Free Blood and Salt by Barbara Sapergia

Viktor hated me. He wanted Halya to marry anyone else. Well, anyone else with a lot of money.
    I crept in the open door. Halya didn’t see me at first, but Natalka did. I flung my jug of water at Halya. She shrieked and giggled, and pretended to be cross. She looked beautiful and I can still see the clear drops of water beading on her linen sorochka.
    Natalka burst out laughing. Halya looked up at a high shelf and I saw a decorated egg. She reached for it.
    And suddenly there was Viktor in the doorway. He must have been lurking around behind the house, guessing that I couldn’t stay away on this special day. He flung himself at me, shoved me to the floor. Halya screamed. The clay jug shattered.
    “Get out of my house!” Viktor yelled. I got up, ready to fight.
    “Taras, no!” Halya cried.
    Viktor and I glared at each other, hands fisted, and Viktor spat a gob of phlegm on the side of the peech . I could see Halya felt ashamed that her father had done such a coarse thing.
    And this was the man who thought he was above the others in the village. Who’d be a landlord if he could. A pahn.
    I saw that Halya wanted me to go, and I slipped past Viktor. In the lane I saw the young people laughing in the square and then I heard a hard slap and a cry. I knew I had to get her out of there. I’d heard that Viktor had been seen lately with an older man from the next village. Lys they called him – fox – because of his pointed chin and red-gold hair. He had a large farm and a fine house and was a widower with no children. A perfect husband, Viktor would think.
    I heard a deep rumbling noise and turned to see huge trucks racing up the rough road to the village. I’d seen trucks before, of course, in the city of Chernowitz, but no one in the village had one. The pahn had a motor car, which he sometimes drove to the city to attend a concert, but none of this had anything to do with me.
    I knew right away that these trucks had something to do with me.
    And then they were in our lane, gears grinding as they slowed down. Four big trucks from the Austrian garrison at Chernowitz, the truck boxes full of soldiers in grey uniforms. Their roar echoed in the lane, slammed against the houses. People rushed to their front doors, including Natalka, Viktor and Halya. In moments the air was filled with a haze of dust.
    Now I’d heard rumours in the tavern, about trouble brewing in Bosnia. The Austrians ruled it, but the Serbs wanted it. So did the Turks, because there were Muslims in Bosnia. The talk was that the Austrians were planning to give the Serbs and the Turks a scare and then they’d both back down. War would be averted.
    Of course, everyone knew that the Serbs and the Turks might not back down. Ruslan had already told me that people around the garrison believed something was going to happen. Now it felt as if war had already come. As if it had always been there somewhere, like a shadow waiting to find a shape and a colour.
    Then the trucks were gone as quickly as they’d come. Dust still hung over the lane. The army must have been doing some training exercises in the countryside. And on the way back to the garrison, I think they wanted to remind people they were around. Let them know things were changing.

    The men sit quietly. Each man remembers a time when he began to realize a great war could happen. But most of them lived in Canada by then, so it wasn’t quite as close to them.
    “Don’t stop now,” Yuriy says. “I was just getting interested.”
    “It’s late,” Taras says. “Most of the men have gone to bed.”
    “Tell us more tomorrow, then,” Myro suggests. “After supper.”
    “That’s right,” Tymko says. “It’ll be more exciting if we have to wait.”
    Taras’s friends drift away, but he can’t stop the flood of bright images. Moments ago he hadn’t known he had a story. Now’s he’s in a world filled with sunshine, glancing off the people, the houses, his darling Halya. He’s living in the