NationStates Jolt Archive

Ten years have passed since the government of Her Serene Highness Queen Dragana IV was toppled from the Balkanian throne in a bloody coup. Dragana herself was presumed to have committed suicide after murdering her closest advisor and sometimes-lover Count Zoltan Kovacs upon discovering him a traitor, but her body was never found and her whereabouts, if she survived her plummet into the moat of the Dubrov castle, are unknown.

Immediately following the dethronement of the monarchy, a democratic socialist government was hastily set up with rebel leader Kostadin Vlahov as president. But Vlahov was young, inexperienced, and terribly weakened by the pain of his conscience whenever he contemplated the ruthless bloodshed his rebel forces had inflicted. And so, just two years after the first coup, the Queen's Guard paramilitaries, a fascist movement formed of the scattered remnants of the royal court, seized power and exiled Vlahov to a remote village in the Rhodope mountains of Bulgaria.

The leader of the Queen's Guard had once been called Nemanja Milic, but after the Vlahov coup he restyled himself as Dragan Drakulovic. Dragan for the martyred queen, Drakul for the fury of the dragon he meant to unleash on the mangy mongrel dogs that had taken power in his country. His malice and cruelty knew no bounds.

Kostadin knelt trembling before an icon of the Virgin and Child. The scent of incense and the harmonies of the Divine Liturgy filled the air, but nothing would calm his tormented soul. Every day for ten years he had hiked up the mountain near his village of exile to the small, crumbling church on the hillside in search of some peace or lightness, but nothing would reach the darkness that had settled deep within him. He had seen too much. He had done too much. He was ready to die, and it was the final cruelty that God refused to answer his desperate pleas for death. He was only 33 years old, and he felt as ancient as the Rhodope mountains themselves.

He spoke Bulgarian now, not that odd Balkanian dialect. He had been baptized into the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. He owned a small farm and some livestock, wore the traditional peasant costume as did everyone else in his remote village, danced and sang and drank on feast days and at village weddings the same as everyone else. No one even knew about his past--here he was called Konstantin Zlatev. The villagers all believed he had come from Sofia, tired of city life and wishing to live simply and devoutly.

But every time he closed his eyes, every night for ten years, he saw the same scenes over and over again: The terrible storm on the night of the first coup, the Gothic spires of Dubrovski Castle illuminated by a flash of lightning. The sprawled body of Zoltan Kovacs on the floor of the throne room, his face frozen forever in a grimace of agony, his blood staining the white marble. The reign of terror in the streets and the mob rule in the outlying districts....then, then, always then, the Fall of Dubrov-Pesha. The invasion of the green-shirted fascist fanatics from their hideaway in the mountains, the helplessness of the populace, the instant fall of the Vlahov government and the cold, cold smile of Dragan Drakulovic as he watched his jackbooted stormtroopers march through the streets of the captive city....

Kostadin collapsed on the church floor, choking and gasping for breath, his mind reeling. A terrible pain clutched at his chest and his vision darkened.....dimly, he was aware that he was shouting something....but then everything dissolved into blackness.

***

...and there was a song somewhere, and the light of a candle burning before a small icon of St. George. A window, a bed, a table covered with an embroidered cloth--Kostadin opened his eyes fully and slowly realized that he was alive. He was tucked into a warm bed in a peasant's house. The window looked out on a cold, clear day, the mountains blanketed in snow and the sun shining brilliantly. Peasant girls were singing outside, twining red and white ribbons together--good heavens, how long had it been? Was it Martenitsa already?

The door suddenly swung open and in walked three young women, still singing cheerfully. Kostadin dimly realized that he knew them: Todora and Slavyana, the butcher's daughters, and the somewhat older Helena, the spinster and orphan taken in by the deacon and his wife.
Todora gasped with joy. "Konstantin, you're awake!" And she ran to him, kissing and caressing him with such ardor that Slavyana and Helena turned away in embarrassment. "We were all so frightened...I was so frightened..."
Kostadin was becoming more bewildered by the second. "What....what happened?" he stammered, distractedly pushing Todora away.
"You collapsed in church about three weeks ago," supplied Slavyana as her sister drew back, a terribly hurt expression on her face. "No one could wake you, Father Vasil stopped the service right then and there and did an exorcism on you, invoked every saint he could think of, but nothing. You were shouting something awful in Macedonian or whatnot, so we assumed you'd been possessed...but there was nothing to be done. You were still alive, though, so we took you back here and tried to take care of you..." (she shot Todora a meaningful glare.)
"Good God...." Kostadin fell back against the pillow. "Three weeks...."
"Why don't you two go fetch Father Vasil again?" interrupted Helena suddenly. "If nothing else, he'd better know that Konstantin is all right."
The two sisters left, and Helena looked Kostadin directly in the eye. "That wasn't Macedonian you were speaking at all," she said, herself in a strange but oddly familiar language. "That was Balkanian. I know it because I grew up speaking it. I know who you are, Mr. Vlahov, I've always known but I never said anything because I didn't want to cause trouble. But I fought in your resistance and I saw the fall of Dubrov-Pesha too, and I'm here for exactly the same reason you are. My name isn't Helena, by the way, it's Mila."
"Oh God..." gasped Kostadin. "Milica Ivanova.....how could I have not recognized you..."
"Because you've spent the last ten years desperately forgetting who you are, where you come from and what your life's work is!" snapped Mila. "You've been tending your fields and praying your liturgies like any Bulgarian peasant from here to Gabrovo, abandoning your country and your people to suffer under the dragon's claws!"
"What else COULD I do??" demanded Kostadin. Mila looked coldly at him.
"You could have done what I've been doing. I've been writing and radioing every back channel and secret alias I could remember. I've been rebuilding the resistance. And as soon as you're on your feet, you're either coming with us or you're dying."