Spring came, and with it, clear skies, clear days, and a clear view of the ruins of Trient falling and rising along the hills in a stark curve.  Smoke rose near the central market square from a fresh fire sown by the guns of the Marrazzano mercenaries.  Jontano crouched next to the sheltering bulk of a fallen column and watched the smoke drift lazily up and up past the wall of greening forest that ringed the city and farther up still into the endless blue of the heavens.

When it was quiet, as it was now, he could almost imagine himself as that smoke, dissipating, dissolving into the air.

"Hsst, Jono, look what I found!"

He jumped, caught himself, and managed to look unsurprised when Stepha ran, hunched over, through the maze of the fallen temple and flung herself down next to him.  She undid the strings of her pack.

"You've never seen things like this!"

But Stepha always bragged.  Jontano wasn't impressed by the pickings:  an empty glass jar, six painted playing cards, a slender book with crisped edges but no writing on its leather cover, a length of fancy silver ribbon, four long red feathers, and ten colored marbles.

"That won't buy much flour," he retorted.  "Where'd you find this?"

"You're just jealous I went by myself.  It all came from the Apothecary's Shop, the one midway down Murderer's Row."

"You idiot!  Not one thing here is worth risking your life for."  Murderer's Row had once been known as Prince Walafrid Boulevard, but no one called it that now, since the entire Boulevard was well within reach of the cannon and, at the farthest end, the muskets of the Marrazzanos.

"Everyone said Old Aldo was a witch.  Maybe these have some power."

"Ha!  If he was a witch, then why couldn't he spare his own shop and his own life?"  But the cards were pretty.  Jontano picked one up even though he didn't want Stepha to think he admired her foolhardy courage.

"No one saw him dead.  He could still be alive."  Her expression turned sly, and she lowered her voice for dramatic effect.  "I heard a noise, like rats, when I was in the shop.  Maybe he was hiding from me.  Everything was all turned over and broken, except for that old painting of the forest that hangs behind the counter.  It was the strangest thing, with the hole in the roof and all, but it still hung there, as if it hadn't been disturbed at all.  Not even wet."

"Here, this isn't wet either," he said, showing her the face of the card, "and it has a forest painted on it."

"You are jealous!  Ha!"  But she examined the card with him.

The colors were as fresh as if they had just been painted onto the card:  the pale green buds of spring leaves, the thin parchment bark of birches, the scaly gray skin of tulip trees and the denser brown bark of fir;  a few dots of color, violet and gold and a deep purpling blue, marked clumps of forest flowers along the ground.

"I don't see how anyone could paint things so tiny," said Stepha.

"They use a brush with a single bristle.  Don't you know anything?"

Before she could reply, the sky exploded.  They both ducked instinctively.  Cannon boomed.  A nearby house caved in.  A wailing rose up into the air, the alarm, and farther away, smoke rose from newly-shattered buildings.

Stepha shoveled her treasures into the bag and scuttled down the hill, dodging this way and that.  Jono, still clutching the card, ran after her, not bothering to bend over.  Not even the famous Marrazzanos could aim well enough to hit them here, as far away as they were from the lines, but if a ball or shot happened to land close by, then it scarcely mattered whether you were bent in two or running straight up like a man.

He caught up to Stepha just as a great crash sounded from the ruins behind and a column fell, smashing onto the hollow where they had just sheltered.  Shards flew.  Stepha grunted in pain, and Jontano felt a spray like a hundred bees stinging along his back.

As they darted into the safety of an alley, a double round of shot hit what remained of the roof of the old temple.  It caved in with a resounding roar.  Dust poured up into the sky in a roiling brown cloud.  Then they turned a corner and another, and ran through the back alleys and barricaded streets, strewn with burnt-out buildings, fallen walls, and an endless parade of little refuges, shelters built from bricks and planks salvaged from once beautiful houses.  In some of those tiny refuges people lived, but most simply served as a hiding place to any man, woman, or child caught outside when a bombardment began.

By the time they got back to their house, in the relative safety of the north central quarter of the city, Jontano could feel tickling fingers of blood running down his back.  Stepha was limping.

They burst in through the gate and, panting, walked past the newly-planted vegetable garden.  Once Mama had grown flowers here, and it had been a lovely place in the spring and summer;  she and Papa had entertained guests and laughed and talked and sung to all hours of the night while the children watched from the windows above, faces pressed to the glass.  But that had been a long, long time ago.  Now most of the windows were covered with boards and the flower garden had been transplanted to vegetables.

Great-Uncle Otto was standing guard over the well.  He looked them over with disgust.  Stepha yelped when he probed her thigh with his fingers, and Jontano saw a gaping red wound where she had been hit with shrapnel.

"Now your mother will have to sew these clothes up," he said, looking angry as he examined the back of Jontano's shirt.  Jontano knew it ought to hurt, but he felt as if Otto's hands probed someone else's body, not his.  "There's little enough thread to be had," Otto went on.  "Nor do I hold with those who go looting shops.  We might as well fall into the hands of the Marrazzanos as become looters ourselves.  Look what barbarians this war has made of us and our children!"

Stepha, brave enough up until now, began to snivel.  Otto spared her not one sympathetic word and turned his black gaze on Jontano, who squirmed.

"You'll be old enough to go into the militia next year, but I suppose next you'll be saying you'd rather prey on the dead than honor those who have died before you by behaving as a man ought, taking up arms and fighting nobly."

Jontano snorted.  "I don't know what's so noble about fighting against cannon and musket with wooden staves and butcher's knives."

Otto slapped him.  "I won't say a word against your sainted mother, who has suffered enough, but her mother and her mother's mother were Marrazzanos, and I can see their dirty blood has tainted you."

"What do I care about Trassahar and Marrazzano?  I wish I had no blood of either kind!  All we do is fight and die.  What's the point of that?"  Jontano could not help but shout the words.  His throat tightened with the familiar lump.  "I'd just like to grow up to be a painter like Papa was."

Otto swung his musket around threateningly, but in the next instant he said, in a low voice, "Get inside."

Stepha bolted in.  Jontano followed her, but just as he crossed the threshold he heard a shot fired, then silence.  He turned.

Great-Uncle Otto staggered and dropped the musket, left hand clutching his chest.  Jontano ran out to him, shoved him aside to get at the musket, and raised it just in time to stare down the muzzle at a ragged band of men and women, armed with a single musket and several buckets.

"Give us water," said one of the women.  She was filthy, skinny, and her hands and arms were a mass of red sores.  Beside her, an emaciated man reloaded the musket.

Shaking, Jontano stared them down, but by that time Mama appeared in the door with the pistol and Uncle Martin leaned out of the second story window, his musket propped on the flowerbox, pushing aside the leafy stems of carrots.  He had no legs now, but he had once been a sniper in the militia.

The ragged band retreated.  Mama stuck the pistol in her belt and hurried out.  With Aunt Martina's help she carried Otto inside, leaving Jontano on guard while Uncle Martin dragged himself down the stairs and together with the two women treated Otto's wound.

It took Otto five days to die, and because of that, everyone was too busy to scold Stepha for looting along Murderer's Row.

"Why shouldn't I?" she whispered to Jontano in the bed they shared with the two surviving youngest cousins, who were asleep. "Why should I care if I get killed, anyway?  The Marrazzanos will never leave, and even if they did I don't have any friends left and no Trassahar boy will ever want to marry me because I'm just a Marrazzano whore."

They had saved the stub of a candle and they lit it now, while the house was quiet.  Great- Uncle Otto's body lay in state in the parlor, until the burial tomorrow.  He was the last but one of his branch of the family, having lost wife, sons, and all but one of his grandchildren to the war.  He and his surviving daughter-in-law had fled to the city three years ago after their village had been razed, but she had died of a fever last winter, and now only little Judit remained, snoring softly beside Jontano.

Stepha played with the marbles, turning them round so that highlights of bright color caught and winked in the light, yet Jontano could not help but be drawn to the cards once more.  They were shaped like playing cards, made of stiff cardboard cut into rectangles as large as his hands, but they were like no deck he had ever seen.  A plain hatched pattern of black and white was printed on the backs.  The front of each card looked as if it had been painted lovingly by a gifted hand.  He spread the deck out to examine them.

A crane stands on one leg in a pool, its form silhouetted in a sunset of red and gold.

A fetid march stretches to the horizon, marked by small hummocks and a few twisted old trees.

The restless sea, infinite, surges and swells, without any sign of the safe harbor of land.

A blindfolded woman dressed in a shift runs through a dark forest.  Spiders and strange, unsightly creatures peer at her from the branches.  As she runs, unseeing, she is stepping on a snake.

Two birch trees bend, their highest branches intertwining so that they form an arch, that leads . . . but here the artist had depicted a haze of golden sunlight in which Jontano could make out only a suggestion, of Trient, perhaps, a golden city where once Trassaharin and Marrazzano lived in peace, together.

And the spring forest, his favorite, the one he never tired of looking at.

As he ran his fingers over the painted surface he could almost feel the touch of the painter's brush, as if by concentrating hard enough he could become the painter painting the card, as if he could see through the painter's eyes the act of creation, the grinding of the paint, the careful preparation of the brushes and the backing, each brushstroke, each spot of color laid on with exact care.

When he touched the pale green buds of the spring forest, he could feel himself walking there along the path which wound through the wood, darting this way and that through clumps of goldenrod and violets.  It sloped down, then crossed a narrow river and ascended a hillside.  He walked up.  Loam gave under his boots.  Wind brushed his face, bringing the scents of the dense forest to him.  He heard the rustle of birds above and the little scrabblings of rodents below.  A spare outcropping of rock thrust from among the trees.  He scrambled up onto it and, turning, saw the land below him, curved like a bowl, filling the graceful little valley with trees and emerald meadows.  Suddenly he realized this was Trient -- but Trient without the city, without the fighting, at peace, in the quiet of a spring morning.

A crash tore him out of the forest.

He lay in the crowded bed, frozen, feeling Stepha snoring against him -- she always had a cold -- and listened to the pound of the Marrazzano cannon.  They had launched a night attack.  Little Judit woke up and began to cry.

Jontano stuffed the cards into his worn but clean pillowcase and gathered the little girl into his arms.  After a while she fell asleep, and he did as well, though the cannon boomed intermittently and once an explosion sounded very near them.  What did it matter if they were killed in their sleep?  At least it would spare them the agony of dying.  So he slept, and dreamed of the spring forest.

At dawn as he and Judit walked hand-in-hand to the old central park that was now the main cemetery -- all the other graveyards being full -- the little girl tugged on him until he leaned down to hear her whisper.

"I dreamed that I was in heaven with Grandpa.  It was all the prettiest forest, and a red and yellow bird sat on my fingers.  And there were flowers."

Aunt Martina and Cousin Gregor carried the body wrapped in the most threadbare sheet, the only one they could spare for burial.  Uncle Martin, ever quick to see the twisted humor in any situation, had waved goodbye to them where he sat on guard in the one unboarded upstairs window and then shouted after:  "See, it'll be the last burial in this house -- we've got no more sheets to spare!"

They paid the gravediggers three coppers and stood by while a hole was dug next to the others in their family.  Jontano led Judit to each wooden cross in turn, Stepha following at his heels:  Papa's grave, the oldest one there, Jono's two brothers and one sister, Baby Lucia, cousins, an aunt, and uncles.  More men than women, because the men all went to the militia, as Cousin Gregor would go next month when he turned fifteen, as Jontano himself would go next year.

Stepha stared at the graves, dry-eyed.  Her parents weren't here.  Their graves lay on the other side of the lines, and everyone knew that at least one of her brothers fought in the Marrazzano army, but Mama had taken the girl in because she and Stepha's mother were first cousins, and no woman with even a trace of Trassahar blood in her was safe on the Marrazzano side.

It was another clear day.  For once the Marrazzanos weren't shelling Trient.  One of the cousins had died while burying his own father.  They buried Great-Uncle Otto without much ceremony, and Mama decorated the grave with a few shoots from his beloved potato plants.  Here and there on the overgrown grass that was all that was left of the once-manicured park, other families stood, burying a newly-lost relative.  Dogs nosed at fresh dirt.  The gravediggers threw stones at them.

"This park used to be so lovely," said Mama to Aunt Martina as they walked back.  The silence lay heavily on them, it was so unusual.  "Do you remember?"

"All the trees," said Aunt Martina in her hoarse voice.  "I remember all the trees."

Not one was left, of course, not even the stumps, all cut down and dug out for firewood.  Jontano remembered the trees vaguely, too, from picnics, from running down by the lake, from Papa's canvases and sketches, flowering tulip trees, elm trees, beech, oaks and birches, ash and aspen, cherry with its spring blossoms and apple and pear.

"It all used to be trees," he said suddenly, and Mama looked at him questioningly.  "Trient.  The city.  Before the city was here it all used to be trees, one great forest.  And it was quiet.  It was peaceful then."

Aunt Martina snorted.  "Except for the wolves howling at night.  There are always wolves, Jono.  Don't forget them."

"I'd like to be a wolf," said Stepha, "and rip out the throats of my enemies."

Little Judit burst into tears.

"You've scared her, Stepha," snapped Aunt Martina.   "I shouldn't have to remind you, but I'll whip you if I've found you went out prowling around Murderer's Row again."

Now Stepha began to cry as well, so they looked properly like mourners as they came home empty-handed.

The house was quiet when they got back.  Uncle Martin sat on his chair, elbows and musket propped in the window, and smoked a pipe.

"Where'd you get that tobacco, you good for nothing?" scolded Aunt Martina.  "Did you sell the rest of my silver forks?"

Uncle Martin merely grinned at her and flourished the pipe.  He had a network of old friends.  Once a week they carted him off to a mysterious place in town where only men from the militia were allowed to congregate.  When Uncle Martin came home from these jaunts, he always had a new piece of news from the front, and occasionally a trinket for the children or some luxury item for the women -- yarn, lamp-oil, a piece of fruit, once a pair of good shoes that, with a bit of paper stuffed in the toes, fit Aunt Martina perfectly.

Aunt Martina called him a few rude names, but she was too weary to really lay into him, as she usually did -- she and Martin liking good arguments.  They argued about everything, the King, the Parliament, the Marrazzano generals, battles fought four hundred years before, treaties signed and broken.  Uncle Martin was a good Royalist:  He believed in the Trassaharin King, whom, Martina reminded him, had escaped years ago to another country where he lived in peace and plenty;  he believed in the Parliament, and in the cause.  Aunt Martina believed that they were all of them, Trassahar and Marrazzano kings, generals, and ministers alike, scavengers feeding off the body of the farmers and the shopkeepers and the artisans, who had once populated Trient and the surrounding countryside without civil war, marrying each to the other with more attention to economic considerations than to blood ties.

So Mama, half Marrazzano, had married into a good solid Trassahar craftsman's family.  No one had thought twice about it, because her own family were craftsmen, tile makers, and she had a good dowry, a fine hand for painting pottery, and liked well enough the man who became her husband.  So she had in her turn fostered in her cousin's daughter, Stepha.

So Uncle Martin, Royalist that he was, patted Stepha on the head when she brought him up his dinner of potatoes and onions, and told her that she'd had an offer of marriage.

Stepha dropped the plate.  She began weeping, but whether over the shattered plate or the marriage offer Jontano couldn't tell.  No one scolded her.  Aunt Martina scooped up the precious food and Uncle Martin ate it from a tin cup.

"Who would offer for me?" Stepha asked through her sobs.

"My old friend Zjilo Berio."

"He's only got one arm," objected Aunt Martina.

"Which he lost fighting," said Uncle Martin.  "His wife died last winter, and he's got the two little ones now."

"They had the three children," said Mama, having come upstairs to see what the commotion was about.

"They had three, it's true, but he lost the boy to a sniper's bullet one month ago."

"Ah," said Mama.  Jontano saw her wipe a speck from her eye.  He wasn't sure if it was a tear or not.

"How old is he?" asked Aunt Martina.

"About thirty."

Aunt Martina considered this.  "That's not too bad."

"That's ancient!" protested Stepha.

Uncle Martin stared her down, and she wiped her nose and clasped her hands obediently in front of her blouse.  But she wrung them, twisting her fingers about each other, and Jontano couldn't tell whether she liked or was terrified of the idea of marrying a man as old as thirty.  Jontano didn't know what he thought of it.  He'd known Stepha so long that he couldn't imagine her being old enough to marry, even though she was almost two years older than he was.

When Uncle Martin spoke again, he measured his words carefully.  "Zjilo is a good man.  We fought together.  He never raised a hand to his wife, though she came from an aristocratic family and spoke down to him once the war came and they couldn't have the luxuries they had before."

"He's rich still!"  Aunt Martina leaped on this point.  "I thought the family lost their warehouse.  I thought they had nothing."

"Or you'd have pursued him yourself?"  Martin grinned at her.  "The family kept something by, or must have.  He's taking the children out of Trient.  He can't bear it any more for their sake now that he lost the boy.  He's afraid of losing the little girls, too.  They've a small estate in Kigori."

"There's no way in or out of Trient," said Mama suddenly.  Jontano felt more than saw the pain on her face, in her body.  His eldest brother had died that way, trying to get out of the city to fetch the herbs -- the apothecary having long since run out of such supplies -- that kept Baby Lucia's heart going.  So the two had, in a way, died together.

Martin snorted.  "How do you think this tobacco got here?  There are ways, if you've enough money, or important enough news, and are willing to run the gauntlet and take the risk.  It would be a good life for you, Stepha, but if you agree to it, you must understand that you might not live through the crossing.  Zjilo's agreed to take Judit, too, now that she's alone, and raise her as his own."

Stepha glanced over at Jontano, but he only shrugged.  He tried to imagine what it would be like without her, but could not.

"Why does he want me?" Stepha asked sullenly.  "To use me as a servant and a whore?"

Uncle Martin slapped her.  This time, though, she didn't begin to cry.  Jontano saw something different in the way she stood, as if she had already made a decision but was refusing to give it away easily.  "As a favor to me, my girl, and don't you talk back to me again.  He needs a wife.  A young girl like you will be strong enough to do the work and bear him more children.  You're a pretty girl, too, when you're not making faces and acting wild.  If we don't get you out of Trient you'll either get shot or end up in the marketplace with the rest of the goods that are bought and sold."

Stepha flinched.

"Martin!" scolded Aunt Martina, but Martin looked at her gravely.  Whatever Martina saw in Martin's gaze caused her to nod her head once, shortly, and gesture at him to go on.  Jontano watched in confused silence.

"When Zjilo began talking of leaving, of getting a new wife, I reminded him that you'll be sixteen next month and that you're a good girl and better off out of Trient.  He doesn't care that you've got Marrazzano blood.  If you agree and are a dutiful wife to him, you'll have a good life, with servants, land, a good kitchen and decent clothes always for yourself and your children."

Abruptly Mama spoke.  "Can he get us out, too, Martin?  All of us?"  Her voice held a passion Jontano hadn't heard in it for years.  Ancient memories resurfaced, clawing out of him, growing, consuming, memories of happiness, of Mama and Papa planning the garden, sketching new patterns for plates and vases for the family business, and in her voice as well he thought he heard a whispering note of hope, that somewhere peace might be found, a place where happiness could, grain by grain, brick by brick, be built again.

As if the Marrazzano guns had opened up again, Martin's next words shattered that fragile thread linking Mama, linking Jontano himself, to her dream.

"Do you have a thousand florins?"

She gasped.  It was an enormous sum.

"Relatives to go to?  We've got nothing but what we have here, Constance.  Zjilo stayed this long because of his wife's family, and because of the risk to the children.  But they'll die quickly enough in this hellhole, so why wait?  I wish him luck.  I wish we hadn't lost everything and everyone, but what's the use?  We can't leave."

"We mustn't leave," said Aunt Martina.  Her voice, forever scarred by the men who had raped her and then tried and failed to kill her by cutting her throat, sounded hoarser than ever.  "That would give Trient to the Marrazzanos.  Why else have we suffered?  What have our beloved ones died for?  I will stand here until the day I die rather than run away and give it to those bastard Marrazzanos."
 

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All material Copyright Katrina Elliott 1995. All rights reserved.