By Blood We Live

The Vechi Barbat by Nancy Kilpatrick

Nita sat hunched at the scarred table studying the black gouges in the wood made by knives, pens, fingernails hard as talons, thinking about the words and symbols. J.C. had been scratched in about the center, and a rough drawing of an eye with long lashes that looked mystical or psychotic, depending on how Nita let her mind wander. A cruder sketch of what might have been a penis but slightly deformed with two long eye teeth and "Bite Me" deeply carved into the birch had been positioned to the right. The letters

c-a-s-, Romanian for "home,” stretched above the rest.

“We are nearly ready,” Dr. Sauers said, a bit gruffly to Nita’s ear. Then, Sit lini_te!” telling her to sit quietly in her native tongue, as if that would have more impact. The doctor didn’t really approve of having anyone else in the room and likely was worried that Nita would "misbehave" as she had warned her against so often. Not that she could. Even if there were no chains circling her wrists and ankles, the drugs they pumped into her kept her weighed down emotionally as if there were also heavy chains clamped to her heart. Sauers was a control freak, she preferred running the show by herself, Nita had quickly realized to her dismay.

Suddenly, Nita felt her heart grow even heavier. What had happened, it had escalated. She felt so alone. She didn’t know if she could go over the events again. No one had believed her the first time. No one believed her now. Or cared. How she missed her home!

She glanced up at Dr. Sauers but the sharp-featured woman fiddling with the video camera did not return her look. Eventually, though, the older woman turned to the silver-haired man standing by the door; he couldn’t have been more than forty; he had not yet been introduced to Nita. As if sensing her insecurities, he glanced at Nita and presented her with a quick benign smile, then faced Sauers to say in English, "Perhaps you should test the audio.”

Sauers, scowling, twisted knobs on the tripod, aimed the small video camera’s eye and adjusted the panel at the back of the camera, making sure the focus was on Nita. Was the camera lens the eye of God watching her, judging her? The doctor’s long hard nail stabbed at a button on the camera twice. Maybe she was nudging God to pay attention too!

“Alright!” Dr. Sauers said abruptly, impatiently, jerking herself away from the equipment. She glanced at her watch with the large face. "We must begin.” She sounded as if there had been a delay that Nita or maybe the grey-haired man was responsible for.

The doctor took a seat to the right of Nita, the man in the well-fitting grey suit took the chair directly in front of her, both of them out of the camera’s view. Almost enough for a card game, Nita thought wryly. Her mind flew to the old beat-up decks of cards the men in her village played with as they drank the strong local brandy, and quickly jettisoned those images in favor of larger cards with faded pastel pictures that her grandmother-her bunic-kept hidden, wrapped in a soiled scrap of green satin, buried in the rich brown earth with a rock over top as if it were a grave hiding a body that refused to stay interred. In her memory Nita envisioned only one card, a black and white and grey picture with a few smudges the color of blood. Bunic patiently explained that this was artwork from five hundred or more years ago. "Danse Macabre,” she had called it. A grisly skeleton with tufts of hair adhering to its skull and fragments of meat on its bones, holding the hand of a richly adorned King on one side of his boney body, and clutching about the waist what looked to be a peasant woman in rags on the other, the three drawn so that they appeared to be in motion. Nita thought the King and the woman were trying to get away from the skeleton, but Bunic interpreted it differently: "He leads the dance. We all must dance with him one day.”

Nita smiled at the memory, so caught up in her mental picture of the stark yet mesmerizing image and of her

Bunic’s rough but soothing tone of voice that she missed the first part of what the man at the table was saying, which apparently had included his name.

“…and I understand you speak English. I’m a behavioral psychologist with the ICSCS, that’s the International Centre for Studies of the Criminally-”

“But I’m not a criminal,” Nita said flatly.

“You’re a patient, convicted of a crime, in an institution for the criminally insane,” Dr. Sauers reminded her, as if Nita might have forgotten about the trial, about being in jail, now the hospital, the humiliation, the alienation, about all of it.

She turned away from Sauers and stared at the man’s cool ash-colored eyes which reminded her so much of the winter sky above the unforgiving mountains of her village. Mountains strong and permanent formed of orange and red molten rock that had burst forth from below the surface and forced its way upward towards the snowy clouds, piercing the steel-blue sky like stalagmites, until the heavens were dominated by soil and rock and trees that could withstand the fierce climate-survivor of every cataclysm. What had existed before she was born, before her grandmother, and her great great great grandmother-

A buzzer down the hall sounded and Nita jolted. Furtively she glanced around her at the sterile environment, its only richness in the dead gleam of stainless steel, its only life the color corpse-white. No, this was not the mountains. She had little power here; she looked down at her wrists chained together and her pale small hands clasped tightly in her lap as if all they could clutch, all they could hold onto to keep body and soul together was each other.

“We’re not here about the legalities,” the grey man whose name she had not learned said in a comforting tone accented by a slight smile. But Nita knew that both people in the room with her thought she was not just guilty but also insane. Hopelessly insane. Not much to do about that.

Bunic believed you can’t change people’s minds with words, just with actions. "Trust only what you taste and touch and smell,” she’d said. "What others believe, this cannot matter.”

“I see your name is Luminita.”

“Everyone calls me Nita.”

“Yes, a diminutive. Very nice. What does Luminita mean? Something about light?”

“In Romanian it means ‘little light’.”

“Meaning a bright personality?”

“Yes. But also someone who lights the way for others.”

“A beacon.”

Nita remembered her

Bunic with so much longing. The woman after whom she had been named, who had meant the world to her, was gone now, and that thought stabbed Nita’s heart like a rusty knife. Bunic, in Nita’s youthful view, had always been old, snowy hair like goose down covered by a headscarf the color of the purple loostrife that grew in the wetlands, a face earth-brown and crinkly as Baltic fruit shriveled by a sudden frost. But her smile, that wasn’t old at all. Her smile lit wise honey eyes and changed the wrinkles around her mouth until she appeared young to young Nita. As if they were sisters. And sometimes Nita believed that they were sisters, more than sisters, identical. As a child, she had wanted to grow up to be just like Bunic.

“And how do you feel about that?”

Nita’s vision of the past cleared returning her to the present. The man had spoken and she had no idea what he was asking her.

“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that, please?” she said.

“Wake sus!” Sauers snapped.

The man said gently, "I asked if we could begin at the beginning. If you would be willing to tell me about how you came to be in Bucharest.”

Nita knew this man had read her file and was aware of every bit of information about her that the courts and the doctors had been able to ascertain. Why he wanted it now, she did not know.

She was about to ask him this when Sauers ordered, ”

Completat!” and Nita decided that complying was in fact the easiest way to go. Once this was over she could return to the vomit-green cell they called her room in this small asylum and fall into the world inside her, where they could not penetrate.

“Let me ask you specific questions,” the man said. "It might be easier that way. Why did you come to Bucharest?”

“To go to school.”

She could see him struggle to recall the information from her files. "I seem to have read that you did very well in school. Exceptionally well.”

“Yes. My grades were excellent.”

He smiled. "It’s unusual for a girl from a small mountain village to be accepted at university.”

“I studied with my grandmother. She taught me to read three languages, and to learn numbers. She wanted me to be modern and well-educated.”

“Your grandmother must have been very proud of you, earning a scholarship.”

“Yes. The whole village took pride in me.”

“I see. So you came here for university.”

“No, I studied first at the secondary school level. I then matriculated to the university.”

“I see.”

She wondered if he saw much of anything. His dove eyes revealed nothing. Did he understand how life could be? How her life had been? Could he sense a clash of worlds? She doubted it.

“Did you enjoy school.”

“Yes.”

“Did you make friends?”

“Yes. A few.” When she said no more he waited and she filled in the blank space hovering between them. "I had two girlfriends, Magda and Anya, and a guy, Toma. We all went to coffee houses together and clubs. We listened to music and danced and talked a lot. More than I was used to.” She felt exhausted from talking now, as if all this depleted her. And to what end? She knew she was destined to be a name in some research study that a girl her age would read about in a text book one day.

“Did you have a boyfriend.”

“No.”

“What about the young man you just mentioned?”

“Toma and I were friends. Only friends.”

“And the girls? Were you just friends as well?”

She did not know what he was implying and at first could not form an answer. Finally she took the easiest route. "We were friends only.”

“Close?”

She hesitated. "I suppose.”

“And did you confide in them?”

“Confide what?”

“Anything. Your thoughts. Feelings. Anything about your life. Your past.”

He said "past" as if she might have accidentally conveyed to Anya or Magda a dark secret, or even Toma, but they had not talked of the past, only the present. And the future. A future that no longer existed. "We talked of school and movie stars and music.” She hoped that would satisfy him, and it appeared to.

“Tell me, Nita, while you were in Bucharest, did you miss your village.”

“Of course. Sometimes, not all the time. I had my studies.”

The man had been making notes on a pad of paper and now turned the page. She wondered why he made notes when he would have the videotape.

In the pause, Nita snuck a glance at Dr. Sauers. The woman’s manure eyes pierced her and threatened retribution but Nita did not know for what. Nita looked down again, but a small smile spread her lips apart as she thought to herself, "We all must dance with him one day.”

“Nita, I’d like to hear what your village was like. Can you tell me something about it? I’m from North America, so this is all new to me.”

She stared at him as he tried to look sincere. Yes, her village would not be known to him, and yet she wondered if he truly appreciated the differences. While she had not been to North America, or even to Western Europe, she had seen his land on television and in movies and knew how it looked, how people acted. He would have no such markers for her world. She could tell him anything and he would believe it. Of course, Sauers knew her village, or claimed to. The doctor was probably German or Austrian but clearly she spoke the language well and must have lived in Romania for some time. But even if she didn’t know Nita’s village, she would know the region; she would have passed through villages like Nita’s. Although there was no village like Nita’s, of that she was quite certain.

“A fi honest,” Sauers said slowly.

Nita stared at the camera, the most humane element in the room to her thinking. At least the camera eye of God was not judgmental today. Or analytical. It recorded what was, without interpretation or hidden agendas. The way she had learned to think at the university.

“The village I grew up in was like many. Small, the people simple, kind and generous. They looked after one another. The people were old because the young ones moved away, like I did.” She felt a short, sharp pain in her heart. An image floated to mind of the village, colorless, empty of living beings, the houses abandoned, the cold mountain breezes blowing through broken windows, forcing wooden shutters to bang against walls, the yards littered with the bones of dead chickens, paper and fabric rushing across the ground and into the nearby woods. A village of ghosts. She felt tears forming in her right eye and looked down. She did not want either of these two to see her vulnerable.

“How many people lived there?” he asked.

“One hundred, no more.”

“Your parents?”

“My mother…died when I was a child.”

“And your father?”

She shook her head.

“Who looked after you?”

She felt annoyed. He must have read all this in the reports. Still, she tried to keep her voice from sounding impatient, which would only bring trouble. "My grandmother raised me. My mother’s mother.” Then she added before he could ask, "My father’s family was from somewhere far away.”

He nodded as if she had said or done something right. Nita did not dare look at Sauers.

The man continued but he could not disguise the energy in his voice, now that he thought he was onto something. "Was there anyone unusual in your village? Anyone different than the others?”

“Everyone was unique.” She kept her smile hidden; she wanted to toy with him a little.

“Yes, of course. But what I meant was would you say there was anyone living in the village who maybe did not feel they belonged there? Who might have felt like a prisoner?”

She knew what he was getting at, and she knew what he wanted her to say. He wanted her to say it was her. Instead she told him, "Yes, one man. We called him

Vechi brbat. It means ‘ancient man’.”

This was not what the grey-haired man was expecting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him move back in his chair slightly, as if regrouping his thoughts. To her right, she heard Sauers make a small sound like a snake hissing.

They insisted she be here. They controlled her life. She had no options but this one: to play with them, as much as she could. And she would. They did not care about her, about her village, about

vechi brbat. And Nita did not care about them. Not at all. What could a prisoner feel but to desire the end of her captors?

The man at the table leaned forward and scribbled in his notebook. When he looked up at her she met his gaze, forcing her eyes to reflect innocence, guilelessness. In an instant his demeanor altered and he again looked hopeful, as if he had made a good decision and even before he spoke, she knew where he wanted to go.

“Tell me about this vechi brbat,” he said, badly mispronouncing the words. And she knew he had decided to humor her. She smiled, which from his reaction he interpreted as her being more at ease with him. But of course she did not trust him. Not at all.

“Vechi brbat was old when my grandmother was young. She told me stories, what her grandmother had told her, and her grandmother before her.”

“I see,” the man said, jotting a note. He looked up at Nita with an encouraging smile. "Could you describe this

vechi brbat for me?”

“Grey hair like yours, but brittle,” she said. "He was thin, very thin, because he did not eat much, and hunched, but I think he must have been shorter than me. His eyes could not focus well, and he had trouble with light, especially the sun.”

“Where did he live? In the village, I mean. Did he have a house?”

“He lived with us. In a cage in the back room. My grandmother fed him from time to time, and let him out when she felt he was not a threat.”

“What kind of threat?” The man’s voice held anticipation, as if Nita were on the edge of divulging something important.

“He might hurt someone. If he were kept weak, he could not harm us. That’s why my grandmother fed him little.”

“And the rest of the villagers? Were they afraid of him?”

“No one was afraid of him.”

“But if he was a danger-”

“When he was well fed. But he never was. And at night, but he was kept on chains and ropes. He was not dangerous in the day, and not when he was weak.”

The man paused. "Did your grandmother ever keep you in the cage?”

“Of course not!” Nita snapped. She saw Sauers tense, ready for action. "I was not a threat. Only

vechi brbat.”

“Alright. That makes sense,” the man said, trying to mollify her, fearful that she would stop talking to him. "Tell me more about him. Did you ever speak with him?”

“No. Why should I? There was no reason to. And besides, he could not talk. He only knew the language of long ago. He had nothing to say.”

“Did he ever try to speak to you?”

She thought for a moment. "Once. When I was very young. I had gone into the woods to hunt for mushrooms too late in the day and he appeared.”

“You were not afraid?”

Nita looked at him with disdain. "Of course not. I told you I did not fear him.”

“And what did he do?”

“He walked up to me and reached out his hand to touch my face, but I stepped back. And anyway, the chains and ropes were caught around a tree trunk, so he could not reach me. It was dark in those woods where the trees grew close together and little sunlight got through. He might have had more power.”

“What did you do, when he tried to touch you?”

“I picked up my bucket and went home.”

“Did he follow you?”

“Yes, for a while, when he unraveled himself.”

“Did you tell anyone about this?”

“Yes, I told my grandmother.”

“And what did she do?”

“She beat him.”

They were all silent for a moment. Nita recalled watching the crimson welts form on

vechi brbat’s bare back as Bunic laid on the thick black leather strap. The blood was not red like Nita’s and Bunic’s but pale, almost colorless, barely pink-tinged. Vechi brbat took the beating with barely a sound coming from his lips, but his body hunched over even more until he was curled into a ball like a baby. Nita had felt sorry for him.

“How did you feel about that?”

“He had to be taught a lesson, my grandmother said. Otherwise he would cause harm to others.”

The man took more notes. Dr. Sauers got up and checked the camera. Nita looked down at the shackles locking her wrists and ankles and thought that she was as much of a prisoner here as

vechi brbat had been in the village. She, too, was kept in a cage. Controlled not by near starvation but through drugs they injected into her daily. She knew how much vechi brbat had longed to break free. She grew to understand him very well.

When Sauers returned to her seat and the man whose name she still did not know had finished his note taking, he turned to Nita and asked if she would like some water, or a juice.

“No. Thank you.”

“All right then. Can we continue?”

She knew he did not expect an answer and she gave none. He would continue whether she wanted to or not. That was the nature of being held prisoner.

“I’d like to talk about the last time you visited your village. Back in the summer.”

Her mind went to a picture. Like a postcard. An overview of the village, in shades of verdant green, with rich ochre mixed in, and the azure of the sky above. There were people: pretty, tan-skinned Oana and her four rosy-cheeked children and her belly swollen with the fifth. And Radu, her blond-haired, hard-working husband. Little Gheroghe, who played the flute so well, and Ilie who made such beautiful, well-constructed boots with his long, graceful fingers colored nearly black from the Russian cigarettes he liked to smoke. She saw them all as dabs of paint on a canvas, a human still-life, paralyzed in the thickness of time, depicted in her mind as they went about their day, as they had always done, as their children would, unless they left the village as Nita had.

“Tell me about that visit. Why did you go home?”

“My studies were complete for the year. I had gotten a position, serving food and drink in a

taverna in Bucharest, but the owner did not need me for three weeks, until the tourists would come, so I went home to see my grandmother.”

“Were you happy to be visiting her and your village?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And how did everyone react to you?”

“They were all excited to see me. They wanted to know what it was like in Bucharest, and at the school.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“That the city is full of people who dress in all the colors of the world and walk the narrow streets at every hour, and that lamp posts shine warm light at night like stars. I told them that the school gave me knowledge, and I learned about things I had not known existed.”

“For example?”

“Mythologies. Legends. The stories of cultures.”

The man checked a file report, obviously filled with information about her. "Ah, yes, you were studying cultural anthropology, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

He closed the file folder, folded his arms on top of it and stared at her. She did not meet his gaze. "Were there legends, stories and myths in your village?”

“Yes.” Suddenly she felt ashamed. Forlorn. How could she not have known what would happen?

“And one was about the

vechi brbat, was it not?”

“Yes,” she said, struggling to release the dark memory and keep living in the present.

“Tell me the story of the

vechi brbat.”

She sighed heavily, surprised at this new, even heavier weight she felt in her chest, as if her lungs had turned to pumice and the clear, pure air had trouble getting inside her.

Dr. Sauers tapped her fingernails on the table. She did not subscribe to "talk" therapy, as she called it. She believed in drugs. Sedate patients. Give them anti-psychotics. Gradually reduce their medication and see if they improved. If so, they were released. If not, up the meds. Since Nita would never be released, she had no hope in either direction.

“My grandmother told me the story of the

vechi brbat. He came to our village centuries ago. He had met a girl from the village, you see, by the river, and they fell in love. They married. Then the woman died of a fever that spread through the mountains killing humans and animals alike. It reduced the numbers in our small village to twenty only, plus the vechi brbat, and the people did not know how to survive. The vechi brbat was not the oldest in the village but he held the most power and was the one with a quick brain and he should have told the people what to do, but he was caught by grief and unable to lead. Another man who had survived became the leader and managed to save the remaining livestock, and the crops, so the people did not starve and could bear more children, and their numbers increased.”

“And the

vechi brbat? You say he was grieving. For his lost wife?”

“Yes. He loved her very much. So much that he would do anything to be with her again. And did.”

“What did he do?”

“He roamed the forest at night, calling on the bad spirits of the old gods, the ones from his life before the village when he lived with the Gypsies, before the Christian god became the one god. He begged the darkest elementals, the angriest spirits of nature to aid him. He promised them that he would do anything if they would allow him to again be with his wife.”

Nita felt her heart race. She knew her eyes darted around the room, looking for what? Escape? Yes, she wanted to escape. This room, these people. The story that had gone so very wrong.

“Then what happened?”

“The storms came. The village is nestled in a valley, and the land flooded. Blinding lightning shot from the sky and struck the

vechi brbat. His skin blackened, and the pale brown color of his eyes turned white, as did his hair and beard. When he returned to the village he had become…different.”

“Different how?”

She tried to avoid his questions. "The villagers, they were so busy trying to save themselves, the crops, the animals, to recapture their way of life. The flood forced mud down the side of the mountain that buried much of what had been rescued. Red-streaked mud, as if the mountain were bleeding. Their numbers dwindled further. They saw it as a sign, that there were demons in the village. The

vechi brbat had brought havoc to their lives when they were struggling to recover. Naturally they blamed him.”

There was silence for a moment. The man said softly, "What did they do to the

vechi brbat?”

Nita swallowed hard. "They could not kill him. He had been with them many years and was now one of their own. But they had to protect themselves.”

“From what?”

“From the curse.”

“What curse is that?”

Nita felt her legs begin to tremble uncontrollably, rattling the chains under the table. The room seemed too hot, the color of scorching yellow. "I’d like some water now, if you please,” she said, trying yet again to redirect the grey man.

He got up and went to a side table and poured a glass of clear water. He set it in front of her but she did not touch it.

Once he was seated again he said, "Tell me about the curse.”

Maybe, she thought, maybe if I tell it now, here, maybe someone will understand. The others before, the police, the medical men, Dr. Sauers, they had all been impatient, believing what they wanted to believe, not the truth, and she knew the truth. This man with hair and eyes the color of a vole who said he was listening, maybe he was listening. Maybe he would believe her.

She heard Dr. Sauers’ nails again, tapping on the table, talons painted violent purple eager to rend flesh.

“Dr. Sauers, would you mind terribly if I spoke with Nita alone for a few minutes?”

“Why?” Sauers snarled. "This is irregular.”

“Yes, it is. But I wonder if I might try a technique I’ve found that has had great success. If you wouldn’t mind…”

Reluctantly Sauers got up from the table and obviously she did not appreciate this shift in the plan.

Sauers checked the camera for film.

“Thank you,” the grey-headed man said cheerfully.

The doctor went out the door, closing it loudly behind her, not acknowledging him.

When she was gone, the man turned his head and smiled at Nita. "There. Now you can take your time telling me what happened.”

For some reason Nita found this both reassuring and intimidating. She picked up the water with shaking hands and took a small sip, then set the glass back down, spilling a little that she wiped up with her sleeve. She held onto the glass, as if letting go might leave her floating in a colorless universe.

“What did the villagers do to the

vechi brbat?”

“They put him in a cage and kept him there. He lived in the cage day and night. They fed him only a little blood, from time to time, to keep him alive, but this is how he existed.”

“And when the original villagers died?”

“For the first season all the villagers cared for him, but soon, as winter approached, one woman offered to take the

vechi brbat into her home, and it was then that he lived in the cage all the time. She…looked after him, and then her daughter, and so on. It soon became the unspoken rule that only one took responsibility for him. One woman of each generation, the task handed down to the next in line, the eldest. Eventually my grandmother was responsible.”

“And with your mother gone, you were next in line?”

Nita’s hands trembled and felt white cold. "Yes.”

The man paused. "And this responsibility, to take care of, to live with the

vechi brbat, is this something you wanted for yourself?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said. No one had asked her this.

Bunic had not. It was assumed that Nita would go to school, then return home to the village and bear children, raising only one girl child, and that she would look after the ancient one who would live with her, in the cage, as it had been with all the women before her.

“Tell me, you said the

vechi brbat walked in the village, and he tried to touch you in the forest. So he was no longer in a cage.”

“Somewhere back in time it was determined by a woman who cared for him that if he were not permitted to eat he would be weak and he could then be allowed to roam free at dusk, provided a chain was attached to his ankle with a long rope. This seemed to work out, and the villagers agreed. Anyway, he could not tolerate the sun and always returned to the cage during the day.”

“Like a vampire,” the grey-haired man said.

“Exactly like a vampire.”

“And he was fed blood.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of blood?”

“The blood of the village.”

The man looked a little shocked by this revelation. "Not animals?”

“No. His body could not tolerate their blood. Only human.”

“Did he drink your blood?”

“Sometimes.”

“How…how was this done? Did he bite you?”

“Of course not!” she said, feeling the tension building in her. "We would make cuts on our arms and legs, each person in the village taking a turn, and would provide a tin cup every day and he would drink that. It kept him alive.”

“Why, over the centuries, did the villagers want to keep him alive?”

“Because it would be bad luck to kill him.”

“But he’d brought disaster to the village, or so everyone thought?”

“But more disaster would come from killing him. He was a Gypsy. He had been in touch with the most evil spirits. They had come to him, heeded him, given him what he asked for. The villagers did not know what would happen if he were killed or released, but they knew they would be cursed and harm would come to them. They just did not know the nature of that harm.”

“But you didn’t believe that, did you? That his curse would bring disaster. That he was ancient. That he had brought back his dead wife.”

A small sound slipped from Nita’s lips. She felt a tear form in one eye and tried to brush it away but the sparkly multicolored drop slid down her cheek. Maybe…maybe he understood! "I…I… The university. They said it could not be so. That he was not old. That he was just a crazy man that everyone kept caged and starved, and that his dead wife had not returned but a woman in the village-my grandmother, and my mother-had slept with him to get pregnant.”

“How did your mother die?”

That was too horrible. Nita could not bring herself to admit the suicide. Instead of answering his question, her mind raced on as if he hadn’t interrupted. "The university professor said it was an example of a mythology that had gone terribly wrong, and the people wanted to blame someone for all their problems, and to torture him.” She looked up at the grey man. "I went home to make it right.”

The man nodded imperceptibly.

Now the words spilled from Nita, like the scorching lava that had formed the mountains. "I tried to tell the others. I told them that he could not be ancient. That he was not responsible for catastrophes. That the gods had not returned his wife to him. I explained that my grandmother who kept him, she was his wife. They would not believe me.”

“What did you do?”

“After the sun set, I cut his chain and took him far from the village, up into the mountains, a night’s journey by foot. I gave him food I had brought home with me, liquid food with nutrients, some blood because he was used to that, but other beverages, because he had not eaten solid food that I knew of. I tried to feed him grains but he could not digest them. And then I pointed to the much larger village just over the mountain peak and told him to go there, to begin a new life. That he was free. I told him that he would be caged no more.”

Nita shook her head. Tears streamed down her face and though her voice wavered, she needed no encouragement to finish her story. "I returned to my village the following day. My grandmother was furious with me. She struck me and called me a fool, ranting that I had brought down the curse and put them all in danger. The villagers were angry and afraid. Some wanted to run away, others found weapons to defend themselves. One suggested I take the place of the

vechi brbat in the cage, as if that would make things right. I told them they had nothing to fear, that the old man, the vechi brbat, was gone for good, and they were all free now. Just as I was free from the life that had awaited me. No more wrong legends to rule their lives, or mine. I could return to the university. I would not have to marry the vechi brbat, or spend my life taking care of him.

“But the people were not pleased by this; they were so enraged. And terrified. My grandmother struggled to keep them from hurting me.”

After a moment, the man said, "And then what happened?”

“He returned. Two nights later. He murdered people in their beds, outside their homes, as they fled into the forest. Women, children, men-even the strongest who tried to fight him off. My…my grandmother. He had been strengthened by the nourishment I’d provided, and he took blood until he became bloated, and then took more. He killed everyone, and it was my fault!”

Her body trembled uncontrollably. The room had become icy. The colors surrounding her, even the white, paled as if glaciers had formed over everything, and the opaqueness that reminded her of the

vechi brbat’s eyes as he stared into hers began to spin and swirl like a snowstorm.

“But he didn’t kill

you,” the man said.

“No,” she gasped. "He spared me.”

“Why?”

She stared at him, watching his grey features shift and twist and the shape of his face change from human to animal then change again from animal to something dark and otherworldly until the images that formed petrified her.

“Nita, they found you covered with blood.

You, not the vechi brbat. You killed the villagers, because you felt trapped there, destined to a life you did not want.”

Her head jerked from side to side.

“Nita, if there were a

vechi brbat, why wasn’t he found? Where is he now?”

She screamed, "I-don’t-know!”

“Take it easy. You’re safe here.”

But his words could not quell the horror that gripped her heart. "He disappeared. And I remained with the bodies, the blood-red bodies, stained by color that seeped into the hungry brown soil as if it were a mouth that had longed for this nourishment. The land of my foremothers, of the villagers, those who imprisoned the

vechi brbat. Don’t you see? The blood went back into the earth. Where it should have gone centuries ago! Because they imprisoned him!”

Her raised voice brought Dr. Sauers storming into the room. "What’s going on here? You’re upsetting my patient!” She hit an intercom button on the wall and told a nurse to hurry with an injection.

“No! No more drugs! Let me be free!” Nita jumped to her feet. "Remove these chains! I did nothing to you, why are you holding me prisoner! Help! Someone help me!

Vechi brbat free me, as I freed you!”

But Nita’s cries faded soon after the needle pierced her flesh. The world around her receded, the colors dimming and fading to nothing, until she could neither see nor hear those outside her with their demands and judgments and limitations. But she clearly heard the

vechi brbat, for now he could speak and he spoke to her, calling her his bride, assuring her that he would be with her always. That she would not be a prisoner forever. "One day,” he promised, "you, too, must dance with me.”