25
The Winter King
It was strange. Even as it was happening, Peter knew it was strange. It was like sitting in the center of a hurricane. Outside, a man whom he had seen buried was prowling around, intent on doing them harm, and prevented from doing so only by millet seed. Inside the hut, in relative safety, he sat quietly, though not peacefully, with a girl he barely knew, as she told him the story of his father.
“Have you heard of the Winter King, Peter?” Sofia asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s a story. The king who’ll save us all from every evil. He was supposed to have saved the land from the Turks. Everyone knows that story. But it’s just a story that the peasants tell each other.”
“The peasants? That’s not you talking. That’s your father. It’s more than a story. Your father could tell you that the Winter King is real. Or was. Your father fought with him.”
Peter laughed.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “My father fought with King Michael. They fought the Turks.”
“That’s right, Peter. King Michael was the Winter King. That was thirty years ago, no more. But memories are short when lives are short. Already the King has become a legend.
“The Turks were greater in number, but the forest in winter is a treacherous place for the unwary. They were overcome by King Michael’s men. Massacred. Some escaped and slipped away into the depths of the forest, never to be heard of again. The Mother Forest dealt with them. When her anger is aroused she takes no prisoners, but it wouldn’t have happened without the Winter King.”
Peter nodded his head. He understood what she meant about the forest, and thought about why he made his little carvings, to give something back. It would never do to betray the forest’s generosity; Peter believed that those who thought the forest was simply a gathering of trees were foolish, unwise, and that there was something else that gathered among those trees.
“The Winter King,” Sofia said, “who will save us from all evil. Now he must save us from the Shadow Queen. His greatest battle ever.”
“But he’s dead. King Michael is dead.”
“Yes. He died and the new king was weak. He let the country crumble into factions, no longer unified. In the chaos that followed many bad things happened. Fighting between men who had been allies. And your father was put in jail.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know because your father fought alongside my father.”
“A Gypsy? Fought with King Michael?”
“A Gypsy, yes, Peter.” Sofia glared at him. “What is so wrong with that? There is more to some of us than there might seem.”
“And your father is here now? He spoke to my father that night when…?” Peter stopped.
“My father is dead. He died in jail when I was just three years old. My uncle leads us. My uncle, Milosh. And yes, he went to speak to your father that night, when we met on the road.”
Peter remembered it all too clearly. He hated himself, with Agnes missing, but he couldn’t help remembering what had happened. What he had felt. Blood rushed to his face as he remembered how he had carried Sofia, cradled her arms and long slender legs, and how she had held his hand.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Peter said, but Sofia merely held his gaze, a sorrowful look on her face.
“That night,” Peter said, quietly.
“What of it?”
“That night, when you—”
Sofia interrupted him.
“Don’t think anything,” she said flatly. “I was sent to delay you from returning home, so that my uncle could speak to your father alone. I did what I had to do. My uncle has been following your father for years and he didn’t want anyone to get in his way.”
Now Peter was angry. With himself. With Sofia. Too angry even to ask why her uncle had been hunting Tomas. Was that why they’d always lived on the move? Always keeping to the edges of the civilized world? He was not surprised at what she said, and yet he knew he was disappointed too. An image of Agnes flickered into his mind, and though he tried to push it away, he could not do so entirely.
Frustrated, he turned back to the crack in the shutter.
Still Radu crawled around. Peter tried to work out if more than half the seed was left on the ground, but Radu’s feet had turned the snow to mush, making it hard to see anything clearly. He wondered if it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that Radu was moving faster than before.
He turned back to Sofia.
“And now?”
“What do you mean?”
“So the Shadow Queen is coming. Making dead people walk again. To make us like them? But the Winter King is dead. How can he save us now?”
“King Michael is dead. But the Winter King lives. In us. In your father. In us, the Gypsies. Even in you, Peter. We all belong to one another, to the ancestors, and we can fight. We have fought for as long as I can remember. Moving, traveling, fighting. We live the life of Gypsies, but we fight the fight of the Winter King.”
She stopped.
Peter shook his head, sighing. It was too much. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to believe what he was hearing—a story coming to life.
“Peter. You must join the Winter King. We need you. We need your father.”
“Why?”
“Because your father was the finest warrior in King Michael’s army. He was famed for it. And he had something else. A sword. A Turkish sword. He found it on a campaign far into Turkish territory in the summer before that final battle in the winter forest.”
“A sword? What sword?”
“A fine sword, Peter. One that is perfectly balanced. It is as light as the wind, yet as hard as the winter. But there is more to it than that. It stops them.”
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, still confused by everything Sofia was revealing to him.
“People like him. Outside. The woodcutter. The sword stops them. Returns them to the soil, for good. It was forged in a land often plagued by such people. There they call them vrykolakoi. Here we call them nosferatu, or moroii. It is all the same. They are all hostages. And once, it is said, they were as common as the blades of grass in the meadow, or berries in a pail. In every land they have a thousand names. It doesn’t matter; it is up to us to stop them.”
“Us?”
“Us,” said Sofia. “The ancestors. All across the land there are groups of us. Some are Gypsies, some are soldiers, some are common people, some are priests. It doesn’t matter. Those who fight the hostages are all ancestors—my uncle, my father, your father. Even you, Peter.”
Peter shook his head, incredulous.
“We need your father’s sword,” Sofia said.
“My father was no warrior. My father has no sword,” Peter answered. “I would have seen it.”
But even as he said the words, he thought of the box his father had kept from him all these years. Was it possible? Was there really a sword inside?
“Perhaps,” said Sofia. “But wherever it is, we must find it.”
“My father is no hero,” Peter said bitterly, still refusing to believe. “He fought with Michael, that is true, but he is not a great soldier. My father is a drunkard.”
Sofia stared at him, but Peter could not fathom what she was thinking.
Now something else struck him. Saying nothing, he moved yet again to the crack in the shutter.
He stepped back, as if he had been stung.
“Sofia,” he said, “look!”
She came and pressed her face to the hole, and gasped.
Outside, Radu was busy picking up the seeds. But Peter’s fears had proved true: Radu was moving more quickly. His hands flew through the snow, sending small flurries all around him.
It was not possible, but it seemed that he grew faster with every passing minute, until he whirled around the hut like a dervish, faster and faster.
The remaining seeds grew fewer, and fewer. Very soon, there would be none left at all.