They stopped in the early evening at a village called Hanwell, the vardos and tilt wagons forming a large circle in the centre of the park. The last few hours had been spent coming along a road surrounded by market gardens and fields, spread out between cottages and farms. A few motorcars had passed them, and a few more wagons, but it had otherwise been a quiet and peaceful end to the day’s trip.
Petri, Mihai, and Toma unhitched the horses and brushed them down, helped by the oldest boy, Petri’s ten-year-old son, Simeon. Elena was watching the other children in the centre of the wagons, with Toma’s grandmother, Esmerelda, helping her. The oldest girls, Lenka, Toma’s eleven-year-old, and Mirisa, Petri’s nine-year-old, had been sent for firewood and Petri’s wife, Anika, and youngest sister, Ilona, had fetched their bows and the family’s hunting dogs, two greyhounds and a small terrier.
“Stay in the wagon for now,” Selene told the Spanish teenagers and the two women, then jumped down. Her own bow was in the second tilt wagon, along with the bags of supplies she’d brought. She’d brought food with her, a lot of it, far more than was required for just the journey, because they would need it at the compound. Still, a little hunting would help stretch that further.
She pulled her quiver on as she followed the other two women into the park. Anika smiled as Selene caught up with them, then they waited a moment until she had strung her bow. They headed the opposite direction from the girls searching for firewood, needing an area where no-one had disturbed their prey.
Selene was the first to shoot. Her arrow punched easily through a large rabbit, and the other two women each killed one before the rabbits had time to scatter. It was more difficult when the targets were running erratically, and she missed on her second shot. Her third took a rabbit behind its ear.
Ilona and Anika took two shots each, and Ilona gave Selene a little smirk as the greyhounds brought back their own kills. “You’re not as accurate as you used to be.”
“There’s less to hunt in the city.”
They fetched their slain prey and Selene looked for her second arrow, but it had vanished into the dark. The three women returned to the camp a half hour later carrying two rabbits each. The terrier, Yappy, had his own rabbit he’d dragged out of a warren and killed. The greyhounds had run their prey down in the open.
When they reached the wagons, they found a fire blazing in the centre. A metal pole had been placed beside it, and hooked onto the end of the pole was a pot. Beside the fire, an aetheric kettle sat on the flattest stone they could find, freshly boiled. Nadara poured them each a cup of nettle tea as they passed her their rabbits. Toma took the ones the dogs had killed and brought them over, too.
Lenka had found some wild onions, and was cutting them with Elena. Selene unstrung her bow, cleaned the arrows she had killed the rabbits with, and put them all back in the last tilt wagon, and then fetched some garlic from the supplies she had brought.
She told the Spanish teenagers and two women to come join them, then fetched her tea and sat close by the fire. The teenagers did so hesitantly, and the ones who had worn blankets this morning wore them again now. They sat on the wet grass near the fire, and didn’t speak. Only Isabel knew any English, and Selene was glad the others didn’t say anything in Spanish. The Boskovs had been one of the few families to make it through the Aetherium Wars unscathed, but Toma’s elder brother had been a casualty. He was always quick to smile, laugh, and joke, but she wasn’t sure how he would take the nationality of his travelling companions.
Hopefully well; he was good with children.
The rabbits were skinned, cut, and left to soak in cold water, and after the tea the men and Anika checked over the wagons. The children ran around them and played as Esmerelda and Elena mended shirts. The greyhounds sat near the fire, relaxing in the heat, but the terrier was jumping with the children, its small barks punctuating the evening.
Selene spent the time chatting lightly with Kannika and Kusi Sisa, slowly getting to know them.
The rabbits soaked for two hours, by which time the children had tired themselves out. A second pot was added to the fire, the first one removed to sit on the grass and cool. It held an oat mush that could, perhaps, be called porridge, for the youngest children. Anika added a splash of oil to the pot, then the rabbit slices went in.
The chatter around the fire was quiet, simple. Selene lay back on the grass, watching the sky overhead. It was still bright, though the evening was growing late. She listened to the sizzle as Anika added water to the pot, and then a little later, the onions, and the garlic Selene had supplied. The scent of the stew soon filled the air.
Mihai settled down on the grass beside her, and lit his pipe. As the smoke drifted to the sky, he spoke softly to her.
“We will always help family,” he started simply.
“But you want to know what is going on,” she finished for him.
He didn’t answer for a moment, smoking his pipe in silence. Then: “this is not a small thing. To have so many of us moving in one direction, for one purpose.”
“We had to get those children out of the city without notice.”
He considered her words. “Why?”
“For the past several months, some children on their sixteenth birthdays have been changing. A different form of magic, perhaps. Something new. For each of them, it manifests differently.”
“A new form of magic?”
“Perhaps. We don’t know what it is. What we do know is that someone targeted those children, across all of Europe, and brought them here. They… did not treat them gently, and when we found them, they were in a bad way. We are taking them somewhere they can be safe.”
Mihai didn’t reply, and when she looked at him, she could see he was considering her words. After a moment, he shrugged. “Stew smells ready.”
“A few more moments, father,” Anika laughed from beside the fire. “Always so impatient with food.”
“Your food smells so good I want to eat it,” he told his daughter-in-law. Mihai glanced at Selene. “Heavy conversations require a heavy stomach. We will talk more, after.”
When the bowls of rabbit stew were finally passed around, the sun had set. The evening had dimmed, and it was beginning to grow colder. The fire and stew warmed them, and more nettle tea was made and given out. The family talked and joked as they ate, and reminisced with Selene, and Kusi Sisa was slowly drawn into the conversation. The Spanish teenagers ate in an oppressive silence that seemed to suck in noise.
When the stew was finished and the bowls and spoons cleaned and put away, Selene thought Mihai would mention the teenagers again, but instead he called across to Ilona, “pen how we drab the baulo.”
“Yes, father,” the young woman called back, and then she began to sing in a soft voice. “To mande shoon ye Romany chals, who besh in the pus about the yag. I’ll pen how we drab the baulo, I’ll pen how we drab the baulo.”
Petri joined in with a soft fiddle, and several other voices added to the second verse. “We jaws to the drab-engro ker, trin hors-worth there of drab we lels, and when to the swety back we wels, we pens we’ll drab the baulo. We’ll have a drab at the baulo.”
“You know this song?” Mihai asked.
“No,” Selene replied, translating the words in her head. She was fairly certain she knew most of them, although: “it’s about poisoning a pig?”
Mihai joined in on the next verse, his voice a deep baritone. “And then we kairs the drab opré, and then we jaws to the farming ker, to mang a beti habben, a beti poggado habben.”
It went on for six more verses. The song was instructional but she couldn’t quite decide if it was satirical. It was describing how Romani people would buy poison, then go and beg for something from a farmer. Whilst there, they could throw poison in the sty. The pig would find it whilst rooting through the mud, eat it and die, and then the Romani would visit the next day and beg for the corpse. Then they could remove the poison and enjoy the pork.
It had to be satirical, she decided. There wouldn’t be a realistic way to remove the poison from the pig. Even just removing the stomach wouldn’t work as the poison would need to go to the heart through the blood, and once it was in the blood it would be everywhere.
As the song finished, Mihai glanced over at her. “We know the reputation our people have,” he said. “But despite how we treat the gorgios, we are moral. We help our families, our communities, and beyond that…” he shrugged. “We help children, even gorger children.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
“The two women with you… they look like they just came from a brothel.”
“They did. They were rescued. They have no other clothes.”
He glanced at Kusi Sisa and Kannika. “I will talk to Ilona and Nadara. They should have something that will fit.”
Selene helped him and the others set up two benders, yurt-like tents with supple willow supports. They looked like igloos and were large enough to hold a dining room table. Tonight, the tarpaulin floors were covered with Persian rugs, and then blankets and pillows were added. The woven coverings were waterproof, but the tents had a hole in the centre to let out smoke, so the bedding was set up around the edges.
Mihai finished hammering the last hawthorn stake into place to secure the second bender, then came to Selene. “You and the children you brought may have this tent,” he said, and “Ilona and my grandchildren shall have the other.”
Previous Chapter: Thirty-one
Next Chapter: Thirty-three
Editor’s Note
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From: The London Eye Editorial Board
Subject: Language
Date: June 16, 1922
Some people may be relieved to learn that igloo is not an anachronism. It was first used in English in 1824. Further, Nanook of the North premiered early in 1922.
Author’s Note
The queerguide has a craft chat today on showing and telling. It’s probably different from any other show and tell advice you might have read. It’s mainly aimed at writers though, so feel free to go to chapter thirty-three if you’re not interested in my rambles on craft.
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