I tried to stand, to flee, but my ankle pulsed with pain and would not hold me. I collapsed back to the ground.
The shapes drew nearer, and I saw they were nothing monstrous, just people, their lights only flickering torches. Some were men, hatless in the night. Others were women in long, striped skirts and clinking necklaces: Gypsies.
This should have alleviated my fears—after all, Gypsy musicians had played at the procession this morning and again for the dancing. But lost as I was, my mind was full of warnings: Grandmama, telling me not to speak with the musicians; János, more bluntly, adding Gypsies were not to be trusted; and a half-remembered scene from Miss Austen’s novel Emma, where Emma and her friend Harriet are attacked by Gypsies.
An argument was unfolding on the banks of the river, an older woman shaking her fists at the girl—it was only a Gypsy girl bathing in moonlight after all, not a rusalka. The fists spoke a language I knew: You should be ashamed of yourself.
The girl hung her head, her arms sliding protectively around her wet torso. But then she straightened and flung her hand in my direction, and dozens of eyes fixed on me.
None made a move to help me. The girl slipped away, no doubt stealing back to camp and drier clothes. Chanting rose on the air, and music. I could see now the distant yellow glow of campfires across the stream, the pale outline of tents.
I shut away the memory of the things that had followed me. Surely I had made shadows into monsters, as I had turned a Gypsy girl into a rusalka. But my ears still held the echo of those haunting cries.
Free us.
I tried again to stand, and failed. I held my hand out toward the crowd. “Bitte helfen Sie mir.” Help me, please. They shifted and muttered, but no one approached me. I could not tell if they did not understand me or chose to ignore my plea.
I swallowed, trying to ignore the burning in my ankle. The night air pricked at my face, cold where the sweat dried against my cheeks, the nape of my neck.
The music ceased abruptly. I heard angry shouting. Those nearest me turned toward the sound, their faces tight. The crowd began to melt away, slinking toward the camp. I thought of the long, impossible walk back to Eszterháza—I no longer knew in which direction—through shadow-infested woods, and sniffed. I would not let myself cry.
A girl slipped through the crowd and crouched beside me, laying her hand on my arm. “Shh.” A dark-patterned kerchief covered her hair.
A young man followed her, carrying a small lantern. He spoke to the girl in a language I didn’t recognize, touching her temple lightly and then lifting a strand of wet hair from beneath her head covering. The girl from the water. In the light of his lamp, his face was all angles and shadows and almost unbearably beautiful—the words of a Byron poem come to life in a wild midnight spell.
Then his burning eyes fell on me, and the whole aspect of his face changed, hard and cold. He spoke to me first in Hungarian, and then, when I didn’t respond, in German. “What are you doing here?”
“I lost my way.” I lifted my chin so this Gypsy wouldn’t think me pitiable.
“You should not be here. You are gadzhi—a foreigner. You’re unclean.” His dark eyes swept down my dress and then he turned away as if he were ashamed of what he saw, as if I were a loose woman in Covent Garden with her bodice cut low and her skirt hitched high, rather than a young lady decently covered by a rather lovely Viennese gown (if now the worse for wear).
A spark of indignation lit me, warming me in the evening air. How dare this Gypsy accuse me of being unclean!
“I hurt myself.” To prove it, I pushed myself upward. Pain shot through my ankle, radiating up my leg, and I crumpled. The girl rushed to my side, slipping a thin arm around me and supporting my weight on her shoulders.
As I caught my balance, I glimpsed an old woman watching us from the stream bank. She flicked her hands toward me, palms down and then up, as one does when shooing off crows in a field or a feral dog. Her words were unfamiliar, but her meaning was clear: Go away. The young man turned and called something to her. His words were calm, placating.
The girl beside me sighed. She said something in Hungarian, and when I did not respond, pointed to my leg, then looked a question at me.
Does it hurt?
“A little,” I answered in German. “I should go.” The pain ratcheting through my body was now augmented by increasing social discomfort. I was not wanted here.
The girl ignored me and whispered something under her breath, catching my right hand with hers.
A stone bracelet at her wrist began shining with a silver light. The glow spread across her palm and lined her fingers before sliding across our joined hands like gloves of moonlight. A slow warmth suffused me, the pain in my ankle beginning to recede. A healing charm? In London, only trained Animanti could cast such spells, as a healing charm took considerable power and mastery. A poorly spoken spell could intensify rather than erase the pain.
My heartbeat quickened, and not from my pain. I was right. There was magic here—and non-Luminate magic at that. Perhaps my adventure had not been so ill guided. If Gypsies had found a way to use magic outside of the Binding spell, surely I could do the same. “Please—how are you using magic?”
The young man turned back at my words and sprang forward, grasping the girl’s arm and tugging her away from me, breaking the charm. His voice was sharp with disapproval.
My weight crashed onto my ankle, and I nearly toppled before the girl caught me.
I ignored the stab of pain. “Can you teach me your spell?”
Her eyes were wide, uncomprehending. I wished desperately that my Hungarian was better.
The older woman was shrieking now, her voice tinged not just with anger but with fear. A shudder swept through me. At once, I wanted nothing more than my plain bed back at the palace. “Please,” I said, “can you help me home?”
“I will take you.” The young man’s German was clipped and hard. He called to a pair of men still standing nearby, watching. One disappeared into the shadows and emerged a moment later with a horse, a long, leggy creature with a dark coat. The young man swung himself up in a single fluid movement, and the girl helped me toward the horse. The young man reached down, grasped my arms, and yanked me up in front of him. I cried out in surprise and some not-inconsiderable pain, and then we were cantering forward.
“Thank you,” I said stiffly. I was not used to being manhandled. Or to riding bareback.
“Pull your skirts down,” my rescuer said.
My skirts bunched around my legs, exposing an indecent amount of skin. Cheeks burning, I tried to tug them down. I straightened and wound my fingers in the horse’s mane, praying we’d be home swiftly. “I’m Anna Arden.” Grandmama would be horrified that I introduced myself to a Gypsy, but I had to say something to fill the silence straining between us, and my name seemed a small thing to give him for his aid.