Cristian's Disappearance

Cristian, the main character's lover, disappears from the forest, leaving her to prepare Orpheo's forces for him.

I wake up the next morning alone in the room, but of course I already know that. I go to the kitchen and ask Razvan to make me a cup of coffee, too, when I find him brewing some in the kitchen because sleep is finally starting to dominate Jenica’s death, and he asks me when his Excellency Cristian is to going to decide to wake up and make coffee, which is his job, you know.

“He’s gone,” I say.

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“You think I know? He’s just gone.”

“Great. Just great. You know, what the hell, does he think he’s doing?”

“Who?”

“Cristian.”

“Oh, yeah�"sorry, I’m sleepy. Maybe he’s as the Ceausescus…”

“He’s not. You think I didn’t look for him before I decided to make coffee on my own? I thought he slept in.”

“Cristian never sleeps in…”

“Yes, well…there’s always a first…you don’t have any idea when his Excellency is deciding to come back, by any chance?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t tell me…” Something suddenly dawns on me, and, leaving Razvan to drop the cup of coffee he was handing me on the kitchen floor I run back to the room and start rummaging around in the mess on the floor for the Sword of Salvation, knowing too well that Cristian has taken the Cross with him.

“S**t,” I shout when I don’t find it, and I run out of the hut, leaving Razvan frozen in the kitchen and wishing the second I step on the snowy ground in the Clearing that I had decided to pause and put some shoes and perhaps a cloak or two on.

Orpheo is in his clearing, as always, seeking shelter from the wind and cold beside a tree, with Asinus by his side.

“Ah, men,” he says when he sees me, “how you abandoned me when your need for me did not arise.”

“Yes, well…” I say, “Cristian is gone.”

Orpheo sharply raises his head.

“Great. He didn’t inform you?”

“No, he has not inquired anything of me for a long time. I have not seen Cristian lately, Alexandra, but I know quite well what this means.”

“What?”

“The Battle of the End of Time is near.”

“The End of Time?”

“Yes,” he says gravely, “the end of our time.”

“And I am supposed to…?”

“You are to return to the Oameni, and prepare them for this final battle, Alexandra, the first and the last.”

“Without Cristian.”

Orpheo nods his head. “Without Cristian. You do not need him, not in this business. You have a heart of your own for the forest.”

I turn to return to the Clearing, when Orpheo says, “And remember, Alexandra, that Rualtd and his followers know very well their ignoring of the Lord.”

“The believe in God?” I ask, turning around.

“Oh, yes, they know God quite well, they do…they have simply chosen the worship of Chort over his worship,” Orpheo says with a certainty in his voice.

“But if they know…why would they choose Chort?” I have to ask.

“Rualtd has deceived them,” he says, “he is a great deceiver, Alexandra; perhaps the greatest of all. Ensure that you are not a deceiver like him, when you come to lead your people, Alexandra, because you can fight deceptions with deceptions. You need truth.”

I meet Orpheo’s eye. “So I should tell them…about you?”

“They will know about me soon enough, without you having to tell them,” he says, and I sigh in relief, “but make the enemy clear to them, Alexandra, so they are not deceived. I do not think it will be too difficult; they already detest the Statuliberi; I do not think they will be too surprised when you reveal it to them.”

“Rualtd?”

“Rualtd.”

He pauses, and then says, “He will enter every dwelling, Alexandra, so make it very clear to them.”

I leave Orpheo with a new weight on my shoulders, one that I have never thought about, or even occurred to me before. I can see no possible way to tell the Oameni of the existence of Rualtd, the form he has taken, the war he is waging. Who will believe? Not even Tullia, the most pious person in the Clearing. My doubts about my message come true and even cost me my friendship with Razvan, who rolls his eyes when I tell him and tells me, “No, that’s just ridiculous: the Statuliberi are just b******s.”

When Razvan rejects the idea, I go and preach it to the Ceausescus, who all roll their eyes too except Tullia, who remains silent all through my speech and then, after everyone has left the kitchen except Decebal, says:

“I believe you, Ale. It makes sense. But you have presented it in the wrong way; you must do it gradually. Just like Rualtd does it gradually.”

“But no-one will listen to me now.”

“No, no-one will listen. Sometimes an act of misjudgement can cost you a reputation, but; I will help you. They will not listen to you, because you made a big mistake in telling them without thinking, but they will listen to me.”

They do listen to Tullia, because, in the end, most of the Oameni believe in Rualtd’s deception, even though they, like me, do not know what the actual deception is.

“He’ll deceive them in order to make them forget their faith; that is his true deception. He’ll deceive them into thinking they can become a god. The Oameni are more faithful than most, because I introduced Christianity to them not too long ago; it still has not had time to fade away too much,” Orpheo makes clear to me, and I return to the Oameni and tell them to closely guard your faith, do not believe me, and follow Rualtd when he comes if you want, but closely guard your faith, and you will see, you will need to sooner than you think.

I do not think that anyone has paid any attention to me until I hear people praying more often than usual as I walk past huts in my solitary walks, wondering how on earth Rualtd will manage to enter each and every dwelling when the Oameni know each other’s individual history, and will not allow any stranger in, particularly not in these troubling times of war. I find it sooner than I would like, one day, when I have gone to see Orpheo, at great personal risk, in order to be temporarily empowered by words, and return, expecting to have a nice cup of cafea with Razvan, without the lapte, because the shortage of food will not allow for milk, not even milk and honey for Ana and Decebal, which Gabi previously braved an excursion into Brasov for, and when I walk into the kitchen at the Razboinici’s, I find fresh food on the table. Thinking Eugen sent some men down to Brasov, I pick up a string of dried meat from the table and pick at it, and ask Razvan how Eugen managed to get his hands on fresh food, other than the fermenting maize that was now used to make the mamaliga, and I drop the string of meat when he says:

“It’s not Eugen. Some Good Samaritan came along today, gave food to everyone.” He hastens to pick the meat up and starts dusting it with a sceptical look on his face.

“Some Good Samaritan? Seriously?”

“Ah, come on, Ale…I know what you’re thinking,” Razvan says, picking a piece of meat off the string and popping it into his mouth, “this Good Samaritan isn’t even from the forest. How could he possibly know?”

“And I suppose he went round giving food to everyone, this ‘Good Samaritan’, did he?”

“I notice you’re not answering my spot-on question,” Razvan says, “but, yes; he did go around giving food to everyone.”

I go and barge into Eugen Ceausescu, and demand from him how he allowed this Good Samaritan to go around giving bounties of fresh food to all of the Oameni when I had warned him about Rualtd and his deceptions, him more than anyone else, seeming as he had taken on the responsibility of war commander, and thus, leader, of the people.

“In war, expect the unexpected,” he says, and then, without looking at me, he admits:

“There’s something wrong with this Samaritan, but not with the food, and my people are hungry.”

“He,” I will not call him, whoever he is, a Good Samaritan, “didn’t go into all the houses by any chance, did he?”

“Each and every one,” Eugen says, “he insisted. Said we might be proud and hide how much we need from him.”

I want to punch Eugen Ceausescu, and this is not the first time I want to do this, but he invites me in for the cup of coffee (with milk!) I didn’t have with Razvan and maybe a caltita or two? Gabi was making them fresh from the oven! The kitchen is full of food, and it looks strange, as we have all grown accustomed to the two staples of our war diet; weak coffee and meagre mamaliga made from maize that has almost grown stale.

The Good Samaritan, Eugen tells me, came with three white donkeys pulling carts full of food behind him, and he requested from the guards patrolling the Clearing that he meet their leader, and when Eugen Ceausescu went out to meet him, he told him that he was a wealthy farmer who wanted to feed some hungry with his surplus, and he insisted on touring the houses, one by one, providing each one with a substantial amount of food, and asking for nothing in return except the people’s blessing.

Eugen tells me how he tested the food for poison, and when he found none, could not say no to his hungry people. “There are still some good people in the world, Ale,” he concludes, “don’t let the Statuliberi muddle your mind up.”

What gets to me the most is not Eugen and Razvan’s insistence of the white heart of the Good Samaritan, as they called him, but of the blessings he received from the Oameni, every time they ate from the food he brought them, or had nothing else to bless and praise, not even their Lord, who, as they proved, could easily be forgotten when food and shelter were abundant. Orpheo is not surprised, or even moved when I tell him, but he says:

“I did not warn you that he wished to enter each one of the dwellings, Alexandra, but rather informed you of the fact that Rualtd will enter each and every one of the dwellings. He took on a form of a Good Samaritan, you tell me?”

“Can Rualtd take on the form of a man?” I ask.

“No,” Orpheo replies, “he cannot, no matter how much he wishes, hide his ugliness and physical form. However, he has, at his command, more than we can see or count. Don’t you see, Alexandra, what he is doing, sending an accomplice of him as a Good Samaritan? Do you not see his deception?”

Wishing very much I could put it into words, I tell him that I do not, and he says:

“Consider: you are in a time of great famine, you have a strong faith, and then, one day, a Good Samaritan arrives at your doorstep, provides you with sustenance. You will think he was sent from God, as an answer to your prayers, a deliverer, when he is actually sent from Rualtd, the deceiver greater than Chort.”

“So what is there that I can do?”

“You, Alexandra, can do nothing but resist as best as you can. You can only try to make your people believe, and then battle. But in the end, there is none other than I who will fight Rualtd,” Orpheo says, “I and my army.”

“You army?”

“The Forces of the First Brother, I believe they call themselves.”

“Us?”

“Yes, you. The Oameni de Padure. They have fought for me, against my brother and his forces, and I will not disappoint them. I will lead the Oameni into battle in the final battle.”

“You will?” I ask in surprise.

“Oh, yes, I will. And now, prepare yourself for that day, Alexandra. Prepare the Oameni, too. Prepare my army for me.”

“I will,” I say, and I do.

I hold a meeting with Eugen Ceausescu, Drago Cernea and Victorei that night, insisting that we needed an army that could combat the Statuliberi’s, if not in number, then in technology.

“Weaponry,” Drago Cernea suggests.

“Strength.”

“Illusions.”

“Armour patterned with geometric shapes which create optical illusions.”

“Boiling water.”

“Fire.”

Victorei looks up, and simply says, “Tactics.”

We start our plan of attack, stretching our imaginations, and our numbers, to the very limits. The archers are placed behind the swordsmen, which has never been done before, so that, while the swordsmen form a barrier in front of them, they can fire arrows set alight at overhead branches and weaken the opposite force’s swordsmen considerably.

“And when the swordsmen charge?” Eugen asks.

“Some archers climb into trees,” Victorei answers, illustrating with a sharpened dagger on the tabletop, “and fire arrows from above. It’s much more difficult to hit someone by accident up there.”

Victorei devises a plan for training the archers to climb trees equipped with a bow and arrows, and to jump down on a particular spot in case a tree is set alight or arrows are fired from the opposite army.

The swordsmen, when charging from the front where to run headfirst into the opposite army’s swordsmen, while the ones charging from the sides and camouflaged, where to advance in solid blocks, in order to compress the enemy army into a deadly square.

“We only need two blocks of swordsmen on either side,” Victorei calculates, “each block made of two lines.”

The end result is called Battle Square Shield, and we start devising plans to increase our men’s endurance, as they Statuliberi were always going to outnumber us.

“If each Statuliber fights like ten of our men,” Drago Cernea says, “each one of our men will fight like a hundred Statuliberi.”

“Yes, well,” Victorei says absently, “we need to increase physical endurance, not only in prolonged fighting time, but also in carrying heavier shields. Can’t we find lighter weapons?”

“No,” Eugen says, “we can’t find any new weaponry at all. We need to make the most of what we have.”

“We have faith,” I suddenly say, remembering something Orpheo has told me, “His army will far outnumber any other in number and strength, but not in faith.”

“Faith,” Eugen repeats, leaning back in his chair, “faith.”

“What, are you tasting the word? Yes, faith,” I say, ignoring Drago Cernea’s immature laugh, “If the men have faith that God is on their side, they’ll fight like a hundred each.”

“The Statuliberi believe they have God on their side,” Eugen says, “or Theos, whatever they call Him…”

“The Statuliberi were not promised anything by God,” I say, “so they cannot kill us in cold blood and say they are protecting God’s land.” They were promised it by Rualtd, I want to say, but of course I cannot if I want them to keep taking me seriously. It reminds me of something else Orpheo once said:

“Oh, these days! For one to be trusted, one must resort to anything but truth.”

It is true, of course, and what am I to expect, in these days when Rualtd rules, but, unlike how he used to, all those years ago, using war and downright dictatorship, he now uses the ultimate weapon: deception. I force myself to supervise the planning even after I am half-asleep, even though I do not have much to say about battle tactics, like I never have, because, like Eugen said, expecting the unexpected, I will not allow Rualtd to somehow creep into the tactics of our final battle, the Brother’s final battle.

Eugen Ceausescu, Drago Cernea and Victorei are finally pleased with the plan a little after daybreak, and Gabi, who has just woken up, boils us some coffee, because, for us, a small portion of the night is the only time for sleeping, and, if we cannot sleep then, then sleep is behind us for a whole day. I request mine extra strong, stronger than Drago Cernea’s, even (who is expecting Brigita to come soon, and see how strong he was, even when he was in severe need of sleep), and Gabi also makes us some mamaliga, which I eat bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, something which I am not used to like the rest of them are, getting more mamaliga on the outside of my mouth than inside it. After this belated breakfast, they go and get the men ready to start the training plan they have been devising all night, and I drag my feet to the Razboinici’s, which is empty, Razvan and Andrei having gone off with all the men to train.

I sit down in my room, and, for the first time, see how I do not fit in without Cristian, how I do not know what to do, where to go, who to be with. I cannot believe it was just him, in this place I fell in love with; I cannot believe it could have possibly been Cristian I had fallen into love with, before this place. It hurts my pride to think I was dependant on him for anything, particularly in the emotional sector, and I almost laugh at myself when I realise I am feeling almost angry at Orpheo for giving me this job to do which lost me Razvan’s friendship, and I realise, without much surprise, how much younger I am than I think, how the things which truly matter to me the most under the surface are the eternal events which my life is supposed to stand for, but rather everyday little things, like crushes and friendships, which didn’t matter, really, and which’s importance usually ceased in days. In the end, I fall asleep more because I do not want to think, or be conscious of, anything that correlated with Cristian and my current situation, than because I have stayed up all night.

I become almost distant from everyone around me; for the first time, I spend less time with the boys, who are so busy with their training, which has been pushed to the maximum, than I do with girls, particularly Tullia, Brigita and Luminita. Like a soldier suddenly wounded, I do not even want to go anywhere near Orpheo, do not want to hear any empowering words he might have, but sit back and simmer in my stew of near misery. I stay at the Ceausescus, because I no longer have Cristian to connect me to Victorei and Andrei, and Orpheo’s message cost me my friendship with Razvan, the only one who I didn’t need Cristian to feel comfortable with. I do not even want to try and bridge the distance between the Razboinici and I, but rather stay at the Ceausescus with Doina Ceausescu, Viorica Presecan, Dana Ecaterina Brezeanu, Gabi, and the children, like I have suddenly aged and become one of the Oameni’s women, with their sons out fighting, instead of one of the sons, and Victorei once again is the only girl out there.

I don’t know what to feel when I’m convincing Ana or Decebal to eat or making food and brewing coffee or cleaning up after them, other than that I’ve given up, on the only thing that I have ever wanted to do, which was become a Razboinic. I remember the days I spent with Cristian drinking cafea cu lapte and worrying about my mother catching me going into the forest at all hours, worrying if he really likes me or not, and I wonder: if I knew this was how I was going to end up, would I have gone on, and become one of the Oameni, like I think I am now? Or would I have gone back, back to the chateau, to the faux life which held no meaning whatsoever?

Like always, I do not regain my faith until the consequences of its loss show, sooner than I would like, and it is then I decide to brave the forest alone, with nothing but my faith, after the consequences show: Rualtd returns to my dreams. I see him in that twilight time between night and day; see him standing patiently outside the window, waiting for me to fall asleep so he can claim me then.

I would have called them nightmares, and not dreams, if their physical evidence was not there when I woke up. But every morning, I would awake, and some new injury would be there, all that have something to do with last night’s dream: Rualtd was lashing out at me with steel hairs of a tail: my wrists are all cut, as if brushed with blood; Rualtd threw me onto the ground: my shoulder is dislocated; Rualtd chokes me with invisible ropes, beside Jenica’s corpse: I wake up with a bloody neck. I am not sure how much affect the dreams have on the injuries, for they are always less serious than the ones in the dreams, but I am sure of one thing: they are not dreams. They are real; it took me much too long to find out Rualtd was real, and not a hallucination; it would not take me that long again. I try, to the best of my ability, to avoid sleep: I drink coffee until my stomach complains and inflict pain on myself, cutting the slippery scarred skin of the burns on my back with a dagger, but in the end I always fall asleep, I always have to meet Rualtd, despite the overdose of caffeine and painful back.

In the end, it is Razvan who rescues me, bursting into the girls’ room when they hear me screaming in my sleep in the kitchen, where he was having a brief conversation with his mother. He does not ask for an explanation or even ask why I was screaming, but stays with me in the kitchen of the Ceausescus’ as Tullia makes me something warm to drink as an antidote along with Tenebre, my true best friend, who loyally sleeps through my screaming fit, which the humans in the kitchen were able to hear, but the dog, him, right next to me on the mattress could not.

I return to the Razboinici’s filled with warm milk and with a much stronger heart, which has been fortified with armour against big things like Rualtd, but which little pricks of thorns like Victorei and Andrei’s dislike of me could still get through. This time, however, I have Razvan on my side, and I tell him that there will be a battle, just as Orpheo said, and that even if he did not believe me, it would be all the better if the Oameni strengthened their forces.

He stuns me then. “I believe you.”

That turns it all around, because Razvan’s belief of course increases Victorei’s, and with Victorei’s mind set to something, it is difficult, and very nearly impossible, to resist it. I do not need to return to my mission of preparing Orpheo’s army for him, because Victorei has already taken that from me in her more than capable hands. Indeed, after the passing of days, my main worry is that the Battle of the End of Time will occur before Cristian’s return, and I will have to stride into it without the Sword of Salvation.

Orpheo, however, does not see this as an impairment, and assures me that I wield it or not, the Sword of Salvation will be wielded in the Battle of the End of Time, and that, as he says, “is not what I wish to happen, but what I know will happen.”

“How do you know?”

“When something is encrypted before the beginning of time,” Orpheo says, “even if it is written afterwards, there is no doubt in its credibility.”

I do not even pretend to understand this, so I ask about Cristian.

“That I do not know,” Orpheo says, “although, believe it or not, Alexandra, it pains me to think that I might face my last battle before bidding him goodbye, my dear Cristian.”

“I’ve just remembered something…” I begin, “about your entwined souls.”

“Yes, you have reminded me, also,” Orpheo cuts across me, “do not forget, Alexandra, that even though your feelings towards Cristian now after his disappearance might not be how they used to be, he was the one who made you who you are now.”

“Actually, it’s his family,” I correct, protecting my pride, “and his home. And his disappearance,” I add, in case Orpheo is referring to my sudden responsibility of ensuring his army is ready for the great battle.

“Yes,” Orpheo says gently, “yes…and, have you not noticed that everything you have just mentioned revolves around…him? Cristian?”

“Well, yes,” I begin, “but…”

“But, you will not admit Cristian had anything to do with it because his sudden leaving has hurt you, in whatever way it has. You will not admit that his love, or rather, your love for him, was what made his disappearance matter anyway, because, Alexandra, that is the very nature of the human heart. Ah, the human heart…a most strange thing, which will hurt itself because of the silliest thing called pride. Even if you do not love him now, Alexandra, do not deny that you once loved him. Embrace your past, whatever it holds for you, because, always, Alexandra, your past is what makes you who you are. You past, and all it holds, from loves to mistakes to sights to people. Everything. Embrace it, because if you run away from your past, you run away from yourself. And that you cannot do, because, if you do, you will never prosper. If you cannot find the truth within yourself, how can you find it in other things? Particularly in these most troubling times. Learn to swallow your pride, Alexandra, and trust yourself instead, because the human instinct is never wrong.”

One of the things I come close to regretting later is not listening to Orpheo’s indispensible wisdom while I could, because I am always on a different track of thinking:

“Are you actually going to die, in the Battle of the End of Time?”

Orpheo looks at me with his horse’s eyes, a gaze I have always found unsettling, to see a horse looking at me with both eyes with their human’s pupils.

“It will be the end of my time,” he says.

“So will you die?”

“It will be the end of my time,” he repeats, “that is what I know.”

“And what will happen afterwards?” I ask. “For so long, the only thing that governed the forest were you: the Brothers.”

“You mean what will happen when justice finally rules over the forest?”

“Justice.”

“Yes, justice, however far away that may seem now.”

I do not worry, or even care too much, about justice, as I go around my daily duties with the First Brother’s Forces, and sit battling over plans with Drago Cernea, Eugen Ceausescu and Victorei, because there is always something on my mind, more than Orpheo or this upcoming battle which seems as impossible as its name. Now that my chagrin at Cristian’s leaving me is fading, I begin to realise that I actually do miss him, here on my own, or so it seems. The Oameni no longer mention him; he is either dead, or has joined forces with the Statuliberi, which is worse than being dead, and I, of course, cannot follow, nor do I want to. I now mean something to the Oameni, that had all to do with me and nothing to do with Cristian, if I didn’t look too deeply into it, but, in the end, it was just as Orpheo said: it all revolved around Cristian, and, no, I did not want it to be so.

Cristian�"or rather, his absence�"dominates my mind so much that I do not notice things that I should, like the first time Victorei left the table and ran to the bathroom to vomit. None of us thought much of it then; Razvan did not even get up to ask if she was okay, because he knew she would not appreciate it much. Andrei continued his ongoing rant about Roxana, how he could not believe she was actually staying indoors all this time on purpose, so he would not be able to catch her eye as he trudged along with the rest to training every day. Like the first time Viorica Presecan worried about her daughter’s excessive vomiting. The first time Doamna Ceausescu considered the idea of being a grandmother out loud. 

Iosif Ceausescu does not leave his room except to use the bathroom, but he is not reading like he used to; now he spends all of his time writing, scribbling out in a very disjointed hand something which looks very complex and important. His handwriting is comical; each letter committed to his memory from a different manuscript, the end product a jumble of different fonts. This doesn’t seem to deter him, though, because his manuscript’s content apparently seems what he is working on, the presentation completely insignificant, particularly when he runs out of complete sheets of paper and begins to fill out little scraps of parchment and tossing them into the pile of hand-written sheets which are, apparently, his magnum opus, more important than his son’s wife pregnancy, his meals, his love of his wife, his children, which are, as his wife keeps reminding him, fighting a war. It is as though destiny had, from the very beginning, had brought his life together; his wife, his literacy, his reading, all so that he could produce this magnum opus, this great manuscript of his. Although I do not know its actual importance until much later, I know from then that it is something I must see someday.

Victorei becomes more gruelling in her training of the men, joining them more than she needs to in swordplay and archery, as though she foresees some sort of decline in her form. I am the only one who notices this, because in her obsession about training herself along with the men, she forgets about me. I am removed from the training completely, all because Cristian has left. I am ignored when I try to talk about this, even to Drago Cernea and Victorei herself, because I know that Eugen Ceausescu holds the final decision, and he makes it clear to me that I would only hinder them. In the beginning, I do not care much about their ignoring me: I will bear through so much for Cristian (because, it is initially his fault), who changed my whole life, and I do not mind much staying behind at the Ceausescu’s while Victorei leads the men off to training. But when Cristian’s absence stretches longer and longer, and any hope of his return is lost, not only to me but to everyone else as well, it begins to get to me that although I was the one doing it for Orpheo, whatever it may be, I was the only one who was obviously not expected to participate in any future battles, and I start, when I am at the Ceausescu’s, dressing Decebal or preparing something warm for Gabi, who is expected to sit back and do nothing now she is possibly pregnant, to wonder about Cristian, and his relationship with me. I start to wonder about my love for him, and if it is possible that I do not love him anymore, or that I am slowly falling out of love. I know, deep down, that all I would get from Orpheo if I conferred with him about it would be wisdom and sound advice, which would undoubtly help, I am too proud and I choose instead to think it over in solitude, simmering in my own stufat of disappointment; it was true what Orpheo said, about this new life of mine revolving around Cristian, but it was also true that it is Cristian’s fault that I am now left behind with the women, instead of fighting out there with men, which was the main reason I embraced this life. Cristian was the one who gave it to me, undoubtly, and he was also the one to take it away from me, whether voluntarily or involuntarily: what I need most as I do Gabi’s chores at the Ceausescu’s is someone to blame it all on, when I see Razvan and Andrei return and go to the Razboinici’s to have yet another fun evening in the midst of war without me.

Something else I ponder while at the Ceausescu’s is particularly what I am doing at the Ceausescu’s: staying behind with the women, while the men go off to train with Victorei, and maybe meet the odd Statuliberi patrol. Victorei doesn’t seem to count as a woman, like Brigita or Luminita, who go to parties and tend to injuries and gossip through it all. She’s Victorei, the special case, the one with the dead parents, who no-one really knew anyway, who no-one remembers, and now Victorei isn’t known much with the Oameni anyway; she’s just Razvan Brezeanu’s girlfriend. Among the warriors, however, she is Victorei, the victory.

I think about Victorei’s history with so much passion I can probably compete with Iosif Ceausescu and his magnum opus; about her turning spy on her people for Meleus, whom she loved, only to have him break her heart and have her stand with her people, not for them, I suppose, but just to be against him. I can imagine the amount of defying she must have done to reach her rank in the forces and to gain her reputation, and I wonder if she would still have the impulse to do the same if she hadn’t had anything with Meleus. I would have admired Victorei, if it wasn’t for a single thing I notice in her: she will not allow me to become like her. She is Victorei, with a capital V, the Victorei, commander of the First Brother’s Forces, leading both Oameni and Razboinici to battle, and I am nothing but Ale, without a surname, Cristian Ceausescu’s prietena; which may have meant something some time ago, but now, with Cristian either dead or worse, it served only as identification, when it could have been a title with a small degree of prestige.

Ironically, it is Brigita and Luminita which push me to defy this exile of mine from the forces, in however small a degree, when Brigita continues her ongoing mangled relationships with Drago Cernea and Omar Presecan, and includes Vlad Zahar in her love affairs with alarmingly increasing rates of flirting, and then discussing everything with Luminita and me, that I fear I might be slowly turning into someone like Brigita, where the boys, as she called them, were nothing but sex and entertainment, relationships and scandal. Every night, after the men come back from their training, I go to the Razboinici’s hut and spend the night with Razvan and Andrei, Victorei strangely preferring to sleep early. Omar Presecan, after suspecting Brigita was still very much attached to Drago Cernea, no matter how high she lifted her skirts, starts to join us in our late-night sittings with coffee and food and laughs. It is some while after these episodes that I realise, with some sort of tranquil but sad calm, that I had fallen out of love. The memory of Cristian no longer posed any importance to me, and I found that you did not need to love one man to get rid of that nagging feeling of need for something masculine; loving many men in small doses, without any physical gratification whatsoever, extinguished completely the need for a man in bed.

Brigita suspects I am up to things, as she so charmingly puts it, with the lads every night, all alone with them in the hut, but I assure her that we are just having fun and that her and Luminita could of course join us, in the Razboinici’s hut, as the mothers would not allow the men to go to the Ceausescu’s and make a lot of noise when it was so late and Ana and Decebal need to sleep and Gabi needs to rest and they need to relax a little, so they do for a few fun evenings, and I feel a little like a traitor when I admit to myself that it is more fun without Brigita, whose flirting made Omar Presecan uncomfortable and not himself, and without her he was, second after Razvan, the most witty.

Tavian is almost as an exception as Victorei is: while she may be the only female in the forces, and serving as a commander and supreme leader at that, he is the only male who is not serving in the forces, or protecting the Clearing, or doing anything at all, except eating and annoying Ana Presecan. Razvan suspects that Victorei might notice this soon, especially with Cristian leaving a gap in the forces and Eugen Ceausescu’s blank refusal to incorporate me into them, so he takes pity on Tavian and decides to get him involved with the forces in some way he can prove to Victorei as useful, instead of leaving him to Victorei’s wrath and rigid training routine, so he invites Tavian to join our late nights, and convinces him to take over cooking duties at the Ceausescu’s which Tullia, who would have never agreed before, hands all kitchen-related issues to him with relief.

Actaeon never joins us, until one night when he knocks on the already open door and asks me if he can talk to me. We take some coffee, go into my room, which I no longer think of as our room, me and Cristian’s, shut the door and sit down on the mattresses, and Actaeon tells me, drinking cup after cup of coffee, and almost shaking with nervousness:

“The time of the battle is approaching. I tell you this, because you…I do not know how, but you know about these prophecies, which we were taught by our elders…the Good Samaritan, he is the Second Brother, the Great One…we were told it would happen mere wisps of time before the Great Battle...”

“You were told of a great battle?”

Actaeon licks his lips, and says, “We were so blind, I cannot believe it. It was all before our clouded eyes, we saw it, but we did not think, you know? It is all so clear now. I have seen the truth here. You will never know how happy I am I am on this side in the battle…Ale, it will be a great one. My people, they have been preparing for it for years…”

“They are not your people anymore,” I say, “you’ve stayed with us for forty nights.”

It is a thought shared by both Victorei and Orpheo, that once a man remained with a people for forty nights, he became one of them, so I never doubted it.

“Ale,” Actaeon repeats, his pupils dilating, even though the light is dull and it is dark in the room, “It will be the greatest battle of all time.”

“I know.”

He takes my hand.

“I thank you, Ale, for bringing me here. I thank you for showing me God.”

“You’re most welcome,” I say.

Later, I find that Actaeon’s urge to express his gratitude could not have come at a better time, because just as I forget Cristian and submit to the fact that the battle will indeed occur without me, I find, one day, the Sword of Salvation propped against the wall of the Razboinici’s hut. 

Author's Note

Orpheo and Rualtd are two brothers, immortal, and whose souls have been encased in the bodies of horses. Orpheo is the secret leader of the Oameni, while Rualtd is the leader of the Statuliberi. Orpheo is good; Rualtd is evil. The Statuliberi, under Rualtd's lead, have occupied the Oameni's land and called it their own. Ale is not originally from this village, called the "Clearing", but from outside it, and she joined the Oameni there to live with her lover, Cristian, who suddenly disappears after Rualtd personally kills a young girl, called Jenica.