***
Kali
She was woken roughly during the night. She reached out for her sister, but nobody was there.
“Wake up. You’re needed.”
Eyes still blurred with sleep, she allowed Drina’s sister-in-law to lead the way. Then she remembered. Chovihani. She was needed. Someone was ailing, most likely.
Nothing could have prepared her for the scene.
Her sister, draped in bloody cloths, lay in a dead faint. Her face was drawn and deathly pale. Women gathered around her. One was a midwife.
“But it’s too early,” Kali blurted. Drina had at least six weeks to go. An early birth was no great thing.
Drina opened her eyes and moaned.
“It’s her time. Give her something for pain,” said the traditional midwife, an elderly woman who had helped pregnant gypsies for years.
Kali took one look at her sister’s eyes, eyes that didn’t see her, and ran. She screamed for her father’s help, but she knew he wouldn’t come.
Death was coming instead.
Her trembling hands found remedies among her belongings. On stumbling feet, she returned to her sister’s confinement. She patted powder on her sister’s dry lips, bade her to lick, and then forced a long swallow of a potent drink down her throat.
Drina’s eyes found Kali’s, and she managed a smile. “Do you see my future, little sister?”
Kali shook her head, her mouth trembling so much she couldn’t speak.
“I do,” Drina said. “I’ve loved you. Make sure my babies are taken care of.”
“Don’t leave me,” Kali whispered in her ear, holding Drina’s hand.
A tear rolled down Drina’s cheek, and her body jerked upward suddenly. She squeezed Kali’s hand until the spasm ended, but the cloths were soaked with fresh blood, and Kali knew there wasn’t much time. Drina’s eyes fluttered lazily as she lost herself in the pain.
“Fight it,” Kali urged. “Don’t sleep. Stay with me. Please, don’t leave me.” A sob caught in her throat, and she shook her head firmly. She wouldn’t be weak now. Drina needed her to be strong. Gulping hard, she leaned her forehead against Drina’s shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be this way. I can try…”
“No.” Drina’s voice had weakened, but her intent stayed true. “You won’t. Not you. Listen to me. Listen. Find a way to be happy. Don’t let your heart die as his did. Be strong for me.”
The night passed too quickly. The spasms of pains increased, and the blood loss wouldn’t ease. The life sapped from Drina’s body. Kali felt her world cracking apart as her sister’s heartbeat slowed. She felt Drina’s pain reach inside her, grip her heart and pull it out, as Drina took her last breath.
“I’m cutting her. The baby’s almost out.” The midwife’s voice brought Kali back into the world. The baby. A light in the darkness. She stared stolidly at her sister’s body as the midwife cut her way to the baby.
A tiny body slipped out into her bloody hands. A boy. Blue. Lifeless. Too small.
Drina was dead for nothing.
Kali stayed with her sister’s body for hours, guarding it until she was carried away screaming. Her father made her swallow a draught that would calm her down, but she didn’t sleep. She could lose anything but Drina. Her sister was the only one keeping her feet on the ground. She couldn’t bear the loss or the fact she would never hear her sister’s laugh again. Jaelle, her niece, would be taken from her. The child belonged to her father’s family, though Drina’s death made them impure for a time. Kali was still clean because Drina had left her family the day she married. The camp women were all so accepting of Drina’s death, and they didn’t understand how she felt. Drina’s death was the end of everything good and decent in her life. Nothing could keep her on the right path anymore.
At least her father seemed to give her time to mourn. Embarrassed by her public displays of grief, Besnik sent word that he didn’t want a sobbing new bride and gave her one month to say goodbye. One month to cauterise the pain, as though that would ever be enough.
Her father forbade her from seeing the body because he didn’t care for her sobbing, either, and he didn’t want to give Besnik the chance to change his mind. If he had shown even the slightest regret that Drina was dead, then Kali might have forgiven her father for everything. If he’d acknowledged with the slightest sign any sorrow that he’d outlived his daughter, Kali might have warmed to him, and calmed the beast in her head that told her to run.
But the bitterness inside her twisted and churned until she realised she would never sleep. She slipped away, running as soon as she gained a healthy distance from the camp. She knew where Andriy lived, or at least knew the general direction of his farm, and she knew she would have to go to him or never find peace and comfort again.
Still covered in her sister’s blood, she ran before dawn broke across the sky, ignoring everything around her except the beating of her heart, which was the only thing that kept her going. She recalled the second Drina’s heart stopped and how her sister’s body felt so empty, merely a shell because Drina’s soul was long gone.
Kali found the farm. Her legs ached from the run. What was she doing? She had nobody else, and if she didn’t tell someone, then she would go completely insane.
She climbed a gate and immediately set off a dog barking. One ran from behind the house, paws slipping in its haste, and the barking increasing as it spied her. The black beast ran straight to her, and she froze in horror. A low whistle halted the animal, and it skidded in the dirt, slammed right into her legs, and knocked her over. She couldn’t get up. Tears streaming, she sat there and wept until Andriy reached her, his face full of concern.
“Are you hurt?” he asked urgently, pulling her to her feet.
She shook her head. “My sister. The baby. They died. She died in my arms, and the baby was already gone. It was for nothing, Andriy. She died for nothing. And that’s what’s going to happen to me.”
He pulled her into his arms, and she savoured the feel of his chest, the way his arms made her feel protected. She clung to his shirt and inhaled his scent. She was desperate to preserve that one memory.
“It won’t happen to you,” he said.
She pushed him away, fresh tears falling. “It will. All they want is for me to bear child after child before it’s too late for me to bear any more. My mother died in childbirth, and now Drina’s gone, too. This is what happens to us.”
She brushed tears from her cheeks, watching the pity in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but a voice called for him from the house. Marusya.
“Run,” he urged, and she did. As much as she wanted him for herself, she couldn’t find it in herself to bring any more trouble his way. She heard Marusya’s yells as she ran, and she knew the woman had seen her. She didn’t regret coming to Andriy, though, because she had felt something for a couple of seconds in Andriy’s arms. Protection, concern… and love.