Hailbringer: A Romanian Folktale by Daniel Alexandrescu

Author:Daniel Alexandrescu [Alexandrescu, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

Cozia’s Mountain, May 1445 (6953)

HE READ THE SKY AS ONE READS A MAP-riddled tome. All the candles lit in its immensity could be traced back to the golden book, resting quietly and wide open in the Chamber. All the lights had names because, unlike people, they were not as free as they appeared. They were chained to the eternal canopy. But they were so many and so old that only the Ancients could have remembered all their names.

‘See there, that is the Wolf,’ he said, pointing his finger at the night sky.

‘It does not look like a wolf,’ Ileana observed, frowning.

‘No...’ he sighed. ‘Perhaps it does not. And those seven bright stars over there,’ he continued, ‘make up the Bear.’

‘I can only see a wagon as one of my father’s,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Why did it only have to be seven?’

The boy tried to remember his lessons.

‘Because seven is lucky.’

Her eyes lit up as if a great thought loomed in her mind.

‘We need all the luck we can get. That should be our number! It is decided!’

‘I would so love to know the Wolf and the Bear’s stories,’ she then said, resting her head and back against the moss-covered tree trunk behind her and turning her eyes back at the abysmal vastness.

‘I don’t know them,’ the boy sighed hopelessly. He wished he did. ‘But I can tell you one of my teacher’s stories about great men turning into beasts.’

‘Oh, please, tell me!’

He rested his back right next to her, shoulder to shoulder, feeling the chilling, early summer night breeze. His heart was shaking at the thought of the master looking for him. Waiting for him. But it only took him a glance at her pale face, washed in the moonlight, for those worries to vanish.

‘The people who lived here many years ago, sons and daughters, would wear beast skins in battle. Some of them, the chosen few, had been given in childhood the name of a beast too, and it was their duty to live like that beast, in exile. If they bore a wolf name, they would live in packs in the forests. If they bore a bear’s, they lived alone in the mountain caves. Many perished.’

The girl turned to him with a hint of realization.

‘So, they were cursed.’

He paused, lost in thought, recalling the master’s teachings.

‘Sometimes, what appears as a curse is merely a shrouded blessing!’ he repeated, as if they weren’t even his words.

She didn’t reply. So, he continued his story:

‘Their hardship was needed for the good of many. When it was war, a few of the Beast-Men had the gift of becoming the animals they were destined to be. The animal’s skin, which they were wearing on the battlefield, would become their own. They would become powerful and would obliterate the enemies, thus protecting their lands and their people.’

Ileana sat up, turning to him, as frustration could be easily seen looming on her face.

‘And where are they now when our people need them

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