Chapter Text
“They’re coming!” A man with a long beard and longer hair runs into the camp.
“Quickly!” Silvanus’ father yells, pulling out the tent stakes and stepping out the fire. Silvanus and his father, both Romani, quickly pack up their meager belongings with the ease of a lifetime of practice. The state patrols have been scenting closer and closer to their trail.
Everyone knows what happens to gypsies who get caught: they get killed on the spot, or worse, sent to a place where there were "better facilities to take care of them". Silvanus doubts much care is going on.
No one has ever returned from those ghettos. Not even his mother, whose apparent last words were a promise to return. Silvanus was out picking herbs for their dog’s injury, then. He didn’t get to see his mother get taken away. He doesn’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse.
The sounds of horse hooves echo in the distance.
“Hurry!” Silvanus’ father urges, swinging atop a steed. Silvanus packs the last of his things, running and jumping on the stirrup to straddle his own pony, leaning forward and urging the loyal beast faster.
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
Silvanus guilds his pony into the forest, over fallen tree trunks and deeper into the darkness. At fourteen, he's a bit too big for the steed, but the pony knows how to evade bigger horses.
The state authorities are getting closer. Silvanus shares a nervous nod with his father, splitting up and veering to the right while his father goes to the left. If they make it, they’ll meet up in the next town over.
If not. Well. Silvanus knows that they will carry on. It’s how his people are: Roma will carry on. Romani are a hardy people.
They have to be.
Silvanus, breath in his lungs, commands his pony to maneuver around obstacles and into smaller crevices that horses can’t enter. He dodges under foliage and hopes that the authorities can’t find his father.
The boy urges his pony farther and farther, not daring to look back. He can hear the rhythmic beat of hooves behind him and all around him, but he’s not sure if it’s the state authorities or his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
A familiar scream slashes through the forest canopy, startling a flock of bird aflight.
Silvanus’ father has been caught.
The boy swallows and forges on, not slowing one bit, pressing forward on and on and on the whole night, until his pony refuses to walk, and on beyond.
He does not think about his father. Once a gypsie is caught, they’re dead.
Silvanus just has to make sure that he doesn’t die.
**
Silvanus settles his pony and goes through the routine of setting up camp. At intervals, the boy has to remind himself to stop whistling their coded birdsong to his father. His father is not here. His father will not respond, assuring a return to camp in five minutes. His father will not return from picking kindle, or hunting rabbit, or washing clothes.
It’s been a long month without his father. One by one, his family was picked off to be deported to Germany or Poland. But this is Silvanus’ life. It’s all he’s ever known: being hunted like an animal for being born is just what happens to people like him.
His life has whittled down over the years: first, the animals had to go, as they were dragging down the traveling circus too much. Silvanus, the apprentice animal tamer, had been sad but understanding. Then, the jugglers were caught and deported.
After that, it seemed to snowball faster and faster: the circus disbanded, each family going into hiding. Silvanus’ extended family lost contact. Silvanus and his parents were kicked out of hotels and not allowed entry into restaurants. They were not allowed into stores. They were not allowed into town. They were not citizens. The authorities started to chase after them, first for supposed crimes, then for being alive. And now, his father and mother picked off, it’s just Silvanus.
Silvanus stills. There’s something wrong. The forest is too silent.
Holding his breath, the boy concentrates on scanning his surroundings. A twig breaks. Silvanus’ head whips around, and stares right into the eyes of a Hungarian soldier pointing a gun straight at Silvanus.
The man smirks, and pulls the trigger.
Silvanus screams, diving into the underbrush. The boy was too slow, and the bullet still carves a deep groove into the boy’s forearm. Blood dribbles down his arm.
The man languidly stalks to where Silvanus lays, downed like game. The soldier looms over the boy, sure of his kill. The boy is not running away anytime soon, with injuries like that.
Paralyzed by the pain, the boy almost doesn’t roll away in time to another gunshot aimed at the boy’s heart.
The boy staggers to his feet, clutching at his arm, running away as fast as he can. He has to survive. He can’t die.
The man follows at a sedate pace. “You’re going nowhere, little boy. Why don’t you be a good boy and stay still?” The soldier’s Hungarian is light and refined. Idyllic. Like this is just a stroll through the park, and certainly not a state-sanctioned murder.
Silvanus gasps through his pain, blinking away the tears, forcing his legs to go faster, go faster.
“Tsk.” The man clicks his tongue. “You’re a lively one, huh? Tell me, what’s your name?”
Silvanus lurches unsteadily through the forest, dripping a trail of red behind him. “S-”
“S-?” The man mocks, patronizing. “Cat got your tongue, little buddy?”
“W-why?” Silvanus grits out. “Why are you doing this?”
The man strokes his mustache, pretending to think. “Why?”
The soldier laughs, reloading the gun and taking aim at Silvanus one last time.
“Because I can.” The man growls in Hungarian. "You untermensch."
The bullet whizzes towards Silvanus and into his skull. The last thing the boy sees is the sneer of the soldier.
And then purple flames burst and somehow, the bullet drops from his head to the grassy ground, the boy’s wound closing and healing.
Without a second thought, Silvanus lurches forward and tackles the soldier, grappling for the gun. Due to the man’s surprise, the scuffle is in Silvanus’ favor and from one breath to the next, the boy aims the gun at the soldier’s heart and fires.
At the shock of sound, the fight dies out of the man. The gun clatters and falls out of Silvanus’ suddenly shaky hands.
The soldier slowly raises his arms to press at his bleeding chest. Staring right at the boy, the man mouths something.
Skyll-
The man dies. The air smells like iron and gunpowder and sweat.
Skull.
Skull doesn’t die.