Chapter Three #2
The moment holds, suspended, fragile as glass.
Then it shatters.
His wife recoils with a scream, stumbling back as though struck. "Away from him!" she cries, her voice rising into something wild. Her hand shoots out, pointing at me, finger trembling. "Do not touch him!"
Her voice cracks, rising higher.
"She is tainted—" she cries. "The strigoi has marked her—look at her—look what she does—"
Old Petru’s chest rises again, uneven, dragging air into lungs that had been still a moment before.
His eyes flutter open, unfocused, blinking against the light and the crowd leaning over him.
His wife grips him beneath the arms, dragging him back across the dirt as though my presence still clings to him.
"Do not touch her—do not let her near you—" she cries, her voice breaking as she pulls him away from me.
"I did not—" The words stumble from me, thin and useless. "He had fallen, I only—"
My hands hover uselessly in the air, the warmth already gone from them, leaving only the memory of it behind.
Petru blinks up at the sky, then at the faces above him. Confusion flickers across his features. He turns his head toward me, slow, uncertain.
His wife grips his jaw, forcing his gaze back to her. "It was her," she cries. "She did this to you. She brought it upon you."
I shake my head, the motion small, desperate. "No. I—"
"She tried to kill me," Petru rasps suddenly, his voice rough with returning breath.
The words land like a blow.
I stare at him. "No," I say, but it comes out too quietly, swallowed by the rising noise.
He lifts a trembling hand and points at me.
"She is a witch," he says, stronger now, certainty filling the space where confusion had been.
"A deceiver. I saw her last night—" His breath catches, then steadies.
"She crept to the door. She meant to flee into the woods. To meet whatever evil calls her there."
My throat closes.
"I did not—" I try again, but the words scatter before they can take shape.
The crowd tightens around us. Faces lean closer. Eyes narrow. The circle draws in, pressing the air thin.
Mama pushes through them, her hands finding my shoulders, pulling me slightly back from the centre. "Enough," she says, her voice firm, though she cannot mask the tremor in it. "He is confused. He has just woken. Let him gather himself."
"Yes," someone murmurs. "He is not himself yet."
"Let him rest."
For a moment, it seems the words might settle things.
Then Petru’s wife lets out a dry, broken laugh. "Confused?" she cries. "Did you not see it? Did you not see the light?" Her hand shoots out, pointing at me again. "It came from her hands. From her flesh. This is no healing. This is corruption."
A murmur runs through the villagers, louder now, less uncertain.
"I saw it."
"So did I."
The space around me contracts further. I feel it in my chest, in the way my breath shortens.
Radu and his parents push forward then, their presence cutting through the shifting mass. Radu’s eyes find mine first, wide, searching, then flick to the others, to the circle, to the fear gathering there. His father steps ahead of him, posture rigid, gaze fixed on Petru.
"If you speak such accusations," he says, his voice measured, "you must be certain."
"If you doubt me," the old man presses, his voice rising with urgency now, "search her house. You will find it. The filth she keeps. The old ways. I swear it."
Mama stiffens beside me. "This is madness," she says too fast. "You cannot—"
Radu’s father raises a hand, silencing her without force, yet without question. He turns to the men standing nearest. "Go," he says. "Search it."
The words fall cleanly.
Mama steps forward, her voice rising. "This is a misunderstanding. Our children are to be wed—"
"All the more reason," he replies, his tone steady, almost reassuring. "We must be certain. There is nothing to fear if all is as it should be."
The calm in his voice does not ease the tightening around my chest.
The men are already moving.
Mama’s hand tightens on my shoulder. "You cannot—" she begins again, but he lifts a hand slightly, not to silence her, only to pause her.
"Do not trouble yourself," he says. "If she is innocent, her name will be cleared, and we shall proceed as planned."
The square holds its breath.
I remain where I fell, my knees pressed into the dirt, the weight of my dress gathering around me like something I have been set inside and cannot step out of.
The world feels tilted, too bright at the margins, too narrow at the centre.
Voices rise and fall around me, but they reach me as though through water.
"She has done nothing—"
"This is foolishness—"
"She has always been a good girl—"
The words come from different mouths, but none come close enough to reach me.
They circle instead, stopping just short, as though there is an invisible line drawn around my body that must not be crossed.
I see it in the way they stand, in the careful space they leave between themselves and me, in the way no hand extends to lift me from the ground.
Mama stands near, her presence firm, her voice rising now and then in defense, but her hands remain at her sides.
Elena is beside her, closer than the others, yet not close enough.
Her fingers twist together at her waist. She looks at me once, quickly, then away, as though unsure what she might see if she holds the gaze too long.
Neither of them touches me.
The absence presses harder than any hand.
I try to swallow. My mouth is dry. Words gather somewhere deep inside me, explanations, fragments of truth, the simple clarity of what I know—that I did not harm him, that I only followed what my father taught me, that nothing here is what they think it is—but they do not rise. They sit heavy and unmoving.
This is madness.
They cannot mean this—not truly. They are frightened. That is all. The night has stretched too long, the fear has settled too deep, and now it spills over, looking for shape.
They will see reason. They will remember who I am. The girl who grew among them, who carried water and baked bread and knelt in prayer beside them. This will unravel as quickly as it has formed.
I lift my eyes, searching faces, waiting. No one meets them for long.
Beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, something else flickers—small, quiet, almost hidden even from myself. A strange stillness, slipping through the cracks of my panic before I can stop it. If they doubt… if they hesitate… if this holds even for a moment—
My heart stutters once.
Then the wedding cannot begin.
A space opens where it had pressed so heavily only moments before. A thin, fragile space, barely there, but enough to feel. Enough to breathe through, if only for an instant.
Before the thought can take shape, before I can decide whether to crush it or hold it close—
The men return.
Their footsteps reach us first, heavy and purposeful against the ground. The murmurs falter. The crowd shifts, turning as one toward them.
"We found something."
The voices reach us before the men do, loud, breathless, carrying something like triumph twisted with fear. They push through the crowd, and I see it at once.
The box.
My father’s box.
It hangs from one man’s hand, the worn wood unmistakable even from a distance, the grain darkened where my fingers have touched it again and again. My stomach drops.
"No—"
The word tears out of me, but it comes too late.
He throws it to the ground.
The wood cracks on impact, the lid splitting, hinges snapping with a dry, splintering sound. The contents spill outward in a scatter of stems and leaves and small wrapped bundles, rolling across the dirt at the centre of the square.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd.
The herbs lie exposed, stripped of the quiet care with which I kept them.
Pale sprigs of yarrow. Dark, shriveled berries.
Twisted roots, still clinging to bits of earth.
Thin stems of mugwort, their scent rising faintly even here.
And among them, the moonflowers—petals curled inward now, soft and ghostlike, meant only to be gathered beneath the night sky.
They look wrong like this.
Not in my hands. Not in their place.
The silver dagger lands last, skidding across the ground before coming to rest near the broken wood. The blade catches the light, and the dark stain along its edge deepens where the sun touches it.
"I told you!" Petru shouts, almost in victory.
A murmur rises.
"Witchcraft—"
"Filth—"
"She hides these things—"
I push myself forward on my knees, my hands hovering over the scattered pieces, not daring to touch them now. "They are for healing," I say, my voice shaking, too thin against the weight of their fear. "They are not—my father taught me—they are not what you think—"
The words tangle. Break. I do not know where to begin, how to untangle years of quiet practice into something they will hear as anything but guilt.
My breath comes too fast. My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
"They are not evil," I try again, but it sounds weaker this time, even to me.
No one listens.
The crowd presses closer, then falters, held back by the same invisible line that keeps them from touching me. Their eyes move from the herbs to my hands, to my face, as though searching for something that has always been there and only now revealed.
"Mama—"
I turn to her.
She has stepped back.
Not far. Only a single pace. But it is enough.
Her hands are raised slightly, palms outward, as though to ward something off. She does not look at me. Her gaze fixes instead on the ground, on the broken box, on anything that is not my face.
"I did not know," she says, her voice unsteady but clear enough for all to hear. "I swear it. I never taught her this. I never—" Her breath catches. "I would not allow such things in my house."
The words fall like stones.
Something inside me folds in on itself.
"Mama," I whisper, but she does not turn.