C7 Chapter 7

Heike woke before Peter.

He got up quietly, in order not to wake his companion, and moments later he was standing in the doorway facing the square. The whitewashed inn was bathed in the morning sun and the square lay deserted. Some fallen leaves lay next to the well and on a balcony on the other side of the square the last flowers of summer displayed their colours. In front of the house with the window box, which was a little nicer than all the others, there was a courtyard paved with stones laid in a beautiful mosaic pattern. Heike wondered whether that was where the two fine ladies lived? No, they had been riding in a carriage.

A nice little village. Very old.

He crossed the square and reached a balustrade between two houses. From there he had a view across to the meadows down by the river.

There were two horses grazing.

He was able to see a good way along the valley. The morning heralded yet another warm day and the vapour rising from the cold ground into the warm air enveloped the landscape in an increasingly pale and soft grey-green fog the farther he looked into the distance.

The day was going to be muggy and humid. It was summer’s last gasp before it was vanquished by the cunning, clingy chill of autumn.

An immense overhanging cliff dominated the far end of the valley. Heike wondered what lay hidden behind it. Perhaps nothing. Two ravens were circling above the cliff, scouting for prey in the valley.

Zeno, the innkeeper, came out and went over to Heike.

“Beautiful creatures,” Heike said of the horses. “They don’t look like any of the other horses in this area.”

“No, they belonged to a couple of French noblemen. You should take them with you if you leave Stregesti. We have neither a proper barn nor fodder for them. They won’t survive the harsh winter here.”

Heike noticed that Zeno said “if” and not “when” they left Stregesti. More importantly, Zeno apparently wanted contact with him and Heike understood that he had to weigh his words carefully.

Still, Heike couldn’t help asking him directly: “Why didn’t the Frenchmen take their horses with them?”

Zeno hesitated for a moment. “They disappeared,” he answered ambiguously.

Heike knew that Zeno meant the Frenchmen but pretended to have misunderstood his words.

“Have many ... horses ... disappeared?

“Yes,” Zeno answered curtly.

“In the forest?”

“Perhaps.”

Zeno’s hesitant response indicated something else and Heike continued, “My friends are still sleeping. I feel like walking around the village a little before breakfast. Is there anything special I ought to see?”

Zeno’s gaze moved instinctively towards the cliff face. “Perhaps the church?” he said slowly, almost reluctantly.

What was Zeno trying to tell him? Heike wasn’t certain.

“Do you have time to join me?” he asked.

Zeno turned. “No, not just at this moment. But I might catch up with you later.”

“That’s fine.”

They parted. Heike sauntered on in the hazy heat. The village wasn’t big. Surrounding the square were two or three fancier houses. The rest of the settlement consisted of small, humble clay huts and between them some indescribably foul-smelling alleys. Women wearing widows’ veils stood shaking out blankets but quickly disappeared inside when Heike approached them. When he had passed by they came back out and watched him.

The only men he had seen since he arrived were Zeno and the locals in the inn the night before. They were all older men and, except for Zeno, none too sympathetic.

There seem to be many widows in the village, Heike thought.

He didn’t have to go very far before he reached the little church. Heike thought it was probably an orthodox church. He made do with looking at it from the outside because like the other cursed members of the Ice People, he had difficulty crossing the threshold of a church. It had been the cause of many a conflict back home in Planina, but in the end Elena and Milan had accepted a compromise: Heike would go to church twice a year but no more, and that was that.

So he could have entered had he wanted to. It was just challenging for him.

He looked at the church and didn’t think it looked all that interesting. Then he walked into the cemetery, which was small and surrounded by a high iron fence.

It was very old. There must be a newer one somewhere. Thick roots and sturdy vines had entwined the gravestones, concealing them in interlacing colours of green and brown. Some of the gravestones were still standing, but to Heike’s astonishment the inscriptions, the few that he could make out, were written in a foreign alphabet, and he couldn’t determine which.

So he didn’t get much information from looking at that cemetery.

Suddenly Zeno was beside him. He had entered the cemetery without a sound.

The innkeeper looked nervously at Heike. “Why don’t we go into the church?”

Heike resisted involuntarily but it seemed important to Zeno, so he nodded briefly and followed him into the little church.

Zeno made a silent prayer in front of the battered image of Christ on the cross. Almost all the paint had peeled off the crucifix and the wood itself was worn smooth from having been touched by thousands of hands over the years.

When he saw how Zeno clutched the cross with his hand Heike knew that must be exactly what had happened for decades, perhaps centuries. Was this a haven for the poor inhabitants of this village?

Poor, Heike thought. Yet still he knew next to nothing of all the things Yves had been told.

“We’re safe here,” Zeno whispered with fearful eyes. “Is there anything you’d like to know?”

“Yes, a lot! First of all, where are all the men of the village?”

“How should I know where people have gone when they have disappeared?”

“Does that mean you’ve never found any of them again?”

“Yes, one. He lived for a very short time. That was many years ago.”

Lived? Did that mean that all the others had died? Did Zeno know more than he wanted to tell him?

“The one that survived,” Heike began, “Did he say anything?”

“Just a few words. That was all.”

Zeno had grown pale. He stammered the words intermittently as though he were deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. “He looked awful. Terrible! We found him ... completely naked. His entire body was covered with strange scratches. And the strangest thing of all was that his ... member ... it was ...”

Zeno couldn’t get the words out, he just stuck his index finger in the air while looking extremely ill at ease and shocked.

Heike blushed. “Go on. So he said two words?”

“Yes, he was dying, you see. He was an unusually big, strong, handsome man so he had probably survived through sheer willpower. But he stared at us with the most indescribable look of horror on his face as he just managed to say the words, ‘The wings of the raven.’ Then he gave us a confused look, as though he was trying to warn us, and then he died.”

Heike opened his mouth to ask where they had found him but at that moment the church door opened and Zeno’s wife entered.

“Oh, here you are,” she whispered to her husband in a panicky voice. “Come on, before you worry us all to death.”

“But ... I’d like to know,” Heike began.

“Not a word!” the innkeeper’s wife silenced her husband, giving him a sharp glance.

She clearly hadn’t come to pray! Zeno trudged off guiltily behind his wife. Normally he would probably have lashed out at her with a “Shut up, woman!” but the problem they were facing was too serious for that. You didn’t just reveal secrets like that!

But before the two men left the church, Heike managed to whisper to Zeno, “The two women ...?”

“Shhh!” Zeno interrupted him, terrified. It was clearly no longer his wife he feared.

Heike hardened his heart. “I must know!”

Zeno grabbed hold of the carved pillar next to the church door as though he wanted to support himself. As his wife disappeared into the porch he whispered to Heike, “The princess is dangerous! The other wretch is in her hands!”

“What is it about the princess?”

Zeno’s eyes had turned round as marbles from terror and hunger for sensation: “Man crazy!”

“Zeno!” the sharp voice of the innkeeper’s wife could be heard from outside in the sunshine. “Where are you?”

They went out. Dazed, Heike followed the couple.

Heike was a young man pure of heart. In her home, Elena never spoke with the children about the relationship between men and women. That sort of thing was considered to be taboo and a sin. That was why Heike knew very little. He wasn’t entirely ignorant, but for him erotic love was something very obscure, vague and forbidden, so Zeno’s descriptions had made him feel very uncomfortable.

Exactly what being “man crazy” entailed was not entirely clear to him.

He caught up with the couple.

“We’ll be leaving the village at around lunchtime,” he said briefly.

“Fine,” answered the innkeeper’s wife, but Zeno wailed in desperation. “But why? I thought ...”

Heike was determined. “I am responsible for the other two and since I am not getting the whole story of what happened I cannot help you.”

“You see,” Zeno snarled at his wife.

“You don’t really believe that that boy can do anything for us?” she snapped back at him.

They reached the inn. Mira was standing in the doorway, refreshed after a good night’s rest and enjoying the sun. She looked very sweet in all her puppyish exuberance.

“There you are,” she smiled shyly at Heike. “I knocked on your door but nobody answered.”

Heike smiled. “Apparently Peter sleeps deeply. I’ll go in and wake him.”

He climbed the stairs two at a time and opened the door to the room.

No one was there.

Confused, he went back down. Mira became nervous when she saw the expression on his face.

“He’s not there,” Heike said gruffly. “I’ll have to go out and look for him.”

Naturally Zeno knew nothing because he had been out with Heike. The same was true of Zeno’s wife but one of the kitchen maids clearly grew anxious when Heike asked her whether she had seen Peter. She blushed and bent over the vegetables she was busy peeling.

“Out with it!” Zeno commanded.

“He ... he asked for ...” she hesitated.

“Peter can’t ask for anything. He can’t speak the language,” Heike objected.

“He just asked about ... he said only one word ... a name.”

Heike knew it before she said it: “Nicola!”

She nodded with tears in her eyes. It was the same kitchen maid who had once looked wistfully at Yves.

“Mr Peter was such a nice young man,” she whispered. “Well, they all were.”

Were? Heike could feel the anxiety like claws gripping his heart.

“And then he left when you showed him the way?”

A new gush of tears appeared as she nodded.

“How?”

Zeno answered for the girl. “The young Nicola always pleads for help. Always. In a desperate and heart-wrenching manner. And it ends in disaster every time. The princess ...”

“You keep quiet!” his wife shouted hysterically. “Do you intend to ruin us all? We know nothing! Nothing, do you hear?”

Heike was unyielding. “Where did he go?”

“If you just continue along the valley, you’ll find the way. But is it really necessary?”

“Just let him go,” the wife cried. “He has brought nothing but misery. He’s putting us all at risk.”

Heike set off immediately. Mira ran after him. “Are you going out to look for Peter? I’ll go with you!”

“No ...!” he began but then he looked at her more closely: there was no mistaking the fear in her eyes. “Did anything happen last night?”

She nodded gravely. “The window ... of, course it was only something I dreamed, but ...

“Then come along with me,” Heike said.

The innkeeper thought they ought to have breakfast first, so they took a little milk and a chunk of bread with them so that they would have something to munch on the way.

Zeno watched them with concern as they left, but he also had a dream, a dream that Heike would rescue both Peter and Târgul Stregesti.

His wife harboured no such illusions.

When they were outside, Heike said to Mira, “Tell me about your dream.”

“But it was only a nightmare.”

“I’ll decide that. Just tell me about it.”

Heike himself was surprised by the resourcefulness he was exhibiting. Good-natured Heike, in whose care all the parents in Planina left their children in the fullest confidence. The responsibility he now carried on his shoulders endowed him with powers that had up until then been unknown to him.

He had never been able to discover what kind of strength he possessed. It had never really been necessary for him to use it until now.

God help us, he thought. This village, this valley, frightens me beyond words.

Mira told him about the dead people and about that frightening, vague entity that had attempted to enter through the window in her dreams. To her consternation, Heike took her dream seriously.

“How idiotic of Peter to go out now,” he said with concern in his voice. “We must get away from here. Immediately! I was rather too confident when I said that I would solve the problems of the village. Right now I don’t feel I can handle it at all.”

“But what about Peter? Shouldn’t we ...?”

“Yes, of course! We must find him and get out of here as fast as possible. Do you see those horses over there? They don’t have any owners, so they’ve been given to us.”

“Been given to us?”

“Yes. They can’t look after them properly in the village.”

“Well, that’s wonderful! Then all three of us can ride! I’ve never owned a horse before. But, of course, the intention isn’t for me to get one ...”

“Of course it is! You deserve one after having taken care of your father for all those years!”

“Oh,” she sighed, dreamily. “But aren’t they terribly fine horses?”

“Yes, they are thoroughbreds. Do you think they want some bread?”

He called to them. The horses shook their ears and went a little farther off. When Heike tried to approach them they broke into a trot and ran away.

“My goodness. They’ve practically become wild,” he said in astonishment.

He let the horses be and looked across the valley. “Well ... where should we go now?”

“I guess we should just follow the road,” Mira suggested as though it were a given.

He followed her gaze. “Oh, yes, the road of course!”

Mira studied him. “You don’t see so well, perhaps?”

“No,” Heike answered thoughtfully. “No, I don’t.”

He gazed at two ravens as they circled the wooded cliff. He wondered whether those were the two that had attacked Mira last night on the way to the village. They were certainly just as big.

The wings of the raven.

Mira prattled away. Her concern for Peter was touching.

“That cow,” Peter had called her.

How unfair! Heike hadn’t had a chance to get a proper look at Nicola the previous night, and it was most certainly a shame if she was caught in the clutches of the princess in some way, but if Peter wasn’t able to appreciate Mira’s qualities then he was downright stupid!

They walked around the projecting cliff. The slopes disappeared upwards in the blue mist.

“Look! Oh, look!” Mira suddenly cried out.

Heike looked up.

“Oh my God!” he whispered. “Oh my God!” He grew weak in the knees and had to lean on Mira’s shoulder for support.

“Oh God,” he repeated in a trembling voice.

“Yes, isn’t it beautiful?” Mira asked dreamily.

“I ... I can’t see it clearly,” Heike lied.

“But can’t you see ... It is a real castle, no, more like a fortress with a parapet and turrets at the very top and a huge gate and a fine avenue leading up to it. That’s probably where Peter’s gone.”

Heike quickly gave her a sideways glance. He was having a hard time breathing. Not until now would he admit to himself that he wasn’t seeing the same thing as her. That his eyes could penetrate the veil that obscured everyone else’s vision.

He had to swallow several times in order to keep down his nausea. Oh, Peter, the cheerful, congenial Peter, his travelling companion!

As if he had been bewitched, he stared at the terrible, horrifying scene up there from which he was completely unable to avert his eyes, although there was nothing he would rather have done.

However, it wasn’t he who had been bewitched, but Mira and Peter and the Frenchmen and all the others who had most probably disappeared through that big gate.

Peter? Oh God!

Mira misinterpreted his excitement and thought that he was merely fascinated. “Yes, isn’t it fantastic? Come, we’ll hurry up there.”

“No,” Heike gasped, stifled. The nausea and the fear rose in his throat. “No, no! Come away!”

He grabbed her arm, practically pulling her with him back around the cliff and towards the village.

“Yes, but what about Peter ...?”

“I’ll try to save him but I have to do it alone.”

“Save him?”

“Yes, and please don’t ask any more questions.”

Mira saw how agitated he was and didn’t dare resist him. He ran for his life back to Târgul, dragging her with him as she protested half-heartedly that he was going too fast.

Heike didn’t stop until they reached the meadow where the horses were grazing. Mira couldn’t understand how she could ever have been afraid of his unusual appearance. Because now she had looked into his eyes and come to know him ...

“Here, Mira, I’m going to let you borrow this ...”

He pulled the cord with the mandrake over his head. “But no, no, please!” she whispered as she opened her eyes wide. “What in the world is that?”

“It is my most precious possession,” he answered. “Mira, this place is bewitched, cursed and mortally dangerous! Put it on but don’t let anyone see it! As long as you have it you are safe, it will protect you so that whatever wanted to get to you won’t be able to tonight.”

She was now taking Heike seriously. “Do you know what it was that tried to get to me last night?”

“I have no idea but I’m going to find out. Take it, it is a mandrake and it was what made Princess Feodora turn away from the door last night. I can’t take it with me because if I wear it I’ll never get into the castle, that’s for sure.”

If it were on account of the mandrake that he couldn’t get in, that is. Perhaps it was just as much himself, the blood of the Ice People running through his veins, that would be the determining factor.

No, it was the mandrake! Now that he had turned around he could clearly see a fine and well-kept road that led to the cliff where he had previously seen nothing but some almost overgrown wheel ruts.

Aloud he said, “Do you now understand how powerful it is?”

Mira nodded. The mandrake tickled her skin but felt warm.

“Do you think you can save Peter?” she asked, her eyes shining.

“I’ll certainly do everything I can,” he promised.

“And what about the poor, unhappy girl? The one with the beautiful eyes?”

“Nicola? That may be more difficult because she is entirely in the hands of the princess. But I’ll certainly try. Just don’t expect too much. I have no idea how to go about this, I know only that I must free Peter.”

She peered up at him. “Are you ... afraid?”

“Yes. I am very afraid.”

“But the castle looked so impressive.”

Heike didn’t answer. He had a tense look on his face. As he went to walk on in the direction of the inn she quickly said, “There’s no need for you to waste your time on me. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I have to speak with Zeno.”

“But what about Peter?”

He frowned. “Although I may be mistaken, it seems to me that the real danger won’t arise until after dark. It’s just a feeling I have.”

They quickly crossed the village square.

“Don’t be deceived by the sobering daylight,” Mira said.

“You’re a smart girl,” Heike smiled. “No, I won’t pull the wool over my own eyes. We’re here!”

He briefly spoke with Zeno and Zeno’s wife. “I’ll leave the girl in your care. Don’t let her go out alone! And when she goes to bed you are to take the same measures as last night. I’ll go to the castle alone. If I don’t come back then put her on my horse and accompany her through the forest!”

“How long should we wait for you?”

“As far as I can see I only have this one night at my disposal. But I wish you had told me a little more!”

The expressions on their faces froze. “We can’t do that,” Zeno said quietly.

They gave him something to eat and drink and then he left.

This time everyone in the village stood behind their closed doors and windows and watched him as he left, and their eyes expressed something that, although it wasn’t exactly hope, wasn’t hopelessness either.

They understood that if anyone was going to save their forlorn village it was this much too young boy with the devilishly wild appearance and the gentle smile.

Heike walked across the meadows that now lay steaming in the heat. The hazy sun shimmered, making the hills in the distance fade into a living, pallid, blue-green mass, blurry, foggy, enchanted. The clear light of day ought to have summoned levelheadedness and objectivity, but instead Heike felt more confused than ever before.

He felt naked without his mandrake and worried that he had betrayed it. But he would never have been able to enter the castle wearing it around his neck, would never have been able to live in Peter’s illusory state and thus never have been able to find him in time.

A couple of ravens were circling high above him. He didn’t care: it wasn’t birds he was after.

Or was he mistaken? No, he dismissed the thought. As it was, he had enough to deal with in Princess Feodora. La strega – the witch.

He went around the projecting cliff again and reluctantly lifted his gaze.

He now saw the castle as it must look to the others, majestic in its ancient gloominess. He saw it with Mira’s eyes, with Peter’s eyes, with the Frenchmen’s eyes and with everyone else’s eyes. For the mandrake wasn’t there now to reveal the truth to him.

It was truly a beautiful castle, with thick walls of grey and white and an impressive gateway.

What if this were the truth? If everyone else had been right and the castle really stood there just as he saw it now? That would have been more logical because what he saw was an abode more suitable for a princess.

But what was it then that he had seen before?

An allegory, an image that the mandrake wanted to show him, a warning that Heike had to be cautious? That he would have to tread carefully?

That was most likely. The mandrake had distorted his vision and everyone else saw what it really was. That had to be the case, because the castle looked very real, concrete and solid. How else could Peter have ever entered it?

In there, behind the stately gate, was Peter, and Heike was going to find him. If Princess Feodora allowed it.

He winced as he let out a long, trembling sigh. He gripped his chest out of habit, but there was no mandrake there to console him.