The Martyr's Song Read online

  That stopped the girl. She didn’t turn at first, and when she did, her eyes were still angry.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Doing what, child?”

  “Lying to me! You don’t even know me!”

  “Then give me a few minutes and I will know you. Is your life so full of adventure and appointments that you can’t spare an hour to test me?”

  Marci stared at her, caught off guard.

  “You came to be made beautiful,” Eve said, “and I really can make you beautiful. You think this is a fairy tale? No, I’m talking about something more real than your own pain. It’s not every day I offer it to someone as unappreciative as you.”

  They traded stares for another five seconds. The girl is more stubborn than I guessed. Perhaps she won’t succumb to the power as easily as I imagined. Though most did. Most certainly did.

  “It’s your choice,Marci. But I’m not going to stand out here forever. I have things to do.”

  Eve started to turn back into the house.

  “How do I know you won’t do something crazy?” Marci asked.

  Eve faced the girl and smiled. “Depending on how you see it, everything I do is crazy.”

  Another five seconds.

  “Inside?” Marci asked, looking past Eve.

  “Yes, inside.”

  “Okay, five minutes.”

  “No, it’ll take an hour.”

  Marci hesitated. Then she walked past Eve, into the house, and stopped in the living room.

  Eve closed the door. “Do you smell that?”

  Marci looked around and saw the roses on the bookcase to her left.

  “Nadia’s flowers,” Eve said. “They smell sweet, like gardenia blossoms, but they’re actually roses. Nadia is the one who taught me what I will show you. Please sit down.”

  Marci hesitated, then sat in a stuffed chair by the window.

  “Wait here.” Eve retrieved the red book from the greenhouse and returned to see that Marci hadn’t so much as moved a muscle.

  She sat in a chair opposite the girl.

  “If you don’t mind, Marci, I will be direct. Is that okay?”

  Marci looked at the roses. No response.

  “Then we’re agreed. Your problem, child, is that you’re ugly only because you think you’re ugly. You’re ugly because you insist that you’re ugly.”

  Marci glared at her. Started to stand. “This is—”

  “Sit down!” Eve said.

  Marci sat, more from shock than of her own choosing, Eve guessed.

  “You’ve come all this way, and I intend to at least give this a whirl. Have you lost your mind, child? I’m talking about making you beautiful, and you’re just going to walk out?”

  “I’m not interested in inner beauty,” Marci said. “I’ve heard enough speeches about inner—”

  “I thought I made that clear. I’m not talking about inner anything. I’m talking about something you can see with your eyes.” Eve set the book on the end table and crossed her legs. “Maybe I misjudged you after all.Maybe you’re not the best candidate for the story.”

  “What story? You’re really talking about physical beauty? You can’t do that. No one can do that. What are you, a witch?”

  “Yes, physical beauty. And it’s not the power of devils that will change you. God forbid.” Eve paused. “But I can promise you one thing, if it does change you—and it will if you let it—you’ll never have any reason to hate yourself again. Any such thought will be the furthest from your mind, because you will love yourself, the new, beautiful you.”

  Marci glanced at the book, then up into Eve’s eyes. “What story?”

  So strong and yet so very weak. “Tea?” Eve asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay.” Eve reached for the book and set it on her lap. “I’m going to tell you the story. You must listen very carefully to every word, because one of the characters will actually be you, and no one except you will know which one. I want you to find the character. Become that character. Embrace it. Her. Him. Whoever it is. Do you understand?”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we will see. But first you must agree to this.”

  “You’re serious? What does this have to do with making me beautiful?”

  “You think you’re the first one to sit in that chair?”

  “Did the others change?”

  “All of them.”

  Despite her attempt to hide it, Marci’s interest had grown. Her breathing sounded a little heavier. The morning was still and the scent of gardenia blossoms strong.

  “If I have to.”

  “Have to what?” Eve asked.

  “I’ll pretend I’m one of the characters.”

  “You are one of them,” Eve said. “No pretending here. Just figure out which one you are.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. I want you to take a mental journey with me. I want you to go back with me to World War II. To a small village in Yugoslavia where a priest and his flock lived in complete peace. Women and children. No men, because they had been called off to war. Are you following me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Remember, you are there. You are one of the characters.

  I want you to figure out which one.”

  “I know.”

  “Good. It’s a calm morning in the village. The grass in the valley is green and the sun is bright. Birds are chirping and children are laughing. There are fewer than a hundred there, all told. All women and children, except for Father Michael, who is standing on the steps of the church, watching the preparations for the celebration.

  It’s Nadia’s birthday, you see. She’s turning thirteen. Do you have the scene?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And from a hill above the village, five soldiers who’ve stumbled into this valley are watching. Can you see them?”

  Marci nodded.

  “On that day, hell collided with heaven, and it all started with the soldiers.”

  Marci’s eyes had softened. She was listening. She was already entering the story.

  Eve opened the book on her lap and read aloud.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SOLDIERS stood unmoving on the hill’s crest, leaning on battered rifles, five dark silhouettes against a white Bosnian sky, like a row of trees razed by the war. They stared down at the small village, oblivious to the sweat caked beneath their tattered army fatigues, unaware of the dirt streaking down their faces like long black claws.

  Their condition wasn’t unique. Any soldier who managed to survive the brutal fighting that ravaged Yugoslavia during its liberation from the Nazis looked the same. Or worse. A severed arm perhaps. Or bloody stumps below the waist. The country was strewn with dying wounded—testaments to Bosnia’s routing of the enemy.

  But the scene in the valley below them was unique. The village appeared untouched by the war. If a shell had landed anywhere near it during the years of bitter conflict, there was no sign of it now.

  Several dozen homes with steep cedar shake roofs and white chimney smoke clustered neatly around the village center. Cobblestone paths ran like spokes between the homes and the large structure at the hub. There, with a sprawling courtyard, stood an ancient church with a belfry that reached to the sky like a finger pointing the way to God.

  “What’s the name of this village?” Karadzic asked no one in particular.

  Janjic broke his stare at the village and looked at his commander.

  The man’s lips had bent into a frown. He glanced at the others who were still captivated by this postcard-perfect scene below.

  “I don’t know,” Molosov said to Janjic’s right. “We’re less than fifty clicks from Sarajevo. I grew up in Sarajevo.”

  “And what is your point?”

  “My point is that I grew up in Sarajevo, and I don’t remember this village.”

  Karadzic was a tall man, six foot two at least, and boxy above the waist. His bulky torso rested
on spindly legs, like a bulldog born on stilts. His face was square and leathery, pitted by a collage of small scars, each marking another chapter in a violent past. Glassy gray eyes peered past thick, bushy eyebrows.

  Janjic shifted on his feet and looked up-valley. What was left of the Partisan army waited a hard day’s march north. But no one seemed eager to move. A bird’s caw drifted through the air, followed by another. Two ravens circled lazily over the village.

  “I don’t remember seeing a church like this before. It looks wrong to me,” Karadzic said.

  A small tingle ran up Janjic’s spine. Wrong? “We have a long march ahead of us, sir. We could make the regiment by nightfall if we leave now.”

  Karadzic ignored him entirely. “Puzup, have you seen an Orthodox church like this?”

  Puzup blew smoke from his nose and drew deeply on his cigarette. “No, I guess I haven’t.”

  “Molosov?”

  “It’s standing, if that’s what you mean.” He grinned. “It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a church standing. Doesn’t look Orthodox.”

  “If it isn’t Orthodox, then what is it?”

  “Not Jewish,” Puzup said. “Isn’t that right, Paul?”

  “Not unless Jews have started putting crosses on their temples in my absence.”

  Puzup cackled in a high pitch, finding humor where apparently no one else did. Molosov reached over and slapped the younger soldier on the back of his head. Puzup’s laugh stuck in his throat, and he grunted in protest. No one paid them any mind. Puzup clamped his lips around his cigarette. The tobacco crackled quietly in the stillness. The man absently picked at a bleeding scab on his right forearm.

  Janjic spit to the side, anxious to rejoin the main army. “If we keep to the ridges, we should be able to maintain high ground and still meet the column by dark.”

  “It appears deserted,”Molosov said, as if he had not heard Janjic.

  “There’s smoke. And there’s a group in the courtyard,”Paul said.

  “Of course there’s smoke. I’m not talking about smoke; I’m talking about people. You can’t see if there’s a group in the courtyard. We’re two miles out.”

  “Look for movement. If you look—”

  “Shut up,” Karadzic snapped. “It’s Franciscan.” He shifted his Kalashnikov from one set of thick, gnarled fingers to the other.

  A fleck of spittle rested on the commander’s lower lip, and he made no attempt to remove it. Karadzic wouldn’t know the difference between a Franciscan monastery and an Orthodox church if they stood side by side, Janjic thought. But that was beside the point. They all knew about Karadzic’s hatred for the Franciscans.

  “Our orders are to reach the column as soon as possible,” Janjic said. “Not to scour the few standing churches for monks cowering in the corner. We have a war to finish, and it’s not against them.” He turned to view the town, surprised by his own insolence. It is the war. I’ve lost my sensibilities.

  Smoke still rose from a dozen random chimneys; the ravens still circled. An eerie quiet hovered over the morning. He could feel the commander’s gaze on his face—more than one man had died for less.

  Molosov glanced at Janjic and then spoke softly to Karadzic. “Sir, Janjic is right—”

  “Shut up! We’re going down.” Karadzic hefted his rifle and snatched it from the air cleanly. He faced Janjic. “We don’t enlist women in this war, but you, Janjic, you are like a woman.” He headed downhill.

  One by one the soldiers stepped from the crest and strode for the peaceful village below. Janjic brought up the rear, swallowing uneasily. He had pushed it too far with the commander.

  High above, the two ravens cawed again. It was the only sound besides the crunching of their boots.

  FATHER MICHAEL saw the soldiers when they entered the cemetery at the edge of the village. Their small shapes emerged out of the green meadow like a row of tattered scarecrows. He pulled up at the top of the church’s hewn stone steps, and a chill crept down his spine. For a moment the children’s laughter about him waned.

  Dear God, protect us. He prayed as he had a hundred times before, but he couldn’t stop the tremors that took to his fingers.

  The smell of hot baked bread wafted through his nostrils. A shrill giggle echoed through the courtyard; water gurgled from the natural spring to his left. Father Michael stood, stooped, and looked past the courtyard in which the children and women were celebrating Nadia’s birthday, past the tall stone cross that marked the entrance to the graveyard, past the red rosebushes Claudis Flauta had so carefully planted about her home, to the lush hillside on the south.

  To the four—no, five—to the five soldiers approaching.

  He glanced around the courtyard—the children laughed and played. None of the others had seen the soldiers yet. High above, ravens cawed, and Michael looked up to see four of them circling.

  Father, protect your children. A flutter of wings to his right caught his attention. He turned and watched a white dove settle for a landing on the vestibule’s roof. The bird cocked its head and eyed him in small, jerky movements.

  “Father Michael?” a child’s voice said.

  Michael turned to face Nadia, the birthday girl. She wore a pink dress reserved for special occasions. Her lips and nose were wide, and she had blotchy freckles on both cheeks. A homely girl even with the pretty pink dress. Some might even say ugly. Her mother, Ivena, was quite pretty; the coarse looks were from her father.

  To make matters worse for the poor child, her left leg was two inches shorter than her right because of polio—a bad case when she was only three. Perhaps her handicap united her with Michael in ways the others could not understand. She with her short leg; he with his hunched back.

  Yet Nadia carried herself with a courage that defied her lack of physical beauty. At times Michael felt terribly sorry for the child, if for no other reason than that she didn’t realize how her ugliness might handicap her in life. At other times his heart swelled with pride for her, for the way her love and joy shone with a brilliance that washed her skin clean of the slightest blemish.

  He suppressed the urge to sweep her off her feet and swing her around in his arms. “Come unto me as little children,” the Master had said. If only the whole world were filled with the innocence of children.

  “Yes?”

  NADIA LOOKED into Father Michael’s eyes and saw the flash of pity before he spoke. It was more of a question than a statement, that look of his. More “Are you sure you’re okay?” than “You look so lovely in your new dress.”

  None of them knew how well she could read their thoughts, perhaps because she’d long ago accepted the pity as a part of her life. Still, the realization that she limped and looked a bit plainer than most girls, regardless of what Mother told her, gnawed gently at her consciousness most of the time.

  “Petrus says that since I’m thirteen now, all the boys will want to marry me. I told him that he’s being a foolish boy, but he insists on running around making a silly game of it. Could you please tell him to stop?”

  Petrus ran up, sneering. If any of the town’s forty-three children was a bully, it was this ten-year-old know-nothing brat. Oh, he had his sweet side,Mother assured her. And Father Michael repeatedly said as much to the boy’s mother, who was known to run about the village with her apron flying, leaving puffs of flour in her wake, shaking her rolling pin while calling for the runt to get his little rear end home.

  “Nadia loves Milus! Nadia love Milus!” Petrus chanted and skipped by, looking back, daring her to take up chase.

  “You’re a misguided fledgling, Petrus,” Nadia said, crossing her arms. “A silly little bird, squawking too much. Why don’t you find your worms somewhere else?”

  Petrus pulled up, flushing red. “Oh, you with all your fancy words! You’re the one eating worms. With Milus. Nadia and Milus sitting in a tree, eating all the worms they can see!” He sang the verse again and ran off with a whoop, obviously delighted with his victory.
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br />   Nadia placed her hands on her hips and tapped the foot of her shorter leg with a disgusted sigh. “You see. Please stop him, Father.”

  “Of course, darling. But you know that he’s just playing.” Father Michael smiled and took a seat on the top step.

  He looked over the courtyard, and Nadia followed his gaze. Of the village’s seventy or so people, all but ten or twelve had come today for her birthday. Only the men were missing, called off to fight the Nazis. The old people sat in groups around the stone tables, grinning and chatting as they watched the children play a party game of balancing boiled eggs on spoons as they raced in a circle.

  Nadia’s mother, Ivena, directed the children with flapping hands, straining to be heard over their cries of delight. Three of the mothers busied themselves over a long table on which they had arranged pastries and the cake Ivena had fretted over for two days. It was perhaps the grandest cake Nadia had ever seen, a foot high, white with pink roses made from frosting.

  All for her. All to cover up whatever pity they had for her and make her feel special.

  Father Michael’s gaze moved past the courtyard. Nadia looked up and saw a small band of soldiers approaching. The sight made her heart stop for a moment.

  “Come here, Nadia.”

  Father Michael lifted an arm for her to sit by him, and she limped up the steps. She sat beside him, and he pulled her close.

  He seemed nervous. The soldiers.

  She put her arm around him, rubbing his humped back.

  Father Michael swallowed and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t mind Petrus. But he is right; one day the men will line up to marry such a pretty girl as you.”

  She ignored the comment and looked back at the soldiers who were now in the graveyard, not a hundred yards off. They were Partisans, she saw with some relief. Partisans were probably friendly.

  High above, birds cawed. Again Nadia followed the father’s gaze as he looked up. Five ravens circled against the white sky. Michael looked to his right, to the vestibule roof. Nadia saw the lone dove staring on, clucking, with one eye peeled to the courtyard.

  Father Michael looked back at the soldiers. “Nadia, go tell your mother to come.”