by Marcy Wilson-Cales

The Gypsy woman was getting old; she did not scorn to hide the silver that had started at her temples and was now spreading, frostlike, over her once-midnight hair. But her eyes were bright as a bird's, and when she walked, the jewelry that festooned her like a Christmas Tree would ring softly, like tiny bells in the night.

She walked alone, without fear of being spotted or harassed. It was late, and the moon was at half-silver, cast in the beautiful glow of summer, and the rays beat down upon the metal roofs of Collinsport, making the small town look clean and well-washed as a wedding dress in white gold and pearls.

No one stirred to notice the moonstone night; the roofs shut the sleeping gaje from the presence of smiling Alako. Older now, Magda could only shake her head, her disgust softening into a sad pity. It was strange how the truly pathetic thought the Romani were poor and meager. No wandering Gypsy ever went without the interconnected world of their family; food, shelter and safety was always there to be had, and no chals ever went neglected, nor lacked for dowry gold, nor food nor affection. Not for them was to push young birds out of the nest, like the gaje did. The birds would fly when they were feathered, not before.

The old woman passed sleeping dogs, chained to their scraps of yard, and the passing cats on their business dipped their ears to her in respect, eyes like her own.

The house she went to was gray under Alako's light, but smoothed in the brightness of it, like the water-gentled quartz pebbles she kept in a putsi around her neck. No lights were on; the sleeping dog here was a pureblooded mastiff with an iron collar. Teeth protruded from his large chops; the three striped cats sitting on top of the white fence, well away from his chain's reach, watched her with polite curiosity.

This house wasn't so bad; two storey, unfortunately, and Magda did not wholly approve of that, since it was too easy for a man or woman to unknowingly walk past each other on separate floors, breaking the marime laws. But it was neat, and kept as clean as gaje knew how, you had to give them credit for trying, like praising a child's first clumy tries at the needle. Outside, it was well planted in thick herb and flower; the Fillmores had a ghost of Power about them, a sensitivity to the way of nature that Magda did approve of. Of course, they were still gaje, and that was why her visit, like all the others, were kept secret. She passed the long, neat rows of honeybee skeps in approval; there were poorer ways to make a living.

Her steps led her to the back of the hosue, where there were more hives, and a tiny grove of quince and apples in a clover lawn. Under the largest tree a swing had been fashioned, and a young girl was sitting in it without swinging, just holding her hands on the ropes and looking up at the stars in the dreamy way her mother used to...

"A night for bak, eh, chal?"

The girl brust into a delighted smile. "Aunt Magda!" She whispered. "I'm so glad to see you! I just knew you'd be out on a night like this!"

Magda approached, and took for a chair a neatly-sawn off tree stump. "You have the look of your mama more every day." She said quietly. "And her mama before." It was true she was pale like her mother and father both; Quentin's stamp was in the glacier-blue eyes and midnight hair, but otherwise, Lenore was her mother reborn.

Lenore had heard this before, so her smile was not as sad as it once had been. "I'm growing up." She admitted with regret. "And I don't see you as much as I want to."

"I'm aging too, chi," Magda chuckled. "But such a nice night, as soon as I did the atchin'tan up right I had to come over, see how you were doing."

"How is Uncle Rus?"

"Same as always. Thinks I'm made of thin glass. He's not like my Sandor, but that's no surrise." Bright eyes, sharp and too-piercing, looked the girl over. "I just have time for a story, mi Romani chi."

A hungry look came over the girl's face. "Tell it to me in Romany, please."

"Are you sure, chi?" You mama's blood is like learning, you know--a little will get you drunk and then the only cure is to drink the cup dry."

"I'm sure." Lenore looked down at her bare feet, which were catching the dew in the white clover. "When you die, there will be no one to talk to me in the way my mother could have. Will I forget the language? I don't know. For years it was just a wonderful secret to keep from the Fillmores--my parents...my friends spoke of fairy godmothers but inside I was laughing because I had a Gypsy witch!"

Her grin, then, was much like Magda's. "Make it a good story."

"Of course." Magda thought. "But I'm not a witch, y'know. I'm the chovihani. That's our name for us."

"How did you get to be one?" Lenore asked eagerly.

"That's a long story, long as a flower takes to grow; I tell you a better story. A story of how I met my first chovihani. I wasn't more than your age, I'd say. And back then, it was dangerous to be one. Even more than it is now. Back in Europe, they would hang us for anything, and the police were so hard that we grew to fear the magic-users of our own kind."

"But you weren't afriad." Lenore said with utter conviction.

"Nah." Magda said slowly, with a grin. "I wasn't..."

Once upon a time (of course), not so very long ago, there lived in Hungary a small band of Lowari Gypsies (That's Romani to you, chi), that eked a simple living by the River Tisa.

When the season came for it, they worked the massive hyssop fields that gave their country so much of its wealth, then worked the paprika fields that gave their country so much fame (and, it was said, zest in life). And when they felt like it, they just uprooted and visited the friendly juhasz, the outlaws who eked out a living in their own, inmitiable way on the barren plain of the Puszta.

Among the little band was a young girl that was just entering that most-dreaded of years for any parent: that of a teenager.

Now, to be fair, that unless they were the most sheltered and repressed of parents, most expect their darling chal to cut loose. It comes with that time of life, like the season of dust-devils, and just like the season, is quick to expend its strength and die down.

Young people also have a way of living the way you tell them to live, and yet not in the ways you expected.

This girl, whose name was Magda, after the rashani who lived in the apple tree of the world, was as stubborn as any Lowari, and determined to treat everyone, even the persecuting gaje, with equal respect and kindness. Her parents said, this was a good thing to do, but impossible to carry out in practice.

Well, Magda hmphed a little, and thought hard about that, but it still seemed to her that indecency was like the tomato plant, and grew best in its own compost. Likewise, decency fed on itself, so she resolved to be nice to everybody, no matter who or what they were.

Even the Wild Man?" Asked her mother with a smile.

"Even the Wild Man."

Her mother saw she was serious, and grew a little alarmed, for perhaps Magda would stop being cautious and go to dangerous places, thinking manners would save her. "Maybe the Inquisitor will smile at you while you're on your way to the wolf-tree!"

"I'd rather he feel guilty, hanging a nice girl like me." Magda replied with her usual spunk.

Her mother threw up her hands and went back to the paprika racks.

Now, coincidence is a curious thing, if you believe in it. Roms don't, as a rule. They just call it bak, or luck. But it just so happened that the paprika harvesting was being done that year inside a large, flat plain carved out of the Tisa when she boiled out of the banks. To those who never grow paprika, it is a delicate plant, and one cannot put it in the same soil for less than once every three years. Otherwise all sorts of horrible blights and wilts and ugly stuff will happen to it. The paprika farmer had three plots, and this was the third one. No one was worried about the Tisa flooding on them, for that only happened in late fall, well after the harvests.

This was the first year Magda had done this kind of work. She had always before been employed doing the work of little girls--which was usually pointing large, dark eyes at any passing gaje on the street who would like to buy a pitiful little flower, please, or help her old granmother run the shish-kebob and tempeh stand in nearby Gyongyos.

So she couldn't help but notice with her growing-up eyes many useful things about the harvesting that would stand her in good stead when she had her own husband and family to take care of; that was the reason why her parents were having her help them. But there was something very strange that everybody was doing that she could find no explanation for.

Many Rom like eggs, you see. Some don't at all and say they're unhealthy, but when you're nomadic, it's hard to depend on a steady supply of them. They mean good luck, wealth, and happiness, and there isn't a spellworker's vardo that isn't crammed with eggs for that reason. The farmer they worked for always gave them a light meal at noon, and a good, solid meal for supper, and with each meal he gave them a basket of hard-cooked eggs.

And when everyone was doing something Magda had never noticed before: that when an egg was eaten, its shell was most seriously ground into a fine powder and stomped on.

Magda finally decided she was never going to riddle this on her own, so she asked her mother the reason for this.

And her mother, sprinkling pickled-pepper sauce on her egg, answered:
"You must break the shell to bits for fear
Lest the witches should make it a boat, my dear
For over the sea and away from home,
Far by night, the witches roam!"

Magda was too polite to say what was on her mind at this. She picked up her boiled egg, a half of bread, a slice of beef, cheese and her bottled cider and said she wanted to eat by the Tisa where it was a little cooler. And while she ate by the water, she thought to herself that it was not very fair to deny the poor witches boats, since a witch needed them as much as the next person. Why, even the storyteller spoke of witches doing good once in a while for people who did good to them first.

"Well," she said to herself, "I could never use an eggshell to row in anyway. What use is it to me?"

And she picked up her eggshell, and threw it as far as she could, shouting, "Chovihani, lav tro bero!" (Witch, there is your boat!)

Nevertheless, she was surprised when the shell was caught up by the wind and whisked high, high into the air where it could no longer be seen, while an invisible voice that came from everywhere cried back: "Paraka! (I thank you!)

"Huh." Magda said to herself.

Time passed, and passed again. Magda grew up to a fine young woman with bright eyes and midnight hair. Her husband was dutiful and loving and there was no complaints in their lives. By the time the paprika had been planted by the Tisa three times, she had taken her sister (your mama) in and there was plenty of money in the vardo.

But Magda's little sister fell down with a cold, and the young woman went searching for the mullein leaves in the best place she knew, which was the floodplain. The peppers were gone, but herbs remained full and plenty in the rich silt. So, mindful that the water was slowly coming up, Magda anchored her rowboat smartly nearby, and began gathering up the large, soft leaves in her arms. When she had enough for the prpose she thought she'd best get some more for future colds, and lost track of the time completely. She deeply regretted it when she turned around to find herself on a little island that was growing smaller all the time. While she had been rooting in the plants, the Tisa had flooded past her calculations. Of her rowboat, there was no sign.

Magda stared about her for a long moment, mullein in her arms, and searched for a way to cross the water without drowning. There was none. Since the situation called for it, she said a bad word.

"Don't a nice girl like you say such things!" Said a voice. "What would your poor mother think?"

And behind the Lowari woman a little white boat was pummeling its way over the choppy water. An old woman with white hair and glowing witch-eyes was using her broom for an oar, and perched on her thin, black-clad shoulder sat a black cat with the same eyes.

"Hurry, chi, jump!"

Magda did, awkwardly, and lost only a few leaves. The old chovihani righted the swaying craft and pounded her broom into the water, which behaved just like any oar ought to. Magda was staring quite hard at it, and did not know they had reached safety until the prow ran up the sides of the bank.

The chovihani breathed a sigh of relief and they climbed out. "Turn around, chi," she told Magda. "Turn around three times to the right and look every time at the boat."

Magda did as she was told and eith every turn the boat became much smaller until on the last turn she saw it for a tiny eggshell. The old woman smiled and sang:
"This is the shell that you threw to me.
Even a witch can grateful be."
And saying so, she vanished into thin air, witch, cat, broom, boat and all.

Magda stopped talking. There was only the silence of the half-silver night. The girl was aware that every hair in her body had been trying to stand up.

The old woman sighed then, a soft, satisfied sound, and stood, brushing her skirts off with the sound of a hundred tiny silver bells. As her fashion, she never said goodbye any more than she said hello, so Lenore watched her walk out of the yard on ancient feet, as she had so many times before.

Then...

Magda stopped at the gate, and turned around. her teeth gleamed, white and strong in the moonlight.

"Now my story is fairly done,
I beg you to tell a better one..."

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