The Mora

Chapter 3

one

“Does it really matter if he killed his wife?”

“Benedykta!”

“Don’t look at me like that. You know what I meant. Isn’t the rest of it enough? It should be enough.”

“No, you’re right. I wouldn’t send her off with an abuser any more than with a murderer, and there can’t be any doubt his reputation is well-founded.”

“Even if it can’t be proven…”

“It’s proven well enough. I saw the marks on the footman.”

“Then we are agreed. It must be broken off at once. No financial security is worth that kind of risk.”

“No. I’ll send a letter. I don’t know that I have the courage to confront him in person. Unless your father would be willing to accompany me…”

“Father would kill him if he threatened you. I don’t want this to become an open conflict, Jan. I just don’t want our daughter married to that. She is intelligent and talented. She’ll find something better. Just send the letter.”

*

The sun glared off the pages of Jadwiga’s open book, making the words fade and bleed together. It hurt her eyes, so for the third time, she picked up her blanket and followed the shade of the pear tree. Her dress stuck to her back and legs. It would be darker inside, but even with all the windows flung wide, there was never a breeze. The house would be an oven.

And her parents were inside, and she was tired of listening to their conversations.

She had received the news with neither surprise nor disappointment. It had never been a real betrothal, after all, only a series of sort-of promises. She had never met the man in question. She knew he was very wealthy, a titled landowner, a widower, and friendly enough with the tsar that the very thought of the marriage made her grandfather curse and clutch at his war-wounded side. She knew he was one of those people her Babcia called niewidomi, “blind”, someone who had seen only part of what the world had to offer and may not react well to a strange bride and her even stranger family. Nothing had ever been set in stone, and she did not much care when it abruptly ended.

“Jadziu.”

She shut her book and turned as someone joined her on the blanket. “Dziadku.”

Jerzy Lojek seemed too young to be a grandfather, only thirty-six when the musket ball ripped through his gut and stole his heartbeat, and he had not aged a day since. He wore his shirt loose and untucked, the neck untied in a nod to the heat, but Jadwiga knew he was loving the weather. It had been days since he had last complained of being cold. He flopped onto his back and tucked his hands behind his head.

“What are you reading, zabka?”

“I’m trying to improve my English.”

“Don’t want to tell me?” He grinned. “Is it that bad a book?”

She blushed. “Well, it isn’t good. It’s about a vampire. Named Varney.”

Jerzy laughed aloud and rolled to face her. “And what is your educated opinion of this vampire named Varney?”

She took a moment to think about that. “He doesn’t seem to be very good at it.”

That pulled another laugh out of him, and she smiled.

“Written by a niewidomy?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“It’s almost insulting, in a way, the notions these people come up with. You should be glad they aren’t writing lurid romances about mora.”

Jadwiga pressed a lock of hair between her lips and averted her eyes. “It wouldn’t catch on,” she said. Her throat suddenly felt tight, and she tried not to let him hear. “The hero can’t gallantly battle a mora.”

Jerzy’s grin disappeared at the tone of her voice. “That’s new,” he commented mildly. He tilted his head, eyes wide and curious. “Is there any reason the mora shouldn’t be the hero?”

“The same reason the vampire is never the hero, I suppose.”

“Are you saying I’m not heroic?” he teased gently, but she did not laugh, and he sobered again. “I didn’t know you felt that way. Being strange is always difficult, but it certainly doesn’t make you the villain. You know that.”

“I do, but the niewidomi don’t, do they? They always write the strange one as the villain, which means they would see me as the villain, if they ever learned the truth of me.” She managed to get that out with a remarkably level voice, considering how guilty she felt just thinking it. She dug a hand into the grass, then jerked it back with a smothered oath and picked the ants out from between her fingers, scowling.

Jerzy scratched thoughtfully at the corner of his eye. “Some probably would, yes. What started you thinking about this?”

Jadwiga shrugged, picking at the edge of the blanket. “When I marry—”

“Which won’t be any time soon.”

“—how do I tell a man about our family? About what Papa and I do?”

“Cautiously, truthfully, and with me nearby to erase his memories if he doesn’t take it well.”

Jadwiga could not help but smile at that, and she felt her grandfather relax beside her.

“Remember,” he went on, “I knew nothing about any of this before I was changed. Neither did your grandmother Nataszia, but she did not turn me away when I came back to her different. All of your aunts have had to explain their odd family to their husbands. Your mother was the only one lucky enough to find a man with his own strangeness. You might ask him what he planned to say to her before he knew about her background. Or talk to your Babcia. She has been explaining herself to the normal folk since before the fall of Rome. But I think you should find the man you want to tell before you start rehearsing how to say it. Different people will need different words.”

Jadwiga glanced toward the house as a shouted argument sprang up and died again. The thing was done, the letter sent; she could not imagine what they were still arguing about, days later.

Jerzy frowned. “Not that man, though. The only thing worse than a Russian is a Pole who wishes he were Russian.” He curled his lip and spat.

*

Jadwiga barely noticed evening closing in until she could hardly see her book anymore. Without even realizing, she had brought the page within inches of her face and angled her body to take advantage of the faint light from the house.

That was not what had distracted her, though; she knew from experience that she would have read until she could see nothing at all, if not for…

She marked her place with a finger and listened hard. There, on the very lower edge of her hearing.

Hoofbeats.

It increased in volume rather than continuing on past, and she rose to her feet as the horse cantered up the lane.

For a moment, in the low light, she thought it had lost its rider, but the man hauled himself up briefly from the animal’s side before tumbling to the ground. He hit with a grunt and did not move.

The horse slowed and stopped, quivering. Jadwiga could see the foam speckling its muzzle and hear its harsh breath. It had been hard used, but she knew little enough about horses and had no idea whether it, too, was on the verge of collapse, so she rushed instead to the man, kneeling to examine him for injury.

He was winded from his fall, muscles slack, eyes only half open, but he did not seem seriously hurt. He was also no one she could remember ever having seen before, young and attractive, but unkempt. He had not shaven in days, and dust caked his tasseled boots. He carried a pistol openly at his belt. A soldier?

For a moment, she stood paralyzed as a thought coiled sickeningly around her windpipe: This is how it happened before. She knew the story her grandfather had told her, how a rider broke through the evening, bearing news of insurrection and a young lieutenant named Wysocki. How they fought for their country under cover of night, using the land as their armor. How Jerzy Lojek lost his brothers one by one to Russian musket balls or to Siberian exile and finally lost his own life. Even his beloved university did not escape.

Shots had been fired. What other news could make a man ride himself to exhaustion?

“Don’t move,” Jadwiga instructed. “I’ll bring the men to take you inside.”

He groaned miserably and rolled to his side, trying to stand. “You… you…”

“Oh! No, stay still. I’ll be right back.”

But he kept struggling clumsily, working his way with painful awkwardness from his hands to his knees. “You…”

“I said don’t move!” Jadwiga protested, but his lack of coordination suggested a head injury, and comprehension might not have been among his strengths, at the moment. She moved to help him to his feet, bracing him with his arm across her shoulders.

“You.”

The stench of used liquor and vomit hit Jadwiga like a physical force. The words that followed were garbled, but their tone was profane, and she had a moment to be annoyed, then a moment to be afraid before the arm around her tightened. She struggled, and it tightened further, moving up from around her shoulders to around her neck, pulling her closer.

On instinct, she turned inward, further into the unwelcome embrace, and drove her knee up into the man’s stomach. But the strike was slowed by her skirts; though the fabric ripped loudly, there was barely any force left by the time the blow reached its target. Her assailant grunted, and his grip loosened, but he did not let go. So she bit him instead, turned her head and sank her teeth deep into his fleshy cheek. Blood gushed over her chin and down the front of her dress as his arm fell away. She stumbled backward into the horse’s flank, and the animal trumpeted in alarm and twisted away from her. She fell, adding her own voice to the horse’s.

There. Someone would hear that, surely. In a moment, someone would come.

Her attacker raised a hand to his face and brought it away dark and wet as he swayed where he stood. For a moment, she thought the drink might lay him out, but his hand moved downward to the gun at his hip, and Jadwiga scrambled to her feet to run.

The report cramped in Jadwiga’s legs as her body braced itself to be perforated, but no pain came. The man could barely stand, much less shoot, and the shot flew wide into the gathering darkness. There was a short moment for relief before the horse’s wild scream and the thunder of hooves behind her as the injured animal, blinded by pain and fear, ran her down.

She felt its shoulder in her back, then its hoof in her side as it drove her to the ground, and then it was gone, vanished into the night. She rolled to a stop against the wall of the old well and clenched her jaw against the urge to scream, knowing instinctively that drawing a deep breath would be more than her damaged body could take. Her ribs had to be broken—all of them, it felt like. She gasped, and even that tiny movement choked her.

Surely, someone would be coming. In a moment, someone would come.

A cry went up from the house. “Jadzia! Jadzia, where are you?” Papa. “Benedykta, find me light! And summon your father back; we need someone with night-eyes!”

The stranger staggered toward her, silhouetted against the deep violet sky. The day’s heat was fading, and the air was growing cold. He bent and retched into the grass, and Jadwiga held very still, hoping a shape on the ground would be too indistinct for him to make out. But he shambled on until he stood in front of her. Words spilled out of him, incoherent and enraged, but too quiet to carry to the house and give him away. He planted his foot in her ribs, and she whimpered.

A candle emerged from the house, followed by the long, slender gleam of metal. Papa and his rifle. He bellowed her name across the garden. She tried to answer, but only a faint, wet sound emerged. It didn’t even hurt so much anymore, and that was when she realized with a start just how badly she must actually be hurt.

The man kicked her again, then once more. Then, seeming to realize that he was too drunk to kick her to death, he heaved her up to standing and tipped her over into the well.

She bounced back and forth between the walls before the brackish, tepid water rose up to surround her. It filled her eyes and her mouth and soaked through her dress, tugging her downward. She fought it, but every twitch of a limb was agony, and when her head broke the surface, her ears were assaulted by the weird, keening voice of a freshening wind whistling over the lip of the well. It reverberated hollowly, broken by the ragged sound of her breath, then men shouting, then the bark of a gun.

She dipped beneath the surface again, and her lungs filled. Her fingernails tore uselessly at the green-slick stone. Her heart thundered in her ears and pounded at her broken ribs.

Don’t let me die, she prayed. Lord, don’t let me die.

The water rose around her flailing arms and closed over her grasping fingertips. Even the water could not erase the sour smell of liquor from her nostrils. The water shivered: another gunshot, though without being able to hear, she could not tell whether it was pistol or rifle. Something hard and cold seeped out of the water into Jadwiga, settled in her throat and began to spread. Cold chest, cold limbs, cold heart. The fury gave her focus, and for a moment, it was only too easy to think around the burning in her lungs.

Lord, don’t let me die. I have to kill that bastard if he hurt Papa. I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him I’ll kill him I’ll kill him…

Darkness.