"Prologue:
“I can never leave a mystery alone.”
--- Alexandre Volkov.
Spring 1983, in the Russian forest, --- the Bogy Woods...
Ihar Volkov stared at the long yellow ratcheting pocketknife that made an ominous clack-clack-clack sound as it was opened. Lyudmilla, his gorgeous Rom woman, who was never without a knife and was an “artist” with knives, had thrust it into his hand moments before, so he wouldn’t die. Now, Ihar gaped at the creepy sight of her uncle Pyo who’d flung himself in agony against the side of his trailer. Pyo’s belly was a sticky-looking mess. He slid to the ground. Ihar wanted pound Pyo into that hard ground, --- if he wasn’t already dead. Still, Ihar whispered, --- “You stupid pig, why did you have to attack me?!”
“Ihar!,” Lyudmilla hissed, her teeth touching his ear, “let’s go!” Lyudmilla felt no remorse. She never liked her uncle Pyotr Efimovich. She didn’t like most of the men of her family. Most of them were aggressive and spiteful.
Ihar, who was from a family who’d been Cossacks and later soldiers, was undercover, said to be an army officer. But, he was reallly a conspirator and assassin for government officials. Ihar was very tall and strong, in his young prime. He’d fought numerous times, harmed and killed in many ways. But, this unnecessary kill, a venerable man of the Ruska Rom, there would be a mess of trouble from this, trouble for Lyudmilla, a Rom blood debt for her great uncle Pyo. That Ihar was an outsider, a gaizjo, made it even worse. He threw the knife away in disgust, wiped his gory hand on his pants as Lyudmilla snatched at his arm. They ran a few steps, then Lyudmilla wanted her violin.
“Your violin!,” Ihar gasped. “Shitting hell, Lyuda, I know you love your music, but!... Are you totally crazy-mad?”
Ihar saw the glitter in Lyudmilla’s narrowed black-black eyes, her high-colored lips pulled back from her gleaming white teeth. Her mass of thick black hair even looked a bit purplish. At this moment, she seemed, --- yes, fiercely lovely, so feral in the bluish light of the April moon.
“You aren’t thinking straight, Ihar!,” she hissed. “Is your brain falling out of your ears?! You know it’s not just a marvelous instrument and an heirloom of my family! It’s full of spirit power!”
Ihar sighed. “You mean magic and the old curse.”
“Of course, you handsome silly --- I’ve told you that many times! And, there’s that something vitally important glued to the inside of it!” Lyudmilla almost spat this at him. Ihar sighed, exasperated. Sometimes, the very passionate Lyuda was too much even for him! “Inside, Ihar, the coded message to an immense fortune! Think of the emeralds, the rubies, the sapphires, the opals and the pearls, the gold, the gold, the gold, the gold! Think of the gems and the gold, Ihar!”
Ihar shook his head, as if truly joggling his brain when there was nothing wrong with it, --- Uda’s liquor! She liked him very much. He made the crone laugh. She giggled and giggled and giggled, her almost toothless pink gums showing. Uda slapped her bony haunches again and again and happily offered the handsome gaizjo the sweet fruity brew she was so proud of. He really shouldn’t drink so much of Uda’s delicious concoction! He shouldn’t have had so much of it tonight! But, Ihar had the ability to recover fast from anything. Drunkenness was a nothing to a him! Ihar was passionately remorseless, a major asset! He was also extremely intelligent. (Some of his superiors thought that wasn’t such a good thing... But, --- “The Mother Land always needs new talent!,” as General Lubov was fond of saying.)
“Right, you’re so right Lyuda!,” Ihar said, running his fingers through the tangle of his dark brown hair. “We need to --- hurry!”
Lyudmilla slipped into her grandma Yenni’s vardo. Her big family, including her grandmother, her mother Bissma, her father Davlo, --- the chieftain of this huge old camp, and her seven brothers, six sisters and many aunts, uncles an crowds of cousins were clustered around the fires. The Rom had enormous, devoted families, all twisting inter-connected through multiple love affairs and marriages, and, of course, all sharing the same traits of their gene pool.
Lyudmilla could hear the music, the passionate Romani words of the old, old songs, the Rom melodies and the exciting rhythms, --- the vivid playing of guitars, zithers, mandolins and balalaikas, the flutes, the sistrums and always, always the drums, drums, drums. Her younger sisters Sylla and Costeylia would be dancing. They were talented sinuous dancers, swaying their rounded hips, their wispy waists, pointing their bare toes, clicking their zils with delicate fingers. Yes, the exquisitely lovely twins Sylla and Costeylia were being shown off. They were thirteen, had begun to bleed, so were deemed ready for marriage, but, only for marriage. They were decent girls. (Rom girls usually matured early and then, were married quickly, before hot blood was completely warmed!)
Ah, the rich, sweet scent of rose incense was in the air. Incense was expensive. It wouldn’t be wasted on a simple night with Rom families! No, there were plenty of gaizje in the camp starting in Spring, as soon as the weather began to be mild. The continuous talking, the raucous and even hysterical laughter, the Rom liked the jingle of gaizje coins adding to their music and the passing of paper money for services, --- always, always welcome!
Lyudmilla snatched her violin. Yes, yes, the coded message from the immense Shadow Brotherhood, that evil smothering presence, the all-encompassing scorpion, spreading it’s numerous vile stings! Her family had been involved with them, glued to them, glued as if they were helpless ants glued to a sea of poisonous jelly and all under the Brotherhood’s various changing names, for centuries and centuries!
Lyudmilla cursed the Shadow Brotherhood in Romani, --- “May flesh-eating worms devour your intestines! May acidic slime fill your skulls and dissolve your brains! May a thousand-thousand-thousand mullos dance their malevolence upon your wicked souls after you die!” And, she spat copiously on the ground behind the vardo, grinding the spit into the dirt with the toe of her shoe. Ihar shrugged. He knew his Lyudmilla well enough.
The couple raced away, not daring to take Ihar’s old truck, whose noisy engine surely would have announced their escape. They didn’t dare to even take a horse. The Romany have sharp ears and horses can make a clop-clop noise with their iron shod hooves and, perhaps, a horse will neigh. Ihar, so tall, had a tremendously long stride. Lyudmilla couldn’t keep up. She stumbled on a tree root, falling, then turning over and over and over, her long ruffled gold skirt and scarlet and black velvet shawl twisting around her. She lost her purple head scarf.
“Lyuda!,” Ihar whispered, even though they were probably too far from the camp for any of the Romany to hear them.
Lyudmilla would be bruised, but she felt nothing mattered as much as the violin, anything to protect the precious old violin, Sonia’s violin, Sonia who was the infamous consort of Peter the Great. Ihar scooped Lyudmilla up without stopping. She clung to him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders and back, her beautiful wavy black hair across her face.
Run, run, RUNNN, --- RUNNN !
She was whimpering. Maybe, she’d broken her arm or an ankle. Lyudmilla wasn’t a baby about pain. Her father and her brothers switched her regularly and sometimes viciously for her disobedience. They’d wanted her to marry, of course. She had numerous offers. She was twenty-five and still unmarried, unheard of for a Romany woman! Was she planning to become a seer? That was unlikely! A seer’s gift was usually recognized in early childhood. Yenni’s gift was discovered when she was six. Perhaps the tempting Lyudmilla was a witch! That was believed by certain members of the camp… She was a witch who could make a man desire her, then refuse him, causing him to ensue any woman! Maybe, then, his parts would dry up!
Yes, Lyudmilla could be very fierce, as fierce as a vengeful witch. Didn’t she kill those three gaizje men who tried to rape her when she was twelve? Police inspectors had come. Davlo, at first, had cajoled the inspectors. He could be very charming, when he wanted to be, especially with the gaizje. Then, he’d paid them off. In addition, Yenni scared them with her bulging and blind white eyes and crazy muttering. Lyudmilla and her sister Taori had dragged the gaizje men’s bodies into the birch woods, scratching shallow graves in the soft earth, not caring if wolves dug them up. And, no more was said about it. But, rumors about the lovely Lyudmilla persisted. It was whispered that Lyudmilla poisoned Mera with a tonic made of toadstools, sweetened and with enough medicinal herbs to mask it’s vile acrid smell. Mera was always worried about her health, and she readily took the tonic when Lyudmilla told her Bissma made it. Mera finished the whole bottle. Then, Mera’s esophagus and stomach simply exploded, but few mourned her. Mera was mean and spiteful as a thirsty wasp in summer.
Now, Lyudmilla was being difficult again, in a bit milder way, but still difficult! She was set on the gaizjo Ihar Volkov, a man who would never marry her and she couldn’t be budged from her desire for him. Lyudmilla, with her magnificent black eyes, her brilliant black hair, her deep beige skin like coffee and sweetest cream swirled with wildflower honey and her body like a curving madness, was the prettiest prize the camp had known since the legendary Sonia, generations ago! Her stubbornness always made Davlo very angry. It made her brothers and uncles very angry too. Her mother Bissma, and her sisters and aunts merely sighed. They secretly wished they weren’t married and didn’t have hordes of children to look after!
But, still and always, fingers pointed at beautiful Lyudmilla, --- good thing for her she was chieftain Davlo’s daughter! Koros, the bootmaker, a well-off man, mature and much respected, had expressed an ardent desire to get Lyudmilla as a wife, despite her witchy-wild reputation. His old wife Serona had died of a seizure. Koros was not a patient man. He was known to have a vile temper, and that was really something considering practically all the men of the camp were, how to put it?, --- biased, intense, compelling and very easily excited. But, Koros wouldn’t challenge Ihar to fight for the lovely Lyudmilla. It would be beneath a Rom man to fight a lowly gaizjo! Recently, Lyudmila had shown even more of her extreme arrogance, her repulsive defiance by defending the gaizjo Ihar Volkov, saying to her father Davlo that Ihar was “a fine man”! This fish-belly pale gaizjo she had taken up with was not a fine man! No gaizjo was ever considered to be “fine” in the Rom sense of the word! But, Ihar was a great fighter and his gaizje family was very rich and powerful in the outside world. The Romany knew well the value of wealth and family influence in the outside world! Still, still, --- still!
Lyudmilla and Ihar, what an interesting and grotesque pair! Lyudmilla was, of course, a natural schemer, and not all Romany are, despite what the gaizje thought! She had great plans for the violin! Oh, yes, that ancient violin could be the lifeline of not only her life, but… And, Lyudmilla needed Ihar’s strength and his position in the outside world for this to work! Now, it had escalated with the unfortunate stabbing of her uncle Pyo! If no one had seen, --- but, Lyudmilla had glimpsed Hespia peeking around the vardo next to her grandmother Yenni’s. Evil meschlo, evil fortune, Hespia and her wicked tongue, --- Borgo, who was so powerful he could lift a horse on his back, had threatened to cut it out long ago! Maybe, he still would! The whole camp would soon know if Hespia had seen Pyo attack Ihar and Ihar kill him! So, there was nothing else for it but to!...
RUNNN, RUNNN, RUNNN, --- RUNNN!" --- Copyright 2026, by Antoinette Beard.
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