***
Kali
For a week solid, she went to the village, sometimes with Drina, but more often alone. Drina’s pregnancy hadn’t been easy, and she needed her rest.
Kali worked each day, prepared to earn her keep, desperate to persuade this particular clan that it needed her around. The clan was a large vitsa made up of a number of families, wealthier than most, and a couple of unmarried men had watched her with interest. Not that she encouraged them. She wasn’t interested in any of them.
She knew she was swapping one keeper for another, but the sooner her father performed the ceremony declaring her no longer a novice, but a chovihani in her own right, the sooner she could prove herself and her magic. She would show her people how she turned toward the light and away from the dark, unlike her father. She would be more important than her father, well-respected, and perhaps her husband would be kind and gentle.
Perhaps.
Her father held power, too. He had once been esteemed, even cherished, by his clan, but he wasted everything when he turned to black magic. His power was corrupted, twisted by his greed and vanity, by the things he had done to assert his position. With any other parent, she would have been greatly desired; the clans would have fought to contain her in one of their folds. But in his desperation to beget a seventh daughter, he had taken steps that would lead to them both being unofficially ostracised.
She swore to herself that she would never be the same as him. She ignored the darkness that pleaded with her whenever she used her talents. The darkness had followed her since childhood, and deep in her heart, she knew it came from her father. She knew he had turned to a darker side to strengthen his power, to make sure she was born, even if her birth would eventually lead to her mother’s early death.
She had to keep her magic pure. She had to stay away from the curses a chovihani was expected to cast on those who wronged them. Everyone expected her to be as dark as her father, which explained why the various gypsy clans had shunned her, and yet that was why they wanted her, too. She was to protect her people, and when she married, she would leave her father’s clan and join her husband’s vitsa to become a part of his people. Perhaps her new alliances would expect her to harm those who interfered with them. How was she supposed to be that person who decided when someone deserved a punishment of dark magic?
She would be different, and her children would cast away the darkness around her. Her children would be the light. She had sworn to herself long ago that she would cleanse herself of her heritage, no matter what it took.
But the shadows, clouds on her heart, followed her to the village, and drew closer every day. On the way back to camp, the air was heavy with humidity. The heat combined with the increasing sense of time running out made her panic, and she broke into a run, the dry earth hard under her bare feet.
She almost ran right by the woman from the village, the bitter woman who would somehow raise a gypsy child. This time they met on a dirt track next to a field of glorious green. Only then did she see the darkness surrounding the woman and understand how the woman had invited darkness into her heart a long time ago. Kali was unsettled to see a manifestation of evil so clearly, and openly. Worse, such acceptance of darkness came from one of the gaje, a non-gypsy who should not have knowledge of such magic.
The woman was accompanied by a young man, most likely her husband, Kali realised. The villagers had called him a boy, Kali remembered, but his wide shoulders and straight posture declared him every bit of a man to Kali. His hair was white blond, his eyes, ice blue, and his complexion similar to the woman. Again, Kali felt a twist of discomfort at the memory of the baby’s image she’d had when telling the woman’s fortune. When the woman set her gaze on Kali, her face lit up.
“You! I need to speak with you.”
“Marusya, we don’t have time,” her husband said in a deliciously deep voice that ran right down to the tip of Kali’s toes. She couldn’t take her eyes from his face. What was wrong with her?
“Oh, go home, you half-wit,” his wife snapped. She may as well have been shouting at a stray dog, for all the care she held in her eyes and voice. He glanced at Kali, his eyes full of embarrassment and shame, and walked away. Trying to contain her shock at the woman’s rudeness, Kali’s stomach still quivered at the memory of her own foresight, and how uncomfortable she felt with the man’s shame. Terrified of the darkness closing in on her, Kali took a tone with the woman and openly challenged her.
“Marusya, is it? I am no dog to be ordered about. Neither is your husband. Perhaps your barren womb is punishment for your misdeeds. Consider that when you treat another like dirt.”
Kali stalked off, chest heaving with fear as the woman screamed insults after her. Had she lost her mind? She had broken the golden rule. The gaje left you alone if they thought you meek. They forgot to put you down if you acted put upon already. Now she had made an enemy out of a bitter woman with a broken heart, because she couldn’t swallow a cruel taunt, and that made her no better than anyone else. Why had she spoken so? Because she was distracted by a pair of blue eyes? Was she obsessing about her future?
She could not throw everything away like that. She would have to move on again if Marusya caused a fuss. She would have to leave Drina because she opened her mouth.
Sighing, she hurried back to camp, hoping to make up for the day’s mistakes.