Read Online The Ballad of Aramei by J. A. Redmerski - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: J. A. Redmerski
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“… Find me ….” There is nothing but pain and desperation in those two words, which shakes my heart to its bitter core. Tears are streaming down my hot cheeks, my entire body shudders and trembles, but I still can’t look away from her.
As her hands get closer it feels as though time is slowing down.
Her fingers touch my face and it’s like being hurled off the top of a skyscraper. I feel like my body is falling a thousand miles per second. I try to scream out, but I can’t. My voice is locked inside my head along with any control over my own muscles. And when I see the ground hurtling upward at me, I try to prepare my mind to brace for the impact. But instead, once I’m at the bottom, my body stops abruptly and is then heaved violently out ahead, horizontally through some series of rapid-moving pictures…no… places . I see trees whipping by me. Darkness and then light and then darkness again. I catch glimpses of the recent past: Aramei standing near the waterfall in my dream, the vision of her lying next to me on the floor, Trajan making love to her, Eva and the servants bathing her. I see even further back in time: Sibyl’s face glaring in at Aramei from the shadows, the dangerous face of Nataša watching over Aramei. I see Viktor and the faces of people I have never met. Time moves faster now and it’s getting harder to see with much detail, but I always see the darkness and the light as the days fade into the past in and out of my mind like blips on a screen. I see the landscape turn white; vast, treacherous mountains covered by snow and then the landscape turns green again as the season changes.
Finally, just when I feel like my body has breathed its last breath and that death has come to take me, time stops abruptly and I’m looking in at a life once lived as if it had been my life.
As if it’s happening all over again….
Balkan Mountains – Eastern Serbia – Summer 1761
The valley stretches boundlessly in the distance, tucked deeply between a vast mountain range on all sides. At the foot of the mountain, scattered about the valley is a small village where hay-covered roofs and wooden structures dot the landscape. A small herd of sheep stand amid the ocean of grass just at the top of one hill, tranquil in the early morning sunlight which filters down through a layer of mist cascading across the landscape. Every now and then a baa echoes between the mountains and fades amid the sound of a waterfall.
It’s a village of poor farmers and sheep herders and fishermen, but a village untouched by the outside world. The only world that infiltrates this hidden valley is the dark world of the Black Beasts, a myth to some, but to others a danger they have feared for more than a thousand years.
Aramei, daughter of a farmer, walks behind her cottage carrying a basket filled with yesterday’s laundry, tucked underneath her arm and pressed against her hip. She wears a long russet-colored dress and a pair of worn leather sandals on her dainty feet. A piece of cloth holds her hair behind her, tied against her back.
She makes her way past the barn and slips into the forest behind it where the stream snakes in from the nearby pond. As she leans over the water, washing her father’s shirt, the sound of footsteps shuffling through the leaves behind her causes her to turn around. A tall and handsome man with a full moustache and long, braided dark hair smiles down at her. She has seen him before in her village, but knows he is no resident, nor any resident of any village within four days walk of here. His accent is odd, more like a mixture of her native Serbian and something more guttural like that of the Germans.
She had heard him speaking to a fisherman just yesterday.
But he seems harmless enough and she knows by the way he looks at her that he must have her in his sights. She is unmarried, after all, and it was but a matter of time before suitors began seeking her out. But why this strange
As her hands get closer it feels as though time is slowing down.
Her fingers touch my face and it’s like being hurled off the top of a skyscraper. I feel like my body is falling a thousand miles per second. I try to scream out, but I can’t. My voice is locked inside my head along with any control over my own muscles. And when I see the ground hurtling upward at me, I try to prepare my mind to brace for the impact. But instead, once I’m at the bottom, my body stops abruptly and is then heaved violently out ahead, horizontally through some series of rapid-moving pictures…no… places . I see trees whipping by me. Darkness and then light and then darkness again. I catch glimpses of the recent past: Aramei standing near the waterfall in my dream, the vision of her lying next to me on the floor, Trajan making love to her, Eva and the servants bathing her. I see even further back in time: Sibyl’s face glaring in at Aramei from the shadows, the dangerous face of Nataša watching over Aramei. I see Viktor and the faces of people I have never met. Time moves faster now and it’s getting harder to see with much detail, but I always see the darkness and the light as the days fade into the past in and out of my mind like blips on a screen. I see the landscape turn white; vast, treacherous mountains covered by snow and then the landscape turns green again as the season changes.
Finally, just when I feel like my body has breathed its last breath and that death has come to take me, time stops abruptly and I’m looking in at a life once lived as if it had been my life.
As if it’s happening all over again….
Balkan Mountains – Eastern Serbia – Summer 1761
The valley stretches boundlessly in the distance, tucked deeply between a vast mountain range on all sides. At the foot of the mountain, scattered about the valley is a small village where hay-covered roofs and wooden structures dot the landscape. A small herd of sheep stand amid the ocean of grass just at the top of one hill, tranquil in the early morning sunlight which filters down through a layer of mist cascading across the landscape. Every now and then a baa echoes between the mountains and fades amid the sound of a waterfall.
It’s a village of poor farmers and sheep herders and fishermen, but a village untouched by the outside world. The only world that infiltrates this hidden valley is the dark world of the Black Beasts, a myth to some, but to others a danger they have feared for more than a thousand years.
Aramei, daughter of a farmer, walks behind her cottage carrying a basket filled with yesterday’s laundry, tucked underneath her arm and pressed against her hip. She wears a long russet-colored dress and a pair of worn leather sandals on her dainty feet. A piece of cloth holds her hair behind her, tied against her back.
She makes her way past the barn and slips into the forest behind it where the stream snakes in from the nearby pond. As she leans over the water, washing her father’s shirt, the sound of footsteps shuffling through the leaves behind her causes her to turn around. A tall and handsome man with a full moustache and long, braided dark hair smiles down at her. She has seen him before in her village, but knows he is no resident, nor any resident of any village within four days walk of here. His accent is odd, more like a mixture of her native Serbian and something more guttural like that of the Germans.
She had heard him speaking to a fisherman just yesterday.
But he seems harmless enough and she knows by the way he looks at her that he must have her in his sights. She is unmarried, after all, and it was but a matter of time before suitors began seeking her out. But why this strange
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