Forgive us, Saint Kosta, we must tear down your shack. Allow our ax to split these beams; allow us to pile them up under the walnut tree and torch them.
The flames loomed tall, the tips of their tongues black from the lamp oil we’d used as an igniter. A gust of wind took up the smoke and dragged it through the walnut branches. I watched it changing shapes and rising higher, free of anything to hold it back, dissolving into the bone-white sky.
When the flame from the oil began to die down, Grandpa pulled a stack of papers out of his shirt — the unsent letters he’d written me for years, the pages on which he’d copied Captain Kosta’s journal, the count he’d kept of all the casualties across the Strandja in all the recent wars. The flame swallowed them and fattened up and soon the beams were burning steady.
It had begun to snow, flakes like descending storks, landing on my head, my shoulders, one by one pressing me down. Grandpa too must have felt their weight. “You want to hear something amusing?” he said. “I’m starting to suspect our stork might be female.”
“Female?” I cried. “How do we know?”
“Well, that’s the thing. We have no way of knowing.”
I thought about this for a little while, watching the stork prance through the meadow. Saint Kosta could very well be Saint Elena then?
“You want to hear another funny thing?” Grandpa said, suddenly encouraged. He took the ax and started raking the beams. Sparks flew in our faces, but I didn’t even feel their heat.
“I heard it in the Pasha Café last week,” he said, “while you were sitting home, heartbroken. Well, rumor has it it’s all one giant scheme.”
“What is?” I said.
“The turbines. They build them and they let them sit. This way they launder the construction money.”
“The hell they do. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the turbines might never turn. According to the rumor.”
I took some time to think this over too. All that fighting, kicking, screaming had been for nothing then?
“You think?” said Grandpa, and kept on raking.
“But maybe the rumor has it wrong?”
“And maybe the stork isn’t really female?”
It’s here I started laughing. And Grandpa too began to laugh. But in the end our laughter also vanished and quietly we faced the flame.
“Saint Kosta,” Grandpa started. “I’ve come to tell you…”
He shook his great, snow-covered head. There was no need for words. Gently, he pulled out that yellowed bundle from his shirt, untied it, and took out Lenio’s braid. The fire flowed like a stream between us, faster when Grandpa let it have the braid, and when I cast Elif’s locks in, more turbulent still.
“Look, Grandpa!” I wanted to say, but I knew he too could see them. Rising within us and with the smoke — Captain Kosta, the endless chain of suffering Strandjans, the girls we loved — finally free from our grip, liberated through the fire.
I felt light. I felt light-headed. How I wanted to throw myself into the flame and let it free me too.
“Not yet, my boy,” I heard Grandpa saying. “The embers aren’t ready yet.”
Or maybe it was my own voice I could hear? Or was it Lenio’s? Elif’s? The voice of Captain Kosta, Murad the Godlike One’s, Nazar Aga’s? I couldn’t really tell. Nor did it matter. The nominalia is never ending. Like a river, like wind, like flame, it always changes in its shape. But underneath that shape it’s always water flowing, it’s always air, always fire.
NINETEEN
WHEREVER THE GODDESS LADA WANDERED, Attila followed, buried within the tresses of her hair. With each day, his weight grew greater. It drank away her beauty. It drained her strength. Her sisters begged her to forget him; her brothers ordered her to let him go. And yet, she longed to see his face once more, to hear his whisper. If only she could pry the coffin open and kiss his lips.
“You’ll never bring him back this way,” she heard a voice say, as rotten as the throat from which it slithered. Starost, the goddess of old age, had left her swamp and now her deathly fingers were brushing Lada’s cheeks.
“Your uncle Veles loves you,” Starost said. “Go to the netherworld and ask his help.”
That Veles loved her was something Lada knew. More than a few times, heart filled with fright, she had thought of bowing at his feet and begging for Attila back. And yet it wasn’t fright that stopped her.
“I don’t know how to find the path to his world,” she said, ashamed. “My eyes have never seen it.”
How wickedly Starost smiled. How ugly she grew.
“Mine have.”
* * *
Down the path Lada stumbled, her eyes the eyes of Old Age. All she saw were shadows, but shadows were enough to mark the way, like crumbs. Through the falls of all-purging fire the goddess plunged and then the Death Winds took her, the way a great river takes a tiny leaf. Like this she flowed through the nether, toward the One Tree.
A single tree grows at the underworld’s navel, colossal, eternal, its branches alive with wind. As dirty blood must be renewed in the heart’s chambers, so must the souls of men flow through the great tree. One by one the souls rush through the branches. One by one the branches catch them and strip them of their faces. There they remain, these masks, for all eternity, like fruit, while faceless the souls rejoin the rushing winds. The winds of life now.
Gently Veles plucked a face; gently he wore it as his own. And with his lips, Attila kissed Lada back.
“I’ve come for you,” she said, and sought his hand. She was surprised to see him pull away.
“What I was once is gone,” he said. “Only this mask remains. And I am not a mask.”
Perhaps she understood that he was right. And yet, how could she let him go?
* * *
Wherever Lada wandered, Attila followed, rotting within the tresses of her hair. She heard him, begging her to be forgotten, his voice unshakable, incessant. Months turned to years, years into decades, but he remained. In vain, her sisters tried to console her. In vain, her brothers attempted to cut the hair and set her free. Weak of sight, tormented of hearing, she guarded Attila and his triple coffin the way the lamya guards a golden apple. Her gold was grief. The grief consumed her. It drove her mad.
* * *
Mad, Lada roamed fields and forests, tortured by Attila’s cries. Whatever she passed, spring with the stench of rot devoured it. Crops grew tall in winter; orchards bloomed under heavy snows. But once Lada had moved along, all blossom withered. Famine swept the people up and in their anger it was Lada’s father, the god Perun, they blamed. Their sacrificial fires turned to ash and soon Perun was weakened too. No longer could he force his daughter back into his mountain. No longer could he control all other gods.
Impudent Starost leapt out of her swamp, stood before Lada.
“My child,” she croaked. “I’ll help you drown his voice in silence. Give me your hearing and I will give you mine.”
* * *
With the eyes of Old Age and with Old Age’s ears, Lada was roaming the mountain. All that she heard were shadows — voices like water rushing, trapped beneath thick ice. But even in the trap of shadows, Attila’s cries kept ringing loud.
Until one day Lada caught a whisper. The call of some old god, almost forgotten, a god whom Old Age had taken long before. And following the whisper, she came upon a temple in the mountains. There in the temple the maenads danced.
How beautiful their madness seemed to Lada, to worship a god so few remembered now. How furious their dance. And in the sweetness of their wine it was some distant lightness that Lada managed to recall. The more she drank, the thicker her thirst grew, the faster she forgot her father. The more fiercely she spun, the deeper Attila sank within her heart.