Page 6

It is then my mother appears. The basket on her hip is filled with wildflowers. Like Ágota, her black hair is long and unfettered. As she walks toward us, her embroidered skirt ripples on the wind. Gazing at her, I know that no other woman is as beautiful as my mother. Green-eyes flecked with gold regard me from beneath long, dark lashes.

I rub my nose and stifle

my tears. I do not want to upset her.

“Erjy, why do you cry?” she asks.

“The little twig girl died,” I say, sniffling.

“I made a poppet,” Ágota explains. “And the wind carried it away.”

Our mother tilts her head and nods solemnly. “I see.”

“The wind is cruel. It killed her,” I complain bitterly.

I am upset at the injustice of the little twig girl being taken away.

“The wind is merely doing what the wind does.” Mama points to the leaves skittering across the ground.

I do not grasp what she’s trying to say and continue to cry.

Setting the basket down on the ground before me, my mother flexes her fingers. I immediately lift my eyes to watch, understanding that she’s about to do something wondrous. With a smile on her lips, she starts to twist and turn her hands, her fingers forming intricate designs. The flowers within the basket shiver beneath her hands. As I watch with delight, the flowers rise slowly into the air, their petals forming skirts and long trousers, their stems and leaves twisting into green-limbed people. Laughing, my mother raises her arms, and the flower people spiral into the air, dancing on the wind. They spin higher and higher into a colorful arc.

“Oh, Mama! They are beautiful!” I clap with joy.

My mother grabs Ágota and my hands to draw us into a merry dance.

When my feet leave the forest floor, I am dancing among the flower people in the wind and with my mother and elder sister.

It is glorious...

The iron door to the mausoleum crashes open. The pain from the iron stake returns with brutal intensity, shattering my concentration and returning me to this atrocious reality. I grip the stake with both hands and scream not only with the agony caused by my wound but the loss of the vision.

“Do not say I do not care for you!” Vlad roars.

He is already in the midst of an argument with me.

I gape at him in surprise.

Is this the same night? Or another?

I cannot tell.

But that he has returned so soon is a sign of his misery.

“Leave me to my agony!” I screech at him. “Do not torture me with your declarations of love while I lay here your prisoner!”

With the flick of his hand, a torch awakens, revealing his tall form. Again, he wears a dark overcoat, but the top hat is gone. His thick auburn hair rests against his wide shoulders in long coils. Dangling from his hand is a terrified man with white hair and sideburns. Choking in the fierce grip, the elderly gentleman—for that is what his clothes reveal him to be—flounders as he attempts to free himself.

“You are here of your own hand! You made me do this to you!” Vlad heaves his prisoner onto the end of my bier. The fear flowing off the man like warm smoke is intoxicating.

I am famished. My teeth tear into my bottom lip as I stare at the veins in his neck straining beneath his skin as he struggles for breath. Vlad releases the man and he clings to the platform, gasping for air.

Ignoring him, Vlad prowls about the small room like a great wolf. “Admit it, Erzsébet! Admit this is of your doing and I will take mercy on you.”

“Never!”

In German the old man cries out, “Where is my daughter? Where did you take her?”