“Who I am? But—”
“You have asked many times about… about your abilities.”
Lenka frowned. “And you have always refused to answer.”
“Yes, because you were too young to know. I wanted to put it off for as long as possible, to allow you to enjoy your childhood. But now your grandmother is very ill, seriously so, and this cannot be delayed. I’m not sure how much longer she can hold out, and there are things you must be told.”
“This grandmother I have never seen? Where is she? What is she dying of? She cannot be so old—”
“Not so old, no. But she is riddled with the worms of disease and weakens by the day.” Clara dipped her head. “I am sorry you have never seen her, but there were important reasons. It was not easy to be around one such as her.”
“So where is she? How do you know all this if she is not here?”
“So many questions.” She poured herself another cup. “Drink yours, Lenka. You will need it.”
“Why? Why will I need it?”
“Because I am afraid for you. You have to be prepared—”
“Mutter, I don’t understand any of this.”
“Your grandmother lives far away, in Romania. That is where I was born. I left because of what my mother carries and because soon it will be what you carry, too – call it a legacy – and it is this you must be prepared for.”
Lenka drank the mead, beginning to relish the warmth spreading through her veins. Now her dark grey eyes met her mother’s head-on. “Prepared for what?”
“To receive your gift. Some will say gift, others might say curse. But it is an extraordinarily powerful one. A generation, sometimes two, will be skipped depending on the lifespan of the carrier, but it is passed down the female line of our family, and there is nothing that can be done about it. As such, you are to inherit Baba Olga’s gift – soon, possibly within days.”
“And this gift concerns my abilities? But I already have it – I know things about people without being told, I hear whispers and thoughts and—”
Clara Heller shook her head. “No, no, that’s child’s play. So you see ghosts, know what’s about to happen before it happens, hear a voice telling you someone’s inner secrets. So can many a gypsy. Those tricks are easy. Even I—”
“Yet you told me to keep it to myself.”
“Yes, because look, Lenka – see what happens to those who admit such things. There are people who can still remember the massacre of witches. Look how they ripped those women from their homes and tortured them in filthy jails. This was the worst-affected area in the whole of Europe – nine hundred just in this country, more than anywhere else in the world. Churchmen accuse us of worshipping the devil. So, yes, keep it to yourself. But know this: what you think you have is nothing, nothing at all to what will soon be yours. We, you and I, are not German like your father. Your father comes from the Black Forest; his father before him made clocks! You and I are from a caravan of wanderers still looking for their place on earth.”
“I thought you said you were from Romania.”
“Your grandmother gave birth to me there and stayed awhile. The rest of the family settled around her, as they would. It is where the family is at this point in time.” She poured them each another cup of mead. “But now your grandma is dying, and so we must go there; this is what I am trying to say. You especially must be there at the end, so she can tell you what you need to know.”
“But that will take days, weeks!” Thoughts of Oskar filled her mind, and her eyes widened, the words catching in her throat as the implication set in. “No, I want to stay here. I don’t need to know these things, and I don’t want to go all that way—”
“Enough. You will go. There are matters that must be directly passed on – this is real, and—”
“I know it’s real, Mutter, and I am not the least bit afraid of it, either.”
“You know nothing.”
“So you keep saying.”
“Ach, you cannot imagine how important this is. What you are about to inherit is thousands and thousands of years old, from a force older than human time. At the very least you need to be informed and prepared because the very power of it could kill you if you don’t control it. Lenka, I cannot stress enough—”
“I’m not frightened of this. I speak to demons all the time and get them to do stuff for me. I have the boy I want, I have beauty, and I have power already. I do not need to see my grandma – this woman I have never met. It will take days to get to Romania, and I do not want to go.” She stood up.
Clara’s voice rose. “Sit down at once. I have not finished. Listen to me! You do not know everything; you are just sixteen, and we are talking about your heritage, your own grandmother. Have respect!”
Reluctantly, Lenka sat down, twiddling her empty cup around and around.
“I shall start again. Your grandmother did not use the powers she was given, and, as such, her body has been unable to withstand the dark energy. She has suffered disease from the age of a child and is tormented day and night. It is not good to be around her. I could tell you things, terrible things, of her tearing out her own hair, shouting at invisible demons day and night, vomiting back all her food, writhing on the floor in terrible agony, and sometimes I would find her, when I was a small child, Lenka, so imagine this… I would find my mother crumpled in a corner, clutching her head and screaming with the pain, covered in running sores, just begging the demons to leave her alone. She said there were not just dozens of them but hundreds around her, waiting for commands she would not give. The pressure would mount and mount, until the family had to hide her for fear she would be locked away in a hospital for the insane.”
“This will not happen to me. No, I will not go.”
“If you do not go, then the same fate awaits you without doubt. You have to know what you are dealing with. You need the information so you can make your choice. Lenka, I do not know how to help you because, whether you like it or not, this is coming your way.”
Lenka hardened her jaw and turned away from her mother’s pleading stare.
“How come it missed you out? You see things, you hear things, you have the house filled with herbs, and I see you making spells—”
“Yes, we have second sight, all of us. But the legacy I am talking about is a sorcery of the darkest kind. Sometimes it will be passed on, or received if requested, from a dying sorceress. But the most powerful sorceress is the one who is born with it, a Bluthexe. As soon as a sorceress in the bloodline is dead, the full power must be transferred along with all the demonic servants allocated for her bidding – or it will follow her into the afterlife. You know other realms exist; you know it well. But what we have in our family is a direct channel to the force behind the darkest entity of all.”
“Why is this in our family? What is this caravan of people who never settled? We are gypsies, then, yes?”
“Not originally. I believe, from the elders and from my mother, we come from Russia, but that is far back in time. Since then, we have travelled through all of Europe, and now here you and I are in Bohemia. From here I feel we will eventually move west. Yes, much further west—”
“Always on the move, why?”
“Because… because we have to…”
Lenka frowned. “I do not understand. And what is the purpose of these demons that are not invoked? What do they want with us, apart from to torment us to death if we don’t work for them?”
“No, it is not to work for them. It is they who work for you. You are the one who lives – a mighty sorceress with a powerful channel from the dark source directly to humans, to God’s creation.”