His father had disappeared weeks ago when she appeared on the doorstep of his parents’ house. If one could’ve called the shack a house at all. It was a shabby little wooden hut in the green foothills of the Southern Carpathians, that had been falling into disrepair for decades along the course of the Arges River. Why his parents had decided to raise their son on this godforsaken piece of land was a mystery to the boy. The soil was not particularly fertile and difficult to cultivate. Field work turned out to be a real backbreaking job. For a child, there was little variety here except for the adventurous terrain of the valley’s swampy forests. But those were his entire happiness.
From morning to night, he roamed through the eerie moorlands; to the chagrin of his mother, who more than once believed her little adventurer among the bog corpses. But like a falcon, he always found his way back to the nest, just in time for dinner. Euphorically, he then spread out his found treasures on the kitchen table—one more gruesome than the other. Weathered skeletons of small animals, stinking beetles, the remains of a bird carcass; her son had a real knack for abominable finds. But lately, she had missed his special desire to explore.
Her boy sensed that she was not feeling well. Her cough got worse from day to day and was more and more often accompanied by black-blooded sputum. She spent most of her time in bed and he wouldn’t leave her side. The fact that he had to watch his mother’s ailing decline at the tender age of thirteen broke her heart. And so, she was glad that he complied with her request to get some fresh air for once.
Packed with his self-made bow as usual, he marched off into the undergrowth. The hunting weapon was the last project he had worked on with his father in their makeshift workshop. At least his producer had stayed long enough to finish the bow’s elaborate wood carvings with his son before making his escape. His son hated him for it. Not for his own sake, but because of his mother. How could his father be so heartless and leave a seriously ill woman alone?
Discontent rose in the boy when he reached the tree line. His black button eyes darkened so much that they formed a perfect complement to the dark mop of hair reluctantly falling into his face. But this did not detract from his impeccable perception. He was able to follow every movement in the thicket up to a distance of five yards. A remarkable achievement for a boy his age. His arrows almost always hit their target at first try. Today, however, even that did not give him any pleasure. It was his father’s craft that he had taught his son at an early age. Hunting prey was the only meat dish they could afford. But the boy’s raids were far more sparse than those of his father. A few sparrows, a rabbit, but nowhere near as magnificent a game as the one from the forays with his disgraced role model. Listlessly and unambitiously, the little hunter went in search of a few forest dwellers worth killing. It was autumn already and the animals’ food supply was becoming scarce. Many retreated to the deeper areas of the forest around this time of season. He would have to follow them if he wanted to get the opportunity for a good shot.
Carefully, he chose his steps. Just no too loud noises that could startle the game. Like a fox, he crept through the rows of trees. A trail caught his attention, drawing the image of a bird that was obviously looking for something. It had lifted off the ground several times and landed again to grope around, just like songbirds do. But the flying creature was clearly too big for a sparrow. Even more peculiar was the pattern of his locomotion. Tracks miraculously disappeared into nothingness without any signs of a flight attempt, only to reappear in another place from the same nothing to which they had vanished. A boy couldn’t help but think of the legends about Baba Cloanta—an old witch said to live in the deep forests and often appearing to people in form of a raven. His father had been only too happy to tell him the story.
“Be careful when hunting in Baba’s forest,” he’d drum into him. “Never approach her with a cocked bow or she will eat you!”
Old horror stories, the little hunter was almost sure about that. Nevertheless, he lowered his weapon after the trail became increasingly erratic. The bird seemed to either run away from him or guide him even deeper into the forest. Other boys would have fled long ago, but not him. He would confront Baba Cloanta for her foolery. Doggedly, the young lad refused to turn back. Even the creeping fog, which crawled up the forest floor behind him like a veil did not stop him from getting to the bottom of things. His gaze was so fixed on the trail that he didn’t notice how he entered a part of the forest he had never seen before—despite his years of wandering through it. Trees became more gnarled, more winding. Their bark deformed in more and more spots into strange patterns that resembled those of letters. The claw prints appeared as if turning towards the boy every few meters to make sure he was still following. Was that possible? Startled, he stopped for a moment at his thought. “Oh, nonsense,” he immediately rejected it, shook his head in disbelief and stalked on.
At some point, he was so caught up in the walking pattern of the ominous bird that it felt like the animal would run around him at will. Sometimes next to him, sometimes in front of him, sometimes behind him and sometimes… through him—just as if they were going for a walk together or… would be one with each other… And then, all of a sudden, the trail was gone in the deepest haze. The boy was determined to find it again. But his right shoe encountered an obstacle within the fog. A stony obstacle. Softly, a small wave broke out of the white mist in front of his shoe tip, like from a surface of water that was agitated by the impact of a pebble. It revealed the base of a large hewn rock. Slowly, the boy raised his eyes, sweeping up the material. About at shoulder height, a sign he did not know was emblazoned in glaring lettering. Nonetheless, the sight of the symbol felt strangely familiar. His fingertips hesitated for a moment before reaching for the pulsating light that illuminated the symbol. But before he could complete his action, a whisper startled him.
“Got you…” A dark but soft female voice echoed down from above into his ears, which had always been way too pointy for a human child.
Frightened, he looked up at her and was confronted with two ghostly, brightly lit eye sockets that stared down at him not a hand’s breadth away from his nose. He let out a horrified scream and jumped back. What sat there on the stone’s dome was not a raven, but a mighty white owl—so powerful that she reached about his height from feathered head to tail. And she spoke! That was too much for him. Hastily he made off and disappeared into the thick wall of vapor. He ran as fast as his feet could carry him. Over hill and dale, he almost flew back in a rush, to the direction of the familiar forest path. Again and again, he looked around in panic to see if the huge animal had followed him. In the process, he stumbled over a root, fell down and hit his head rudely on a tree stump. The impact was so harsh that his consciousness faded, and he would remain motionless on the forest ground.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
As the day drew to a close and dusk with dark clouds heralded a nightly storm, he was still not home. His mother looked out of the window next to her bed every few minutes. She had to stretch her head properly to catch a glimpse of the gravel path at the edge of the forest. Even such small movements caused her the greatest effort by now and she coughed after every peeking attempt before she fell back on her pillow exhausted. She prayed fervently that the little man had not fallen into the stupidity of looking for his father, who had not noticed the initial symptoms. Masterly, she had managed to keep the first signs of illness hidden from him. When she started showing some slightly increased body temperature, she told him it was due to overheating while working in the field. And when he recognised a small bump on her arm, she claimed it came from the stupid barn door, which always stood open a crack too wide. Irrelevant everyday events, nothing more. She felt that it was getting harder and harder for him to stay, so she didn’t want to stop him. He tormented himself with a guilt that she could not take away from him. However, Ravina had not expected that said guilt would personally knock on her door that evening.
At first, it was only a light breeze that elicited a mild melody from the wind chime outside the window. But soon, skies rumbled, and an ever-increasing wind blew the half-dried leaves from the majestic zelkova in front of her house. The shutters rattled as if they were afraid of the storm approaching. Then, a dazzling flash of light flickering through the black night sky as if it were a stroke of tinder. Like a choir of lamenting souls, the winds howled through the draughty crack under the front door, which suddenly but slowly creaked open.
“My darling boy,” Ravina raised her voice. “Is that you?”
She didn’t get an answer, but she could clearly hear a few tentative steps over the threshold. When the door closed again, the storm suddenly subsided. An eerie feeling spread through Ravina and a serious expression came over the sick woman’s face. At that moment, she knew that it was not her little boy, who had just entered the house. Unsettling silence filled her home. Her pale hands clasped the blanket, and she pressed the back of her head deep into the pillow. Without a word, she listened to what was happening in front of her bedroom door in the kitchen. An unknown figure wandered around like a ghost, scurrying from one corner to the next and moving some objects on the sideboard. It opened a drawer, casually leafed through some notes, closed the drawer, opened a second and closed it, too.
“He’s not here, my lady.” Ravina’s voice sounded frightened. Her tired eyes turned to the bedroom door, behind which still not a word was uttered. However, the steps of the figure were now getting closer. “Please, good Lady Zana. You have every right to be angry with me. But tell me that you left my boy unharmed.”
Her words had an effect. The sinister guest directed its presence to the front of her chamber. Smoothly, the handle was pushed downwards. Ravina just wanted to bury herself under her blanket. But she found the courage to not look away. This courage was to be surprised with a sight she had not expected. Old horror stories of the fairy women had drawn the image of hideous creatures in her head. Half human, half animal, they roamed through the forest boundaries from this world to the afterlife. They were said to eat small children, lead wanderers to their doom and haunt women, who had stolen their men. But the woman who stood in the doorway was beautiful beyond measure. Her wild hair as white as snow, her skin as black as ebony, she was wrapped in a robe of blue velvet. Surrounded by the shadows of the unlit kitchen, her blue eyes sparkled like two small moons. Her fur-trimmed long ears lay close to her voluminous hair, the ghostly woman had one hand loosely placed behind her back. With the other, she elegantly held a crescent-shaped staff sickle, the handle of which was encircled by five deadly but well-groomed claws. Reserved and unapproachable, she looked to the doomed woman in her bed. A few guilt-ridden tears poured down Ravina’s cheeks due to this long overdue meeting.
“Do what you have to do.” Ravina closed her eyes and prepared to be laid to rest at the hands of this Lady Grim Reaper. But the lady hardly moved.
“What exactly is it, I have to do?” she asked tonelessly in a voice of honey and smoke.
The eyes of the sick opened again. Embarrassed by her hasty judgment. “Excuse me,” Ravina apologized. “I didn’t mean to command you, Lady Zana.”
“My child, it takes a little more than a mortal to command me,” Zana’s words sounded suspicious, even if she avoided unnecessary spitefulness in her tone. With a hint of temperament, she leaned her weapon against the bedroom wall. Indignantly, she flocked to the window and opened it extremely roughly to let some fresh air into the germ-filled room. Then she searched the chamber for incense. She found what she was looking for on the chest of drawers.
It was only with difficulty that Ravina managed to sit up in her bed, to which she had been confined for weeks now. Visibly ashamed, she followed the actions of the nocturnal visitor, whose hands routinely balanced a few grains of frankincense out of a small casket. It was a gift Ravina once had received from her mother many years ago when she began her apprenticeship in the family’s pharmacy. The procedures of a healer seemed well known to the ghostly lady. Lighting the incense charcoal with nothing more than her otherworldly breath, she carefully placed the grains in the incense burner before putting its lid back.
“This dwelling is beneath your dignity,” Lady Zana remarked, visibly upset, as her watchful eye lights assessed the battered interior of the shack. She ran her fingers along the edge of the chest of drawers and had to discreetly wipe the dust off her tips afterwards.
“We had no choice,” Ravina admitted. As bourgeois descendants of the Black Army master, Ravina’s family had a dubious reputation. Together with the boy’s father, she had fled from several village communities. Time and time again, the residents blamed them for a number of incidents, including poor harvests, dead livestock, and pets mysteriously drained of blood. Although most wanted to see Ravina hanged on the gallows as a witch for these events, she was the least responsible. At an early age, she had distanced herself from the dark practices associated with her bloodline and instead dedicated herself to medicine and spell magic. With the same powers, she also succeeded in keeping the dark forces in check, which tormented her son’s father. Just with her dear little boy did she struggle in vain. The child had inherited something from his producer he had far less control over. Therefore, the parents had only one choice. They renounced civilization and went into hiding. Far away from Moldova, the most remote areas of the Fagaras Mountains were to become their new home. And for a while, peace was coming to a couple, whose bloodlines had shaped a dark past. Only that their happiness did not last forever.
“I can’t say that I would have given you a choice either,” Zana commented, visibly offended. Her companion had gone to the mortal realm against her will to do the raven witch’s bidding.
“He never forgot you, you know?” Ravina tried to calm the fairy woman. But Lady Zana didn’t want to hear anything about such sentimentalities. Disappearing back into the kitchen, she put on a kettle amid great noise. Meanwhile, the sick woman wanted to express a few more soothing words, but the plague germ in her lungs squeezed a cough accompanied by stabbing pain out of her instead. Holding her blood-stained handkerchief in front of her mouth, she sank into her pillows again. She was glad the boy’s father couldn’t see her like this anymore. Little she knew about his life before his time in Moldova. One day, he simply stood in her parents’ pharmacy and inquired about sleeping potions. It didn’t take long for Ravina to find out that he was suffering from an insomnia conventional medicine could not cure.
Only once he laid with her. But once was enough to give birth to a child in this fleeting affair. After that, he stayed with her more based on a sense of obligation; to be a good father and male example for his son. A much older oath though, had been gnawing at him ever since. It ate him up inside and made sure that he did not find rest for a single night. In the last days before his disappearance, the nightmares and sleepwalking became worse than ever. Finally, during the last full moon, he was gone. And the Black Death was there.
“Will you take him with you?” Ravina knew she didn’t have more than a few weeks to live. Whether she died at the hands of Lady Zana’s sickle or at the hands of this infernal sickness that had plagued her homeland for centuries, was negligible. Either way, she would never live to see the next winter. All she wanted was for her little boy to be brought to safety. He had never really felt at home among people. In the folk tales they called a child like him a changeling, born of the unholy union between a human woman and an elfling. In this world, these children often did not even survive the first few years after birth. Which did not apply to her son, but his animalistic behaviour would sooner or later get him into trouble.
“That fool,” Zana murmured at the stove. Her faithless companion should have known that the raven curse that burdened him would bring misfortune to any mortal who stayed near him for longer. The tea kettle’s whistling reflected the tense atmosphere quite well. It was also able to wake a little troublemaker from his slumber on the porch’s bench. Of course, Lady Zana had carried him back to his home. Despite all the mean tales of her kind, she wasn’t a monster. She had merely stumbled upon the young lad while searching for tracks within the veil. How he managed to enter it, she could not tell until following his route back to the house.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
That blow to the back of his head had taken a toll on the boy. He woke up with a mighty roaring headache. Gritting his teeth, he rose from the bench outside the house and put a hand to his temple. It took him a while to realize where he was. How had he come back here from the forest? And why was it already dark? Completely disoriented, he pushed himself from the wooden bench to the door. When he opened it, he got the second shock of his life on the same day. At his mother’s stove stood a white-haired fairy witch, who apparently was mixing poison into his mother’s tea. At least that’s what the boy’s vivid imagination wanted to believe. “You!” He grabbed for his bow but it wasn’t there. He must have lost his hunting weapon when fleeing the depths of the forest.
“‘Tis lying over there,” the witch’s voice instructed him, suspiciously resembling that of this horrific owl. Her head nodded to the kitchen table without even looking back at him.
Reflexively, he rushed for his weapon and within a few moments had unerringly cocked the bow, pointing it at the intruder within his parents’ house.
Lady Zana did not let herself be disturbed and prepared to filter the herbal decoction on the sideboard through a sieve. Maybe it was the lack of attention she paid him that made him so angry he actually fired the arrow. A cheeky fairy’s hand caught it before it could pierce the wall. Her other hand took the sieve from the teapot and filled a fresh cup with herbal brew. The little raven-haired boy was fuming. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he threw his bow on the ground and attacked the witch directly with a more than inhuman jump.
His lack of respect almost cut Zana’s last thread of patience. Emphatically putting the teapot back on the sideboard, she turned around to the whelp and, like the arrow before, caught him out the air.
Before he knew it, he found himself tucked under her arm like a barrel of wine. “Let me go, you monstress!” The boy fidgeted to the best of his ability. However, the fairy witch was surprisingly strong and had better things to do than release him from her grip. Pulling the filled teacup from the sideboard, she transported cup and rascal back to Ravina’s bedroom. In front of the sick woman’s bed, she finally let him tumble down before placing the cup on Ravina’s bedside table. “I suppose this one is yours,” she then figured.
“My little angel. Where were you?” Ravine asked her son with relief when she spotted him.
If he’d had an answer to that, he would have felt more comfortable. Irritated, he was looking back and forth between his mother and this owl woman, who definitely had far too much strength.
“What’s his name,” the owl witch inquired.
Ravina pulled her son over and cuddled him for a welcome. “Tell her,” she whispered with a weakened voice.
Her boy hesitated. Eventually, he did as his mother asked him to, although not without keeping the spooky madam locked under distrusting gaze. “Radu.” His answer sounded disgruntled.
A silver brow was lifted. “I see.” Lady Zana appeared as if adding up his name with unknown information.
“Who is she? And what is she doing in our house?” Distrustful, Radu stared into her blue eyes and was now undoubtedly sure that it was her who had led him astray with false tracks.
“This is Lady Zana, Radu,” Ravina whispered over her son’s shoulder. “She’s your father’s fairy.”
Radu’s eyes widened. He had not forgotten the story. His father had told him about many a sorceress. But there was no other story he told with so much admiration in his voice as the one of Lady Zana. The great fairy sorceress from the afterlife and guardian of Azwood, who claimed the souls of the most noble, bravest and righteous. “I don’t like her,” he announced snidely.
“And I certainly don’t like you either,” Zana let him know with a cold look, again disappearing back into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of tea.
After heated tempers had calmed down, some quiet returned to the house at the forest edge. Radu spent the rest of the evening closely monitoring the movements of this stranger in his home. She prepared a poultice for his mother to lower the fever. Ordering him around like a henchman, she told him to hand her various herbs from mother’s apothecary cabinet so that she could make a pain-relieving ointment from them. He had hoped that she would finally leave after that. Zana, however, stayed. She stayed until Ravina fell into eternal sleep peacefully a few days later, guiding her plagued soul towards the other side in strange rituals the boy did not fully comprehend. To soothe Ravina’s mind, she spoke of great world trees to whom all souls would once return and be reborn from—of mysterious ways life and death would take and how all souls were intertwined in the great cycle. Her stories managed to take Ravina’s fear about her inevitable fate.
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
The night Radu’s mother died and in which he clung to her cold body for the last time, howling bitterly, Zana sat next to him. She stroked his head for hours and held him tightly in her arms—even when he kept yelling how much he hated her in a fit of rage. He scratched, he bit, and he hit her when she packed his things and wrapped his mother’s deceased body in a clean white cloth. And she waited, from morning until sunset, smoking her long pipe on the bench outside, staring into the distance with empty eyes until he had spat out all his poisonous words. Only then would he help her bury his dead mother under the zelkova in front of their home. Into the mountains he should move afterwards, with his father’s ghostly fairy.
Grey clouds hung over the marshes and followed the two up the hills. About at height, where the trees stopped growing, thick mist began to rise once more—just like days before, when the boy got lost in the forest. The owl witch didn’t halt.
A croaking drifted through the fog; sounds only a raven or crow could utter. The owl witch didn’t listen. A croaking made its present known and flew right over both their heads, like a shadow made of clouds. The owl witch though, didn’t care, until her patience yet again wore thin. “Stop your games, Cloanta,” Lady Zana hissed. “I’m not in the mood.” A croaking turned to laughter. Rusty cackling as it might only come from an old hag. And with that sound, the fog did clear, revealing ashen peaks of old. Dull noise came closer to the odd couple and should reveal itself as a massive wooden mortar hopping along the way. On its top, with a warty nose shaped like the beak of a bird, she sat: Baba Cloanta in the flesh.
“What you do with that little raven, Zana?” Mushrooms were growing out her back and with her long gnarly pestle, she gave Radu a clap on his behind. The boy was stunned.
“I’ll take him home.” Zana grabbed Radu’s hand and meant to continue walking, but he refused and winded himself out of her grip.
“I AM at home!” he yelled stubbornly.
Scowling, Lady Zana let herself be drawn into this unwelcome hiking pause. “You don’t belong here,” she spoke to him with words so final that Radu did not know any backtalk to it. Because if he was honest, she was right. He never felt at home, no matter where his parents settled.
Cloanta kept cackling while the owl witch relit her pipe. “That boy must be a pain,” she guessed. “Leave him with me, I’ll make use of him.” The black-haired hag crawled out her mortar, jumping down next to Radu way to agile for an old woman.
Zana became protective. “You won’t take him.” Reproachful was her gaze upon the raven witch, who showed herself amused beyond measure.
“Look at her,” Cloanta stirred her up. “Acting like his mother already. She’s not his mother, tho, is she?”
Lady Zana sensed Cloanta’s taunting humour, so she tried to remain calm. She wouldn’t let this hag feed upon her broken heart. “He didn’t deserve your curse. Nor did his father.”
Now they were talking business. The raven witch would welcome it. Chatter she did not get often if it wasn’t with her birds. “Ah, curses, curses,” she mumbled. “‘Tis not a curse. ‘Tis a gift.”
Her gifts were troublesome and cruel as Zana figured. “What kind of gift is this, sundering kin and soul and heart entire?” She sounded hurt after all. And for the first time, she seemed human to Radu underneath all that closed-up countenance.
“Oh, little Zana, don’t be so rude. I thought you might enjoy a bit of adventure.” Peacefully, the crone walked towards the owl witch, glued to her strange wandering stick. “Would you rather have me let him die with all that poison in his chest,” she asked and laid her hand on Zana’s belly. “Where do you intend to go with all that load? All portals lie in ruins.”
Lady Zana did not move an inch. “I’ll send him through the stones in the west.”
Her words caused a horrendous laughter, made of fifteen ravens’ cackling at least. It came from everywhere but Cloanta’s mouth, though it was opened widely. “That is a long way through the Forest Beyond,” the hag warned. “Foul creatures pass it every hour. Bats and man-wolves, Strigoi and Moroi alike.”
Surprisingly, Radu knew exactly what she was talking about. He had read all the stories. “I will not set foot into the Transylvanian Forest,” he declared, much to Cloanta’s approval.
“There, there. The little raven knows I’m right,” the crone lauded herself and had an offer to suggest. “Let’s strike a bargain. Just a little one.” Inspired by the tricky situation, she wandered off and around Zana, pondering. “I’ll bring you two safely to the other side of the Forest Beyond,” she proposed. “You send him home and then return to me for a cup of tea in my neat little hut.” Proud of her own idea, she stopped after her round in front of Zana. “We have so much to discuss. About ravens, owls, dragons, foxes and little kittens.” Yet again, she leisurely patted on Zana’s womb, who became nervous and tightened the grip around her staff sickle. The old crone knew something about her mate’s whereabouts. “Oh, don’t be scared, little Zana. I never did you any harm, did I?”
Having done her harm was an understatement in the owl witch’s eyes. Cloanta had taken her husband, drove him into the arms of one of her bastard daughters and doomed him to roam the mortal realms for answers to his burden. “Listen to me, Cloanta,” she said with iron tone. “I will accept your offer, but you will make amends for what you did.”
Radu found himself amidst one of those scary fairy tales, where two witches were testing each other. And his fate was at stake.
“Fine, fine,” the crone gave in. “I don’t know why you always assume the worst of me.” She knocked on the rocky ground three times with her large pestle and resumed the haze. Skies went dark; the moon arose and started rapidly wandering through its cycle. Within the blink of an eye, the ashen peaks turned into ashen oaks, which stood like guardians around a six-legged wooden hut. “Now here. Now there.” Cloanta’s fog took another breath, inhaling oaks and hut completely, then breathing out the Shrieking Lands of Crisana, right at the western edge of the Carpathian Mountains.
The boy’s heart skipped a beat. Never had he been more fascinated yet intimidated at the same time. He was not sure if this was good or bad magic, but what he knew was that he would be solely at the mercy of Cloanta if Zana left him here. His hand searched for her arm unconsciously. She would not comment nor react to it. A boy’s fears never wished to be called out in public. This boy’s fears most certainly didn’t.
“Now, now. Go, my little birds. I’ll put up a kettle in the meantime.” That being said, it knocked three times more and mist should swallow Baba Cloanta. A young boy was still staring into the haze although she had vanished already.
“Let’s go, Radu,” a voice rang out next to him, still keeping her arm still on which he hung like a frightened child. Did the little raven hear that right? Lady Zana had said his name for the first time since they both had met a week ago. And she did so with the gentlest voice, just like his mother used to. He’d follow her without a word of protest through the grey haze, even if he was still suspicious of the owl witch and her strange familiars.
