Chapter 2: Introductions

"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.” - Tennesee Williams


Zere’maya woke up in a soft, very male smelling bed, wearing someone else's clothes, just a tad too snug for her. She grimaced, knowing that either Karl had undressed, bathed and redressed her or one of her kinspeople -- her incredibly far-flung kinspeople had done so.

Clues. What could she know? Well, for one, if she was inside some man's vardo -- and there was no other place in the universe this could be -- she had not accidentally killed Karl. Not that he hadn't asked for something to go terribly wrong by elbowing her into doing this. She almost certainly hadn't killed those two girls outright as well.

Medical person that she was she carefully thought about the two little girls. It was completely amazing that they had lived as long as they had. It wasn’t unusual that a traveling sideshow would pick up someone like the two girls when they could find them, but their anatomic difficulties were many. Essentially they were like the Eck brothers, only joined at the belly, with one sister hanging upside down. As far as she could tell the upside down twin had all the external exterior organs she would have needed – except legs – but they were blind, not connected to any of the usual internal organs. Her intestines must link directly up to her sister’s. That would have explained the bowel impaction – two combining into one like that.

She had seen drawings of twins like that, but never any with both unequal twins with normal – possibly more than normal – intelligence.

Saving them, though – had been horrible. She ached all over.

If when she landed here she had felt like she had fallen out of a tree, now she fell like she had been run over (technically, run under) by a car. She shivered. A stunt like this without another of her kind could have been her last, and her task here would go uncompleted.

She opened up the door a crack and her worst fears were realized -- her skin bubbled where the sun hit her. She snapped the door closed. She couldn't even leave the vardo until she had fed. She cradled her burned, throbbing hand. Blisters almost made the rest of her hurt less.

There is always a price to pay, she reminded herself. Karl had agreed to power her but she had been left badly drained. She prayed that the next person through the door would be Karl. She prayed that someone, anyone would come soon.

She heard someone at the lock and dived under the covers.

"Come in, and shut the door, quickly!" She called. She could feel the heat on the outside of the blanket. The door shut.

She peeked out. Her visitor was the tall old woman. Her knees shook with disappointment.

"Good evening, Grandmother." She said, carefully pouring respect into every word.

"The young man is still asleep." she said matter of factly. "What are you that you could heal with your hands the way you do?"

"One of the lonely ones. "Zere’maya said carefully.

"What sort of disaster?" the old woman asked.

"On a world far away. I haven’t told him anything about how I got here or why I’m here." Zere’maya answered.

"He may be born on this world and know nothing else but we are not so ignorant. We journey farther than people think. Some of us, some perhaps even I know have jumped the creek." The old woman said.

Zere’maya nodded. “I just jumped the creek. I am badly injured – I do not remember how. Karl found me. He’s very, very strong. I may have even been dying when he found me. I was not ready to do my work here when he brought me to Inchin and Iruin. I’m critically ill now.”

“Your wearing of Gypsy attire is offensive when you are so obviously not one of our people. I have earned a great deal of displeasure with our caravan for allowing you in, even as a healer for those children. If anyone but Karl had asked I would not have let you pass wearing that – wearing a costume to cause you to seem to be what you are not.” The old woman’s voice was soft but there was no disguise of her feelings.

Zere’maya had made this trip into other worlds many times, and had many prewritten explainations that had been drilled into her. She considered, then gave the version that she hoped would make the most sense.

"Grandmother -- long ago my mother’s people took in my father. We’re well known in my time for “buying children” but you and I know that adoption can be expensive. Either way he wasn’t a gypsy and when he left our band to return to his people my mother came with him. She stayed with him and me until I was six years old – then returned. I saw my band from time to time after that but never saw my mother again – at least, never identified as my mother.

My daughter, my only child, grew up and found another group of Romany people on another world and is trying to become accepted into that band. I have a name, if you would use it. I am Zere’maya."

The women stared each other down -- the old woman into the younger woman's face, the younger woman into her shoulder as was expected.

"Zere’maya can have one of two meanings." The old woman said, firmly. "Either one can be a curse. Why do you keep that name?"

"Because," Zere’maya said firmly, "My mother gave that name to me. It's rightly mine and ~~I~~ choose to keep what was given me."

"Certainly you go by other names among the Giorgio." said the old women, softer.

"Don't we all." said Zere’maya, simply. “Sarah Mary. Sarah Mary Cornsilk, with my father’s name.”

“Then you are more than simply half and half.” Said the old woman.

“My father was a good man, he took care of me when my mother left us. He was a man with a sense of humor. He used to say that ‘those Cherokee will sleep with anyone’.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence between the two women. Zere’maya broke it. “I’m supposing you want the other explanation, why here, why now?”

The old woman looked serious, quiet. Again Zere’maya felt obliged to talk. “There is a universe out there of beings of intelligence and education -- scientists. A few of us scientists come from Earth. Of course – different times and places, but the people we were born among could not provide us with the environments we needed to express our genes, so those of us who could -- left. We call ourselves the “friends of Nickie.”

The woman showed no signs of recognition, nor of confusion. Only her breathing moving her hair showed Zere’maya that the woman was even alive. Zere’maya began again.

“Nickola Tesla. He discovered the forces that can be tapped inside our world, and each world has its own unseen energies – but energies that can be tapped into and put to use. Most people who figure these out on their own have only a partial understanding and little motivation to learn control – no one to talk to, no one to share anything more than the basic, big explosions part of their understanding. Those that understand find that they do not understand the power and can’t control what they have tapped into, and both those who know that they are over their heads and those who don’t know even that, are a danger to themselves and to others. We go to stop them from doing as much damage as we can, any way we have to, but in the best case we bring them to us, because they show promise as scientists in their own right. If we can’t teach them, we try to prevent them from hurting themselves and others. If we can’t protect them and others, we do our most undesirable, needed action, to protect all those they could bring to harm.”

Mother Faa continued to sit there. One eyebrow slowly raised. Zere’maya was left wondering if Mother Faa understood scientist, energy, or where exactly she was planning to bring the person she was seeking. She pondered asking Mother Faa about these things. She decided against this.

“Or to put this another way, I’m a senior wizard, a very big, and older chovihani and patrinyengri among my people, a shamen and a healer. Someone on this planet is misusing the magics and will hurt him or herself and others sooner or later, if they haven’t already. Without people to understand them, watch and guide them any person can become crazy – mostly with loneliness and the acts fear inspires from others. My tools – my bakterismasko ran – my magic wand and other needful things are broken, mostly, and I’m hurt both in my body – my mind is confused and I have huge gaps in my memory – and in my magical abilities. I’m suffering, but still trying to do my intended work here.

My feelings – only hunches – is that the person I’m seeking didn’t do this to me but that someone else seeking them did. The person I’m looking for is in danger if not already hurt. I came here intending to help, then quietly return to my home.”
The old woman looked at the young woman still with suspicion, but with a kinder look on her face.

"You are in pain, and weak." she stated.

"It’s worse than being uncomfortable. It’s taking all my concentration just to hold together. If you leave me here much longer I’ll boil away. Open the door and let the sunlight reach me and all that will be left of me is some stinky steam, and that won’t take much time to air out of the vardo. I’m a really easy problem to fix -- if that’s the sort of solution you want." Zere’maya stated. She held up her hand and displayed her blisters.

"If I send the boy in to you -- you will continue to exist." Mother Faa stated. “Have you tried to drink his blood?”

"I will take what I need to live. You know what I am, I take it. I won’t drain him by drinking him unless I have no other choice and with his consent. You know that it’s mostly the fear that would power someone like me, anyhow. I’d rather drain off his life and leave him with it. I am not here to hurt the boy, nor anyone among The People, nor to harm Magic nor am I in the service of evil. My nature will pull me towards the person I need to find, attracting me, that’s how it works.

“May I assume that you know the tales of Shahrazad and so know that demons too can be pious and fear God?” asked Zere’maya, trying to keep the timidity and awe she was feeling out of her voice. The old woman nodded.

“Even the most evil things can serve under a kindly Master." Zere’maya concluded. Again, the woman understood each other.

"-------Zere’maya," the word came with difficulty to the old woman, "In all my years I’ve never heard of a Gypsy who was also a vampire."

Zere’maya had explained how she could be a living human woman and a ghoul many times. At least this explanation was one she could give from memory. “I was very, very foolish. Perhaps it was my destiny. I tried to use magic, and someone was sent from Across the Creek stop me came too late, or didn’t do a very good job of stopping me. I will never know. I lashed out at him and told him I could do a better job myself. The nature of magic heard. It’s very, very foolish to say out loud what you do not mean, to speak without thinking. He took my place in my time and place, and I took on his job, as he had taken on another's before him. There is always a price to pay. What he was I became. I don’t doubt that there are very few gypsies, even young ones, who would curse themselves so completely and fearlessly."

The old woman laughed. "I will send the boy to you. And, for compassion's sake, I freely and gladly offer myself to you -- just a touch now -- before I take your leave." She offered a bare hand.

"A minute ago you were considering killing me. Why would you willingly offer yourself to a vampire, even a gypsy vampire?" politely countered Zere’maya.

"This way I can know if you are telling the truth." said the old woman, simply. "You drink me, part of me will remain with you. And, I imagine that neither you nor the boy wishes to see you this way. I know how creatures like you 'freshen up’. Drink, half my granddaughter, half my own kind."

In this world the women are Shamans, Zere’maya thought, understanding. To show respect, to assure herself as well as the woman that Zere’maya meant no harm she laid her blistered hand on a pillow between them. The old woman took the succubus' hand between her own and Zere’maya sighed with pleasure, taking the old woman’s fear and anger, taking the energy that she needed to begin to heal.

The old woman – Mother Faa, the eldest here. Zere’maya took that in along with her life. The old woman pulled her hand away, gently, and firmly. The small woman with the beginnings of grey in her hair looked up to the tall woman whose hair had long since greyed, whose scalp had begun to show along her parting.

Zere’maya could feel the duality, the welcome of a far long traveler, and the revulsion and fear. It was in her eyes – welcome, monster child.

“So – you usually are a werewolf when you visit other worlds?” Told Mother Faa. Zere’maya hesitated.

“I don’t think of it that way,” she said meekly, ”Each time I jump the creek is like the first.”

“Fitting.” then Mother Faa pulled away and was gone. Zere’maya was startled – the old woman could pull her memories out with just a touch – she was ~good~ a powerful chuvani – woman shaman. Zere’maya’s daughter had searched out gypsies while working out her own identity and was trying to earn the right to be considered Gypsy, to be a chuvani as well as Zere’maya’s own protégé. Imagine what Iscah would think – her mother smack dab in the middle of a caravan with a woman of power without even trying! Zere’maya laughed. How she wished she could contact her daughter, let her family know she was still alive.

While her eyes were still full of phosphenes – and tears -- Karl entered the trailer. She cuddled into him, sucking up his need, falling asleep with his hand tightly gripped between hers as if she did not so much want to drink from his flesh as take off his skin and wear him from within.

She could not wear him, could not enter him. She could, though, drink skin to skin from his life energy. She could feel the deeply broken places in her body begin to mend. She had been barely whole when she had mended the twins – now she could judge – how much to take, where his own limits to wholeness might be.

When Zere’maya woke up Karl had been gone – long enough so that the bed was cold. She looked around the inside of the vardo, drinking it in.

“It’s like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ she murmured to herself. “I must remember everything, it’s like everything I ever wanted – what I wanted when I began using magic.” She reached around, looking for her skirt. Her recorder was still working, but was running out of power. Maybe – probably – she would be able to get a solar charge once she was whole again rather than sizzled as if she’d stuck her hand into a gas jet. She recorded the interior of the vardo, taking readings. She knew that all the beings she had known since leaving Earth had never seen anything like this – she had tried to describe save memories. It was all here. She swept around a second time, without commentary, and then put the recorder away for her medical kit. Most of what she had was broken, but she could take enough measure to know that the healing the twins needed on top of her injuries had damaged her badly. She would need time in hospital, need her own healing crew when she got home.

She was still physically bleeding internally from her physical injuries; she was also in at least as bad shape magically, with roughly the equivalent injury. Her memories were still very patchy –brain damage for certain, distant recollections were sharper. She had enough healing memory to know her memory recovery would come and go, if she remembered something now she might better record it because with further healing she could lose that memory again. She still did not know how she had gotten here. She knew she was missing someone important – her partner, and that should not have happened.

At the same time, -- Zere’maya swiveled her head around – this was Sara Mary Cornsilk’s deepest, most painful dreams made real. She looked at her hands. They were the scarred, furrowed hands of a woman in her midforties. She was not really eighteen, though she could remember her youth intensely. She pulled a lock of hair forward – shot with greys – but no, Zera/Sara had been white at the temples while still a teenager, with a light salting all over. She had begun going grey at sixteen. That, most likely, was the same amount of grey she had been then. At least, she thought so.

There were a variety of women’s clothing choices laid out for her – all fairly worn, but many different styles. Zere’maya noted that none of the outfits were like her own – very distinctly Romany. These were the sort of clothes Gypsy women would wear when out among the Giorgios, to not direct notice to themselves. Zere’maya chose a gleaming grey sari with gold decorations – much less flashy than the clothing she had worn, packing herself into the biggest blouse available besides her own. Zere’maya could feel magic leaving her body, giving her more fabric, working inside the sari bringing it back to its new condition. So that was how this persistent ‘leak’ is going to play out, she thought. At least whoever had loaned her these clothes would be very happy – the original workmanship was first rate.

What this meant was that for the next few days she’d have to be ‘sipping’ regularly off of someone, somehow or she would boil away. Normally she could draw the energies she needed directly from the homeworld – having to be “vampire” feeding off human beings disturbed her.

Finally she had tidied, made records, and checked her stuff enough. She had visited modern gypsies back on earth, back before she had ‘jumped the creek’ but this was the first time ever she was guest accepted enough to live among them.

She stuck her hand into a sunbeam – no pain, no smoke, no bubbling though she could feel a tightness that should not have been there. Zere’maya pulled the folds of her sari carefully over all of her exposed skin, and stepped out of Karl’s Vardo, onto the grass.

From nowhere the gypsy children surrounded her. The rules, she remembered, were that you told the complete truth – gently, simply, but absolutely frankly.

She was looked over, prodded a few times, and talked about for a good fifteen minutes before anyone talked to her directly. Zere’maya spoke to them first.

“It’s important not to touch me if you can. I have been hurt inside and I could hurt you, though I would never want to do so.”

“Oh, we know you wouldn’t try to hurt us. You nearly got yourself killed making the twins all better.” Said one boy. “When are you going to make them two, as they should be? Zere’maya shook her head.

“I haven’t seen the twins but I already know that I did not ‘make them all better’. I tried my best, and they are more comfortable and more stable. That is all I could do.”

“You speak our language – granted, you have a weird accent.” Said the same boy. “Is this your magic?”

“A little help from Mother Faa, a little more from Karl, but mostly I grew up speaking your language first, too. Different in some ways, but really close. I spoke all through my life with different groups of Gypsies, and my mother was Gypsy and taught me.” Replied Zere’maya.

There was a general rumble of disbelief in the crowd. “Miss, no Gypsy woman would do something like that.” Said a small boy, who was given warning looks by several older children.

“It’s different where I grew up from here, but not so very different. My mother went back to her people when I was no longer a baby.” Said Zere’maya. There were general comments all around.

“It must have been hard growing up with only your dad’s family then.” Said another boy. Zere’maya swallowed. Yes, as hard as it would be for a nun who left her order and then returned, it just would not do to return to being a nun again while bringing your daughter along. It was just like that for her mother, and this did not need to be shared.

“It’s important for you to know that part of my being hurt is that I don’t remember much from after I left my father’s home to go find my mother, when I was old enough to be on my own. I look like a woman twice as old as I have to remember I am.” Zere’maya pointed.

“That older young woman among you, that’s where my memories end, after that I have bits and pieces, and feelings. Over time I will remember more but I’m still very broken up inside. I will maybe forget a lot of what I can speak today, if my memories come back, and if I don’t understand as much tomorrow that means I’m healing. I’ll be glad for your help when being young like you is far away again, the way it’s supposed to be. I know I’ve done a lot but until I’m better I won’t have access to those memories.”

“What’s your dad, then?” asked the young woman she’d pointed to.
“A little of this, a little of that. Just regular American. Some black, mostly white, enough Cherokee so we had a distinctive name – Cornsilk. Most people looked at me and thought I was an Indian. Gypsies are much less common. But we didn’t live like Indians or like Gypsies – just like most everyone else.” said Zaramaya.

“He had a job?”
“And I went to school. Just regular folks.” She said.
“You really come from “Across the Creek?” Asked the young woman again. Zere’maya nodded.

“And I thank you all for your hospitality. I wish I knew why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do. Either I’ll remember and finish my work here, or someone will come for me shortly. I have family out there that will miss me.”

Everyone nodded and spoke back and forth to each other.

“Is it true that you’re a vampire, that’s why you have to cover up?” Said another boy.

“Partly true. I’m as alive as you all are, I have the abilities to feed vampires have. More importantly I’m hurt magically and physically. I can’t stay in the sun as long as I’m hurt, once I’m mend I can do anything any living woman can do.”

“Do you drink blood, like a vampire?” asked another. Zere’maya smiled and showed her teeth. The children screamed, laughed and fell back. “I can, yes. Whether people like me choose to feed on life physically or drain others of their energies other ways --- is a personal choice.”

“Is it true that you are a werewolf?”

“Not true, not here and now. In other places, yes. The magic and the task is always different every time I Jump the Creek. Even if I jump to the same place, the magic of that place will be different for me, like going back to somewhere as a small child and then again as a young man or young woman.”

“I should like to be a wolf.” Said a little girl.

“When I can be a wolf, I like it.” Agreed Zere’maya. “Sometimes I’ve been a dragon, and then I can fly, I’ve been many things.”

“Why do you do this?” asked several at once.

“That’s part of the problem. I know I’m supposed to be doing something, but I can’t remember what. Usually I complete my task, and then I go home. But I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do. If any of you want to search out for answers, I would be grateful.”

“Shall we get you pencil and paper? Do you want to write our ideas down?” Asked the tall, dark girl.

“I have something better than that.” Said Zere’maya. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slim cylinder.

“I talk into this, and it saves all the information. Do you want to try it?” There were eager hands, and soon the children were playing with Zere’maya’s recorder, talking into it, playing their voices back. This could take some time, she knew.

Just coming outside and talking was exhausting her. She leaned back against the side of Karl’s vardo, careful to cover all of her bare skin from direct sunlight. The tall, dark girl came and sat by her. Together they watched the children, no supervision present, and none needed, as they experimented and exchanged and shared.

“What do you think you’ll write down when you get your recorder back?” The girl asked. She was friendly enough, intense, with an attitude somewhere between petted favorite child and seasoned leader. Given how much gypsies treat children as adults treat each other in the Giorgio society, that wasn’t surprising, thought Zere’maya.

“Well, I have to be writing to somebody, so I’ve made myself up one. Like an invisible friend. When I remember whom I’m really writing to we’ll have a good laugh about all this. My imaginary friend – I have a lover, out on a distant, desert world, who lives all alone in a beautiful French chateau. He’s tall, and dark with shiny black hair, and brooding, and lonely, and he loves me enough to let me go on adventures. He wears black velvet and fancy white ruffles, I am his dear little beloved and I’m going to hurry back to him.” Mused Zere’maya. “I think he’s called – Mr. Nobody.”

“Well, the next time you go running off your Nobody should sew your name in all of your clothes.” The girl replied. “If the two of you are so in love, why are you always going gallivanting away without him?”

Zere’maya thought. “I don’t think I travel with him. But he’s always there waiting for me when I’m done. I always come home to our tall four-poster bed with the linen sheets and the sachet under my pillow. .”

“Feather bed?” asked the girl.

“Mmmm’h’mmm.” Said Zere’maya. “Just like in the barn, laying my blanket over the softest alfalfa hay. I sleep – um, slept in the barn whenever I could as a child. I had to leave the whole world to discover feather ticking, and I love it.”

“We have feather beds here.” The dark girl replied. Zere’maya looked around slowly, thoughtfully.

“I would imagine you would. This area is in high summer, I think, but it’s still cold at night. We didn’t go to areas this cold if we could help it, my father and I.”

“Sounds like the two of you were good buddies. It’s not like your world here. I hear you have liquid oceans on your world. We’re mostly ice, and salt flats. We follow the warmest parts of the planet. There are some people who live on the edges, but we stay where it’s warm – here is about as hot as it gets.”

The dark girl paused. “You look at me – you look at me like a man does. Or like the women of Alleliea do.”

“What kind of look is that?” asked Zere’maya, surprised. “Is there another kind of look?”

“You look at my face, then your vision drops. Then you look up and away, as if you were trying to forget that I’m beautiful.”

“You are beautiful --- um ---- ?” said Zere’maya.

“Zassh.”

“Well, you are. And I know someone who reminds me of you. Mr. Nobody-girl. She’s all ribbons of color, dark and light, and you’re more melancholy, and she’s smarter, and the two of you are about the same age.” Zere’maya looked frustrated. Zassh laughed.

“You know the most interesting people.” Said Zassh.

“I’ll be so very happy when I remember who they are.” Replied Zere’maya, saddened. Then she grew serious. “But still I’m glad I met you. You feel like ---- power. I’m so glad I got to meet you, Zassh.”

Zassh stood up, a long, graceful gesture. “I’ll make sure your device gets back to you, Zere’maya, Sarah Mary Cornsilk, wounded healer. I was supposed to bring you to the twins, but you need rest and healing. They will last, you go back in.”

Zere’maya startled. “Maybe I’m tripping on insecticides.”

“What?!” replied Zassh.

“This is a very buggy world. It’s like No-See-Um paradise. Maybe I’m not really here at all, I got into some inane accident in a farmer’s field and am having my own private freakout on bug killers.” Replied Zere’maya, deadpan.

“Go on, shoo!” said Zassh, “go on, or I’ll carry you up and you know you’re not supposed to touch anyone and then I’ll be in all kinds of trouble with Mother Faa. Go on, save me and get some rest!”

Zere’maya had barely laid down when Karl started shaking her. She protested weakly, but Karl was already carrying her halfway across the campsite when her head cleared enough to protest.

“Nope. Sorry. You won’t hurt me and you’ve been asleep long enough, just look over the twins and I’ll carry you back to my vardo.” Said Karl firmly.

“There’s some sort of issue with you, you have to be useful. If you don’t want the troupe to like you I know you’ll care that the twins are hurting and you will do something about that if I put the three of you together.”

Karl was right about that. She’d tried driving him off with the basic “stinger” touch but couldn’t bring herself to hurt him. She did take a good, long, deep drink from his energy, enough to make him stumble.

“If you do that I’ll drop you.” Whined Karl.

“If you drop me I’ll be able to walk on my own two feet, I’m not accustomed to having people treat me like baggage.” grumbled Zere’maya.

“If you walk you won’t know where to walk to.” Replied Karl.
“Then I’ll walk beside you, you’ll show me.” Responded Zere’maya. “Down. Now.”

“No need, we’re here.” He replied smugly, and set her down on the lower steps.

Zassh, the dark girl was waiting for them.

Zere’maya looked over the room and the girls. “They’ve healed remarkably well for the time they’ve had.” Commented Zere’maya.

“You have spent most of the past two weeks asleep. They haven’t. We’ve been waiting for you to finish the job.” Said Zassh.

“Finish the job? Two weeks? I’ve been here two weeks?!” Zere’maya scrambled for her communicator. It didn’t work properly, still broken.

“I’ve been here two weeks?” she said again. Zere’maya fought it but began to cry. The girls, seeing her, began a monotonous wailing.

“Healers don’t cry!” said Zassh to Karl.

Karl put his arms around the twins, trying to comfort them. Zassh looked from the twins to Zere’maya and back again.

Zere’maya found herself outside on the steps. She wasn’t sure if Zassh had taken her out, or if she had run out and Zassh had followed her.

She could hear Zassh talking, first angrily, then quieter and quieter, then stop and wait, sighing every now and then.

Eventually both were sitting together, watching the stars.

“Way too long?” asked Zassh.

“I don’t know who is supposed to come and get me, but yes, I know that. I’m sure. What went wrong? Why am I still here?” asked Zere’maya. “I get pieces – flashes – of a life I know I’ve lived. I don’t understand where I’ve been for half my life, but I know it was important, and I’m loved, and --- my poor family –“ she laid her head on her knees.

“You don’t remember them --- “ began Zassh

“I know I counted. I know I’m missed. Maybe they think I’m dead, maybe they’re still searching for me and haven’t found me. I know some people are left behind, “lost at sea’, left forever ---“

“You don’t remember –“ broke in Zassh.

“But I’m certain.” Said Zere’maya. There was a calmness in her voice now. Zassh came around and looked her over.

“All right. I believe you.” Zassh answered.

“I’m all tired again.” Said Zere’maya.

“Crying like that will do that to a person.” Said Zassh. They watched the stars silently. Zassh sighed.

“Look. You can go two weeks without so much as a drink of water, just by touching another person. You are just about as miserable as a person can get homesick for people who you know love you.

I know two little girls who were kept alive for years by their mother, who was shunned by everyone, who eventually sold them to us. We’ve done everything we can to be mother and father and still be good to their mother, who sneaks away to see them when we come near where she lives. If her husband catches her around us, he beats her.”

“Let me guess – we’re getting close to her village now?” asked Zere’maya.

“About a week or so away. She will come in and see if they are still alive, see if they seem to be happy.” said Zassh.

“Kids usually are happy. If they aren’t it’s usually not because of something that would seem distressing to everyone else – like being fused together.” Said Zere’maya. “I never promised I could make two girls of them. They had a bowel impaction and I’m still in bad shape for the help I did give them.”

“You can do more for them, and you should. You can try at least to make them healthier.” Said Zassh.

Zere’maya thought. “You two want me to sleep with the children, while you watch over us? Without Karl I’d never survive the night. I don’t imagine – putting a pair of little girls in the same bed as me and Karl while we exchange needs – it’s against the spirit of proper conduct if not the letter.”

“With Karl some of your mending magic would pass to them. I could watch over you two waking you if anything went wrong with the girls. I’ve known Karl for years and he wouldn’t pull any funny business in front of me. And Mother Faa wants you to try. If you can nourish them the way you nourish yourself -----“

“Karl is eating for me as well as for him now.” Said Zere’maya.

“He’s lost a good deal of soft flesh while you’ve been here. It’s good for him. We’d be happy to feed the girls by mouth, we’re happy to feed Karl what he’d need, if you can do it.”

I’m not going to be home in my own bed in this bed, or in the other, thought Zere’maya. What I would really like to do, if that was even possible, would be to just sit in a ball rocking back and forth hoping that when I finally pass out I never wake back up. I have to remember that I’ve felt this bad before and it somehow always ended.

Zere’maya walked in. Karl scowled at her, the two girls asleep in his arms. Zere’maya found a place to sleep between the two sweaty blonde heads and the boy-man who held them so closely. She could feel him place his hand between her shoulders as they, all four of them, fell asleep.

Zere’maya tried a guided imagery exercise. Up to now she had fallen asleep like someone drugged. Wretched and tired and sore, but not to that hard place.

Zere’maya dreamed.

Chapter 1: Arrival

“I prefer the things of which there is seeing and hearing and perception, these I prefer.” - Heraclitus

It always starts the same, Zere’maya thought. I'm cold, I'm dirty, and I don't know where I am, who I am, only that there is some reason behind me being here.

She rolled over and looked at the spot on the forest floor as if looking for something important. She found it. The leaves were crushed in the shape of her body as if she had been lying there a long time -- probably hours. Part of her impression wasn't leaves; she had also crushed a patch of moss. The ground underneath her was cold, lingeringly wet and smelled herbal – like some really repulsive sort of herbal tea. She looked on her sleeve.

Ewww, gross, it was ground into her shirt and rubbed into her skin. She touched her skin lightly. She was crusting over where her skin had been broken and part of her shoulder was a deep purple. She shifted her weight. There seemed to be matching impact pains up and down her body, and as she shifted her weight her back spasmed -- she wasn't sure if it hurt more to move or to try to stretch it out.

She rolled to her hands and knees, cat-style. Nothing seemed to be broken, though her shoes were ruined. She could see the tops of her feet and there were leaves stuck to them with her blood. Groaning, she unrolled her body and stood on her feet. Her shoes would at least stay on for a few miles, while she tried to get her bearing. The lacing running up her legs would keep her left ankle from swelling too badly, though she suspected she would have to loosen and relace if she walked far enough.

Why couldn't they make this easier? She wondered. Then, who are 'they' anyway? She walked crosswise through the woods, then, finding a path followed it downhill, as she had done, hundreds of times before. She thought. She felt, really. She still didn't have any memories, just -- hunches.

Her senses had to still be dulled, confused, or her mind was wondering because suddenly she found herself being passed by a young man, walking along her path.

Yum.

His hair was curly and his build was solid. She reached out to grab his hand.

Karl, stunned, stared at the little woman who had grabbed him. He hadn't really paid much attention to her walking past. He felt her hands -- hard, calloused. The hand on his arm was as blocky as a man's even though it was the size of a twelve-year-old boy's. She was his mother's age, maybe -- with wispy, fine brown hair, long, but so thin it hardly seemed worth the bother of growing out. Her face was strange -- broad and flat, but with a brush of freckles over her nose.

She was smiling, and he noticed, then, she was injured, and then, uneasily, that though she was carrying too much weight for her frame that a good deal of that was in a completely amazing pair of breasts. She really was smiling. Completely friendly, open, accepting, welcoming.

She put her arms around his waist.

“Say yes,” she whispered. Her arms were stronger than she should be. There was blood running down from the back of her neck, dried in the center and over a nasty looking bruise, one of many he could see..

A whole lot happened after that but the last thing he could really understand, really remember himself after she dragged him off the road was how wonderful his tongue felt when in her mouth.

He woke up the next morning in a pile of leaves, her hand held tightly in his. She was still sleeping, and he could see that she was dressed (mostly) and there were no traces of the injuries he had seen last night. Even the damage to her leather shoe was gone.

This was strange stuff, he thought. This was magic. He shifted uncomfortably, remembering the night. He remembered dawn now, and everything before. Now in the morning he could see her clothing, and better see her face. She looked like the people he was traveling with, but Romany women do not jump men and drag them into the bushes. Then again, that wasn’t the only serious problem with what he was trying to understand, here.

The world wasn’t all that big a place, and he had thought he knew all the Romanies in the world. He was sure that he knew all the different traveling bands. This woman’s clothing was different, and different in important ways from any tribes he knew. This was more like a gypsy – costume? No – costumes were usually flimsy, cheap material. This was thick, heavy and the sigils embroidered on her clothes were handmade – but were meaningless to him. Her earrings, at least the gold hoops – were very much correct, and some fine stone settings and intricate hammer work at that. The high hoop on her right ear, though – was made of a metal he found completely unfamiliar.

Then again, he wouldn't have thought he was the sort of man who jumped any woman. He thought of the rules of the people who sheltered him. Man, if she was a Gypsy, was he in trouble. He must have shifted at that point, because she woke, and smiled at him.

Her eyes were small, deeply set under a heavy overarching brow, spoked in dark brown against muddy green. The effect was rather like looking into a goat’s eyes, or a cat’s. Her smile was as welcoming as the night before, only peaceful.

"Good morning, handsome." she crooned. Her voice was light, flutelike. She stretched luxuriously. "Thank you sooooooooo much!"

He grimaced. "I'm sorry. I mean, I've never done anything like this. I had a lot to drink last night." He groaned in exasperation. "You aren't even pretty!"

She burst out laughing.

"I'm sorry, you are pretty I --" she held up a hand.

"No, don't worry about it. For Strigoi Vii a big ego is completely optional."

'What?" He sat up.

"I sucked your energy. That's what I do. I was drained completely and confused so I didn't remember who I am. But I do, now, and I feel much better. You feel better too." This was a statement not a question.

"You do feel better?" She asked. Karl nodded.

"Well, from here on in you'd better stay away from me. I've got a full head of magic and no idea what I can do." She said that very matter-of-factly. Karl groaned.

"I was about ready to ask how in the world you came to be hunting men in the woods. Then you said you were a Strigoi Vii and I was ready to run away." He paused "If running from demons even does any good. But I don't want to. Is this part of your magic, too?" said Karl. The stranger paused, thoughtfully.

"No, always before I could tell if I was doing any magic. I think it's just the effects of you being a nice guy." She replied.

"You tell me you're a demon, and I believe you. Then you tell me you aren't enchanting me and I believe you! This day could not be any more wrong!" He punched a tree, felt stupid.

"Look, what happened last night isn't a contract, and I haven't any idea whether I am or will be sorry, or even if I just fell asleep in the bushes and I'm dreaming." Karl said "But -- If you are real, for the sake of common decency will you just sit there until I come back from the bushes for a minute??!!!"

She nodded solemnly. He headed out. She could hear him swearing under his breath, trying to make sense of the moment. She spent the time trying to find any leaves in her hair by feel, plucking them out. Even though her hair was very fine it was also textured, and everything stuck in it -- lint, leaves, paper bits. She was working her way through her bangs coaxing some very young dreadlocks to unlock when he came back out of the bushes. He was clearly steaming mad.

"One more time, slowly. I'm looking at a ---- " he paused. "Very sweet, friendly, um mature woman who on closer, and sober inspection is wearing the clothes of a people I know damned well aren't to be touched much less --"

She started. "You recognize my clothing?" She asked. He nodded. She frowned, smoothed her full skirts.

"Well, this is the furthest out I've ever been recognized." She cleared her throat. "So you know something of my people?" He nodded.

"I'm traveling with them. Technically in charge of the blacksmith caravan, but that's a very long story." said Karl.

"Well, technically I'm not a Gypsy woman." said the stranger. "I'm poshrat, a half and half. Hungarian specifically.”

"I've never heard of Hungary." said Karl. She gave a huge sigh.

"Hungary is a country in a world at least a hundred worlds away from here, long ago and unbelievably far away." She said, in Romany.

"Now you are telling me that not only are you a demon, you are from off world." he said, also in Romany. She sighed again.

"I got the ability to speak your language last night. Now I believe that you really do know gypsy people. But I don't believe I know your name." she said. She held out her tiny, squared, still heavily lined and calloused hand. Apparently bruises were different from calluses in her magic.

"I'm Karl." He replied. His lips made the shape of the final “l” sound but his pronunciation was more like ‘Kar’. She smiled. “Yes, I know. I arrived here with the name “penis”. It’s been brought to my attention.” He sighed. “So most call me Karli, or just ride the last “l” really hard. So I get to be the “cheese” instead. Let’s just declare the obvious jokes already made and move through.”

“So why do you keep the name, then?” asked Zere’maya. Karl looked down. “Because my parents gave it to me. The gypsies have given me everything else.”

She looked him up and down. He was full-mouthed, heavily muscled, not tall but very strong. He was still young enough to have chubby cheeks, like a boy, and his eyes were deep, chocolate brown. He shifted uneasily.

"I'm Zere’maya," she smiled. Karl smiled back. "About as Gypsy sounding name as you can get," he replied.

"I know. I’m not just Gypsy but that’s the side of me that feeds me, that’s the side I chose. But the people don't have to choose me back. You know how it is." she added, ruefully. He nodded.

“My mother gave me that name. My mother was gypsy.” She clarified. He winced for her.

“Ouch. Then you know how I have it.” Karl added. She shrugged; a little half-shape made by creatures who understand each other. Gypsy heritage is through fathers. He could not expect to marry a gypsy woman – she was the result if someone like him actually managed to make a child with a gypsy woman. He changed the subject.

"What could your magic be?" he asked.

"Just about anything -- melting stone, shooting fireballs, shape shifting, the magic belongs to the world I come from. I just do with it what I can."

"I'm a brave man. I've slept next to you and have not caught fire -- as of yet. Why don't you come back to camp with me. I imagine that if there are Gypsies in other worlds there are Georgios and an unattended Gypsy woman -- who may or may not be able to shoot fireballs out of her fingers -- may be in danger." He smiled.

"Freely and of your own will?" she asked.

"Freely and of my own will." a little shiver went over him. "Did you just do magic?"

"A little. Just to make sure that no one else was using magic on you. Do you want me to do it again?" She asked. He nodded. His hair stood up. He reached forth a finger and poked. It was as if he was sticking his finger into cold water. The feeling was gone as quickly as it had come.

"You knew you could do that?" he asked.

"A few little parlor tricks come with the territory. Protective words. Minor healing spells."

"Yeah, I noticed your clothes." Karl replied. She started.

"No, healing my clothes is unusual." She inspected her clean, new looking shirt, with fresh embroidery as if she had just made it instead of it being a very old shirt. Her leather vest as also freshly waxed, as if it had just been made to help her carry her overgenerous bust line around. She wondered if the steel wires keeping its shape were still rusting.

Her hands flew to her ears. Whew -- her earrings were in, both sets of hoops and the high single hoop on the right. She hated having her ears re-pierced because she'd healed with her earrings out.

Karl was looking very serious, and very bossy. She started, resenting him. He had no business giving her orders. She stuck out her lip and glared at him.

"Listen to me." he said, his voice breaking in the intensity. (damn, she thought, much younger than I thought he was) "If you tried to heal someone and couldn’t control it and killed someone, would they hurt? I mean, a lot, like burning agony?"

"It's possible, but I really don't see how. Sure, easily I could kill someone from lack of control, but I'm a succubus, what I am *is* pleasure." She stopped, very confused.

"I know people. You say you're a demon but I say you're a nice person and I say that I really, really want you to try. Unless you hurt these people more than getting gutshot ---- you've got to come with me. I'll explain on the way."

He ran/walked them through the woods, telling her about the problem. During the conversation she learned that this wasn't a very medically advanced world, no electricity, no vaccines, nothing much beyond a knowledge of basic hygiene and she had patients -- Karl had decided for everyone, for Zere’maya, for the whole traveling troupe, for the girls. Unless she wanted to fight him she was going to try. Several times during the half-walk half-run she thought he was going to just pick her up and throw her over his shoulder and run carrying her.

She talked to him, trying to calm him, going back over and over to the not knowing what she was doing part and the accidentally killing them part. She gave up, and told him to tell the others to make a whole lot of food for him, because he was going to be hungry. And he would have to do what he did last night again, at least once. That was the only time during the journey that he stopped, rolled his eyes, and laughed.

She walked into camp fearful, born an outsider. In her time on her world the people used travel trailers. This world was more of her father's maybe her grandfather's time -- real vardos, real horses.

The woman tending the fire gasped in surprise, then her eyes narrowed and glared –the look of rejection known to any half caste, half-'n-halfer. Well, she hadn’t expected to meet up with Gypsies. That had never happened to her when traveling before.

Zere’maya dug in her heels and half-stumbled, half-bounced across the yard, still firmly stuck in Karl's grasp. Karl looked back and forth between the two women, then pleading, spoke to the older woman in Romany:

"Please, grandmother, she can be trusted. Don't scare her for the sake of the trust you have in me, please ----" This last trailed off like a little child's whine, again his voice cracked.

"She's for Aruin and Inchkin. Pleaaaaaaasseeeeee!"

Her mouth opened into a little o. She nodded. "For compassion's sake." She said slowly. She stared into Zere’maya's face.

"Thank you, grandmother." Zere’maya answered miserably, in the language of her earliest childhood, as her father taught her.

"We are not monsters." said the older woman, simply. She turned her head as if she could not see Karl and Zere’maya.

"Please make breakfast for me!" called back Karl. "A lot of breakfast, I'm very, very hungry!" The old woman poked at the fire as if she could not hear him.

Zere’maya did not have to be lead to the right trailer -- she could smell it. There was something repulsive to any human being about another human's waste, another person's decaying flesh. She had seen and smelled this often enough before, the smell of human life losing out slowly to other, simpler life.

There were two patients waiting for her, and a surprised Romany girl taking care of them, shocked to see Karl run into the trailer and more shocked to see the stranger.

"I'm going to try to heal them but I may kill them." Zere’maya said simply. The girl looked resigned. "That may be for the best." The girl looked at Karl. Karl looked stubborn.

“I’m going to need a whole lot of what I took from you last night. At least as much. I expect a few times over as much.” Said Zere’maya. She looked around at her surroundings, not believing what she was seeing. All she had to do was breathe – she was surrounded by the smell of her earliest childhood memories -- the air was heavy with sandalwood and rose water, the rich, clean smell of close living by people accustomed to the art. The odor from the girl – girls? Under the blanket was that of bowel impaction. Even over that miserable smell she could feel the vardo’s odors seeping under her skin.

Karl looked down at Zere’maya. "I'm young and I'm strong." He said simply. Zere’maya moved her braid aside and he put his hands on her bare back. That much he knew – to drain him she had to have his bare skin on her own. The Romany girl looked offended -- and angry.

Zere’maya looked at the girl.

"He so much as looks shaky, you pull him off of me. Pull him hard." Zere’maya said. "For compassion's sake." The girl, eyebrows as high as they could go, nodded. “You may feel a strange feeling if you touch him. Pull anyway.” The girl gathered a towel and wrapped it around her hands.

Zere’maya gently brushed the back of her hand against one of the sick child’s skin, as if she was testing the power of an electric fence. She shivered with pleasure. To keep alive the body had need. Zere’maya could drink in that need. It was like the feeling when you peel off sweat soaked, clammy clothing in sight of a running hot shower.

"This is really, really going to hurt me." she mused, looking at the extent of the work. "I really, really wish I'd stopped and found myself a tree to squat behind before I got here." Too late now, as she plunged both her hands deep into the bodies of the two little girls.

Welcome to my first enovel

Thanks for coming along with me as I tell a story made up of other stories. Some of them are true; some of them are legends and folktales handed down to me (which in some important ways makes them truer than a simple history); some are wish fulfillment and some are just plain me having a good time building stories with my son, cartoonist Nicholas Biales.

First, the disclaimers. Some of these tales I've only heard at my home growing up among people from Hungary, specifically Hungarian Beyash-speaking gypsies. I'm a real poshrat, and I don't know why no one else seems to be telling these stories. I'm as puzzled as you are; still, they are fine stories and whether part of Gypsy culture as recognised worldwide or not, they are fine stories, they've taught me a lot and I'd like to pass on their wisdom, wherever the people who told them for me got them.

Stories educate; stories give context for life. My father speaking into the dark, telling "the good 'uns" that went on for days -- I've learned them. He never recorded them and so left his last child without both his voice and the stories. I'm hoping that at some time my brother Zhondor finds this blog and gets at least the stories if not my father, the storyteller.

We're not people who swindle gajos (nongypsies) I'll happily listen to tales of how people in my family have caused you harm. We all have our embarrassing relations. The hardworking chicken is distant relation to Tyranaasaurus Rex, after all. My father worked iron -- he didn't recoat driveways or encourage his children into the company of wolves with human faces.

He did teach his children to dumpster dive and one of my earliest memories is coming home joyously with many peices of silverware, found in bins, and seeing my mother cry about what her children were learning.

And yes, my son and I have explored on from time to time, and by now my mother has come to understand.

May you too, enjoy coming along on our science-fantasy wilderness fairy tale about gypsies, and magic, and civilising influences, and music -- like voices burning in the dark.

Thanks for your company,

Lulia Lee