Other Earths (collection)

There were whispers around her, as the story spread. “Yes,” said Professor Kert’sz, turning to the people around the fire. “Antal Szarvas has been arrested. This is, of course, the worst news I could have for you. But I am also sorry to say that we have been unable to locate his manuscript. We believe there were two copies, his personal copy and another that he was sending us. We searched his apartment after his arrest, but the police had already been there. We found nothing, and we do not know if the second copy was sent. I can’t tell you how sad I am to have a colleague in danger. To have lost Queen Gertr’d’s stories is a double blow. Translating them into English would have been the most significant work of my life.”

“We haven’t lost her stories,” said Mrs. Mad’r.

From the darkness into which she had fallen, Csilla suddenly saw what seemed to her like a flicker of light, bringing her back to the stone she sat on, and the forest. “My grandmother was queen of the T̈nd’r?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “Your grandmother was our queen. If she had told you, it would have put you in danger.”

In the blankness of her grief, Csilla thought, I wish people would stop trying to protect me.

Mrs. Mad’r looked at the people around the fire, ordinary people who looked like farmers and teachers and librarians but were, it turned out, not ordinary at all. “This is Csilla Szarvas, Professor Szarvas’ daughter and Queen Gertr’d’s granddaughter. She knows where the second copy of her father’s manuscript is located.” Csilla heard the people around the fire whisper to one another.

“What do you mean?” she said. “I don’t know anything about a second copy. I just know about the one he was typing.”

“Csilla,” said Mrs. Mad’r, “don’t you understand? You are the second copy—or rather the first copy, because what he was typing was really the second. You know all the stories that your grandmother knew—she made sure of that. We couldn’t understand your father’s message—was he sending us his daughter or his manuscript? It turns out he was sending us both.” Mrs. Mad’r put her arm around Csilla’s shoulder. “But don’t think about that right now. Just keep getting stronger. We’ll try to help him, I promise. Even in prison, we’ll try to help him and bring him out. We’ll never stop trying.”

The people around the fire were turning to each other, talking. She heard a pipe begin, and then a drum. But Csilla could not stand, and she could not speak, because her father might be dead already, and who cared about a bunch of stories that were probably, anyway, a bunch of lies? Even the White Stag.

“Csilla, there is someone I want you to meet.” Mrs. Mad’r squeezed her shoulder and then stepped aside.

The woman who stood before her was so small, no taller than Csilla herself, and so slender. Her bones were like the bones of birds. She was so pale, like white stones at the bottom of a stream. Her skin was wrinkled, all over her cheeks and around her eyes. She looked infinitely old, but the hair that hung over her shoulders was as green as grass.

“Drink this,” she said in an accent so strange, so ancient, that it seemed to echo from a thousand years in the past. As the honey wine burned her throat, Csilla felt the crack in her chest …not close, but ease.

“Csilla,” said Mrs. Mad’r, “I told you that the Daughters of the Moon were dead. That is what we would like the world to believe—the T̈nd’r have been feared enough, and an almost-immortal ancestress might convince even the twentieth century that we are the witches we were once thought to be. But this is Ibolya, the last of the Daughters of the Moon.”

“Welcome, child,” said Ibolya. Her voice sounded like the whisper of leaves overhead. “You have lost so much, we have all lost so much. That is why you must help us find ourselves again.” She turned to Mrs. Mad’r. “Show her, Queen. Show her what we are doing here, in this new land.”

“Den’s,” said Mrs. Mad’r to her brother, “I think we can begin.”

It was a song Csilla’s grandmother had never taught her, and it sounded as ancient as Ibolya herself. Mrs. Mad’r sang the first verse, then Professor Kert’sz joined in, then the others, one by one, until even Mrs. Martin was singing. Csilla watched firelight flicker on the singers’ faces.

First came a doe, with its fawn. They looked at the firelight and the circle of singers before slipping away again into the forest. Then came a fox with a mouse, its dinner, hanging from its jaws. Then a porcupine curled into a ball by the base of a stone, like a small stone itself. An owl swooped over the fire, adding its cry before it flew off into the forest. And the forest around them was growing. Csilla could feel it, the thickening of trees, the flowing of their sap. The ferns uncurling fronds, sending their spores floating into the air. Moss climbing the tree trunks, covering the scars where there had once been saws.