My Swordhand Is Singing (17 page)

38

The Song of the Miorita

Peter scrambled to his feet and rushed to Tomas, who had managed to sit up.

“How did you do that?” Peter cried. “You were so drunk!”

Tomas smiled.

“Haven’t touched a drop all afternoon,” he said, “but it worked.”

Sofia came over. Her uncle was with her.

“Tomas,” Milosh said. “Are you hurt?”

Tomas chose not to answer this.

“How are your people?” he asked.

“Some are hurt. Some badly. But all are alive. Thanks to you. I am glad you came to your senses at last.”

“I didn’t come willingly,” Tomas said.

“What happened?” Peter asked. He turned to Milosh. “You came to take the sword by force?”

“Yes,” said Milosh, “but when we got here we found Tomas waiting for us. It seems something had changed his mind. Someone.”

Peter glanced at his father, then looked away at the ground, his heart pounding.

“We knew they would come for the sword, so we waited. We didn’t expect them to bring you, but it played into our hands.”

Sofia looked at Peter, smiling, but Peter was looking at his father on the ground.

“Are you hurt? What happened?”

Milosh knelt down beside Tomas, feeling for the wound.

“One of them got a blow in. Here.”

Tomas winced as Milosh pressed his stomach. Pulling back Tomas’s clothes, they could see a huge discolored swelling already forming.

“You’re bleeding. We must get you inside.”

“No,” said Tomas.

“No?” said Milosh.

“Peter. What did you see in the village? There are others from the graveyard, aren’t there?”

Peter nodded.

“Dozens,” he said.

“That’s not possible!” Milosh cried.

“It’s true, Uncle. I saw them,” Sofia said. “And they won’t stop now.”

Tomas sat up straighter. “We have to act. We have learned a lot today. We have seen hostages walk in daylight. It seems Agnes was among them. There may be others. I have never heard of that before. So the Shadow Queen’s power is growing. Some of them may even have been living among us, biding their time. And the hostages have learned about the sword, and they want it. Well, they will get it, but we have learned something else too.”

Tomas turned to Sofia.

“What you did…How did you know?”

“I…I didn’t,” Sofia said slowly. “I just believed.”

“There!” Tomas said. “And what did you believe?”

“I’m not sure…”

She shook her head, puzzled, and Peter laughed.

“I know!” he said. “I believe it too. I understand the song.”

“And what does the song teach us?” Tomas said. “Does it teach us to go to our deaths, without fighting? To accept our fate?”

“No,” said Peter. “No. It teaches us to embrace death while we live, to understand it, so that when we do finally come to die, we may accept it without fear. And that way we can live free of fear, believing in ourselves.”

“That is it,” said Milosh. “That is it. Death is part of life. They are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other. The song teaches us that if we accept a wedding with death, we can go to our graves content. It is people’s failure to understand this that makes them prey to the Shadow Queen.”

“How?” asked Peter.

“She can feel the discontent of the dead, those who were not content, those who had not understood the Miorita. These people are open to her power, and so she brings them back from the grave.”

“And now we have another weapon!” Peter cried. “A song!”

Peter could feel this faith within him, as a presence that he had failed to see until now. Belief in the song, and true understanding of its message, that was it. Enough to give power, enough to lay the hostages to rest.

“Yes,” said Tomas. “And a great confrontation is upon us. Help me to my feet.”

“No, Father!” Peter cried. “You must rest. Let someone else take the sword.”

“Your son is right,” Milosh said. “Give the sword to me. I am not as skilled as you, but I will do my best. You are hurt.”

Seeing no help from anyone, Tomas rolled onto his side, then scrambled to all fours. He raised his head, and trunk, and knelt. He put one foot flat in the snow, and pushed for all he was worth. He stood.

“No, Milosh. I am not hurt,” he said. “I am dying. But my swordhand is singing. I will take the sword into the village, and put an end to it.”

Milosh dropped his head, unable to meet Tomas’s stare.

“Please, Father,” Peter said. “Please don’t.”

Tomas turned to his son, his face pale with pain.

He spoke softly, so that only Peter could hear.

“I have been a bad father to you. Please give me the chance to be a good one.”

Tears welled in Peter’s eyes, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand, but he looked his father in the face, and nodded.

“We will help you,” he said.

“The song!” Sofia cried. “We can help you with the song!”

Tomas nodded.

“Then let’s be ready,” he said. “We have the sword. Milosh, you have six men here. More in your camp. Peter, my son. Sofia. And we have the song! If only I had a horse. Peter, you should have seen me with King Michael! When we rode our warhorses into battle, the ground itself shook with fear!”

“But look!” said Sofia. “You do have a horse! Sultan!”

They all turned and saw the old white horse walking serenely through the trees toward them, his head nodding as he came.

Tomas laughed.

“What do you say, Sultan? Can you manage it?”

Sultan snorted.

39

Resurrection

They made an extraordinary sight, but there was no one to see them as they made their way through the forest, toward the stricken village.

At their head, a fat, red-cheeked man rode a stocky white horse. The rider and horse formed the point of an arrow, as behind and to each side walked his friends. His son. His dead comrade’s brother and daughter. Others of their kind, maybe twenty in all.

They saw no one, and no one saw them.

They reached the village.

They walked down the long main street that led to the square and still they saw no one. Not a word was spoken, and the silence in the streets was absolute.

They arrived in the square, and stopped.

And now they came.

From every alley and street, they came. Those whom the Shadow Queen had brought from the ground.

They did not come slowly. They ran, they hurtled toward the man and his horse.

“Sing!” he shouted.

They sang, twenty voices in unison, with full lungs and loud voices. The hostages began to falter and hesitate, slowing in their great number. But still they came on. And there were scores of them.

The rider knew the moment had come.

He looked down to his son, and smiled.

He kicked the horse into action.

“Sultan!” he cried. “Hah!”

Away he rode into the fight. Behind him, the singing voices lifted higher and higher, reaching out to protect him as he darted this way and that through the crowd, the sword flashing in the failing light in the square.

Bodies began to pile all around him, bodies that lay still, that did not wish to leave the ground anymore, and as he fought on through the grappling hands and the clawing fingers, he saw that he would die.

There was nothing for Tomas now.

Not the singing.

Not the square.

Not the dead.

Not even Sultan.

Just the sword, which flew so fast that the air itself was cut in two.

But the hands grasped and grappled and there were too many. He was pulled from Sultan’s back, landing clumsily in the mud.

From a seemingly vast distance, he heard a cry.

“Father!”

Peter. It was his son, sprinting to be beside him in a moment. Dimly, Tomas saw Peter snatch the sword from the ground and begin to swing it wildly about him. The hostages faltered, shocked by the fluid energy of the boy, by his strength.

Tomas’s eyes were closed now, but in his mind he could see Peter twisting and stroking the blade from side to side.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s it. Feel it!”

In his heart, he heard Peter’s reply.

“Yes, Father. My swordhand is singing.”

Tomas found himself staring at nothing but a bright white light that seemed to open in the sky above him, pouring down onto the blade, bathing him in joy.

Joy that he had been good, one last time.

That he had given.

That he was a good father, with a good son. It was the joy of completeness.

Even as Peter swung the sword for the last time, and gave rest to the last of the hostages, and fell to his knees by his father, the joy was irrepressible.

As Tomas died, his heart was singing, and a smile spread across his face.

40

A Perfect Shade of Green

Days pass, whether you want them to or not. For Peter the days passed slowly, but nonetheless, one day winter had gone.

The Gypsies stayed on through the winter, living in the clearing just as they had before. Every day, Sofia would visit Peter and Sultan on their little island.

Peter, his mind drifting, seldom spoke on these occasions, but Sofia would talk to him anyway, tell him of news from the camp, and from the village. She told him that when St. George’s Day arrived, they would be on their way once more. This was a piece of news that Peter had taken in.

One day, as Sofia cooked some soup on the stove in the hut, Peter got to his feet abruptly.

Startled, she looked at him.

“What is it?”

“Come with me,” he said.

He took her by her lovely brown hand and gently led her out, and around the side of the hut, to the toolshed.

“Look,” he said. “That was the first thing I found.”

Sofia shook her head, not understanding what he meant.

All she saw was a row of tools. Saws, chisels, hammers, gouges, laid out on a bench in a neat line.

“He was never like that,” Peter said. “The tools were always a mess. Whenever he finished with something he’d leave it where it fell. If he put things back in here at all, he’d leave them all over the place. But when we came back from the village—that last day—this was the first thing I found. At some point, when he and Milosh and the others were waiting for the hostages’ attack, he came out here and tidied up the tools.”

He hesitated, then asked, “Why did he do that?”

Sofia shrugged.

“He knew,” she said. “He’d already decided what he was going to do. He did it for you, because you brought him back to himself.”

What happened after Tomas fell from the horse was a blur to Peter. He knew he had rushed to his father, that he had taken his father’s sword and fought for him, but he couldn’t remember the details.

He knew they had won. He remembered that the villagers came rushing out from their houses, among them Teodor and Daniel, who fell on their knees in thankfulness before Peter and the Gypsies.

And then there was Anna, old Anna, whom everyone feared. Even she came and begged forgiveness from them all.

“What can I do to thank you?” she wailed.

Milosh had told her.

“Stand up,” he said.

She did so, a puzzled look on her face.

“Turn around,” he said, and the old woman complied.

Before she had turned back, Milosh had snatched the sword from the ground beside Tomas, and with a single stroke had cut Anna to the ground.

There had been shock and outrage. But only at first, as Milosh gently rolled Anna’s body face down.

There he pointed out what no one else had seen, or at least understood. The old woman’s back was covered in sawdust.

“From a coffin,” he explained. “That was why she didn’t want to help us. She was one of them! She was guiding them, infected perhaps by the Shadow Queen herself…. I would have understood sooner, but we didn’t know they could move by daylight.”

Milosh had turned to give the sword to Peter.

“This is yours now,” he said, but Peter shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want it. It’s what my father didn’t want to be. Let me give it to you. You will need it. You can use it.”

Milosh nodded.

They buried Tomas in the very graveyard from which the epidemic had first sprung, now truly a place of final rest, thanks to their efforts.

Finally, St. George’s Day came, and with it, Sofia came to see Peter for the last time.

It was a beautiful spring morning, full of bursting hope. The trees were heavy with leaves, and flowers had leapt into life in the meadow. Peter was sitting on a tree stump on his island, thinking how the early green of spring was the most perfect of the year, when into his vision walked Sofia.

“May I come over?” she called.

Peter waved and she crossed the bridge.

Beyond her, Peter saw the Gypsy caravan on the path through the trees, and knew the day had come.

“Don’t say anything,” he said as she came close.

The smile softened his words, but Sofia still ignored him.

“Why don’t you come with us?” she said.

“I can’t,” Peter said. “You know that as well as I do. This is my home. I belong here, in the home my father and I built. I want to stay.”