My cohort and I enjoyed the mountainside even more once we'd been released from our seven years in darkness. We slept under the stars, foraged, and studied the natural world around us by pale moonlight. The sun was too much for us in those early days of freedom, when the doors of ?oloman?? allowed us to come and go as we pleased.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  He dared to close his eyes, though his blood surged, instinct screaming for him to watch the creature. Slowly, the pounding in his ears faded.

  Zgavra was silent. Perhaps it had left, its supper denied.

  Dragos woke to the mewling on his chest and the fuzzy sense of amazement that he’d found sleep at all. He caught the bundle in his arm as he sat upright, away from the tree, bones groaning in protest. The milk bladder was still where he’d left it, so he took it up and scraped the wax cap off it. The baby drank well. Perhaps he’d gotten better at feeding her.

  The smell rising from him told his tale better than words ever could.

  As the child drank, he took in the pale dawn. A faint mist rose from the thicket, washing the forest in a luminous, swirling glow. Fae. Almost magical. The finest fools might imagine it a divine gift.

  Just mist. Beautiful, nevertheless, in its simple nature.

  A crunch of soft leaves stilled him. Muscles tensed, instinct woke, and his gaze slipped toward the sound.

  It came around the tree, half man, half dragon. A shaggy mane draped its shoulders, the scales of its belly like a lizard’s underside. It walked like a man in its truest form. Dragos relaxed a notch, like a belt buckle loosened after a large meal but still firmly in place.

  “You’re still here,” he muttered with a note of disappointment, then added, since it was dawn and he wasn’t certain if there was a time length to his earlier command, “You still can’t eat the baby.”

  It didn’t speak, just crouched by the fire, poking it with a stick. A muscle twitched in Dragos’ cheek. He worked his jaw, and, when the baby turned its head away, he left it resting on his legs while he stoppered the bladder once again. It could last a bit longer.

  He didn’t know how many times a child needed milk.

  Dragos did know it needed cleaning again. It stank of piss. His lip curled up as he took her to the bucket. The water was cold. Unfortunate, but not unexpected.

  The child washed clean, he set her aside to gather his meager belongings and sip what was left of his ale. His gaze rarely left the zmeu. The Unspoken lingered.

  That sent prickles of irritation down his spine.

  Shoving a strip of dried pork between his teeth, he stood and kicked at the embers the zmeu had been idly poking. Twisting, he snatched up the bucket and dumped the water on the scattered char. The embers died in a hiss of steam and ash.

  Zgavra looked up at him, orange eyes narrowed. After a moment, it stood and brushed off its shins. Dragos paid it no mind, treating it like the myriad spirits he had come across. It was best to leave them to their devices in their ways and world.

  When he shrugged his box onto his shoulders, the zmeu shifted into the form from the night before, hovering over the ground in defiance of all man’s laws.

  Dragos scooped up the baby and the bucket and set off on his way, back turned to the zmeu.

  Zgavra followed, winnowing through the trees. Dragos pushed on until he got tired of trying to pass through bushes with both hands full.

  The baby ended up in the bucket.

  It was easier to carry both that way, and she seemed to like it. Dragos swung it gently as he left the forest and found the road. The sun peered between clouds now and again, as if comparing its progress against his. The road he travelled led to Plansura.

  He’d never been there and only knew a bit about the town. Larger than Mure?el, and hopefully with more kindly townsfolk. He kept his mind occupied by watching the roadside for useful herbs. And ignoring Zgavra.

  The zmeu ignored him in turn, yet followed him like a stray that, once finding food dropped, followed in hopes for more.

  The wanderer paused to harvest some yarrow and glanced past the black serpent that hovered a few paces away. He wasn’t concerned that anyone would see it. Few could see the Unspoken—those who could would pretend they didn’t. The wise ones, anyway.

  The zmeu drifted ahead along the trail. Good. Dragos hoped it got bored. Even if people couldn’t see it, they would feel the dark omen of its presence. But, if it did leave…

  “Zgavra, no stealing future wives,” Dragos said. Not loudly, but with enough weight that it could hear him. He knew it had when it paused mid-stroll, serpentine body coiling over the path. The zmeu continued onward, silent, as it had been since Dragos forced the pact on it.

  Though his cloak was soiled, he wore it draped over his peddler’s box, firmly over his head, the hood low over his brow. It cast a broad shadow over the plants he bent toward, plucking at the roots. He stuffed the yarrow into his belt to dangle in a bundle, a poor man’s tassel. Where the forest thinned, furlongs replaced ancient, looming trees. Plansura became visible, first by the fields, then the travelers, and the peaks of buildings in the distance.

  Donkey carts drawn by children with switches and men and women with huge baskets strapped to their backs dotted the winding, rutted path towards the town. Some walked towards him, away from Plansura, but many went toward it. Most were as mud-spattered as he, stinking of animals and the acrid smoke of their pipes.

  Dragos lost sight of the zmeu, but that hardly mattered. It would obey his command until dusk. With a sigh of trepidation, he approached the town.

  Plansura had proper streets and an inn. Homes stood shoulder to shoulder with businesses: a cartwright, a blacksmith, and an apothecary. He eyed the last with interest, then turned instead toward the inn and tavern. A painted placard of a woman in black sitting by a fireplace hung beside the door.

  Dragos narrowed his eyes at it, then pulled the door open.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Iron hinges creaked, and the floorboards groaned when he stepped inside. The ceiling was low enough that he had to duck a crossbeam on the way to the bar. Everything in the room was crafted of good oak, worn smooth with age and use. The fireplace was already ablaze, warming the small taproom.

  He stepped up to the bar and hefted the bucket to sit upon it. The elderly woman in widow’s black, perched on a stool and clearly the owner by the painting outside, looked at him, her gaze questing for his face and only finding the lower half of it. That gaze shifted to the bucket. The woman startled and gasped, “There’s a child in that bucket, sir.”

  As if he didn’t know. The cerel jerked awake at the woman’s voice and immediately began to cry. Dragos sighed and stuck his hand in to scoop the child out, then paused and pulled it back, shaking it. She was likely crying because she was once again sitting in her own filth.

  “Do you know of a wet nurse?” He asked. “My wife has died, and I need to find help in caring for her.”

  The lie was rehearsed, and though not comfortable to speak, it was believable to others.

  “What a pity,” the woman said, clucking her tongue. Dragos could feel her eyes on him, weighing his worth. He pulled out a small pouch of coins, the only money he had left. For now.

  “I’d be willing to pay you to take—”

  She cut him off, her voice rising over the sound of the baby’s wailing. “I’m far too old to take care of a youngling like that. Such a pity. May the Light guard your steps, poor sir.”

  He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew what he’d find. There would be no scraping the cerel off onto this woman. A pragmatic business owner wouldn’t get saddled with a foundling. Fair enough. The cerel would be better off with a woman who wanted her, not one paid to take her.

  “A room and a meal. Donkey’s milk. Or a goat’s. Until I can get her something else.” Dragos conceded, tugging the pouch open.

  “Of course,” the woman said warmly, seeing the metal he carried, palms already bared and ready to receive his money. “I’ll see to the child’s clothes as well. What is her name?”

  A name. He paused, then answered, “Mirel.”

  “How sweet,” The woman cooed, waggling her fingers at the crying infant. “Shush, Mirel. Pappa’s talking.”

  He talked with his money. He handed the woman thaler. She jingled the currency in her palm, then waved for more. Mouth tightening, he put more on the counter. Her fingers snapped shut around the coins.

  The widow hadn’t seemed to notice anything off about him. As he mounted the stairs, he hoped it stayed that way.

  After feeding the child, washing up, and washing the baby—again—he paused to regard her before putting her back in the bucket.

  Mirel.

  He’d named her after the red-haired Solomonar that raised him. It was the only name that had come to mind. Somehow, thinking of her made weariness soak into his bones.

  Dragos lifted the child to face him and regarded her solemnly. She looked back at him with a serene, serious stare. Silent, for once. Such a small creature. Weak and helpless. She would never grow to be a witch like the original Mirel. She wouldn’t be anything other than wind, one day. Vexatious as she was, the thought clenched his heart like a vice. It was unfair. But that was life, wasn’t it? Cruel.

  If nothing else, he might find her a safe home. A happy one. Let her be a proper child for a while, until she changed.

  She fussed, squirming in his hands. He placed her in the bucket and left the little closet of a room he’d rented for the night. He swung it as he descended the stairs and out into the afternoon, hood pulled down to his brows.

  He went to trade at the apothecary. Often, they were more tolerant of the strange and unusual, like himself. His cache of goods spoke louder than his pale looks and ever-present cloak. He’d pulled his peddler’s box out from under the concealing garment with practiced skill, tipping the hood back just enough to see the apothecary’s face.

  The man had a pinched expression and a crown of hair that clung to his scalp with sweaty tenacity. He took his spectacles off and wiped the lenses with the hem of his shirt as Dragos set both the box and the bucket on the counter.

  “What are you looking for today, good sir?” The apothecary asked, slipping the wire curves back around his ears, gaze darting from Dragos to the box and then the baby in the bucket, then back to the road-weary wanderer again. His tone shifted lower, cautious when he asked, “Or are you selling?”

  “Selling,” Dragos said, and as the man’s eyes shifted to the baby, he clarified, “Not the baby.”

  He cast a glance at the shelves. The man had an abundance of belladonna and lobelia. In small doses, a medicine. In large doses, sickness and death. Interesting.

  Dragos unlatched his box and took out the most precious of his wares. Starlace ink, carefully gathered from the Zioruluc, the light river that coursed within the Embrace to meet its twin, the river of darkness called Umbregrin. Pale like mercury, yet it illuminated beyond the glass vial that contained it, spreading a muted light on the counter beneath it.

  The apothecary leaned in and adjusted his spectacles. His mouth fell open a moment later, and he grabbed a nearby rag to toss over the vial, gaze flicking up to the closed door. Though his teeth, he hissed, “This isn’t the place to sell things like that. That’s real magic. Plansura is a simple, Lightfearing town.”

  “Everything is real magic,” Dragos snorted, then tipped his chin at the rack of bottles behind the man. “Light fearing, but hungry for poison. Very well. I have other things. I can sell you a remedy recipe, if you don’t want starlace—”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want it,” the man murmured.

  The wanderer smiled thinly. A merchant’s greed always won against any threat. No doubt the apothecary already had a buyer in mind for the small treasure, regardless of what was decent or correct under Calruthian law. “Five hundred denarii.”

  The man choked visibly.

  Dragos swept up the rag and what was hidden within with a speed that drove the man back a step. The apothecary’s hands went up as if to defend himself, though there’d been nothing violent in the motion.

  He’d asked for an exorbitant amount, and he knew it. Silverlace was worth it. Dragos leaned on the counter, murmuring low, “It’s a bargain. Do you know how difficult it is to get this?”

  The back of Dragos’ neck prickled. He fought to stay still, to not turn around.

  The apothecary’s collar darkened with sweat. He tugged at it, his small eyes flicking from the rag in Dragos’ hand to the shop’s confines, then to the guttering lamplight, the window full of colorful glass, and the shadows in the rafters.

  “Selling the lifeblood of the world to scum,” a voice whispered by Dragos’ ear, smug with judgment.

  Zgavra.

  The apothecary couldn’t see it in this form, the dragon’s spirit-body hovering just beside him, invisible to the ordinary man, but not unfelt. The cold sheen that beaded at the man’s upper lip bespoke the presence of the supernatural. The merchant sensed it. Even if he didn’t understand it.

  The door creaked open.

  Dragos steeled himself. Pretended like nothing was wrong. That was the only defense for a stranger like him. He casually glanced over his shoulder, looking past the accusing orange eyes of the zmeu, to the woman and child who walked in.

  Another time, he might have tried to offer the cerel to a woman like that. Not now.

  Not when he saw the child look right at the zmeu.

  “Momma, what is that?” The pink-cheeked, healthy child piped with innocent curiosity, chubby little finger jabbing at the air.

  The well-dressed woman glanced down at her son, amused, and then at the vague darkness that hovered in the air, like a menacing depression of light. Her brows furrowed at the distortion between Dragos, the apothecary, and herself.

  She asked the child sweetly, but the high note in her voice wavered, proof that though she couldn’t see, she could feel it. “What is what, dear?”

  “The monster, right there,” the child replied.

  Dragos realized that the little one’s finger was pointing right through the zmeu.

  Right at him.

  (zmyeh-oo): Type of Romanian dragon.

  (TSEH-rel) [rolled r]: Living child of sky spirits.