Embrace The Twilight

Sarafina trembled at the tone of her sister’s voice. She had noticed. She’d noticed Sarafina being the first to arrive, and she’d noticed her reaction to the sight of the demon’s kill-neither one for the first time. “How did you not know?” Sarafina asked her. “You’re supposed to be a seer, like me.”

“Unlike you, I have no bond to demons.”

“Do not accuse me, sister. You know nothing of this.”

“It’s the same as the other times,” Andre said, rising slowly from Belinda’s body. He’d examined the wounds, all without touching the corpse. Then he glanced at the weeping old mother. “I am so very sorry, Melina.”

“The demon has found us again. We must bury her quickly and move on,” someone said.

“What good will it do?” Katerina asked. “It will only pursue us, find us again, just as it has ever since our tribe was cursed by the birth of my dear little sister.”

Melina gasped, and Gervaise frowned deeply. Andre put his hand on Katerina’s shoulder. “This is not the time-”

“You all must know it’s true! The first time this demon took one of our people was the summer Sarafina was born. I’ve studied on this, consulted the spirits. Every sign, every omen, tells me she is somehow bound to the creature that stalks us. She’s the reason it plagues us so.”

“That’s madness!” Sarafina shouted. She looked at the faces around her, the speculation in them as they studied her.

“You knew it was near,” Katerina said. “You always seem to know.”

“I am a seer.”

“It attacks only by night. You, more and more, are becoming a creature of the night yourself. Up until all hours, sleeping long into the day.” Her gaze swept the others. “You’ve all seen it.”

Melina nodded her head in agreement. “It’s true.”

“I sleep when I’m sleepy,” Sarafina said softly. “That does not mean I am in league with this creature.”

Katerina looked around her, perhaps saw the doubt of her accusations in some of those faces, and shrugged. “If it isn’t you the demon follows so persistently, then I say we should put it to the test.”

Frowning, Sarafina searched her sister’s face, her eyes, for some clue what she was up to. “Test?”

“Leave us. Leave the tribe. Stay behind this time while the rest of us move on. If the demon follows again, even without you among us, that will be proof of your innocence.”

Andre stepped forward, putting a protective arm around Sarafina’s shoulders. “I won’t permit it, Katerina.”

“Nor will I,” said Gervaise. He studied Sarafina’s face, leaning heavily on his staff, his back bowed and his once jet hair long since gone to silver. “We are all frightened and aggrieved at the loss of Belinda. But turning against one another is not the answer. We must not let this evil divide us.”

Now everyone present was nodding, including the two young men who had returned from the camp with rifles. Everyone except for Katerina.

Gervaise fixed his stern gaze on the two sisters. “You two will prepare Belinda for burial.”

Katerina paled visibly. Sarafina felt her own blood run cold at the prospect and blurted, “Surely you can hire a pair of gorgios- ”

“You two will do it.”

“With respect, Gervaise,” Katerina said, “my home and all my possessions have burned in a fire caused by my sister’s carelessness. I must see to it that I have shelter tonight.”

Gervaise crooked a brow and rubbed his chin in thought. He truly was the wisest man in the village, but he was unused to having his commands questioned. “You, Katerina, will share your sister’s shelter and her possessions. It is high time the two of you learned the meaning of family.” Then he glanced at Belinda, and his voice softened to a mere whisper. “Do neither of you understand the role you play? Your mother is dead, and, since last summer, your grandmother, too. You are the seers. And you are the Shuvani. ”

Melina shook her head. “I said from the start, they are too young to be the tribe’s wise women.”

“They are all we have.” Gervaise patted her gently before refocusing on the two sisters. “Now do your duty to Belinda. She lies dead while you fuss and fight. Do not shame us.” He glanced at them. “Belinda is trapped between the worlds. You know what must be done?”

“I know,” Sarafina said softly. She glanced at her sister. “Gather sticks,” she said. “We’ll need a small fire.”

Gervaise set the young men a few paces away on either side, close enough to guard the women while they worked over the body, but far enough away to give them the privacy that was necessary for the rite. Katerina had taken Melina back to camp, to set her to work gathering the clothes with which Belinda would be buried. While she was gone, Sarafina arranged twigs and sticks carefully on the ground beside her cousin, but not too close.

Katerina returned, three bundles of dried herbs in her hands. She handed her sister a bit of each. “Are we ready to begin?” she asked.

Sarafina nodded, and lowered her torch to the pile of twigs and sticks. It caught on the first try, a very good omen. The flames spread rapidly. Fina jammed the torch into a notch in a nearby tree.

“First the thyme,” she said, and they each tossed a handful of the herb into the fire.

“Next the sage,” Katerina whispered. “And last the rosemary.”

They cast the remaining herbs into the fire in the correct order, then began to walk backward and countersunwise around it as fragrant drafts of smoke billowed to the heavens. “Belinda Rosemerta Prastika,” they whispered together. They walked round the fire, round the body, and increased their pace, chanting the name of their cousin over and over, a little louder each time. Seven times around the fire they went, and Sarafina felt the power they raised growing stronger all the while. At the end of the seventh time around, they stopped, each at the same instant, faced the body and lifted their hands.

Sarafina felt the energy-and, she hoped, her cousin’s spirit with it-shoot forth from the circle they had trod, straight into the heavens.

Letting their bodies relax, they stood still and silent, each in her own thoughts.

Sarafina closed her eyes and sighing, lowered herself to the ground.

“The ritual is the job of the Shuvani, ” Katerina said. “One of honor. And we have done it well. Preparing the body is not.”

Handling a dead body was a despised task among the tribe. When their own grandmother had passed, she had been bathed and dressed in her finest clothes even while she lay dying. No Gypsy wanted to touch the dead.

“Perhaps Gervaise wishes to teach us the lesson of humility,” Sarafina suggested. “Quiet, now. Melina returns.”

Melina carried a bundle of clothing, a pail of water scented with herbs and oils, and a soft cloth. She glanced at the small fire that had been left to burn itself out but said nothing. She had lived a long time and had no doubt seen the fire before. She knew better than to ask its meaning. The death rites were secret, known only to the Shuvani, passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Sarafina and her sister had learned them from their grandmother, as they had so many other things.

Melina knelt, watching in silence, waiting for the two of them to do the job they had been given. Sarafina thought in that moment, that even her hardhearted sister felt moved.

So they knelt, and they gently undressed the shell that had been Belinda. They washed the young woman carefully, even though every touch made chills race up Sarafina’s spine. Belinda was not yet cold, but cool to the touch. She tried to keep the cloth between her palm and Belinda’s flesh, but sometimes it slipped.

When the washing was finished, the two women unrolled and unfolded the red fabric Melina had brought; then they laid it out beside Belinda. Sarafina rolled the dead woman up onto one side, because she knew that while touching the corpse chilled her to her very marrow, her sister simply could not bring herself to do it. So she rolled poor Belinda, and Katerina tucked the cloth beneath her as far as she could manage. Then Fina lowered the body gently onto the cloth and rolled it up onto its other side, so Katerina could pull the fabric through.

They did a good job of it, Sarafina thought. The body rested almost perfectly centered on the open bolt of scarlet cloth.

Sarafina laid a small bit of fabric, cut in the shape of a perfect circle, upon Belinda’s chest. Then, she took one side of the cloth, and her sister took the other, and they wrapped Belinda in it as carefully as they would have wrapped a baby, leaving only her head and her bare feet uncovered.

“I intended to use that bolt of cloth to make a dress for her,” Melina whispered. “Now it becomes her shroud.” She unfolded the clothing she had brought, turning the blouse and skirt inside out before refolding them carefully and stacking them beside her daughter’s body.

The little fire had died to smoking remains by the time they had finished. Katerina leaned over the water pail to scrub her hands.

“There should be more light,” Melina whispered. “We mustn’t let her lie in the dark this way.”

“My work here is done,” Katerina said, straightening and wiping her hands on her skirts. “I’m returning to camp. I’ll send someone back with lanterns.”

Melina only nodded, not even watching her go. When the sounds of her footsteps died away, she glanced at Sarafina. “You may as well go, too. I’ll watch over her until morning.”

“I’m staying with you,” Sarafina replied. “I won’t leave you alone.”

Melina lifted her head, met Fina’s eyes, and for a moment seemed to be searching them. Almost as if she were not entirely comfortable staying alone with her. It was dark in the hardwood forest. Oaks and elms towered around them, and the ground was thick with ferns and weeds. Only that single torch spilled a circle of pale light around the two of them, and it was burning low. The night was silent, eerily so.

Then Melina glanced past her, at a sound from one of the young men who stood guard, and she seemed to relax a bit. Sarafina sat down on the ground beside the slender body wrapped in red cloth and wondered why anyone, even a demon, would want to murder her cousin so cruelly.

I didn’t kill her, I set her free, and deep down you know it’s true.

Sarafina’s head rose with a snap at the clear sound of a man’s voice. A man she knew full well was not her beloved spirit. “Who is that?”

Melina paused in her rocking. “What are you talking about?”

“That voice. Didn’t you hear it?” She got to her feet, brushing the twigs from her skirts and staring at the woods around her, every sense on full alert, her very skin prickling and aware. There was laughter then, deep, ringing laughter. “There,” she whispered. “Don’t you hear that?”

“I hear nothing, Sarafina,” the old woman said. She got up, as well, backing a few steps away from the younger girl. “Perhaps…you should go back to camp.”

“No. It’s out here. I can’t leave you alone.”

That’s right. I’m here. But you know deep down it’s not the old woman I want. It’s you, Sarafina. It’s always been you. Leave this band of traitors and come to me.

“No!” she cried, pressing her hands to her ears. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” She turned to run away, but collided instantly with a hard chest and looked up and into Andre’s concerned eyes. Sobbing, she clung to him, burying her face against his chest.

But she stiffened when she heard the voice of her sister. “What is going on?”

Blinking, Sarafina lifted her head from Andre and looked around until she spotted her sister standing a few feet away, aglow in light. She sniffed and hoped none of the tears remained on her cheeks. “I thought you were staying in camp.”

“I decided to help Andre bring the lanterns.” She glanced down at the glowing lanterns she carried, one in each hand.

Pulling away from Andre, Sarafina saw that he, too, carried lanterns. She understood then why his arms hadn’t come around her hard and fast as they usually did.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Nothing, I-I’m afraid, that’s all.”

“Take her back to camp, Andre,” Melina said. “Take her and go. Katerina will sit vigil with me until sunrise.”

“But I can stay. I’m fine,” Sarafina said.

The old woman only shook her head, even as Andre set his lanterns down on the ground and put an arm around Sarafina, gently leading her away.

Sarafina knew perfectly well that old Melina was going to tell her sister everything that had happened. It would only be more ammunition for Katerina to use against her. She wouldn’t be happy until she was the sole Shuvani of the tribe. She knew Sarafina, though younger, was better, stronger, more talented-and she couldn’t stand it.

Andre helped her back to her vardo, and she climbed inside, tired to her very bones. It would be dawn soon. And yet she couldn’t go to sleep, not just yet.

“Would you like me to stay with you, watch over you while you sleep?” he asked.

Sarafina shook her head. “No. I want…I want to be alone.” She didn’t, not really. She wanted to feel the reassuring presence of her guide, her angel. She wanted to hear his voice again-clearly enough so she could listen while he explained all this to her. What was happening to her? To her life? To her tribe? And why?

“Something frightened you out there tonight, Fina. Won’t you tell me what it was?”

Again she shook her head. “Everyone is afraid of…whatever sort of creature killed poor Belinda. And the others before her. Why should I be different?”

“I don’t know. It seemed like…more than just fear.”

“Now you sound like my sister. I suppose you suspect me of being in league with demons, as well?”

“Of course not.” He stroked her hair lovingly. “Get some sleep, Fina. You don’t look well.”

“I will. Good night, Andre.”

He leaned close, kissed her mouth briefly, then turned and left her alone. Sarafina didn’t go to bed. She closed her tent flap carefully and went to the small table in the center of her home. Her hands trembled as she unwound the silk from around the crystal ball. When it was uncovered, she sat down before it, in the darkness, and gazed into its depths. She let her mind go still, let her vision slip out of focus, let her eyelids grow heavy. She had never tried to summon her spirit this way before. But suddenly she was moved to try. “Come to me, my beloved. Come to me, for I need your wisdom now. Tell me, what is my destiny?” she asked. “If it is true I am linked to some demon, how may I break the curse?”

The crystal clouded and then the cloud vanished, and instead she saw a person take shape before her. A man. He was darkly handsome, though not a Rom. His hair was wet, dripping, and his shirt was torn open to reveal a ghastly scar on his chest.

As she stared at this vision, wondering at it, he lifted his head and looked right into her eyes. He looked at her-through her. And she knew him. “I have seen you before,” she whispered. “Who are you?” But even as she asked, she knew the answer. This man was her guide, her spirit, the voice who spoke to her, the presence who walked with her. But why was he wet, and so battered? Was he the ghost of some martyr who had died for his cause?

He only kept staring, clinging to her eyes as if by sheer will. There were men around him, men in foreign robes and headdresses, and they were hurting him. Branding his flesh with hot irons.

Sarafina’s heart twisted in her chest, her palms pressing to either side of the crystal as if she could make the torture stop, but the man never flinched. His eyes held hers through the glass.

Then the crystal clouded over again, and he was gone.

Fina sat back, breathless and sick to her stomach. He was not the demon who hunted among her tribe. She knew that without much thought at all. He was her spirit. Her spirit had a face now. But why was he so tormented? He hadn’t, during those moments when they had held each other’s eyes in the crystal, seemed like a spirit at all. He had seemed like an ordinary man. Though not from this place, nor perhaps, her mind whispered to her, from this time.

3

“W hy do we keep him alive? If there were any spies among us, they fled when the Americans declared victory and pulled their troops out of our lands. It is impossible to know who they were, when we have so many men missing, so many dead and left behind in the desert.”

The conversation was spoken in yet another dialect, one Will knew, though not as well as some. He was able to make out the words. That the U.S. had pulled out did not surprise him. This had never been meant to be a sustained operation, like the one in Afghanistan. This leg of Operation Enduring Freedom was a simple, short, potent lesson with clear parameters. Infiltrate terrorist cells, then, guided by spies on the inside, launch strikes on their training camps and then get the hell out. It had worked. The cells had been decimated, the survivors scattered, the leadership cut off. This band who’d captured him had unfortunately spotted him as he made his way to the extraction point. He had been within sight of the chopper when he’d realized they were on his tail, and he’d had no choice but to take cover and open fire, holding them off long enough for the chopper full of American soldiers to get clear.

“I say we put a bullet between his eyes and leave him for the vultures.”

Fine, he thought. Just do it and get it the hell over with. How long had he been here, now? Weeks? Longer? It was impossible to be sure. The goddamn broken foot and ribs ached so badly he couldn’t sleep, and whatever freaking bug he’d picked up had him so weak he spent most of his time lying in the corner, shivering-at least when he wasn’t hunched over in the opposite corner throwing up.

He had expected U.S. forces to come after him. Apparently he was presumed dead or they would have by now. Of course he was presumed dead. He hadn’t talked. None of the men who had infiltrated the other terrorist cells in the area had been identified. They’d had time to get out. The U.S. would assume he had died a hell of a lot more readily than they would assume he’d withstood weeks of torture without uttering a single name.

The voice of the man who wore the silk turban and diamond pinky ring, apparent right-hand man to the leader of this small pack of jackals, came next. “We will shoot him when Ahkmed says we shoot him. Here.” There was a rattle, as if of paper. “Have him hold this and take his photograph.”

“You intend to ransom him?” one of the underlings asked.

“They took our men to their Bay of Guantanamo as prisoners. Perhaps we can use the colonel to get some of them back.”

“Over my dead fucking body,” he muttered. He would have shouted it, but his throat was so raw that muttering was the best he could manage.

The lock of his kennel scraped open, and two men whose faces had become familiar stepped inside. He stayed where he was, huddled in the corner of a metal box that had once been part of a cargo truck. It was his own room within the caves where they were hiding out, though not deeply enough to benefit from the one plus of cave life: a constant temperature. This place was oven hot by day, freezing cold by night. His furniture included a large tin can he used for a toilet and a pitcher of stagnant water he supposed they expected him to drink. Most days it was tough to tell which smelled worse, though when you got thirsty enough the smell of the water didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference.

When the light spilled in from the open door, it blinded him, and he covered his eyes with his hands.

“Come out, pig. We are to photograph you.”

He lifted his head, squinting at them and made his way forward. Every step on the broken foot was sheer agony, but he had learned cruelly what happened when he hesitated or disobeyed.

They pulled him out when he got close enough so they could grip his arms. He was struggling to see. The caves were lit by floodlights, powered by a generator he could hear running somewhere in the distance. Probably near the entrance.

They slung him into a chair. One held a rifle on him, while the other shoved a newspaper into his hands. He glanced down at it. Jesus, it was in English.

“You hold this up so the date is showing while we take a photo.”

He lifted his gaze to meet the speaker’s dark brown eyes. “This says the Americans have left the country. Are you trying to give them a reason to come back and kill you all?”

“You should shut up and do as you are told, Colonel Stone. We will trade you for our prisoners. This is your only hope of leaving here alive.”

He shook his head slowly and decided to use this to his advantage. His wounds were infected. He needed to clean them. “They won’t even recognize me like this,” he said, running a hand over his unshaven face. “And if they do, they’ll be so angry at what you’ve done to me that they’ll just renew the bombing.”

The two men blinked and stared at each other. “He could be right. Do you think we should clean him up first?” one asked in his native tongue.

“I…let us ask Ahkmed.”

The two of them turned and left him there, alone, in that section of the caves. Granted, there were no weapons in sight, and he couldn’t try to escape, since there was only one way out of this section, and they had taken it. But still…

He got to up onto his one good foot and hopped over to the table, where a pitcher of water and a partially eaten loaf of bread were sitting, ignored. Picking up the pitcher, he sniffed it, found the water cleaner than any he’d had in days and drank deeply. He shoved a large piece of the bread into his mouth, chewed, then washed it down with more of the water.

And then he noticed the knife. It was blunt edged, not meant to cut anything. But he took it all the same, along with the rest of the bread, and he hopped across the room to his box, tossing both deep into the shadows inside.

He got back to his chair just as the men returned. One of them carried a large basin of water. The other had a stack of clothes in his hands, a razor and a bar of soap on top.

“Ahkmed says you are to wash up and shave. Then put on these clothes.”

The basin was set in front of him. “Make good use of the water, Colonel. You’ll get no more.”

He nodded, glad they’d taken the bait. Without getting up, he peeled off his torn, bloody shirt. He took the bar of soap, which was the ugly brown-yellow hue of homemade stuff, hard as a rock and, he thought, probably strong enough to burn out his eyes. There was a washrag, too, and he made use of it. God, it felt good to wash some of the filth away.

The men stood back, guns at the ready, watching him. He cleaned the burns and cuts on his chest and arms, even though the soap felt like battery acid when it touched them. Lye soap, it had to be. Jesus.

“It is your face that needs cleaning, Stone. Get on with it.”

Nodding, he cleansed all wounds he could reach on his back, fearing he’d missed more than he’d hit, and finally rinsed the cloth in the water and washed his face. Next, he leaned over the water basin, dipping his entire head into it and then scrubbing the soap over his wet hair, dipping it again to rinse. Finally he lifted the razor to his face, but paused when he glimpsed his reflection in the basin of water. The beard was coming in nicely. It would be excellent camouflage if he ever got out of here.

He set the razor down again. “I would like to keep the beard, if I may.”

They looked at each other, then at him. “You are an American. You’re not worthy to wear a beard. Take it off.”

Sighing, he didn’t see the value in arguing the point. He shaved the beard with the dull razor, scraping his face raw in the process.

“Now put on the clothes,” one of the men ordered.

He braced his hands on the table to push himself up onto his feet, though he kept his weight on the good one. Then he balanced there as he managed to get his pants undone and off. The shorts went, too. He didn’t have a single qualm about baring himself, because it meant being relatively clean for the first time in a month. He snatched up the soapy washrag and washed his lower body before they had time to object.