Maslenitsa
It happened last summer, while I was travelling through the mountains to reach the summer market in the north. We had camped for the night, my little band and I, in a small, secluded valley in the southern foothills. Marcus, muscle-bound and lightning death with his knife, was on watch, while Lilidd stirred the cook pot, waiting for the lentil stew to cook. I had jumped up on the back of the wagon, and was checking the horses’ tack, cleaning and oiling, mending where needed. The result of six month’s hard work supported my back – a stack of finely woven cloth, silk and cotton, to be sold at the Northern Market. I had been travelling this route for the last seven years, as had my two companions, and the tasks of setting camp were second nature to us, so we chatted idly as we worked.
“Looks like late snow further up.” Marcus commented, glancing up at the peaks to the north and east. “Might want to head for Cereci Pass rather than Rakic.”
“I don’t like Cereci.” I replied, knowing he was probably right.
“Rather the longer journey than getting snowed in ‘til the melt.”
“They’re both about the same distance from here” Lilidd said. “If we’re changing course, we should decide tonight.”
“Who has the map?” I jumped down from the wagon and made for the bags.
“Why do you need a map?” Marcus asked. “How long have you been walking these tracks?”
“Long enough.” I told him tartly, rummaging quickly and recovering a tightly rolled length of vellum. “But the roads on the other side of Cereci are temperamental. If the melt comes before we get there, they could be washed away, and I don’t know the area well enough to navigate around them.”
Lilidd abandoned her pot for a moment, and joined me over by Marcus, where we spread the map on the ground and anchored the corners with stones.
“So, where are we?” Lilidd asked. I couldn’t help but smile – the woman had a brilliant head for numbers, and could haggle with the best and meanest, but ask her about geography and all you got was a blank stare and a change of subject. I scanned the map quickly, and pointed to a name.
“Dolina Maslenitsa. Fiesta Valley. About ten miles from both passes, maybe slightly closer to Rakic. The road splits in a couple of miles – that’s where we’ll have to choose.”
“I know you’ll grumble, but I vote for Cereci.” Lilidd said. “Even if the roads are nothing but mud and water, there are locals there who have to cope with that every year. They’ll be able to help. And I don’t fancy getting snowed in up at Rakic.”
“Plus,” Marcus interrupted, “There are lots of smaller roads and tracks up round here–” He gestured around the north side of Cereci pass, “–that bypass the flood channels. It won’t be as easy, but we can make it through.”
“That’s a pretty well-reasoned argument you two have got there.” I told them sardonically. “Fair enough. Cereci it is, against my better judgement.”
“Better judgement?” Marcus laughed. “Just because your daddy got swindled by those two trappers back when you were bow high to a squirrel.”
“The place is a veritable den of iniquity.” I replied, sticking my nose in the air, and airing my – long-disused – sophisticated voice. Marcus laughed even harder, and threw a clump of grass at me. Feigning disgust, I rolled up the map and stalked off, pausing only to stick out my tongue at the pair of them.
The evening passed quietly enough. The sun set, a multitude of insects appeared and swarmed, but the addition of a couple of herbal candles around our fire kept them from bothering us too much. We ate the lentil stew, and chewed on strips of dried beef, before unrolling the bedrolls and distributing the blankets. Summer it may have been, but even the low altitude of the foothills made the nights too cold for just the clothes on our backs. Marcus, on watch for another hour or so, spoke quietly with Lilidd for a while, but I let their words roll over me, and drag me into sleep.
It was still dark when I woke. I rolled over, searching for a more comfortable hollow in the grassy ground, and shut my eyes again. But dropping back off to sleep is never so easy. My mind began to tick over in the space behind my eyes – why did I wake up; was there a noise close by; was Lilidd still on watch, or was it nearly my shift? I opened my eyes again and sat up, looking around.
Marcus was asleep, blanket tangled round his legs. Lilidd was not lying on her bedroll. I shook my head, and tried to find her dark shape in the night around me.
She wasn’t there. Frowning, I pulled myself to my feet.
“Lilidd?” I called softly. No reply. I tried louder, but still nothing. Thinking she was attending to a call of nature, and had gone a bit far, I settled down on the pile of packs to wait.
It must have been half an hour before I began to believe she wasn’t coming back. Worried, I shook Marcus awake.
“Hnmm?” He grunted.
“Lilidd’s gone. She’s not on watch, and I haven’t seen her for a while.”
With a suddenness I envied, Marcus was completely awake. He grasped the handle of his hunting knife, and looked around.
“Anything else suspicious?”
“Nothing. Just silence and dark.”
“Poke the fire back up, I’ll have a search around.”
I breathed life back into our banked camp fire as Marcus scanned the ground. There wasn’t much he could see, even by the now lively blaze. After a while, he stretched, shook his head, and sat down.
“It looks like she might have walked further down into the valley, but the tracks stop after a few yards. I can’t tell anything properly in this light – we’ll have to wait for morning.”
I nodded soberly. It was all we could do, but I couldn’t help imagining Lilidd lying hurt somewhere close by, waiting for us to find her.
I was so absorbed in my dismaying thoughts, Marcus had to call my name twice before I heard him
“Tanya! Snap out of it and look up.”
“What?” I glanced at him, then over at where he was looking. On the other side of the fire, where Lilidd should have been sitting, was a young boy.
“Who are you?” I asked, surprised and slightly alarmed. There were no colonies in the area – this was the only patch of foothills left permanently uninhabited, due to rumours of ghosts and demons. I had travelled the mountains enough to know cock-and-bull stories when I heard them, but as I watched the boy, they trooped one by one into my mind.
“Looking for your friend?” He asked. I heard Marcus take a sharp breath.
“Where is she?” He asked gruffly. His knife was very visible, held tightly in one hand, and the boy looked at it a moment, but it didn’t seem to worry him. He can’t be more than twelve. I thought. How can he not be scared of a tough man with a sharp knife?
“She went to Maslenitsa.”
“We’re in Maslenitsa.” I told him. “That’s the name of the valley. Where is Lilidd?”
“At Maslenitsa. At the carnival. She won’t come back.”
“Like hell she won’t.” Marcus stood and strode over to the boy. Picking him up by his collar, he asked, “Where is this carnival?”
“In the valley.” The boy replied, completely unconcerned that he was hanging three feet in the air. “Can’t always see it, ‘cause of the way it sits in the air.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. It was entirely possible Marcus was about to do something he would regret, and I tried to take the conversation in a more understandable direction.
“It turns in the air. It comes and goes. She was inside when it went. You could go look for her, but you’ll have to wait for it to turn back.”
“How will we know?”
“The music’ll draw you in.”
He turned and looked at me then. His eyes were startling green; too green, too bright, even with the firelight reflecting in them. He seemed much older than he should. But it was something deeper, and tightly reigned inside, that turned my blood cold. Something feral.
And then he was gone. Marcus swore, and stamped about, convinced the boy had slipped through his grasp, but there was no sign of him. No footprints led to his seat by the fire – none led away.
He had disappeared. Marcus may not have been looking close enough, but I saw it. One moment, those eyes were burning into my own, and then they weren’t. Just a gap in the air where a small boy should have been hanging.
Eventually, Marcus stopped swearing, and sat back down. We looked at each other.
“So what do we do now?” He asked.
“Wait for the carnival?”
The carnival didn’t appear that night. Or the night after. On the second day, we packed up, and headed for Cerci Pass, and the Northern Market.
Despite the delay, we made good time, and arrived two days before the market was due to start. Plenty of time to find a good patch, set up shop. The cloth sold well – better than I had expected, considering. Even without Lilidd’s help, we came out of that venture better off than any other year previously. Marcus and I didn’t talk about that much. We spent our time discussing rival traders, and goods we would need for the journey home. Although it was never mentioned out loud, we both added a few extra days’ worth of supplies. Just enough to cover an extended stay at Dolina Maslenitsa, to wait for the carnival once more.
Two weeks later, the market began to show signs of winding down. We had sold every scrap of cloth we had brought with us, and so there was little point waiting for the official end, three days hence. We loaded the wagon and, for the first time ever, beat the mass exodus of traders from the city.
Three weeks and four days after we had left it, we arrived back at the Maslenitsa Valley. The place still looked the same – the grass was still growing, the trees were still standing. There was no sign that a carnival had ever been there, or was ever going to be there. The place was deserted.
We set up camp where we had set up before, and stayed up late into the night, searching the valley floor for any sign of life – lights, movement, music.
Nothing.
I lay back and shut my eyes, fighting off tiredness. We had arrived back here the day before, still with enough light to search the area for anything we may have missed last time. We didn’t say it aloud, but we knew it was a pointless task. Still, it had kept us busy that evening.
Today, we had walked down into the valley proper. We had tried this the last time as well, but the walk kept us both occupied, and since we had no real hope of finding anything, we weren’t disappointed. And now, we sat by our fire once more, long after we should have been asleep.
“We could detour round to that village we saw on the way up.” Marcus suggested. I opened my eyes and looked at him, propping myself up on one elbow. He hadn’t said much all day, and it was strange to hear his voice.
“It would add an extra two days to the journey. We’d have to set off tomorrow.”
Marcus nodded. I knew what he was thinking. Leave the valley, and abandon Lilidd. But the village we had seen in the distance, nearly a month ago, was the closest settlement to this valley. They might know why no one wanted to live here, rather than regurgitating old ghost stories. They might know where Lilidd had gone.
I lay back again, torn. I couldn’t spend my whole life sitting here, waiting. At some point, I would have to accept that I wasn’t going to find her.
I must have fallen asleep, despite attempts to stay awake. I rose gently out of unconsciousness, willing my dream to stay with me. The three of us were back together again, and we were having a party. There were lots of people, and a band, and Lilidd was dancing round in circles, spinning me around, then leaping towards Marcus and doing the same for him. Everyone was laughing. But I could feel the brightness of the dream fading as I woke, and eventually everything was gone.
Except the music.
I had lain there and listened to it for a good ten minutes before realisation dawned. When it did, I snapped upright, darting glances around me, looking for the source. I couldn’t see anything. Marcus was still asleep, the fire was glowing gently between us, and the moon lit the tops of trees down into the valley. But nothing else.
I crawled over to Marcus and shook him awake. He blinked blearily at me, then bolted upright just as I had.
“Music.” I mouthed quietly at him. He nodded. We both stood, looking around. No visible signs, so there was nothing for it but to follow the music, and see where it led us.
Before we started off, we grabbed a small pack filled with food and other fire lighters, and a blanket apiece. Marcus loosened his knife in its sheath, and I grabbed my staff. I had never liked carrying a blade, but it was naïve to think I could travel with no weapon. Thus prepared, we doused the fire, and walked into the valley.
I don’t know what happened after that. I think I remember the whole of the journey, but in the wrong order. As soon as we left camp, we had made it to the bottom of the slope, but a few minutes later, we were still negotiating a difficult patch of scree half way down. We were walking across a grassy plain one minute, then back-tracking around an impassable slope the next. The music accompanied us all the way down, getting steadily louder, regardless of the absurdity of our movements.
Suffice to say, we found the carnival. Once on the valley floor, it was as though the air had thinned enough for it to peek through, to reveal itself to us. Like the young boy had said, it turns in the air. A gust of wind blew across our path, making the carnival billow and fade, before returning with the calm air.
I could see people inside. Ordinary looking people, bustling to and fro on ordinary journeys, like a well attended market. Stalls were set up, and tents, but buildings had been thrown together over the years as well, making a strange picture of permanent and temporary. From what I could see, stall owners were hawking their wares, haggling with customers, chasing off thieves, but none of the voices reached our ears. Only the music: an accordion, playing doleful tunes somewhere close by.
Marcus turned to look at me. We had not spoken since we left camp, and we didn’t need to speak now. Lilidd was in there, we both knew it, and we couldn’t turn our backs on her now.
He nodded his silent agreement at our shared thoughts. Side by side, we walked forward, under the welcoming arch of the carnival.
Welcome to Maslenitsa.
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