Chapter 2 – Beginning of a Journey

Notes:

I tried to research the historical setting as best as I could without spending too much time on it. So mistakes are possible. Better don't use what you read here in your next history test.

The political borders were different in 1898. Romania used to be much smaller during that time, about half the area it is today. The other part belonged to Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary (1867-1918) was a huge empire, consisting of today's Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Czech Republic, and parts of Italy, Poland, Russia and Romania.

Buffy was going through her things, considering what she wanted to take along. She couldn't take much, only the essentials. They'd have to travel on foot a lot. The bag would have to be light enough to carry for long distances. She chose her least colorful dresses, skirts and blouses, outfits that were the least likely to reveal her gypsy heritage. They didn't want to draw attention. They'd probably have to make new clothes along the way to adapt to the circumstances and disappear into the crowd. Luckily, the clan elders weren't greedy when it came to supporting this vengeance operation. They had provided them with sufficient funds for accommodation, food and other essentials. The clan was rather well off. They were breeding and training horses and sold them in the towns and cities they came through.

When Buffy came across her favorite dress, a dress she usually wore to special occasions, like festivals or celebrations, she was reluctant to leave it behind. It was perfect for dancing and she loved to dance. The skirt had little chains of metal plates attached that would jingle when she moved. She'd made it herself. Everybody made their own clothes. Buying them was simply too expensive. But this had been the first dress she had ever made without any help from her mother. It was the quintessential gypsy dress, colorful, consisting of several layers of different, vibrant shades of red, comfortable to wear, ideal for dancing and the cleavage was a bit more revealing than on her other dresses. Her father had not been too happy about the low neckline. But her mother had said it was perfect.

Buffy decided to take the dress with her. Maybe she would get an opportunity to wear it. She was proud to be a gypsy. She didn't always agree with their ways, but she loved the general ideas of moving from place to place, of not belonging to just one place but being at home wherever the clan was.

When she was finished with packing, Buffy walked over to Willow's wagon.

"You ready, Will?"

"Yeah," she came out and grinned, "been packed and ready for years." She patted her bag.

Buffy laughed. Then she realized that Willow actually meant what she had said. "Seriously?"

"Yep, I've had that bag ready to go underneath my bed since I was ten, I think."

"Well, I hope you repacked it every once in a while. I think if you only have those silly skirts you wore when you were ten, we will stick out like a sore thumb."

"Don't worry. And I got rid of Mr. Scarecrow, too, and exchanged him for some very useful," she leaned closer to Buffy so they wouldn't be overheard, "special ingredients my grandma gave me."

Buffy hugged her. "I am so glad you are coming with me, Will." She didn't mention that she herself had not been able to leave her stuffed animal, Mr. Gordo, behind.

"And I am so glad you are taking me with you. I might have had that bag packed for years, but I never would have had the courage to leave on my own."

Buffy and Willow went over to where the elders were already waiting for them.

"We received a message from Xander and Larry," Constantin said. "The vampire is not very far away yet. He only made it to the next town. But my guess is that he is ultimately making his way towards a bigger city. Vampires like to hide in bigger cities because there are more places to seek shelter during the day. And more food, of course. And they are less likely to draw attention. In small towns, people tend to know each other. He's probably trying to get away from us and heading towards Austria-Hungary. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"Jenny showed you how to work the location spell?"

"Yes."

"Good. But don't forget, you have to be in his vicinity for it to work. So don't get lazy and let him out of sight for too long."

"We know," Buffy said.

"We?" Constantin asked, obviously disapproving of Buffy's use of pronouns. "You know Willow is not allowed to practice any spells. That won't change just because she is leaving the community."

"Sorry, I meant 'I know' of course." Buffy rolled her eyes and added with a tiny, defiant grin, "But Willow can at least remind me, in case I should forget."

Constantin ignored her last remark and went on, "And don't loose the hair we gave you. The spell can't be done without it."

Buffy groaned inwardly. How stupid did they think she was? It was almost a miracle that they let her go at all, if they really thought she couldn't manage a spell a six year old could do. "I won't."

Noticing Buffy's irritation, Constantin relented, "I just wanted to make sure that there were no misunderstandings."

"Well, there obviously weren't. Can we go now?"

"So eager to do your duty? I am glad to finally see a change in attitude from you. Well, we wish you two all the best then and hope to receive the first reports from you soon."

"Of course."

Buffy and Willow said goodbye to their family and friends, when Riley approached Buffy and said, "I will accompany you until you meet up with Xander and Larry."

"We'll be fine, but thanks," Buffy said curtly.

Constantin came up behind Riley and said in a resolute voice, "He will accompany you. It wasn't an offer."

Buffy and Willow exchanged annoyed looks. Total freedom would have to wait a little longer.

Riley was walking quite some distance ahead of Buffy and Willow. He had insisted on scouting the area. Willow and Buffy had tried to suppress their laughter as they were very familiar with this area. It was an area the clan chose regularly, almost every year, to set up their camp. They probably knew the area better than Riley. But they simply let him be and pretended to be grateful. This way they would have their peace and quiet and could talk undisturbed.

"Just be glad you didn't have to be there as well, Will. The advice Jenny gave me was actually interesting and valuable. She even taught me some more spells that might come in handy, additional to that ridiculous location spell. But Constantin's lecture… I had such a hard time keeping a straight face." Buffy made her voice deeper to impersonate the clan elder. "'Vampires can smell human beings from exactly ten horse lengths away. Women he can smell even eleven horse lengths away. Children from only nine horse lengths.' Can you believe that?" Buffy burst out laughing and Willow joined in.

"Yeah, how would he know?"

"Exactly, did he do an experiment with vampires and interviewed them afterwards? Don't think they would have cooperated."

"They would have eaten him, too."

They burst out laughing again. It was so good to get away from the clan. It was a feeling of freedom. They were almost euphoric.

"But I do wonder," Willow said. "Vampires do have a great sense of smell. We have to be careful."

"I know."

"I would think that out here, where the air is clean, he could smell us pretty well. But in the city it would be hard to distinguish between anything from even one horse length away with all those awful smells."

"Yuck. The city does smell awful. The few times I have been there it was disgusting. But the people in the city don't seem to mind."

"I guess their noses got used to the stinking odors."

"Probably. On the one hand I dread going to the city, if that is where the vampire is really heading. But on the other hand, it could be quite interesting."

"Oh, yes," Willow said excitedly. "All the big buildings and shops and different food. Do you think they have magic shops?"

"I wouldn't bet on it. Certainly not in the smaller ones. And even if, we wouldn't know how to find them. There might not be any burning at the stakes anymore, but people are still very suspicious of women interested in that. We have to be careful."

"I know," Willow sighed. "Why do people have to be so narrow-minded?"

"Don't ask me that. Even our own clan, who practices magic, is narrow-minded. And look who is walking in front of us: Mr. Most-narrow-minded-of-all."

They started giggling again.

"I don't even want to think what would have happened if you wouldn't have agreed to come with me. I'd have to do this with him," Buffy said disgusted.

"Can't blame him. You are one of the most beautiful girls of the whole clan. And everyone is after him. He thinks he can have anyone."

"Yuck. Anyone but me."

"Or me. But at his side, you could have made it far," Willow teased.

"Right, become his trophy wife and be prohibited to ever utter a word again."

"It seems that is the highest goal of many young women in our clan," Willow said disdainfully.

"Idiots."

"Exactly. I'd rather end up a spinster than submit to some stupid, no-good husband."

"Absolutely," Buffy agreed.

"My grandmother would disown me." Willow chuckled. "Not that she has anything to pass on to me besides her knowledge, but she would do it anyway."

Again, they started laughing.

After walking a while in quiet, simply enjoying the sounds of the woods, Willow asked carefully, "Buffy, do you think you can do this?"

"Do what?"

"Watch how the murderer of your sister goes on with his life?"

"I don't know, Willow, I really don't know. And I don't quite understand all this yet. Janna explained some of this soul stuff to me. But why do they want to make him suffer by giving him his soul back? What was he without his soul? Compared to having a soul? How much a difference makes the soul? How much of him is still that monster that killed my sister? If he feels guilty about it now that he has a soul, he probably wouldn't do something like that again, meaning he would never have done it with a soul in the first place, right?"

"I don't know, Buffy." Willow could see that this was seriously upsetting her friend.

"Who are they punishing, the monster or the soul?"

"The vampire, the monster, I would say."

"Yeah, that was the intention. But they say the monster wouldn't care, so they gave him a soul. So then the soul is the one who ultimately suffers, isn't it?"

"You talk like they are two different people, Buffy. He killed your sister, no matter if he has a soul now or not."

"I'm not so sure about that. Where was the soul before it was put back? Has it been present all the time and was just activated? Then yes, it would be one and the same, I guess. But what if the soul was gone, like in heaven? I mean, he was a person before. He died when he was made a vampire. If his soul was sent to heaven, imagine what the soul must have felt when it was dragged out of there to be put into the body of a mass murderer."

"Or hell," Willow pointed out. "Maybe he wasn't a good person at all and his soul was in hell."

"Could be," Buffy sighed. This was confusing. And she felt that as the person who was responsible for him now she should know these things. She felt ill-prepared and wouldn't put it beyond the elders that they had tried to confuse her on purpose or withheld information. "Well, I guess I have to find out."

"Find out? Like go up to him and ask him?"

"Why not?"

"Buffy! He is a vampire. He is dangerous."

"A vampire with a soul. They wouldn't have let him loose, if he was still that dangerous."

"Buffy, you can't reveal yourself to him."

"I know, I know. I wasn't really serious about that. But I need to find out more about him, if I want to do this right."

"You were always too curious for your own good," Willow cautioned. "I'm sure we'll find a library somewhere and could read up on vampires. I always found them quite fascinating, you know, mysterious and evil – from afar, of course. They always make good horror story material." Willow wasn't really too fond of the idea of getting too close to the vampire.

"Willow, he is unique. Janna said he's the first ever with a soul she's heard of. You won't find anything about him in books."

Willow didn't know how to reply to that. But then they saw that Riley had stopped and was waiting for them to catch up.

"We are there," he said when they came closer. "Look, there's the town. And it looks like Xander and Larry are already waiting for us." He waved and two figures waved back.

When the group got closer, Xander greeted them. "Buffy, Willow, so great to see you. Riley, man, didn't think you would come all the way out here, too."

"I just wanted to make sure that Buffy and Willow found you guys alright. I still don't think it's a good idea that the elders sent them off without any male company."

"We are perfectly able to look out for ourselves, Riley," Buffy said annoyed.

Willow nodded.

Before Riley could say anything else, Xander said, "Well, we'll show you where the vamp usually hides during the day. Come on."

"Riley, maybe you should wait here. Four is already a crowd," Buffy pointed out.

"Yeah, we don't want to wake the sleeping beast," Xander joked.

"I'll stay here with Riley," Larry offered. He wasn't really happy about this assignment at all. He wanted to go home and get far away from this murderer as quickly as possible.

"Good idea," Buffy said quickly, before Riley had a chance to object.

When they were some distance away from Riley and Larry, Xander said, "Man, never thought Larry would be such a wuss. As soon as the sun set on the first night we were out here, he got all jittery and wrapped himself in crosses. Then he lined up bottles of holy water like a protective wall between him and the door. I thought a guy of his size would not be afraid of one single vampire. He is driving me crazy."

After some more walking Xander led them to a barn a bit out of town. It was quite some distance away from the main house. "He's been staying here for the last few days. Hardly ever moved. We didn't see him attack any people. He seems slightly confused. Maybe he is still hazy from the spell the elders did on him. One night, I think he was chasing rabbits and fed on one. My guess is that he is probably still too weak to chase anything bigger. But who knows. Maybe he just went bonkers after that spell. You better be careful. A vampire is bad enough, but a mad vampire... I really don't get why the elders didn't just kill him. This is irresponsible." When Xander realized what he had just let slip, he looked nervously at Buffy. "Um… don't tell Riley I said that. He will probably rat me out to the elders. I really don't wanna go back to being responsible for the horse dung."

"Don't worry, Xander. I won't tell Riley anything. I am glad if I don't have to talk to him at all."

Xander grinned relieved and went on, "Since the harvest is already in, the people living here only go into the barn out once in a while to get some hay. But otherwise they don't seem to use it."

"What is that noise?" Buffy asked.

"Oh that. We've heard it before. Probably some animal."

It sounded more like whistling or howling to Buffy. "An animal? You sure?" The noise seemed to come from the barn and Buffy went closer.

Xander grabbed her arm. "Hey, what do you think you are doing?"

"It's light, Xander, as long as I stay outside, he can't hurt me, even if he should be awake."

Buffy went to the door and put her ear to it. "It's coming from inside," Buffy whispered to Xander and Willow. Just when she was about to carefully open the door, a horrible scream came from inside the barn. Startled, Buffy jumped back from the door.

"Told ya, he's raving mad," Xander said.

To Buffy, the scream had sounded like someone being tortured or having a really, really bad nightmare.

"I would understand if you simply offed him," Xander said. "I certainly would, if he had killed my sister. Nobody would blame you. The elders will be a bit miffed, but they'll get over it. I could stick around a bit longer and help you."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'll manage."

"Want to do it yourself, right? Can't blame you. Kick him in the balls for me, if you get the chance."

They all went back into town. Xander, Larry and Riley offered to stay with Buffy and Willow a few more days. But they declined, saying that the elders expected them back and would probably want another report as soon as possible. Larry was rather glad when the other two finally agreed to leave without any further delay.

"If you need anything, let me know," Riley said to Buffy as they said their goodbyes. "If you think you need backup, write me and I am sure I can convince the elders to let me accompany you after all."

"Thanks, Riley, but I am confident that Willow and I will be fine."

"Yes, yes, I know, for two young women you are quite capable. I didn't mean to imply that you weren't, otherwise the elders wouldn't have sent you on this mission. I am just worried about you."

Buffy had to pull herself together to keep herself from saying something very insulting to Riley. "Thank you, Riley, that means a lot to us," she lied through her teeth.

After the three guys had finally left, Buffy and Willow got a room at the local inn. The town was very small and there was just this one. But it was very nice and cozy and run by a very friendly landlady. The landlady was only too happy to have two young women as her guests for a change.

"So, how long will you two be staying?" she asked Buffy and Willow.

"We don't know yet," Buffy answered. She hoped that the vampire would move on to a bigger town soon. If they stayed here for too long, it would arouse suspicion. "We want to rest a bit before we travel on, but haven't decided yet for how long."

"Where are you headed, dears?"

"We are going to visit family, in Austria-Hungary."

"Really? Such a long way for two young women on their own. But I always thought gypsies travel with their whole clan. You two are gypsies, aren't you?"

Willow and Buffy looked at each other, not knowing what to say and wondering how she had guessed.

"Oh, no need to be ashamed. I have nothing against gypsies. Not at all. My son once bought a horse from your people. He always said that it was the best horse he ever had." The landlady smiled at them warmly. "But that was a long time ago. He hardly comes back home anymore. He is one of the few who ever made it out of here. He is a very successful businessman now. He even wanted me to give up my inn and come live with him in one of those big cities, I can't remember the name. But I told him that I would never leave here. It's my home and I have my own little inn, which I am very proud of. And it's a great way to meet new people, don't you think?"

"Yes, it sure is," Buffy said. "But can I ask what gave us away?"

"Mainly your colorful shawls."

Buffy and Willow had consciously foregone any accessories that could have given them away, like flashy jewelry or headscarves. They had chosen plain-colored skirts and blouses. But since the outside temperatures could get rather cold this time of the year, they had both wrapped themselves in their warmest shawls, which happened to have colorful patterns.

"I understand your desire to go incognito. Not everybody is welcoming to people from elsewhere. My son had the same problem when he first started his business. Nobody wanted to work with him when they found out where he was really from. They thought somebody from such a little village in the country could never be any good. So he pretended to be from a big city, dressed like it, talked like it. And it worked. He's such a clever boy."

"I am sure he is," Buffy said.

"Oh, I am sorry. I am going on and on when you two must be very tired from your travels. Come on, I will show you your room."

After the landlady had shown them to their room and left again, Buffy said, "I was thinking, maybe I should let my natural hair color grow back. What do you think?"

"I hardly remember what you looked like as a blonde," Willow said. "I only remember that when I was still a little girl and told my mother I wanted to have hair like yours, she said that me having red hair was already bad enough."

They both laughed at that.

"And only a short while later you had dark hair like all the other girls."

"You were the only one to wish for blond hair, Will. And I would have given anything to have your red hair."

"They were just envious of you, Buffy."

Buffy's father had married an outsider, someone not from the gypsy community. That in itself was not forbidden or a problem. But her mother had had blond hair and it had constantly reminded everybody that she had not been one of them from the beginning. And it had made her integration into the community harder for her. Buffy had inherited her mother's blond hair. And since children could be very cruel, they had teased her mercilessly about her blond hair. Her father had told Buffy to be proud of being different, that she was special. But a five year old didn't care about being special when the other kids constantly pulled at her hair and called her names. Finally her mother hadn't been able to bear her daughter running home crying anymore and had dyed her hair dark. She had been glad when her second daughter had been born with her father's brown hair.

"I think I will do it, Willow," Buffy said determined.

"Do what?"

"Go back to my old hair color. I should have done it long ago." She had rebelled against the elders whenever she could, but she hadn't done the most obvious thing, setting herself apart from them by not hiding her true hair color any longer.

"I'm sure it'll look great on you. And it'll be a good disguise at the same time. We'll just have to get you some of this liquid, I think they call it... hydrogen peroxide. It bleaches the hair so you won't have to wait until it grows out naturally. But I don't think we'll get that here. Maybe in the next bigger town."

"I've been a brunette for years now. A few more days or weeks won't make a difference."

"Maybe I should try a new hair color as well."

"Don't, your hair is pretty as it is."

Willow smiled. "I was just joking."

"Oh, good. Well, I'll try to get some sleep. I want to go out later and see for myself how our vampire spends his nights."

"Our vampire?" Willow asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You know what I mean."

"I think I'll go downstairs again and keep our landlady some company, maybe ask her some questions about the town."

Buffy grinned. "I'm sure she won't mind one bit."

"Maybe I am just missing my grandmother," Willow mused. "Well, I'll see you later."

"Okay."

Willow left and Buffy tried to get some sleep. She wanted to be alert for when she went out again after dark to see what the vampire would do at night time. But even after the long trip, Buffy had trouble falling asleep. She simply couldn't get that agonizing scream out of her head.

TBC

Note:

Fact, not fiction: Hydrogen peroxide was already used for bleaching hair in the late 1800s.