breast, bows her head, moves away. Al that we wanted, she thinks. Al that we ended up with.
A short distance from the camp she hooks the canvas among the branches and settles down for the evening. By dark she is sure she hears something pacing in a half-circle around her camp. A wolf or a deer or an elk. Not a man. Men do not circle in that way. She sits upright and stirs the loose embers of the fire, throws on more leaves. The flames jump in the pitch-dark. She rips a piece of cloth from the sleeve of one of Swann's shirts and sets it aflame, circles her camp with the rag burning.
She remains awake until morning, knees drawn to her chest, then dozes until a patch of wet shocks her cheekbones. Giant flakes of snow gently fal ing. It is as if the weather, too, wants to make a fool of her.
The snowfal makes the tree branches darkly flamboyant, pencil lines in a pale drawing. Crows gather on the branches and flap off black into the sky. She can see, in the nearby trees, an eyebrow of white on the burnt-out carriage.
“Blessings,” she says aloud, for no reason she can fathom.
A reply slices the crisp air. Perhaps it is the wind in the trees, or a branch fal ing, but then there is another sound, and a deep bronchial coughing.
Zoli hurries to gather her things and bundles them in her zajda. Frosted leaves snap beneath her feet.
A voice then.
She spins.
Two men in loden jackets lumber through the trees, axes over their shoulders. They halt and one drops his axe. Together they shout as she scrambles through the snow. The whip of a twig against her face. Her foot catches on an exposed tree root. She fal s, slams into a cut-off tree trunk.
She rises again, but the men are upon her, above her, looking down. One is young and fresh-faced. The other wears a shabby beard and broken eyeglasses. The younger one leers. She turns in the snow and curses them but the younger one gazes down, amused. The older reaches to pick her up and she bites at his arm. He jumps back. She shouts at them in Romani and the younger says: “I told you there was someone out here. Last night. I told you. I felt it.”
Zoli scoots backwards in the snow, wraps her hand around a length of stick, but the younger one knocks it out with a swift kick.
“I bet she's the one. Look at her.”
“Pick her up.”
“Watch the evil eye.”
“Oh, shit on your evil eye. Just pick her up.”
“I bet she's the one. Look at her coat.”
“Shut up.”
“She was going to hit us with that stick.”
“Pick her up.”
They lean down together and grab under each shoulder. Zoli jams her feet hard down in the snow and leans backwards, but the men have a hold and she feels useless between them. They bring her a good distance through the woods to a clearing where two donkeys pace patiently around the front of a wooden shack.
So that was last night's noise, thinks Zoli: only donkeys.
A wafer of snow slides from the roof and plops onto the ground below. Skinned logs stand in stacked piles around the shack. A piece of cutting machinery lies against the wal . Nearby, a trundlecart. The snow is footprinted and packed: more than just two men here, she thinks.
She spits on the ground and the younger one says: “She's trying to put a curse on us.”
“Don't be an idiot,” says the older.
Inside, the men knock snow off their boots and lead her to a chair. The air is heavy with sweat and old tobacco. Eight wooden bunks are screwed to the wal and an unlit lamp hangs from a chandelier of antler horns in the center of the room. The floor is made of flat riverrock. A workcamp of sorts, she thinks. Or il egal hunting. She watches as the younger one latches the door shut, kicks the bottom in place.
She reaches inside her pocket, opens the blade of the onyx-handled knife and slides it along her coatsleeve, the tip of the blade against her forefinger.
The older man turns away and bends down to the stove door. He opens it and pokes with a stick. The fire rises orange in the joints of the stove and a hot ember lands on his boot. He knocks it off, takes a saucepan, begins stirring food with the same stick. A hind leg of lamb hangs like a jacket above the stove. He shaves off a sliver with a blade and it drops directly into the pot.
“There's nothing good that wil come to you out here,” says the man.
And as if by way of proof the younger one begins to undo his belt. He pul s it through the loops and snaps it in the air. His trousers, caked in mud, fal to the ground around his ankles, but he keeps his back turned. His underclothes are a filthy gray. Zoli slips the knife further down along her wrist and closes her eyes. A deep coughing comes from across the room. She looks up to see that the man has stepped into another pair of trousers.
He adjusts the belt. His eyes sharpen. He toes a smal cone of wood-dust on the floor, comes across, and reaches past her for a cup on the table.
With two fingers on his cup he raises it to drink. There is, she knows, nothing in the cup.
“What's your name?”
She slides the chair backwards but he pushes her once more into the table. A smel of resin to him.
“What's your name, Gypsy?”
