bottom, Sanda and my grandparents had signed.
I thought for a long time. I stared.
Of all the writing in all the world, this was what Uncle Andrei had carried with him over the mountains. This was what he’d clung to with his broken hands, what he’d hidden away.
There was no mark of publication. And it certainly wasn’t the kind of writing people wanted to read. It would make them uncomfortable, anxious, afraid. It would make them question our whole way of life.
This. This is what writers can do.
I crawled across the floor to my little yellow notebook. I took the pen back to my bed. And before returning the manifesto to its hiding place, on the very last page, I printed my name.
Beside it I wrote, Storyteller.
What Belongs to Us
After I’d been bedridden for almost a week, Sanda finally proclaimed that I was well—just in time, of course, for the start of school. On our last day of vacation, Gabi showed up at the cottage barely after sunrise. I was awake and already dressing, fiddling with the straps on my overalls and lacing my boots. It had begun to get chilly in the mornings—the leaves already tinting red and orange—and since I’d only brought summer wear, Mamaie helped me go through my mother’s old clothes. Unfortunately, most of it was too big for me to wear, and to be honest, the dresses and skirts and head scarves didn’t look like they belonged to my mother at all.
At my request, Mamaie traded one of her blankets with a neighbor for some used children’s clothes. Though she muttered about how she’d prefer to see me in things meant for girls, my grandmother got me some brown overalls and big boots, which hardly smelled like boy feet at all. Mamaie’s comments were delicate enough to ignore, and besides, when I wore my overalls, I looked like a real farmer. Tataie said so more than once, and it made me beam bright as a radish.
After securing the last button, I met Gabi in the kitchen. She had a net and a stubborn look on her face.
“There’s some Bombus lucorum down near the schoolhouse,” she said, her jaw set. When I didn’t react, she rolled her eyes. “White-tailed bumblebees.”
My brow raised. “Those are worth extra credit.”
Perhaps there was hope I’d finish my homework after all.
Since, of course, I’d completed all the summer reading, I’d helped Gabi fill out her worksheets with questions about characters. I’d even written book reports for her to copy, just different enough from my own that we shouldn’t get caught. In return the veterinarian’s daughter had brought me slugs, beetles, grasshoppers, and moths. She’d dropped
the cotton balls into the jars and pinned the bugs to my board.
“It’s all right,” she said as she pushed the needles through their backs and caught my expression. “They’re dead now. It doesn’t hurt.”
“It’s just so sad, though,” I said. “Why do they make us kill them?”
“Adults are pretty messed up.” She shrugged. “But I guess it’s better than keeping them alive trapped in a jar, feeding them grass and stuff that they don’t want to eat.”
“Maybe,” I said. Though at least in a jar there was hope. Your captor might let you go. Or the jar might get knocked off the table and break.
Even with Gabi’s help, though, my bug collection was unfinished. If I wanted the project to pass, I’d have to catch something really fantastic.
“I saw the bees yesterday in some witch’s bells. Probably the last of the year,” Gabi said. “I wanted to get one for you, but I was bringing formula to the Salas’ piglets and my arms were full. They might be back today, though, and you need the points. You won’t get any credit for those mushed caterpillars.”
I looked at Mamaie, who was near the door collecting her things.
“You’re sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked, touching a hand to my head. I nodded, and she said, “Go ahead, then, but no running. And no drinking cold water out of the well. And keep away from the man at the inn.”
She still hadn’t said out loud who he was, but I knew.
While I’d been sick, a stranger had arrived in the valley. He claimed that he was on vacation, traveling the countryside, and had promised to meet a companion in our town. Every day he walked around the village, describing his friend to the townspeople, asking if anyone had seen him. The description sounded just like my uncle.
My grandparents’ first instinct was that I should stay hidden. But the man never mentioned anything about a little girl, and once school started tomorrow, it would be more suspicious than anything else to keep me locked up at home.
“Don’t worry,” I said to Mamaie. “Ninja Robo-Gabi and I will use stealth mode.”
The Story That Cannot Be Told Page 11
