"Where are you from?"

"A long way from here, in America."

"What brings you to Romania?"

"Adventure, as corny as that sounds."

The jeep bounced heavily over the narrow path, the girl riding in the passenger's seat bracing herself against the roof with hands trained from the miles beforehand. The jolly man at her side had been her companion for the last few hours, a local guide willing to drive her across the mountain to the next town on her tour through the forests of Europe without having to struggle through the over-priced tour busses and short flights in rickety planes. She'd felt a little bad, her duffle bag and suitcase barely fitting in the storage compartment, but she planned to tip heavily as soon as they reached their destination. The man, Cristian, seemed more than happy to help her along, and she welcomed his companionship.

He turned to her with warm brown eyes and a bright smile despite the chill, continuing their idle conversation.

"Do not worry, you do not look like the normal tourists."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

Elena was more pleased with the comment than she let on, feeling her chest swell with pride. She tried her best to be polite, to blend in with the more local crowd. She didn't really care for the long queues, the over-priced "authentic cuisine" restaurants or pre-paid tours. There were exceptions to the rules of course, her fairy tale themed tour across Germany was more than worth the price when it so perfectly fit with her goals for her journey.

The thought sat happily in her mind as she pulled out the heavily marked collection of Eastern European folklore to thumb through as the road leveled out.

"You read many books, mea fluturaș, I am afraid that you may not be able to take them all with you when you return home."

"As long as they go to someone who wants them. They're my travel guides, I've based my trip on local legends, fairy tales and myths. I'm studying for when I return home, I plan to write my thesis about them."

"They've not made any princesses based on Romanian tales, I am afraid."

"You're right, but not every story needs a happy ending, there doesn't have to be a princess or a damsel in distress. I like the original tales, I think they say more for a place's culture than any retelling could. You just have to want to learn. Plus, I'm a pretty big fan of monster movies."

Cristian laughed, swinging the bundle of garlic that hung from his rear view mirror towards her playfully.

"What could you possibly say about old stories that have not already been said?"

She'd turned to a page in her book, the beginning of a story titled "Youth Without Age, Life Without Death". It was an interesting story, one she'd been looking forward to studying.

Suddenly, the jeep squealed to a halt, Cristian turning the wheel sharply and sending her book tumbling to the cold earth of the road below them. Elena's head swam from the jostling, breathing through the spell of lightheadedness that followed as Cristian quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed down from the driver's seat. Fallen across the road before them was a tumbled statue of a woman wrapped in chains, it's base cracking with rot and lifting the earth that had been settled around it.

"What the hell…"

Cristian gave the crumbling stone a shove with the heel of his boot, sighing heavily when it didn't budge.

"So, I guess I'm not making it to my hotel, huh?"

The joke didn't land, Cristian quickly looking around the area while running a hand through his mess of brown hair. They were pretty far into the mountains, surrounded on all sides with dense forests. Turning back was always an option, of course, but it would be dark before they were able to arrive back in the town they started in. Elena stepped down onto solid ground behind him, surveying the area they'd stopped in.

There wasn't a more stereotypical vignette of what she'd grown up thinking Romania to look like.

"Where are we?"

The distance was decorated with high towers, a grand castle sitting tucked against the mountainside. Below it sat a quaint village, the sounds of livestock echoing up the hill towards them in the late afternoon sun. In the distance, windmills turned in the current of a great river fed by a waterfall that roared a few miles away. The only scourge on this gothic escape was the black smoke that streamed from the worn down factory that sat at the town's edge, bent and rusted from years of war and neglect.

"We should go."

The wavering voice turned her head from admiring the view, finding her guide quickly climbing back in the driver's seat and restarting the engine. Elena quickly retrieved her book, tucking her fingers between it's pages and pulling herself back into the safety of the car. A cold air had settled over their small, single convoy, unease lining Cristian's once jolly features. Elena tried her best to remain positive, but the grim and worried glances that were being sent all around them were making it harder than she expected.

"So, what's the new plan? Do we go back?"

"It will be dark before we can make it, it is very risky to be out at night here. It's quicker to go around the village, but…"

"But?""

"It is dangerous for outsiders."

Before their conversation could continue, a low howl echoed from the forest beyond them, and with a loud crank the car was thrown into reverse. Elena could only hold on for dear life, bracing a boot against the door to keep herself from tumbling out of the vehicle as it took a sharp turn down the hill towards the village. The path was barely visible in front of them, the slightest of worn tire tracks showing the way around stones and crops scattered across worn terrain. It was all Elena could do to buckle herself in, praying to whatever god was watching over them that the poor jeep wouldn't meet its end here.

They made it to the bottom of the hill, Cristian throwing the car into park before it had even stopped rolling completely and bolting for the heavy metal gate that sat in front of them. When pulling on latch echoed with the clinking of heavy chains, he cursed loudly before returning to the vehicle.

"We keep driving, do not look anywhere but ahead. You should not have to know the darkness that exists here."

"What are you talking about?"

Any answer she may have found was drowned out by the screams, a sick screech that sounded somewhere between animal and human. The wheels spun as Cristian floored it, turning their path sharply towards the heavy smog of the factory and the path that winded around it. Elena tried her best to ignore the rushing wind around them that carried sounds she only thought existed in theaters cushioned by overpriced popcorn and sticky floors, focusing instead on watching the road before them as it winded around rusted remnants.

But god wasn't watching.

It was a sick sound, coming into impact with the black shape that darted across their path, but it was one that she could barely hear over the sound of her own scream mixing with the crunch of metal as the jeep overturned and went rolling into the chain link fence that bordered their escape route. The ringing in her ears was numbing, the pain she felt from the strain of the impact sending a bout of panic through her blood as she flexed her extremities. The click of her seatbelt cut through the swirling torment of confusion, strong hands pulling her upright and near-carrying her away from the debris as her blood rushed away from her head.

Cristian was pulling her away from the crash, back towards one of the piles of metal they'd passed. She became aware enough to control her own feet, pulling them from the mud and helping to provide momentum. In this moment she trusted her guide with all of her rational consciousness, allowing him to push her towards the open space in the makeshift junkyard and pressing her back against the tar of time worn tires. Cristian crouched before her, eyes trained over his shoulder even as he spoke.

"There is a song, my wife hums it to me. You stay here, hide, and do not come out until you hear it. I will whistle when it's safe, înțelege?"

The melody shook as he demonstrated, but she tried her best to focus on the strained sound. It was familiar, a song that she had most definitely heard in her travels before this awful moment. There was nothing more she wished for than to go back to the cheerful excitement she'd been lost in mere hours ago. Instead, she was here, shaking as her body attempted to fight back shock and whimpering through almost-formed words as Cristian pushed a pistol into her palms. His fingers lingered on the edge of his boot, tucking the fabric of woven pants back into the leather and snapping open the fastening of the leather pouch on his thigh before he turned to her, the glint of a knife shining in the low sitting sun.

"I hope to hear what you think about the stories after this."

"Wait, wh-"

Her questions never landed, the squeal of metal grinding into place drowning her stumbling voice and sealing her into place. The only light streamed from around the cracks in her makeshift shelter, allowing her some visibility to inspect her person. Her legs felt like lead, sinking heavily into the mud beneath her knees as she shifted her weight. When nothing protested in a way that made it apparent that any bones were broken, she changed focus to her hands. In one, she clutched the pistol. The feeling was foreign, and she wasn't confident that she could even properly use the thing if it came to it, so she just hoped that time would never come.

In her other, much to her surprise, was her book.

Those fingers were worse for wear, already swelling with blood that was sure to lead to bruising as the clutched between the pages. Those pages fell open when she stretched her hand, hoping to fend of some of the worst soreness by exercising them now, and her eyes fell to the intricate scrawl of a story title she swore wasn't part of the table of contents when she'd picked up the small paperback at it's meager bookstore. Each letter seemed to dip into the parchment in a swirling script, it's dark ink sinking into the grim ornamentation that adorned the space before the beginning paragraph. The burning eyes of a dark steed stared back at her, it's forelegs held high defiantly as a young maiden shielded herself from it's bucking arch. In the shadows it was hard to focus on anything beyond that image, and as the adrenaline rushing through her body died and the full force of shock sunk in, that foreboding inscription of that unfamiliar title became the bottom of her tunnel vision before it faded into the dark splotches that clouded her vision.

"The Village of Shadows."