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.