Miroslav Penkov - Stork Mountain

“MY DADDY has a hundred white sheep,” she sometimes told my grandpa. “There isn’t a bachelor in the village who wouldn’t want me as his wife. Yet, here I am, at your threshold, a jar of yogurt in my hands.”

Each day at the threshold Grandpa scooped up yogurt from the jar. He knew full well he’d have to come to a decision soon. Take the girl and the hundred white sheep, or push away the jar, before her heart had shattered.

He led her on. Day after day.

And in the end, is there a force darker than a woman with a broken heart?

LENIO, BEAUTIFUL LENIO. Lend me your eyes so I may see all that you’re seeing. Lend me your lips and your ears. How rosy the cheeks of the baby. How soft his skin when we kiss him. Is this his heart beating or is it yours I can hear? Or is it my heart that won’t stop knocking?

A fist. Yes, a fist is slamming the front door. And a voice is calling.

Mina. The shepherd’s daughter. I can smell her, stinking of wet fleece. I’ve seen how she watches him, how she turns crimson when he steps near. I’ve seen how she watches you and turns green with venom. Saint Kosta never chose her. The teacher never chose her. What does she want, the spinster?

“Lenio, beautiful Lenio, come out without fear. Your father has gone to the mayor’s house and your brothers have followed. But the coals are still glowing under the old tree. No one will see you. No one will hurt you. Dance in the fire. I’ll stay here and care for the baby.”

Across the yard Lenio runs, out of the house gates. Up the road, through the bushes. Her feet burning, they don’t touch the ground even. When she steps in the river, the water hisses. The air is hissing as she swims through it.

There, under the walnut, some embers still glisten. But when your feet touch them, they will all wake up in fire. Wade in the coals, Lenio, fear nothing. A giant is coming to meet you. He steps out of the dark shack, there, can you see him? Tall, terrible, handsome. Hold his hand, don’t let go.

The fire in the coals turns liquid, turns to blood, dark and flaming. Spilling from your chest, from my chest. Flowing out of you and into me, out of me and into you. Both ways, both directions. Hold the hand, Lenio, don’t let the hand go.

Your father’s hand, the saint’s hand. My hand, Lenio. Hold it.

THE DANCE WAS FINISHED, the crowd dispersed. The nestinari had retreated to their shack, but soon they too would be going. Their vekilin , the village teacher, had already left to take the candelabra back to the church. Even the storks had grown quiet up in their nests. Wind whistled in the branches of the walnut; thick clouds blanketed the moon, and on the riverbank, Vassilko lay in hiding. Once the Greeks had left the shack there would be no one there to see him. Alone in all the world, he’d plunge himself into the embers, invincible, barefooted. So what if whole patches of the embers were turning black; others still glistened. But he would have to enter soon. Why were the Greeks not leaving?

And as he lay, Vassilko heard twigs snapping, the rustling of grass. The splash of water. Who’s that wading through the river, crossing the meadow, running toward the tree? Those braids swaying, Vassilko can’t mistake them. It’s Lenio, the teacher’s girl. Trampling on the coals! She’ll put them out!

He gets up, dashes through the stream. If she can dance, he’ll dance with her. And then he freezes. Someone has walked out of the nestinari shack — a terrifying giant. Captain Vangelis. There’s no mistaking the way he walks — as though he hates the earth and wants to hurt it with every footfall.

And who is that behind the captain — his eldest son? And after him — his other two?

One with the dark, Vassilko watches. But what he sees he doesn’t really understand. Why is Lenio prancing across the embers like this? Why is she running from one brother to another, bumping into one, falling down, then bumping into the next like a moth that shuffles inside a circle of shining lights?

Up in the branches the storks are waking. Is it the noise of their wings he hears, the rustle of running feet, or the boom of his own blood? The wind picks up some ash and slams it in Vassilko’s face. He blinks, he fights to see.

Was this a cry? The girl? A stork?

He wants to yell . Get back! I see you! A single word and he will save the girl. But he is too afraid. He’s seen their knives and so he watches, not even fifteen feet away.

The girl has fallen to the ground. She lies, unmoving. One brother shakes another by the shoulders. Captain Vangelis pulls madly on his hair. They look as if they too are just awaking from some awful dream.

“Quick, run!” the captain calls. Timid light pours out of the shack and Vassilko hears voices. Women are crying. He sees them swooping on the men. What have you done! In a daze, he nears the Greek girl. There she lies in the ashes, in the glimmering coals.

“Lenio,” he whispers, and shakes her. Not a muscle moves.

Beside himself, he pulls out his knife, cuts clean a rope of hair. The teacher. I must get the teacher.

“You there!” he hears the captain yelling.

And so he runs. The braid so hot inside his shirt. Vassilko, my sweet Vassilko , Lenio coos in his ear. Sweetly, sweetly, the way her tresses brush against his chest.

“WHEN WE ARRIVED at the meadow,” Grandpa said, lighting up, “the clouds had parted and we could see better.”

The door of the shack was thrown open, the shack itself empty. Not a soul left, just the storks overhead crying something fierce. And the embers under the walnut tree, cold ashes, but scattered so you could tell someone had wrestled in them.

“Look!” Father Dionysus said, and in the light of the oil lamp they saw an imprint in the ash, like from a body. The body was gone, but when the Pope brought the lamp closer what glimmered was a pool of blood. Blood had turned the ash to a cold sludge, awfully sticky.

How long Grandpa knelt there, he couldn’t tell me. A minute. A thousand years. But when he came to, he understood what had happened. If they wanted to stop the Greeks, there was one way for them now — up the hills, across the border.

And Grandpa had just grabbed the Pope’s cassock and he was just telling him that they should go in pursuit, when a woman’s cry reached them. Out of the dark came Mina, her hair messy, her lip bloodied. She’d guessed that Grandpa might be in the nestinari shack and that’s how she’d found him.

“Teacher,” she cried. “Run! They’re stealing the baby!”

So Grandpa ran. Faster than the Pope. Faster than Vassilko. By then he’d lost his mind completely. All he knew was that when he arrived at the school the man was still there. Michalis, the son of Captain Elias. The boy who’d been set to marry Lenio before Grandpa stole her.

They met in the courtyard, and in his arms the baby was crying.

“I’ve come for my son,” he told Grandpa.

“Your son?”

“My son.”

“He isn’t yours.” And Grandpa told him: how Lenio was in love with this other boy, how that boy had gotten her pregnant.

“I got her pregnant,” said Michalis. “I took her without her permission. So what? We were about to marry.”

“Your son.”

“My son.” And the man brushed past so close Grandpa could smell the sweet smell of the baby.

If they really talked in so many words, Grandpa couldn’t be certain. Nor was he sure what he did next. Only that the man was walking, up the road, out of the village, and if Grandpa let him, he’d never again see the baby.