About Maria
A Vanishing People story
The Vanishing People is a series of independent short stories, related in a longer timeline.
Andrei and Eva Plot a Revolution
Titus and Andrei
The sky spattered cloudy.
Beneath, the conversation heated.
Titus was near eruption. He would erupt if Andrei didn’t stop talking about Maria. Andrei was the Reader of the Blood, of the clan, untouchable. But Titus would touch him, touch him hard if he didn’t shut up. He didn’t care.
But Andrei lived according to a code and he’d enforce it if he had to. As the Reader of the Blood of the Eastern Shore, the responsibility fell to him. Titus didn’t bother him. He gazed bored at Titus, the greasy, dark youth facing him. He had taken a shit before breakfast that gave him more trouble than this boy could. He jabbed his finger into Titus’s chest.
“We’ve decided. It is a done thing,” he told him. “You go home and forget about Maria.”
A few moments earlier, Andrei had insisted Titus join him on a walk in which he would lay down the law, read Titus the code, letter by letter if he had to. He assumed Titus would resist, like any 17-year-old who imagined himself in love, and when he resisted, Andrei wanted to be out of sight of other members of the Blood in case he had to enforce the code physically.
Titus was no genius, but he knew he was running out of moves. People didn’t argue with Andrei. They didn’t question a Reader’s authority. Only the Prophet, who lived on the far shore of the Big Lake could question a Reader. He clenched his jaw at the powerlessness.
“How can you say it is done?” Titus said. “God has smiled on Maria and I, and granted us a child. You would overrule God?”
“Look at you, pretending to carry out the work of God.” Andrei smiled through his sarcasm.
Titus wanted to slap him. He persisted. “It goes against nature to reject my marriage to Maria. She is carrying my child. We have consummated our love.”
“Let me make this crystal clear, since it seems you’re not understanding the situation. You will never have Maria. Not ever. Stefan is a man of high standing in the Blood. His marriage to Maria has been approved. The child Maria carries belongs to Stefan, not you. Maria has agreed.”
Titus stomped. “Maria only agrees to it because she is afraid. She loves me, not Stefan.”
Andrei laughed. “You think because a woman lies with you she must love you?”
Titus and Stefan
Titus, humbled, not defeated, was assigned to work alongside Stefan the day after his meeting with Andrei.
Andrei was rubbing his nose in it, but Titus had plans.
For now, he’d keep his mouth shut. He worked silently with Stefan while they mended fish traps, cut trees and shaped a trunk into flat boards.
Stefan never talked, except to order Titus around. Until the third day. Abruptly, he stopped and stood like a stone man, the wind flapping at his shirt and hat.
Titus pulled up beside him. One minute passed, two, three and Titus held his tongue.
Finally Stefan said, “My son is to be born vigorous and kicking. This has been seen by Andrei and he showed it to me this morning. Maria will give him life. The boy will grow up and become a respected member of the Blood, possibly a Reader because it is said he was conceived in the secret caves of the underworld vents.
“If there is anything you wish to say, say it now because after today, there will be no more talk of you and Maria.”
Titus felt fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to answer. Stefan was looking for a reason to beat him down.
Wait him out, Titus thought, stay silent, slip the net.
“Whatever you and Maria had is over.” Stefan said in a tone of finality. His face was turned away, but Titus heard his angry breathing.
He spun to stare into Titus’s eyes. “If you insist on telling your stories, let’s settle it now. Leave no doubts, no more rumours.”
Stefan’s eyes shifted left, right, down. Suddenly Titus understood Stefan was uncomfortable with his planned marriage arrangement with Maria. He was trapped, and Titus liked him better for it..
Stefan was also as strong as an ox and could kill Titus with one hand. All the more reason to avoid a fight.
Titus and Maria
Titus bickered his way out of work detail with Stefan and crept along the bench of land next to the river, where the hot springs gurgled up from beneath the earth and spilled over a rock outcropping.
He spied Maria heading with a pail to pick berries.
Now was his chance. He could grab her and together they could run east, through the mountains and onto the Plains of Melancholy where nobody would dare come after them. Maybe they’d join up with a new Blood, or they might make a place of their own.
Maria saw Titus following her. She had counted on it when she noticed him hanging around the camp after Stefan left this morning.
She made a mistake telling him about the pregnancy. She was excited and it popped out before she realized. Her affair with Titus should never have happened, she had already agreed to marry Stefan. But Stefan was 15 years older. Titus was the young stud the young girls had their eyes on and when Maria found herself assigned to work jobs side-by-side with Titus more often, the couple’s isolation and the romantic hot springs bound them together.
Maria never imagined Titus as more than a fling. He was short-legged and hairier than a 17-year-old ought to be.
Her fiancé Stefan, however, now there was a man. Broad-shouldered, thick arms, tall as half a wagon was long. She always wanted Stefan, even through the time she was having trysts with Titus.
She should have told Stefan sooner about the pregnancy. They could have married sooner, slotted in a spring wedding and set the matter to rest.
But she paused in her uncertainty, and now had to contend with Titus making a power play.
She hurried away, leading him into the trees and up the slope away from camp. She clambered between two boulders three times her height and squeezed into a wide crack. Titus would come on, pass by her and fall into the trap.
Stefan waited on the other side of the narrow passage.
She eased her way downward through the gap in the rock, pressing back into the steam emanating from below. She poured sweat and tasted salt on her lips, her hair fell stringy and wet across her face.
The walls fell away and a huge cathedral opened. Warmth enveloped her and overtook the cell growing inside. The fetus awoke. It was rock, limestone, flowstone, calcite, carbon, sulphur, oxygen.
Outside, Stefan crouched behind the rocks, heard Titus approach and stepped out, waving his arms, telling Titus to turn around. He didn’t ambush Titus as Maria wanted, but Stefan wouldn’t fight for her.
Titus, face red from the chase, eyes clouded in fear. He turned without hesitation, in time to save his life.
But he wasn’t giving up, yet. He had schemes within schemes. Traps to spring. For now, he’d bide his time and wait for Maria. She’d come around.