My Prima Donna Swamp Princess [ 3 ] : Resurrection

  • 2005-09-14
I managed to heave myself out of the mud and stand on my feet. But she was so weak she was incapable of doing the same, so I took her by the arm and led her gingerly to the Volkswagon Golf. I had a few bottles of water in the trunk, and I fetched one for each of us. Not surprisingly, she drank in gulps. In the meantime, I looked over my clothes. Useless.
From a suitcase I pulled a clean pair of pants and shirt and, excusing myself, proceeded to change in the front seat. I grabbed my voice recorder and flipped it on. Based on the one phrase she had uttered, I had a feeling that communication between us would be difficult. Sure enough, thanks to this foresight I am now able to give you a more or less accurate account of our initial dialogues.

After drinking about a liter of water, the woman began an impromptu ablution. She scrubbed her arms and face and then removed the larger chunks of dirt from her copious jewelry. I began to see traces of blonde in her grimy hair. "Do you want a change of clothes?" I asked in English.

She looked up, and at that moment I saw, for the first time, the ferocity, the irresistibility, of her Baltic-blue eyes. Eyes infinitely confident and determined. Eyes that devoured fear. I instantly felt sorry for the man in her life.

"You speak a language of the crusader," she said deadpan. "I shall not condescend to answer."

Mind you, it took me a minute to register what she said, so criss-crossed it was in Baltic tongues, most of them extinct. But I chose to dismiss her answer as lunatic raving. "Maybe you'd like something to eat then?" I fetched some crackers and a Twix, and at the sight her expression changed. She took the offering and ate it ravenously. As the old adage goes, the path to a woman's heart is through her stomach.

"What language do you speak, outsider?" she asked, oblivious to the widening chocolate stain on her lips.

"American," I said.

"America…" She spoke with a scoff, as if the place were just a toilet for a tribe of Scythians. "I've never heard of it."

Unbelievable! She'd never heard of America. I was in love.

"Well, it's a ways from here," I explained with a smile, indulging whatever game she was playing. "Just hang a left at Greenland, as they say."

She didn't register the joke, so lost has she become in her own thoughts. I used the lull to admire her ornate medieval folk costume (which, by the way, seemed to resuscitate along with her skin as her body imbibed a few paltry nutrients), and then delicately proceeded to pry her for information, in her Baltic pidgin, picking the words slowly and not worrying about case declension.

"I take it you were in a medieval battle re-enactment before you got lost."

Mind you, I couldn't recall the Yatvingian word for "re-enactment," so I fudged a little and said "war game" in Semigallian.

Big mistake.

Disgust and disdain rendered the woman's face unrecognizable, and it looked as if she would spit a half-chewed Twix at me. "War is not a game, American."

"My name is Terry, first of all, and of course I know that war--"

"Do all Americans take war so lightly?"

"Of course n--"

"Our people are preparing themselves for war right now, against your ilk, and yet you talk about games. Shame on you!"

Oh, boy… a real rural nutcase. "I'm sorry, madam, but there's no war around here," I felt compelled to inform her. "Hasn't been for 60 years."

This trivial tidbit sent the woman into a near-trance. "Sixty years!" she mumbled. "How can that be? I was on my way to deliver a message, that the Skalvians were prepared to help…"

Skalvians?!? "What on earth are you talking about," I implored.

"We have to stop Jogaila," she said. Her countenance faded off into a distant stare.

"Jogaila? You mean the Grand Duke?"

"Yes, he promised before Grunwald that, if victorious, he would consider disavowing his baptism and ceasing all further Christianization of the Baltics. But he deceived us."

I was too stupefied to respond, but she continued. "But if that was 60 years ago, then he must be dead!"

"Madam, Jogaila's been dead for, well, about 570 years!"

I barely managed to prevent her from hitting the asphalt. And from that very moment, when I held this unconscious mystery in my arms, I knew my life had changed forever.