Jaro’s journal

Do all moms think their sons are blind idiots?

Time goes by, but my encounter with the ghost is not easily forgotten. I still feel her grip on my forearm. It faded a little, became less sharp, less cold, but hasn’t gone completely. Apart from that, life is returning to normal. Jaro doesn’t bring up our fight or his idea to “help me move on” anymore.

Except Nora is acting really strange all of a sudden, and Jaro doesn’t like it. And neither do I.

At first, it’s just tiny things—details that are easy to miss. She goes shopping and then returns with a small pink package. Curious, I peer inside to find a tiny wooden box with a cute rosebud painted on the lid. Later I find out it’s a new rouge.

Women in the city love to torture their faces with makeup. They powder their cheeks porcelain white and rouge their lips crimson until they pretty much look like dolls. Nora, however, was always quite indifferent towards those things. She was a Steppe-girl in a sense, raised in the wilderness. Women in My Little Wanderer shunned the Steppe-people, but still, there was some influence in the way people dressed and styled themselves. I don’t remember my mother or aunts ever using makeup. Their beauty was simple, bare and sun-tanned.

Nora uses some powders of course and even rouge sometimes, but never anything too bright. Now, this rouge is different. It’s imported and pricy, and the color of freshly spilled blood.

She also starts going out more often. She has friends in the city.

“Just having dinner with Lydia,” she says.

Or, “Mary and I thought we’d go see a play.”

But something is off. She opens up the chests that have been locked since Jaro’s father passed and rummages through the old dresses and scarves and hats, and then she spends the whole evening trying them on in front of a tall mirror.

Now and then she lets a sigh escape her lips and mutters something like, “No, this is so out of fashion!”

But despite these complaints, for the first time in a long, long while, she actually seems… happy.

And the reason for this happiness appears on our doorstep a couple of weeks later, wearing his best suit and carrying a huge box.

By that time we know his name is Mikh and that he is “a friend.”

“Behave well,” Nora warns Jaro, who was forced into his best suit, too.

“Are you going to marry him?” Jaro demands instead.

“Marry? Ah, my dear! What… It’s too early for that sort of… Anyway, are you ready?”

We’re not ready, but she opens the door and invites him in. Mikh is a nice guy. I see it at once. He isn’t too young, but not old. Balding. A bit on the stockier side. Not handsome exactly, but not unpleasant either.

He hands the box to Jaro, and by the looks of it, it’s pretty heavy. Jaro lowers it to the floor and regards it with alarm.

“Open it!” Mikh urges him, and hesitantly Jaro complies.

“Wow!” he breathes out when he sees what’s inside. Books. Of course.

“Your mom told me you like archeology.”

“I do,” Jaro nods, and then, heartily adds, “Thank you. I love it.”

They have dinner, the three of them, in the dining room lit by thirty candles. It’s a big room to illuminate, and usually, Nora and Jaro just eat in the kitchen, by the hearth. They have to be careful with money because Igor’s pension is not much. They can barely afford a maid, and sometimes Nora even entertains the thought of moving to the country, but I doubt she’ll ever actually go through with this. She feels safer in the big city.

Jaro eats his dinner and retires with his box upstairs, to the Attic, leaving Nora and Mikh alone. They sit on the couch and drink wine and talk.

I almost join Jaro, but then I hear Nora’s quiet voice, and it stops me in my tracks.

“I was a little girl,” she says softly. “Twelve.”

Mihk listens, holding her fingers gently in his hands.

“My whole family was murdered.”

I can’t believe it! She’s talking about the My Little Wanderer massacre! She never talks about it! Not with Jaro, not with anyone. I can’t help but listen closer.

“Tell me,” Mikh says.

“I… well, I was but a young girl back then. I went to the cave near the river to gather some grape leaves. Our sister-in-law used to bake them, so we often went there. And then something happened and the cave started to fill up with water. I got trapped inside, and I couldn’t get out for almost two days. Then, when I got out…”

She shakes her head.

“Well, I discovered my whole town, soaking in blood, slaughtered by those savages, the Clan!”

“That’s… shocking! I can’t imagine what you must’ve gone through.”

“Oh, it was tough. I remember the smell. It was horrible. I had to walk for many kilometers to get to the nearest settlement. I was thirsty and hungry, dead tired and so scared…”

I can’t help but roll my eyes. It all sounds so rehearsed. And why tell all of it to him, to this stranger? Does she want him to feel sorry for her? Or maybe she wants to appear “interesting” in his eyes? Oh, this is so Nora! None of this is real for her!

“Was your family big?” Mikh asks.

She shrugs.

“Not really. Mom, dad, older brother and a sister.”

A sister…

I can’t believe my ears. I wasn’t “a sister”! I was her twin! I was the closest person in the world for her! We shared our mother’s womb, and can there be an intimacy greater than that?

A sister…

Oh, yeah, and a sister…

What was her name?... Kara? Yes, that’s it!

And then she reaches out and kisses him. I watch them, feeling anger rising in me.

I want to slap her. I want to grab her by the hair and slam her stupid head into this elegant coffee table. I want to tear apart the room and break the glass and upturn the furniture.

But I certainly can’t do any of those things. So instead I pull my shit together and go upstairs to find Jaro.

* * *

“So what do you think of him?” Jaro asks.

“About your mother’s suitor?”

“Yeah.”

“Nora’s type.”

“Which is?”

“Boring.”

He chuckles.

“Yeah.”

“You agree, I see. So a box of books isn’t enough for you to warm towards him?”

He shrugs.

“I don’t really need to like him now, do I? But I want Mom to be happy.”

I consider this. Can I say the same thing? Do I want Nora to be happy? Do I actually believe she deserves to be happy?

The print of the ghostly hand on my forearm flares up with sudden intensity and I grimace. For a second it’s like I can see into the future. I can see Nora getting married to Mikh. I see their beautiful wedding with white lilies and sugary cakes. I can see her in the wedding gown—beautiful, radiant. I can see them moving to a new home—his home. I can see her giving birth to a couple more kids—cute golden babies, whom she would adore and who would adore her in return.

And I can see me, invisible, cold, angry, jealous, watching her have all that I can never have. Watching her live her simple ordinary life. I’m going to become just like that poor girl in the graveyard, aren’t I?

But I don’t want that.

“Jar?” I say. “So where do you think I might move on then?”

Jaro’s journal

She’s changed.

I can’t pinpoint this change, so subtle, so insignificant it is.

But it’s still there—a seed of fear has been planted inside of her.”

We discuss it for some time and pretty soon it becomes apparent that neither of us knows what we are supposed to do or even where to start.

“So you don’t remember anything about that night?” Jaro is looking through some books, philosophic bullshit about the nature of reality and existence of a soul. I know deep in my core that nothing that can help us can be found in those books, but Jar doesn’t lose hope.

“I don’t.”

“Nothing at all? Like maybe the tiniest thing?”

“I told you a hundred million times already: no, I don’t!”

My whole past is wrapped in thick smoke, but the night of the massacre is just not there at all. As if someone ripped it out of time, leaving a gaping black hole.

“Then… what is the nearest memory?”

I sigh and try to reach out into the smoke.

“Nothing unusual. Life there was not full of events, you know. It was a small town in the middle of nowhere. Quiet. Boring. Days were all the same.”

You might think that life in the Steppe has got to be exciting. Full of unknown dangers and adventures. But in reality, it isn’t different from a life in any other small town. The only difference really is that there were more Steppe people coming to town to get some supplies or have a drink or two in the local tavern. Sometimes young men picked fights with them, but nothing too serious.

There were whispers of the Clan’s atrocities, but all those things were happening somewhere else, they were like horror stories children like to tell each other at night, cozying up under warm blankets.

We spent our days doing chores. Fishing. Playing hide and seek. Swimming in the fickle river that ran past the town. Our life was boring in the most perfect amazing sense. Mother scolding me for yet another ripped dress. Father teaching me how to shoot a bow and arrow. Alma, my brother’s wife, making me the most beautiful wreath of flowers, saying in her gentle Steppe accent: “You’re too fast, little one. Just be still for a moment, let me put this onto your head.”

The only thing I remember about that day is that I was angry at everyone because suddenly everyone seemed to have a job for me. Even Alma had come up with something. She was baking grape leaves and wanted me to pick them for her.

Picking grape leaves was a tedious task. The cave where the grape grew was a long way away. It was damp and cold, and truly the last place in the world I wanted to go to.

But I couldn’t say no, not to Alma, so I acquiesced reluctantly and was on my way to the cave when I saw Nora. She was sitting by the river with her book on her knees, in her pretty, old-but-good-as-new dress.

I called out for her:

“Do this for me! Please! I’ll be forever in your debt!”

“You’re so in my debt already! No, Kara, I don’t want to!”

“Please, Nora! Please, please, please, please, please!”

“I’m… scared of that place, you know that. And I’ll ruin my dress!”

“You can have my dress for the next week!”

“Which dress are we talking about exactly?”

“Which dress do you think? The green one! Your favorite!”

She worshipped that dress and hated me for not allowing her to wear it. Especially so, since I didn’t really care for it that much myself. I only used it to taunt her, putting it on in front of the mirror, spinning this way and that way, letting the hem fly in graceful circles.

“You’re gonna give it to me?” she squinted at me, not quite buying it. “The green dress?”

“For a week. Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I swear! Anything just to get Alma out of my hair! Now go, she needs this basket full.”

I close my eyes. This was the last time Nora and I spoke.

But this isn’t an important memory, so I keep it to myself and try to think of something else—something that is actually helpful.

And then I do.

“We buried a vow-keeper, me and Nora,” I say. “Could that be it?”

“What’s a vow-keeper?”

“It’s a… like a charm Steppe people make when they are really serious about something. My older brother was married to this Steppe woman, and she taught me how to make those. It’s like a little spell. You take a jar or a box, and you put something inside, something that has a very special meaning to you and you promise to do something, and then you bury it. This charm helps you to keep your promise, no matter what happens.”

Some uncle went to a big city and brought us a round tin box full of caramel candies. We ate them, sitting by the river, under the Huge Tree. And then Nora said:

“Let’s make that vow thingy she taught you.”

“What shall we vow?”

“That we never come apart.”

“We don’t need no vow for that. You know I’m never going to leave you.”

“Well… still.”

And so we made it. We each cut a strand of our hair and braided them together and put it into the caramel smelling box and secured it with a ribbon. And then we dug a hole in the ground under the tree and buried it there.

And then we forgot all about it…

Jaro listens to my explanation, frowns.

“It sounds like a children’s game to me,” he finally says.

I shrug.

“Yes, but the way Alma explained it to me, the Steppe is a magical place. Steppe people believe that all those creatures that live there draw their powers from it—from the earth itself. Every intention you put into the earth, becomes magical. What if there is a bit of truth there? What if it actually worked?”

“Well… it does make sense, I suppose.”

“Not really, it doesn’t, but what in this world does?”

He considers for a while.

“Okay. Then this is what we’re going to do. We need to find that box and dig it out and destroy it. By doing this, we destroy the spell, too. And then you are free.”

“Yeah, but… how? I mean it’s there, in My Little Wanderer. In the Steppe.”

“Exactly. We need to go there and find it.”

Is he serious? With a creeping feeling I realize that yes, he actually is.

“Jaro, no! We can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Imagine telling your mom you want to go to the Steppe, let alone finding My Little Wanderer! Nora wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Mom doesn’t have to know.”

“You want to run away?!” I squeak.

“Yes, exactly!”

“But you can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because…. Because, Jar, you’re a kid!”

“I turned fifteen six months ago, which means I am only six months short of being legal. And I look a lot older.”

“Older? Please! You look twelve!”

But that is not entirely true. He does look older. He could probably pass for an eighteen-year-old. If he wiped that goofy smile off his face. Seeing his enthusiasm makes me want to smile too and relent to any stupid plan he might come up with. My idiot sister, how did she manage to make something as perfect as Jaro?

“I can’t let you do this! It’s not right, taking you there.”

“Come now,” he says quietly. “It’s not about me, and you know it. It’s about you not wanting to go back and face all of that. It’s about you being scared. And please, don’t disappear again! I am not trying to be mean. I just want to help.”

I think about it for a few long seconds.

“Tell me it has nothing to do with you being not okay with your mother’s new suitor.”

“Of course not,” he waves me off with a fast smile.

I am not sure I believe him, but I pretend that I do. It doesn’t mean that I say yes though. I know that it isn’t the right thing to do. Jaro is still very young, and the Steppe is not a place for idealistic stupid kids who want to play heroes. I won’t be able to protect him if he gets into trouble.

But there is a voice in my head that finds arguments against all of these points. Jaro is not a kid anymore, it tells me. He is smart, capable, and he wants adventures. It means that sooner or later he’ll be off to find them with or without you, so why not let him do it now? He is idealistic—that’s true, he doesn’t know what he is getting himself into—that’s also true, but he has you, and you would be able to help him still. You can warn him of danger. You can be a lookout. You can notice things he doesn’t, and caution him in time to avoid any harm.

Deep in my heart, I know that all of these reasons are nothing but a pile of dog shit. He is young and naïve, and those two things are enough to not let him anywhere near the Steppe.

“Nora will kill me,” I think, and then almost laugh out loud.

Nora doesn’t even know you’re here, you dolt! That’s the beauty of being a ghost. No one will ever blame you for anything.