Chapter 7: The Raven and the Owl

His father had disappeared weeks ago when she appeared on the doorstep of his parents’ house. If you could call the shack a house at all. The shabby little wooden hut in the green foothills of the Southern Carpathians on the course of the Arges River had been falling into disrepair for decades. Why Radu’s 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 boy, there was little variety here, if you disregarded the adventurous terrain of the swampy foothill forests. But these were Radu’s whole happiness.

From morning to night, he roamed through the eerie moorlands. To the chagrin of his mother, who more than once believed her little adventure 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 in front of her, 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 has missed his special desire to explore.

The 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 Radu 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 again.

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 the makeshift workshop. At least he had stayed long enough to finish the bow’s elaborate wood carvings with his son before he made his escape. Radu hated him for it. Not for his own sake, but because of his mother. How could he be so heartless and leave a seriously ill woman alone? Displeasure 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 the boy’s 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 child 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. The hunting booty was pretty much the only meat dish they could afford. But Radu’s raids were far more sparse than those of his father. A few sparrows, maybe a rabbit, but nowhere near as magnificent a game as the one from the forays with its disgraced role model.

Listlessly and unambitiously, the little hunter went in search of a few forest dwellers that were worth killing at all. It was autumn already and the animals’ food supply was becoming scarce. Many retreated to the lower areas of the forest around this time of season. Radu would have to follow them if he wanted to get the opportunity for a good shot.

He chose his steps carefully. 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. It drew the picture of a bird that was obviously looking for something. He 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. The track miraculously disappeared into nothingness in some places, without any signs of a flight attempt, only to reappear in another place from the same nothing to which it had vanished.

Radu couldn’t help but think of the legends about Baba Cloanta—an old witch said to live in the deep forests and often appeared 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 Cloanta’s forest,” he'd drum into him. “Never approach her with a cocked bow or she will eat you!” Old horror stories, Radu was almost sure about that. Nevertheless, he lowered his weapon after the trail became crazier and crazier. 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 Radu. He would confront Baba Cloanta for making such a fool of him.

The lad doggedly 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 that he had never seen before, despite his years of wandering through it. The 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, Radu stopped for a moment at this 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 that 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 fog. The boy was determined to find it again. But his right shoe encountered an obstacle in within the fog. A stony obstacle.

A small wave broke out of the white mist in front of his shoe tip, as if from a surface of water that was agitated by the impact of a pebble. It revealed the base of a large hewn rock. Radu slowly 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. The boy’s fingertips hesitated for a moment before reaching for the pulsating light that was engraved in front of him. But before he could complete his action, a whisper startled him.

“Got you...”

A dark but soft female voice echoed down from above into Radu’s 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 in front of his nose. Radu let out a horrified scream and jumped back. What sat there on the dome of the stone was not a raven, but a mighty white owl. So powerful that she reached about Radu’s 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 fog. 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.

As the day drew to a close and dusk with dark clouds heralded a nightly storm, Radu was still not home. His mother looked out of the window next to her bed every minute. 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 in the forest.

Her husband had not noticed the initial symptoms. Masterly, she had managed to keep the signs hidden from him. A small bump on the arm from the stupid barn door, which always stood open a crack too wide, and slightly increased body temperature due to overheating when working in the field, 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. Soon, however, the sky rumbled, and an ever-increasing wind blew the half-dried leaves from the majestic zelkova in front of the house. The shutters rattled as if they were afraid of the storm that was approaching. Then, a dazzling flash of light flickering through the black night sky like a stroke of tinder. Like a choir of ghosts, the winds howled through the draughty crack under the front door, which suddenly but slowly creaked open.

“Radu, my darling, 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 was just entering the house.

An 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 in the kitchen. The unknown figure wandered around like a ghost, scurrying from one corner to the next and moving some objects on the sideboard. She opened a drawer, casually leafed through some notes, closed the drawer, opened a second, closed it.

“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 seemingly had an effect. The sinister creature directed its presence to the front of her chamber. The handle was smoothly pushed downwards. Ravina just wanted to bury herself under her blanket. But she found the courage not to look away. This courage was to be surprised with a sight she had not expected. The old horror stories of the fairy women had drawn the image of hideous creatures in her head. Half human, half animal, they supposedly roamed through the forest boundaries from this world to the afterlife. They were said to eat small children, lead men to their doom and haunt women, who had stolen their men. But the woman who stood in the doorway was beautiful beyond measure. The wild hair as white as snow, the skin as black as ebony, wrapped in a robe of blue velvet. Behind the shadow of the unlit kitchen, her blue eyes sparkled like two small moons over the Arctic Circle. Her fur-trimmed long ears 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 down on the doomed woman in her bed. A few guilt-ridden tears poured down her cheeks due to this probably 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 she 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, I didn’t mean to command you.”

“My child, it takes a little more than a mortal to command me,” Azana’s words sounded suspicious, even if she avoided unnecessary spitefulness in her tone as much as possible. With a hint of temperament, she leaned her weapon against the bedroom wall. To stand in the room where her good-for-nothing of a mate had most likely committed adultery must have been unbearable to her. 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 room 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 from the small casket that Ravina once had received as a gift from her mother many years ago when she began her apprenticeship in the family’s pharmacy. The procedures of the healers seemed well known to the ghost 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,” Azana 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. Shortly afterwards, she had to discreetly wipe the dust off her fingers.

“We had no choice.”

As bourgeois seventh-generation descendants of the Black Army master, Ravina’s family had a dubious reputation. Matei Corvin may have been a legendary general, but his followers included various chilling figures, including Istvan Bathory, great-great-uncle of the notorious Blood Countess Erzsebet, and every Transylvanian’s nightmare, Vlad Draculea. Ravina’s little raven head was named after the latter’s forefather, Radu. In retrospect, perhaps not the best idea.

Together with Radu’s father, both 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 for them. She had distanced herself from the dark practices associated with her bloodline at an early age 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 husband. Only with her dear little boy did she struggle in vain.

The child had inherited something from his father that he had far less control over. Therefore, the parents had only one choice. They fled civilization and went into hiding. The most remote areas of the Fagaras Mountains were to become their new home. And for a while, peace seemed to be coming to a couple, whose bloodlines had shaped a dark past. Only the happiness did not last forever.

“I can’t say that I would have granted you a choice,” Azana commented, visibly offended. Her companion had gone to the mortal realm against her will to begin his self-imposed exile after a serious quarrel with the high council. By human standards, she had been looking for him for half an eternity. For herself, it was little more than a few moons.

“He never forgot you, you know?”

Ravina tried to calm the fairy woman. But she didn’t want to hear anything about such sentimentalities and disappeared back into the kitchen, where she put on a kettle amid a great noise.

The suffering wanted to say a few more soothing words to her, 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 back into bed.

She knew little about her husband’s life before his time in Moldova. One day, he simply stood in her father’s pharmacy and inquired about sleeping pills. It didn’t take long for the pharmacy assistant to find out that he was suffering from an insomnia that conventional medicine could not cure. He only laid with Ravina only once. But once was enough to give birth to a child in this fleeting affair. After that, he stayed with her more out of a sense of obligation to be a good father to his son. But a much older oath has 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, one night before 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 long 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, she would never live to see the next winter. All she wanted was for her little Radu to be brought to safety. He has 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. This did not apply to her boy, but his animalistic behaviour would sooner or later get him into trouble.

“That fool,” Azana hissed at the stove. Her faithless companion should have known that the raven curse that weighed on him would bring misfortune to any mortal who stayed near him for longer. Her people were immune to it. But the weak blood that flowed through the veins of mortals would not be able to withstand the spell. Especially not if it was a descendant of the Thracians.

The whistling of the tea kettle reflected the tense atmosphere quite well. It was also able to wake a little troublemaker from his slumber on the porch’s bench. The blow to the back of his head had taken a toll on Radu and he woke up with a mighty roaring headache. Gritting his teeth, he rose and put his 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 and when he opened it got the second shock of his life the same day. At his mother’s stove stood a white-haired fairy witch, who apparently mixed poison into his mother’s tea. At least that was what the boy’s vivid imagination seemed to believe.

“You!” Radu grabbed for his bow but realized that he had lost his hunting weapon when he fled from the depths of the forest.

“‘Tis lying over there,” the witch’s voice instructed him, suspiciously resembling that of this monster owl. Her head nodded to the kitchen table without even looking back at him. Reflexively, the boy rushed for his weapon and within a few moments had unerringly cocked the bow and pointed it at the intruder within his parents’ house. But she 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 Radu so angry that he actually fired the arrow. A cheeky claw caught it before it could pierce the wall. The other claw took the sieve from the teapot and filled a fresh cup with the herbal brew. The raven-haired 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.

The boy’s lack of respect almost cut Azana’s last thread of patience. Emphatically putting the teapot back on the sideboard, she turned around to the puppy and, like the arrow before, caught him out of the air while jumping. Before Radu 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. But the fairy witch had better things to do than release him from her grip. Pulling the filled teacup from the sideboard, she transported the cup and the rascal back to Ravina’s bedroom.

“I suppose this one is yours.” In front of the sick woman’s bed, she finally let him tumble down before placing the cup on Ravina’s bedside table.

“Radu, my angel. Where were you?”

If he had had an answer to that, he would have been more comfortable. But as it was, he had no choice but to look irritated back and forth between his mother and the owl woman, who definitely had far too much strength.

“Who is she? And what is she doing in our house?”

He didn’t like her. He stared suspiciously into her blue eyes and was now undoubtedly sure that it was she 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 fascination in his voice as the one of Lady Zana. The great fairy sorceress from the afterlife and guardian of the forest, who demanded the souls of the most noble, the bravest and the righteous.

“I don’t like her,” Radu said snidely.

“And I certainly don’t like you either,” Azana let him know with a cold look. Then she disappeared back into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of tea, to calm her nerves.

After the heated tempers had calmed down a bit, some peace gradually returned to the house at the forest edge. Radu spent the rest of the evening closely monitoring the movements of the stranger in his home. She prepared a poultice for his mother to lower the fever and ordered him around like a henchman to hand her various herbs from Mama’s apothecary cabinet so that she could make a pain-relieving ointment from them. He had hoped that she would finally disappear after that. Azana, however, stayed. She stayed until Ravina finally fell asleep peacefully a few days later, guiding her plagued soul towards the Otherside in strange rituals, the boy did not fully comprehend back then.

She spoke of great world trees to whom all souls would once return and be reborn from to soothe Ravina’s troubled mind. However, she did not do this out of pure charity. While caring for the sick woman, she studied her appearance, her behaviour and her voice. With her patient’s bloody sputum, she made a potion that enabled her to shapeshift in the mortal world. Her unusual appearance would otherwise have made the search for Radu’s father much more difficult.

The night Radu’s mother died and in which he caressed her cold body with bitter howling for the last time, Azana sat next to him. She stroked his head for hours and held him tightly in her arms, even when he kept yelling at her how much he hated her in a fit of rage. He scratched, he bit, and he hit her as she wrapped his mother’s deceased body in a clean cloth and packed his things. And she waited, from morning until sunset, smoking her long pipe on the bench outside and staring into the distance with empty eyes, until he had spat out all his poisonous words and finally arranged with the reality that he could no longer stay here. Then, he helped her bury his dead mother under the zelkova in front of the house before moving north into the mountains with the ghostly woman, who had stolen Mama’s face.

She’d only wear it whilst ascent near the villages, where her kind was not welcome. About at height, where the trees stopped growing, she took on her true form again when thick mist began to rise again, just like yesterday, when the boy was lured into his doom by footprints of a raven.

It got colder around their feet. The owl witch didn’t halt. A croaking drifted through the fog. The owl witch didn’t listen. The croaking made its present known and flew right over their heads, like a shadow made of clouds. The owl witch didn’t care.

“Stop your games, Cloanta,” Azana hissed. “I’m not in the mood.”

The croaking turned to laughter. A cackling one as might be uttered by a hag. And with that sound, the fog did clear, revealing ashen peaks of old. A dull sound hopped its way to the odd couple. It should reveal itself as a massive wooden mortar. 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.”

Azana grabbed Radu’s hand and meant to continue walking, but he refused and winded himself out of her grip.

“I AM at home!”

Disgruntled, Azana let herself be drawn in to this unwelcome hiking pause.

“You don’t belong here.”

Cloanta kept cackling while the owl witch relit her pipe.

“That boy must a pain. 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. Azana became protective.

“You won’t take him.”

Reproachful was her gaze upon the raven witch, who showed herself amused beyond measure.

“Look at her,” she stirred the pot. “Acting like his mother already, even without the face. She’s not his mother, doh, is she?”

Azana 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 Azana figured.

“What kind of gift is this, separating kin and soul and heart alike.”

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.”

The crone started walking towards the owl witch, glued to her strange wandering stick.

“Would you rather had me let him die with all that poison in his chest,” she asked and laid her hand on Azana’s belly. “Where do you intend to go with all that load? All portals lay in ruins.”

Azana did not move an inch.

“I’ll send him through the stones in the West.”

Her words caused a horrendous laughter, made of fifteen raven’s 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. Foul creatures pass it every hour. Bats and manwolves, Strigoi and Moroi alike.”

Surprisingly, Radu knew exactly what the hag 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.”

Azana’s poker face was good. But it didn’t deceive the crone.

“Let’s strike a bargain. Just a little one.”

Inspired by the tricky situation, she wandered off and around her fellow witch sister, pondering.

“I’ll bring you two safely to the other side of the Forest Beyond,” she started making her offer. “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 Azana.

“We have so much to discuss. About ravens, owls, dragons, foxes and little kittens.”

Yet again, she leisurely patted on Azana’s womb. The owl witch became nervous. The old crone knew something about Arajon’s whereabouts. Her grip around her staff sickle tightened.

“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,” Azana 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 stakes.

“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 fog. The sky went dark, the moon arose and started rapidly wandering through his cycle. Within the blink of an eye, the ashen peaks turned into ashen oaks, who stood like guardians around a six-legged wooden hut.

“Now here. Now there.”

The fog took another breath, inhaling oaks and hut entire, 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 completely at the mercy of Cloanta if Azana left him here. His hand searched for her arm unconsciously. She would not comment nor react to it. A boy’s fears don’t wish 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. The mist arose and left with Baba Cloanta.

“Let’s go, Radu.”

Did the little raven hear that right? Azana had said his name for the first time since they both had met weeks ago. And she did so with the gentlest voice, just like his mother. He’d follow her without a word of protest, even if he was still suspicious of the owl witch and her strange familiars.