Chapter 50: Lost

"Well, as everybody knows, demons and angels are one in the same. They just have different agendas."

Kurt was freezing, but it was bothering him less and less. A few minutes ago every time he put one of his bare feet down on the icy marble floor he was sure he would stick to it and it felt like someone was driving a nail of ice through his leg. Now he hardly noticed the cold.

It seemed like they had walked miles though the landscape never changed beyond anything but infinite blackness. He wanted to ask Azazel how he knew where they were going, but he was afraid of what might happen if he did. Finally they stopped.

"Do you see them?" Azazel asked.

Kurt squinted into the darkness. He saw nothing – like gazing into a pool of ink. And then he saw it, a mere shimmer of light at first, a warm orange glow that increased in intensity until he could make out trees and a few trailers parked beneath them.

"Yes," Kurt said.

"Then go for it is there you will find the one you seek."

Kurt felt Azazel push him forward. He wasn't sure how he was seeing what he was seeing. Was it a door or a window he could step through? Or was it just an image? How did he "go to them" as Azazel asked? Kurt reached out – feeling for some kind of barrier between where he stood and what he saw. And then he was pulled forward – like someone grabbing his hand and yanking.

"Ah!" he cried out and closed his eyes. When Kurt opened them again, he was standing in a small thicket, just beyond the circle of light cast by the gas lanterns.

"Azazel, where are we?" He asked, turning. But Azazel was gone. The dark room was gone. He was alone. There were footsteps and Kurt quickly teleported behind the nearest tree. He recognized the silhouette of Martuska Szardos as she walked past, carrying what looked like a large kettle. He was still trying to make sense of what had just happened. Had that really been Azazel's realm, just a vast expanse of darkness? From Margali's books he had understood Azazel's realm to be synonymous with hell. Had that been it?

Martuska was walking away quickly, he didn't want to lose track of her. But if he had really just passed through hell? Kurt bowed his head and recited a prayer of contrition. He hoped that God would understand that all this was necessary.

He tried to follow Martuska as quietly as possible, but the ground was littered with twigs and had only made a few careful steps before one snapped.

"Who is that?" Martuska said in Romani as she whirled around – looking in the direction of the sound. She was looking straight at him, but from the way she was walking curiously forward; Kurt could tell she couldn't see him.

For a moment Kurt was silent. He knew about thirty words in Romani and that was mainly limited to a few greetings and the funny little phrases Margali used to say when they were kids. Add to that their favorite things to call him, "beng", "marimé", and "gadje" and he still wasn't exactly conversant. But if he remembered correctly, Martuska spoke German.

"Kurt Wa… It's Margali's son." Kurt said in German. If Martuska had been a man, Kurt would have been expected to make a more formal presentation of himself; that was the Romani custom. As it was he was glad he didn't since he wasn't very familiar with Romani customs.

Martuska squinted into the darkness. "I can't see you." She responded in German.

Taking a deep breath, Kurt stepped out into the light cast by their lanterns.

Martuska stepped back and hissed at him "Beng!" she shouted. "Margali's devil son. Get away from here!"

Kurt had to duck away when she took a swipe at him with the kettle, which thankfully, was empty. Kurt let her fling insults at him for a few minutes. Most of them he knew though a few were new to him. When she tried to hit him a second time with the kettle, he caught it in his hands and kept it.

"I said get away!" Martuska shouted at him and when Kurt stood his ground she stormed off towards the trailers. Kurt teleported so that he was in her path. Martuska screeched in surprise.

"I'm not going anywhere," Kurt said. "At least, not until I've talked to you."

"I won't listen to your words. Now go away."

Kurt shook his head and to his surprise Martuska gave a huff of impatience and ripped the kettle out of his hands. He followed her as she started down her original path, away from the trailers. When he couldn't convince her to stop or even look in his direction, he teleported into her path again.

Martuska's response was much the same. She screeched though now she glared at him angrily.

"I'm really hard to get rid of," Kurt said.

Martuska put a hand on one hip and considered him for a moment, still glaring daggers, then she thrust the kettle at him. "Then you can carry the water for me," she said.

Kurt took it and followed her to the well.

"What is it you want?" she asked.

"I need your help." Kurt said as he worked the pump until water poured from the spigot into the large pot.

"I don't help demons." Martuska said.

Kurt stopped pumping as the water began to spill over the edge. He picked the kettle up by the handle, leaning back to counter balance it's weight. "And yet you would ask one for his help," he said.

Martuska's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Kurt began following her back towards the trailers.

"And if you believe in demons, then you must believe in angels," he added.

"I might," Martuska said.

"Well, as everybody knows, demons and angels are one in the same. They just have different agendas." Kurt said. "You haven't asked me what my agenda is."

"That's because I don't care. Put it there." Martuska said. She pointed to a stand with a hook that stood over a small fire.

Frowning, Kurt hung the hoisted the kettle up onto its hook.

"I expect you to be gone," Martuska said. She glared at him from the doorway of one of the trailers.

"Maybe," Kurt said with a shrug. "Mind if I use some of this water? I'm pretty thirsty." Kurt used his hand to scoop some out to drink, then he teleported out of sight into a shadow cast by a stand of trees. From there he watched Martuska dump out the water with a grunt of irritation and start back towards the well. He couldn't help but smirk even though he was sure he hadn't endeared himself to her that that stunt.

Kurt hadn't really expected to live outside for so many days and he certainly hadn't packed for it. He supposed he had spent his entire life "camping", but he always had some sort of roof over his head. Since following Azazel to Martuska's camp however, the trees had been his only cover.

He'd learned he was in Spain and though the days were warm it cooled down considerably at night. Kurt had made a sort of home for himself in a thicket of trees a short distance from where Martuska's trailers were parked. His coat was warm, but he woke up freezing every morning, shaking the dew out of his hair and hopping around to get the circulation back in his hands, feet, and tail.

He was getting a little restless and more than a little discouraged. Every night he'd tried to convince Martuska to listen to him and it always ended the same way. She went into her trailer and he returned to the woods. The strange thing was that he was pretty sure she was leaving food out for him. It was hard to imagine why else they would be throwing away perfectly good fruit and loaves of bread that were nearly whole. Even so, it was hard to imagine that he'd left Father's Dietrich's for this.

Even though only four days had passed, it seemed like an eternity to Kurt. He had always lived surrounded by people so a few days spent living alone in the woods made him feel like he was going mad. Wolfgang had lent him the German translation of Thoreau's Walden once and it was hard to imagine how anyone could live in isolation like that. At least Thoreau had his cabin, Kurt thought.

He would have liked his bible or his rosary at least, but he'd had a feeling that Azazel would make him an offer like the one he had. It didn't seem right to carry such objects across a space that was, as Kurt understood it at least, Hell. But, at least he would have had something to do now.

As darkness fell that night, he crouched in the shadows of the thicket nearest to Martuska's camp waiting for Margali's sister to come out to collect water for that evening's meal. When he heard the sounds of footsteps on leaves and branches behind him it was too late for him to do anything as he was pulled to the ground by a hand gripping him by his hair.

He let out a shriek of surprise that was answered in a torrent of Spanish. He struggled against the many hands that held him down while another attempted to bind him with loops of thick rope. Under the cover of the trees in the darkness there was barely enough light even for Kurt to make out the faces of Franco, Martuska's husband and his sons.

They spoke a mix of Spanish and Romani to each other and it seemed that they were experts with knots because it wasn't more than a minute or two before Kurt was bound fast, unable to free his hands or feet.

"Let me go!" Kurt shouted in German and then again in Spanish. Franco laughed and threw him to the ground.

Franco gave a quick nod to one of his sons, "Drag him this way," he said.

Kurt felt his bonds tighten as he was pulled along the ground and out into the open. He twisted and jerked, trying to dig his feet into the ground, to keep them from bringing him any closer to their trailers. He started shouting the old Romani proverbs that Margali used to say at them in an effort to convince them he meant no harm.

" May mishto les o thud katar i gurumni kai tordjol! Shuk tski khalpe la royasa!" Kurt shouted. It was nonsense, but his Romani was pretty limited after all. He wasn't really even sure what he was saying.

"Bengesko niamso." Franco said.

"Mashkar le gadjende leski shib si le Romeski zor!" Kurt responded, which meant, ironically, "surrounded by Gadje, the Rom's only defense is his tongue".

"I said be quiet," Franco said. He shoved Kurt face first up against a rotting tree trunk.

Kurt cringed against the side of the tree trunk. How could this be happening to him again? He tried to hold his bound hands up in front of his face, making himself as small as possible.

"What are you doing in our woods?" Franco asked.

"Nothing," Kurt said.

Franco gave him a look of distrust.

"I came to see Martuska." Kurt said, swallowing hard. "She's my aunt."

"She's no relation of yours." One of Franco's sons said.

"Margali is my sister and she calls that child her son," a voice broke in from above them and everybody looked up to see Martuska Szardos standing in the doorway of the largest trailer.

Franco shouted back at her in Romani and the two of them began to argue with Franco's statements apparently being supported by his sons. Meanwhile Kurt pulled frantically at his bonds, trying to free his hands and feet by yanking on the ropes with his tail.

The argument reached a fevered pitch then seemed to cut off suddenly. Kurt could see the look of angry defeat in Franco's eyes as he watched him take out a small pocketknife and cut through the ropes. Kurt stood up quickly and backed away from them, not sure of why he'd been freed or what they wanted from him. For a few minutes nobody said anything.

"So what are you waiting for?" Martuska said at last. "Get out of here. And don't come back."

"Please, I…" Kurt began but Martuska cut him off.

"No. I said leave. Next time Franco finds you – I won't come to your aid. Now go." With that Martuska turned away toward the interior of her trailer and let the door shut behind her.

Kurt didn't move at first. Was that it? Had he journeyed all this way for nothing? How was he going to get back? And more importantly where would he go? He couldn't go back to Father Dietrich, not after Azazel's threats. And he had no way of finding the circus other than once again summoning Azazel to ask him to take him to Margali. And at what price? Kurt certainly couldn't imagine Azazel allowing him to freely cross his realm a second time.

Kurt suddenly understood how alone in the world he truly was. There was no life for him outside of Circus Gehlhaar. He couldn't find a new place to live, a new job, or even walk down the street. His very existence was predicated on the myth that his appearance was a costume. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do.

Franco and the others were still staring at him expectantly.

"I'm going." Kurt said. He turned away from them and walked slowly into the woods to fetch his things. Though after that, he did not know what to do next, his options were so limited they hardly seemed to exist at all.

Perhaps Azazel had engineered this too. Maybe he hadn't allowed Kurt free passage at all; that he knew Martuska would so stubbornly refuse to help him, and that in the end he would be trapped far away from anyone who could help him, anyone except for Azazel himself.

But he couldn't accept Azazel's offer, he just couldn't.

And yet it seemed that all his life he had played into Azazel's hand – even in his most earnest attempts to serve God. In fact at that moment it seemed to Kurt that everything he'd every understood about his own faith, about God's plans for him, had been turned and twisted back against itself by Azazel's silent yet constant meddling.

Kurt stared down at his meager pile of possessions and shoved them into his rucksack. He didn't even miss his bible and his rosary for it seemed that God truly had forsaken him.

Looking around he realized he was lost in every way possible.