Prelude - @Short Story

Prelude - Part 2

Prelude                                                         

by sloanranger 

Part  2

The memory was still clear, as though it had been yesterday and not ten years before.

Simza had been young; they'd both been just babies, really, her and the boy. She had been walking beside her mother on a warm day.  Her Daj took Simza with her whenever she went into the town to tell fortunes for the gadjes.  Vadoma had chosen a likely corner. When a gadje stopped and asked the gypsy to tell her fortune, she told her child to stand under the eave of a nearby building for shade.  

Out of nowhere it seemed, a little boy, smaller than Simza, ran up to her. He almost fell as he pressed his lips onto hers. She could not have been more than four - and from the size of him, the boy was not even that old.

She could recall her back pressed against a hard surface - the building, she guessed. The pressure of his child's mouth was somehow familiar and she felt the lack of it when his mother dragged him away. It lasted only seconds and they both giggled. As he left, he waved and said: "Bye, bye." Simza had waved too.

"Simza! What were you thinking?" Her mother had said, as she came up to her. But her Mama was suppressing a smile.

Vadoma reached for a cloth but the child was already wiping her mouth with her hand. Her mother swiped at the girl's mouth with the cloth and reached for her fingers but stopped.

The four-year old was staring at the open palm of her left hand: "Look, Mama," she said, "at the picture."

Her mother steadied herself. "What do you see, Simza?"

"He's going to marry me, Mama" The child looked up from her palm to her mother.

"Hmmph," Vadoma said. "Not today, he isn't - come."

She took hold of her daughter's hand and they'd gone straightaway home to their encampment.

Simza had seen the images ever since. Mama would not let her look at other hands, only the palms of the family and only if she – Vadoma, had read them first. Mama said too many images were not good for her young mind. "I guess I cannot do anything about the clouds and the water, girl," her mother had told her. "The nature spirits have their own rules."

Another loud splash took Simza from her reverie beneath the tree. She was pulling a wiggling fish from the water when her mother stepped from the woods, her basket full of mushrooms... and  blackberries - an unexpected bonus.

Simza brought the fish aground and it flopped on the grass until Vadoma grabbed a stone and struck it. The woman knelt, took her knife and beheaded and gutted the two fish. Throwing the offal into the rushing stream, she cleaned them throroughly of fins, scale and bone. Vadoma then handed the mushrooms to her chey. She carried the two fish herself as they walked back to the camp.

The fire already contained a pot of fusui – bean stew - steaming in the middle of the rock-encircled pit. Her mother cut the fish into pieces and added them to the stew along with the mushrooms. Vadoma had told the fortune of a farmer earlier that morning and received a bag of vegetables in return. They'd got cabbage, onions and carrots from his garden but except for two of the onions, they would save the rest for tomorrow.

(To be continued).