Enchanted Forests (48 page)

through the back alleys and barricaded streets, strewn with burnt-

out buildings, fallen walls, and an endless parade of little ref-

uges, shelters built from bricks and pianks salvaged from once

beautiful houses. In some of those tiny refuges people lived, but

most simply served as a hiding place to any man, woman, or

child caught outside when a bombardment began.

By the time they got back to their house, in the relative safety

of the north central quarter of the city, Jontano could feel tickling

fingers of blood running down his back. Stepha was limping.

They burst in through the gate and, panting, walked past the

newly-planted vegetable garden. Once Mama had grown flowers

here, and it had been a lovely place in the spring and summer;

she and Papa had entertained guests and laughed and talked and

sung to all hours of the night while the children watched from

the windows above, faces pressed to the glass. But that had been

a long, long time ago. Now most of the windows were covered

with boards and the flower garden had been transplanted to veg-

etables.

Great-Uncle Otto was standing guard over the well. He looked

them over with disgust Stepha yelped when he probed her thigh

with his fingers, and Jontano saw a gaping red wound where she

had been hit with shrapnel.

"Now your mother will have to sew these clothes up," he said,

looking angry as he examined the back of Jontano's shirt.

Jontano knew it ought to hurt, but he felt as if Otto's hands

probed someone eise's body, not his. "There's little enough

thread to be had," Otto went on. "Nor do I hold with those who

go looting shops. We might as well fall into the hands of the

Marrazzanos as become looters ourselves. Look what barbarians

this war has made of us and our children!"

THE MEMORY OF PEACE        315

Stepha, brave enough up until now, began to snivel. Otto

spared her not one sympathetic word and turned his black gaze

'' on Jontano, who squirmed.

"You'll be old enough to go into the militia next year, but I

suppose next you'll be saying you'd rather prey on the dead than

honor those who have died before you by behaving as a man

ought, taking up arms and fighting nobly."

Jontano snorted. "I don't know what's so noble about righting

against cannon and musket with wooden staves and butcher's

knives."

Otto slapped him. "I won't say a word against your sainted

mother, who has suffered enough, but her mother and her moth-

'   er's mother were Marrazzanos, and I can see their dirty blood

has tainted you."

"What do I care about Trassahar and Marrazzano? I wish I had

no blood of either kind! All we do is fight and die. What's the

point of that?" Jontano could not help but shout the words. His

throat tightened with the familiar lump. "I'd just like to grow up

to be a painter like Papa was."

Otto swung his musket around threateningly, but in me next

instant he said in a low voice, "Get inside."

Stepha bolted in. Jontano followed her, but just as he crossed

the threshold he heard a shot fired, then silence. He turned.

Great-Uncle Otto staggered and dropped me musket, left hand

clutching his chest. Jontano ran out to him, shoved him aside to

get at the musket, and raised it just in time to stare down the

-^  muzzle at a ragged band of men and women, armed with a single

musket and several buckets.

"Give us water," said one of the women. She was filthy,

skinny, and her hands and arms were a mass of red sores. Beside

her, an emanciated man reloaded the musket.

Shaking, Jontano stared mem down. but by that time Mama

appeared in the door with the pistol and Uncle Martin leaned out

of the second-story window, his musket propped on the

flowerbox, pushing aside the leafy stems of carrots. He had no

legs now, but he had once been a sniper in the militia.

The ragged band retreated. Mama stuck the pistol in her belt

j,  and hurried out. With Aunt Martina's help she carried Otto in-

side, leaving Jontano on guard while Uncle Martin dragged him-

self down the stairs and together with the two women treated

Otto's wound.

It took Otto five days to die, and because of that, everyone

was too busy to scold Stepha for looting along Murderer's Row.

316

Kate Elliott

"Why shouldn't I?" she whispered to Jontano in the bed they

shared with the two surviving youngest cousins, who were

asleep. "Why should I care if I get killed, anyway? The

Marrazzanos will never leave- And even if they did, I don't have

any friends left, and no Trassahar boy will ever want to marry

me because I'm just a Marrazzano whore."

They had saved the stub of a candle and they lit it now, while

the house was quiet. Great-Uncle Otto's body lay in state in the

parlor, until the burial tomorrow. He was the last but one of his

branch of the family, having lost wife, sons, and all but one of

his grandchildren to the war. He and his surviving daughter-in-

taw had fled to the city three years ago after their village had

been razed, but she had died of a fever last winter, and now only

little Judit remained, snoring softly beside Jontano.

Stepha played with the marbles, turning them round so that

highlights of bright color caught and winked in the light, yet

Jontano could not help but be drawn to the cards once more.

They were shaped like playing cards, made of stiff cardboard cut

into rectangles as large as his hands, but they were like no deck

he had ever seen. A plain hatched pattern of black and white was

printed on the backs. The front of each card looked as if it had

been painted lovingly by a gifted hand. He spread the deck out

to examine them.

A crane stands on one leg in a pool, its form silhouetted in a

sunset of red and gold.

A fetid marsh stretches to the horizon, marked by small hum-

mocks and a few twisted old trees.

The restless sea, infinite, surges and swells, without any sign

of the safe harbor of land.

A blindfolded woman dressed in a shift runs through a dark

forest. Spiders and strange, unsightly creatures peer at her from

the branches. As she runs, unseeing, she is stepping on a snake.

Two birch trees bend, their highest branches intertwining so

that they form an arch, that leads ... but here the artist had de-

picted a haze of golden sunlight in which Jontano could make

out only a suggestion, of Trient, perhaps, a golden city where

once Trassaharin and Marrazzano lived in peace, together.

And the spring forest, his favorite, the one he never tired of

looking at.

As he ran his fingers over the painted surface, he could almost

feel the touch of the painter's brush, as if by concentrating hard

enough he could become the painter painting the card, as if he

could see through the painter's eyes the act of creation, the

THE MEMORY OF PEACE        317

grinding of the paint, the careful preparation of the brushes and

the backing, each brushstroke, each spot of color laid on with ex-

^ act care.

When he touched the pale green buds of the spring forest, he

could feel himself walking there along the path which wound

through the wood, darting this way and that through clumps of

goldenrod and violets. It sloped down, then crossed a narrow

river and ascended a hillside. He walked up. Loam gave under

his boots. Wind brushed his face, bringing the scents of the dense

forest to him. He heard the rustle of birds above and the little

scrabblings of rodents below. A spare outcropping of rock thrust

from among the trees. He scrambled up onto it and, turning, saw

the land below him, curved like a bowl, filling the graceful little

valley with trees and emerald meadows. Suddenly he realized

this was Trient—but Trient without the city, without the fighting,

at peace, in the quiet of a spring morning.

A crash tore him out of the forest.

He lay in the crowded bed, frozen, feeling Stepha snoring

against him—she always had a cold—and listened to the pound

of me Marrazzano cannon. They had launched a night attack.

Little Judit woke up and began to cry.

Jontano stuffed the cards into his worn but clean pillowcase

and gathered the little girl into his arms. After a while she fell

asleep, and he did as well, though the cannon boomed intermit-

tently and once an explosion sounded very near them. What did

it matter if they were killed in their sleep? At least it would spare

them the agony of dying. So he slept, and dreamed of the spring

forest-

At dawn as he and Judit walked hand-in-hand to the old cen-

tral park that was now the main cemetery—all the other grave-

yards being full—the little girl tugged on him until he leaned

down to hear her whisper.

"I dreamed that I was in heaven with Grandpa. It was all the

prettiest forest, and a red and yellow bird sat on my fingers. And

there were flowers."

Aunt Martina and Cousin Gregor carried the body wrapped in

the most threadbare sheet, the only one they could spare for

burial. Uncle Martin, ever quick to see the twisted humor in any

situation, had waved good-bye to them where he sat on guard in

tile one unbearded upstairs window and then shouted after: "See,

it'll be the last burial in this house—we've got no more sheets to

spare!"

They paid the gravediggers three coppers and stood by while

318 Kate Elliott

a hole was dug next to the others in their family. Jontano led

Judit to each wooden cross in turn, Stepha following at his heels:

Papa's grave, the oldest .one diere, Jono's two brothers and one

sister, Baby Lucia, cousins, an aunt, and uncles. More men than

women, because the men all went to the militia, as Cousin

Gregor would go next month when he turned fifteen, as Jontano

himself would go next year.

Stepha stared at the graves, dry-eyed- Her parents weren't

here. Their graves lay on the other side of the lines, and every-

one knew that at least one of her brothers fought in the

Marrazzano army, but Mama had taken the girl in because she

and Stepha's mother were first cousins, and no woman with even

a trace of Trassahar blood in her was safe on the Marrazzano

side.

It was another clear day. For once the Marrazzanos weren't

shelling Trient. One of the cousins had died while burying his

own father. They buried Great-Uncle Otto without much cere-

mony, and Mama decorated the grave with a few shoots from his

beloved potato plants. Here and there on the overgrown grass

that was all that was left of the once-manicured park, other fam-

ilies stood, burying a newly-lost relative. Dogs nosed at fresh

dirt. The gravediggers threw stones at them.

"This park used to be so lovely," said Mama to Aunt Martina

as they walked back. The silence lay heavily on them, it was so

unusual. "Do you remember?"

"All the trees," said Aunt Martina in her hoarse voice. "I re-

member all the trees."

Not one was left, of course, not even the stumps, all cut down

and dug out for firewood. Jontano remembered the trees vaguely,

too, from picnics, from running down by the lake, from Papa's

canvases and sketches, flowering tulip trees, elm trees, beech,

oaks and birches, ash and aspen, cherry with its spring blossoms

and apple and pear.

"It alt used to be trees," he said suddenly, and Mama looked

at him questioningly. 'Trient. The city. Before the city was here

it all used to be trees, one great forest. And it was quiet. It was

peaceful then."

Aunt Martina snorted. "Except for the wolves howling at

night. There are always wolves, Jono. Don't forget them."

"I'd like to be a wolf," said Stepha, "and rip out the throats

of my enemies."

Little Judit burst into tears.

"You've scared her, Stepha," snapped Aunt Martina. "I

THE MEMORY OF PEACE

319

shouldn't have to remind you, but I'll whip you if I've found you

went out prowling around Murderer's Row again."

Now Stepha began to cry as well, so they looked properly like

mourners as they came home empty-handed.

The house was quiet when they got back. Uncle Martin sat on

his chair, elbows and musket propped in the window, and

smoked a pipe.

"Where'd you get that tobacco, you good for nothing?"

scolded Aunt Martina. "Did you sell the rest of my silver forks?"

Uncle Martin merely grinned at her and flourished the pipe.

He had a network of old friends. Once a week they carted him

off to a mysterious place in town where only men from the mi-

litia were allowed to congregate. When Uncle Martin came home

from these jaunts, he always had a new piece of news from the

front, and occasionally a trinket for the children or some luxury

item for the women—yam, lamp oil, a piece of fruit, once a pair

of good shoes that, with a bit of paper stuffed in the toes, fit

Aunt Martina perfectly.

Aunt Martina called him a few rude names, but she was too