Chapter 40
The first time Maria had visited Transylvania again after years of correspondence, Ana had taken her to these odd little rooms on the mountainside. The bars like a prison cell set into the rock were loose enough for two seventeen-year-old girls to move, with thick wooden posts all around them rotted nearly to dust. They both knew they'd be forbidden from returning if they were ever found out. So they'd never asked the older generation, still reeling that summer from the collapse of the USSR just a few months before.
Their best guess was a cave, perhaps natural to begin with, expanded with some kind of tool that left gouges in the dark gray rock. Three chambers were on either side of the main one, each with what looked like chairs and beds hewn into the stone. A few animal bone
