Chapter Six #2
Voices are rising now. The traveller women speak over our own, hands lifting, palms opening and closing as they refute the accusation. Their tones are heated but not afraid.
"What are they saying?" someone snaps.
"They mock us," another mutters.
"They curse us in their devil tongue!"
"Speak properly," a man shouts. "You stand on Christian ground now."
The noise thickens, layers of speech piling atop one another until meaning is lost entirely. Fear curdles into anger. Anger into certainty. Bodies press closer. I feel the crowd shift around me, a tightening, as if the air itself is being drawn inward.
Petru’s accusation echoes again, louder now, taken up by others.
I hear my own language shouted back at them, their voices pushing harder in return, insistent but incomprehensible, only deepening the divide.
One of them steps forward half a pace, chin lifted in defiance, and the movement sends a ripple of unease through the crowd.
I stand rooted where I am, heart racing, the image of the sheep burning behind my eyes.
"Stop."
A single voice cuts through the chaos.
The crowd quiets in pieces—voices dropping, heads turning, words dying mid-breath as attention gathers around the man who asked for shelter yesterday. He raises one hand, palm outward.
"This," he says, gesturing toward the bodies on the ground, "…this is not done by man."
A murmur stirs, but he does not wait for permission.
He moves past Petru and kneels beside the nearest sheep.
The grass dampens the knees of his trousers, his gray-threaded hair slipping forward as he crouches.
One hand rests on the animal’s flank, gentle, almost reverent, before he parts the wool with practiced fingers.
The crowd leans in as one, and me with them, breath held tight in my chest. Beneath the thick fleece, the skin is pale. Untorn. Unbruised.
Then I see them.
Two small punctures sit close together at the curve of the throat. Neat. Precise. So faint they might have been missed if one did not know to look, if not for the way the flesh around them has darkened, drawn inward.
The world tilts. A rush of heat floods my face, the ground swaying beneath my feet as memory crashes through me—moonlight on bone, the wet sound in the clearing, the shape that bent too carefully over the deer. The way the forest froze. The way two eyes burned red when they lifted to meet mine.
My nails bite into skin as I struggle to stay upright.
No. It cannot be.
The man straightens slowly and turns back to face us. His face has gone solemn, stripped of whatever warmth it carried before. When he speaks this time, it is weighted with certainty.
"Strigoi."
The word falls into the silence like a stone into deep water.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd, as if the sound itself has bitten down on them. And suddenly, no one is speaking at all. No one moves. No one breathes quite right.
The man's gaze travels across the faces before him—over rigid mouths, over wide eyes, over hands clenched tight around rosaries and sleeves and one another.
"You need act," he says. "Now. Before sun goes."
A murmur stirs, uneasy, but he presses on.
"Garlic," he lifts one finger. "Rub it on doors. On windows. Where night comes in." He hesitates, searching for the word, then nods to himself. "Animal blood. Fresh. Mark the wood."
My breath catches, the words pulling at something old in my memory—my father’s hands, drawing a thin red line across a stable door after a fox had been troubling the hens. Blood binds protection, he'd said, almost absently, as if the world obeyed older rules than the ones we spoke aloud.
A woman draws in a quick breath. Someone whispers a prayer.
"Knives," the man continues, undeterred. "Iron. Plant them in ground. Point up." His hand drives downward before it angles to the sky. "It does not like sharp earth."
His eyes flick briefly toward the pasture, toward the shadows beyond it.
"And silver," he finishes. "Most important. Silver blade. On the body. Always." He frowns slightly. "Not story-silver. Real."
Silver. My fingers drift to my belt without thinking, to the small knife tucked there in its worn leather sheath. My father’s dagger. The one he left me to cut herbs, its blade always bright and clean no matter how many plants it slices through.
He had always insisted it remain silver. Not iron, or steel. Silver.
The words seem to thrum in the air, low and ominous, as the man inclines his head slightly.
"We help," he adds. "We have silver. Herbs. Old knowing."
For a heartbeat, no one answers.
Then, the square explodes. Voices pile atop one another, rising fast, fear twisting quickly into something harder.
"They killed the sheep themselves!"
"To frighten us!"
"So we buy their trinkets and charms!"
"Pagan lies!"
"Satanic," another voice adds, trembling with conviction. "They want to curse us."
My ears ring. I stand there, stunned. Because the things the man spoke did not sound like devilry to me.
They sounded like fragments of something I had once known—something my father had taught me without ever calling it sacred.
Yet the people around me recoil as if they have heard blasphemy itself.
Faces twist with anger. Hands clutch tighter around crosses and rosaries. Bodies press closer together, as though the travellers’ very presence might stain them.
The circle tightens, bodies pressing closer together, their people too near now, their bright cloths too loud against the gray of our fear.
"You think us fools?" Petru surges forward, anger twisting his face into something almost feral. "You come with death on your heels and call it help?"
The traveller opens his mouth, but Radu’s father is already stepping forward. His voice cuts through the noise, carrying the weight of command.
"Enough."
The shouting falters, drawn toward him instinctively. He stands tall now, shoulders squared, jaw set. His eyes do not leave the travellers as he speaks.
"You will leave," he says. "This moment."
A ripple of approval runs through the crowd.
The traveller’s leader stiffens. "You make mistake," he says urgently. "Night comes again. Storm comes back." He gestures to the sky, then to the far reaches of the fields. "You need shelter. All of us."
"Out," someone yells.
"Go curse another village!"
"We don’t want your satanic filth here!"
The words rain down on them, cruel and unchecked now. Curses follow—old ones, spat with conviction. Someone throws a clod of dirt. It lands short, but the intent is clear.
Radu’s father points to the road, unwavering.
"Go," he says. "Before we make you."
The traveller’s jaw tightens. He opens his mouth again, then closes it, his hand lowering in defeat. Then, one by one, his people begin to retreat, gathering their things under glares and whispered prayers. The sheep lie forgotten between us, their marks hidden once more by wool and shadow.
I remain frozen at the edge of the pasture, breath shallow, watching the travellers gather themselves and turn away.
Cloth is tied down quickly, practiced hands working without panic.
Dogs circle and settle. Horses stamp, then lean forward, muscles bunching as the reins are gathered.
The carts creak as they are turned back toward the road, wheels biting into dirt, painted patterns flashing one last time in the dull light before slipping into motion.
Their voices rise again in that flowing language that seems to carry its own rhythm. It spills out around them as they move, words catching and breaking like water over stones.
Colour recedes from the edge of the village, red, blue, gold.
I watch it from far away, until it blurs into motion and distance, until it becomes only movement against the pale road.
For a moment, my eyes are drawn up.
She stands at the back of the last cart; the woman in red.
Her lined gaze finds me with frightening ease, as if it had been looking for me all along.
Her eyes do not flicker or soften or look away.
They hold me where I stand, pinning something inside me that I cannot name.
There is no warning in her mouth now—no words at all—but the meaning of her stare presses into me all the same.
A shiver runs through me, raising the fine hairs along my arms. For a heartbeat, nothing else exists.
Then someone brushes past me, hard enough to jolt my shoulder. Voices swell again. A hand claps loudly somewhere near my ear. The last cart lurches forward, breaking the line of sight, and the woman is gone—swallowed by movement, by cloth and wood and dust.
The road takes them; I remain.
Sound rushes back in uneven pieces. Feet shift.
People begin to talk over one another, voices thick with excitement and fear.
Someone laughs too loudly; someone else cries.
I feel myself being carried with the movement, guided without thinking, my steps falling into place beside others as the crowd turns and flows away from the pasture.
The ground changes beneath my feet. Dirt gives way to wood. The air cools. The noise thins, reshapes itself into murmurs that echo strangely, until I find myself standing in the church.
Bodies pack the space tightly now, shoulders brushing, breath warm and shared, the familiar press of it closing in around me. Popa Vasile stands before the altar. The doors are shut, and now, the outside world feels very far away.
"My children, we have been tested," his voice rings clear. "And in our weakness, we have been tempted."
His gaze sweeps the crowd; I feel it pass over me like a hand.
"Greed," he continues. "Pride. Curiosity. These are the cracks through which darkness enters."
Candles flicker. Shadows leap along the walls.
"We must answer with humility. With prayer. With obedience. God has shown us death today—not as punishment, but as warning."
Heads bow. Hands fold. I follow them.
Still, my thoughts slide, unbidden, back to the pasture—the darkened wool, the two small marks. Back to the woods, to the clearing washed silver by moonlight, to the weight of stillness before the night moved again.
Red eyes.
A wrongness that did not belong to men.
My stomach tightens.
What if—
The thought barely forms before fear smothers it.
What if they were right? The travellers. The man. The word he spoke. What if something else has already crossed a line?
My pulse races. I imagine myself stepping forward, opening my mouth, trying to explain. I imagine the questions that would follow. The looks. The way the air would change.
I would have to speak of the woods. Of night. Of being alone where I should not have been. Of knowing things I should not know.
Mama’s hand closes around my arm, making me flinch.
Her face is set, eyes forward, lips moving steadily with the prayer. Her eyes shine with tears she does not let fall. She nods once, as if to steady both of us.
I am wrong, I tell myself. The travellers unsettled me. Their words, their ways, their warnings—they stirred my thoughts, led me astray. They planted fear, and fear grows wild if you let it.
Prayer will set it right, as it always does. Everything will settle back into its proper place.
When we rest at last, my knees are aching, sore from hours pressed into the ground. Mama’s voice still drifts through the house as I lay awake beneath my blankets, the darkness shaped by her holy words.
Outside, the wind has risen. It rattles the shutters, worries at the roof, whines through the gaps in the wood.
Inside, my hand slips beneath my pillow, the silver of the dagger cold when my fingers close around it.
I hold it tight and do not let go.