Headwind - CH 1

Chapter One

Natalia Novotny closed the door on the tea party as she made her way out. She was well aware of what they all said about her.

It wasn't late, yet, as she headed down the lane from Radka Klimy's house. The shrew was still always inviting her to things, even though everyone knew they hadn't been friends for years. Natalia hung back at these gatherings, a wallflower, and answered their questions—thinly veiled, mean spirited gossip—as to avoid confrontation.

“Natalia, why haven't you been courting lately?”

“Why don't you ever come to Friday socials anymore?”

“I heard you and your father are still fighting. What's wrong now?”

She wasn't sure if Radka kept her around because she enjoyed making jokes at her expense, or if her invitations were extended merely out of the same decorum that led Natalia to accept. Either way, she was glad to be halfway down the drive and at least aurally oblivious to her peers when they collapsed in giggles in her absence.

It was expected that Natalia spend some time with the young women of her station, heiresses wasting their lives away in long skirts. It was the way of things in the village.

The townspeople assumed she would associate with girls her class and age. The women themselves were so used to her presence, wanted or not, that they couldn't imagine tea without her. And her father, Marek—he was the one that made her. It was a measure to retain some of the normalcy left intact in her life. The only things that brought her to those events were her father's money and society's glare. People In Bosko had said enough about her in the past year without her retreating like a hermit.

Natalia came to the main road, a thin dirt line connecting the Klimy's rural estate to the main stretch of town. It stretched the other way for miles, leading to a thousand places she had never been. Above the curve of a grassy hill, the blush of sunset had barely begun to spread across the sky; it was early for a socialite to be turning in. The carriage she had arrived in wouldn't be returning for her for another two more hours. The thought of waiting, skulking in front of a gala, turned her stomach. Natalia tied her capelet a little tighter at her throat and started down the road to Bosko.

She didn't live in town, but beyond it—on the opposite countryside from her friend-turned-rival. Natalia wasn't much expected to, but she had spent years of her life walking between these places: friends, the village, and the plantation she lived on. The Novotny's had owned it for generations; she knew it like the back of her hand, as she did the road below her boots.

A breeze caught her dark hair, and Natalia pulled her hood up. The day was fading quickly, shades of evening slowly but surely conquering the earth. She couldn't trust nights anymore—she quickened her pace.

A man was refilling the oil streetlights when she arrived in the town. He glanced at her as she passed by—curious, undoubtedly having heard plenty about her. It was impossible to keep a secret in a small town—almost.

“It’s awfully late for you to be out, isn’t it?” He asked, teasing.

Natalia made a bland response and hurried on her way.

By the time she had crossed the village, darting past buildings and homes she had seen a million times, it had gone dark, save a thin line of blue-green afterglow, stretched thin along the horizon. The moon was making its first appearance. It was swollen, waxing gibbous—Natalia was vaguely aware that most people didn’t know that terminology. To her, it was vital.

The clicking of horseshoes was loud even on the gravel road; Natalia could hear the buggy her father sent approaching her long before she could make it out in the darkness. The sound was comforting, soothing her wary mind. She flagged the driver down, grateful to have intercepted him, and let him get down and open the door for her, ready to bear her back home to her bedroom.

She had three nights left.

* * *

As he woke, Adam Pulnik realized that only one morning separated him from his weekly pay. He was almost too tired to feel good about it, but a smile crept across his face when he thought about the tidy sum he’d net Friday night. He had a good thing going for himself on the Novotny orchard. They gave him a roof, a bed, and some money for food. It was a dream for someone that had grown up with means as modest as his.

The floor was freezing. The days were getting shorter in Bosko, and the mornings were now finding a way to make Adam shiver. He pulled a shirt from the floor, and held it to his nose. It was fine. He’d take his bath in the evening. It was generous of Marek Novtony to allow the workers here to bathe on his tab anyway. Water wasn’t scarce, but it certainly wasn’t free. The fringe benefits for his job picking and sorting apples were amazing. Adam felt more at home here than he had anywhere else.

It was starting to warm up outside when he made it to his row. His pay was commission based, since each of the workers were assigned a few scheduled jobs for the day, after which they had their time to themselves. Because of this, many of his colleagues were already far into their assignments, having woken up early just to get it done. Today, Adam had to pick. It was October and the apples were becoming heavy on the slender branches of their trees.

He made fairly quick work of it, as his eyes and hands were all very used to this job. He could visually assess the sizes, feel the quality with his right hand as he plucked it from the tree, placing it in the proper bag as he moved to pick another with his left. This left plenty of time for Adam's mind to wander.

It felt good for him to think about meaningless things. There were no more worries of money or of a roof to sleep under; he had both of these, enough to live decently. Decency, his mother had told him before she died, was all anyone would hope for in life. He believed her. His father told him to work for a Chytry if he wanted to make some for himself. Adam believed him, too.

And now, picking apples on the Novotny orchard, Adam knew that he had found some measure of propriety. He was sure it would content him to work for Marek the rest of his life.

He took a bite from the apple he was holding—they weren't supposed to eat any, really, but all of them did. It was sweet, and the morning was warm, now.

By the time that Adam had finished with his row, many of the others had eaten lunch and left. Only a few of the slow workers remained, telling lame dirty jokes that everyone knew the punch lines to, but laughed at anyway, while gulping sub sandwiches and drinking golden beer. Adam sat with them, just in time to hear the silence that Natalia Novotny brought as she walked past.

She didn't look over, but Adam knew that she could tell they were watching. Everyone liked and respected Marek, but they had also heard the rumors about her. She wasn't a deviant, or anything—just strange. But she was the strange daughter of a respectable Chytry, of the man that decided whether or not to employ them. So they sat silently until she turned into a row, and was out of earshot, to speak again.

“She's got a set of tits on her!” Another laborer, Andel Hruska, practically shouted this after she'd passed. Everyone roared with laughter. So did Adam.

“Well,” he said, “I can agree with that, but I'll need to be going before we get any further in this discussion, since I've seen more boobs than the lot of you together.” More laughter.

“I'll be here for hours.”

Even more.

Adam left chuckling. He made it to his room quickly, wanting to get his gun and get out to the orchard fast. Whatever he brought back needed time to be cleaned and stored before he came back to make dinner that night. There was a flock of birds flying over the rows that day, and Adam was a dead shot through repetition.

The fowl launched themselves from their trees when he sent one to the ground. It fell into the next row, where the trees were tightly packed. He made his way to the bird as quickly as he could, in case an opportune fox made off with it before he got there.

He found Natalia, instead.

She stood frozen over the bird on the ground, jaw agape. When she saw the gun in his hand, she bolted, running in the opposite direction of him and his weapon.

Everybody hunted in Bosko.

“Weirdo,” Adam muttered to himself.

* * *

Friday evenings always brought a buzz of life. Every week, after the sun went down on the Novotny plantation, fires sprang up in the dark. They formed a long, winding, dotted line across the vast lawn in front of the worker's settlement, visible to the people in town from their mile away. The laborers assembled in the patches of light, gathering with their family—or, if they had none, their friends—ready to relax some of the week away and get in the spirit of their break on Saturday. It was their answer to the upper class's Friday socials; even in the cold, Autumn air, voices and laughter filled the night with a dull rumble.

Adam, two geese in hand, headed up to the top of a hill. The young men's bonfire sat perched atop it, it's large size representative of the amount of workers that fell into that demographic—men with no relatives and no wives. The sun had only just retreated, and already a dozen of his friends had arrived. He pulled up a log that hadn't been incinerated yet.

“What'd you bring, Adam?” Andel asked. “You can't just show up with nothing.”

He raised his arm and showed him the fat birds; the men expressed their approval of his contribution and took the meat from him. There was a smaller fire off to the side for cooking, which the geese were promptly laid across.

Though Adam had showed up later than the rest of them, it was easy for him to jump into the conversation.

“...know Zofie Vavra? The new house maid?” A younger worker, Roman Musil, was talking between swigs of a drink. “I swear on the sky I'm going to have her.”

The men laughed. Andel took up a log next to Adam and gave him a mug, already full of beer. “You couldn't get her if you tried.”

“I'll do it,” Roman said. “I'm telling you, I want her. She's as good as mine already.” The youth stumbled over to Adam and put an arm around him; he'd apparently arrived and began drinking a long time before, judging by the slur in his voice. “You better keep your hands off her, Pulnik. I know what you're like.”

Adam chuckled. “Don't worry about it, Roman. Your maid is safe with you.” He waved at the rest of them. “That is, unless one of these other gents decides to take some action and get themselves a lady for once, instead of sitting in their rooms and—” He made a crude gesture with a few flicks of his wrist and finished his first mug of ale as the crowd erupted into uproarious laughter.

“Don't go acting like you're that good, Adam,” said Andel. “I hear Tomas Dvorak down on the Klimy farms gets skirt by the dozens.”

“Maybe,” Adam began, getting up to fill his cup again at the keg. “But I haven't had to pay for any of mine.”

Again he had cracked a joke that warranted hysterics amongst the other men. He was well liked by all of them; he was grateful to the Novotny's for this, too. In his childhood he'd had to move around the town frequently—first as his parents drifted, then finding wherever he could for himself to stay out of the region's frequent rain showers. The town was small, but being as destitute as he was kept him from bonding even with the other street urchins. All of that had changed when he got his job on the plantation at age 15. Adam had everything he needed now—security, friends, several female house workers for him to pursue when he desired, and a dinner of geese, beer, and potatoes every Friday. What else could a man want?

He was about to make another crack when he heard the people on the other side of the greeting another man approaching. Before he could make out the name they were calling, Adam recognized his best friend's almost spectral form. He stood, putting the once again empty mug down, and walked over to him. “Erik! I didn't know you were coming out tonight!”

“I got done grading papers in time, so I couldn't miss it.” He slapped his back and the two sat down.

Erik Yedlicka had worked on the Novotny plantation with Adam for his first three years of employment. He taught an early grade at Bosko's primary school now; picking fruit had been a way for him to pay for his internship, not a matter of necessity like it was for Adam. The two had shared a room together for the first year there, and had remained good friends even after Erik moved on. The teacher even opted to come to the fires rather than the Friday socials the wealthier citizens went to, though he was well enough off to be welcomed there. Adam thought it said a lot about his friend, that he would rather drink ales with them than the many other things he could be doing with his evening.

“What have I been missing down here at the orchards?” Erik asked. The sound of gooseflesh cracking, nearing well done, was loud between his words.

“It's harvest week, so we're busy as ever,” Adam said. “And Roman has decided he's going to give it to a housemaid.”

They all laughed again, and Erik spoke almost a little woefully. “No one I spend the day with talks about women. They're mostly still at the age where they think girls are gross.”

“But you must like it,” Adam said. “A salary based job! We only dream of it.”

“I don't do it for money, really.” Erik shrugged. “I like to teach.”

“And perhaps there's pretty lady teachers there?” Andel steered the conversation away from money—they all knew he had more than they did.

Erik shook his head. “Only one. But I think she's got a boyfriend right now.”

“What's her name?”

“Miss Tesar, but it doesn't really—”

“Miss, see? There's no reason you can't go for that,” Andel said. Adam and most of the others nodded in agreement.

Erik was about to disagree when Roman announced that the food was ready, which sent all the men scrambling over to the fire pit, holding their plates out to try and get the biggest potatoes, the best pieces of goose. Adam let them go ahead of them—he liked the crispy parts of meat the best. His plate was soon full and he sat once more, filling another glass so he didn't have to wait for Andel to go replenish the keg, and dug into his food.

By the time Andel had lumbered back up the hill, arms struggling with the weight of a barrel full of ale, Adam had cleaned his plate and gone back to scavenge the seconds with the other less picky eaters. As soon as the keg was once again available, they all took another glass. Plates emptied, and the talk picked up; the keg had to be taken and filled twice more.

They were all at least buzzed when the topic of Natalia came up, at first innocently enough, when Johan Zima announced he had seen her naked the day before. He was the junior butler of the household; he'd been taking up her morning tea on behalf of a busy maid. “She had a nice ass,” he said.

“You're lucky she didn't see you looking like that,” Erik admonished. “She could have told her father, had you fired.”

“You're lucky she didn't see you and kill you!” Roman laughed. “That girl is weird.”

“She can't be that bad,” Adam said.

Andel shook his head. He wasn't usually indulgent in gossip, but he, too, had gotten caught up in the relative mystery that surrounded the young woman. “She gives me the creeps. She never used to when she was younger, but now.... I mean, why does she stay in every night? That's all her kind of girl does—go out with friends. I mean, she doesn't have work to do.”

“Maybe she's shy?” Erik suggested.

“Hardly,” Johan said. “She talks to the maids all the time. They're all great friends.”

Roman leaned in a little closer, looking around cautiously a few times before taking a swig of brew and continuing. “There's something wrong with her. She can't go out in the dark.”

“What do you mean, she can't? She won't?”

“No, no, man.” Andel poked at the fire. “I heard from one of the drivers, that she was late coming home one night. It got dark, and she started freaking out and actually got out of the carriage. He saw her running home next morning.”

“Maybe a lover?”

“I doubt it,” Roman said. “She'd seem happier if she had a man, not stranger. And anyways—” Again he checked to see if someone was listening in. “Noemi Kostelecky, her personal maid, says she keeps lunar calendars. Dozens of them, all marked up. She said she was looking through them once, sort of snooping, and Natalia had written down all sorts of notes on them, weird things about 'change' days or something. You know what I think?” His eyes darted again, checking to see nothing had appeared in the darkness. “I think she's some kind of demon.”

After half a dozen mugs full of ale, Adam's jokes weren't as good. “You know, I did hear that goats have been dying on the other farms...”

“It's not funny!” Andel said. He shivered, even by the fire. “She never comes out in the dark except a few times a month. Once, I saw her...” He took a quick drink of beer. “She was checking in my window, seeing if I was awake. I wonder what she meant to do to me?”

“Maybe finally give you a lay?” Johan remarked, chuckling.

“Stop it!” Andel hit his log with his mug. “I haven't slept well since then. I'm scared.”

“That's probably the liquor talking,” Adam said, voice ironically slurred. “She's half your size. What is she gonna do to you? She might be spooky or afraid of the dark or something, but she's probably not a blood thirsty monster.”

“You should all stop talking about her like this, guys,” Erik piped up—he wasn't drunk like they were. “Didn't her mom just die last year? She could still be upset about it, you don't—”

A shriek cut his voice off. Johan had let out an outcry when someone passed by their bonfire, closer than expected, popping randomly out of the darkness of night. All the talk of demons and oddities had gotten to him. Andel gasped after he heard him, knocking his mug off the log and spilling it all over Johan. The rest of the men laughed. When the person walking by heard them, and turned to look, it silenced them.

It was Natalia.

She put her hood up and started away again, towards the worker houses.

They exchanged looks. “What do you think she's doing?” Roman asked.

Andel looked unwell. “I don't want to know,” He whispered.

“I do!” Johan said—perhaps attempting to recover from his scream. “Let's follow her.”

“That's a terrible idea, guys,” Erik said. “Come on—”

“It's great!” Roman rose to his feet. “Come on, lets go!”

Three of the brassier young men stood, then a few more. Adam got up—five beers ago, he might not have.

“Adam, don't. This is stupid, you could get in trouble.”

From the front, Johan called, “We've almost lost her! Come on!”

With that, the men started after her. Adam stuck to the middle of the pack; he heard the reluctant Erik and Andel come up behind him. His friend squeezed up next to him.

“Are you crazy?”

“I'm just curious.” Adam almost stumbled over a root. “It'll be fine. Relax.”

The men left the lighted lawn behind them as they followed Natalia past the houses, into the orchard. Their voices grew quieter and quieter as they left the glow of the fires behind, their only illumination the full moon above them.

Natalia seemed to know something was amiss behind her—her walk quickened, became a jog, and broke out into a run. They upped their pace to match; Johan tripped over a branch and only Andel went back to his aid. The world tilted a little under Adam's feet as he ran. He heard Erik repeat that what they were doing was stupid, insane, wrong.

She took a turn around the stable and fumbled at a door for a couple moments, releasing the Novotny guard dogs on whatever she thought was following her. The men screamed and began to sprint in the opposite direction of them, fleeing—everyone except Adam, in his drunken momentum, and Erik, who was following him. The hounds were too occupied chasing to notice them. Natalia hopped over a fencepost and continued towards the clearer countryside.

Adam and Erik jumped over the stable fence, and kept on.

* * *

It got darker the moment they stepped into the natural tree line. It was never this dark in the orchard with its perfect rows making the moonlight shine brighter, but Adam didn't care; he hardly noticed as he chased the flashes of Natalia's red pea coat through the woods. Erik was still objecting behind him, but now Adam's curiosity was burning. He could feel that she was running for a reason,that the reason was an important one, and that he needed to see why.

There was a grove up ahead. Adam could tell that it was a fairly wide meadow, a perfect circle of treeless grass with a large rock standing in the middle. It had a tip like a finger pointing straight up into the clear night at the full moon above, like a statue of God's own hand. Natalia stopped when she reached it, leaning to breathe deeply. Adam and Erik stopped where they were, too, sheltered by the trees just outside the clearing. She was looking all around her, peering into the foliage, making sure that she wasn't followed.

Even the wind didn't breathe for a moment. Another.

Then she was done looking.

Erik let out a breath of relief, but didn't urge Adam to leave anymore – now he was curious, too. The night was electric around them, leaving them to inhale lightning with each gasp. Something was going to happen, but neither of them knew what.

Natalia took off her coat, and tossed it on the ground. Both of their eyes widened.

She was wearing very little. It was taboo for a girl of Natalia's class to even own much clothing that didn't cover from shoulders to knees at least – most of what the women wore out were long dresses, covering down to the ankles; Natalia's skirt showed more leg than Adam had ever seen on a girl outside of a bed. Natalia climbed the boulder quickly, as though it were a habit, and started pulling off the rest of her clothing. First came the shirt, which fluttered to the ground more quickly than did her skirt. She wore no undergarments. Erik fidgeted uncomfortably next to Adam, who stared all the more intently. He supposed that it was funny – all the talk about Natalia was true: she was strange and gorgeous. He could see all the curves of her body very clearly in the starlight. Her white skin doused in the white light of the moon was a new definition of beauty.

It seemed sudden to them, but Natalia had been waiting for it. She extended her hand up toward the sky, and her fingers became feathers.

Adam and Erik both felt like they had been punched in the gut by the impossibility of it, but it continued. The feathers ran like water down her body, sprouting causally, as if they'd always been there, taking a nap on the backs of her hands. Her arms got longer, while her legs got shorter and harder, the skin thickening into shining scales. It was the final part of her transformation that stunned Adam into belief. Her lips and nose melded, became noticeably solid, and protruded slightly farther than they did before – enough for a beak, but still short enough that he could tell that the bird-creature was Natalia. It still looked like her, but she appeared as a dark brown angel while she stood atop the stone in the grassy field.

Adam was drawn to her. He stood, and stumbled into the field. Erik tried to stop him, but was simply pulled into the clearing by force of Adam's shoulders. The bird-girl saw them, and flew quickly towards them. Erik ducked, but Adam stood firmly. Natalia folded her wing into his chest, knocking him to the ground while taking the wind out of him, and ascended quickly, flying until she was only a speck in the sky to the two young men.

They looked at each other in amazement for one moment, but in the next, they were running back to the Novotny orchard. Neither of them spoke; there was nothing to say. All they knew was that they had stumbled onto something secret and powerful.

They arrived at the Workers' Dormitories quickly, hardly remembering the journey back. Their hearts were pounding, but not only from the sprint back to the safety of the orchard.

Erik looked like he was going to speak, but stopped before he could find a single word to utter. Adam understood.

“Come back here tomorrow, okay? My assignment is pretty short, so come by around lunchtime, and we'll figure out what to do.”

“What can we do?” Erik asked, finding his voice.

“I don't know. I do know that I won't even be able to think about whether what we saw was

real until I've at least tried to sleep on it.”

“I don't even...” Once again he didn't finish his sentence. Erik said uneasily, finally, “Okay. I'm gonna go.”

Adam watched him leave. Erik looked up into the sky fitfully as he went, ducked when a cloud passed across the moon. When his back was invisible in the darkness, Adam quickly went into his room, and slid into bed, replaying the memory in his head.

What did I just see? He asked himself.

The reason she stays by herself, he answered.

He slept then, and dreamed. Much like the rock in the field, Natalia remained in the center of Adam's mind all night, pointing straight up to questions whose answers he hadn't even considered to be within the realm of possibility only the night before.