Black Spring Read Free Page B

curiosity was piqued by this exchange; I felt that Anna was concealing something from me. I stepped outside to sniff the air and saw that the skies were clear and blue and showed no sign of unrest. So it was that a short time later, despite further attempts at dissuasion from Anna, I left the house, armed with meticulous directions (and checking that my silver ring was still on my finger, in case of unexpected meetings with Plateau wizards or the like). I found myself following a path that was little more than a goat track, which wound its way through scrubby fields of cabbages and barley in the direction of the Black Mountains.
    I passed around a dozen sad memorials — the crumbling cairns of stones that signified where some luckless man had met his death — which seemed excessive for such a humble goat path. Then I remembered that my friend had told me that some two decades before, Elbasa had been under vendetta. “Vendetta can go on for generations,” he said. “But in this case they found some way to stop it before it killed every man in the village.”
    It was, at first, as pleasant a stroll as I had anticipated, but as I neared my destination, I began to realize that my housekeeper’s warning had been well founded. The temperature fell abruptly, the wind began to gust in uneasy jumps and startles, and I saw to my alarm an ominous bank of purple cloud devouring the sky with an astonishing rapidity. I wrapped my coat closer around me and hurried on, keeping an anxious eye out for the house which, according to my directions, should soon appear to my left. It was with some relief that I spotted a gleam of light in the gathering darkness of the storm — it was only midafternoon, and yet the sun had all been eaten up, so that it almost seemed like night — and hurrying on, I found myself at the doorway of a large farmhouse just as the first drops of rain began to fall.
    No one answered my initial knock. Puzzled, I tried again, growing concerned because the rain now began to pour down in earnest, liberally interspersed with hail. I thought that perhaps the deafening thunder drowned my knocking, and persisted, and after some minutes began to shout as well, but although there was a light in an upper window, indicating that the house was by no means empty, the door remained resolutely shut. At last I gave up and, shaking the water out of my eyes, started looking around for some rude shelter; perhaps the storm would pass quickly and I could make my luckless way home. There were, I saw, a couple of outbuildings, but more promisingly, I saw that at the back of the house there was a small courtyard. Perhaps this man Damek — if he was at home — was at that end of the house and simply had not heard me through the din of the storm. The gate was locked, but when I clambered to the top of the wall, I saw a window, and through the window, flickering against the wall, the reflected flames of a huge hearth.
    By now I was soaked through and freezing — seduced by the pleasant morning, I had worn only a light coat — and forgetting how loud the storm was, I was possessed by an irrational rage, that anyone could have such lack of fellow feeling that they could leave a traveler unanswered by their door — and in such weather! And in the high country, where one’s duty to a guest was sacred, a matter of honor, of life and death itself! Standing on an old water butt, I hefted myself over the wall and scrambled into the dark courtyard.
    As soon as I dropped to the ground, I realized I had made a grave mistake: a very hound of hell, which had hitherto remained silent, rushed out of the shadows, barking fit to wake the dead. Had I not plunged forward in a blind panic for the door, it would have torn out my throat; even so, the brute attacked my leg, inflicting a most painful bite. I should have been done for had the back door been locked, but to my great good fortune, it was not, and I and the snarling dog tumbled in a wet, graceless