Adelina

Leaving Madison and Mirielle, Adelina needed to rest. The effort and exertion of using the curse and manipulating the laws of nature had seriously depleted her and left her on the verge of exhaustion. Taking up residence in Mortimer’s home office, she slumped into his large leather bound chair, reclining her head back against the rest. Reaching up, she removed the jewelry from around her neck, her appearance immediately aging, restoring her to her old and withered self.

She chuckled softly, flexing and curling her knobby arthritic fingers, the joints aching. More and more she used the necklace to stave of the ravages of advancing years, but the use of such enchantments required a cost and she was almost unable to keep her weary eyelids from drooping.

November 1940, Ion Antonescu the fascist ruler of Romania entered into an alliance with Nazi Germany. The Roma, gypsies, living in Romania at the time were considered beggars and thieves and a problem Adolf Eichmann said need to be solved.

She remembered the morning the German soldiers arrived in their transport trucks, the engines roaring as they pulled in around their camp, grey uniformed men brandishing machine guns and screaming orders in German. There was one among who seemed to walk with an air of authority, his uniform unlike the others, black with the bright red arm band. It was January 7, 1941.

In the morning she was a married mother with three children, eleven year Nadia, seven year Magda, and infant son Karel. She was dragged from her tent, her children too. She watched in horror as the soldiers threw her baby to the hard ground and stomped on his tiny body. Magda screamed and tried to run and was shot in the back of her pretty head by one man.

Adelina wailed in grief, silenced by the butt of a rifle to the side of her face. Lying face down in the furrows of frozen mud, she watched as the man in black approached where two soldiers were holding Nadia. Her golden haired child, her darling daughter just beginning to show the bloom of puberty. The man took her beautiful daughter’s face in his gloved hand and nodded, lecherous smile on his face. “Ja,” he said, looking at the soldiers,

She didn’t know the other words he spoke, but the two soldiers were dragging the girl to the car.

“Mama,” Nadia hollered, too small to fight against the men holding her, too weak to pull away.

Adelina mewled a weak protest, blood gurgling in her throat as she reached out for her girl. “She is my little one,” she cried out in her native tongue.

The man in black walked around pointing at certain people, many elders and the majority of men including her husband Dragomir. They were lined up. The sound of machine gun fire tore through the quiet countryside, over powering the wails and laments of those still be held. Her grandmother, mother and father lay dead on the ground, eyes going glassy. Dragomir, a half dozen bullets in his body crawled forward on hands and knees before a soldier shot him in the head.

“No,” she screamed, choked with emotion, tears blinding her vision.

This time the rifle that came down on the side of her head mercifully rendered her unconscious.

She awoke in the back of the transport truck with a dozen other women from her camp. Her clothing was torn and she was bleeding from between her legs as a result of being repeated raped. All of the other Roma men in the camp had been executed save for two boys, Iancu aged ten, Radu and eleven. Of Nadia there was no trace.

The ache in her heart was almost too much to bear and she surrendered to weeping, the other women trying to console her but suffering in their own grief.

Amidst the anguish, she felt rage and hate. “What kind of men would do such a thing to women and small children!” she spat vehemently at the two soldiers at the rear of the truck, one of whom had participated in the death of her tiny son.

One of the men laughed, the other sneered.

“Adelina,” said one of the other women, pulling the distraught woman close, “you are drabarni now, you must lead us,” she said voice bordering on a sob.

Sniffling Adelina, wiped a hand across her face. “Ask them where we are going Sofia,” she said, looking at one of the other woman in the truck.

The woman named Sofia nodded, “Where are you taking us?” she asked, speaking in German.

“See Fritz, this one at least has a civilized tongue?” chortled the man on the left looking to his companion before facing the woman. “To the train station,” he laughed.

She translated the response before inquiring “From there?”

The other man shrugged, “Buchenwald, Dachau maybe, does it matter?” he asked, fluttering his fingers miming the scattering of ashes to the wind.

“Tell him I will see him made small and helpless, and then I will do to him what he did to Karel,” she said through clenched teeth as she lowered her hands between her sticky thighs.

Sofia looked at Adelina and shook her head, “I-I,” she stammered.

“Tell him!” Adelina growled, bringing up a mixture of blood and semen in her hands and looking at it. There was no way for her to tell which of the soldiers had raped her and left his essence behind, but she didn’t care.

“You want some more Gypsy girl?” taunted Peter, reaching down and clutching his crotch.

Sofia nodded sharply, turning to the two soldiers, “She says she is going to kill you for what you have done, she is going to make you small and helpless and then she will kill you,” she said hurriedly.

The two soldiers looked at each other and laughed almost in unison. “Oh no Peter, she says the woman is going to kill us,” Fritz said, tone mocking and derisive.

“And how is it you plan to do that? What are you going to do? Hey?” Peter asked, still grinning as he looked at her.