Chapter II

"Now what is that noise about?" Gion asked irritably, glaring at the ceiling of the farm house as he entered and pulled off his muddy boots. "Is Ueli trying to slaughter a pig up there?"

Gion's younger brother Hans glanced at the ceiling, rolled his eyes, then turned back to sawing at the hard lump of bread their housekeeper had given them that morning. "Magic," he mumbled in his usual mumbly, taciturn way.

Gion gave the ceiling one last glare before sitting down at the wooden kitchen table and switching on the radio. "Researchers of magic have recently made a fantastic new discovery!" the radio crackled loudly. "After years of experiments, the renowned magician Friedrich Bolding has finally produced a two-headed piglet. The pig is worth over five million Alland Hemmas(4). Bolding is planning on furthering his experiments, and expects to produce a flying cow within–"

Sighing, Gion switched the radio off again. "There's nothing useful on this thing anymore! All I want is the weather forecast, and they heap me with a load of magic nonsense!" As if he wasn't frustrated enough, the noises started again upstairs. Annoyed, Gion stood up and stomped up the stairs. "Ueli! What the thunders are you up to?"

The strange sounds stopped as soon as Gion banged open the door to his younger brother's room. Ueli looked up from his position in the middle of his messy bed. "Who gave you permission to come in?" he huffed.

"What's that noise for? I've got enough headaches without you squealing around like a stuck pig. What was that?"

Ueli shrugged. "Just Yodelling."

"Yodelling? What on earth would you do that for?"

"The gypsies use it to locate themselves in the mountains," Ueli explained, "and they're the ones who know the most about magic, since they're the only civilisation in the world who still have it. I read somewhere that Yodelling's supposed to release magic energies and get the magic circulating…"

"Don't tell me you're starting it too!" Gion groaned.

"But don't you even believe in magic? You go to the gypsies so often, I'm sure you must know a lot about –"

"Ueli, I am not in a mood for nonsense. Now get dressed and go eat breakfast!"

Grumbling something inaudible, Ueli scrambled out of bed and yanked open the door to his terribly untidy wardrobe. Gion, his headache feeling a thousand times worse than before, closed the door and went back downstairs. As if a guilty conscience wasn't already enough to handle…

"I'm going up Mount Culm," he announced to Hans, grabbing his coat on the way to the door. He didn't even know why he came to the decision. As much as he feared going back to the Radunanza village, Gion knew that only a gypsy beer could cheer his spirits.

"What, again?" Hans glanced up from his newspaper. "What about the ploughing?"

"Don't pretend I don't know where this is leading," Gion said, groaning. "I know you think you're better suited, and I know you're better with the tractors, but seriously, Hans, you have no idea about all the rest of farming." Gion walked over to the table and drank out his mug of coffee.

"Just because Father inherited the farm to you doesn't mean you're the only one who can do decisions for it. You have been ordering far too much cow food and we've been out of petrol for a month! Why don't you let me do something?"

"Because you are seven years younger than me and far less experienced."

"At least I spend all my days working here instead of – of gallivanting off across the mountains all the time like you do!" Hans shouted, jumping up.

Gion winced. He hated fighting about farm matters. "Look, let's talk about this some other time. I'm not feeling well," he said. With that, he opened the door and left, glad to finally be rid of his clamouring brothers and the weight of duty.

The only problem was, even with the fresh air and cool wind blowing all about him, the weight of guilt was still there.

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The small tavern was almost empty. Most of the gypsy tribes had left already, so only the Riders, the Carvers, the Painters and the Jewellers were still in the town. After ordering his beer, Gion sat at a lonely table in a dark corner, where he would be least noticed and no one would try to speak to him. They wouldn't talk to an ester(1) like him anyway.

A group of gypsy men were at a table not far from him, conversing loudly over their drinks. "I always knew he was in for a bad end, poor man," Gion heard one of them say. "I told him to be careful last night, but I guess he just had one glass too many!"

"As usual!" another added.

"Still, even so, he might have been killed even if he wasn't under the influence of wine! You saw the knife!" a third said.

Gion felt cold. He wished that he had stayed in the valley and listened to Ueli's miserable yodelling attempts all day, or fought with Hans over who the farm should belong to. Anything, even going to view Bolding's two-headed pig, would be better than this. For he knew what they were talking about. And just listening to them talking about it made him see those pale, staring eyes again, smell the reek of the drunk's breath and feel the pain of realising what he had done.

"But that's not even the worst, my friends!" the first man exclaimed. "Do you know he had a family?"

Gion sat up, attentive.

"A family?" the other gypsies asked.

"His widow and two children. She is but eighteen, I hear she is expecting a third child…"

Several of the men shook their heads in shock. Gypsies usually married young, but being widowed at such a young age was a rare and terrible thing.

"They're not doing well, it seems; I heard from my brother-in-law in the Weaver tribe that the family seems to be suffering bad harvests, they probably don't have enough to eat and their yak has been limping for the past few weeks. They did badly enough with him around – you know his drinking problem –, but I don't know what will become of them now without a man to care for them."

Gion stared at his empty beer glass. What had he done? Because of him, this family would starve. Because of him, an eighteen-year-old girl now had to fend for herself as well as for children, animals and crops. Because of him, someone was suffering.

Silently, resolutely, Gion stood up. He returned the beer glass to the counter, thanked the bartender and left the inn. He looked up and down the street full of caravans and yaks ready to travel.

An old lady was fastening a rolled-up tenda(2) onto the back of a tall, black yak. "Excuse me," Gion said, walking towards her, "do you know where the Weaver tribe is headed?"

The old woman shook her head. "I believe they went East… ask the Manader(3), he can find them for you." She pointed to the front of the line of waiting yaks.

Gion recognised the Manader from the light silver bracelet he was wearing. Each of the five glass beads decorating it symbolised a year of being voted as tribe leader. From the plain wooden bracelet the man was wearing on his other arm, Gion noticed that he must be around sixty years old, the age at which gypsies were counted as 'elderly'.

"Excuse me, sir…"

The Manader looked up from cleaning his yak's hooves. He glanced Gion up and down a few times before saying, "Ah. An ester(1). What do you want of me?"

Gion had heard of the mental connection between gypsy Manaders before, though he wasn't sure whether he believed it to be true. "Could you tell me where the Weaver tribe is headed?" he asked, doubtful that he would receive a definite answer.

"The Weavers, eh?" The Manader raised an eyebrow and Gion suddenly hoped that gypsy tribe leaders couldn't also read the minds of normal people. He was relieved when the Manader turned away, closing his eyes and swaying on the spot for a moment. Then, the old man looked up once more and said, "They have just set up camp on Mount Liun. It's not far; six kilometres eastwards."

Gion quickly thanked him, bowing his head three times as gypsies did to their headmen. Then, taking a deep breath, he set off down the eastward path towards Mount Liun and the Weaver tribe. He hardly knew why he was doing this. All he knew was that he had done a great wrong, and that the only way he would ever forgive himself was if he prevented the even greater wrong that was about to happen. He would help the widow, whatever the cost, even if it meant hiking up the mountains every day for a hundred years. At the very least, he would try.

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(1) ester/estra – stranger, foreigner, usually used for non-gypsies

(2) tenda – gypsy tent

(3) Manader/Manadra – leader, tribe leader

(4) Hemma – Alland currency