“I’m not even going to bother correcting that.”
“That’s half the fun, you know.”
“I know,” I murmured, smiling to myself.
Satisfied, he relaxed and made a noise that indicated he was done talking. I knew precisely when he fell asleep, because he began tipping sideways until his head rested on my shoulder and his cap fell into my lap. Good grief, he was heavy. And close. Draped on me like a heavy blanket. I should have pushed him away, but he smelled like shaving cream and the warmth of him was a comfort. So I just let him be and dug out the French crossword I still had in my handbag from the Orient Express.
The first half of our railway journey took us through boring, desolate country. It was overcast and a bit foggy, especially after we passed several potato fields. But the view changed drastically when we entered the Transylvanian region. Misty foothills rose up around the track. Pockets of quaint villages dotted the slopes between spiky firs. Here, there were fewer cars and more horse-pulled carts—even a shepherd and two fluffy dogs, herding slow-moving sheep into a valley.
But the farther into the mountains we went, the foggier and darker it got. Colder, too. Huck woke with a start as raindrops pattered against the window. He didn’t apologize for falling asleep on me, and I discreetly rotated my shoulder to counter the effects of my arm going numb under his weight. It was as if we’d jumped back in time to when I was fifteen and using every possible excuse to touch his hand at the dinner table and he was sixteen and using every possible excuse to brush my arm as he passed by me in the hallway, and neither of us acknowledged any bit of it.
We still had a couple of hours to go. To get my mind off all that remembered touching and to pass the time, I suggested we read through tourist brochures Huck had picked up at the train station. One of them had a foldout map of Romania designed for tourists, with legends translated in several languages and whimsical Gothic drawings of medieval towers, castles, and pointy-toothed vampires. Ignoring the schlock, I pointed out the Carpathian town where my mother was born, Bra?ov—east of where we were now—and it made my heart beat faster, wondering what she’d think if she knew I was finally traveling here, so close to her roots.
According to this map, we soon learned that everything worth seeing in Romania was either religious (painted Orthodox churches), medieval (villages in the Carpathians), or haunted—haunted monasteries, haunted homes, and even a haunted forest. “Outside Cluj. It’s supposedly the place where Vlad was beheaded,” Huck informed me, reading the English translation.
“I thought he was killed on a battlefield by the Turks?”
“According to the Romanian tourist board, he’s been killed in multiple locations. In this particular one, on the spot where he was beheaded, there’s a circle inside the woods where nothing grows. People who go into those woods disappear on the regular too.”
“That sounds positively delightful. Let’s be sure to stop there and take photographs.”
He smiled, eyes merry. “I’ll add it to our must-see list.”
By the time we made it to our stop, the fog and drizzle had changed to fog and snow. Delicate flakes fluttered onto my coat as we stepped off the platform beneath a Gothic-script metal sign that swayed in the wind. It read:
SIGHI?OARA
TRANSILVANIA
LOCUL NA?TERII LUI VLAD ?EPE?
Birthplace of Vlad ?epe?. If I remembered my history correctly, he didn’t live here long, but the small town had clearly embraced him as their own. Apart from the sign, there wasn’t much to see around the railway station. It was a bit desolate out here, with a smattering of weary cottages on one side of the tracks and a few newer buildings on the other. It was also cold. I dug a pair of thin leather gloves from my coat pockets and tugged them on as we left the station.
We zigzagged over a street along with a small pack of tourists from the train, avoiding horse-pulled carts and old black cars with overlarge skinny wheels while following signs to Old Town. The farther we walked, the more it felt as if we were stepping back in time.
Several hundred years back.
Perched on a mountainside terrace was a ringed Saxon citadel—one that looked as if it had sprung from the pages of a medieval fairy tale. And it was no abandoned ruin. There was a living, breathing village inside the old walls.
“Bram Stoker had it all wrong with the Transylvanian doom and gloom,” Huck said, a little awe in voice. “This is enchanting, yeah?”
It really was, especially with the snow falling. “Keep an eye out for Father,” I said.
“Youkeep an eye out. As your official protector, I’m looking for dangerous cultists and stolen wolf dogs.”
“Fair enough,” I said, rearranging my satchel and camera case across my torso as we both looked around.
We crossed a narrow bridge and passed through a stone fortifying wall dotted with turreted towers. Inside the citadel, crowds of people strolled hilly, cobbled lanes past medieval row houses painted in bright pastels: salmon, buttercup... sky blue. Geraniums decorated window boxes on gingerbread-roofed merchant houses.
It was dreamlike. Timeless.
Maybetoodreamlike and timeless: for one dizzying moment, passing by us in the crowds, I gaped at a group of serious-looking men dressed in medieval Saxon furs and chain mail. It felt as if I was losing my mind.
“What is happening?” I murmured, seeing other people dressed like illustrations fromThe Canterbury Tales.
“Middle Ages Festival,” Huck said, head turning in all directions. “I just heard an English tour guide explaining that it draws twice as many tourists this time of year.”
And almost as many Vlads. I couldn’t stop staring at a group of scowling, raven-haired men with the Impaler’s infamous thick mustache and jeweled crown—all of them smoking cigarettes and drinking frothy ale from metal mugs.
