And Your Mother Before You By Zary Fekete

Trial by Water

It was just after midnight when my classmate, Anna, came to me. I woke when I heard the crackling of the flames. She leaned over my bed and water dripped onto my sheets. I looked up. Everyone else in the dorm room was asleep.

Come, Sari, she said. I’ll show you.

I held her hand, the right one, the wet one. Her left hand, the one on fire, lit the dark and by its light, she led me from the dorm and out into the low field. I looked back for just a moment, rather like Lot’s wife, at the city of Szeged, where the torches were still lit from the day before. The flickering light reminded me of the pain in my knees, how I knelt for hours yesterday outside the magistrate’s house, pleading for the female students to be released. But, in the end, none of them were freed. They were taken to the river, all thirteen of them. I turned back, away from the city, and saw Anna’s white face, her dark eyes on me.

Come, she said. Don’t be afraid.

She led me through dry brush, parched from the drought. I tried to step where she stepped, but her feet made no prints in the brittle grasses. Her hand was cold. She gripped mine tightly. My fingers, all six, ached from the chill. Soon we were crossing onto the peninsula in the Tisza River where the burning happened yesterday. The fire had gone out, but the rocks still smoldered, unable to forget what they had felt.

The headmaster hadn’t allowed any other students to watch. So, yesterday when the officials led them all to the river, the last I saw of Anna was when she turned to wave. Then she was gone, across the dry field.

Now, she showed me the place. The flickering flame of her left hand, revealed the cauldron. Her wet right hand still gripped mine. Yesterday the water in the cauldron was boiling. Tonight, it was cool. Yesterday she had to dip in her right hand, searching for the stone while her skin boiled, hoping to show it was not her who made the fields dry. She couldn’t reach it. Later, when they were tying her to the stake, she thought perhaps there had been no stone.

I stared at the charred circle. The river breeze lifted some of the ashes, and they blew into the night sky. I looked back in the direction of the city.

It’s ok, she said. I’m with Isten now.

I looked at her. Her hollow eyes stared into mine. Then she reached forward and took my hand again, my right hand, the one with six fingers from my birth.

Find her, she said. Find the one in the mountains. She will prepare you.

I awoke in the morning. Anna was gone. I went to her grave, behind the town church. The carving on the wood was still fresh, “Nagy Anna, 1710-1728, Trial by Water”.

Trial by Metal

The flickering light from my torch illuminated Erzsebet asszony’s door. Hers was the last house, a small hut, huddled at the edge of the village. The wind whipped down, blown from somewhere above me in the Transylvanian mountains. I’ve never been this far from Szeged and never before seen mountains. Their height seemed unreal to me.

The woodsman who gave me a ride for the last few miles was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path.

“You’re a student?” he said.

“Yes. From the Piarista boarding school in Szeged,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Far from school here,” he said. I climbed into the wagon and he gave me a piece of bread. The wagon rattled along. As we passed through small settlements, the path wound up through the hills toward Mennyháza where I had heard she lived.

Then the woodsman told me a legend from when he was a boy. In the story, a boy child nursed by a white mare, grew to become a young man in these mountains. His name was Fehérlófia. He lowered himself on a rope into the caverns beneath the earth. In the underworld he found a golden castle where a maiden was held by a twelve-headed dragon. Fehérlófia killed the dragon and brought the princess back to the rope. The princess climbed up to the daylight, but then the rope broke. Fehérlófia searched through the mountain and found a small griffin, weak from hunger. The young man cut his hand and fed the griffin with his blood. In return the griffin carried Fehérlófia to the sunlit lands above. The boy’s star picture was then carried into the night sky. A constellation for the eyes of the nation’s youth.

“He was a táltos?” I said.

“He had six fingers on his right hand,” the woodsman said.

The woodsman dropped me in the town square of Mennyháza. He said I should look for shelter soon. The wind from the mountains was bringing a cold night. After asking at a few houses, I was finally led to Erzsebet asszony’s house. Another gust of wind blew down the street, this time with a few snowflakes. I squeezed my hands to warm them and knocked twice on the wooden door. There was a pause, then a hiss at the threshold, and she stood before me.

Even though she had a face, I couldn’t really see it. I sensed the vacant spaces where her eyes were and the wide slice of a mouth. I could also hear her breath, thick and deep. After a pause she said, “Well, then, come in.”

She brought me down a dark hallway, and gestured to a wooden bench by the fire. She sat across from me, sipped something for a moment, and then said, “Who told you?”

“My classmate,” I said.

“Where is she?”

I looked down.

“One of the thirteen in Szeged?” she said.

I nodded.

“Fools,” she said. “Young girls are caught late at night after curfew and suddenly there’s blame all around and tales of witches. A waste of young lives for a hope at a better harvest next year.”

She sipped some more.

“Show me your right hand,” she said. I flexed it for a moment and then held it up, embarrassed.

“You have six like me,” she said. “All do.”

I gave a small smile. “Yes, I know.”

“Do they teach about Táltos in your school?” she said.

“Not much,” I said. “The priests think it is a folk tale. But my mother taught me some. She said Táltos have extra fingers or bones. If the finger or bone breaks then they lose their power.”

“Did you see your mother’s hand?” she asked.

I nodded. “The same as mine. When she enrolled me at Piarista she told me to keep my hand hidden. Not to show it to the priests.  She said if they saw it they would know.”

I sensed her smile in the darkness of her face and then she continued, “Well, some say they know, but some might lie.” She paused and I sensed a small frown. “Shall we do the test?”

There was a fierce pop from one of the logs on the fire. She sipped quietly while she waited. I knitted my brow and twisted my mouth. I took a deep breath and held out my hand.

“Put it on the hearth,” she said.

I was shaking. I knelt on the floor and stretched my hand forward. The hearth was warm from the fire. I lay my palm flat against the stone.

She stood and walked to a dark corner of the room. When she returned she was holding an axe. “This will hurt,” she said. And swung the axe.

Pain exploded from my hand. I wanted to snatch it back, but I kept it stretched before me. She struck again. The pain was white and brilliant. It radiated up my arm until I could feel it in the back of my head. She must have struck again, but my eyes were squeezed shut. I saw white flashes and my arm was alive with pain.

Then I saw a vision. It was Anna’s cross, the wood was older now, but her name was clear. I was hovering above her grave. White lightening flashed above me as the axe came down again. But now I felt no pain. Instead I rose into the air above her grave and saw the city of Szeged below me. People walked in the streets. I saw the magistrate and his men, hunched at their desks.

Then white shapes rose up around me. There were thirteen of them. I heard Anna’s voice next to me in the air.

This is where it will happen, she said. Anna and the other white shapes moved away and slowly encircled the city below.

“Open your eyes,” Erzsebet asszony said.

I did and saw I was back in her room. She stood above me with the axe. I looked at my hand. All six fingers were there. I flexed it. Nothing was broken.

I was still breathing heavily. I sat back in the chair.

“May I have it?” I said.

“What will you do if you have it?” she said.

I was so eager I closed my eyes to steady myself. “Invite them back,” I said.

There was a pause. Slowly a smell filled the room. It was wet earth, like during planting time…fallow ground. Then she leaned forward and pressed a little jar into my right hand. The glass of the jar felt cool. As she leaned back the air wafted around me. I realized the planting smell was coming from her.

Then she ushered me back down her hall to the door. I crossed the threshold and a slight shiver came between my thighs. I turned back to her.

“Travel through the night,” she said. “The storm won’t touch you.” Sure enough, although the wind was high and screaming, I felt warmth coursing through me.

“When should it happen?” I said.

“In two days,” she said. “On Sunday.”

Then she was gone.

Trial by Fire

It was just after midnight again. I was back in my dorm room on Sunday morning. I took Erzsebet asszony’s jar and sniffed it. It smelled like dry earth and mushrooms. I tipped the contents into my water cup and drank it.

The floor beneath my feet became shifting sand. I saw myself from the outside. The girl looking back at me looked like a dark asszony with wind swirling around her like a mirage. I could hear deep voices chanting and churning.

Then I was floating high in the air. The city of Szeged was below me again, but far from the Tisza River. It was in a vast desert with the sands reaching away to the eternal horizon. The priests and officials were below me. They hoped for blessings from me. They brought offerings … baskets of dried paprika and crushed leaves. Poppies and lilac branches. Dried sunflowers and caraway seeds. They laid them below me as they bent down. On the horizon was a storm with flashes of lightening, coming closer. In the thundercloud it seemed as if a constellation of stars was moving and growing. The stars formed the constellation of Fehérlófia. I felt movement in the air next to me. The thirteen white shapes appeared again. I felt Anna’s hand close around mine. It was no longer cold.

I looked down. The priests had raised their hands to the sky. They bent and swayed and moaned softly.

As I waited I saw a column of officials carrying a funeral pyre. The magistrate’s desiccated body was on it. His eyes were crusted and white. Several people were already carrying lit torches.

As I looked down on everyone, I opened my mouth and a low call rolled out from my chest. Soon the town was writhing and holding their hands up towards me. The torches touched the pyre and the magistrate’s body succumbed to flame. I felt a great power surge within me, as though hundreds of voices were stored in my heart. I pointed to the sun.

There was a crack like lightening. The sun tore across the sky in a flash and fled beyond the horizon. The crowd of officials and priests wailed and were carried away in the wind. Daytime was replaced with a night sky absolutely inflamed with stars, the brightest of which was the Fehérlófia cluster. I continued to breathe and I felt the light of day and night enter my eyes, my face, my waiting body.

I looked up into the sky around me. The thirteen white shapes were with me, and hundreds of others as well. We were all táltos. We all looked into the face of Isten, far above us in the sky. Isten raised his scepter. He pointed it at the earth and directed my eyes down. Suddenly I saw other girls, all throughout Hungary, all bent beneath their tasks. Digging in the earth. Trudging to schools. Reading their books. Writing. All the while watched by distrustful eyes of officials and priests.

You’ll go to them now, Isten said. Meet them in the night.

Why me?  I asked, through lips which carried a breath of scented earth.

I called you, Isten answered. And your mother before you.

Zary Fekete

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addition) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete