Lycanthropos (18 page)

Blasko, a strong, healthy man in his mid-thirties, shook
his head, "Father, it is better to take unnecessary
precautions than unnecessary risks. The forest is like a mother to us. What harm in seeking refuge in her?"

"No harm, Blasko," the old man said. "But tomorrow we will go to the
village
of
Hunyad
to ply our trade, and from this spot we can reach the village before noon. If we go into the forest we may seek a campsite for hours, and we
will waste much of the day tomorrow." He pointed with his
gnarled old finger at the narrow pathway which led into the woods. "See, so poor a road."

"Not too narrow for the wagons," Blasko observed.

"No, not too narrow. But it will take time. Slow journeys make distant destinations." He nodded his hoary
head as if his platitude had settled the matter. "We will
camp here tonight."

Blasko nodded, accepting the decision of the patriarch,
and then returned to his wagon. He did not climb back up
into the seat, however. Instead he walked to the rear of the
wagon and, opening the small wooden door, entered it.

"Visha," he said to his wife. "We will camp here for the
night."

His wife, a dark woman already growing portly from a
diet too heavy in starches, raised her thick eyebrows in
surprise. "Here? On the edge of the forest?"

"Yes," he replied, opening an old wooden trunk and
rummaging around in it. "Father has decided."

Visha sighed. She knew better than to protest or
question, though she would have felt much safer had she had
the security of the forest when night fell. True, the past four years had been unusually calm ones for her people. The town dwellers in the countries through which the Gypsies roamed, the Magyars and the Romanians, the Italians and the Swiss, the Croats and the Poles, the Bulgars and the
Bohemians and the Slovaks, were too busy slaughtering each
other to pay their customary hostile attention to the Gypsies. But now the war of which they had heard so much was over, and Visha, like Blasko and most of the others in their tribe, expected the old ways to return. The forest had always been a refuge for them, and she longed for it this night. But who can argue with Father?

As Blasko took a tin of tobacco from the trunk, the
shrill wail of a baby cut through the silence of the
interior of the wagon, and Visha said, "Lura is awake. She
sleeps so well when the wagon is moving."

"Do you need water?" Blasko asked.

"Yes, please, my love." Visha reached down into the old wooden cradle and took their infant into her arms, carefully
unwrapping the swaddling rags, making ready to wash her and
replace the soiled rags with fresh ones. Blasko climbed out of the rear door, took a pot from its nail on the side of
the wagon, dipped it into the water barrel which hung beside it, and then carried it back to his wife.

He watched happily as Visha, chuckling and speaking
playfully to their baby in soft, soothing maternal tones,
washed the infant and wrapped her. Blasko took the soiled
swaddling rags without being asked to, and threw them into a
bucket which, like the barrel and the pot, was hanging from
the side of the wagon. He returned to his wife and child,
and smiled at them both with contentment. Visha had given
birth to three other children in the years of their marriage, but all three had died, all of disease. This fourth child, Lura, was their last child, this they both knew, for the delivery had almost killed Visha. She had lain in delirium for days afterward, and even now, four months
later, she was not fully recovered.

Three children buried in nameless graves along the
roadside, Blasko thought. And yet, how good is life. He watched his wife expose one breast and smiled as the
child suckled greedily. Little Lura, he thought. How lovely
you are, how dear.

And outside the wagon, as the others were making ready the campfires and filling the stewpots with water, the sun
was sinking slowly toward the tops of the trees.

The nomads went about the nightly tasks. The food was plentiful, for hunting had been good, and the bottles of
wine which they had obtained in the last town they had
visited were passed around freely. Soon the darkening sky
was witness to merriment and music, as the sounds of
mandolins and pipes drifted up from the Gypsy camp.

The sun disappeared behind the trees and soon the light
of the full moon bathed the plain on the edge of the forest.
The stars twinkled placidly in the cloudless sky, and the world seemed truly at peace for the first time in many
years. No distant cannons boomed and nowhere was heard the whistle of flying shells or the cracking of distant rifle fire. The Gypsies rested in security and calm, sleepy and content around their flickering fires. And then the night was rent by a shriek of agony, and then by another; and then
came the rasping, guttural howls.

The Gypsies fell silent as the sounds reached their
ears. The old man turned to the others and, in a hushed,
trembling, terrified voice, whispered, "
Vrolok!"

Werewolf!

As if responding to a silent command, the Gypsies broke
from the campfire and rushed back to their respective
wagons. They were not a people who had forgotten the myths and legends of the past as the town dwellers had done; they
lived with the past as if it were the present, and their
beliefs had led them to prepare for any eventuality. No
Gypsy caravan traveled the plains of
Central Europe
without
a supply of wolfsbane and silver bullets; one never knew
when a werewolf would make its unholy appearance. Though they
were what the Church called pagans, they nonetheless
travelled with stakes and holy water and crucifixes to guard
against the
nosferatu
. They kept talismans against demons
and knew spells to drive away witches. Thus it was that when the cries of the werewolf broke the silence of the forest, the men of the Gypsy tribe began to load their old rifles
with bullets of pure silver as the women, after herding the
children into the wagons, began to remove the brittle sprigs
of wolfsbane from their hiding places and began to affix the withered plants to the exteriors of the wagons.

For years afterward, Blasko would review the events of that night in his mind, wondering if he was at fault,
wondering if his bravado had caused the tragedy, wondering
if he bore his own share of guilt for what transpired. He was confident, cocky, and just a bit ambitious within the
context of his limited world. Father was old, and would die
soon, and though his wife, whom everyone called Mother though she was much younger than he, would continue as the unofficial chief by virtue of her age, still a new leader
would be chosen from among the men. The Gypsies, like most nomadic peoples, were an elective patriarchy, not a
hereditary one; and who better to choose as leader than the
man who braved the fury of the werewolf and slew it in the
midst of the camp?

Blasko loaded his gun as Visha rummaged through the
trunk in search of the wolfsbane, and then he left the wagon
and stood just outside it, awaiting the monster. The other
Gypsies remained in their wagons, guns loaded and ready, the doors and windows draped with the protective plant. He alone
stood in the open, nervous and frightened, yet somehow
excited and eager to confront the beast.

And then he remembered that his tribe had last gathered
wolfsbane some four months before, when Visha was in her natal delirium; he remembered that she had been, of course, unable to go with the other women to pick the plant; he
remembered that he had stayed with her during her illness, and had forgotten to get a supply of wolfsbane from another of his tribe; and Visha remembered all of this as well as her search for the plant was unavailing, for she cried,
"Blasko! Blasko!" at the same moment that not one, but two werewolves came bounding from the woods.

Blasko faced death and accepted it, the instinct to
protect his woman and his child overcoming his abject terror. He raised the gun and aimed at one of the approaching figures, knowing that if he killed one of them, surely his fellows would be able to kill the other. He could
not change the fact that he would die in the battle; but
Visha would live. And little Lura would live.

Blasko prayed in the seconds between the emergence of
the beasts and the firing of the gun, but he did not pray for
life. He prayed that if he were bitten, the bite would kill
him; for he knew full well what happened to anyone who
survived the bite of a werewolf.

Blasko fired the gun.

One of the werewolves seemed to recoil from the impact
of the red hot silver which slammed into its chest, but the
hesitation was momentary. Almost immediately the other
Gypsies opened fire, and both of the creatures were pounded
by a hail of silver bullets. But they did not fall to the ground, they did not die. The barrage of silver bullets
seemed merely to enrage them.

The first of the werewolves rushed at Blasko, and the
young Gypsy shifted his hands from the stock of his rifle to its barrel and then swung the weapon as a club. The wooden stock splintered as it struck the werewolf on the side of the head, but it did not impede the attack. The creature lashed out at Blasko, swung a taloned claw at him, and only the Gypsy's quick reflexes, which caused him to jump backwards, saved him from decapitation. He stumbled over his
own feet and fell hard to the ground.

"Blasko! Blasko!" Visha screamed. The werewolf turned in
the direction of the sound, and it leapt from the ground
onto the roof of the wagon. It dug its talons into the old wood and then ripped the planks from the roof. As it jumped
down into the wagon, Blasko got to his feet and began to run to the rear door, but the second werewolf jumped on him and raked his back with its claws. Another barrage of bullets
caused the beast to release Blasko, and it ran at another of
the wagons with a furious howl tearing from its throat. Blasko, his back bleeding and his body shuddering with
pain, lost consciousness.

He awoke an hour later. As he struggled to orient his
confused thoughts, as he tried to focus his eyes, he saw
faces, dozens of faces, gazing down at him. He realized at
once that they were the faces of the others of his tribe, and the memory of what had happened struck him at the same moment. His fellows helped him to his feet and he stumbled over to the wreckage which had been his wagon.

"No, Blasko," Father said. "No." But he had to see, he
had to climb into the wreckage. Blasko screamed and
collapsed into hysterical weeping when he realized that all
that was left of his wife was torn cloth, wet bone and blood, and that all that remained of his little daughter, his precious, darling Lura, was one tiny, stiff, cold little hand
.

 

When morning came, the smoke from the Gypsy camp was drifting up into the cold morning air as Janos Kaldy
awakened from his deep, dreamless sleep. He sat up on the grass of the hillside and looked over to Claudia, who was standing a few yards away, watching the smoke. She heard him
move, and she glanced at him before returning her gaze to
the distant scene. "They are burning a wagon," she said softly. "They buried something a little while ago."

"A body?" he asked.

"What was left of a body, I think. I couldn't tell from
this distance, but what they buried was too small to be a body
. "

He sighed. "They should have camped elsewhere."

She turned and faced him. "So the fault is theirs?" Her
voice was bitter and mournful, and tears welled up in her eyes.

"No, Claudia, of course not," he said softly.

She walked toward him. "They had a plant. I remember that they had a plant. It made me ill."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "You remember
something which happened during the...last night?!"

"I think so. I'm not certain."

"That's remarkable, Claudia! I never remember anything
from the time after the change."

She shook her head. "No, no, I don't really remember
anything, nothing specific. I just remember that they had a
plant which made me
ill."
Her delicate brow furrowed. "I
have a picture in my mind, Janos, and I can't remember from
whence it comes, but it is connected to that plant."

"What is the picture?"

"An old man. A very old man with a long white beard,
dressed in a purple robe. He is holding the same plant." She looked at him. "Do you remember something like that?"