Prologue: Wolves of Daciea – Sincere Regrets

[Miki Yamuri]

(Wolves of Dacia – Anthony Burns, 2008, all rights reserved)

Prologue – Sincere Regrets

October the 25th, 1933.

Dear Mum,

My love to you and dad. I expect that Father Vadim has told you the news by now, but I thought best to make sure, in case my coming back in the middle of the semester should be a shock.

I have been expelled. The new National Socialist government apparently feels that German universities must not have more than a limited number of students from “inferior” races. The faculty assures me it was a tough decision, but in the end I was not one of the fortunate ones. Professor Freund has been most kind. He offered to provide a reference should I wish to continue my degree elsewhere in Europe, but being able to speak only German and Romanian (not counting Romani: no-one else does, alas) I would not have much choice, and nor do I feel like imposing any more upon Father Vadim’s charity. Anyway, dad always said that it would never work out.

True, thought Mihaela, forcing back her tears, but no man ever wished more to be in the wrong. She read on:

I shall be catching the early express from Berlin on the 28th, and staying overnight in Vienna with some friends of Professor Freund. I will then take the train to Budapest, change there, and should arrive in Brasov hopefully not too late in the afternoon of the 30th. Father Vadim will meet me at the station and drive me back to the Romani settlement, not that I suppose I shall be very welcome after having lived so long in gadje society. If there is a problem with the elders, I can stay with Father Vadim until it can be resolved. At any rate, I look forward to seeing …

“Mrs Petrescu!” called out a strident voice from outside her door. “A couple of punters here to see you!”

Cursing under her breath, Mihaela put down the letter and made for the door. Opening it, she discovered the source of the interruption to be a young lad, barefoot and ill-nourished, although not quite as sorry a sight as he night have been without the handful of 100 lei notes which he was clutching protectively to his chest. At all events, he did not cut so wretched a figure that Mihaela would have refrained from sending him off with a sore ear, but for the two strangers who stood a little way behind him, taking in their surroundings – the bare dirt yards, squalid wooden huts, and open drainage ditches of the Romani settlement – with looks of deep scepticism.

They were a middle-aged couple, dressed in high-quality riding outfits, and the man had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, which only really made him look like a well-armed invitation for anyone contemplating highway robbery. The woman was carrying a Gladstone bag, and even that looked stupidly expensive. Pitiable as they were, Mihaela did not have any sympathy to spare at present, and although she was not given to prejudice, a civil conversation with a pair of prosperous and successful gadje was more than she felt equal to. She was about to make a curt apology, when the woman started towards her with an open, outstretched hand, and spoke. Her accent was imperfect, but her Romanian was fluent, to say nothing of excited:

“Mrs Petrescu?” Mihaela received her enthusiastic handshake with a listless nod. “Mihaela Petrescu, the drabarni?” This received an even less inviting nod, not that such coldness seemed to dampen the ardour of the questioner. “This is really quite an honour for us,” she declared. Behind her, Mihaela saw the man looking around the settlement with furrowed brows and a curled lip, and was confident the woman did not do him justice in thus speaking for him, but allowed her to rattle on. “My name’s Meredith – Moira Meredith – and that’s my husband; Professor Lewis Meredith. We’re from Cambridge University. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

Patronising as this comment was, that was nothing compared to its hideously poor timing, and Mihaela made no effort to conceal her resentment:

“Oh, how lovely for you. So tell me, Mrs Professor: how many Romani students does your university have?”

“I … err … really wouldn’t know,” lied Moira, not one to let an undiplomatic truth spoil the occasion.

“I only mention it because my daughter just got booted out of Humboldt University. She’s as bright as young lady as you ever saw, but not, apparently, the right sort to be in company with good, clean gadje girls and boys. So, if you’ve an opening for her and don’t mind that she’s of an inferior race, do please leave your details.”

“Well … that’s the Nazis for you,” said Moira, awkwardly and somewhat evasively. “I mean, who don’t they hate? I don’t expect they’ll last long, though. Herr Hitler may talk big, but I’m sure he’s got no head for government.”

“Gadje politics are nothing to me. All I know is that your ancestors were enslaving and murdering my people long before this Hitler was even born, so you’ll have to pardon me if I can’t derive much comfort-”

“Hold on: my ancestors?” interrupted Moira, paying back Mihaela’s resentment in kind. “Where do you come off knowing my family tree, all of a sudden? For your information, my ancestors have been solidly Welsh, give or take, since the time of Henry the Eighth. Even if they had come from around here … Even if they had been guilty of all of that, exactly how many generations of their sins am I supposed to atone for?”

Mihaela momentarily had the urge to bite off her unguarded tongue. Her last remark, she could hardly avoid conceding, had not been spectacularly civil, and the worst of it was that she now felt obliged to offer some gesture of conciliation to her less-than-welcome visitors.

“So … what can I do for you?” she asked, with obviously forced politeness. This was good enough for Moira, it seemed, as she immediately assumed a brisk, professional tone, thankfully lacking any of her former infuriating affability:

“I’m conducting a study,” she explained, “and collating information on certain phenomena that many people believe in, but few in the scientific community would take seriously. I believe that you can help me. I realise that your main duty as drabarni is healing, but you do also tell fortunes, don’t you?”

“I do … but you’re wasting your time. I wouldn’t tell this to anyone,” unless I badly wanted to get rid of them as well, “but fortune-telling is all so much nonsense. I only do that for the diversion of superstitious gadje who’ve got money to burn on a few vague, mysterious, encouraging words and tacky home-made ‘charms’ and ‘amulets’. Your colleagues are quite right not to believe in such foolishness.”

“Of course. I know all that, but in your case it isn’t the whole truth, is it?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea-”

My friend, you always were a hopeless lair.

“-what you mean,” said Mihaela, with only the slightest hesitation betraying the alien thoughts that had crept into her head mid-sentence, but Moira took no note of it.

“I had a word with some of the local peasants,” said Moira, “and they tell a different story: that you are, in fact, possessed of a very great gift indeed.”

Indeed … would that you appreciated it.

“Shut up!” hissed Mihaela, unthinkingly, to the inner voice.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, nothing. The gadje peasants don’t know what they’re talking about, any more than you do. I’ve never seen into the future in my life, I swear.”

“I believe you, but you have had visions, haven’t you? Known things that you couldn’t possibly have known? Like that time you led the clan to that man who’d assaulted your niece? They told me that you saw into his mind, and knew at once where he was hiding out.”

“Whatever I might have seen or known … my ‘gift’, if you will call it that, is not a sideshow amusement. I’ve no idea what you hope to gain by prying into these things, but no-one will thank you for it, so why don’t you and your husband just-”

Wait. I would know more. Humour them for now.

“Why will no-one thank me?” asked Moira, willing to hope that this hesitation heralded a change of heart.

“Because … it isn’t some ‘power’ that you can ‘harness’. It comes and goes. I can’t make it happen, nor can I suppress it if it does come upon me. It would seem just like madness to some, and maybe it is a form of mental illness. You would find it a very unprofitable subject to study.”

“But just think: if I can prove that such experiences are real, it might mean so much to the world. People these days will hardly believe in anything if it requires the slightest imagination. If I can only open a few closed minds with my work, I’d consider myself well-paid.”

Ah, the lofty sentiments of wise fools … but she interests me. Invite her in.

“No!”

“Oh … I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Moira, surprised at how passionately Mihaela seemed to disagree with her innocent enough purpose. “I don’t wish to seem insensitive … but if it’s a question of money-”

“You did hear what I just said about not being a sideshow amusement?”

Invite her in, or you force me to claim someone else. Someone close to you, perhaps.

“Go to Hell!” she muttered, not quite quietly enough.

“Hold on … You’re not talking to me, are you? Oh my God,” declared Moira, with not altogether tactful enthusiasm. “You’re having one now, aren’t you? A psychic episode? Please; if I could just take some readings,” she urged, and started rummaging through her Gladstone bag.

Perhaps I will claim your daughter, when she returns. Oh yes, old friend: you can conceal nothing from me.

“Come in, then,” said Mihaela, icily, “and keep your money. Study my ‘gift’, and much good may it do you.”

Thanking her profusely, Moira followed her into the hut, her husband close at her heels, though hardly her match for enthusiasm. When they were inside, he spent his time looking around the bare wooden walls; sparse furnishings; and the low, exposed beams (thickly hung with bundles of dried herbs) with open disdain. Oblivious to her mean surroundings, his wife busied herself in arranging various articles from her bag upon the only table. One of them – a small glass bulb mounted upon a Bakelite stand, containing a thin vertical shaft upon which a spindle of four paper-thin metal vanes slowly revolved – caught Mihaela’s attention.

“For what it’s worth, I do have my own crystal ball,” she quipped, but the irony was wasted.

“What? Oh. No, this is just a Crookes radiometer, slightly modified,” explained Moira, “in case of any unusual electromagnetic emissions. Not that I know the true nature of psychic projection, but it doesn’t hurt to cover all angles. And this,” she continued, indicating a device very much like a large metal microphone, “is a low frequency sound detector, and this one here is a thermometer, for sensing changes in temp-”

“Amazing as it may seem, I know what a thermometer is,” interrupted Mihaela, her irony undaunted. “As a matter of total disinterest, what do you hope to achieve with all of these baubles?”

“Well, it would be nice if I could record some sort of environmental effect, you know? If you should have another episode, that is. Something to show it was a real event, and not just a hallucination … Please don’t take that the wrong way. I’m just hopeful we might find something that can be measured and analysed.”

Pitiful, is it not? Like a curious child dismantling a toy.

“There! Look!” exclaimed Moira, gesturing frantically at the radiometer, in which the vanes had, albeit only for a few seconds, speeded up their rotation considerably. “You saw that? It happened again, didn’t it? Please tell me what-”

“Nothing! It … must have been a draught,” said Mihaela, knowing that it sounded weak (although, in all fairness, there was no shortage of draughts in the hut).

“Impossible. The space in the bulb is a partial vacuum, so it has airtight seals.”

“Maybe the air’s leaking in, then. Isn’t that more likely than- ?”

Do not seek to discourage her.

“It’s doing it again! Look! And the mercury’s fallen by a whole degree! Is there a presence in here you can sense? Please-” urged Moira, before her husband at last spoke up, to her obvious irritation. His language was unintelligible to Mihaela, but his contempt was crystal-clear.

“What did he say?” she asked, not very interested but finding the distraction welcome and well-timed.

“Nothing important. He … He said that a cold draught might have set my equipment off, but that’s typical: he has no more faith in my technical skills than you do.”

“You made these contraptions yourself?”

“Certainly. Well, Lewis helped with the infrasound scope. Electronics are more his field than mine.”

Send them to me: both of them. I will tell you what to say.

“There it goes again!” cried Moira, as the radiometer’s vanes picked up pace yet again. “I’m onto something, I know it, if only you’d be a bit more-”

“Your husband seems impatient. Perhaps you’d better be on your way, now that you have the readings from your equipment.”

Them … or your daughter, unless you obey me. Now, repeat after me …

“Very well, then,” said Mihaela, in a tone so altered, emphatic, and artificial that Moira was stunned into silence and even Lewis spared her a curious glance. “You want to learn about my gift? You won’t learn much here, in this childish way. But instead, I shall tell you how I came by it. Oh yes: I was not born this way. At the age of twelve, I was wayward. I would spend my time alone in the woods, wandering ancient paths along which few of my people would venture. Not many of us share your fascination with the spirit world, though we profoundly believe in the powers of the dead. We neither covet nor needlessly risk them, however. But I was reckless, and one day, having gone further than I had done before, I chanced upon some ruins: buried chambers, broken columns, and the crumbling walls of palaces or temples. Perhaps you have heard of the Kingdom of Dacia?”

“Weren’t they the ones who ruled Transylvania before the Roman conquest?”

“Exactly, many centuries ago. These ruins were of that period.”

“That old, and they hadn’t been taken apart? You’d think the peasants would have appreciated all of that free stone for their cottages and walls.”

“They wouldn’t have dared. The presence in that place awoke my ‘gift’, but anyone can sense it. Even animals give that place a wide berth, and I’m sure that it will drive your little toys wild. Show me your map.” With trembling fingers, Moira took her map out of her inner pocket and unfolded it on the table. “Good. Now, look here: that is where you will find them,” said Mihaela, pointing at a location not much further than a mile away, but deep within the forest.

“You are sure? I can’t see anything special indicated.”

“Nevertheless, there you will find them.”

“And can we make it there? It looks like it might be rough going.”

“It’s no Roman road, I grant you, but if a twelve-year-old girl could get there on foot, your horses should be up to the task.”

“It’s fairly safe, then, I suppose.”

“Safe … Oh, yes. You might see the odd wolf, but they only get desperate in the winter.”

“Nice to know … and you really think we’ll learn something there?”

“I’ve no doubt you will. Perhaps more than most people would be comfortable with knowing, but you do seem determined.”

Whereupon the radiometer, which had been spinning furiously during this conversation, returned to its normal rate, and Moira, concluding that the local excitement had run its course and that the real action was to be found at these ruins, was eager to be on her way. She gave thanks, renewed her offer of payment (and was again emphatically rejected), and content with the sense of having done her duty, she and her husband bid a hasty farewell and left Mihaela in peace.

Not that she enjoyed any peace of mind. For many minutes after the Meredith’s had left, she continued sitting at the table, her head in her hands, mentally cursing the injustice of humanity, herself, and above all the one who had intruded upon her already hateful day and added shame to her catalogue of woe.

I only hope you’re satisfied now, she thought, but received no answer. Small wonder. Thanks to me, you have “guests” to attend to, don’t you?