The cottage—cozy and neat, the nicest in the village—was built against the tree line, and it took only a handful of steps before Lada was enveloped in a new, secret world, filled with green-filtered light and the constant droning of unseen insects. The ground beneath her bare feet was morning-damp and littered with striped slugs the size of her index finger. Mist clung to sections of the trees, greeting her with almost sentient tendrils. She climbed straight up, picking out a precarious path, winding her way with slow progress toward the top of the nearest jutting peak of solid gray stone.
There were ruins up there, an ancient fortress long since fallen. It teased her with glimpses through the fog, calling to her in a way she could not explain.
She had to get to it.
She climbed down a small ravine, and then straight up the face of the rocky peak. Her feet slipped, and she pressed her face against the stone, breathing hard. Hammered into the stone were the rusted remains of pegs that once must have held a bridge. Lada grabbed one, then another, until she heaved herself up and over the crumbling remains of a wall.
She crossed the foundation, jagged bits of brick and mortar digging into her feet. At the very edge, where even the wall had fallen away, nothing was left but a cobblestoned platform hanging over empty space. Her heart pounded as she looked down at the Arges, now a tiny stream, and the village, mere pebbles for homes. The sun crested the opposite peaks, falling directly on her. It turned the motes in the air to gold, and the mist into brilliant rainbow droplets. A spiky purple flower growing in the old foundation caught her eye. She plucked it, holding it to the light, then pressed it to her cheek.
A sort of rapture descended on her, a knowledge that this moment, this mountain, this sun, were designed for her. The closest she had come before to the exultant feeling—both a burning and a lightness in her chest—was when her father had been pleased with her. But this was new, bigger, overwhelming. It was Wallachia—her land, her mother—greeting her. This was how church was supposed to feel. She had never experienced the divine spirit within a church’s walls, but on this peak, in this countryside, she felt peace and purpose and belonging. This was the glory of God.
This was Wallachia.
This was hers.
After the sun had nearly crossed the canyon and was preparing to disappear behind the mountain, Lada made her way back down. It was harder than the climb up, her feet less sure, her purpose less driving.
When she walked back into the village, footsore and starving, it was to a severe scolding from her frantic nurse. Radu pouted that their whole day had been ruined, and even Bogdan scowled because she had not taken him with her.
She did not care about any of them—she wanted to tell her father how she had felt up on the mountain, how her mother Wallachia had embraced her and filled her with light and warmth. She was filled to bursting with it, and she knew her father would understand. Knew he would be proud.
But he had not even noticed her absence; and at dinner he was cross, complaining of a headache. Lada tucked the flower she had held on to all day beneath the table. Later that night, she pressed it into the small book of saints her nurse had packed for her, next to the sprig from the evergreen tree.
The next day her father left to attend to business elsewhere.
Still, that summer was the best of Lada’s life. With her father gone, so, too, was her driving desperation to please him. She splashed in the river with Bogdan and Radu, climbed rocks and trees, tormented the village children and was tormented back. She and Bogdan created a secret language, a bastard version of their native tongue, with Latin, Hungarian, and Saxon mixed in. When Radu asked to play with them, they answered him in their garbled, intricate language. Oftentimes he cried in frustration, which only served to prove they were right to leave such a whining baby out of their games.
One day, high on the side of the mountain, Bogdan declared his intention to marry Lada. “Why would we marry?” Lada asked.
“Because no other girls are fun. I hate girls. Except for you.”
Already Lada understood, in a vague and fearful way, that her own future revolved around marriage. With her mother having long since returned to Moldavia—or fled there, depending on which gossip Lada was unable to avoid overhearing—there was no one she could ask about such things. Even the nurse simply clucked her tongue and told her sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, from which Lada could only understand that marriage was evil.
Sometimes she imagined a shadowy figure standing at a stone altar. She would hold up her hand, and he would take everything she had for himself. She burned with hatred at the very idea of that man, waiting, waiting to make her crawl.