A child's voice, distressed, stretched to plaintive wails. Wait, she is coming closer, her footsteps brisk and urgent-- here she sprints, and here her message rings clear to the old man Mihalis, startled awake from slumber:
The lads are coming from Shurikoi, she shrieks.
Annika's idiot son tried to stop them, and they cut his throat. Leave behind your house, your animals, your possessions. Run, Parmiakert is no longer safe!
Annika had been a well-loved relative who lived in the next village, Shurikoi, and was also the only reason the Permyaks had been allowed to settle where they were. With both her and her son gone, nothing came in the way of an escalated war between the twin villages. Having been made nervous by persistent threats from the lads at Shurikoi, and
news shouted over the hills about the country plunging into general unrest, the Permyaks reacted promptly. Parents woke up their children, barely dressed up, and made for the cover of the surrounding forest.
This all except for Mihalis, his daughter Elena, and her two children, Nikos and Chrysanti. Their home was surrounded by an expanse of field, the closest thicket was too far away to duck into, and they were the closest, out of all the folk, to the approach of the assailing party: They were a gang of thirty or so
komitadji, members of the Qarataimir tribe, tall and haughty and marching resolutely to their destiny to wrest their lands once again from the wretches, the unworthy children of the flood. And Mihalis seized his sabre and said to his family:
Look, I'm not letting the Taimirs get to you. Before they reach us, I will kill you first. And Elena tucked her children grimly into the far corner of the house.
Now the lads had split up into teams, each one taking to an individual household to slaughter everyone and everything alive and to let loose their appetites for plunder. A deafening blow-- they have come armed with rifles! Where can they have gotten them from? A muffled plea for mercy from the distance, the next building, the dairy mill of Babajan's family. Alas, a travelling bard has heard the warning but only manage to duck into the building, covering himself vainly in the thresh. Poor man; they will break his neck and, in no time, he will be swinging from a tree on his own lyre's strings. Meanwhile, the mill was set ablaze, and Mihalis sensed the ominous crackling of fire, the heat on his face.
A gunshot close by, a deafening, sickening squeal, and another gunshot again which cut it off. They had reached Mihalis's pigpen. One kick, two kicks-- the assailants had shattered the old hemp lashings that held the door planks together. Mihalis counted three men; three had been tasked to dispatch of his family. Forgetting his earlier promises, he hurled himself at the closest one. The lightly-built komitadji was easily knocked over and pinned under the thickset older man. The swoosh of the sabre, the flash of a pistol's muzzle-- Chrysanti wailed in anguish, and Elena tore her gaze away and scrambled to cover her children's eyes with her mantle.
Father is dead, Lord, let it be as quick for us as it was for him. Could one ever steady the shivers of mortal fear? Even the most courageous of us pall in the face of death! Elena prayed wordlessly, in that space of a moment which seemed as eternity. And from eternity the words emerged:
A great sign appeared in the sky,
a woman, clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
The third komitadji lingered timidly at the door, hesitant to come any closer to Elena.
Get away from there, Chushinta, you don't know what creature it is that guards them! he called to his surviving companion. Elena waited for Chushinta to do his worst, but what could be taking him so long? And then she prayed:
The accuser of our brothers is cast out,
who accuses them before our God day and night.
Someone else was in the room. The hem of a dress brushed against Elena, who opened her eyes in surprise. How has this lady entered the room? Elena hadn't been looking, and Chushinta apparently did not know.
Come away from that woman! the boy shouted from behind him, but his heart had hardened.
He spat on the ground before him.
Here he fired his arquebus from the hip at the woman who stood between himself and Elena-- no, it missed, and the room was too dark to hit anything. He threw the arquebus aside, and unsheathing his shortsword he swung it at her, once! -- she did not dodge, and the tip of the blade grazed her right cheek -- twice! -- another gash, alongside the first one. Chushinta raised the shortsword over his head, ready to bring it down to split her down the middle, when he dropped the sword and collapsed, clutching his chest. Elena and her children watched him as he thrashed in the dirt in agony and expired, in a stretch of time which seemed all too long.
A cool breeze blew in through the doorway. The boy who had called Chushinta from there had fled in fright, and none of the others komitadjis paid the house of old man Mihalis any more heed; satiated as they were with laying waste to Parmiakert, they had moved on to the other villages. What had become of the lady who protected the family from them? She has disappeared, as abruptly as she had materialised. Elena and her children sat at the family bed, still huddled together and in a daze, but the next day they found themselves recovered enough to make for the hills.
References and Brainwave Sources
- Elena's prayer: Apocalypse 12:1, 12
- Polish Catholic folk legend from Częstochowa
- The circumstances of the raid, as well as some personal names, have been (almost) lifted from the autobiography of Nikos Kazantzakis.
